word-shop, writers of the sixteenth century were fain to take this word,
and this other too, and yet that one more; and when on the threshold,
about to go, they would turn and take two or three again. There are
pages in Rabelais and pages in Nash where most of the important words
are supplemented and fortified with a number of others placed there at
our disposal as alternatives or substitutes, for the pleasure of our
ears and eyes, in case we might like them better. Nash has to express
this very simple idea: Look at Yarmouth, what a fine town it is! Well,
it owes all it is to the red herring. This he formulates in the
following manner with quite a Rabelaisian mixture of native and half
Latin words and iterations for most terms of importance: "Doe but
convert, said hee, the slenderest twinckling reflexe of your eye-sight
to this flinty ringe that engirtes it, these towred walles, port-cullizd
gates, and gorgeous architectures that condecorate and adorne it, and
then perponder of the red herringes priority and prevalence, who is the
onely inexhaustible mine that hath raised and begot all this, and,
minutely, to riper maturity, fosters and cherisheth it."[270]

Some critics of his time abused Nash for the liberties he took with the
vocabulary, especially for his foreign and compound words. He was ready
with this half-serious, half-jocose answer: "To the second rancke of
reprehenders, that complain of my boystrous compound wordes, and ending
my Italionate coyned verbes all in _ize_," such as "tympanize;
tirannize," says he elsewhere; "thus I replie: That no winde that blowes
strong but is boystrous; no speech or wordes of any power or force to
confute or perswade, but must be swelling and boystrous. For the
compounding of my wordes, therein I imitate rich men, who having
gathered store of white single money together, convert a number of those
small little scutes into great peeces of gold, such as double Pistoles
and Portugues. Our English tongue of all languages, most swarmeth with
the single money of monosillables, which are the onely scandall of it.
Bookes written in them and no other seeme like shopkeepers' bookes, that
containe nothing else save halfe-pence, three-farthings, and two-pences.
Therefore what did me I, but having a huge heape of those worth lesse
shreds of small English in my _pia maters_ purse, to make the royaller
shew with them to men's eye, had them to the compounders immediately,
and exchanged them four