e, two years later, fused the two characters into one, caused
the wit of the page to enter the brain of the fat man, and the blending,
animated by his genius, produced the inimitable customer of the "Boar's
Head" tavern.

After various adventures, Wilton returns to London, and struts about in
fine clothes, whose originality he describes with an amusing rush of
language: "I had my feather in my cap as big as a flag in the fore-top;
... my cape cloake of blacke cloth, over-spreading my backe like a
thornbacke or an elephantes eares, ... and in consummation of my
curiositie my hands without gloves, all a mode French." The sense of the
picturesque, the careful observation of the effect of a pose, of a fold
of a garment, were, before Nash, entirely unknown to English novel
writers, and it was not until the eighteenth century, until the time of
Defoe, Fielding, and, above all, Sterne, that the author of "Jack
Wilton" was excelled in this special talent.

Soon the page takes up the course of his adventures again, and travels
anew on the continent. He visits Venice, Florence, Rome, refraining with
a care for which he is to be thanked from trite descriptions. What's the
good of describing the monuments of Rome? he says; everybody knows them:
"he that hath but once drunke with a traveller, talkes of them." Sir
Thomas More contemplating his "Utopia," John of Leyden dragged to the
scaffold, the Earl of Surrey jousting for the fair Geraldine "against
all commers," Francis I., conqueror at Marignan, Erasmus, Aretino, "one
of the wittiest knaves that ever God made," and other personages of the
Renaissance, figure in the narrative. Faithful to the picaresque plot,
Nash conducts his reader into all societies, from the tavern to the
palace, from the haunt of robbers to the papal court, and makes his hero
no better than he should be. At Marignan, Wilton occupies himself
especially in discovering quickly who is likely to be the strongest, in
order to attach himself ardently to the winner. At Venice he runs away
with an Italian lady, deserts his master, the Earl of Surrey, and passes
himself off as the Earl.

All this is too much at length for honest Nash, and feeling not less
displeased than ourselves with the wicked actions of his hero, he
himself interposes at times, not without disadvantage to his plot, and,
in spite of the improbability of placing such remarks in Wilton's mouth,
introduces his own opinions on the persons and incident