[d] It is true that Nash, in his dedication of the “Unfortunate Traveller,” speaks of it as his “first offering.”  This, however, must be taken rather as meaning his first serious effort in acknowledgment of his patron’s bounty, for in “The Terrors of the Night” (registered on the 30th June, 1593), he somewhat effusively acknowledges his indebtedness to Lord Southampton:—­“Through him my tender wainscot studie doore is delivered from much assault and battrie:  through him I looke into, and am looked on in the world:  from whence otherwise I were a wretched banished exile.  Through him all my good is conueighed vnto me; and to him all my endeavours shall be contributed as to the ocean.”  Again, as evidence that Nash had addressed himself to Southampton prior to his dedication of “The Unfortunate Traveller,” we glean from his promise ("Terrors of the Night”) “to embroyder the rich store of his eternal renoune” in “some longer Tractate.”

[e] At the same time it must be stated that the scandal of the controversy between Nash and Harvey became so notorious that in 1599 it was ordered by authority “that all Nashes books and Dr. Harvey’s books be taken wheresoever they may be found and that none of the said books be ever printed hereafter” (COOPER, Athenae Cant. ii. 306).

[f] Davies [Grosart, Works (1888) 1-75, lines 64-72.]

[g] These have been incorporated in “National Ballad and Song” (Section 2, Merry Songs and Ballads, Series 1).

[h] This is not quite correct.  The title in the MS. runs “The Choise of Valentines,” and Dr. Grosart purports to give the first eighteen lines, but in transcription he has omitted line 4.

[Illustration]

      TO THE RIGHT
  honorable the Lord S.[i]

  Pardon, sweete flower of Matchles poetrie,
    And fairest bud the red rose euer bare;
    Although my Muse, devorst from deeper care,
    Presents thee with a wanton Elegie. 4

  Ne blame my verse of loose unchastitie
    For painting forth the things that hidden are,
    Since all men acte what I in speache declare,
    Onlie induced with varietie. 8

  Complants and praises euery one can write,
    And passion out their pangu’s in statlie rimes;
    But of loues pleasures none did euer write,
    That have succeeded in theis latter times. 12

  Accept of it, Deare Lord, in gentle gree,
    And better lynes, ere long, shall honor thee._

* * * * *

FOOT- AND LINE NOTES: 

[i] Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, and Baron of Titchfield.  The dedication is absent in the Rawlinson text:  cf. variorum reading in line 13.

1 Matchles, machles.

2 the red rose euer bare, that euer red rose bare.