Nash, however, for some cause or other failed to retain the Earl’s interest; “indeed,” says Mr. Sidney Lee, “he did not retain the favour of any patron long.”  It is only fair to state, however, that the withdrawal of Lord Southampton’s patronage may not have been due to any fault or shortcoming on the part of Nash, for there is likewise no evidence whatever to show that any close intimacy existed between Southampton and Shakspeare after 1594.  Probably there was much else to claim Lord Southampton’s attention—­his marriage, and the Essex rebellion to wit.  This, however, leads somewhat wide of the present work.

So much for the circumstances which appear to have called forth “The Choise of Valentines.”  The next consideration is, Has it ever appeared in print before?  Oldys, in his Ms. notes to Langbaine’s English Dramatic Poets (c. 1738) says:—­“Tom Nash certainly wrote and published a pamphlet upon Dildos.  He is accused of it by his antagonist, Harvey.”  But he was writing nearly 150 years after the event, and it is certainly very strange that a production which it can be shown was well known should, if printed, have so entirely disappeared.  At all events, no copy is at present known to exist.[e] John Davies of Hereford alludes to it, but leaves it uncertain whether its destruction occurred in Ms. or in print.  In his “Papers Complaint"[f] he writes:—­

But O! my soule is vext to thinke how euill It is abus’d to beare suits to the Deuill. Pierse-Pennilesse (a Pies eat such a patch) Made me (agree) that business once dispatch.  And having made me vndergo the shame, Abusde me further, in the Deuills name:  And made [me] Dildo (dampned Dildo) beare, Till good men’s hate did me in peeces teare.

As regards the manuscript copies there are one or two points worthy of note.  At present we know of two, more or less incomplete, but each of which supplements, in some degree, the other.  These MSS. are respectively in the Bodleian (Rawl.  MS. Poet, 216) and the Inner Temple (Petyt MS. 538, vol. 43, p. viii., 295b.) libraries.  Both texts are obviously corrupt, the Rawlinson abominably so.  Probably the former was written out from memory alone, while the Petyt, if not a transcript direct from the original is, at any rate, very near to it.

The Bodleian version is written on paper in a small oblong leather-covered book, originally with clasps.  The penmanship is early 17th century, probably about 1610-20.  It is thus catalogued:—­ ..."E libris Matt.  Postlethwayt, Aug. 1, 1697.  Perhaps (earlier) Henry Price owned the book.”  The volume contains besides an English transcript of Ovid’s “Arte Amandis” and some amatory poems.[g] The date of the Petyt text may be about....  It is written in a miscellaneous, folio, commonplace-book, and in the catalogue it is described as “an obscene poem, entitled ‘The Choosing of Valentines,’ by Thomas Nash.  The first 17 lines are printed at p. lx. of the Preface to vol i. of Mr. Grosart’s edition of Nash’s works, as if they formed the whole piece."[h]