ht in the night as it had been noonday.
In the Sanctum Sanctorum was heard clashing and hewing of armour, while
flocks of ravens, with a fearful croaking cry, beat, fluttered and
clashed against the windows. A hideous dismal owl, exceeding all her
kind in deformity and quantity, in the Temple-porch built her nest. From
under the altar there issued penetrating plangorous howlings and ghastly
deadmen's groans."

He tells us, in the preface, that he takes an autumnal air, and in truth
there is a melancholy refinement in this volume which we may seek for
in vain elsewhere in Nash's writings. The greater part of the book is
a "collachrimate oration" over Jerusalem, placed in the mouth of our
Saviour; by degrees the veil of Jerusalem grows thinner and thinner,
and we see more and more clearly through it the London of Elizabeth,
denounced by a pensive and not, this time, a turbulent satirist.

In 1594 Nash's pen was particularly active. It was to the Lady Elizabeth
Carey, again, that he dedicated "The Terrors of the Night," a discourse
on apparitions. He describes some very agreeable ghosts, as, for
instance, those which appeared to a gentleman, a friend of the author's,
in the guise of "an inveigling troop of naked virgins, whose odoriferous
breath more perfumed the air than ordnance would that is charged with
amomum, musk, civet and ambergreece." It was surely a mock-modesty which
led Nash to fear that such ghost-stories as these would appear to his
readers duller than Holland cheese and more tiresome than homespun. To
1594, too, belongs the tragedy of "Dido," probably left incomplete by
Marlowe, and finished by Nash, who shows himself here an adept in
that swelling bombast of bragging blank verse of which he affected to
disapprove. A new edition of "Christ's Tears" also belongs to this busy
year 1594, which however is mainly interesting to us as having seen the
publication of the work which we are here introducing to modern readers.

An eminent French critic, M. Jusserand, whose knowledge of English
sixteenth-century literature is unsurpassed, was the first to draw
attention to the singular interest which attaches to "The Unfortunate
Traveller, or the Life of Jack Wilton," 1594. In his treatise, "Le Roman
au Temps de Shakespeare," 1887, M. Jusserand insisted upon the fact
that this neglected book was the best specimen of the _picaresque_ tale
written in English before the days of Defoe. He shows that expressions
put in th