(_Characters of Gabriel Harvey and accounts of his quarrel with the Marlowe group, and Nash in particular, will be found in all histories of Elizabethan literature, and also elsewhere. The war of pamphlets between Harvey and Nash was a very furious word-battle, and its two chief monuments_, Pierce's Supererogation _and_ Have with you to Saffron Walden, _are as choice examples of scurrility as can easily be found. But both are very long, and as I have set my heart on giving whole pamphlets, I have preferred Harvey's_ Precursor _and Nash's_ Prognostication. _The former is a sort of pilot engine to_ Pierce's Supererogation, _published first before and then with the longer piece, and for all its brevity intensely characteristic of Harvey--the incarnation of the donnishness of his time, and also of a certain side of the Elizabethan man of letters generally. The latter, though evidently composed in direct imitation of Rabelais, of whom Nash was certainly a reader, was indirectly an attack on the Harveys, one of whom, Gabriel's brother Richard, was a great astrologer._) Pierces Supererogation OR A NEW PRAYSE OF THE OLD ASSE. _A Preparatiue to certaine larger Discourses, intituled_ NASHES S. FAME. Gabriell Haruey. _Il vostro Malignare Non Giova Nvlla._ LONDON Imprinted by Iohn Wolfe. 1593 _To my very gentle and liberall frendes, M. Barnabe Barnes, M. Iohn Thorius, M. Antony Chewt, and euery fauorable Reader._ Louing M. Barnabe, M. Iohn, and M. Antony (for the rest of my partiall C[=o]menders must pardon me, till the Print be better acquainted with their names), I haue lately receiued your thrise-curteous Letters, with the Ouerplus of your thrise-sweet Sonets annexed: the liberallest giftes, I beleeue, that euer you bestowed vpon so slight occasion, and the very prodigallest fruites of your floorishing wittes. Whose onely default is, not your, but my default, that the matter is nothing correspondent to the manner; and miselfe must either grosely forget miselfe, or franckly acknowledge mi simple selfe an vnworthy subiect of so worthy commendations. Which I cannot read without blushing, repeate without shame, or remember without griefe, that I come so exceeding-short in so excessiue great accountes; the summes of your rich largesse, not of my poore desert; and percase deuised to aduertise me what I should be, or to signifie what you wish [me] to be; not to declare what I am, or to insinuate what I may be. Eloquence, and Curtesie were euer bountifull in the amplifying veine: and it hath bene reputed a frendly Pollicy, to encourage their louing acquaintance to labour the attainement of those perfections, which they blason in them, as already atcheiued. Either some such intention you haue, by / way of Stratageme, to awaken my negligence, or enkindle my confidence; or you are disposed by way of Ciuility, to make me vnreasonably beholding vnto you for your extreme affection.