no longer in existence. The Lord Admiral's
Company of actors, which produced it, had its licence withdrawn until
the 27th of August, when Nash was probably liberated. Gabriel Harvey was
not the man to allow this event to go unnoticed. He hurried into
print with his "Trimming of Thomas Nash," 1597, a pamphlet of the most
outrageous abuse addressed "to the polypragmatical, parasitupocritical
and pantophainoudendecontical puppy Thomas Nash," and adorned with a
portrait of that gentleman in irons, with heavy gyves upon his ankles.
According to Nash, however, the part of "The Isle of Dogs" which was
his composition was so trifling in extent that his imprisonment was
a gratuitous act of oppression. How the play with this pleasing title
offended has not been handed down to us.

Nash was now a literary celebrity, and yet it is at this precise moment
that his figure begins to fade out of sight For the next two years he is
not known to have made any public appearance. In 1599 he published the
best of all his books; it was unfortunately the latest "Nash's Lenten
Stuff; or, the Praise of the Red Herring" is an encomium on the
hospitable town of Yarmouth, to which, in the autumn of 1597, he had
fled for consolation, and in which, through six happy weeks, he had
found what he sought The "kind entertainment and benign hospitality"
of the compassionate clime of Yarmouth deserve from the poor exile a
cordial return, and, accordingly, he sings the praise of the Red Herring
as richly as if his mouth were still tingling with the delicate bloater.
In this book, Nash is kind enough to explain to us the cause of some of
the peculiarities of his style. His endeavour has been to be Italianate,
and "of all styles I most affect and strive to imitate Aretine's."

Whether he was deeply read in the works of _il divino Aretino_, we may
doubt; but it is easy to see that this Scourge of Princes, the very type
of the emancipated Italian of the sixteenth century, might have a vague
and dazzling attraction for his little eager English imitator.

Be that as it may, "Lenten Stuff" gives us evidence that Nash had now
arrived at a complete mastery of the fantastic and irrelevant manner
which he aimed at. This book is admirably composed, if we can bring
ourselves to admit that the _genre_ is ever admirable. The writer's
vocabulary has become opulent, his phrases flash and detonate, each
page is full of unconnected sparks and electrical discharges. A sort
of