ditions, besides being translated in 1594 into French,
and, a little later, into Macaronic Latin. In "Christ's Tears" the young
writer, conscious of his new importance, deals with what the critics
have said about his style. He tells us, and we cannot wonder at it, that
objections have been made to "my boisterous compound words, and ending
my Italianate coined verbs all in _ize_." His defence is not unlike
that of De Quincey; we can imagine his asking, when urged to be simple,
whether simplicity be in place in a description of Belshazzar's Feast He
says that the Saxon monosyllables that swarm in the English tongue are a
scandal to it, and that he is only turning this cheap silver trash into
fine gold coinage. Books, he says, written in plain English, "seem
like shopkeepers' boxes, that contain nothing else save halfpence,
three-farthings, and two-pences." To show what sort of doubloons he
proposes to mint for English pockets, we need go no further than the
opening phrases of his dedication of this very book to that amiable
poet, the Lady Elizabeth Carey:--

"Excellent accomplished court-glorifying Lady, give me leave, with the
sportive sea-porpoises, preludiately a little to play before the storm
of my tears, to make my prayer before I proceed to my sacrifice. Lo, for
an oblation to the rich burnished shrine of your virtue, a handful of
Jerusalem's mummianized earth, in a few sheets of waste paper enwrapped,
I here, humiliate, offer up at your feet."

These, however, in spite of the odd neologisms, are sentences formed in
a novel and a greatly improved manner, and the improvement is sustained
throughout this curious volume. Probably the intimate study of the
Authorized Version of the Bible, which this semi-theological tractate
necessitated, had much to do with the clarification of the author's
style. At all events, from this time forth, Nash drops, except in
polemical passages where his design is provocative, that irritating
harshness in volubility which had hitherto marked his manner of writing.
Here, for example, is a passage from "Christ's Tears" which is not
without a strangely impressive melody:--

"Over the Temple, at the solemn feast of the Passover, was seen a comet
most coruscant, streamed and tailed forth, with glistering naked swords,
which in his mouth, as a man in his hand all at once, he made semblance
as if he shaked and vambrashed. Seven days it continued; all which time,
the Temple was as clear and lig