Be that as it may, "Lenten Stuff" gives us evidence that Nash had now arrived at a complete mastery of the fantastic and irrelevant manner which he aimed at. This book is admirably composed, if we can bring ourselves to admit that the _genre_ is ever admirable. The writer's vocabulary has become opulent, his phrases flash and detonate, each page is full of unconnected sparks and electrical discharges. A sort of aurora borealis of wit streams and rustles across the dusky surface, amusing to the reader, but discontinuous, and insufficient to illuminate the matter in hand. It is extraordinary that a man can make so many picturesque, striking, and apparently apposite remarks, and yet leave us so frequently in doubt as to his meaning. If this was the result of the imitation of Aretino, Nash's choice of a master was scarcely a fortunate one. Thomas Nash was now thirty-two years of age, and with the publication of "Lenten Stuff" we lose sight of him. His old play of "Summers' Last Will and Testament" was printed in 1600, and he probably died in that year. The song at the close of that comedy or masque reads like the swan-song of its author:-- Autumn hath all the summer's fruitful treasure; Gone is our sport, fled is poor [Nash's] pleasure! Short days, sharp days, long nights come on apace; Ah! who shall hide us from the winter's face? Cold doth increase, the sickness will not cease, And here we lie, God knows, with little ease: From winter, plague and pestilence, Good Lord, deliver us! London doth mourn, Lambeth is quite forlorn, Trades cry, Woe worth that ever they were born; The want of term is town and city's harm. Close chambers we do want, to keep us warm; Long banished must we live from our friends: This low-built house will bring us to our ends. From winter, plague and pestilence, Good Lord, deliver us! Whether pestilence or winter slew him, we do not know. In 1601 Fitzgeoffrey published a short Latin elegy on Nash in his "Affaniae," alluding in happy phrase to the twin lightnings of his armed tongue and his terrible pen; and Nash had six lines of tempered praise in "The Return from Parnassus." But all we know of the cause or manner of Nash's death has to be collected from a passage in "A Knight's Conjuring," 1607, written by the satirist on whom his mantle descended, Thomas Dekker. Nash is seen advancing along the Elysian Fields:--