no stranger to the penury which attended the life of scholarship, especially during the earlier part of his career. But he was generously patronized by Francis Bacon and Prince Henry during his later years, and died in 1634 at the age of seventy-seven. Thomas Nash was born at Lowestoft, in 1558, and though educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, was presumably the son of poor parents. That he attributed his wretchedness to having been educated above his station, may be gathered from his 'Pierce Penniless': Ah! worthless wit, to train me to this woe, (Pierce Penniless, 1592.) And there can be no doubt that his life was miserable in the extreme. Misery in fact is the burden of this, his best-known work. Thus he says: Having spent many years in studying how to live and lived a long time without money—having tired my youth with folly and surfeited my mind with vanity, I began at length to look back to repentance. I sat up late and rose early, contended with cold and conversed with scarcity; for (but?) all my labours turned to loss. My vulgar muse was despised and neglected, my pains not regarded or slightly rewarded, and I, myself, in prime of my best wit, laid open to poverty. (Idem.) For a short time, during 1592-3, he was patronized by Archbishop Whitgift, who had been Master of Trinity, when he was a student at its neighbour John's; but the patronage soon ceased. The Archbishop, who had been attracted by the spirited satire on the Puritans in 'Martin Marprelate,' probably wished to enlist him as a servant of the Church; but, as we have said, it was the idiosyncrasy of all the poor scholars to reject that servitude, so Nash was once more thrown upon his own resources; while the Archbishop joined with the Bishop of London in procuring an order from the Privy Council for the destruction of his pamphlets wherever they were found. No doubt the poor folks at home did what they could for their unhappy son; but Lowestoft, in his day, was not a place whence much help could be expected. It must have been little better than a fishingvillage, though the curing of herrings had already been established there. But this re minds us of the story told by Gabriel Harvey, that Robert Greene, another of the poor scholars, whose biography will appear later, had not died of want, but of a surfeit of pickled herrings and Rhenish wine. No doubt a supper of such fare did take place, at which both Greene and Nash were present; and if Greene were in a famishing condition, he would be very likely to take too much. Be that as it may, the herrings and the Rhenish, too,* were, in all probability, a present from Lowestoft, which Nash, with true Bohemian generosity, shared with his unfortunate friend. Nash died in the year 1600, when little past forty. Samuel Daniel, the son of a music-master, was born at Taunton, in 1562, and was educated, probably by the aid of the Earl of Pembroke, at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, which he entered as a * The principal, if not the only, export trade from Lowestoft was to Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Hamburg. We may, therefore, fairly assume that Rhenish wine constantly found its way to it. commoner in 1579. After three years' residence he left the University and was engaged by the Earl as tutor to his son William Herbert, whom he accompanied to Italy. He was similarly employed in the family of the Earl of Cumberland, his pupil being Anne Clifford, afterwards famous as the Countess of Pembroke. But at Oxford he had become a worshipper of the muses, and he remained more a professional author than a schoolmaster, and figures most conspicuously as a poet, dramatist and historian. He always seems to have enjoyed the patronage of the great; and, on the death of Edmund Spenser in 1599, he was made poet-laureate. He may never have sounded those deeper depths of penury, in which so many poor scholars were engulfed; but he was always a poor man, though no one better deserved a peaceful competency. Thus, Fuller says that His father was a master of music; and his harmonious mind made an impression on the genius of his son, who proved an exquisite poet. He was profaneness. a pious man, who abhorred all kinds of (Worthies of England-Somerset.) But he was destined to experience not only the pinching of poverty, but the hostility of enemies. And his letter to the Earl of Devonshire, formerly Lord Mountjoy, gives significant evidence of the fact, while it shows his own manly spirit. Early in the reign of James, his tragedy of Philotas' had been presented to the Privy Council as a treasonable work; and he had been summoned before the lords to answer the charge. In doing so he had appealed to the Earl's knowledge of him and the tragedy in question-an appeal that had greatly offended. his lordship. Hence the letter, which is as follows: MY LORD, Understanding your Honour is displeased with me, it hath more shaken my heart than I did think any fortune could have done ; in respect I have not deserved it, nor done or spoken anything, in this matter of 'Philotas,' unworthy of you or me. And now, having satisfied my Lord Cranbourne, I crave to unburthen me of this imputation, with your honour. And it is the last visit I will ever make. And, therefore, I beseech you to understand all the great error I have committed. First I told the lords, I had writ three acts of this tragedy the Christmas before my Lord Essex's troubles, as divers in the city could witness. I said the Master of the Revels had perused it. I said I had read some parts of it to your Honour. And this I said, having none else of power to grace me, now in Court and hoping that you, out of your knowledge of books and favour of letters and me, might C |