Wilton, as an imprisoned earl, had presently a fair lady for fellowprisoner. This was Diamante, the wife of Castaldo, a falsely jealous husband. Jack Wilton gave Castaldo better reason for his jealousy. The fair lady became Wilton's courtesan. Through the good offices of Aretino they were set free. Then Jack Wilton, leaving Surrey, travelled away from Venice to see Italy with Diamante. That lady's husband had died of jealousy, and left her mistress of his goods. Jack Wilton lived on Diamante's money, but found Surrey again and saw his tournaments. Then Surrey returned to England, and Jack, with Diamante, went to Rome.

Jack Wilton pulls well on his invention for a wonderful account of Rome, describes also a plague there. At Rome Jack's Diamante was carried off in the night by one Bartol, a desperate Italian, leagued with Esdras, of Granado, from "the eighth score house" in which he has wronged and murdered women. Esdras wronged a widow-Heraclide -in the same house, and left her in swoon with her head pillowed on the body of her husband, lately dead of plague.

Jack pleased the eye of the Countess Julia, the Marquis of Mantua's wife and the Pope's chief concubine, when he chanced to pass her window. By device she got possession of him, and kept him imprisoned in an inner room, slave to her pleasures.

Diamante, after other adventures, was sold by the Jew Zadoch to a Jew physician, Doctor Zacharie, who kept her in a cellar for public dissection on an appointed day. But a time came when it was found better to present Diamante as a slave to Countess Juliana, whom she was instructed secretly to poison. This plot being revealed, Zacharie escaped; Zadoch remained, and Jack Wilton racks his brains for the details of a pageful of outrageous tortures to which Zadoch was put.

Lastly, when Juliana had gone, in great state, on Saint Peter's Day, to greet the Pope, Jack Wilton and the trusted Diamante, who was keeper of Juliana's keys, packed up Juliana's jewels, plate, and money, and escaped with them down the Tiber.

Juliana came back, saw her loss, and was frenzied; her breast swelled (like Lear's) with the mother. A maid was sent for spiritus vini. She brought, by mistake, the poison Zacharie had prepared for her, which she had kept as a dose for Jack Wilton after she grew tired of him.

Jack Wilton and Diamante escaped to Bologna, where they saw a criminal broken on the wheel. It was one Cutwolfe, younger brother to Bartol, whom Esdras of Granado had slain in a quarrel over Diamante. Cutwolfe rejoiced in his torture, and told from the wheel that he had followed on the track of Esdras for two years until he had his revenge by killing him, after compelling him to curse God aloud

and unconditionally give his soul to hell. After seeing Bartol tortured, Jack Wilton married his courtesan, performed many almsdeeds, left Italy, and found his way to the King of England's camp at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, between Ardennes and Guines. That would have been in 1520, fifteen years before the destruction of John of Leyden and his followers in Munster. In the middle of this Traveller's Tale, it may be noted that there is a long passage against the English appetite for life away from home.

"Jack Wilton," printed in 1594, was dated at its close June 27, 1593. Nash's pen was never so busy as in this plague year, when the writer was removed from London tavern life and all distractions of the town, and housed with patrons in the country, where he was expected to behave well and to use his wit.

In the year 1597, on the fourteenth of May, Philip Henslowe, as manager of the Lord Admiral's company of

"The Isle of Dogs."

players, "lent to Jubie, upon a note from Nash, twenty shillings more for 'The Isle of Dogs,' which he is writing for the company." When this play was produced it gave so much offence that the Privy Council withdrew its licence from the company and imprisoned Nash in the Fleet. Henslowe records, on the twenty-third of August, that he had paid "to Harry Porter to carry to T. Nash, now at this time in the Fleet for writing of the Isle of Dogs, ten shillings to be paid again when he can." The piece is lost, and there is no trace left of the cause of offence. Some great man may have resented words that he supposed-wrongly, perhaps to have been pointed at himself; or there may really have been some bold touches of political satire; but there was resentment enough to cause Nash to leave London after his release, and he―a Lowestoft man-found safe and pleasant shelter in Great Yarmouth. So near home, probably he was housed with some of his kindred, and he wrote there his last pamphlet, his happiest piece of prose, published in 1599, the year before his death. It was a lively piece, all

kindliness, in serious praise of Great Yarmouth and of the Red Herring that had made the fortune of the "Nash's

Lenten
Stuff."

town. He called the book "Nashes Lenten Stuffe, Containing The Description and first Procreation and increase of the towne of Great Yarmouth in Norffolke: With a new Play neuer played before, of the praise of the Red Herring. Fitte of all Clearkes of Noblemens Kitchins to be read: and not unnecessary by all seruing men that haue short boord-wages, to be remembred. Famam peto per undas.”

To the last Nash retained interest in the fisher-folk whom he had known as a child on our east coast. If anywhere he praises husbandmen, he does not forget to join with them the labourers upon the sea. If Nash had wished to praise the rope-maker of Saffron Walden, he would have connected his trade, not with the hangman's office, but with the rigging of our navy, with the nets and tackle of our fishing fleets. The sea-breeze is in this little book of his, a book happy and healthy, caring only about what is good, with a broad sense of patriotism that dwells, however playfully, on no more trivial theme than the influence of small things upon the shaping of a nation's power. The herring fishery had made Great Yarmouth an important town, enriched by the great industrial fleet that helped to the training of good sailors and the nerving of our strength at sea. The piece is written in high spiritsfull of gaiety, but clear of empty fooling. Nash knows the real worthiness of his theme, feels younger for his contact with the sea, and, drawing on the records set up in the town hall of Great Yarmouth, he traces the town's growth from industry of simple fishermen till Yarmouth Roads are covered with a busy fleet, and the Red Herring cured by Yarmouth traders is merchandise in which men deal throughout the world. The London pamphleteer and playwright speaks in this piece as the countryman of Drake and

Frobisher. He is a man born on the English coast, whose happiest memories are blended with the stir of waves and stress of sail and oar.

Exit Nash.

That was the last breath of Thomas Nash in literature. He died about a year after the publishing of the best bit of praise Great Yarmouth ever had, and the wittiest and wisest eulogy man ever spent on a red herring. He died at an age--thirty-three-when many another writer has yet forty years of work before him. His life as a member of the new-born profession of letters had been full of want and struggle. "Summer's Last Will and Testament" was but a larger example of the occasional writing that helped towards maintenance. Marriage songs and small occasional pieces paid for by great people brought fees that helped to boil the pot. Nash tells us that need set him on to do such work; but no mishap daunted his courage.

"Maroccus Extaticus."

Pamphlets abounded that were written by men far below Nash's level-men without wit or genius, who sought to earn bread by amusement of the public. Let one serve for example, "Maroccus Extaticus: or Bankes' Bay Horse in a Trance," published in 1595. Bankes was a vintner in the City, who owned a middle-sized bay English gelding named Marocco, about eight years old in 1595, and then already famous for the tricks it had been taught. It could dance, and when accused of being a devil it could, at command, pick out from a crowd of people one with a crucifix in his hat, kneel to the crucifix and kiss it. In 1600 Bankes's horse went to the top of St. Paul's Cathedral. Bankes travelled abroad to show his horse, and it is said that horse and master were finally burnt at Rome as wizards. Bankes's horse, then being shown at the Belle Savage, was a new matter of town talk in 1595, and therefore was thought able to turn a penny for a pamphleteer, who set Bankes and his horse

talking together "in a merry dialogue anatomizing some abuses and bad trickes of this age."

Ballad

Writing.

If a murder became town talk, it was promptly turned into a ballad. The chief workman in this form, William Elderton, died a few years before Nash. He may have been the boy-actor of the same name who played at Court on Twelfth Day, 1553. His first known ballad appeared on a single sheet in 1559, "The Pangs of Love, and louers fittes." There was a ballad of his, in 1565, on "The true fourme and shape of a monsterous chyld which was borne at Stony Stratforde." In 1571 he wrote a ballad on the death of Bishop Jewel. In January, 1574, he managed a company of comedians. that acted before the queen. "A new Yorkshire song" of Elderton's, in 1584, celebrated in twenty-two stanzas a match at archery. Nash, as we have seen, writes of Elderton's "ale-crammed nose." Shakespeare made Benedick, in the fifth act of "Much Ado about Nothing," sing a snatch from one of Elderton's ballads—

"The god of love

That sits above,

And knows me, and knows me,

How pitiful I deserve."

Elderton did, perhaps, deserve pitifully, but he rhymed with ease over the ale until about 1592, when he might append to his own life, as he appended to each of his ballads, "Finis, qd W. E.," or "William Elderton."