Miscellaneous Tracts - 1598 Author:John Payne Collier Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION. This traet, mainly by Gabriel Harvey, was the provoeation to Nash's " Strange Newes"; following it so immediately that some of the eopies bear d... more »ate in 1592, although others have 1593 upon the title-page, whieh, for some reason not stated, was then altered. It seems probable that Nash did not think the eonneetion between Harvey's " Four Letters" and his own " Strange Newes" suffieiently obvious, and therefore, after a few eopies had been issued, altered " Strange Newes" to " The Apologie of Pieree Pennilesse" and "Four Letters confuted," as it continued to be ealled. We have already reprinted the latter, and we now present the reader with the former. It will be seen that in it Harvey, in various plaees, notiees and answers Nash's " Pieree Penniless' Supplieation to the Devil," and without that produetion some of the allusions in "Four Letters," now in the reader's hands, are hardly intelligible: we, therefore, propose very shortly to reproduee "Piercc Penniless," perhaps the most remarkable and popular publieation of the kind in our language, from an edition (the seeond of six in the same year) whieh eontains innumerable variations, some of them of eonsiderable importanee. " Pieree Penniless' Supplieation" was indeed reprinted by the Shakespeare Soeiety in 1842 from the first impression, whieh the author afterwards saw reason to amend to the form in whieh it will appear in our pages. Of the emendations nobody has hitherto taken noticc, with the exeeption of Nash's introduetory Epistle to his authorised printer, Abel Jeffes, eomplaining, among other things, l,t' the manner in which the first edition had been hastily brought out by an unauthorised printer, Riehard Jones. It was not our original intention to have reprinted " Pieree Penniless", but the " tiyting" be...« less