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Read Ebook: An Almond for a Parrot: Being a reply to Martin Mar-Prelate. by Lyly John Dubious Author Nash Thomas Dubious Author Petheram John Editor
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Ebook has 35 lines and 21111 words, and 1 pages
Contributor: John Petheram
Puritan Discipline Tracts.
AN ALMOND FOR A PARROT; BEING A REPLY TO MARTIN MAR-PRELATE.
Re-printed from the Black Letter Edition, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES.
LONDON: JOHN PETHERAM, 71, CHANCERY LANE. 1846.
INTRODUCTION.
Although I cannot at this time bring together positive and undoubted evidence of the authorship of the following tract, at some future period, in the Introduction to one of his accredited productions, I hope to place the fact beyond the reach of cavil or question, that Thomas Nash, to whom public fame has given it, was the author.
Whatever may be the date of the first edition of Greene's Menaphon, we have here only to do with Nash's Preface to that work, and, though Sir E. Brydges, in his reprint of it in 1814, mentions 1587, in which he is followed by the Rev. A. Dyce in 1831, , by Mr. Collier above, in the same year, and again in 1842, all agreeing to fix the date of Nash's Preface in 1587; yet there is, if I mistake not, internal evidence that it could not have been written before the date of the first known edition, which is in 1589.
Of the accuracy of the extraordinary facts which Nash relates in the Introduction to the Almond for a Parrot , I had expected to find confirmation in some book of travels of the time, but in this have not succeeded.
Thirdly, he says, "If I please, I will think my ignorance indebted unto you that applaud it, if not, what rests but that I be excluded from your courtesy, like Apocrypha from your Bibles?"
This passage appears to refer to a fact which Martin Mar-Prelate states in his Epistle to the Terrible Priests. "The last lent there came a commaundement from his grace into Paules Church Yard, that no Byble should be bounde without the Apocripha." Strype, in his Life of Archbishop Whitgift, admits the order, and takes some pains to justify the Archbishop in issuing it.
I should not have taken the trouble to investigate the contents of this Preface of Nash, "the firstlings of my folly," as he calls it himself , with such minuteness, but that it establishes beyond question the fact that Nash commenced his literary career in 1589, and not, as is generally supposed, in 1587.
In the following Introduction, Nash says, "For comming from Venice the last summer, and taking Bergamo in my waye homeward to England." Now as he afterwards alludes to the appearance of Martin Mar-prelate in England, and also to the defeat of the Spanish Armada, "neither Philip by his power," this most probably was the latter part of the summer of 1588, and if he arrived in England towards the end of 1588, there would be both time and opportunity for him to write the various works, which, published in 1589, are attributed to him. There is every probability, therefore, that Nash did visit Italy, that he was there in 1588, and that, returning to England with his mind enlarged by travel, he commenced his short, but remarkable career in literature, which, after he had undergone the painful vicissitudes to which authors by profession have so often been subjected,
"Since none takes pitie of a scholler's neede,"
was terminated by his death in 1601.
I shall not here enumerate the various works which Nash wrote, because an opportunity will offer, in the Introduction to one of his publications, to notice the whole of them.
Whatever was the origin of the long and bitter quarrel between Nash and Gabriel Harvey, from this passage in the Preface to Menaphon, 1589, "and Gabriel Harvey, with two or three other, is almost all the store that is left us at this hour," we may reasonably infer that it was not in existence then. The origin, progress, and effect of this quarrel, which included Lyly, Greene, Nash, and the three Harveys, and the right understanding of which is necessary to elucidate the progress of the Martin Mar-Prelate Controversy, I hope to give in the Introduction to "Plaine Percevall the Peace-Maker of England," a tract uniformly attributed to Nash; but which he, in one of his publications, not only utterly disclaims, but charges it upon one of his most hated antagonists.
The internal evidence in favour of Nash, as the author of the Almond for a Parrot, is very strong; and cannot but appear to any one who is conversant with his "Christ's Tears over Jerusalem," a work containing more remarkable passages than any publication of the time that has ever fallen in my way. The description of Penry, at p. 39, beginning, "Where, what his estimation was," &c.; but more especially the paragraph at p. 21, beginning, "Talke as long as you will of the Ioyes of heaven," &c., may be compared with several passages in "Christ's Tears" wherein Nash describes the horrors endured by its inhabitants during the siege of Jerusalem.
The original, from which the present tract is reprinted, is a small 4to, printed in black letter, consisting altogether of 28 pages. The "Protestation" is referred to at p. 11, "Pap with a Hatchet," at p. 12, and "Hay any worke for a Cooper," at p. 15, by which it is certain that its publication was subsequent to them, and may perhaps be referred to the latter end of the year 1589.
J. P.
Therefore beware you catch not the hicket with laughing.
Imprinted at a Place, not farre from a Place, by the Assignes of Signior Some-body, and are to be sold at his shoppe in Trouble-knaue Street, at the signe of the Standish.
TO THAT MOST
Comicall and conceited Caualeire
Vice-gerent generall to the Ghost of Dicke Tarlton.
An Almond for a Parrat.
Yours to command as your owne for two or three cudgellings at all times.
FOOTNOTES
Hug. lib. de duob. abusio.
Greg. lib. 8.
Greg. lib. mor.
Ber. 2. ser. resur.
Ierome super Oseam.
Greg. 15.
NOTES.
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