est image on poets." Differing from Francis Bacon and a few of
the grave dignitaries of literature, he has faith in that group of
artists in the first rank of whom he placed heavenly Spenser, who can
well bear comparison with any author of France, Italy, or Spain.
"Neither is he the only swallow of our summer."[264]

This fondness for pure literature, for musical verse and lyrical poetry,
explains how, satirist as he was, Nash had numerous friends whose
feelings towards him were nothing short of tenderness. "Sweet boy,"
"Sweet Tom," are not usual expressions towards a satirist; they are,
however, applied to Nash both by Greene and by Francis Meres, because
there was in Nash's mind something besides the customary rancour of born
satirists, "The man," said Shakespeare,

"The man that has no music in himself
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are as dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus;
Let no such man be trusted."[265]

A very different sort of a man was Nash; his friends found that he could
be "mov'd with concord of sweet sounds," and that he could be trusted.
As he survived Sidney at a time when a few years meant much for English
literature, he could form a far more favourable judgment of the drama
than the well-known one in the "Apologie." The ridiculous performances
noticed by Sidney had not disappeared, but they were not the only ones
to be seen on the stage; dramas of the highest order were being played;
actors rendered them with becoming dignity, and, curiously enough to our
ideas, Nash adds as a special praise that women were excluded from among
their number: "Our players are not as the players beyond sea, a sort of
squirting baudie comedians, that have whores and common curtezans to
play womens parts, and forbeare no immodest speech or unchast action
that may procure laughter; but our sceane is more stately furnisht than
ever it was in the time of Roscius, our representations honorable and
full of gallant resolution, not consisting like theirs of a Pantaloun, a
whore and a Zanie, but of emperours, kings and princes whose true
tragedies, _Sophocleo cothurno_ they do vaunt."[266] In the next
century, women were allowed to replace on the English stage the
newly-shaven young fellows who used to play Juliet and Titania; we are
happy to say that so indecent a practice was due to foreign influenc