by some, his removal from the University,
and, by others, his entanglement with a young woman. It is perhaps
simpler to understand him to say that the ensuing pamphlet was written,
in consequence of an intellectual crisis, in 1587, when he was twenty
years of age.

At twenty-two, at all events, we find him in London, beginning his
career as a man of letters. His first separate publication seems to have
been the small quarto in black letter from which a quotation has just
been made. This composition, named an "Anatomy" in imitation of several
then recent popular treatises of a similar title, is only to be pardoned
on the supposition that it was a boyish manuscript prepared at college.
It is vilely written, in the preposterous Euphuism of the moment;
the style is founded on Lyly, the manner is the manner of Greene, and
Whetstone in his moral "Mirrors" and "Heptamerons" has supplied the
matter. The "absurdity" satirized in this jejune and tedious tract is
extravagant living of all kinds. The author attacks women with great
vehemence, but only in that temper which permitted the young Juvenals
of the hour to preach against wine and cards and stageplays with intense
zeal, while practising the worship of all these with equal ardour. "The
Anatomy of Absurdity" is a purely academic exercise, interesting only
because it shows, in the praise of Sidney and the passage in defence of
poetry, something of the intellectual aptitude of the youthful writer.

In the same year, and a little earlier, Nash published an address "to
the gentlemen students of both universities," as a preface to a romance
by Greene. Bibliographers describe a supposititious "Menaphon" of 1587,
which nobody has ever seen; even if such an edition existed, it is
certain that Nash's address was not prefixed to it, for the style
is greatly in advance of his boyish writing of that year. It is an
interesting document, enthusiastic and gay in a manner hardly to be met
with again in its author, and diversified with graceful praise of St
John's College, defence of good poetry, and wholesome ridicule of those
who were trying to introduce the "Thrasonical huffsnuff" style of which
Phaer and Stanihurst were the prophets.

Still in 1589, but later in the year, Nash is believed to have thrown
himself into that extraordinary clash of theological weapons which is
celebrated as the Martin Marprelate Controversy. As is well known, this
pamphlet war grew out of the passionate rese