Unidad documental simple 8 - Letter from Edwin Nungezer to R. B. McKerrow

1 single sheet

Department of English, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.—Asks whether he can throw any light on an allusion in Nashes Lenten Stuffe.

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Transcript

Cornell University | Ithaca, New York
Department of English
February 15, 1939

Dr. R. B. McKerrow
Picket Piece
Wendover, Bucks

Dear Dr. McKerrow:

Through the years I have been using the Index and the Notes in your edition of Nashe as a kind of encyclopedia and as a guide to Elizabethan matters, and I am sometimes hard pressed when I do not find there the information I am seeking.

In Nashes Lenten Stuffe, 1599 (iii.178.3), there is an allusion to “Cornelius the brabantine” and his “discourse of Tuftmockados,” with a marginal gloss referring to the letter of N.W. prefixed to Daniel’s translation, The Worthy Tract of Paulus Iouius (1585). In a note to the passage you make the statement (iv.394): “I have been able to identify neither Cornelius nor his book.”

Since 1910 have you found any information that will throw light on Cornelius and his discourse? Also, has “N.W.” been identified?

I am interested in Cornelius because I am preparing an edition of Samuel Daniel, the first volume of which I hope will appear in a year or so.
Any help you can give me will be greatly appreciated.

Yours faithfully,
Edwin Nungezer

Please use this address {1}
Edwin Nungezer
The Folger Library
Washington, D.C.

[At the foot of the letter are the following pencil notes by McKerrow:]

ans. Negative. {1} 2 Apr. 1936

iii. 177. 29–30. {2} a Tobacco pipe | Everardus A. De Herba Panacea, quam alii Petum aut Nicotianum vocant {3}

[iii.] {6} 177. 24–5. Plat Flowers of Philosophy | in Cens. Lit. viii. p. 5. {4}

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{1} These words are braced to the succeeding address.

{2} i.e. ‘answered in the negative’.

{3} The references are to The Prayse of the Red Herring, in the Works of Nashe.

{4} Cf. Add. MS. a. 457/3/26.

{5} The reference, cited in illustration of the words ‘a strong dozen of poyntes’ in Nashe, is to an article on Hugh Plat’s Floures of Philosophie (1572) in S. E. Brydges’ Censura Literaria, vol. viii (1808). The article includes a quotation of a poem from Plat’s volume entitled ‘A dossen of points sente by a Gentlewoman to hir Lover for a New Yeares Gifte’.

{6} The repeated reference is omitted in the original.