He Set Aristotle With His Heels Upwards on the School Gates
With ass’s ears on his head,—a thing that Tom would ‘in perpetuam rei memoriam,’ record and never have done with. Wilson, in his Memorabilia Cantabrigiæ, says of this said Tom Nash, that he was educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he resided seven years, was at the fatal repast of the pickled herrings with the poet Green, and, in 1597, was either confined or otherwise troubled for a comedy on the Isle of Dogs (extant in the MSS. of Oldys,) though he wrote but the first act, and the players without his knowledge supplied the rest. He was a man of humour, a bitter satirist, and no contemptible poet; and more effectually discouraged and non-plused the notorious anti-prelate and astrologer, Will Harvey, and his adherents, than all the serious writers that attacked them. There is a good character of him, says Oldys, in The return from Parnassus, or Scourge of Simony, which was publicly acted by the students of St. John’s, in 1606, wherein