or the author of "England to her three Daughters" in
"Polimanteia," 1595, speaking of Harvey and Nash, and the pending
quarrel between them, uses these terms: "Cambridge make thy two children
friends: _thou hast been unkind to the one to wean him before his time_,
and too fond upon the other to keep him so long without preferment: the
one is ancient and of much reading; the other is young, but full of
wit."[4] The cause of his disgrace is reported to have been the share he
took in a piece called "Terminus et non Terminus," not now extant; and
it is not denied that his partner in this offence was expelled. Most
likely, therefore, Nash suffered the same punishment.

If Nash be the author of "An Almond for a Parrot," of which there is
little doubt, although his name is not affixed to it, he travelled in
Italy;[5] and we find from another of his pieces that he had been in
Ireland. Perhaps he went abroad soon after he abandoned Cambridge, and
before he settled in London and became an author. His first appearance
in this character seems to have been in 1589, and we believe the
earliest date of any tract attributed to him relating to Martin
Marprelate is also 1589.[6] He was the first, as has been frequently
remarked, to attack this enemy of the Church with the keen missiles of
wit and satire, throwing aside the lumbering and unserviceable weapons
of scholastic controversy. Having set the example in this respect, he
had many followers and imitators, and among them John Lily, the dramatic
poet, the author of "Pap with a Hatchet."

In London Nash became acquainted with Robert Greene, and their
friendship drew him into a long literary contest with Gabriel Harvey, to
which Nash owes much of his reputation. It arose out of the posthumous
attack of Harvey upon Robert Greene, of which sufficient mention has
been made elsewhere. Nash replied on behalf of his dead companion, and
reiterated the charge which had given the original offence to Harvey,
viz., that his brother was the son of a ropemaker.[7] One piece was
humorously dedicated to Richard Litchfield, a barber of Cambridge, and
Harvey answered it under the assumed character of the same barber, in a
tract called "The Trimmino of Thomas Nash,"[8] which also contained a
woodcut of a man in fetters. This representation referred to the
imprisonment of Nash for an offence he gave by writing a play (not now
extant) called "The Isle of Dogs," and to this event Francis Meres
alludes in h