ille, Chaucer, Gower, Skelton, were not
forgotten. Following then the usual course, he seems to have travelled
on the continent, to have visited Italy and Germany,[257] and to have
come home, also according to custom, to rush into literature: by which
word was then habitually understood fame, poverty, quarrels,
imprisonment, and an early death. Not one of these items was wanting in
Nash's career. A prolific and easy writer, he tried his hand at all
kinds of work, composing them rapidly and with visible pleasure, always
ready to laugh at the follies of others, sometimes at his own, not
melancholy like Sidney, nor downcast like Greene. He very rarely alludes
to his miseries without a smile, though he could not help regretting the
better things he might have done if Fortune had not been so adverse,
"had I a ful-sayld gale of prosperity." But "my state is so tost and
weather-beaten, that it hath nowe no anchor-holde left to cleave
unto."[258] Having said thus much, he immediately resumes his cheerful
countenance and in the best of spirits and in perfect good humour goes
on describing the great city of Yarmouth, the metropolis of the Red
Herring.

With this turn of mind and an inexhaustible fund of wit, satire, and
gaiety, he published numerous pamphlets, threw himself impetuously into
the Martin Marprelate controversy (in which another novelist, Lyly, was
also taking part); sustained a rude warfare against Gabriel Harvey;[259]
wrote a dissertation on social manners: the "Anatomie of absurditie,"
1589; a disquisition with an autobiographical turn, which may be
compared with those Greene has left; "Pierce Penilesse his supplication
to the Divell," 1592 (it had great success, and was even translated into
French, "maimedly translated," says Nash,[260] probably with great
truth); a novel "The unfortunate traveller or the life of Jack Wilton,"
1594, which has most undeservedly remained until now the least known of
his works; a drama, "The Isle of dogs," 1597, which is lost, and for
which the author was sent to prison; a curious and amusing discourse "in
praise of the red herring," 1599; and many other books, pamphlets, and
works of all kinds.[261]

Constantly entangled in quarrels, in such a way sometimes that the
authorities had to interfere--for example, in his war with Gabriel
Harvey, when the destruction of the books of both was ordered--he
preserved to the last his good humour and his taste for people and
authors who knew