This was in part verified in the next year, for when Nash published his
"Lenten Stuff," he referred with apparent satisfaction to his past
troubles in consequence of his "Isle of Dogs."[9]

So much has been said, especially by Mr D'Israeli in his "Quarrels of
Authors," on the subject of this dispute between Nash and Harvey, that
it is unnecessary to add anything, excepting that it was carried to such
a length, and the pamphlets contained so much scurrility, that it was
ordered from authority in 1599 that all the tracts on both sides should
be seized and suppressed.[10]

As with Greene, so with Nash, an opinion on his moral conduct and
general deportment has been too readily formed from the assertions of
his opponents; and because Gabriel Harvey, to answer a particular
purpose, states, "You may be in one prison to-day and in another
to-morrow," it has been taken for granted, that "after his arrival in
London, he was often confined in different jails." No doubt, he and his
companions Greene, Marlowe, and Peele, led very disorderly lives, and it
is singular that all four died prematurely, the oldest of them probably
not being forty years of age. It is certain that Nash was not living at
the time when the "Return from Parnassus" was produced, which, though
not printed until 1606, was written before the end of the reign of
Elizabeth: his ashes are there spoken of as at rest, but the mention of
him as dead, nearest to the probable date of that event, is to be found
in [Fitzgeoffrey's "Affaniae," 1601, where an epitaph upon him is
printed. His name also occurs in] an anonymous poem, under the title of
"The Ant and the Nightingale, or Father Hubbard's Tales," 1604, where
the following stanza is met with--

"Or if in bitterness thou rail like Nash: