Thomas Nashe

on the diamond rock of your judgement disasterly chanceth to be shipwrecked

except these unpolished leaves of mine have some branch of nobility whereon to depend
and cleave

so they be not woe-begone at the heels, or weather-beaten, like a black head
with grey hairs, or mangy at the toes, like an ape about the mouth.

What stratagemical acts and monuments do you think an egregious infant of my years
might enact?

I was prince of their purses, and exacted of my unthrift subjects as much liquid allegiance
as any Kaiser in the world could do

to have his great velvet breeches larded with the droppings of this dainty liquor

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after he had sponged and wrung all the rheumatic drivel from his
ill-favoured goat’s beard

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cut it out equally, like a true justiciary, in little pennyworths that it would do
a man good for to look upon.

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The wheel under our city bridge carries not so much water over the city
as my brain hath welled forth gushing streams of sorrow;

by this time his white liver had mixed itself with the white of his eye, and
both were turned upwards

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no definitive sentence of death shall march out of my well-meaning lips

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Nay, then (quoth he), questionless some planet that loves not cider hath
conspired against me.

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We made five peals of shot into the town together of nothing but spigots
and faucets of discarded empty barrels;

I had the right vein of sucking up a die twixt the dints of my fingers

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Seignior Velvet-cap, whose head was not encumbered with too much
forecast.

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the dice of late are grown as　melancholy as a dog

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I had moistened my lips to make my lie run glib to his journey’s end

had you seen him how he stretched out his limbs, scratched his scabbed
elbows at this speech

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The whelps of a bear never grow but sleeping, and these bearwards, having big
limbs, shall be preferred though they do nothing.

delude their sight by one means or other, that they dive not into his subtleties

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What need the snail care for eyes when he feels the way with his two horns as
well as if he were as quick-sighted as a decipherer?

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This silver-sounding tale made such sugared harmony in his ears

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Our vulgar politicians are but flies swimming on the stream of subtlety
superficially in comparison　of your singularity; their blind narrow eyes
cannot pierce into the profundity of hypocrisy;

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he had no mite of any metal about him, he took part with none of the four ages,
neither the golden age, the silver age, the brazen, nor the iron age;

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I simpered with my countenance like a porridge-pot on the fire when it first
begins to seethe.

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They would in　no wise permit that the motes in the sunbeams should be
full-mouthed beholders of their clean finified apparel;

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wherefore on the experience of their pusillanimity I thought to raise the
foundation of my roguery.

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How we dealt with them, their disburdened desks can best tell, but this I
am assured, we fared the better for it a fortnight of fasting-days after.

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Yes, whether you will part with so much probable friendly suppose or no,
I’ll have it in spite of your hearts.

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my long stock that sat close to my dock, and smothered not a scab or a
lecherous hairy sinew on the calf of the leg;

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I have seen an old woman at that season, having　three chins, wipe them all
away one after another as they melted to water, and left herself nothing of
a mouth but an upper chap.

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The fishes called sea-stars, that burn one another by excessive heat, were
not so contagious as one man that had the sweat was to another.

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kept their houses so hot with their hairy excrements that not so much but
their very walls sweat out saltpetre with the smothering perplexity;

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God had done fairly by him if he had turned him to a goat, for goats take
breath not at the mouth or nose only, but at the ears also.

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here unwieldy Switzers wallowing in their gore like an ox in his dung, there
the sprightly French sprawling and turning on the stained grass like a roach
new taken out of the stream;

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you might see a fellow that had a canker-eaten skull on his head which served
him and his ancestors for a chamber-pot two hundred years

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why, inspiration was their ordinary familiar, and buzzed in their ears like a
bee in a box every hour what news from heaven, hell, and the land of
whipperginnie;

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When Christ said the kingdom of heaven must　suffer violence, He meant
not the violence of long babbling prayers, nor the violence of　tedious
invective sermons without wit

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the glorious sun of the gospel shall be eclipsed with the dim cloud of
dissimulation, that that which is the brightest planet of salvation shall
be a means of error and darkness, and the moon shall be turned into
blood

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the ringleaders of this rusty morosity, and he, for all his nice dogged
disposition and blunt deriding of worldly dross and the gross felicity of
fools was taken very fairly a-coining money in his cell;

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To see even a　bear (which is the most cruelest of all beasts) too too
bloodily overmatched, and　deformedly rent in pieces by an unconscionable
number of curs, it would move　compassion against kind

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yet drums and trumpets sounding nothing but stern revenge in their ears
made them so eager that their hands had no leisure to ask counsel of
their effeminate eyes;

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for what with talking of　cobblers, tinkers, rope-makers, botchers, and
dirt-daubers, the mark is clean out of my　muse’s mouth, and I am as
it were more than duncified twixt divinity and poetry.

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if there be any spark of Adam’s paradised perfection yet embered up in
the breasts of mortal men, certainly God hath bestowed that, his
perfectest image, on poets.

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There is a little god called love that will not be worshipped of any leaden
brains, one that proclaims himself sole king and emperor of piercing eyes
and chief sovereign of soft hearts;

Her high-exalted sunbeams have set the phoenix nest of my breast on fire,
and I myself have brought Arabian spiceries of sweet passions and praises
to furnish out the funeral flame of my folly.

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She very discreetly answered me that if my love were so hot as I had often
avouched, I did very well to apply the plaster of absence unto it

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Here did tears step out before words, and intercepted the course of my
kind-conceived　speech, even as wind is allayed with rain;

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Now I beseech God love me so well as I love a plain-dealing man; earth is
earth, flesh is flesh, earth will to earth, and flesh unto flesh;

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where by the orator of the university, whose picke-devant was very
plentifully besprinkled with rose-water, a very learned or rather ruthful
oration was delivered (for it rained all the while)

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there rushed upon him a miserable rabblement of junior graduates that all
cried upon him mightily in their gibberish like a company of beggars,
God save your Grace, God save your Grace

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the town arms carousing a whole health to the Duke’s arms, which
sounded　gulping after this sort, Vanhotten, slotten, irk bloshen glotten
gelderslike: whatever the　words were, the sense was this: Good drink
is a medicine for all diseases.

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one that had a sulphurous big-swollen large face like a Saracen, eyes like
two Kentish oysters, a mouth that opened as wide every time he spake as
one of those old knit trap doors

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O orificial rhetoric, wipe thy everlasting mouth, and afford me a more
Indian metaphor than that for the brave princely blood of a Saxon.

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even as garlic hath three properties, to make a man wink, drink and
stink, so we will wink on thy imperfections, drink to thy favourites,
and all thy foes shall stink before us.

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Marry, their outward gestures would now and then afford a man a morsel
of mirth

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If of a number of shreds of his sentences he can shape an oration,
from all the world he carries it away, although in truth it be no more
than a fool’s coat of many colours.

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seeing the Duke have a dog he loved well, which sat by him on the
terrace, converted all his oration to him, and not a hair of his tail
but he combed out with comparisons.

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Perch thou, my spirit, on her silver breasts,

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Stars, fall to fetch fresh light from her rich eyes

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a precious supernatural pander, apparelled in all points like a gentleman,
& having half a dozen several languages in his purse, entertained us in
our own tongue very paraphrastically and eloquently

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On her beds there was not a wrinkle of any wallowing to be found

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Tears, sighs and doleful-tuned words could not make any forcible
claim to my stony ears

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yet was one of those treacherous brother Trulies, and
abused us most clerkly.

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he, by a fine cony-catching corrupt translation, made us plainly to
confess, and cry miserere ere we had need of our neck-verse.

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If he be half a Puritan, and have scripture continually in his mouth,
he speeds the better.

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as fat and plum, every part of her, as a plover, a skin as　slick and soft
as the back of a swan; it doth me good when I remember her.

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Many are honest because they know not how to be dishonest: she
thought there was no pleasure in stolen bread, because there was
no pleasure in an old man’s bed.

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he would kneel & kiss the ground as holy ground which she　
vouchsafed to bless from barrenness by her steps

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he was more in love with his own curious-forming fancy than her face

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Suck out my soul with kisses, cruel maid

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A holy requiem to their souls that think to woo a woman with riddles.

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to work her hoddy-peak husband a proportionable plague for his jealousy
but to give his head his full loading of infamy

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His sight pierced like lightning into the entrails of all abuses.

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all others of his age were but the lay temporality of ink-horn terms.

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whom he little dreamed of had such art in my budget to separate
the shadow from the body

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under your colours all my meritorious works I was desirous to shroud

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how more great than the greatest was he that could command one
going so sumptuous

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but talk it was, and talk let it be, & talk it shall be, for I do not mean
here to remember it.

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The alchemy of his eloquence, out of the incomprehensible drossy
matter of clouds and air, distilled no more quintessence than would
make his Geraldine complete fair.

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I should, if I were a wench, make many men quickly immortal. What is’t,
what is’t for a maid fair and fresh to spend a little lipsalve on a hungry
lover?

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Puritans, spew forth the venom of your dull inventions. A toad swells
with thick troubled poison; you swell with poisonous perturbations;

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His armour was all　intermixed with lilies and roses, and the bases thereof
bordered with nettles and weeds,　signifying stings, crosses and overgrowing
encumbrances in his love

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His bases were all embroidered with snakes and adders,　engendered of the
abundance of innocent blood that was shed.

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At the foot of this bush, lay a number of black swollen toads gasping for wind,
and summer-lived　grasshoppers gaping after dew

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they seemed to bounce and toss, and sparkle brine out of their hoary
silver billows

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I thought these cimexes were no more but things like lice, which alive
have the most venomous sting that may be, and being dead do stink out
of measure.

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These are but the shop dust of the sights that I saw

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The heaven was a clear overhanging vault of crystal wherein the sun
and moon and each visible star had his true similitude, shine, situation
and motion

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Neither went　those silver pipes straight, but by many edged unsundered
writhings and crankled　wanderings aside, strayed from bough to bough
into an hundred throats.

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Serpents were as harmless to mankind as they are still one to another; the
rose had no cankers, the leaves no caterpillars, the sea no sirens, the earth
no usurers.

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The clouds, like a number of cormorants that keep their corn　till it stink
and is musty, kept in their stinking exhalations till they had almost stifled
all　Rome’s inhabitants.

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The walls were hoared and furred with the moist scorching steam of
their desolation.

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when death substitutes one friend his special bailie to arrest another
by infection, and disperseth his quiver into ten thousand hands at
once, who is it but looks about him?

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So struggling and so resisting, her jewels did sweat, signifying there was poison
coming towards her.

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Have I lived to make my husband’s body the bier to carry me to hell? Had
filthy pleasure no other pillow to lean upon but his spreaded limbs?

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If any guilt be mine, this is my fault, that I did not deform my face ere it
should so impiously allure.

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Point, pierce; edge, enwiden; I patiently　afford thee a sheath; spur forth my
soul to mount post to heaven. Jesu, forgive me; Jesu, receive me.

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Upon this was I laid in prison, should have been hanged, was brought to the ladder, had
made a ballad for my farewell in a readiness called Wilton’s wantonness, and yet for all
that scaped dancing in a hempen circle.

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These insolent fancies are but Icarus' feathers, whose wanton wax, melted
against the sun, will betray thee into a sea of confusion.

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He that is a traveller must have the back of an ass to bear all, a tongue like
the tail of a　dog to flatter all, the mouth of a hog to eat what is set before
him, the ear of a merchant to　hear all and say nothing...

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Even as Philemon, a comic poet, died with extreme laughter at the conceit
of seeing an ass eat figs, so have the Italians no such sport as to see poor
English asses,　how soberly they swallow Spanish figs, devour any hook baited
for them.

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And when they come home they have hid a little wearish lean face under a
broad French hat, kept a terrible coil with the dust in the street in their long
cloaks of grey paper, and spoke English strangely.

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It makes him to kiss his hand like an ape, cringe his neck like a starveling, and
play at hey-pass, repass, come aloft when he salutes a man.

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Get thee home, my young lad, lay thy bones peaceably in the sepulchre of thy
fathers, wax old in overlooking thy grounds, be at hand to close the eyes of thy
kindred.

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His snot　and spittle a hundred times he hath put over to his apothecary for
snow-water. Any spider he would temper to perfect mithridate. His rheumatic
eyes, when he went in the wind, or rose early in a morning, dropped as cool
alum-water as you would request.

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Then thought I what a thing were this, if I should let my soul fall and break
his neck into a basin.

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Day by day he digested his meat with leading her the measures. A diamond
Delphinical dry　lecher it was.

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I'll hire them that make their wafers or sacramentary gods, to minge them
after the same sort, so in the zeal of their superstitious religion shall they
languish and　drop like carrion.

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If a poet should spend all his lifetime in describing a banquet, he could
not feast his auditors half so well with words as he doth his guests with junkets.

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Chaste Heraclide, thy blood is laid up in heaven's treasury; not one drop of it was
lost, but lent out to usury; water poured forth sinks down quietly into the earth, but
blood spilt on the ground sprinkles up to the firmament.

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Ay me, already I see my life buried in the wrinkles of thy brows; say but I shall
live, though thou meanest to kill me. Nothing confounds like to sudden terror; it
thrusts　every sense out of office.

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Pluck out my eyes if thou wilt, and deprive　my traitorous soul of her two best
witnesses. Dig out my blasphemous tongue with thy　dagger; both tongue and
eyes will I gladly forgo to have a little more time to think on my　journey to heaven.

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There is no heaven but revenge. I tell thee, I would not have undertook so much
toil to gain heaven as I have done in pursuing thee for revenge. Divine revenge, of
which (as of the joys above) there is no fullness or satiety.

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The vein in his left hand that is　derived from the heart with no faint blow he
pierced, and with the full blood that flowed　from it, writ a full obligation of his soul
to the devil;

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No limb of his but was lingeringly splintered in shivers. In this horror left they him
on the wheel as in hell, where, yet living, he might behold his flesh legacied amongst
the fowls of the air.