s foamed against each other,
till Nash, in his vehement invective, involved the whole generation
of the Harveys, made one brother more ridiculous than the other, and
even attainted the fair name of Gabriel's respectable sister.
Gabriel, indeed, after the death of Robert Greene, the crony of Nash,
sitting like a vampyre on his grave, sucked blood from his corpse,
in a memorable narrative of the debaucheries and miseries of this
town-wit. I throw into the note the most awful satirical address I
ever read.[85] It became necessary to dry up the floodgates of
these rival ink-horns, by an order of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The order is a remarkable fragment of our literary history, and is
thus expressed:--"That all Nashe's bookes and Dr. Harvey's bookes be
taken wheresoever they may be found, and that none of the said bookes
be ever printed hereafter."

This extraordinary circumstance accounts for the excessive rarity of
Harvey's "Foure Letters, 1592," and that literary scourge of Nash's,
"Have with you to Saffron-Walden (Harvey's residence), or Gabriel
Harvey's Hunt is vp, 1596;" pamphlets now as costly as if they
consisted of leaves of gold.[87]

Nash, who, in his other works, writes in a style as flowing as
Addison's, with hardly an obsolete vestige, has rather injured this
literary invective by the evident burlesque he affects of Harvey's
pedantic idiom; and for this Mr. Malone has hastily censured him,
without recollecting the aim of this modern Lucian.[88] The delicacy
of irony; the _sous-entendu_, that subtlety of indicating what is not
told; all that poignant satire, which is the keener for its polish,
were not practised by our first vehement satirists; but a bantering
masculine humour, a style stamped in the heat of fancy, with all the
life-touches of strong individuality, characterise these licentious
wits. They wrote then as the old _fabliers_ told their tales, naming
everything by its name; our refinement cannot approve, but it cannot
diminish their real nature, and among our elaborate graces, their
_naivete_ must be still wanting.

In this literary satire NASH has interwoven a kind of ludicrous
biography of Harvey; and seems to have anticipated the character of
Martinus Scriblerus. I leave the grosser parts of this invective
untouched; for my business is not with _slander_, but with _ridicule_.

Nash opens as a skilful lampooner; he knew well that ridicule, without
the appearance of truth, was letting fl