Henry Craik, ed. English Prose. 1916.
Vol. I. Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century
Thomas Nashe (15671601)
S
They were not obdurate to be entreated, though they had little cause to revenge the hawks’ quarrel from them, having received so many high displeasures, and slaughters, and rapines of their race, yet in a general prosecution private feuds they trod underfoot, and submitted their endeavours to be at their limitation in everything.
The puffin that is half fish, half flesh (a John indifferent, and an ambodexter betwixt either) bewrayed this conspiracy to Proteus’ herds, or the fraternity of fishes; which the greater giants of Russia and Iceland, as the whale, the sea-horse, the norse, the wasserman, the dolphin, the grampus, fleered and jeered at as a ridiculous danger, but the lesser pigmies and spawn of them, thought it meet to provide for themselves betime, and elect a king amongst them that might daraine them to battle, and under whose colours they might march against these birds of a feather, that had so colleagued themselves together to destroy them.
Who this king should be, beshackled their wits, and laid them a dry ground every one. No ravening fish they would put in arms, for fear after he had everted their foes, and fleshed himself in blood, for interchange of diet he would raven up them.
Some politic delegatory Scipio, or witty-pated Petito, like the heir of Laertes, Ulysses (well-known unto them by his prolixious sea-wandering, and dancing on the topless tottering hills) they would single forth, if it might be, whom they might depose when they list, if he should begin to tyrannise, and such a one as of himself were able to make a sound party if all failed, and bid base to the enemy with his own kindred and followers.
None won the day in this but the herring, whom all their clamorous suffrages saluted with vive le roi, God save the King, God save the King, save only the plaice and the butte, that made wry mouths at him, and for their mocking have wry mouths ever since, and the herring ever since wears a coronet on his head, in token that he is as he is. Which had the worst end of the staff in that sea-journey or cannazado, or whether some fowler with his nets (as this host of feathermongers were getting up to ride double) involved or entangled them, or the water-fowls played them false (as there is no more love betwixt them than betwixt sailors and land soldiers) and threw them off their backs, and let them drown when they were launched into the deep, I leave to some Alfonsus, Poggius or Æsop to unwrap, for my pen is tired in it: but this is notorious, the herring from that time to this hath gone with an army, and never stirs abroad without it, and when he stirs abroad with it, he sends out his scouts or sentinels before him, that oftentimes are intercepted, and by their parti-coloured liveries descried, whom the mariners after they have took, use in this sort: eight or nine times they swinge them about the mainmast, and bid them bring so many last of herrings as they have swinged them times, and that shall be their ransom, and so throw them into the sea again. King by your leave, for in your kingship I must leave you, and repeat how from white to red you chameleonised.