death. Marlowe was at Corpus, then called Benet College,
during five years of Nash's residence, but it is by no means certain
that their acquaintance began so early. It is, indeed, in the highest
degree tantalizing that these writers, many of whom loved nothing better
than to talk about themselves, should have neglected to give us the
information which would precisely be most welcome to us. A dozen whole
"Anatomies of Absurdity" and "Supplications of Pierce Penniless"
might be eagerly exchanged for a few pages in which the literary life of
Cambridge from 1582 to 1589 should be frankly and definitely described.

It has been surmised that Nash was ejected from the university in 1587.
His enemy, Gabriel Harvey, who was extremely ill-informed, gives this
account of what occurred:--

"[At Cambridge], (being distracted of his wits) [Nash] fell into diverse
misdemeanours, which were the first steps that brought him to this
poor estate. As, namely, in his fresh-time, how he flourished in all
impudency towards scholars, and abuse to the townsmen; insomuch that to
this day the townsmen call every untoward scholar of whom there is great
hope, _a very Nash_. Then, being bachelor of arts, which by great labour
he got, to show afterwards that he was not unworthy of it, had a hand in
a show called _Terminus et non terminus_; for the which his partner in
it was expelled the college; but this foresaid Nash played in it (as I
suppose) the Varlet of Clubs.... Then suspecting himself that he should
be stayed for _egregie dunsus_, and not attain to the next degree, said
he had commenced enough, and so forsook Cambridge, being bachelor of the
third year."

But, even in this poor gossip, we find nothing about ejection. Nash's
extraordinary abuse of language is probably the cause of that report. In
1589, in prefacing his "Anatomy of Absurdity," he remarked:--

"What I have written proceeded not from the pen of vainglory, but from
the process of that pensiveness, which two summers since overtook me;
whose obscured cause, best known to every name of curse, hath compelled
my wit to wander abroad unregarded in this satirical disguise, and
counselled my content to dislodge his delight from traitors' eyes."

That the young gentleman meant something by these sentences, it is only
charitable to suppose; that he could have been intelligible, even to
his immediate contemporaries, is hardly to be believed. This "obscured
cause" has been taken to be,