Note 88 — CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS: (continued 3)
Reading edition
Nash was a great favourite with the wits of his day. One calls him “our true English Aretine,” another, “Sweet satyric Nash,” a third describes his Muse as “armed with a gag-tooth (a tusk), and his pen possessed with Hercules’s furies.” He is well characterised in “The Return from Parnassus.”
“His style was witty, tho’ he had some gall; Something he might have mended, so may all; Yet this I say, that for a mother’s wit, Few men have ever seen the like of it.”
Nash abounds with “Mother-wit;” but he was also educated at the University, with every advantage of classical studies.