Strange News, Of the intercepting certain Letters, and a Convoy of Verses, as they were going Privily to victual the Low Countries.  
unda impellitur unda.  
By Tho. Nashe Gentleman.  
Printed at London by john Danter, dwelling in Hosier-Lane near Holborn Conduit, 1592.   

To the most copious Carminist of our time, and famous persecutor of Priscian, his very friend Master Apis lapis: Tho. Nash wisheth new strings to his old tawny Purse, and all honourable increase of acquaintance in the Cellar.  
GEntle M. William, that learned writer Rhenish wine & Sugar, in the first book of his Comment upon Red-noses hath this saying: veterem ferendo iniuriam invitas novam, which is as much in English, as one Cup of nipitaty pulls on another. In moist consideration whereof as also in zealous regard of that high countenance you show unto Scholars, I am bold in stead of new Wine, to carouse to you a cup of news: which if your worship (according to your wont Chaucerisme) shall accept in good part, I'll be your daily Orator to pray that, that pure sanguine complexion of yours may never be famished with potte-lucke, that you may taste till your last gasp, and live to see the confusion of both your special enemies, Small Beer and Grammar rules.  
It is not unknown to report, what a famous pottle-pot Patron you have been to old Poets in your days, & how many pounds you have spent (and as it were thrown into the fire) upon the dirt of wisdom, called Alchemy: Yea▪ you are such an infinite Maecenas to learned men, that there is not that morsel of meat they can carve you, but you will eat for their sakes and accept very thankfully. Think not though under correction of your boone-companionship, I am disposed to be a little pleasant, I condemn you of any immoderation either in eating or drinking, for I know your government and carriage to be every way Canonical. Verily, verily all poor Scholars acknowledge you as their patron, providitore, and supporter, for there cannot a threedbare Cloak sooner peep forth, but you straight press it to be an outbrother of your bounty, three decayed Students you kept attending upon you a long time.  
Shall I presume to dilate of the gravity of your round cap and your dudgeon dagger? It is thught they will make you be called upon shortly to be Alderman of the Stillyard. And that's well remembered, I heard say when this last Term was removed to Hartford, you fell into a great study and care by yourself, to what place the Stillyard should be removed: I promise you truly it was a deep meditation, & such as might well have beseemed Eldertons' parliament of noses to have sit upon.  
A Tavern in London, only upon the motion mourned all in black, and forbore to gird her temples with ivy, because the grandam of good fellowship was like to departed from among them. And I wonder very much, that you sampsownd not yourself into a consumption with the profound cogitation of it.  
Diù vivas in amore iocísque, whatsoever you do, beware of keeping diet. Sloth is a sin, and one sin (as one poison) must be expelled with another. What can he do better that hath nothing to do, than fall a drinking to keep him from idleness?  
Fah, me thinks my jests begin already to smell of the ●aske, with talking so much of this liquid provender.  
In earnest thus; There is a Doctor and his Fart, that have kept a foul stinking stir in Paul's Churchyard; I cry him mercy I slandered him, he is scarce a Doctor ●●ll he hath done his Acts: this dodipoule, this didopper, this professed poetical braggart, hath railed upon me with out w●t or art, in certain four pennyworth of Letters, and three farthing-worth of Sonnets; now do I mean to present him and Shakerley to the Queen's foole-taker for coatch-horses: for two that draw more equally in one Oratoriall yoke of vainglory there is not under heaven.  
What say you Master Apis lapis, will you with your eloquence and credit shield me from carpers? Have you any odd shreds of Latin to make this letter-mungera coxcomb of?  
It stands you in hand to arm yourself against him; for he speaks against Coney-catches, and you are a Connicatcher, as Coney-catching is divided into three parts; the Verser, the Setter, and the Barnacle.  
A Setter I am sure you are not; for you are no Musi●ian: nor a Barnacle; for you never were of the order of the Barnardines: but the Verser I cannot acquit you of; for M. Vaux of Lambeth brings in sore evidence of a breakfast you won of him one morning at an unlawful game called rhyming. What lies not in you to amend play the Doctor and defend.  
A fellow that I am to talk with by and by being told that his Father was a Rope-maker, excused the matter after this sort; And hath never saint had reprobate to his Father? They are his own words, he cannot go from them. You see here he makes a Reprobate and a Ropemaker, voces convertibiles. Go too, take example by him to wash out dirt with ink, and run up to the knees in the channel, if you be once wet shod. You are amongst grave Doctors, and men of judgement in both Laws every day, I pray ask them the question in my absence, whether such a man as I have described this Epistler to be, one that hath a good handsome picker devant, and a pretty leg to study the Civil Law with, that hath made many proper rhymes of the old cut in his days, and deserved infinitely of the state by extolling himself and his two brothers in every book he writes: whether (I say) such a famous pillar of the Press, now in the fourteenth or fifteenth year of the reign of his Rhetoric, giving money to have this his illiterate Pamphlet of Letters printed (whereas others have money given them to suffer themselves to come in Print) it is not to be counted as flat simony, and be liable to one and the same penalty.  
I tell you, I mean to trounce him after twenty in the hundred and have about with him with two staves and a pike for this gear.  
If he get any thing by the bargain, let what soever I writ henceforward be condemned to wrap bombast in.  
Carouse to me good luck▪ for I am resolutely bend; the best blood of the brothers shall pledge me in vinegar. O would thou hadst a quaffing bowl, which like Gawens' skull should contain a peck, that thou mightst swap off a hearty draft to the success of this voyage.  
By what soever thy visage holdeth most precious I beseech thee, by john Davies soul, and the blue Boar in the Spittle I conjure thee, to draw out thy purse, and give me nothing for the dedication of my Pamphlet.  
Thou art a good fellow I know, and hadst rather spend jests than money. Let it be the task of thy best terms, to safeconduct this book through the enemy's country.  
Proceed to cherish thy surpassing carminical art of memory with full cups (as thou dost) let Chaucer be new scoured against the day of battle, and Terence come but in now and then with the snuff of a sentence, and Dictum pu●a, we'll strike it as dead as a door nail; Haud teruntij estimo, We have cats meat and dogs meat enough for these mongrels. However I writ merrily, I love and admire thy pleasant witty humour, which no care or cross can make unconuersable. Still be constant to thy content, love poetry, hate pedantisme. Vade, vale, cave ne titubes, mandatáque frangas.  
Thine entirely, Tho. Nashe.   

To the Gentlemen Readers.  
GEntlemen, the strong faith you have conceived, that I would do works of supererogation in answering the Doctor, hath made me break my day with other important business I had, and stand darting of quills a while like the Porpentine.  
I know there want not well-willers to my disgrace, who say my only Muse is contention; and other, that with Tiberius Caesar pretending to see in the dark, talk of strange objects by them discovered in the night, when in truth they are nothing else but the glimmering of their eyes.  
I will not hold the candle to the Devil, unmask my holiday Muse to envy; but if any such deep insighted detractor, will challenge me to whatsoever quiet adventure of Art wherein he thinks me least conversant, he shall find that I am Tam Mercurio quàm Marti, a Scholar in some thing else but contention.  
If idle wits will needs tie knots on smooth bulrushes with their tongues, faith the world might think I had little to attend, if I should go about to ●nloose them with my pen.  
I cannot tell how it comes to pass but in these ill cide days of ours, every man delights with Ixion to beget children of clouds, dig for Pearls in dunghills, and wrest oil out of iron.  
Poor Pierce Penniless, have they turned to a conjuring book, for there is not that line in it, with which they do not seek to raise up a Ghost, and like the hog that converts the sixth part of his meat into bristles, so have they converted six parts of my book into bitterness.  
Aretine in a Comedy of his, wittily complaineth that upstart Commenters, with their Annotations and gloss, had extorted that sense and Moral out of Petrarch, which if Petrarch were alive a hundred Strappadoes might not make him confess or subscribe too; So may I complain that rash heads, upstart Interpreters, have extorted & raked that unreverent meaning out of my lines, which a thousand deaths cannot make me ere grant that I dreamt off.  
To them that are abused by their own jealous collections and no determined trespass of mine, this advice by the way of example will I give.  
One coming to Doctor Perne on a time, and telling him he was miserably railed on such a day in a Sermon at Saint Maries in Cambridge, I but quoth he (in his puling manner of speaking) did he name me, did he name me, I warrant you go and ask him, and he will say he meant not me; So they that are vngroundedly offended at any thing in Pierce Penniless, first let them look if I did name them; if not, but the matter hangeth in suspense, let them send to me for my exposition, and not buy it at the second hand, and I do not doubt but they will be thoroughly satisfied.  
He that wraps himself in earth like the Fox, to catch birds, may haps have a heavy cart go over him before he be aware, and break his back.  
A number of Apes may get the glowworme in the night, and think to kindle fire with it, because it glisters so, but God wot they are beguiled it proves in the end to be but fools fire, the poor worm alone with their blowing is warmed, they starved for cold whiles their wood is untouched. Who but a Fop will labour to anatomize a Fly? Fables were free for any bondman to speak in old time, as Aesop for an instance, their allusion was not restrained to any particular humour of spite, but generally applied to a general vice. Now a man may not talk of a dog, but it is surmised he aims at him that giveth the dog in his Crest, he cannot name straw, but he must pluck a wheat sheaf in pieces, jutelligendo faciunt ut nihil intelligant.  
What ever they be that thus persecute Art (as the Alchemists are said to persecute Nature) I would wish them to rebate the edge of their wit, and not grind their colours so hard, having found that which is black, let them not with our forenamed Gold-falsifiers, seek for a substance that is blacker than black; or angle for frogs in a clear fountain.  
From the admonition of these uncourteous misconsterers. I come to The kilcow champion of the three brethren; he forsooth will be the first that shall give Pierce Penniless a non placet.  
It is not enough that he bepissed his credit about twelve years ago, with Three proper and witty familiar letters, but still he must be running on the letter, and abusing the Queen's English without pity or mercy.  
Be it known unto you (Christian Readers) this man is a forestaller of the market of fame, an engrosser of glory, a mount bank of strange words, a mere merchant of babies and connyskins.  
Hold up thy hand G. H. thou art here indicted for an incrocher upon the feesimple of the Latin, an enemy to Carriers, as one that takes their occupation out of their hands and dost nothing but transport letters up and down in thy own commendation, a conspirator and practiser to make Printers rich, by making thyself ridiculous, a manifest briber of Booksellers and Stationers, to help thee to sell away thy books (whose impression thou paidst for) that thou mayst have money to go home to Trinity Hall to discharge thy commons.  
I say no more but Lord have mercy upon thee, for thou art fallen into his hands that will plague thee.  
Gentlemen, will you be instructed in the quarrel that hath caused him lay about him with his pen and inckehorne so courageously. About two years since (a fatal time to familiar Epistles) a certain Theological gimpanado, a demie divine, no higher than a Tailors pressing iron, brother to this huge booke-beare, that writes himself One of the Emperor justinian's Courtiers, took upon him to set his foot to mine, and over-crow me with comparative terms. I protest I never turned up any cowsheard to look for this scarab fly. I had no conceit as then of discovering a breed of fools in the three brother's books: marry when I beheld ordinance planted on edge of the pulpit against me, & that there was no remedy but the blind Vicar would needs let fly at me with his Church-door keys, & curse me with bell, book and candle, because in my Alphabet of Idiots I had overskipt the His, what could I do but draw upon him with my pen, and defend myself with it and a paper buckler as well as I might.  
Say I am as very a Turk as he that three years ago ran upon ropes, if ever I spelled either his or any of his kindred's name in reproach, before he barked against me as one of the enemies of the Lamb of God, and fetched allusions out of the Buttery to debase me.  
Hear beginneth the fray. I upbraid godly predication with his wicked conversation, I squirt ink into his decayed eyes with iniquity to mend their diseased sight, that they may a little better descend into my scholarship and learning. The Ecclesiastical dun● instead of recovery waxeth stark blind thereby (as a preservative to some, is poison to others) he gets an old Fencer his brother to be revenged on me for my Physic; who flourishing about my ears with his two hand sword of Oratory and Poetry, peradventure shakes some of the rust of it on my shoulders, but otherwise strikes me not but with the shadow of it, which is no more than a flap with the false scabbard of contumely: whether am I in this case to arm myself against his intent of injury, or sit still with my finger in my mouth, in hope to be one of simplicities martyrs.  
A quest of honourable minded Cavaliers go upon it, and if they shall find by the Law of arms or of ale, that I being first provoked, am to be injoinde to the peace, or be sworn true servant to cowardice & patience, when wrong presseth me to the wars; then will I bind myself prentice to a Cobbler, and fresh underlay all those writings of mine that have trodden awry.  
Be advertised (gentle audience) that the Doctors proceed have thrust upon me this sowterly Metaphor, who first contriving his confutation in a short Pamphlet of six leaves like a pair of summer pumps: afterward (winter growing on) clapped a pair of double soles on it like a good husband, added eight sheets more, and pricked those sheets or soles as full of the hobnails of reprehension as they could stick.  
It is not those his new clouted startopsiwis, that shall carry him out of the dirt.  
Sweet Gentlemen, be but indifferent, and you shall see me desperate. Hear lies my hat, and there my cloak, to which I resemble my two Epistles, being the upper garments of my book, as the other of my body: Saint Fame for me, and thus I run upon him.  
Tho. Nashe.   

The four Letters Confuted.  
GAbriel and not only Gabriel, but Gabrielissime Gabriel, no Angel but ANGELOS, id est, Nuntius, a Fawneguest Messenger twixt Master Bird and Master Demetrius: Behold, here stands he that will make it good on thy four Letters body, that thou art a filthy vain fool. Thy book I commend; as very well printed: and like wondrous well, because all men dislike it.  
I agree with thee that there are in it some matters of Note, for there are a great many barefoot rhymes in it that go as jump as a Fiddle with every ballet-maker's note: and if according to their manner you had tuned them over the head it had been near the worse, for by that means you might have had your name chanted in every corner of the street, than the which there can be nothing more melodiously addoulce to your divine Entelechy. O they would have trowld oft bravely to the tune of O man in Desperation, and like Marenzos' Madrigals, the mournful note naturally have affected the miserable Ditty.  
Do you know your own misbegotten bodgery Entelechy and addoulce. With these two Hermaphrodite phrases, being half Latin and half English, hast thou pulled out the very guts of the inkehome.  
Letters.  
To all courteous minds that will vouchsafe the reading.  
Comment.  
In their absence this be delivered to Meg Curtis in Shoreditch to stop mustard pots with.  
The particular Contents.  
L. A preface to courteous minds.  
C. As much to say, as Proface, much good do it you would it were better for you.  
L. A Letter to M. Emanuel Demetrius, with a sonnet there to annexed.  
C. That is, as it were a purgation upon a vomit, buskins upon pantofles.  
L. A Letter to M. Bird.  
C. Or little matter wrapped up in many words.  
L. A Letter to every favourable and indifferent Reader.  
C. Id est, An exhortation to all Readers, that they shall read nothing but his works.  
L. Another letter to the same extorted after the rest.  
C. By interpretation, a Letter whereof his invention had a hard stool, and yet it was for his ease, though not for his honesty: and so forth, as the Text shall direct you at large.  

Hear beginneth the first Epistle and first Book of Orator Gabriel to the Catilinaries or Philippics.  
Wherein is divulged, that venum is venum and will ininfect, that that which is done, cannot (de facto) be undone, that favour is a courteous Reader, and G.H. your thankful debtor.  
A Comment upon the Text.  
THe learned Orator in this Epistle taketh precise order he will not be too eloquent and yet it shall be (L,) as well for inditing unworthy to be published, as for publishing unworthy to be indited.  
C. He had many adversaries in those times that he wrote, amongst the which Cloth-breecheses and Veluetbreeches (his father's poverty, and his own pride were none of the meanest.)  
After them start up one Pierce Penniless, and he likewise was a stumbling block in his way. (Penury not long tarries after pride; pray all the ropes in Saffron Walden that I do not prophesy,) Amen, Amen, quoth M. Bird and M. Demetrius.  
He forbears to speak much in this place of the one or the other, because his letters are more forward to accuse them than their own books to condemn them; yet for a touch by the way, he talks that green is no livery for this winter, it is pitifully blasted and faded in every mead by the strong breath of his barbarism.  
He hath a twitch at Pierce Penniless too, at the parting style, and terms him the devils Orator by profession, and his Dame's Poet by practice: wherein me thinks (the surreverence of his works no● impaired) he h●th ve●ie highly overshot himself: for no more is Pierce Penniless to be called the devils Orator for making a Supplication to the Devil, than he is to be held for a Rhethoritian, for setting forth Gabrielis Scuruei Rhetor, wherein he thought to have knocked out the brains of poor Tully's Orator, but in verity did nothing else but gather a flaunting unsavoury fore-horse nosegay out of his well furnished garland.  
The advancement of the devils Oratorship, which he ascribeth to Pierce Penniless, me thinks had been a fit place for his Doctorship, when he missed the Oratorship of the University, of which in the sequel of his book he most slanderously complaineth. Doctor Perne, green, no dead man he spareth.  
What he should subaudi by his Dame's Poet, I scarce apprehend, except this, that Pierce his Father was Dame Laws. Poet, and writ many goodly stories of her in An Almond for Parrot.  
Those that will take a Lecture in our Orator's letters, must not read, excuse, commend, credit or believe any approved truth in Pierce Penniless, especially if it be any thing that upbraideth the great Baboon brother.  
He will stop the beginning, id est, when he hath come behind a man and broke his head, seek to bind him to the good a bearing, or else the end were like to prove pernitio us and perilous to his confusion.  
Somewhat he mutters of defamation and just commendation, & what a hell it is for him that hath built his heaven in vainglory, to be pulled by the sleeve, and bid Respice funem, look back to his Father's house; but I overslippe it as frivolous, because all the world knows him better than he knows himself, & though he play the Pharisie never so in justifying his own innocence, there's none will believe him.  
Let this be spoken once for all, as I have a soul to save, till this day in all my life with tongue nor pen did I ever in the least word or tittle derogate from the Doctor. If his brother (without any former provocation on my part God is my witness) railed on me grossly, expressly named me, compared me to Martin, indevord to take from me all estimation of Art or wit, have I not cause to bestir me?  
Gabriel, I will bestir me for all like an Alehouse Knight thou crav'st of justice to do thee reason; as for impudency and calumny, I return them in thy face, that in one book of ten sheets of paper, hast published above two hundred lies.  
Had they been witty lies, or merry lies, they would never have grieved me: but palpable lies, damned lies, lies as big as one of the Guards chines of beef, who can abide?  
I'll make thee of my counsel, because I love thee (not:) when I was in Cambridge and but a child, I was indifferently persuaded of thee: me thought by thy apparel and thy gate thou shouldst have been a fine fellow: Little did I suspect that thou wert brother to Io. Paean (whom in wardly I always grudgd at for writing against Aristotle) or any of the 〈◊〉 of Hemp hall, but a Cavalier of a clean contrary house, now thou hast quite spoilt thyself, from the foot to the head I can tell how thou art fashioned.  
Teterrime frater, and not fraterrime frater, mayst thou very woefully exclaim, for in helping him thou hast cracked thy credit through the ring, made thy infamy currant as far as the Queen's coin goes.  
But it may be thou hast a cider cloak for this quarrel, thou wilt object thy Father was abused, & that made thee write. What by me, or Grieve, or both?  
If by Green and not me, thou shouldst have written against green and not me. If by both, I will answer for both, but not by both, therefore I will answer but for one.  
Give an instance if thou canst for thy life, wherein in any leaf of Pierce Penniless I had so much as half a syllables relation to thee, or offered one jot of indignity to thy Father, more than naming the greatest dignity he hath, when for variety of Epithets I called thy brother the son of a Ropemaker.  
We shall have a good son of you anon, if you be ashamed of your father's occupation: ah thou wilt near thrive, that art beholding to a trade, and canst not abide to hear of it.  
Thou dost live by the gallows, & wouldst not have a shoe to put on thy foot if thy father had no traffic with the hangman. Had I a Ropemaker to my father, & some body had cast it in my teeth, I would forthwith have writ in praise of Rope-makers, & proved it by sound sillogistry to be one of the 7. liberal sciences.  
Somewhat I am privy to the cause of Green's inveighing against the three brothers. Thy hotspirited brother Richard (a notable ruffian with his pen) having first took upon him in his blundering Persival to play the jack of both sides twixt Martin and us, and snarld privily at Pap-hatchet, Pasquil, & others, that opposed themselves against the open slander of that mighty platformer of Atheism, presently after dribbed forth another fools bolt, a book I should say, which he christened The Lamb of God.  
That book was a learned book, a laboured book; for three year before he put it in print, he had preached it all without book.  
I myself have some of it in a book of Setmons that my Tutor at Cambridge made me gather every Sunday. Then being very young, I counted it the abiectest and frothiest form of Divinity that came in that place. Now more confirmed in age and Art, I confirm my ill opinion of it.  
Neither do I urge this as if it were a heinous thing for a man to put sermons in print after he preached them, but observe the proud humour of the pert Didimus, that thinks nothing he speaks but deserves to be put in print, and speaks not that sentence in the Pulpit, which before he rough hews not over with his pen. Besides, I tax him for turning an old coat (like a Broker) and selling it for a new.  
These and a thousand more imperfections might have been buried with his books in the bottom of a drie-fatte, and there slept quietly amongst the shavings of the Press, if in his Epistle he had not been so arrogantly censoriall.  
Not me alone did he revile and dare to the combat, but g●ickt at Pap-hatchet once more, and mistermed all our other Poets and writers about London, piperly make-pla●es and makebates.  
Hence Green, being chief agent for the company (for he writ more than four other, how well I will not say: but Sat citò, si sat benè) took occasion to canuaze him a little ●in his Cloth-breecheses and Velvet breeches, and because by some probable collections he guessed the elder brother's hand was in it, he coupled them both in one yoke and to fulfil the proverb Tria sunt omnia thrust in the third brother who made a perfect parriall of Pamphleteers.  
About some seven or eight lines it was which hath plucked on an invective of so many leaves. Had he lived Gabriel, and thou shouldst so unarteficially and odiously libeled against him as thou hast done, he would have made thee an example of ignominy to all ages that are to come, and driven thee to eat thy own book buttered, as I saw him make an Apparriter once in a Tavern eat his Citation wax and all, very handsomely served twixt two dishes.  
Out upon thee for an arrant dog-killer, strike a man when he is dead, 
So Hares may pull dead Lions by the beards.  Memorandum, I borrowed this sentence out of a Play. The Theatre Poet's hall, hath many more such proverbs to persecute thee with, because thou hast so scornfully derided their profession, and despitefully maligned honest sports.  
Before I unbowell the lean Carcase of thy book any further, I'll drink one cup of lambswooll, to the Lamb of God and his enemies.  
In the first four leaves of it I have singled out these Godly and fruitful observations.  
Noble Lord I do it even upon former premises, not for any future consequents.  
My book is not worthy of so honourable speciality as your Patronage.  
I will not prosecute it with Theological peculiars, but from the mouth of the sword I speak, etc.  
The hearts of the wicked pant, their spirits fail them, they may well call for butter out of a Lordly dish.  
You that be gentle Readers do you not laugh at this lawyers english of former premises and future consequents▪  
O finica●l●tie your Patronages speciallitie, but if he prosecute it with Theological peculiars, we must needs thrust him inter oves & boves, & reliqua pecora campi.  
From the mouth of the sword I speak it, that butter out of a Lordly dish is but lewd diet for the Pulpit.  
But this is not half the litter of inckehornisme, that those four pages have pigged. I must tell you of the Octonarium of Ramus, the Sesquiamus of Phrigius, the Carthusianisme of Gulielmus Rikel, of Annals Diaries, Chronologies & Tropological schoolmen, The Abetilis of the Aethiopians or Pret●ioannans, of Gulielmus minatensis, & S. Jerome allegorized & Ab dias, Lyra, Gryson, Porta, Pantaleon.  
All which he reckons up to make the world believe he hath read much but allegeth nothing out of them: Nor I think on my conscience ever read or knew what they mean, but as he hath stole them by the wholesale out of some Booksellers Catalogue, or a table of tractates.  
Here are some of his profound Annotations, jacob took Leah for his bed fellow in the dark by night in steed of Rachel, whereby I learn to buy my wife candle to go to bed withal, and admit her not by dark but by light.  
jacob was deceived by Laban's words: ergo, Obligations are better than bills, and we must believe no man except he will wax and multiply in words, and call ink & parchment to witness.  
jacob laid peeled rods with white streaks in the watering places of the sheep, whereby I note that in carnal mixture the senses are opened.  
judge you that be the Fathers of the Church whether this be fit matter to edify or no.  
It was not for nothing brother Richard that green told you you kissed your Parishioners wives with holy kisses, for you that will talk of opening the senses by carnal mixture (the very act of lechery) in a Theological Treatise, and in the Pulpit, I am afraid in a privater place you will practise as much as you speak. Homines rarò nisi male locuti malè faciunt. Olet hircum, olet hircum, any modest ear would abhor to hear it.  
Farewell unclean Vicar, and God make thee an honest man, for thou art too bawdy for me to deal withal.  
It follows in the Text.  
To my very good friend Master Emanuel Demetrius.  
This Letter of M. Bird to M. Demetrius, should seem by all reference or collation of styles, to be a Letter which M. Birds secretary Doctor Gabriel indicted for him in his own praise, and got him to set hand to when he had done. Or rather it is no letter, but a certificate (such as Rogues have) from the head men of the Parish where he was borne, that Gabriel is an excellent general Scholar, and his Father of good behaviour.  
We will not believe it except we see the Town seal set to it: but say we should believe it, what doth it make for thee? Have the Townsmen of Saffron Waldon ever heard thee preach, that they should commend thee for an excellent general scholar? or (because thou professest thyself a Civilian▪ hast thou solicited any of their causes in the bawdy Courts thereabouts. If not, go your ways a dolt as you came, Master Birds Letter shall not reprieve you from the ladder.  
But Veluetbreeches and Cloth-breecheses (by the judgement of the best man of none of the least towns in Essex) is a fantastical and fond Dialogue, and one of the most licentious intolerable invectives that ever he read.  
Why?  
In it is abused an ancient neighbour of his.  
How is he abused?  
Instead of his name, he is called by the craft he gets his living with.  
He hath borne office in Walden above twenty year since (hoc est had the keeping of the Town stock, alias the stocks) Ergo he is no Rope-maker.  
He hath maintained faure sons at Caembridge: Ergo green is a lewd fellow to say he gets his living backward.  
Three of his sons universally ridiculously reputed of (for inamoratos on their own works) in both Universities and the whole Realm. The fourth is shrunk in the wetting, or else the Print should have heard of him.  
One of the three (whom the Quip entitles the Physician) returning sick from Norwitch to Linne in julie last, was past writing any more Almanacs, before Green ere imagined God had thought so well of him to take him to him.  
Livor post quiescat. Mother Livers of Newington is a better fortune-teller than he was a Physician.  

A Dash through the dudgeon Sonnet against Greene..  
Put up thy smiter O gentle Peter,  
Author and halter make but ill meeter.  
I scorn to answer thy misshapen rhyme,  
Blocks have called scholars bayards ere this time.   
I would troth a false gallop through the rest of his ragged Verses, but that if I should retort his rhyme doggerel aright, I must make my verses (as he doth his) run hobbling like a Brewer's Cart upon the stones, and observe no length in their feet▪ which were absurdum per absurdius, to infect my vain with his imitation.  
The Analasis of the whole is this: an old mechanical meeter-munger would feign rail if he had any wit. If green were dog-sick and brainsick, sure he (poor secular Satirist) is dolt-sicke and brainless that with the toothless gums of his Poetry so betuggeth a dead man.  
But I cannot be induced to be●eue a grave man of his sort should be ere so ravingly bend: when all co●s to all, shortest vowels and longest mutes will bewray it to be a web of your own looms M. Gabriel▪ you mute forth many such phrases in the course of your book, which I will point at as I pass by.  
I will not rob you of your due commendation in any thing: in this Sonnet you have counterfeited the style of the old Vice in the Morals, as right up and down as may be.  Let. 
green the Coney catcher of this dream the author,  
For his dainty devise deserveth the hau●er.  Vice. 
hay nan a non sir, soft let me make water,  
Whip it to go, I'll kiss my masters daughter.  
Tum diddy, tum da, falangtedo diddle,  
Sol la me fa sol, conatus in fiddle.  
I am afraid your Doctor's fart will fall out to be a fatal foist to your breeches, if we follow you at the hard heels as we have begun.  
Thou shalt not breathe a whit, trip and go, turn over a new leaf.  
Master Bird in the absence of M. Demetrius. Perge porrò. I found his wife courteous, barlady sir but that is suspicious.  
A woman is well helped up that does you any courtesy in the absence of her husband, when you cannot keep it to yourself, but you must blab it in print.  
If it were any other but Mistress Demetrius (whom I have heard to be a modest sober woman, and endued with many virtues) I would play upon it a little more. In regard that she is so, I forbear; and crave pardon in that I have spoken so much.  
Yet would I have her understand, how well the general scholar her guest hath rewarded her for his kind entertainment, by bringing her name in question in print.  
M. Bird and Demetrius, I know neither of you by sight, but this isle say, being of that wealth you are, you had better have spent a great deal of money, than come in the mouth of this base companion.  
What reason have I (seeing your names subscribed as his bolsterer, in a matter of defame that concerns me) but to go through s●itch with you as well as him.  
He thinks to ouer-beare us as poor beggars with the great ostentation of your rich acquaintance.  
Let all Noblemen take heed how they give this Thraso the least beck or countenance, for if they bestow but hal●e a glance on him, he'll strait put it very solemnly in print, and make it ten times more than it is.  
I'll tell you a merry jest.  
The time was when this Timothy Tiptoes made a Latin Oration to her Majesty. Her Highness as she is unto all her subjects most gracious: so to scholars she is more loving and affable than any Prince under heaven. In which respect, of her own virtue and not his desert, it pleased her so to humble the height of her judgement, as to grace him a little whiles he was pronouncing, by these or such like terms. 'tis a good pretty fellow, a looks like an Italian, and after he had concluded, to call him to kiss her royal hand. hereupon he goes home to his study all entranced, and writes a whole volume of Verses; first De vultu Itali, of the countenance of the Italian; and than De osculo manus, of his kissing the Queen's hand. Which two Latin Poems he published in a book of his called Aedes Valdinenses, proclaiming thereby (as it were to England, France, Italy and Spain, what favour he was in with her Majesty.  
I dismiss this Parenthesis, and come to his next business, which indeed is his first business: for till green awaked him out of his self admiring contemplation, he had nothing to do, but walk under the Ewe tree at Trinity hall, and say: 
What may I call this tree, an Ewe three O bonny Ewe tree,  
Needs to thy boughs will bow this knee, and va●le my bonneto,  Or make verses of weathercocks on the top of steeples, as he did once of the weathercock of Alhallows in Cambridge: 
O thou weathercock that stands on the top of the Church of Alhallows,  
Come thy ways down if thou darest for thy crown and take the wall on us.   
O Heathenish and Pagan Hexamiters, come thy ways down from thy Doctourship, & learn thy Primer of Poetry over again, for certainly thy pen is in state of a Reprobate with all men of judgement and reckoning.  
Come thy ways down from thy Doctourship said I? Erravi demens thou never went'st up to it yet.  
Fie on hypocrisy and Dissimulation, that men should make themselves better than they are.  
Alas a Gods will thou art but a plain moth eaten Master of Art, and never pollutedst thyself with any plaster of Doctourship.  
List Paul's Churchyard (the peruser of every man's works & Exchange of all Authors) you are a many of you honest fellows, and favour men of wit.  
So it is that a good Gown and a well pruned pair of moustachios, having studied sixteen year to make thirteen ill english Hexameters, came to the University Court regentium & non to sue for a commission to carry two faces in a hood, they not using to deny honour to any man that deserved it, bade him perform all the Scholarlike ceremonies and disputative right appertaining thereto, and he should be installed.  
Noli me tangere, he liked none of that.  
A stripling that hath an indifferent pretty stock, of reputation abroad in the world already, and some credit amongst his neighbours as he thinketh, would be loath to jeopard all at one throw at the dice.  
If he should have disputed for his degree, descended in arenam & pulverem Philosophicum, and have been foiled. Aih me quoth Wit in lamentable sort, what should have become of him, he might have been shot through ere he were aware with a syllogism.  
No point, Ergo, it were wisely done of goodman Boor's son if he should go to the wars for honour and return with a wooden leg, when he may buy a Captainship at home better cheap.  
Pumps and Pantofles because they were well blacked and glisteren jolly freshly on it, being rubbed over with ink, had their grace at length to be Doctor Ea lege, that they should do their acts (that is, perform more than they were able)  
Cursed be the time that ever there were any obligations made with conditions, unde habeas quaerit nemo sed oportet habere, How Dorbell comes to be Doctor none asks, but Doctor he must be to make him right worshipful.  
Acts are but idle words, and the Scripture saith, we must give account for every idle word.  
Pumps and Pantofles swear they will jet away with a clear conscience at the day of judgement, and therefore do no Acts, give no offence with idle words, only like a Hawk let fly at a Partridge, that turns the tail and betakes her to a walnut-tree, so to Oxford they trudge having their grace ad disputandum, and there are confirmed in the same degree they took at Cambridge: which is as if a Prentice here in London, as soon as he is enrolled, should run to some such Town as Ipswich, and there crave to have his Freedom confirmed as of London, which in truth is no Freedom because he hath not served out his prenticeship.  
Trust me not for a dodkin, if there be not all the Doctourship he hath, yet will the insolent inkhorn worm write himself Right worshipful of the Laws, and personate this man and that man, calling him my good friend Master Doctor at every word.  
Doctor or no Doctor green surfeited not of Pickled hearing but of an exceeding fear of his Familiar Epistles.  
He offered in his extremest want twenty shillings to the Printer to leave out the matter of the three brothers.  
Haud facile credo, I am sure the Printer being of that honesty that I take him for, will not affirm it.  
Marry this I must say, there was a learned Doctor of Physic (to whom green in his sickness sent for counsel) that having read over the book of Velvet breeches and Clothbreeches, and laughing merrily at the three brother's legend, wild Green in any case either to mitigate it or leave it out: Not for any extraordinary account he made of the fraternity of fools, but for one of them was proceeded in the same faculty of Physic he professed, and willingly he would have none of that excellent calling ill spoken off.  
This was the cause of the altering of it, the fear of his physicians displeasure, not any fear else.  
I keep your conscious mind with all other odd ends of your half faced english till the full conclusion of my book, where in an honourable Index they shall be placed according to their degree and segnioritie.  
We are to vex you mightily for plucking Elderton out of the ashes of his Ale, and not letting him enjoy his nappy muse of ballad making to himself, but now when he is as dead as dead beer, you must be finding fault with the brewing of his metres.  
Hough Thomas Delone, Philip Stubs, Robert Armin, etc. Your father Elderton is abused. Revenge, revenge on course paper and want of matter, that hath most sacriligeously contaminated the divine spirit & quintessence of a penny a quart.  
Helter skelter, fear no colours, course him, trounce him, one cup of perfect bonaventure liquor will inspire you with more wit and Scholarship than he hath thrust into his whole packet of Letters.  
You that be lookers on perhaps imagine I talk like a merry man, and not in good earnest when I say that Eldertons' ghost and Gabriel are at such odds: but than you know nothing, for there hath been monstrous emulation twixt Elderton and him time out of mind. Yea, they were rivals in rhyming four year before the great frost. He expressly writ against him, 1580. In his short but sharp and learned judgement of Earthquakes.  
Broome boys, and cornecutters, (or whatsoever trade is more contemptible) come not in his way, stand forty foot from the execution place of his fury, for else in the full tide of his standish he will carry your occupations handsmooth out of town before him, besmear them, drown them, down the river they go Privily to the isle of Dogs with his Pamphlets.  
O it is a pestilent libeler against beggars, he means shortly to set forth a book called his Paraphrase upon Paris Garden, wherein he will so tamper with the interpreter of the Puppets, and betouse Harry of Tame and great Ned, that Titius shall not upbraid Caius with every thing and nothing, nor Zoilus any more flirt Homer, nor Thersites fling at Agamemnon.  
Holla, holla, holla, flirt, fling, what reasty Rhetoric have we here? certes, certes brother hoddy doddy, your pen is a colt by cocks body.  
As touching the liberty of Orators and Poets, I will confer with thee somewhat gravely, although thou be'st a goosecap and hast no judgement.  
A liberty they have thou sayest, but no liberty without bounds, no licence without limitation.  
jesus what mister wonders dost thou tell us? every thing hath an end, and a pudding hath two.  
That liberty Poets of late in their invectives have exceeded, they have borne their sword up, where it is not lawful for a poynado that is but the page of prowess to intermeddle.  
Thou bringst in Mother Hubbard for an instance. Go no further, but here confess thyself a flat nodg-scombe before all this congregation; for thou hast dealt by thy friend as homely as thou didst by thy father.  
Who publicly accused or of late brought Mother Hubbard into question, that thou shouldst by rehearsal rekindle against him the sparks of displeasure that were quenched?  
Forgot he the pure sanguine of his Fairy Queen sayest thou?  
A pure sanguine sot art thou, that in vainglory to have Spencer known for thy friend, and that thou hast some interest in him, censerest him worse than his deadliest enemy would do.  
If any man were undeservedly touched in it, thou hast revived his disgrace that was so touched in it, by renaming it, when it was worn out of all men's mouths and minds.  
Besides, whereas before I thought it a made matter of some malicious moralisers against him, and no substance of slander in truth, now when thou (that proclaimest thyself the only familiar of his bosom, and therefore shouldst know his secrets) gives it out in print that he overshot himself therein; it cannot choose but be suspected to be so indeed.  
Immortal Spencer, no frailty hath thy fame, but the imputation of this Idiot's friendship: upon an unspotted Pegasus should thy gorgeous attired Fairy Queen ride triumphant through all reports dominions, but that this mud-born bubble, this bile on the brow of the University, this bladder of pride new blown, challengeth some interest in her prosperity.  
Of pitch who hath any use at all, shall be abused by it in the end.  
High grass that flourisheth for a season on the house top, fadeth before the harvest calls for it, and may well make a fair show, but hath no sweetness in it. Such is this Ass in present, this gross painted image of pride, who would feign counterfeit a good wit, but scornful pity his best patron, knows it becomes him as ill, as an unwieldy Elephant to imitate a whelp in his wantonness.  
I wot not how it falls out, but his invention is over-weapond; he hath some good words, but he cannot writhe them and toss them to and fro nimbly, or so bring them about, that he may make one straight thrust at his enemy's face.  
Coldly and dully idem per idem who cannot indite? but with life and spirit to limn deadness itself, Hoc est Oratoris proprium.  
L. invectives by favour have been too bold, and Satyrs by usurpation too presumptuous. What pleasure brings this to the reader? jacke of the Falcon in Cambridge can say as much and give no reason for it.  
But I can prompt you with a demonstration wherein invectives have been too bold. Do you remember what you writ in your Item for Earthquakes, of double faced jani, changeable Cameleons, Aspen leaves painted sheaths, and sepulchres, Asses in Lions skins, dunghill cocks slippery eels, dormice, etc. Besides your testimonial of Doctor Perne, wherein it pleased you of your singular liberality and bounty to bestow upon this beautiful Encomium: A busy and dizzy head, a brazen fore head, a leaden brain, a wooden wit, a copper face, a stony breast, a factious and elvish heart, a founder of novelties, a confounder of his own and his friends good gifts, a morning bookworm, an afternoon malt-worm, a right juggler, as full of his sleights, wiles fetches, casts of legerdemain, toys to mock Apes wiehall, odd shifts and knavish practices as his skin can hold.  
Notwithstanding all this, you defy cut and long-tail, that can accuse you of any scandalous part either in word or deed.  
Tully, Horace, Archilochus, Aristophanes, Lucian, julian, Aretine, go for no payment with you, their declamatory styles brought to the grand test of your judgement, are found counterfeit, they are a venomous and viperous brood of railers, because they have brought in a new kind of a quick fight, which your decrepit slow-moving capacity cannot fadge with.  
Tush, tush, you take the grave peak upon you too much, who would think you could so easily shake off your old friends? Did not you in the forty one Page line 2. of your Epistles to Collen Clout use this speech?  
Extra iocum, I like your Dreams passing well: and the rather because they savour of that singular extraordinary vain and invention which I ever fancied most▪ and in a manner admired only in Lucian, Petrarch, Aretine, Pasquil.  
Dic sodes (god a mercy on Dick Sothis' sou●e, for he was a better dancer than thou art an enditer, & with his legs he made some Music, there is none in thy letters) answer me briefly I say to the point, have I varied one vowel from thy original text in this allegation. If not, I cannot see how the Doctors may well be reconciled, one while to commend a man because his writings savour of that singular extraordinary vain, which he only admired in Lucian, Petrarch, Aretine, Pasquil: and then in another book afterward to come and call those singular extraordinary admired men, a venomous and viperous brood of railers.  
The ancienter sort of Poets and Orators shall plead their own worthiness.  
Tully never overreached himself in railing so much as in flattery. His Phillippicks (sound Physic applied to a body that could not digest it) are the things that especially commended him to this art-thriving age of ours, and had not these been, he would certainly have been sentenced by a general verdict of histories, for a timorous time-pleaser.  
Who cannot draw a curtain before a deformed picture. Plautus' personated no Parasite, but he made him a slave or a bondman.  
Fawning and croutching are the natural gestures of fear, and if it be a virtue for a vassal to lick a man's shoes with his tongue, sure it is but borrowed from the dogs, and so is biting too, if it be accompanied with over loud barking, or in such wise as it cannot pinch but it must break the flesh and draw blood.  
Horace, Perseus, Iwenall, my poor judgement dareth you plentiful allowance of applause: yet had you with the Phrygian melody, that stirreth men up to battle and fury, mixed the Dorian tune that favoureth mirth and pleasure, your unsugred pi●les (however excellently medicinable) would not have been so harsh in the swallowing. So likewise Archilochus, thou like the preachers to the Courtesans in Room, that expound to them all Law and no Gospel, art all gall and no spleen. Hence came it to pass, that with the mere effect of thy incensed jambickes thou mad'st a man run and hang himself that had angered thee.  
Thee I embrace Aristophanes, not so much for thy Comedy of the cloud which thou wrotst against philosophers, as for in all other thy inventions thou interfusest delight with reprehension.  
Lucian, julian, Aretine, all three admirably blest in the abundant gifts of art and nature: yet Religion which you sought to ruinated, hath ruinated your good names, and the opposing of your eyes against the bright sun, hath caused the world condemn your sight in all other things. I protest were you ought else but abominable Atheists, I would obstinately defend you, only because Laureate Gabriel articles against you.  
This I will justify against any Dromidote Ergonist whatsoever, there is no other unlascivious use or end of poetry, but to infamize vice, and magnify virtue, and that if they assemble all the examples of verse-founders from Homer to Hugh Copland, they shall not find any of them but hath encountered with the general abuses of his times.  
Whatsoever harpeth not of one these two strings of praise and reproof, is as it were a Dirige in pricksong without any ditty set to it, that haply may tickle the ear, but never edifies.  
In the Roman commonwealths it was lawful for Poets to reprove that enormity in the highest chairs of authority, which none else durst touch, always the sacred Majesty of their Augustus kept inviolate: for that was a Planet exalted above their Hexameter horizon, & it was capital to them in the highest degree to dispute of his setting and rising, or search inquisitively into his predominance and influence.  
The secrets of God must not be searched into. King's are Gods on earth, their actions must not be sounded by their subjects.  
Seneca Nero's Tutor, found his death in no verse but Octavia. Imperious Lucan sprinkled but one drop of blood on his imperial chair, and perished by him also.  
Ovid once saw Augustus in a place where he would not have been seen, he was exiled presently to those countries no happy man hears of.  
Long might he in a blind Metamorphosis have played upon all the wenches in Room, and registered their privy 'scapes, upbraided in hospitality with the fable of Lycaon: alluded to some Ambidexter Lawyer under the story of Battus: have described a noted unthrift, whose substance hawks and hounds have devoured, in the tale of Actaeon, that was eaten up by his own dogs: mocked Alcumistes with Midas: pictured inamaratos under Narcissas: and shrouded a picked effeminate Carpet Knight under the fictionate person of Hermophroditus; with a thousand more such unexileable overthwart merriments, if lust had not led him beyond the prospect of his birth, or he seen a meaner man sinning than an Emperor.  
Sancta Maria ora pro nobis, how hath my pen lost itself in a crowd of Poets.  
Gaffer jobbernoule, once more well overtaken, how dost thou, how dost thou? hold up thy head man, take no care, though green be dead, yet I may live to do thee good.  
But by the means of his death thou art deprived of the remedy in law, which thou intendedst to have had against him for calling thy Father Ropemaker Mas that's true, what Action will it bear? Nihil pro nihilo, none in law, what it will do upon the stage● cannot tell; for there a man may make action besides his part, when he hath nothing at all to say: and if there, it is but a clownish action that it will bear: for what can be made of a Ropemaker more than a Clown. Will Kempe, I mistrust it will fall to thy lot for a merriment one of these days.  
In short terms thus I demur upon thy long Kentish-tayld declaration against Greene..  
He inherited more virtues than vices, a jolly long red peak like the spire of a steeple he cherished continually without cutting, where●t a man might hang a jewel, it was so sharp and pendant.  
Why should art answer for the infirmities of manners? He had his faults, and thou thy follies.  
Debt and deadly sin who is not subject to? with any notorious crime I never knew him tainted; (& yet tainting is no infamous surgery for him that, hath been in so many hot skirmishes).  
A good f●llowe he was, and would have drunk with thee for more angels than the Lord thou libeldst on, gave thee in Christ's College, and in one year he pissed as much against the walls, as thou and thy two brothers spent in three.  
In a night & a day would he have yarkt up a Pamphlet as well as in seven year, and glad was that Printer that might be so blest to pay him dear for the very dregs of his wit.  
He made no account of winning credit by his works, as thou dost, that dost no good works, but thinks to be famosed by a strong faith of thy own worthiness, his only care was to have a spell in his purse to conjure up a good cup of wine with at all times.  
For the lousy circumstance of his poverty before his death, and sending that miserable writ to his wife, it cannot be but thou liest learned Gabriel.  
I and one of my fellows Will. Monox (Hast thou never heard of him and his great dagger?) were in company with him a month before he died, at that fatal banquet of Rhenish wine and pickled hearing, (if thou wilt needs have it so) and then the inventory of his apparel came to more than three shillings (though thou sayst the contrary.) I know a Broker in a spruce leather jerkin with a great number of gold Rings on his fingers, and a bunch of keys at his girdle, shall give you thirty shillings for the doublet alone, if you can help him to it. Hark in your ear, he had a very fair Cloak with sleeves, of a grave goose ●urd green, it would derue you as fine as may be: No more words if you be wise play the good husband and listen after it, you may buy it ten shillings better cheap than it cost him. By S. Silver it is good to be circumspect in casting for the world, there's a great many ropes go to ten shillings. If you want a greasy pair of silk stockings also to show yourself in at the Court, they are there to be had too amongst his movables. Frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora: It is policy to take a rich pennyworth whiles it is offered.  
Alas even his fellow writer that proper young man, almost scorns to cope with thee thou art such a crow trodden Ass: dost thou in some respects wish him well and spare his name? in some respects so doth he wish thee as well? (hoc est, to be as well known for a fool as my Lord Welles) and promiseth by me to talk very sparingly of thy praise. For thy name, he will not stoop to pluck it out of the mire, and put it in his mouth.  
By this blessed cup of sack which I now hold in my hand, and drink to the health of all Christian souls in, thou art a puissant Epitapher.  
Yea? thy Muse's foot of the twelves; old long Meg of Westminster? Then I trow thou wilt stride over Green's grave and not stumble: If you do, we shall come to your taking up.  

Letter.  
Here lies the man whom Mistress Isam crowned with bays,  
She, she that joyed to hear her Nightingales sweet lays.   

Comment.  
Here Mistress Isam Gabriel flouts thy bays,  
Scratch out his eyes that printeth thy dispraise.   
She, she will scratch, and like a screeching night-owle come and make a dismal noise under thy chamber window for deriding her so dunstically. A big fat lusty wench it is, that hath an arm like an Amazon, and will bang thee abhominationly if ever she catch thee in her quarters. It is not your Poet Garish, and your fore-horse of the parish that shall redeem you from her fingers, but she will make actual proof of you, according as you desire of God in the under following lines.  
The next week Master Bird (if his inkepot have a clear current) he will have at you with a cap-case full of French occurrences, that is, shape you a mess of news out of the second course of his conceit, as his brother is said out of the fabulous abundance of his brain to have invented the news out of Calabria, (john Doletas prophesy of flying dragons, comets, Earthquakes, and inundations.)  
I am sure it is not yet worn out of men's scorn, for every Miller made a comment of it, and not an oyster wife but mocked it.  
When that flyboat of Frenchery is once launched, your trencher attendant Gamaliel Hobgoblin intends to tickle up a Treatise of the barley kurnell which you set in your garden, out of which ther● sprung (as you avouched (twelve several ears of corn at one time.  
Redoubted Parma was never so matched if he kindle the match of his meeterdome, and let d●iue at him with a volley of verses. Let not his principality trust too much to it, because his name is Latin for a shield; for Poet Hobbinoll having a gallant wit and a brazen pen, will honourably bethink him, and even ambitiously frame his style to a noble emulation of Livy, Homer, and the divinest spirits of all ages, as he hath done to the emulation of Tully heretofore, when he compiled a Pamphlet, called Ciceranis Consolatio ad Dolobellam, and published it as a new part of Tull●e, which had been hid in a Wall a thousand and odd years and was found out by him before it ever found being.  
The circumstance was this; going down the water at Cambridge one summer evening, and ask certain questions of the Echo at Barnewell wall (as the manner is passing by) holding her very narrowly to the point, she revealed unto him what a treasure she had hidden amongst her stones; namely, this new part of Gabrielis Ciceronis consolatio ad Dolobellam: and though she was very loath to disclose it, yet because she knew not how soon God might call her; videlicet, how suddenly she might fall; to discharge her conscience before her death, she would deliver it up as freely unto him as ever it was hers, come and dig for it he should have it. Never more glad was she in her life, that since she must needs surrender it to the light, she had chanced upon such a Cardinal Corrigidore of incongruity, and Tully's next and immediate successor under Garre, to whose careful repolishing she might commit it.  
Keep it quoth she?  
No, if it were a book of gold it is THINE, read it, new print it, dedicate it from thy gallery at Trinity Hall to whom thou wilt.  
Whether he used a spade or a mattock for the unburying of it I know not, but extant it is, and of a hundred I have heard that it is his.  
O Gabriel, if thou hast any manhood in thy starched peake, look upon me and weep not.  
From this day forward shall a whole army of boys come wondering about thee as thou goest in the street and cry kulleloo, kulleloo, with whup ho, there goes the Ape of Tully: uh he he, steal Tully, steal Tully, away with the Ass in the Lion's skin.  
Nay but in sadness, is it not a sinful thing for a Scholar & a Christian to turn Tully? a Turk would never do it.  
Be counselled in thy calamity, writ no more Consola●ios ad Dolabellam, but Consolatio ad Doctorem Gabrielem; thyself comfort thyself, and earn to make a virtue of contempt.  
Ad ruentem parietem ne inclina, is a Proverb which would have prevented all this, if thou couldst have suffered thyself to have been directed by it: for first and foremost hadst not thou stepped forrh to underprop the ruinous wall of thy brother's reputation, I had never meddled with thee; if thou hadst not leaned too much to an old wall, when thou pluckst Tully out of a wall, the damnation of this jest had been yet unbegotten.  
He that hath born sail in two tempests of shame, makes a sport of shippewracke of good name ever after.  
The wall of the welfare of France that is started from her King, her true foundation, thy writings (more wretched than France) would feign cleave unto if they could tell how, and count it a felicity to have the opportunity of so heroical an argument.  
God help Alexander if he have no other Poet to emblazon his achievements but Cherillus.  
High resolved Earl of Essex and virtuous Sir john Norris England's champions, envied tranquilities confidence, unworthy are your adventures Iliads to be reported by such a ragged reed, as the jarring Pipe of this Batillus. The Portugals & Frenchmens fear will lend your Honours richer ornaments, than his low-flighted affection (fortunes summer follower) can frame them.  
The seal that I set to your virtues be silence; the argument of praise is unauthorised in any man's mouth but old age.  
When the better part of youths fervence is boiled away, and that the showers of many sorrows have seasoned our green heads with experience, with the wither-faced weatherbeaten Mariner, that talks quaking and shudderingly of a storm that he hath newly toiled through, our words will be written in our visage  
Even as the sun, so no science shines in his complete glory till it be ready to decline.  
These be the conclusions that grey hairs prune & cut down the prosperity of young years with as fast as it aspires, but let the sear Oak look himself in the glass of truth, and he shall find that Methusalems' blessing is imbecility bestowed on any creature but the Fox, who never is a right Fox till he be ripe for the dunghill.  
If my style hold on this sober Mules place but a sheet or two further, I shall have a long beard like an Irish mantle drop out of my mouth before I be aware.  
Marry God forfend, for at no hand can I endure to have my cheeks muffled up in fur like a Muscovian, or wear any of this Welsh freeze on my face.  
O it is a miserable thing to dress hair like tow twixt a man's teeth, when one cannot drink but he must thrust a great sponge into the cup, & so cleanse his cool porridge as it were through a strainer ere it comes to his lips.  
This second Epistle I have said prettily well too, I think we were best begin THIRDLY WHEREAS, for fear a volume steal upon us unlooked for.   

The Arrainment and Execution of the third Letter.  
To every Reader favourably or indifferently affected.  
TEXT stand to the Bar. Peace there below.  
Albeit for these twelve or thirteen years no man hath been more loath or more scrupulous than myself etc.  
The body of me he gins like a proclamation: sufficeth it we know you your mind though you say no more.  
Is not this your drift? you would have the world suppose you were urged to that which proceeded of your own good nature: like some that will seem to be entreated to take a high place of preferment upon them, which privily before they have prayed and paid for, and put all their strength to climb up to.  
You would foist in non causam pro causa, have it thought your flight from your old companions obscurity and silence was only with Aeneas to carry your Father on your back through the fire of slander, and by that shift with a false plea of patience unjustly driven from his kingdom, filch away the hearts of the Queen's liege people.  
The back of those cripple excuses I have broke in the beginning o● my book, if you have any new infringement to destitute the indictment of forgery that I bring against you, so it is.   

Hear enters Argumentum a testimonio humano, like Tamburlaine drawn in a Chariot by four Kings.  
I THAT IN MY YOUTH FLATTERED NOT MYSELF WITH THE EXCEEDING COMMENDATION OF THE GREATEST SCHOLAR IN THE WORLD, etc.  
Ille ego qui quondam gracili modulatus avena.  
Ah neighbourhood, neighbourhood, dead and buried a●t thou with Robin-hood, a poor creature here is feign to commend himself, for want of friends to speak for him.  
Not the least, but the greatest Scholars in the WORLD, have not only but exceedingly fed him fat in his humour of Braggadochio Glorioso.  
Yea Spencer him hath often Homer termed,  
And monsieur Bodkin vowed as much as he:  
Yet cares not Nashe for him a half penny.  
Lamentable, lamentable, that an indifferent untoward civil Lawyer, who hath read Plutarch Deutilitate capienda ab inimicis, & can talk of Titius and Semprovius, should be no more set by, but SET BY, thrust aside, while his betters carry the breadth of the street before them.  
Misery will humble the haughtiest heart in the world: Habemus reum confuentem, he confesseth himself a sinner in unsufficiency, yet for all that the adversity of universal obloquy hath laid a heavy hand on him, still he retaineth (like concealed land) some part of his proud mind in a beggars purse, scorneth to say Fortune my foe, or ask a good word for God's sake of any man.  
In the plainness of his puffed up nature, he will defy any man that dare accuse him of that he is.  
Why▪ why, infractissime PISTLEPRAGMOS, though you were young in years, fresh in courage, green in experience, and overweening in conceit (we will refuse nothing that you give us) when you privately wrote the letters, that afterward (by no other but yourself) were publicly divulged; yet when the bladder is burst that held you up swimming in self love, you must not be discontented though you sink.  
I have touched the ulcer of your Oratourship, in requiting the nickname of The devils Orator. An Ulcer you may well christian it, as an ulcer is a swelling, for it was a swelling of ambition, no modest petition of any merit of yours that did crave it.  
The old Fox Doctor Perne thoroughly discovered you for a young Fop, or else half a word of our high Chauncelors' commendation had stood with him inviolable as an Act of Parliament.  
Great men in writing to those they are acquainted with, have privy watchwords of denial, even in the highest degree of praising; they have many followers, whose dutiful service must not be disgraced with a bitter repulse in any suit though unlawful.  
It may be some of these long deservers of his followers laboured him for thee, he like Argus having eyes that pierce into all estates, saw thee when thou wert unseen of thyself, and knowing thee to be unworthy of any place of worth, would not discountenance his men in so small a matter, but writ for thee very vehemently outwardly, when the soul of his letter (into which thy shallow brain could not descend) included thy utter mislike.  
Young blood is hot, youth hasty, ingenuity open, abuse impatient, choler stomachous, temptations busy. In a word, the Gentleman was vexed, and cut his bridle for very anger.  
The tickling and stirring invective vain, the puffing and swelling Satirical spirit came upon him, as it came on Coppinger and Arthington, when they mounted into the pease-cart in Cheapside and preached: needs he must cast up certain crude humours of English Hexameter Verses that lay upon his stomach, a Nobleman stood in his way as he was vomiting, and from top to toe he all to berayd him with Tuscanisme.  
The Map of Cambridge lay not far off when he was in the depth of his drudgery, some part of the excrements of his angerfell upon it: poor Doctor Pernes picture stood in a corner of that Map, and by the misdemeanour of his mouth it was clean defaced.  
signor Immeritò (so called, because he was and is his friend undeservedly) was counterfeitly brought in to play a part in that his Interlude of Epistles that was hist at, thinking his very name (as the name of Ned Allen on the common stage) was able to make an ill matter good.  
I durst on my credit undertake, Spencer was no way privy to the committing of them to the print. Committing I may well call it, for in my opinion G. H. should not have reaped so much discredit by being committed to New gate, as by committing that misbelieving prose to the Press.  
I have usually seen uncircumcised doltage have the porch of his Pa●im pilferies very hugely pestered with praises. Hay give (Gentlemen) comes in with his Ploughman's whistle in praise of Peter Scurf the penman, and Turlery ginkes in a light foot jig libels in commendation of little wit very loftily: but for an Author to renounce his Christendom to write in his own commendation, to refuse the name which his Godfathers and Godmothers gave him in his baptism, and call himself a well-willer to both the writers, when he is the only writer himself; with what face do you think he can answer it at the day of judgement? Est in te facies sunt apti lusibus anni, Gabriel, thou canst play at fast and lose as well as any man in England.  
I will not lie or backbite thee as thou hast done me, but are not these thy words to the courteous Buyer.  
Show me or Immerito two English letters in print, in all points equal to these, both for the matter itself, and also for the manner of handling, and say we never saw good English in our lives.  
Again, I esteem them for two of the rarest and finest treaties, as well for ingenuous devising, as significant uttering, & cleanly conveying of his matter, that ever I read in this tongue, & I bartily thank God for bestowing upon us such proper and able men with their pen.  
You must conceit he was in his chamberfellowe well-willers cloak when he spoke this, the white-livered slave was modest, and had not the heart to say so much in his own person, but he must put on the vizard of an undiscreet friend.  
It is not worth the rehearsal, he scribbled it in jest for exercise of his speech and style, etc. and it was the sinister hap of those unfortunate letters to be derided & scoffed at throughout the whole realm.  
The sharpest part of them were read over at Counsel Table, and he referred over to the Fleet to bear his old verse-fellow noble M. Valanger company.  
There was no remedy for it but melancholy patience.  
A recantation he was glad to make by way of articles or positions, which he moderates with a milder name of an apology, & that recantation purchased his liberty. Wherhfore in grateful am of the benefit he received by it (although he hath hitherto unworthily suppressed it) yet he means to take occasion by this extraordinary provocation to publish it, with not so few as forty such Academical exercises, and sundry other politic discourses.  
And I deem he will be as good as his word, for ever yet it hath been his wont, if he writ but a letter to any friend of his, in the way of thanks for the pot of butter, gammon of bacon, or cheese that he sent him, strait to give copies of it abroad in the world, and propound it to young gentlemen he came in company with, as a more necessary & refined method of familiar Epistles than the English tongue hath hitherto been privy to.  
Lord that men should be so maliciously bend to frame a matter of some thing, he takes a pleasurable delight to behave himself so that he may be laughed at, how would you prate and insult if you knew as much by him, as he knows by himself.  
Nashe do thy worst, the three brothers bid a Fico for thee, discommend thou them never so much, they will palpably praise, and so consequently dispraise themselves more in one book they set forth, than thou canst disparaged them in ten: yea, rather than fail, Master Bird shall leave coppying out letters of news, and meeter it mischievously in maintenance of their scurri●itiship and ruditie.  
Three to one par ma foy is odds, not one of them writes an Almanac, but he reckons up all his brothers.  
Be it spoken here in private; Musa Richardettis fatrizat sat been pretty: The Muse of dappert Dicky doth sing as sweet as a cricket.  
Nostimanum & stilum Gabriel? it is thine own verse in Aedes Valdinenses, all save the inserting of pretty in stead of certè for rhymes sake.  
Had Physician john lived, or not died a little afore dogdays, a synod of Pisspots would have concluded, that Pierce Penniless should be confounded without reprieve.  
The Spaniards called their invasive fleet against England the Navy invincible, yet it was overcome. Low shrubs have outlived high Cedars, one true man is stronger than two thieves, Gabriel & Richard I proclaim open wars with you: March on, jocus, Ludus, Lepos, my valiant men at arms, and forage the frontiers of his Fantasticallitie, as you have begun.  
Tubalcan aliâs Tubal, first founder of Farrier's Hall, here is a great complaint made, that utriúsque Academiae Robertus green hath mocked thee, because he said, that as thou wert the first inventor of Music, so Gabriel Howliglasse was the first inventor of English Hexameter verses. Quid respondes? canst thou brook it yea or no? Is it any treason to thy well tuned hammers to say they begat so renowned a child as Music? Neither thy hammers nor thou I know if they were put to their book oaths will ever say it.  
The Hexamiter verse I grant to be a Gentleman of an ancient house (so is many an english beggar) yet this Clime of ours he cannot thrive in; our speech is too craggy for him to set his plough in, he goes twitching and hopping in our language like a man running upon quagmiers up the hill in one Syllable and down the dale in another, retaining no part of that stately smooth gate, which he vaunts himself with amongst the Greeks and Latins.  
Homer, and Virgil, two valorous Authors, yet were they never knighted, they wrote in Hexameter verses: Ergo, Chaucer, and Spencer the Homer and Virgil of England, were far overseen that they wrote not all their Poems in Hexamiter verses also.  
In many Country's velvet and Satin is a commoner wear than cloth amongst us, Ergo we must leave wearing of cloth, and go every one in velvet and satin, because other Countries use so.  
The Text will not bear it good Gilgilis Hobberdehoy.  
Our english tongue is nothing too good, but too bad to imitate the Greek and Latin.  
Master Stannyhurst (though otherwise learned) trod a foul lumbring boisterous wallowing measures in his translation of Virgil. He had never been praised by Gabriel for his labour, if therein he had not been so famously absurd.  
Green for dispraising his practice in that kind, Is the Green Master of the black Art, the Founder of ugly oaths, the father of misbegotten Infortunatus, the Scrivener of Crossebiters, the Patriarch of Shifters, etc.  
The Monarch of Crossebiters, the wretched fellow Prince of Beggars, Emperor of Shifters, he had called him before, but like a drunken man that remembers not in the morning what he speaks overnight, still he fetcheth Metaphors from Conny-catchers, & doth nothing but torment us with tautologies.  
Why thou arrant butter whore, thou cotqueane, & scrattop of scolds, wilt thou never leave afflicting a dead Carcase, continually read the rhetoric lecture of Ramme-Allie? a wisp, a wisp, a wisp, rip, rip you kitchen stuff wrangler.  
Wert thou put in the Fleet for pamphleting? Bedlam were a meeter place for thee. Be not ashamed of your promotion, they did you honour that said you were Fleete-bound, for men of honour have sailed in that Fleet.  
Waste paper made thee betake thyself to Limbo Patrum, had it been a book that had been vendible, yet, the opproby had been the less, but for Chandler's merchandise to be so massacred; for sheets that serve for nothing but to wrap the excrements of huswiverie in, Proh Deum, what a spite is it. I have seen your name cut with a knife in a wall of the Fleet I: when I went to visit a friend of mine there. Let Master Butler of Cambridge his testimonial end this controversy, who at that time that thy joys were in the Fleeting, and thou crying for the Lords sake out at an iron window, in a lane not far from Ludgate hill, questioned some of his companions very inquisitivelie that were newly come from London, what novelties they brought home with them, amongst the rest he broke into this Hexamiter interrogatory very abruptly.  
But ah what news do you hear of that good Gabriel huff-snuff,  
Known to the world for a fool, and clapped in the Fleet for a Rhymer.  
Is't true Gibraltar, have I found you, It was not without foundation that you burst into that magnifical insultation, I THAT IN MY YOUTH FLATTERED NOT MYSELF, etc. for M. Butler for a Physician being none of the least Scholars, hath commended you exceedingly for a fool & a Rhymer. He that threatened to conjure up Martin's wit, hath written some thing too in your praise in Pap-hatchet, for all you accuse him to have courtly incensed the Earl of Oxford against you. Mark him well, he is but a little fellow, but he hath one of the best wits in England. Should he take thee in hand again (as he flieth from such inferior concertation) I prophecy that there would more gentle Readers die of a merry mortality engendered by the eternal jests he would maul thee with, than there have done of this last infection. I myself that enjoy but a mite of wit in comparison of his talon, in pure affection to my native country, make my style carry a press sail, am fain to cut off half the stream of thy sport-breeding confusion, for fear it should cause a general hicket throughout England. green I can spare thy revenge no more room in this book, thou hast Physician john with thee, cope thou with him & let me alone with the Civilian & Divine, whom if I live I will so uncessantly haunt, that to avoid the hot chase of my fiery quill, they shallbe constrained to ensconse themselves in an old Urinal case that their brother left behind him. Yet ere I bid thee good night, receive some notes as touching his phisicallity deceased. He had his grace to be Doctor ere he died. As time may work all things. In Norfolk where he practised he was reputed a proper toward man at a medicine for the toothache, & one of the skilfullest Physicians in casting the heavens water that ever came there.  
How well beloved of the chiefest Gentlemen (& Gentlewomen especially) in that shire, it is incredible to be spoken. Astra petit disertus, he is gone to heaven to write more Astrological discourses, his brothers live to inherit his old gowns, and remember his notable sayings, amongst the which this was one: Vale Galene, farewell mine own dear Gabriel: valet humanae arts, heart and good will, but never a rag of money. 
Tunc tua res agitur paries cum proximus ardet.  Cloth-breecheses house is burnt, and the flame goes a feasting to Pierce Penniless house next.  
Never till now, Gregory Habberdine, went thy four letters up Newgate, up Holborn, up Tyburn, to hanging.  
Gentlemen, by that which hath been already laid open, I do not doubt but you are unwaveringly resolved, this indigested Chaos of Doctourship, and greedy pothunter after applause, is an apparent Publican and sinner, a self-love surfeited sot, a broken-winded galdbacke jade, that hath borne up his head in his time, but now is quite foundered & tired, a scholar in nothing but the scum of scholarship, a stolen soker at Tully's Offices, the drone of drones, and master drumble-bee of none proficients. What hath he wrote but hath had a woeful end? When did he dispute but he dulled all his auditory? his Poetry more spiritless than small beer, his Oratory Arts bastard, not able to make a man ravishingly weep, that hath an Onion at his eye. In Latin like a louse he hath many legs, many locks fleeced from Tully to carry away and clothe a little body of matter, but yet he moves but slowly, is apparaild very poorly.  
In English, ice is not so cold, yet on the ice of ignorance will he slide. No wise man pity him that perisheth so wilfully.  
judge the world, judge the highest Courts of appeal from the miscarried world's judgement (Cambridge and Oxford) wherein I have trespassed in Pierce Penniless, that he should talk of gnashing of teeth, young Phaeton's, young Icari, young Chorebi, young Babingtons'.  
Never was I in earnest till thus he twitted me with the comparison of a traitor.  
Babington, high was thy birth, I a bondslave of fortune in comparison of thee, thy fall greater than Phaeton's, thy offence as heinous as judasses. May never more such foul seeds of offence be sown in so fair a shape, may they be marked always to mischief that mean as thou didst. The branches of thy stock remains yet unblasted with any disobedience. God forbidden that our foreheads should for ever be blotted with our forefather's misdemeanours. Die ill deeds with your ungracious ill doers, the living have no portion with the dead, hell once paid his due, heaven gates are open to succeeding posterity.  
Prate of Pierce Penniless and his paltry as long as thou wilt, I will play at put-pinne with thee for all that thou art worth, but of thy betters get thee a better discoursing pen before thou descantes of.  
L. Green's inwardest companion pinched with want, vexed with discredit, tormented with other men's felicity, and overwhelmed with his own misery, in a raving and frantic mood, most desperately exhibiteth a Supplication to the Devil.  
C. Herein thou thinkest thou hast won the spurs from all writers, but God and Dame Fiction knows thou art far wide of thy aim; for neither was I Green's companion any more than for a carouse or two, nor pinched with any ungentleman-like want, when I invented Pierce Penniless.  
Pauper non est cui rerum suppetit usus: only the discontented meditation of learning generally now a days little valued, and her professors set at nought & dishartened, caused me to handle that plaintiff subject more seriously.  
Vexed with discredit (Gabriel) I never was as thou hast been ever since Familiarit as peperit contemptum, thy familiar epistles brought thee in contempt.  
Though I have been pinched with want (as who is not at one time or another Pierce Penniless) yet my muse never wept for want of maintenance as thine did in Musarum lachrimae, that was miserably flouted at in M. Winkfields' Comedy of Pedantius in Trinity College.  
How am I tormented with other men's felicity, otherwise than saying, I know a Cobbler that was worth five hundred pound, an ostler that had built a goodly Inn, & might dispend forty pound yearly by his land, a Carman that had whipped a thousand pound out of his horse tail; if I had likewise reckoned up a rope-maker, that by tormenting of hemp, & going backward (which the Devil would near do) had turned as many Mill sixpences over the thumb, as kept three of his sons at Cambridge a long time, & that which is more, three proud sons, that when they met the hangman (their Father's best chapman) would scarce put of their hats to him, why then thou shouldst have had some colour of quarrel, thy accusation might justly have entered his title pro aris & focis, whereas now it is frivolous and forceless.  
The sharpest wits I perceive have none of the best memories, if they had, thou wouldst near have touched me with tormenting myself with other men's felicity; for how didst thou torment thyself with other men's felicity, when in the 28. Page of thy first tome of Epistles thou exclaim'st that in no age so little was so much made of, nothing advanced to be something, Numbers made of Ciphars', that is by interpretation, all those that were advanced either in the Court or commonwealth at that time, had little to commend them, nothing in account worthy preferment, but were mere meacocks & Ciphars' in comparison of thy excellent outcast self that livedst at Cambridge unmounted.  
Hang thee, hang thee, thou common cozener of courteous readers, thou gross shifter for shitten tapsterly jests, have I imitated Tarlton's play of the seven deadly sins in my plot of Pierce Penniless? whom hast thou not imitated then in the course of thy book? thou hast borrowed above twenty phrases and epithets from me, which in sober sadness thou mak'st use of as thy own, when thou wouldst exhort more effectual.  
Is it lawful but for one preacher to preach of the ten commandments? hath none writ of the five senses but Aristotle? was sin so utterly abolished with Tarlton's play of the seven deadly sins, that there could be nothing said supra of that argument?  
Canst thou exemplify unto me (thou impotent moate-catching carper) one minnum of the particular device of his play that I purloined? There be many men of one name that are nothing a kindred. Is there any further distribution of sins, not shadowed under these 7. large spreading branches of iniquity, on which a man may work, and not tread on Tarlton's heels. If not, what blemish is it to Pierce Penniless to begin where the Stage doth end, to build virtue a Church on that foundation that the Devil built his Chapel.  
Gabriel, if there be any wit or industry in thee, now I will dare it to the uttermost: writ of what thou wilt, in what language thou wilt, and I will confute it and answer it. Take truths part, and I will prove truth to be no truth, marching out of thy dung-voiding mouth.  
Divinity I except, which admits no dalliance: but in any other art or profession, of which I am not yet free, and thou shalt challenge me to try masteries in, I'll bind myself Prentice too▪ and study thoroughly, though it never stand me in any other stead while I live but to make one reply, only because I will have the last word of thee.  
I would count it the greatest punishment that In speech could lay upon me, to be bound to study the Danish tongue, which is able to make any Englishman have the mumps in his mouth, that shall but plunge through one full point of it, yet the Danish tongue, or any Turks, or hogs, or dog's tongue whatsoever would I learn rather than be put down by such a ribaldry Don Diego as thou art.  
Heigh drawer, fill us a fresh quart of newfound phrases, since Gabriel says we borrow all our eloquence from Taverns: but let it be of the mighty Bordeaux grape, pure vino de monte I conjure thee, by the same token that the Devils dancing school in the bottom of a man's purse that is empty, hath been a graybeard Proverb two hundred years before Tarlton was borne: Ergo no gramercy Dick Tarlton. But the sum of sums is this, I drink to you M. Gabriel, on that condition, that you shall not excruciate your brain to be conceited and have no wit.  
Since we are here on our prating bench in a close room, and that there is none in company but you my approved good friends four Letters and certain Sonnets your Pages; I will rehearse unto you some part of the Method of my demeanour in Pierce Penniless.  
First, insomuch as the principal scope of it is a most lively anatomy of sin, the devil is made special supervisor of it, to him it is dedicated, as if a man should compile a curious examined discovery of whoredom, and dedicate it to the quarter Masters of Bridewell, because they are best able to punish it.  
Wherefore as there is no fire without some smoke; no complaint without some precedent cause of aggreevance; I introduce in a discontented Scholar under the person of Pierce Penniless, tragicallie exclaiming upon his partial-eid fortune, that kept an Alms box of compassion in store for every one but himself. He tells how he tossed his imagination like a a dog in a blanket, searched every corner of the house of Charity to see if he could light on any that would set a new nap of an old threedbare Cloak: but like him that having a letter to deliver to a Scottish Lord, when he came to his house to inquire for him found no body at home but an ape that sat in the Porch and made mops and mouse at him; so he delivering his unperusde papers to Paul's Churchyard, the first that took them up was the Ape Gabriel, who made mops and mouse at them, beslavering the outside of them a little, but could not enter into the contents, which was an ace beyond his understanding.  
With the first and second leaf he plays very prettily, and in ordinary terms of extenuating, verdicts Pierce Penniless for a Grammar School wit; says his Margin is as deeply learned as Fauste praecor gelida, that his Muse sobbeth and groaneth very piteously, bids him not cast himself headlong into the horrible gulf of desperation, comes over him that he is a creature of wonderful hope as his own inspired courage divinely suggesteth, wills him to enchant some magnificent Maecenas to honour himself in honouring him, with a hundred such grace wanting Ironies cut out against the will, that would jeopard the best joint of Poetica licentia to procure laughter, when there crinckled crabbed countenance (the very resemblance of a sodden dogs face) hath sworn it would never consent thereunto.  
Not the most exquisite thing that is, but the Counsel Table Ass Richard Clarke, may so Carterly deride.  
Every Milkmaid can gird, with Is't true? How say you lo? who would have thought it? Good Bear bite not? A man is a man though he hath but a hose on his head.  
No such light payment Gabriel hast thou at my hands; I tell thee where, when, and how thou show'dst thyself a Dunsivall.  
Only external defects thou casts in my dish, nothing internal in thee, but I prove that it is altogether excremental.  
A few elegiacal verses of mine thou pluckest in pieces most ruthfullie, and quotes them against me as advantageable, together with some dismembered Margin notes, but all is ink cast away, you recover no costs and charges. With one minutes study I'll destroy more, than thou art able to build in ten days.  
Squeise thy heart into thy inkhorn, and it shall but congeal into clodderd garbage of confutation, thy soul hath no effects of a soul, thou canst not sprinkle it into a sentence, & make every line leap like a cup of neat wine new powered out, as an Orator must do that lies aright in wait for men's affections.  
Whom hast thou won to hate me by light crawling over my Text like a Cankerworm.  
Some superficial slime of poison hast thou driveld from thy pen in thy shallow footed sliding through my Supplication, which one pen full of ●epurified ink will excessively wash out. Shall I inform thee (that unfruitfullie endeuorst to inform authority against me) why I infixed those Poetical latin margin notes to some few pages in the beginning of Pierce Penniless? I did it to explain to such expected spiefaul●s as thou art, that it was no uncouth abhorrency from the custom of former writers, for a man openly to bewail his undeserved ill destiny.  
In the uncasing of thy brother Richard, I calculated the Nativity of the Astrological Discourse, I apparently suggested what a lewd ●iece of Prophecy it was, I registered the infinite scorn that the whole Realm entertained it with, the A dages that ran upon it, Tarlton's and Eldertons' nigrum THETA set to it, yet wilt thou that art the son and heir to shameless impudence, the unlineall usurper of judgement from all his true owners, the HOYDEN and pointing stock recreation of Trinity hall, Vanitas vanitatis & ●mnia vanitas, invest that in the highest throne of Art and Scholarship, which ascrutinie of so many millions of well discerning condemnations hath concluded ●o be viler, than newesmungrie, & that which is vilest of all, no less vile than thy Epistles.  
Most voices, most voices, most voices; who is on my side who? Whether is the Astrological Discourse a better book than Pierce Penniless? Gabriel hangtelow says it is, I am the Defendant▪ and deny it, and yet I do not overcull my own works: His assetrion he countermures thus.  
Pierce Penniless is a man better acquainted with the Devils of hell, than the Stars of Heaven: Ergo, the Astrological Discourse is better than the notorious diabolical discourse of Pierce Penniless.  
Once again I deny his Argument to be of lawful age▪ Pierce Penniless is a better Starmunger than a Divelmunger, which needeth no other FOR to corroberate it but this, that my yea, at all times is as good as his nay.  
How is the Supplication a diabolical Discourse, otherwise than as it entreats of the diverse natures and properties of Devils and spirits; in that far fetched sense may the famous defensatiu● against supposed Prophecies; and the Discovery of Witchcraft be called notorious Diabolical discourses, as well as the Supplication, for they also entreat of the illusions and sundry operations of spirits: Likewise may I say that those his four Letters now on their trial are four notorious lousy Discourses, because they lyingly discourse little else save Green's lousy estate before his death.  
M. Churchyard our old quarrel is renewed when nothing else can be fastened on me, this Letter leapper upbraideth me with crying you mercy, I cannot tell, but I think you will have a saying to him for it. there's no reason that such a one as he should presume to intermeddle in your matters, it cannot be done with any intent but to stir me up to write against you a fresh, which nothing under heaven shall draw me to do. I love you unfeignedly, and admire your aged Muse, that may well be grandmother to our grand-eloquentest Poets at this present.  
Sanctum & venerabile vetus omne Poema.  
Shore's wife is young, though you be stepped in yeared, in her shall you live when you are dead.  
For that unadvised in dammagement I have done you heretofore, I'll be your champion hence forward against any that dare write against you. Only as ever you would light upon a good cup of old sack when you are most dry, pocket not up this sly abuse at a rakehell rampalions hands, one that when an injury is deep buried in the grave of oblivion, shall seek to dig it up again, recall that into men's memories which was consumed and forgotten.  
Whoreson Nynnyhammer, that wilt assault a man & have no stronger weapons.  
The Italian saith, a man must not take knowledge of injury till he be able to revenge it.  
Nay but in plain good fellowship, art thou so innocent & unconceiving, that thou shouldst ere hope to dash me quite out of request by telling me of the Counter, and my hostess Penia.  
I yield that I have dealt upon spare commodities of wine and ●apons in my days, I have sung George Gascoignes Counter-tenor; what then? Wi●t thou peremptorily define that it is a place where no honest man, or Gentleman of credit ever came?  
Hear what I say, a Gentleman is never thoroughly entered into credit till he hath been there; & that Poet or novice, be he what he will, aught to suspect his wit, and remain half in a doubt that it is not authentical, till it hath been seen and allowed in unthrifts consistory.  
Grande doloris ingenium. Let fools dwell in no stronger houses than their Fathers built them, but I protest I should never have writ passion well, or been a piece of a Poet, if I had not arrived in those quarters.  
Trace the gallantest youths and bravest revellers about Town in all the bypaths of their expense, & you shall unfallibly find, that once in their life time they have visited that melancholy habitation.  
Come come, if you will go to the sound truth of it, there is no place of the earth like it to make a man wise.  
Cambridge and Oxford may stand under the elbow of it.  
I vow if I had a son, I would sooner send him to one of the Counters to learn law, than to the Inns of Court or Chancery.  
My hostess Penia, that's a bugs word, I pry thee what Moral hast thou under it? I will depose if thou wilt that till now I never heard of any such English name.  
There is a certain thing called christian verity, & another hight common sense, and a third cleapt humility, they are more requisite and necessary for thee, than modesty or discretion for me and my companions, of which would thou shouldst understand, we are so well provided, that we can lend thee and thy brother Richard a great deal, and yet keep more than we shall have need of for ourselves.  
Will't thou be so hardy and iron-visaged, to gainsay that thy brother Vicar's Batchlours hood was not turned over his ears for abusing of Aristotle, I know thou hast more grace than so, thou dost not contradict it flatly, but slubbers it over faintly, and comes to recapitulate not confute some of the phrases I used in the unhandsoming of his divinitiship.  
I myself in the same order of disgracing thou singles them forth will have them up again, and see if thou or any man can absurdifie the worst of them.  
I say, and will make it good, that in the Astrological discourse thy brother (as if he had lately cast the heavens water, or been at the anatomizing of the skies entrails in Surgeon's hall) prophesieth of such strange wonders to ensue from the stars distemperature, and the unusual adultery of planets, as none but ●ee that is bawd to those celestial bodies could ever descry.  
This too I will ratify for truthable & legible English, that his Astronomy broke his day with his creditors, and Saturn & jupiter proved honester men than all the world took them for.  
That the whole University hist at him, Tarlton at the Theatre made jests of him, and Elderton consumed his ale cramined nose to nothing, in heare-●ai●ing him with whole bundles of Ballads.  
All this he barely repeats without any disprovement or denudation at all, as if it were so lame in itself, that it would annihilate itself with the onel●e rehearsal of it.  
For the gentility of the Nashes (though it might seem a humour borrowed from thee to brag of it) yet some of us who never sought into it ●il of late, can prove the extancy of our ancestors before there was ever a ropemaker in England. We can vaunt larger petigrees than patrimonies, yet of such extrinsical things common to ten thousand calves and oxen, would not I willingly vaunt, only it hath pleased M. Printer both in this book and Pierce Penniless, to invaile a vain title to my name, which I care not for, without my consent or privity I here avouch.  
But on the gentility of T. N. his beard, the master Butler of Pembroke hall, still I will stand to the death; for it is the very prince Elector of peaks, a beard that I cannot be persuaded but was the Emperor Dionysius his, surnamed the Tyrant, when he played the schoolmaster in Corinth.  
Gabriel, thou hast a pretty polwigge sparrows tail peake, yet mayst thou not compare with his: thy Father, for all by thy own confession he makes hairs, had never the art to twilt up such a grim triangle of hair as that.  
Be not offended honest T. N. that I am thus bold with thee, for I affect thee for the names sake as much as any one man can do another, and know thee to be a sine fellow, and fit to discharge a far higher calling than that wherein thou liv'st.  
What more stuff lurketh behind in this letter to be distributed into shop-dust?  
Pierce Penniless is as childish and garish a book as ever came in print; when he talks of the sheepish discourse of the Lamb of God and his enemies, he says, it is monstrous and absurd, and not to be suffered in a Christian congregation; that Richard hath scumd over the schoolmen, and of the froth of their folly made a dish of Divinity brewis which the Dog's would not eat.  
If he said so (as he did) and can prove it (as he hath done) by Saint Lubeck then The Lamb of God is as childish and garish stuff as ever came in print indeed.  
I but how doth Pierce Penniless expiate the coinquination of these objections.  
Richard, whom (because he is his brother, he therefore censures more curious and rigorous, in calling him M. H. than he would have done otherwise) red the Philosophy Lecture in Cambridge with good liking and singular commendation, when A pierce a was not so much as Idoneus auditor civilis scientiae, Ergo, the Lamb of God bears a better Fleece than he gives out it doth.  
A pierce a is improved nothing since, excepting his old Flores Poetarum, and Tarlton's surmounting rhetoric, with a little euphuisme and greenness enough.  
Gabriel reports him to the favourablest opinion of those that know A pierce a his Prefaces, rhymes, and the very tympany of his Tarltonizing wit his Supplication to the Devil.  
Quiet yourselves a little my Masters, and you shall see me disperse all those clouds well enough. That Richard read the Philosophy Lecture at Cambridge, I do not withstand, but how?  
Very Lentenlie and scantly, (far be it we should slander him so much as his brother Richard hath done, to say he read it with good liking and singularity.) Credit me, any that hath but a little refuse Colloquium Latin, to interseame a Lecture with, and can say but Quapropter vos mei auditores may read with equivalent commendation and liking.  
I remember him wondrous well. In the chief pomp of that his false praise, I both heard him and heard what was the universal slender valuation of him.  
There was eloquent Master Knox, (a man whose loss all good learning can never sufficiently deplore) 'twas he and one Master jones of Trinity College, that in my time with more special approbation conversed in those Readins.  
Since I have heard of two rare young men M. Meriton and another, that in supplying that place of succession have surmounted all former mediocrity, and won themselves an everlasting good name in the University.  
These thou shouldst have memorised if any, but thou art given to speak well of none but thyself and thy two brothers.  
Thrice fruitful S. john's, how many hundred perfecter Scholars than the three brothers hast thou nursed at thy paps, that yet have not shaked off obscurity?  
Mellifluous PLAYFERE one of the chief props of our aged, & auntientest, & absolutest Universities present flourishing. Where do thy supereminent gifts shine to themselves, that the Court cannot be acquainted with them.  
Few such men speak out of Fame's highest Pulpits, though out of her highest Pulpits speak the purest of all speakers.  
Let me add one word, and let it not be thought derogatory to any, I cannot bethink me of two in England in all things comparable to him for his time. Seldom have I beheld so pregnant a pleasant wit coupled with a memory of such huge incomprehensible receipt, deep reading and delight better mixed than in his Sermons.  
Sed quorsum haec, how do these digressions link in with our Subiectum circa quod?  
Flaunting Richard and his Philosophy Lecture, was under our fingers even now, howsoever we have lost him. Hold the candle, and you shall see me cast a figure for him extempore: Oh hoh, I have found him without any further seeking. Give me your ears Io Paean, God save them they are long ones.  
Now between you and me declare as if you were at shrift, whether you be not a superlative block for all you readd the Philosophy Lecture at Cambridge: Briefly, briefly, let me not stand all day about you.  
His conscience accuseth him, he is struck stark dumb, only by signs he craves to be admitted in forma pauperis that we should let him pass for a poor fellow, and he will sell his birthright in learning with Esau for a mess of porridge.  
Cura leues loquuntur, he hath but a little cure to look too. Maiores stupent, more living would make him study more.  
For this once we dispense with you because you look so penitently on it, but let not me catch you selling any more such twice sodden sawdust divinity as the Lamb of God and his enemies, for if I do, I'll make a dearth of paper in Pater-noster-rowe (such as was not this seven year) only with writing against thee.  
A pierce a can do it, tempt not his clemency too much. A pierce a?  
Passion of God how came I by that name; my godfather Gabriel gave it me, and I must not refuse it. Nor if you were privy whence it came would you hold it worthy to be refused, for before I had the reversion of it he bestowed it on a Noble man, whose new fashioned apparel, and Tuscanish gestures, cringing sidenecke, eyes glancing, physiognomy smerking, having described to the full, he concludes with this verse, Every inch A pierce a his terms and braveries in print.  
Hold you your peace Nashe: that was before you were Idoneus auditor civilis scientiae. It may be so, for thou wert a Libeler before I was borne. Yet under correction be it spoken, I have come to the schools and purged rheum many a time, when your brother was Philosophy Lecturer, he wanted no supplosus pedum to spend away his hour that I could help him with.  
What since I am improved, you partly have proved to your cost, and may do more at large if God send us more leisure.  
As for Flores Poetarum, they are flowers that yet I never smelled too. I'll pawn my hand to a halfpenny I have readd more good Poets through, than thou ever heardst off.  
The flowers of your Four Letters it may be I have ouerlookt more narrowly, and done my best devoir to assemble them together into pathetical posy, which I will here present to Master Orator Edge for a New years gift, leaving them to his wordie discretion to be censured whether they be currant in inkehornisme or no.  
Conscious mind: canicular tales: egregious an argument: when as egregious is never used in english but in the extreme ill part. Ingenuity: jovial mind: valorous Authors: inckehorne adventures: inckehorne pads: putative opinions: putative artists: energetical persuasions: rascallity: materiallitie: artificiallitie, Fantasticallitie: divine Entelechy: loud Mentery: deceitful perfidy: addicted to Theory: the world's great Incendiary: sire●ized furies: sovereignty immense: abundant Cautels: cautelous and adventurous: cordial liquor: Catilinaries and Phillipicks: perfunctory discourses: David's sweetness olimpique: The Idee high and deep Abyss of excellence: The only Unicorn of the Muses: the Aretinish mountain of huge exaggerations: The gracious law of Amnesty: amicable terms: amicable end: Effectuate: addoulce his melody: Magy polimechany: extensively employed: precious Traynment: Novellets: notoriety negotiation: mechanician.  
Nor are these all, for every third line hath some of this overracked absonisme. Nor do I altogether scum off all these as the new engendered foam of the English, but allow some of them for a need to fill up a verse; as Traynment, and one or two words more, which the liberty of prose might well have spared. In a verse, when a word of three syllables cannot thrust in but sidelings, to joint him even, we are oftentimes feign to borrow some lesser quarry of elocution from the Latin, always retaining this for a principle, that a leak of indesinence as a leak in a ship, must needly be stopped, with what matter soever.  
Chaucer's authority I am certain shallbe alleged against me for a many of these balductums. Had Chaveer lived to this age, I am verily persuaded he would have discarded the tone half of the harsher sort of them,  
They were the Oouse which overflowing barbarism, withdrawn to her Scottish Northern channel, had left behind her. Art like young grass in the spring of Chaucer's flourishing, was glad to peep up through any slime of corruption, to be beholding to she cared not whom for apparel, travailing in those cold countries. There is no reason that she a banished Queen into this barren soil, having monarchizd it so long amongst the Greeks and Romans, should (although wars fury had humbled her to some extremity) still be constrained when she hath recovered her state, to wear the robes of adversity, jet it in her old rags, when she is wedded to new prosperity.  
Vtere moribus praeteritis, saith Caius Caesar in Aulus Gellius, loquere verbis praesentibus.  
Thou art mine enemy Gabriel, and that which is more, a contemptible underfoot enemy, or else I would teach thy old Truantship the true use of words, as also how more inclinable verse is than prose to dance after the horrizonant pipe of inveterate antiquity.  
It is no matter, since thou hast brought godly instruction out of love with thee, use thy own destruction, reign sole Emperor of inkehornisme, I wish unto thee all superabundant increase of the singular gifts of absurdity, and vainglory: from this time forth for ever, ever, ever, evermore mayst thou be canonised as the Nun parreille of impious epistles, the short shredder out of sunday sentences without lime, as Quintilian termed Seneca all lime, and no sand; all matter, and no circumstance; the factor for the Fairies, and night Urchins, in supplanting and setting aside the true children of the English, and suborning inkhorn changelings in their stead, the galimafrier of all styles in one standish, as imitating every one, & having no separate form of writing of thy own; and to conclude, the only feather-driver of phrases, and putter of a good word to it when thou hast once got it, that is betwixt this and the Alps. So be it world without end. Chroniclers hear my prayers. Good Master Stowe be not unmindful of him.  
That's well remembered, now I talk of Chroniclers, I found the Astrological discourse the other night in the Chronicle. Gabriel will outface us it is a work of such deep art & judgement, when it is expressly passed under record for a cozening prognostication. The words are these, though somewhat abbreviated; for he makes a long circumlocution of it.  
In the year 1583. by means of an Astrological discourse upon the great and notable conjunction of Saturn and jupiter, the common sort of people were almost driven out of their wits, and knew not what to do: but when no such thing happened, they fell to their former security, and condemned the discourse of extreme madness and folly.  
Ipsissima sunt Aristotelis verba, they are the very words of john Telltruth in the 1357. folio of the last edition of the great Chronicle of England.  
Mehercule quidem, if it be so taken up, Pierce Penniless may well cast his cap after it for ever overtaking it. But some thing even now Gabriel thou wert girding against my praefaces and rhymes, and the tympany of my Tarltonizing wit.  
Well these be your words, praefaces and rhymes, let me study a little praefaces and rhymes. Minimè verò; si ●is nego. I never printed rhyme in my life but those verses in the beginning of Pierce Penniless, though you have set forth, 
The stories acquaint of many a doughty fly,  
That read a lecture to the venturous elf.  And so forth as followeth in chambling row.  
Praefaces two, or a pair of Epistles I will receive into the protection of my parentage, out of both which, suck out one solecism or misshapen English word if thou canst for thy guts.  
Wherein have I borrowed from green or Tarlton, that I should thank them for all I have? Is my style like Green's, or my jests like Tarlton's? Do I talk of any counterfeit birds, or herbs, or stones, or rake up any newfound poetry from under the walls of Troy? If I do, trip me with it; but I do not, therefore I'll be so saucy as trip you with the grand lie. Ware stumbling of whetstones in the dark there my masters▪  
This I will proudly boast (yet am I nothing a kindred to the three brothers) that the vain which I have (be it a median vain, or a mad man) is of my own begetting, and ca●s no man father in England but myself, neither Euphues, nor Tarlton, nor Greene..  
Not Tarlton nor green but have been contented to let my simple judgement overrule them in some matters of wit. Euphues I readd when I was a little ape in Cambridge, and then I thought it was Ipse ille, it may be excellent good still for aught I know, for I looked not on it this ten year: but to imitate it I abhor, otherwise than it imitates Plutarch, Ovid, and the choicest Latin Authors.  
If you be advised I took shortest vowels and longest mutes in the beginning of my book as suspicious of being accessary to the making of a Sonnet whereto Master Christopher Birds name is set, there I said that you mute forth many such phrases in the course of your book which I would point at as I passed by: Hear I am as good as my word, for I note that thou being afraid of beraying thyself with writing, wouldst feign be a mute, when it is too late to repent. Again, thou reviest on us and sayst, that mutes are coursed and vowels haunted. Thou art no mute, yet shalt thou be haunted and coursed to the full. I will never leave thee as long as I am able to lift a pen.  
Whether I seek to be counted a terrible bulbegger or no, I'll bait thee worse than a bull so that the thou shalt desire some body on thy knees to help thee with letters of commendation to Bull the hangman, that he may dispatch thee out of the way before more affliction come upon thee.  
All the invective and satericall spirits shall then be thy familiars, as the furies in hell are the familiars of sinful ghosts to follow them and torment them without intermission: thou shalt be double girt with girds, and scoffed at till those that stand by do nothing but cough with laughing.  
Thou sayest I profess the art of railing, thou shalt not say so in vain, for if there be any art or depth in it, more than Aretine or Agrippa have discovered or dived into, look that I will sound it and search it to the uttermost, but ere I have done with thee i'll leave thee the miserablest creature that the sun ever saw.  
There is no kind of peaceable pleasure in poetry, but I can draw equally in the same yoke with the haughtiest of those foule-mouthd backbiters, that say I can do nothing but rail.  
I have written in all sorts of humours privately I am persuaded, more than any young man of my age in England.  
The weather is cold, and I am weary with confuting, the remainder of the cold contents of this Epistle be these.  
He enviously endeavours since he cannot revenge himself to incense men of high calling against me, and would enforce it into their opinions, that whatsoever is spoken in Pierce Penniless, concerning Peasants, Clowns & hypocritical hotspurs, Midass', Buckram Giants, & the mighty Prince of darkness is meant of them, let him prove it, or bring the man to my face to whom I ever made any undutiful exposition of it, I am to be my own interpreter in this first case. I say in Pierce Penniless I have set down nothing but that which I have had my precedent for, in foreign writers, nor had I the least allusion to any man set above me in in degree, but only glanc'st at vice generally.  
The tale of the Bear and the Fox, how ever it may set fools heads a work a far off, yet I had no concealed end in it, but in the one, to describe the right nature of a bloodthirsty tyrant, whose indefinite appetite all the pleasures in the earth have no power to bond in goodness, but he must seek a new felicity in variety of cruelty, and destroying all other men's prosperity; for the other, to figure an hypocrite: Let it be Martin if you will, or some old dog that bites sorer than he, who secretly goes and seduceth country Swains.  
Makes them believe that that honey which their bees brought forth was poisonous and corrupt.  
That they may buy honey cheaper than by being at such charges in keeping of bees.  
That it is not necessary they should have such stately hives or lie sucking at such precious honnicombs.  
If this (which is nothing else but to swim with the stream) be to tell tales as shrewdly as mother Hubbard, it should seem mother Hubbard is no great shrew, however thou treading on her heels so oft, she may be tempted beyond her ten commandments.  
A little before this the foresaid fanatical Phobetor, geremumble, tirleriwhisco, or what you will, called forth the biggest gun-shot of my thundering terms steeped in Aqua fortis and gunpowder to come and try themselves on his paper Target.  
But that it is no credit Galpogas to discharge a Cannon 'gainst a louse, thou shouldst not call in vain, thou shouldst hear Tom a Lincoln roar with a witness, woe worth the da●e & the year when thou hearest him. I feareblast thee now but with the wind of my weapon. With the waist of my words, I lay waste all the feeble fortifications of thy wit. Show me the Universities hand and seal that thou art a Doctor sealed and delivered in the presence of a whole Commensement, and I'll present thee with my whole artillery store of eloquence.  
A bots on thee for me for a lumpish leaden heeled letter dauber, my style with treading in thy clammy steps is grown as heavy gated, as if it were bound to an Alderman's pace, with the irons at Newgate called the widow's Alms.  
Ere I was chained to thee thus by the neck, I was as light as the Poet Accius, who was so low and so slender that he was feign to put lead into his shoes for fear the wind should blow him into another Country.  
Those that catch Leopards set cups of wine before them; those that will win liking and grace of the readers, must set before them continually that which shall cheer them, and revive them.  
Gabriel, thou hast not done so, thou canst not do so, therefore rhy works neither have, nor can any way hinder me, nor benefit the Printer.  
Even in the packing up of my book a hot ague hath me by the back. Maugre sickness worst, a lean arm put out of the bed shall grind and pash every crumb of thy book into pin-dust.  
The next piece of service thou dost against Pierce Penniless, is the naming of him woeful pouerett●, and pleasant supposing thou puldst him by the ragged sleene: Then matchest thou thyself to Ulysses, and him to Irus, Irrita sunt haec omnia: it is a sleeveless jest, I have besliued thee already for it, it toucheth the body and not the mind. Besides I was never altogether Peter Poveretto, utterly thrown down, desperately separated from all means of relieving myself, since I knew how to separate a knave from an honest man, or throw my cloak over my nose, when I sallied by the Counters.  
The ragged cognizance on the sleeve, I may say to thee, carried meat in the mouth when time was, do not dispraise it yet, for it hath many high partakers. Qua sequuntur huiusmodi sunt.  
Thou turmoilst thy pia mater, to prove base births better than the offspring of many descents, because thou art a mushroom sprung up in one night, a silly mouse begotten on a moulehill, that wouldst fayne perch thyself on the mountains, when thy legs are too short to overcome such a long journey of glory.  
My margin note, Meritis expendite causam, thou wouldst rather than any thing wrest to an enditment of arrogance, & so branch me into thy tiptoe stock. I cannot see how thou canst compass it: For though I bade them weigh the cause by deserts, yet I did not assume too much to my own deserts, when I expostulated, why Cobblers, Ostlers, and Carmen should be worth so much, and so much, and I a scholar and a goodfellow a beggar. How thou hast arrogated to thyself more than Lucifer, or any Miles glori●sus in the world would do, I have already noted at large in his due place and order. If thou bestowst any courtesy on me, and I do not requite it, then call me cut, and say I was brought up at Hoggenorton where pigs play on the Organs.  
Wert thou well acquainted with me, thou shouldst perceive that I am very frank where I take, & send away none empty-handed that give me but half an ill word.  
It is a good sign of grace in thee, that thou confessest thou hast offences enough of thy own to answer, though thou be'st not charged with thy Fathers. Once in thy life thou speak'st true yet, I believe thee, and pity thee. God make thee a good man, for thou hast been a wild youth hitherto.  
Thy Hexameter verses, or thy hue and cry after a person as clear as Crystal, I do not so deeply commend, for all Master Spencer long since embraced it with an overloving sonnet.  
Why should friends dissemble one with another, they are very ugly and artless. You will never leave your old tricks of drawing M. Spencer into every pybald thing you do. If ever he praised thee, it was because he had picked a fine vain fool out of thee, and he would keep thee still a foot by flattering thee, till such time as he had brought thee into that extreme love with thyself, that thou shouldst run mad with the conceit, and so be scorned of all men.  
Yet yet Gabriel, are not we set non plus, thy roister doisterdome hath not dashed us out of countenance. If any man use boisterous horse play, or be beholding to Carters Logic, it is thyself; for with none but clownish and roynish jests dost thou rush upon us, and keep'st such a flirting and a flinging in every leaf, as if thou wert the only reasty jade in a country.  
Skolding thou sayest is the language of shrews▪ railing the style of rakehells; what concludst thou from thence? Do I scold? do I rail?  
Scolding & railing is loud miscalling and reviling one another without wit, speaking every thing a man knows by his neighbour, though it be never so contrary to all humanity and good manners, and would make the standers by almost parbreak to hear it. Such is thy in●ectiue against green, where thou talk'st of his lowsines, his sur●e●ing, his beggary, and the mother of Infortunatus infirmities. If I scold, if I rail, I do but cum ratione insanire, Tully, Ovid, all the old Poets, Agrippa, Aretine, and the rest are all scolds and railers, and by thy conclusion flat shrews and rakehell's: for I do no more than their examples do warrant me.  
The intoxicate spirit of grisly Eurydice, I can toss over as lightly to thee, as thou hast pu●t it to me. My heart is praeoccupated with better spirits, which have left her no house-room: thou hast no spirit as it should appear by thy writing, entertain her and the spirit of the buttery out of hand, or thou wilt be beaten handsmooth out of Bucklers bury.  
When I parted with thy brother in Pierce Penniless, I left him to be tormented world without end of our Poets and writers about London, for calling them piperly make-playes and makebates, not doubting but they would drive him to this issue, that he should be constrained to go to the chief beam of his benefice, and there beginning a lamentable speech with cur scripfi●cur pery, end with Prawm prava decent, juuat inconcessae voluptas, & so with a trice truss up his life in the string of his sancebell. Now here thou thankst God thou a●t not so uncharitably bend to put so much wit in a speech, like a Parson in Lancashire that kneeled down on his knees in a zealous passion, and very heartily thanked God he never knew what that vile Antichristian Romish Popish Latin meant. Did I exhort ink and paper to pray that they might not be troubled with him any more? Ink and paper if they be true Protestants will pray, that they may not be contaminated any more with such abomination of desolation, as the three brother's apocrypha pamphleting.  
After all this foul weather ensueth a calm dilatement of others too forward harmefulnes, and thy own backward irefulness; that's dispatched, the court hath found it otherwise.  
Then thou goest about to bribe me to give over this quarrel, and sayst if I will hold my peace, thou wilt bestow more compliments of rare amplifications upon me, than ever thou bestowdst on Sir Philip Sidney, and gentle Master Spencer.  
Thou flatter'st me, and praisest me.  
To make me a small seeming amends for the injuries thou hast done me, thou reckonst me up amongst the dear lovers and professed sons of the Muses, Edmund Spencer, Abraham France, Thomas Watson, Samuel Daniel.  
With a hundred blessings and many prayers thou entreat'st me to love thee.  
Content thyself, I will not.  
Thou protests it was not my person thou misliked (I am afraid thou wilt make me thy Ingle) but my fierce running at Parson Richard, excusest me by my youth, & promisest to cancel thy impertinent Pamphlet.  
It were good hanging thee now thou art in such a good mind; yet for all this, a dog will be a dog, & return to his vomit do what a man can, thou must have one squib more at the devils Orator, & his Dame's Poet, or thy pen is not in clean life. I will permit thee to say what thou wilt, to underlie (as thou desir'st) the verdict of Fame herself, so I may lie above thee. LIE above thee, tell greater lies than thou dost no man is able.  
Thus O heavenly Muse I thank thee for thou hast given me the patience to travel through the tedious wilderness of this Gomorian Epistle. Not Hercules when he cleansed the stables of Aegeas, undertook such a stinking unsavoury exploit. By thy assistance through a whole region of golden lanes have I iourneied, & now am safely arrived at not speedily dispatched but hastily bungled up as you see. Grant that all such slow dispatchers & hasty bunglers, may have a long time of reproach to repent them in, and not come abroad to corrupt the air, & impostumate men's ears with their pan-pudding prose any more. So be it, say all English people after me, that have ears to hear or eyes to read.  
Feci, feci, feci, had I my health, now I had leisure to be merry, for I have almost washed my hands of the Doctor.  
His own regenerate verses of the jolly Fly, & Gibeline and Gwelph some peradventure may expect that I should answer. So I would if there were any thing in them which I had not answered before, but there is nothing; if there were, having driven his sword to his head, I respect not what he can do with his dagger. Only I will look upon the last Sonnet of M. Spencer's to the right worshipful Master G.H. Doctor of the laws: or it may so fall out that I will not look upon it too, because (Gabriel) though I vehemently suspect it to be of thy own doing, it is popped forth under M. Spencer's name, and his name is able to sanctify any thing though falsely ascribed to it.  
The fourth letter of our Orators to the same favourable or indifferent reader, was a letter which this many a long summer's day I dare jeopard my maidenhead had line hidden in his desk, for it is a shipman's hose that will serve any man as well as Green or me.  
To make short, in it as forty times before, he brides it and simpers it out a cry, No forsooth God dild you he would not that he would: None so desirous of quiet as he good old man, who with a pure intent of peace, first put fire to the flame that hath hedged him in.  
He hath prevented Master Bunnie of the second part of his treatise of Pacification, for like some crafty ringleader of rebellion, when he hath stirred up a dangerous commotion, and finds by the too late examination of his foreunexamined defects in himself, that so sweet a root will hardly effect correspondent fruits straight in policy to get his pardon, he strikes sail to that tempest of sedition, and is thrice as earnest in preaching pacification, obedience, and submission: so Gabriel when he hath stirred up against me what tumults he can in Stationer's Shops, and left the quiver of his envy not an arrow undrawne out, he finds by the audit of his ill consumed defects that he is not of force enough to hold out, wherefore in policy to avoid further arrearages of infamy he tires the text of reconciliation out of breath, and hopeth by the intercession of a cup of white wine and sugar, to be made friends with his fellow writers.  
It cannot choose but he must of necessity be a very sore fellow, that is so familiar with white wine & sugar, for white wine in a manner is good for nothing but to wash sores in, and smudge up withered beauty with. Well for all he would have Pierce make no wars on him, he makes wars on Pierce Penniless, he be beggereth him again in this epistle very bountifully he says that Lords must take heed how they Lord it in his presence.  
That the Ass is the only Author he allegeth. That green is an Ass in print, and he a calf in print.  
That they are both chieftains in licentiousness, and truth can s●ie the abominable villainies of such base shifting companions, good for nothing but to cast away themselves, spoil their adherents, etc.  
For my beggary let that travel the countries, I have said more for it than a richer man would have done, but that I take upon me to Lord it over great Lords thou art a most lewd tungd lurden to say it.  
Must they take heed how they Lord it in my presence, what must they do then in thy presence, 
That sitting licks a looker on  
Of this world's stage, dost note with critic pen,  
Thy sharp dislikes of each condition▪  
Ne fawnest for the favour of the great,  
Ne fearest foolish reprehension,  
But freely dost of what thee list entreat,  
Like a great Lord of peerless liberty,  
Lifting the good up to high honours seat,  
And th'evil damning evermore to die,  
For life and death is in thy doom full writing.   
Whereas thou sayst the Ass in a manner is the only Author I allege, I must know how you define an Ass before I can tell how to answer you; for Cornelius Agrippa maketh all the Philosophers, Orators, and Poets that ever were Asses: and if so you understand that I allege no Author but the Ass; for all Authors are Asses, why I am for you; if otherwise, thou art worse than a Cumane Ass to leap before thou look'st, and condemn a man without cause.  
What Authors dost thou allege in thy book, not two, but any Grammar Scholar might have alleged?  
There is not three kernels of more than common learning in all thy Four Letters. Common learning? not common sense in some places.  
Of force I must grant that green came oftener in print than men of judgement allowed off, but nevertheless he was a dainty slave to content the tail of a Term, and ●●usfe Serving men's pockets.  
An Ass Gabriel it is hard thou shouldst name him: for calling me Calf it breaks no square, but if I be a calf it is in comparison of such an Ox as thyself.  
The chieftains of licentiousness, and truth can say the abominable villainies of such base shifting companions, good for nothing, etc. I am of the mind we shall not digest this neither.  
Answer me succinctè & expeditè, what one period any way leaning to licentiousness, canst thou produce in Pierce Penniless?  
I talk of a great matter when I tell thee of a period, for I know two several periods or full points in this last epistle, at least forty lines long a piece.  
For the order of my life it is as civil as a civil orange, I lurk in no corners but converse in a house of credit as well governed as any College, where there be more rare qualified men, and selected good Scholars than in any Nobleman's house that I know in England.  
If I had committed such abominable villainies, or were a base shifting companion, it stood not with my Lords honour to keep me, but if thou hast said it & canst not prove it, what slanderous dishonour hast thou done him, to give it out that he keeps the committers of abominable villainies and base shifting companions, when they are far honester than thyself.  
If I were by thee I would pluck thee by the beard, and spit in thy face, but I would dare thee and urge thee beyond all excuse to disclose and prove for thy heart blood what villainy or base shifting by me thou canst, I defy all the world in that respect.  
Because thou usedst at Cambridge to shift for thy Friday at night suppers, and cozen poor victuallers and pie-wives of Doctors cheese and puddings, thou thinkest me one of the same religion too.  
What green was, let some other answer for him as much as I have done, I had no tuition over him, he might have writ another Galataeo of manners, for his manners every time I came in his company, I saw no such base shifting or abominable villainy by him. Something there was which I have heard not seen, that he had not that regard to his credit in which had been requisite he should.  
What a Calimunco am I to plead for him, as though I were as near him as his own skin. A thousand there be that have more reason to speak in his behalf than I, who since I first knew him about town have been two years together and not seen him.  
But I'll do as much for any man, especially for a dead man that cannot speak for himself. Let us hear how we are good for nothing but to cast away ourselves, spoil our adherents, pray on our favourers, dishonour our Patrons. Have I ever took any likely course of casting away myself?  
Whom canst thou name that kept me company and reaped any discommodity by me, I can name di●ers good Gentlemen that have been my adherents and favourers a long time. Let them report how I have spoiled them, or prayed on them, or put them to one penny detriment since I first consorted with them.  
Have an eye to the maine-chaunce, for no sooner shall they understand what thou hast said by me of them, but they'll go near to have thee about the ears for this gear one after another.  
My Patrons or any that bind me to them by the least good turn, there is no man in England that is or shall (for my small power) be more thankful unto than I. Never was I unthankful unto any, no not to those of whom for deeds I received nothing but unperformed deed promising words. It is an honour to be accused and not convinst.  
One of these months I shall challenge martyrdom to myself, and writ large stories of the persecution of tongues. Troth I am as like to persecute as be persecuted. Let him take up his Cross and bless himself that crosseth me, for I will cross shins with him though every sentence of his were a thousand tons of discourses, as Gabriel saith every sentence of his is a discourse. Quods, quods give me my Text pen again, for I have a little more Text to lance.  
The secretaries of art and nature, if it were not for frivolous contentions, might bestead the commonwealth with many puissant engines. As for example, Bacon's brazen nose, Architas wooden dove▪ dancing balls, fire breathing gourds, artificial flies to hang in the air by themselves, an eggshell that shall run up to the top of a spear.  
Archimedes' made a heaven of brass, but we have nothing to do with old brass and iron.  
Appollonius Regimontanus did many pretty juggling tricks, but we had rather drink out of a grass than a jug, use a little brittle wit of our own, than borrow any miracle metal of Devils.  
Amongst all other stratagems and puissant engines what say you to Mates Pump in Cheapside, to pump o●er mutton and porridge into France: this cold weather our soldiers c●n tell you have need of it, and poor field mi●e they have almost got the colic and stone with ear-ring of provant.  
Consider of it well, for it is better than all Bacons, Architas, Archimedes, Appollonius or Regiomontanus devices: for Gabriel that professeth all these, with all their help cannot make the bias bowl at Saffron Walden run down the hill, when it is thrown down with the hardest hand that may be, but it will turn up the hill again in spite of a man's teeth, and that which is worst, give no reason for it.  
The Parrot and the Peacock have leisure to revive & repolish their expired works, you speak like a friend, we'll listen to you when you have repolished and expired your perfected degree. A Demy Doctor, what a shame is it?  
Because your books do call for a little more drink and a few more clothes when they are gone to bed, that is, when they lie dead, you think ours should do so too. No, no, we do not use to clap a coat over a jerkin, or thrust any of the children of our brain into their mother's womb again, & beget them a new after they are once borne. If it be a horn book at his first conception▪ let it be a horn book still, and turn not cat in the pan, convert the Pater noster to a Primer, when it hath begged itself out at the elbows up and down the country.  
Thou didst thou knewst not what in eking this thy short-wasted Pamphlet, iwis as thou sayst of thy self, Thou art an old tr●●ant, fit to play the dumb dog with some ancients, than the hissing snake.  
Who be those ancient dumbed dogs? we shall have you a Martinist when all comes to al●, because you cannot thrive with the Civil Law, and that you may marry her for any thing you are a kindred to her, therefore you will compare Whitegift and Cartwright, white and black together, name the highest governors of the Church without giving them any reverence or titles of honour, embrace any religion which will be even with the profession that favours not you.  
There is no bai●e or main prize for it, but we must have you in the first peeping forth of the spring, preaching out of a Pulpit in the woods: you have put on wolves raiment already, seduced many simple people under the habit of a sheep in Wolves p●i●t. If you protest & lie any more, it is not your ending here like a sermon, that will make you be reputed for a saint.  
Readers, a decayed student lately shipwrecked with Simo vales bene est, having four Lightors of Letters, clean cast away on the rocks called the Bishop & his Clarks, desires you all to pray for him, and he will recommend you all to God in the next sermon he penneth for his brother Richard.  
He hath a mind to pay every man his own, though he hath sustained great loss in fight, that which he cannot effect he beseecheth ●he Lord to accomplish, and even to work a miracle upon the deaf.  
Lord if it be thy will, let him be an Ass still. Gentlemen, I have no more to say to the Doctor, dispose of the victory as you please, shortly I will present you wi●h some thing that shallbe better than nothing, only give me a gentle hire for my dirty day labour, and I am your bounden Orator forever.  

Sonnetto.  
Were there no wars, poor men should have no peace,  
Uncessant wars with wasps and drones I cry:  
He that gins, oft knows not how to cease,  
They have begun, I'll follow till I die.  
I'll hear no truce, wrong gets no grave in me,  
Abuse pell-mell encounter with abuse:  
Writ he again, I'll write eternally.  
Who feeds revenge hath found an endless Muse.  
If death ere made his black dart of a pen,  
My pen his special Bailie shall becum:  
Somewhat I'll be reputed of 'mongst men,  
By striking of this dun or dead or dumb,  
Await the world the Tragedy of wrath,  
What next I paint shall trea● no common path.   
Aut nunquam tentes aut perfice. Tho. Nashe.    

Observations for the Readers of this book.  
Item whatsoever for the most part is here in this book in change of letter, is our adversaries own Text, and unvaried words, either in this his convicted Four Letters, or some other fusty treatise, set forth by him heretofore.  
Then that I am wrested and utterly divorced from my own invention, & constrained still still, before I am warm tyranny one vain, to start away suddenly, and follow him in his vanity.  
Finally, Printers have many false stitches which are thus to be drawn up.  
In the second page of C. for Baboon brother, read Baboon his brother. In the 7. for allegorized & Abdias. read allegorized Abdias. in the 8. for set hand, read set his hand. idem for headmen, read headman. in the first of D. for Livor post quiescat, read Livor post fata quiescat. in the 5. for plaster of Doctourship, read plais●rie or daubing of Doctourship▪ in the 7. for insolent inckehorne worm, read insolent ink worm, in the 2. of E. for Ass in present, read Ass in presenti in the 3. for bestow upon, read bestow upon him in the 5. for effect, read efficacy. in the 4. of F. for virtuous Sir john Norris, read victorious Sir john Norris. in the 5. page of H. for I introduce in a discontented Scholar, read I introduce a discontented Scholar. in the 8. for● is assentrion, read His assertion. in the 5. of I for very company, read v●●ie tympany▪ in the 5. page of K. for in this first case, read first in this case.  
FINIS.