SOURCE: Relle, Eleanor. “Some New Marginalia and Poems of Gabriel Harvey.” Review of English Studies 23, no. 92 (November 1972): 401-16.

[In the following essay, Relle presents an account of the marginalia in three works owned by Harvey and maintains that they shed light on the writers and books Harvey was reading, his reading habits, and his personal life and beliefs.]

At the beginning of a volume in the Old Library of Magdalene College, Cambridge¹ (shelf-mark Lect 26), there are three items containing the signature and manuscript notes of Gabriel Harvey. The three are to some extent connected by subject-matter and authorship, and some of Harvey's elaborate cross-references indicate that at some time in the early 1590s he had them bound together. They are:

• (1) The Essayes of a Prentise, in the diuine Art of Poesie [by James VI of Scotland] (Thomas Vautroullier; Edinburgh, 1585)
• (2) His Maiesties Poeticall Exercises at vacant houres [by James VI of Scotland; 3 parts] (Robert Waldegrave; Edinburgh, 1591),
• (3) The Triumph of Faith, the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Shipwracke of Ionas, with a song of the victorie obtained by the French king, at Yury. Written in French, by W. Salustius Lord of Bartas, and translated by Iosuah Siluester, Marchant Aduenturer (Richard Yardley and Peter Short; [London], 1592).

Harvey's interest in all these works was that of a practising rhetorician, and his comments on them are at times revealing. The translation of Du Bartas' Yvry, in particular, was apparently one of his favourite poems, and is not only heavily annotated and marked but also practically worn out with repeated energetic readings. As well as using the margins of the books for more or less relevant remarks, he found room on several blank pages for original poems in Latin and English.

In giving some account of this material, one is obliged to be selective. Harvey's complicated system of symbols and cross-references, so helpfully explained by Harold S. Wilson,² furnishes impressive evidence of the seriousness and care with which Harvey read, but is generally of little use to a modern reader in its individual manifestations. At times Harvey's contribution to a page amounts only to a one-word summary of its contents, and unless it is for some reason significant, no useful purpose is served by remarking on it. What matters about the marginalia is the light they throw on the men Harvey knew and the books he read, as seen by a man whose reputation for arid pedantry is not altogether deserved.

The notes appear to have been written during a period of about ten years, 1585-96. Harvey bought The Essayes of a Prentise some time after March 1585. Its title-page is inscribed ‘Gabriel Haruejus. y^e pris, ij^s iiij^d. Ex dono praestantissimi Doctoris, Bartholomaei Clarci, Arcuum Decani,’ and its last page ‘Legi xxiiij. februarij. 1585 [i.e. 1585-6]. Gabriel Haruey.’ Bartholomew Clarke had been a friend of Harvey's for some years before this date,³ and must have been intimate enough with him to give him money with which to buy books. Harvey's professional enthusiasm for King James's exercises in rhetoric is evident in his earliest connected comments on A3^r, above and below the lines introducing the twelve preliminary sonnets to the pagan gods:

The subiect of these twelue Sonets, the singular wish of euery one, that affectith to be an excellent writer, jn prose, or verse. And therefore no argument more worthy of meditation.

His sute, the general Art of decorum, & special vse of prosopopaeia: to describe euery particular naturally, as it is, & artificially as it seemith. The souerain grace of A perfect Oratour, & diuine Poet, to expresse all things as sensibly, & liuely, as may be deuised: Magna grauiter: Mediocria temperatè: parua submissè.

Gabriel Haruey. 1585.

Of the variety of gods invoked in the sonnets, Harvey observes on A4^r, ‘Manie persons: one God.’ After the final sonnet he writes, ‘Viuax pictura, poesis. Emblema Musarum.’ (C1^r).

This familiar motto might serve as the argument for the Latin poem to Sir Philip Sidney that occupies the subsequent blank pages. It is entitled De tribus viuidis scriptoribus Epigramma. Ad Astrophilum, viuidiora delineantem, and begins, ‘Siccinè ais generose? stilo efferuescis Olympi?’ It runs to 83 hexameters, about half of which were afterthoughts. The three writers whose pictorial quality so impresses Harvey are Homer, Livy, and Chaucer—the last of whom he describes as ‘Veris Apelles.’ This epithet can be explained by reference to the enthusiastic account of Chaucer which he wrote in his copy of Dionysius Periegetes' Surveye of the World some time after 1574, where he lists the descriptions of spring in poems then attributed to Chaucer and adds, ‘Poësie, a liuelie picture: and a more florishing purtrature, then the gallantest Springe of the yeare.’⁴ His point is that in this respect Sidney's art surpasses that of all his predecessors, especially in his pastoral writings. The poem was clearly intended for presentation to Sidney, but the fair copy possibly never reached his hands, since he died so soon after its composition. Among the other writers Harvey mentions admiringly are Du Bartas, Scaliger, Lipsius, and Blaise de Vigenère. As often in his private writings, he signs himself ‘Axiophilus’.

Harvey's delight in Du Bartas is still more obvious at the beginning of James's translation of Uranie (C4^r), where he writes:

Dubartas, the french Dant: full of graue, profound, venerable, & stately matter. In the next degree to the sacred, & reuerent stile of heauenly Diuinity itselfe. In a manner the only Poet of Diuines: and worthy to be alledgid of them, as Homer is quoted of Philosophers.

His Vranie: his Triumphes of Faith, & of the French King: three golden Monuments of his excellent, & diuine Witt.

This note is interesting—partly because it marks Harvey as one of the few Elizabethans who remembered Dante for the Commedia rather than for the conveniently anti-papal De Monarchia,⁵ but chiefly because its first part recurs almost verbatim in Pierces Supererogation.⁶ This diatribe against Nashe was written in circumstances which Nashe himself was all too ready to use as polemical capital; Harvey left Saffron Walden for London in the summer of 1592, and, despite the plague, remained there for nine months, living in close seclusion at the house of his publisher, John Wolfe. During these months he was, as Nashe later reported, ‘inck-squittring and printing against me at Wolfes in Powles Churchyard.’⁷ It seems almost certain that this copy of James's poems, and its companion volume, travelled with Harvey to London. There he acquired Sylvester's newly published translation of The Triumph of Faith and Yvry,⁸ and, on reading it, wrote this comment on Uranie, which served as raw material for a passage in the attack on Nashe which he was by then composing (the body of Pierces Supererogation is dated 27 April 1593). The French text of Uranie is not much marked by Harvey's pen, but above the beginning of James's translation (D1^r), he entered a favourite maxim to which we shall return—‘Vn raro assai piu, che Cento mediocri.’⁹ His comments on the poem itself tell us little, but at the end of it (G1^r) he exclaims, ‘Dubartas, a full boule of the purest Claret, & sweetest Ipocrase, that the daintiest Muses did euer taste’—a remark that has fortunately no counterpart in Pierces Supererogation. He adds a reference to another writer in French who interests him—‘The French Sonets, & Letters of Marie, Queene of Scotts’.¹⁰

On the blank verso of this leaf, Harvey wrote down two Elizabethan nursery rhymes under the heading ‘Childrens Songs’. He subsequently tried hard to obliterate them, perhaps because they were unworthy of a place in a book of serious poetry. They originally read,

When pucketts away, when shall we go play?
When the puckett is a sleap, then may wee go sow owr wheat.

and

My Dame hath in a hutch at home
          A little Dog
          With a Clog;
Hey dogs hey.

‘Puckett’ was once a not uncommon dialect word for a nest of caterpillars, although Harvey's song is the earliest instance of it that I can trace; but both the word and its context here suggest some connection with that other source of agricultural mischief, Puck. The second song is oddly close to the more familiar ‘My dame hath a lame tame crane,’ and one wonders if it too was used as an exercise in elocution. These rhymes probably belong to the Saffron Walden district, but it is just possible that Harvey noted them down in an idle moment in London in 1592-3; for John Wolfe lived almost within earshot of St. Paul's School.

James's next poem after Uranie is ‘Phoenix’, an allegorical poem which has been variously interpreted. Its latest editor maintains convincingly that the Phoenix of the poem is Esmé Stuart,¹⁰ but it has always been attractive to identify the Phoenix as Mary, Queen of Scots, even though the poem was written some years before she was executed. What Harvey made of it when he read it for the first time, two years before the execution, is doubtful; but at some point, presumably in or after 1587, he wrote at the top of I1^v, where the death of the Phoenix is described, ‘The Queen executed’, and on the following page, where the new Phoenix appears, ‘The young King her sonne, of most royall Hope.’ He must have credited the young James with the gift of prophecy. These laconic notes suggest that he was attracted to Mary as a tragic figure—he was, as we have seen, familiar with her writings—and that he hoped one day to see her son on the English throne.

Harvey treats James's Schort treatise, conteining some reulis and cautelis … with attentive appreciation. On the title-page we find

A braue art of Poetry, supra in the Vrany of Dubartas: & his owne Twelue Sonets of diuine Inuocations.

Hetherto no better of Inglish meter, then Gascoignes Rules, and y^e practis of owr excellentist Poets.

Harvey's own annotations to Gascoigne's Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English, dating from 1577, are included in Moore Smith's collection,¹² and are sometimes interestingly close to these; but Harvey clearly preferred James:

The excellentest rules, & finest Art, that A King could learne, or teach, in his Kingdom.

The more remarkable, how worthy the pen, & industrie of a King.

How much better, then owr Gascoignes Notes of instruction for Inglish Verse, & Ryme.

(K3^r)

On the prefatory sonnet to the reader (K3^v), he remarks, ‘The royal & diuine Art of Poetrie, here intimated, by his owne profession.’ On K4^v he summarises the plan of another rhetorical textbook of his day, Georgius Sabinus' De Carminibus ad veterum imitationem artificiose componendis, praecepta bona & vtilia,¹³ which he admires for its economy. After his summary he quotes several of Sabinus' salient passages and examples. The economy of James's performance also impresses him, and he numbers each leaf of it, announcing after the heading on L1^r, ‘8. leaues. short, & sweet’. He does not, however, entirely approve of its arrangement, for he writes below, as he did some years earlier in his Gascoigne,

His aptest partition had bene, into precepts of
          Inuention.
          Elocution. in tropes, y(e) meter, & other figures

—the plan, as he adds, chosen by Sabinus.

Some of his author's Scotticisms seem to Harvey to require glossing; he writes ‘foote’ against ‘fute’, ‘caesura’ against ‘sectioun,’ and ‘flowting’ against ‘flyting’. He also improves on the King's punctuation, always in the direction of making the stops heavier. To James's advice on the use of alliteration, he adds, ‘Hunting of a letter, a green affectation; but when it offereth itself, & floweth naturally. rarò, et aptè.’ (M1^r). A similar piece of common sense occurs below the discussion of comparisons and other stylistic ornaments on the next page—‘Epitheta, è re nata, propria, mnemosyna: non dura, aut prolixiora, nimiumue composita; quæ compositionem faciunt insuauem.’ When James advises his reader against opening a poem with a sunrise, for fear of seeming merely imitative, Harvey disagrees:

No Imitation, but a singularitie in the right Poet: & either exquisite Descriptions; or fine Preteritions, or suddaine Reticenties: nihil Vulgare.

(M2^r)

Here Harvey is nearer to the heart of the matter than his author. James also cautions the aspiring poet against praising his lady only in terms of her beauty, again because this has been done too often. Harvey notes an example—‘Machiauels Description of his Lady, in L'asino doro’ (M2^v).¹⁴ Whether he liked this uninspiring passage we can only guess. At the foot of this page he writes, ‘Quisque egregius Poeta, Phœnix; præsertim Jnuentione, et Viuido Elocutionis spiritu.’¹⁵ On the following page (M3^r) he refers to an author he admires in spite of himself—‘Nouita, il valore di stilo. L'Vnico Aretino.’

The next two significant notes can be dated at or after the time of Harvey's prolonged sojourn with John Wolfe. Where James mentions his own two sonnets in this treatise (M4^v), Harvey's comment contains a cross-reference which proves that this book and the Poeticall Exercises (and presumably, the book by Du Bartas) had been bound together before he wrote it—‘His finest Sonet, jnfra, after Lepanto. & the last, in this first Booke.’ It would be hard to impugn his judgement here. On N1^r, against James's discussion of the new metrical forms now being ‘inuentit daylie’, he cites a case in point:

Barnabe Barnes: His Sonets, Madrigals, Elegies, & Odes. Where sundrie new fangled, & phantastical sorts of meter.

Wolfe printed Barnes's Parthenophil and Parthenophe. Sonnettes, madrigals, elegies and odes in 1593. According to Nashe, the venture was a commercial disaster into which he was lured by Harvey himself:

If there were euer a paltrie Scriuano … shuld stumble in there with a Pamphlet to sell, let him or anie of them but haue conioynd with him in rayling against mee, … he would haue prest it vpon Wolfe, whether he would or no, and giu'n it immortall allowance aboue Spencer. So did he by that Philistine Poem of Parthenophill and Parthenope, which to compare worse then it selfe, it would plague all the wits of France, Spaine, or Italy. And when he saw it would not sell, hee cald all the World asses a hundred times ouer, with the stampingest cursing and tearing he could vtter it, for that he hauing giu'n it his passe or good word, they obstinately contemnd and mislik'd it.¹⁶

Harvey compliments Barnes on Parthenophil in the Letter to Barnes, Chute, and Thorius at the beginning of Pierces Supererogation,¹⁷ but the tone of his private remark on Barnes's metres suggests that his response was not as uncritical as Nashe would have us believe. If, as seems probable, Harvey's attitude became harder and more defensive as the book's unpopularity became obvious, we can date this reserved comment during his months as a lodger in Wolfe's house, while Parthenophil was still in the press.

To the heading of The CIII Psalme, translated out of Tremellius (N2^r), Harvey adds:

A most notable & diuine Hymne: abooue all other diuine Psalmes, or Heroical Hymnes, selected by Freigius, for a souerain Corollary to his Physicae Quaestiones. The 18. Psalme, such an other worthy, & admirable Hymne.¹⁸

The blank page O3^r contains an original poem of Harvey's, entitled ‘A charme for a mad woman’:

Ô heauenlie Medcin, Panacea high,
Restore this raging Wooman to her health,
More Worth then hugest Summes of worldlie Wealth
          Exceedingly more worth then anie Wealth.
Ô light of Grace, & Reason from the Skie,
Jlluminate her madd-conceited minde,
And Melancholie cease her Witts to blinde.
          Cease fearfull Melancholie her Witts to blinde.

Axiophilus

He considered ‘rauing’ as a possible improvement on ‘fearfull’, and it is uncertain which was his final choice. This poem may be a manifestation of the practical interest in medicine which he is said to have pursued in his later years, or it may reflect a more general interest in melancholy as such. One wonders whether it was meant for use in real life.

The blank P2^v is devoted to a Latin poem on a theme that recurs more than once in Harvey's manuscript writings¹⁹—Odiosa procrastinatio. ad Meipsum:

Vitæ tela breuis prohibet spem nectere longam.
          Tarda nimis techna est crastina: disce statim.
          Tarda nimis sophia est crastina: quære statim.
          Copia tarda nimis crastina: cresce statim.
Per cras, crasque pigrum teritur versatilis ætas.
          Crastina sera salus: tu reualesce hodiè.
          Crastina vis sera est: tu reuiresce hodiè.
          Crastina sera nimis Praxis: agendum hodiè.
Vt væ, væque odi Cras, crasque: hodiéque, hodiéque
          Persequor incoepti seria puncta mei.
          Cras tibi, prudentis gnoma, hodiéque mihi.
          Cras hostes, hodie tu sapias, rapias.
Vita minuta vetat spaciosum texere pensum:
          Lenta nimis Vita est crastina: viue hodiè.
          Parca aurem vellens, Profice, ait, Venio.
          Mors pectus tundens, Perfice, ait, Ferio.

Axiophilus

On the blank P3^v we find another—De Republica Ordinanda. Ad summos Aulae, Vrbis, prouinciarumque magistratus:

Curas partiri communes arte decenti,
Nec Legum immemores, nec morum, aut ordinis esse,
Et fascem cuiusque grauem ratione leuare,
Ne procurantes confusa mole fatiscant,
Aut hos, aut illos nimiumue, parumue molestet,
Propria nostrorum fortè est medicina malorum.
Quæ nemo potis est solus componere tanta,
Quantuscunque magistratus meret inclyta regni.
Non si humeris, velùt Enceladus, ferat arduus Ætnam,
Aut coeli subeat pondus, magni instar Atlantis.
Foelix, qui miserum tolerans superauit agonem,
Nec spe succubuit, pænè obrutus aggere rerum.
Nam cedo nulli, tua sola est, Termine, gnoma:
Plusque vltrà, nimis effusum, defixa coercet.
Ille modus rerum priuatus, publicus, olim
Aureus, hoc ferri, quantò magis aureus aeuo?
Diuidere intererit, quæ pulcher segregat ordo.
Talia apud Caium meditatus publica Crispus
Me monuit, rerum dominos, Proceresque monere,
Credo equidem, memores: sed quid memorare nocebit?

Axiophilus

The final sentence of this poem is difficult; one would like to imagine that it referred to a friend called Crisp who was a member of Caius and thus within the easiest visiting distance of Harvey's college, Trinity Hall, but if so, there seems to be no other record of his existence. There is perhaps a play on Sallust's full name, Caius Sallustius Crispus.

After The Essayes of a Prentise comes James's other volume of poetry, the Poeticall Exercises (1591), which Harvey inscribes ‘Ye pris, xij^d.’ His comments are less extensive than in the earlier work, but his marginal cross-references (on*3^r and A4^r) again show that he studied the two simultaneously after having them bound together. Since this is also true of the Du Bartas (1592), it is likely that he bound all three together soon after acquiring the latter, and that most of the annotations can be dated in 1592-3, the period during which he was, as Nashe said, ‘cloystred and immured’ in Wolfe's house writing Pierces Supererogation. The actual text of Pierces Supererogation makes it clear that James's two books of verse and the new translation of Du Bartas were in the front of Harvey's mind, and almost certainly on his table, as he wrote:

And now whiles I consider, what a Trompet of Honour Homer hath bene to sturre-vp many woorthy Princes; I cannot forget the woorthy Prince, that is a Homer to himselfe, a golden spurre to Nobility, a Scepter to Vertue, a Verdure to the Spring, a Sunne to the day; and hath not onely translated the two diuine Poems of Salustius du Bartas, his heauenly Vrany, and his hellish Furies: but hath readd a most valorous Martial Lecture vnto himselfe in his owne victorious Lepanto, a short, but heroicall worke, in meeter, but royall meeter, fitt for a Dauids harpe. Lepanto, first glory of Christendome against the Turke; and now the garland of a soueraigne crowne. … The afore-named Bartas (whome elsewhere I haue stiled the Treasurer of Humanity, and the Ieweller of Diuinity) for the highnesse of his subiect, and the maiestie of his verse, nothing inferiour vnto Dante, (whome some Italians preferre before Virgil, or Homer,) a right inspired and enrauished Poet; full of chosen, graue, profound, venerable, and stately matter; euen in the next Degree to the sacred, and reuerend stile of heauenly Diuinity it selfe. In a manner the only Poet, whom Vrany hath voutsafed to Laureate with her owne heauenly hand; and worthy to bee alleadged of Diuines, and Counsellours, as Homer is quoted of Philosophers, & Oratours.²⁰

There is evidently a connection between the last two sentences of this passage and the note on Uranie quoted above, and the simpler, more staccato manuscript version is presumably the earlier. It is not, on the other hand, in any sense a rough draft; one has the impression that Harvey designed his marginalia as a kind of commonplace-book, a source of raw materials for the books he never wrote.²¹ His public praise of the Scots King's literary output was not a piece of sycophancy; in its tone and terms of reference it corresponds closely with the private comments on which he was drawing as he wrote it.

Harvey's remarks on The Furies are brief and purely descriptive, but those on Lepanto are more revealing. His interest is largely in its subject-matter, for, as he asks in the New Letter (September 1593),

Who honoureth not the glorious memory, and the very name of the renowned Lepanto: the monument of Don Iohn of Austria, the security of the Venetian State, the Halleluia of Christendome, & the welaway of Turky?²²

He begins here with a topographical note:

Lepantum, olim Naupactus oppidum Achaiae, ad sinum Corinthiacum: vt eccè in pomponio Mela Soni: in Cosmographia Honteri: &c.

(H2^r)²³

On 13^r, where James tells how Venier ‘gaue false Alarum’ to encourage the Christians to join battle, Harvey observes, ‘The Stratagem of Bernardin Mendoza; when the Spanish Armada threatned Ingland, 1588.’²⁴ His enthusiasm increases as the fleets approach each other, and on I4^r he writes, ‘Here beginnes the eger & fierce worke.’ Against Don John's speech on K1^r he exclaims,

Braue Don Jon; as gallant before the battel, as valorous in the battel: & so oft commended by Sir Philip Sidney, for a most fine Courtier, & a most braue General.

On K2^v, as the ships engage, Harvey points out his favourite passages—‘Here, & a little after, the life, & brauerie of his gallantest Descriptions.’ Against the encounter of Don John and Ali-Basha, he adds what reads like a snatch of a ballad:

So y(e) braue French kinge made amaine
to the valiant Duke demaine
especially at Yury: y(e) heroical battaile of this age.

(K4^v)

A ballad entitled ‘A songe of the Frenche kings vyctorie the 14 of marche 1590’ was entered to John Wolfe in the Stationers' Register on the 19 May 1590, but is otherwise unknown.²⁵ Perhaps the first two and a half lines of this note formed part of it. Harvey was interested in both Lepanto and Yvry from a military point of view, as the next note shows:

The terrible Encounter of the two braue Generals.

To make head against y^e head, the highest point of importance.

Vnus ferè, instar Omnium.

(L1^r)

—and the ballad lines suggest that he had ears for an unpolished literary performance on the right subject. At the end of Lepanto, however, we find a rapturous note evidently written immediately after Harvey bought Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas:

A gallant & notable Poem, Both for matter, & forme.

Oh, but the new Victorie at Yurie, the braue & admirable peece of worke: Worthie of the diuinest Muse in y^e World; & nothing extant, comparable, but sum inspired Pageants of Homer.

And scarsely anie part of Homer himself, equiualent, for y^e quantity. The Onlie Poet of this age, in the iudgment of One: & second to none but Homer, if not before him in sum veines; euer full of life, & state.

(L2^r)

This casts a curious light on Harvey's reasons for admiring Homer.

Despite his interest in Du Bartas, Harvey scarcely marks the French poet's rendering of Lepanto; here, as with the original of Uranie, one feels that French was not his favourite language. At the end of the poem, which is also the end of the book, he writes,

Whome but high Bartas, & a higher King,
Hath heauen inspired, heauens exploits to sing?

Axiophilus

Considering the close association between James and Du Bartas in Harvey's mind, it is not surprising that he bound Sylvester's translation alongside the works of the Scots King. The first poem in Sylvester's collection is The Triumph of Faith, dedicated to Gui de Faur, Seigneur de Pibrac. Above the sonnet on A4^v, Harvey refers to the latter's published defence of the massacre of St. Bartholomew—‘Pibraci ad Heluidium Epistola de Caede Parisiensi: a Cosmopolita exagitata.’²⁶ He was impressed by Du Bartas' dedication, and later wrote in his copy of Erasmus' Parabolae, ‘Bartasius ingenuè, et peritè laudat Pibracum; in Triumpho Fidei.’²⁷ Du Bartas' choice of subject also interested him, and he listed on A4^v the titles of Petrarch's Trionfi, which he had read in the earliest English translation:²⁸

Petrarchs six Triumphs, translated into Jnglish, bie y^e Lord Morley. Francis the French King, karried theise Triumphs abowt him, for his Jewell: as Alexander vsed Homer.

Excellent Commonplaces, & of singular much vse in y^e world, both for matter, & forme. His six Visions also …

The end of this comment was shaved away in a later rebinding. Most of Harvey's notes on The Triumph of Faith are of the nature of short headings or glosses—‘the facound Cyneas’ on p. 1 is glossed ‘Sir Nicholas Bacon’²⁹—but on p. 3 he attempts an evaluation: ‘No Triumph in Petrarch, comparable for matter, or manner.’ He also implicitly compares Du Bartas with Gascoigne; the account of the sins of the times on p. 27 is headed ‘His Steel-glas’.³⁰ At the end of the Triumph he makes yet another comparison with James VI:

His Cantique of Victory, jnfra, an other gallant Triumph, and excellent Poëm. Also y^e King of Scottes, Lepanto, an other braue Triumph / supra.

Vescere mellifluis, ô philomuse, fauis.

The Shipwracke of Ionas interested Harvey chiefly as ‘A notable Description of a singular Tempest’ (p. 18), but its emphasis on prayer and fasting led him to add at the end, ‘Hermolaus Barbarus. Venter, pluma, Venus laudem fugienda sequenti.’³¹ Below this he later wrote,

Bionis epitaphium: but sublimed. Henrici Epinicion: But quintessenced.

Jlias Jliados: but multiplied. Gargantuisme: but refined. Aretinisme: but disciplined. Singularitie: but ciuilis'd.

(p. 24)

On the title-page of Yvry, we find

An heroical Canto: like y^e Hymnes of Orpheus, Homer, Pindar, & the rest of the inspired diuine Poets. None of y^e excellentest new Poets, rauished with so mighty, & diuine a spirit, as Salustius.

Vilia miretur Vulgus: mihi flauus Apollo
Pocula Castaliâ plena ministret aquâ.(32)

Overleaf, around the Dedication, there is a series of notes of various dates. Of the Dedication itself, to James Parkinson and John Caplin, Harvey disapproves:

A fitter Dedication for the Earle of Essex; the Earle of Cumberland; the Lord Admiral; General Norrice; or sum other of owre Braue men.³³

Below the border comes a brief reference—‘Anthologia Phœnicis. Elixir Orientis’—which should mean The Phoenix Nest, and should therefore date from 1593 or later. Above and below are two notes of indeterminate date—

Herculis Clypeus, Opus heroicum Hesiodi singulare.
Pictura, tacita Poesis. Poesis, loquens Pictura.

—of which the latter recalls the theme of the poem to Sidney. At the foot of the page is a note of 1595 or later:

Henrie the 4. of France, bie Dubartas.
Henrie the 4. of Jngland, bie Samuel Daniel.(34)

On the first page of the poem, Harvey again counts the leaves of a favourite book—‘Nine leaues: or an howers reading: sed rosa Solis.’ Sylvester's line ‘To giue my spirit career, whilst others whist their voice’ prompts the comment, ‘Spiritus viuidus, et animosus; splendidus, et magnificus. Nec vllus stylus penetrantior; nec vlla Musa potentior.’ Harvey judges Yury as an epic; when its author uses the images of a river in spate (p. 3) and an enraged bull (p. 4), he notes the parallel use of these by Homer and Virgil—adding, in the latter case, ‘… but here Dubartas rowsed his inspired hedd, to excell them bothe.’ Against the passage on p. 3 in which the French King's forces overrun the enemy, he writes,

Quae pictura tam conspicua? aut quæ aulæa tam illustria, ac gloriosa? Eccè Solis splendentis opus pulcherrimum; nitidissimos, atque Viuos Eloquentiæ, Sapientiæque radios fundens, penetrantissimo vigore eiaculatos; instar fulmineæ cuiusdam traiectionis, præpotenti impetu Vibratæ. Da mihi talia poemata: aut nulla.

Du Bartas refers to the King on p. 7 as ‘our bold Achilles great.’ This expression Harvey finds doubly appropriate, since he has already cast Du Bartas as a second Homer—‘The tru Achilles of Dubartas: a right heroical Prince.’

The account of the King in the later part of the poem moves Harvey considerably, and the margins witness a conflict between his natural enthusiasm for the heroic virtues and the Machiavellian attitude he at times affected:

His Prudence, & Temperance, like his Valour, & Justice. A wise, & most curteous King: gratious & magnificent.

(p. 10)

Dubartas sawe the errour of the Duke of Guises popularitie, in a Monarchie. Himself wiser, to be a liege Subiect in a Kingdom.

(p. 15)

An vnquam fides Heroica frigeat? Quicquid non est ex fide, est peccatum. Nisi quatenus Sol interdum latet; aut etiam patitur Eclypsin.

(p. 16)

It interesseth a Prince, to be as Cautelous, as Valorous.

(p. 17)

—to which he later added, thinking better of it,

Haec ordinaria Praxis: extraordinaria, tota ignea; vt Alexandri, et Caesaris.

Almost every line in the poem carries some mark from Harvey's hand, in the form of underlining (in ink or reddish chalk), small corrections, or the astronomical symbols he used as a key to subject-matter. At the end (p. 18) we find a rash of comments in various shades of ink, most of which it is impossible to date. Among them is the full version of the motto Harvey entered in the margin of Uranie:

Sopra tutto non ui esca di mente, che Vn raro assai piu vale, che Cento mediocri. L'Vnico.

‘L'Unico’ is of course Aretino, and the passage comes from a letter to his godson, thanking him for a sonnet.³⁵ The motto continued to attract Harvey as late as 1598, when he wrote it in his copy of Speght's Chaucer.³⁶ There was no English edition of Aretino's Lettere. John Wolfe promised one in his preface to the Prima Parte of the Ragionamenti, which he printed in 1584, and the Lettere were licensed to him in 1588, but never appeared.³⁷ It may be that Harvey's interest in the Lettere arose as a result of Wolfe's plan to print them. The one fact that would seem to contradict this is the presence of the motto in his copy of Erasmus' Parabolae, which he first read in 1566³⁸—but since, as we have seen, this book also contains a comment on the dedication to The Triumph of Faith, the phrase from Aretino may similarly date from a re-reading in or after 1592. It has recently been suggested³⁹ that Harvey's attitude to Aretino changed dramatically shortly before the quarrel with Nashe, and that his earlier pleasure in the Italian writer's virtuosity gave way to moral disapproval of his scurrility—perhaps because of his own unfortunate experience of writing satire in 1580, perhaps because Nashe was now imitating Aretino and praising him extravagantly. However, since Harvey must have inscribed these words from the Lettere at the end of Yvry at (or indeed after) the very time when he was writing so bitterly against Nashe and his Aretinism, it is clear that his private feelings about Aretino did not square with the severe attitude he adopted in public. Another note on the same page mentions Aretino without a trace of self-consciousness:

No heroical Canto of Ariosto, Tasso, Aretine, or anie of owr late heroical Muses; comparable with this singular, & diuine Cantique, for y^e quantitie. A braue, & glorious peece of heroical work. Canticum Canticorum.

In private, at least, Aretino's activities as a satirist did not turn Harvey against him altogether.

Some of Harvey's other remarks on Yvry have a familiar ring:

The mirrour of Cantos. His Vrany, and Furyes; notably translated by the King of Scotts.

Lepanto, a braue Victorie at Sea / supra.

	Lepanto, at sea.
Two singular worthy Victories,
	Yury, at land.

Equall to the old Heroicall Acts.

Eutheismo d'Eunapio: et Politismo di Tacito.⁴⁰

Placet nouissimum Carmen Epicum, de Guiana: vena quaedam Bartasij.

This last is a reference to Chapman's De Guiana, Carmen Epicum, published under his initials in Lawrence Kemys' Relation of the Second Voyage to Guiana (1596), and is the latest note in the collection that can be dated. Elsewhere on this page Harvey testifies to his affection, not only for Yvry, but also for the old alchemist John Hester: ‘Hesters Chymical Epistle. An other Vade mecum.’ Hester was recently dead in 1593, and Harvey mentions this fact in Pierces Supererogation in terms that imply a close friendship between the two.⁴¹ Harvey's note here does not seem to fit any of Hester's published works exactly,⁴² and it may be that the ‘Epistle’ was indeed a private letter to Harvey.

It will be observed that many of the books referred to in these notes of Harvey's were printed by John Wolfe or have some less direct connection with him. Harvey apparently read several of his Italian texts in Wolfe's pseudo-Italian editions, and may have been in some way associated with his plans to print others, notably Aretino's Lettere. He was certainly guilty of persuading Wolfe to print a number of unremunerative English works, including Parthenophil and Parthenophe, although the note he wrote on the latter at the time indicates that he was struck rather by its metrical virtuosity than by any solid poetic merit. This and many of the other notes were written while he was lodging in Wolfe's house, writing Pierces Supererogation—also printed by Wolfe—and not daring to stir out of doors for fear of the plague. The two books by James VI he evidently brought with him to London and re-read while he was there; Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas he must have bought during his stay, and it is probable that he united the three in one binding at the same time. The actual text of Pierces Supererogation reveals how closely the three books were associated in Harvey's mind as he wrote, and the literary judgements he made in the published work generally agreed with his private notes—except where the wicked Aretino was concerned. Harvey's three books must have accompanied him back to Saffron Walden in the summer of 1593, by which time his board and the printing expenses of Pierces Supererogation had cost Wolfe £36 which he never saw again,⁴³ besides the commercial losses he later sustained through printing Parthenophil and the other ‘Pamphlagonian things’ which Harvey had thrust upon him. Wolfe, however, was in other respects a competent man of business; he was also far from scrupulous, and we need not waste much sympathy on him.

Harvey's notes in these books are interesting for several reasons—for the original poems they include, and for the picture of his reading habits that we are enabled to build up—but in addition, they shed a curious sidelight on a particular period of Harvey's life during which he chose these texts as close companions, and furnish us with a means of comparing, to some extent, his public utterances with his private reflections.

Notes

1. I am most grateful to Professor J. A. W. Bennett, Keeper of the Old Library, for drawing my attention to these marginalia.

2. ‘Gabriel Harvey's method of annotating his books’, Harvard Library Bulletin, ii (1948), 344-61.

3. Clarke (?1537-1590), a member of King's College, Cambridge, proceeded LL.D. in 1572 and became Dean of the Arches in 1573, pursuing his public career under the protection of the Earl of Leicester. He wrote the Latin Epistle prefixed to Gabrielis Harueii Rhetor (1577) and is mentioned in Pierces Supererogation (The Works of Gabriel Harvey, D.C.L., ed. A. B. Grosart (London, 1884-5), ii, 83; hereafter cited as Works), Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, ed. G. C. Moore Smith (Stratford-upon-Avon, 1913), p. 150 (hereafter cited as Marginalia).

4. Marginalia, p. 159.

5. See Frances Yates, ‘Queen Elizabeth as Astraea,’ J.W.C.I. x (1947), 44.

6. See below, p. 409.

7. Have With You to Saffron Walden (Works, ed. R. B. McKerrow (London, 1904-10), iii, 87).

8. Yvry was issued separately in 1590; only in 1592 did the two poems appear together.

9. See below, p. 414.

10. This may possibly refer to three of the Casket Letters printed in Latin in George Buchanan's De Maria Scotorum Regina [London, 1571], or, more probably, to the Scots version—Ane detectioun of the duinges of Marie Quene of Scottes … translatit out of the Latine quhilke was written by GB [London, 1572]—which contains eight letters, including the ‘Sonnets’ to Bothwell. The French text of the sonnets is given in full; the first sentence only of each letter appears in the original French. A French translation of the Detectioun appeared in 1573, giving seven of the letters in a French rendering of the Scots text. It is conceivable that Harvey saw this book and assumed that the French was Mary's own.

11. James Craigie ed., The Poems of James VI of Scotland, i (S.T.S., Edinburgh and London, 1955), 304-5.

12. Marginalia, pp. 168-9.

13. This was printed several times; see, for example, Ioannis Rauisij Textoris … Epithetorum opus absolutissimum. Iam vltimò, post varias aeditiones, … ab innumeris mendis repurgatum, opere Heinrici Pantaleonis. … Accesserunt De carminibus ad veterum imitationem artificiosè componendis praecepta bona, & vtilia, collecta a Georgio Sabino (Basle, 1573).

14. This note was probably written in or after 1588, when this work was printed in England by John Wolfe as Lasino doro di N. Macchiauelli. Con tutte laltre sue operette, Roma. For Wolfe's activities in this line, see Harry Sellers, ‘Italian books printed in England before 1640,’ The Library, 4th series, v (1924), 105-28.

15. He addresses Sidney as Phoenix in the Latin poem mentioned earlier.

16. Works, ed. McKerrow, iii. 89-90. Harvey first saw Parthenophil in print when Wolfe sent a copy after him to Saffron Walden (Works, ed. Grosart, i. 259). For the relationship between Harvey and Wolfe, see Harry R. Hoppe, ‘John Wolfe, printer and publisher,’ The Library, 4th series, xiv (1933), 267-9.

17. Works, ii. 14.

18. The book referred to here is J. T. Freigii quaestiones physicae; in quibus methodus doctrinam physicam legitime docendi describendique rudi Minerva descripta est, libris XXXVI (Basle, 1579).

19. Marginalia, pp. 93, 145.

20. Works, ii. 102-3.

21. A long note in his copy of Speght's Chaucer, in which he compares Chaucer with Sidney, is signed ‘Axiophilus in one of his Inglish discourses’—but the discourse seems never to have materialised. See Marginalia, p. 226.

22. Works, i. 264.

23. The books here referred to are G. Sooni Vantesdeni auditor, sive Pomponius Mela disputator, de situ orbis. … Adiecti sunt ad finem orbis terrarum novi incolae (Cologne, 1572) and Rudimentorum Cosmographicorum Ioan. Honteri Coronensis libri III cum tabellis geographicis elegantissimis … (Zurich, 1552)—or one of several other issues of the 1540s and '50s.

24. In July 1588 Mendoza was said to have circulated in Paris a report that the Armada had defeated the English fleet in the Channel and sunk the Lord Admiral; this was known as ‘Mendoza's mendacia.’ See The copie of a letter sent out of England to Don Bernardin Mendoza Ambassadour in France for the King of Spaine, declaring the state of England … Whereunto are adioyned certaine late Aduertisements, concerning the losses and distresses happened to the Spanish Nauie. … (London, 1588), p. 14. This piece of propaganda was entered to John Wolfe with the support of a letter from Walsingham in October 1588; see Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers, ed. E. Arber (London, 1875-94), ii. 235.

25. See also H. E. Rollins, ‘An analytical index to the ballad-entries (1557-1709) in the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London,’ S.P., xxi (1924), 1-134; no. 918.

26. Ornatissimi cuiusdam viri, de rebus Gallicis, ad Stanislaum Eluidium, Epistola (Paris, 1573).

27. Marginalia, p. 136.

28. The tryumphes of Fraunces Petrarcke, translated out of Italian into English by Henrye Parker Knyght, Lorde Morley (London,?1565).

29. Nashe echoed in Pierce Penilesse a passage from Du Bartas' Semaines (already translated by Sylvester) in which More, Bacon, and Sidney are described as the three knights who uphold the English tongue; see Dubartas his Diuine Weekes and Workes, trans. J. Sylvester (London, 1633), p. 124.

30. For Harvey's notes on Gascoigne's Steele Glas, see Marginalia, pp. 170-2.

31. This line was part of an oration with which Hermolaus Barbarus introduced his course of lectures on Aristotle in 1484. See Omnia Opera Politiani, et alia quaedam lectu digna. … (Venice, 1498), sig. t1^r.

32. Ovid, Amores, 1. xv. 35-6. This recurs in Harvey's famous note on the poets in his Chaucer (Marginalia, p. 232), where his immediate source is Sir Edward Dyer.

33. Cf. his praise of Essex and Norris in Foure Letters (Works, i. 175).

34. The First Fowre Bookes of the ciuile wars between the two houses of Lancaster and Yorke (London, 1595); also mentioned in Harvey's notes on Chaucer (Marginalia, p. 232).

35. Lettera cccx; Lettere di M. Pietro Aretino (Paris, 1609), v. fol. 224^r. The Lettere had earlier been printed in Venice (1542-57).

36. Marginalia, p. 233.

37. See H. Sellers, loc. cit., v, 116.

38. Marginalia, p. 137.

39. David C. McPherson, ‘Aretino and the Harvey-Nashe Quarrel’, P.M.L.A., lxxxiv (1969), 1551-8.

40. The Lives of Eunapius of Sardis (a.d. 347-?420) were first printed in Antwerp in 1568, in Greek with a Latin translation. An English version appeared in 1579.

41. Works, ii. 80.

42. See, further, Paul H. Kocher, ‘John Hester, Paracelsan (fl. 1576-93)’, Joseph Quincy Adams Memorial Studies, ed. James G. McManaway et al. (Washington, 1948), 621-38. The works of Hester published during his own lifetime were all translations. Harvey owned a copy of one of Hester's handbills, which he dated 1588 and marked profusely, but this would not have been likely to qualify as a vade-mecum.

43. Nashe, Works, ed. cit., iii. 96.