[In the following excerpt, Moore Smith discusses Harvey's marginalia, his “war” with Thomas Nashe, and his career after the controversy.]

Harvey's marginalia give us just what we should like to have in the case of his greater contemporaries, Spenser and Marlowe and Shakespeare. They add, it is true, only a few small details to the known facts of his life; but they throw a flood of light on the books he read, and on the thoughts he cherished in secret. When they are before us we can indeed say with Dr. E. J. L. Scott that Harvey is better known to us than almost any Elizabethan writer, though Grosart, who had no liking for him and did not even master the best-known facts of his life, strangely opined that there was hardly any Elizabethan of whom we knew so little.

The mother of Gabriel Harvey was probably a woman of energetic character, and this is borne out by the one saying her son attributes to her, ‘All the speed is in the morning.’ He quotes some jesting rimes of a rather cynical kind which his father used to repeat, and he tells a little story of his own sense of filial duty under provocation. His brother Richard appears as smitten with admiration for a fair lady of the Court; his brother John as an example of rapid learning.

Harvey tells us something about Spenser, besides the fact already referred to that Spenser was for a time secretary to Bishop Young of Rochester. We hear of Spenser's admiration of Du Bartas' astronomical book (the 4th Day of the 1st Week), and also of his regret that he had not more skill himself in astronomical rules, tables, and instruments.

When he would illustrate a rich man's foolish hankering for some thing he does not possess, he thinks of Philip, Lord Surrey, who left the side of his young countess to court Mercy Harvey; when he would illustrate tergiversation and falsity, he thinks of Dr. Perne.

It is from Harvey's marginalia that we know that he was University Prælector in Rhetoric from 1573-4 to 1575-6; that he lost his ready speech on some occasion during his Cambridge Proctorship, and again when keeping his Acts for the Doctor's degree at Oxford; that he succeeded Lancelot Brown in a medical fellowship at Pembroke; from them, too, that we hear of a disputation in which he was engaged at Trinity Hall, and of a match in quick repartee in which he bore off the honours at Oxford.

But these facts about himself and his friends are unimportant compared to the new knowledge we get of Harvey's reading, of his literary judgments, and of his deepest thoughts on life. The books of his which I have handled range from Erasmus' Parabolæ, which was in his possession in 1566, the year of his going up as a freshman to Christ's, to a medical work in which he inscribes his name in 1590. The earliest books are, as one would expect, of a humanistic kind, Erasmus, Xenophon in Latin, Quintilian, Cicero's Letters, a history of Cicero. Events of the moment meanwhile make him buy books on Mary, Queen of Scots. A number of books on travel and geography, which he acquired in the seventies, connect themselves with his hopes of travelling abroad in Lord Leicester's service. From 1574 onwards he buys books of law, the study to which he was now to devote himself. In 1584 he is taking up medicine, and about the same time resuming the mathematical and scientific studies which he had begun years ago at Pembroke. He now has special artisans who make instruments for him.

Harvey's notes, made generally in Latin, next often in English, sometimes in Italian, and here and there in French or Spanish, testify to his wide reading in the classics, in English, French, and Italian literature, in works of rhetoric, geography, history, law, politics, and in the mathematical and experimental sciences. Several times he makes a chart of his reading for a week. Often he bursts out into enthusiasm over his favourite authors. They are not limited to the great writers of Greece and Rome, but include Ramus, Machiavelli, Aretine, Du Bartas, Angelus Decembrius, Guevara, Blaise de Vigenère, Tasso, Ariosto, Jewel, Chaucer, More, Heywood, Sidney, Spenser, Smith, Ascham, Wilson, Digges, Blundevile, Hakluyt.

Harvey's reading in a number of languages is seen to have been enormous, his interests encyclopædic, tending always to the practical, to law, history, politics, natural philosophy rather than to pure literature. It is remarkable that he makes little reference to the contemporary stage. He has a word for Gorboduc, but none for the plays of Greene, Marlowe, or Shakespeare, except that now-lost note which was seen by Steevens and Malone in Harvey's copy of Speght's Chaucer (1598): ‘The younger sort take much delight in Shakespeares Venus and Adonis, but his Lucrece and his tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke have it in them to please the wiser sort.’¹ The most interesting of Harvey's literary criticisms occur in his notes on Gascoigne's Posies.

The chief value of the marginalia, however, lies in the light which they throw on Harvey's character and attitude towards life.

Harvey is often called a Puritan. If to be a Puritan is to have a strong sense of personal religion, a spirit of self-humiliation, a disposition to despise this life in comparison with that which is to come, a fanatical intolerance of a ceremonial form of religion, Harvey seems to me to have been as little of a Puritan as any man could be. He shows nothing of the spirit of the fanatic, and the only approach to religiousness which I have seen in his notes is in the little story to which I have referred, in which he promises to pray for his father.

In his home Harvey used the language of an ordinary Christian; he believed as a statesman in the necessity of religion to a commonwealth; he was shocked at open blasphemies and professed atheism. More than this one cannot say. He was too much a man of the Italian Renaissance to be a very fervent Christian.

Conceive what is meant by the man of the Italian Renaissance: the man who aims at universal knowledge; who can sympathize with the intellectual detachment of Machiavelli and the audacious licence of Aretine; who yet would make scholarship a means rather than an end; who firmly holds that worldly success, power and riches are things worth striving for, and things which can be won if one is only resolute; that resolution may require the casting away of many moral scruples—conceive such a typical man, and you have Harvey as he appears in these notes written only for his own eye. No man lives up to his principles, nor perhaps down to his principles, and in the living Harvey there were no doubt amiable qualities which could not be justified by his professed opinions; but Harvey, as he depicts himself in these personal notes, is, I believe, the Renaissance man pure and simple, and in him we see the full influence of the Renaissance more clearly than in any other Englishman known to us.

Harvey was following the Italians when he published his inaugural lectures on Rhetoric; he was following them when he published his Familiar Letters. From the beginning he had without any doubt the hope of passing from Cambridge to public life; of treading in the steps of Cheke and Smith and Cecil. It was this that fired his ardour in his early studies. He would make himself a consummate orator, and though a novus homo he would rise as Cicero rose. Almost all the ‘Megalandri’ were, he says, excellent orators, and he cites the names of Wolsey, Cromwell, More, Gardiner, Smith, Cheke, Cecil, Bacon, and others. ‘The prince's court the only mart of preferment and honour. No fishing to the sea, nor service to a King.’ ‘Give me entrance,’ he cries, ‘and lett me alone. Give me footing, and I will find elbow room.’ ‘Regula regularum, to seek and enforce all possible advantages.’ ‘In any excellent action, più oltra the bravest and Imperialest posy in the world. You do well, do still better and better—più oltra. Another doth or speaketh excellently well, do you and speak you better—più oltra.’ ‘Who would not rather be one of the nine worthies than one of the seven wise masters?’ ‘To me Cæsar alone is more than all books.’ ‘Let Pompey be false to himself, be conquered and perish: let Cæsar be true to himself and conquer and triumph.’ Nietzsche made it a reproach to men of the sixteenth century—and especially to Shakespeare—that they failed to recognize the greatness of Cæsar. If he had known Harvey, he must have excepted him from this censure. In Harvey there is already latent the doctrine of the ‘Uebermensch’. With these views of his end, Harvey disparaged the writing of books. ‘Little or no writing will now serve. All writing laid abed as tedious and needless. All is now in bold courtly speaking: and bold industrious doing.’ Another means to success was the complete subjection of the body to the mind. He is never weary of advocating moderation in sleep and food, and the habit of bodily exercise, and reproaching himself for any weakness which stood in the way of his attaining the mastery he sought. ‘I was ever a slow-worm in the morning,’ he says. The ascetic life, to which he was forced not only by his principles but by his constant impecuniosity, is seen in Nashe's account of him.

But the man who is to succeed must not only be bold and self-reliant, he must be supple, ceremoniously polite, one who can mask all feelings which it would not be politic to express. He must be ‘a continual ironist like Socrates, Sannazarius, and our Sir Thomas More.’ He must find ‘precedents of honorable behaviour and entertainment in Esau and Jacob, the Queen of Saba and Salomon, Dido and Aeneas.’ ‘The Siren every day of one's life, The Gorgon not once in the year, only in extremes.’ Even flattery and self-abasement are a legitimate means to success. ‘Learn from the dog how skilfully to treat a Lord or a King. Endure anything in the way of wrongs, and fawn none the less.’ ‘Visible flattery is abject and unworthy of a gentleman; invisible flattery a matter of skill and suited for men of affairs.’ (These last maxims are in Latin).

Such were Harvey's principles. In his youth he hoped to rise in the world by combining in himself the qualities of a Cicero and a Cæsar; as disappointments came on him he seems to have been ready to adopt baser methods. In various places his notes have the tone of one who feels that he has failed. ‘The coyning of base moony, Cardinal Wolseyes great Deuyse to enrych the Kynge. The suppressing of Abbyes, the Lord Cromwells famous aduice. The Court of Augmentation S^r Francis Drakes Gowlden Booty from Spain. At nihil tale feci: illis honorificum, mihi turpe.’ …

Spenser's sonnet to [Harvey], the finest tribute ever paid to his character and powers, is dated from Dublin, 18 July, 1586.

Haruey, the happy aboue happiest men,
I read: that, sitting like a looker-on
Of this worldes stage, doest note, with critique pen,
The sharpe dislikes of each condition;
And, as one carelesse of suspition,
Ne fawnest for the fauour of the great,
Ne fearest foolish reprehension
Of faulty men, which daunger to thee threat:
But freely doest, of what thee list entreat,
Like a great lord of peerelesse liberty;
Lifting the good up to high Honours seat,
And the euill damning euermore to dy:
          For Life, and Death, is in thy doomefull writing!
          So thy renowme liues euer by endighting.

Your deuoted frend during life,

Edmvnd Spencer.

Edmund Spenser could not be mistaken in praising Harvey's critical faculty; but we must feel that he did not know Harvey as well as we do, when he counted him ‘happy above happiest men,’ because ‘sitting like a looker-on of this world's stage’! To one bitterly chafing at being a looker-on and not an actor on that stage, the words of congratulation must have seemed sadly ironical.

We have little evidence of meetings or correspondence between Harvey and Spenser after this date. Among the manuscript notes, however, which Harvey made in Twine's Surueye of the World, is the following: ‘Pudet ipsum Spenserum … suæ in astronomicis canonibus, tabulis, instrumentisque imperitiæ, præsertim ex quo vidit Blagravi nostri Margaritam mathematicam.’ As Blagrave's Mathematical Jewel was only published in 1585, and Spenser is not likely to have seen it in Ireland, this is an indication of a meeting between the two old friends when Spenser was in England about 1590, or on his subsequent visit. Professor Hales, arguing² from the fact that Hobbinol is introduced into Colin Clouts come home again, suggests that Harvey visited Spenser in Ireland after the latter's return from England, but this is at least a very doubtful inference.

We now come to the war of words between Harvey and Thomas Nashe, the history of which has been for the first time most carefully analysed by Dr. McKerrow. The quarrel took its origin in 1589 when Lyly, in his anti-Martinist tract, Pap with a Hatchet, referred contemptuously to Harvey's letters to Spenser of 1580 and to the offence therein given to Lord Oxford,³ which Lyly himself had apparently fomented. Harvey wrote a reply to Lyly, dated from Trinity Hall, 5 November, 1589, but not then published. It contains a most serious treatment of the Marprelate controversy, in which Harvey's statesmanship, his independence of ecclesiastical prejudices, and his powers as a writer are seen to the highest advantage. He shows that a perfect system of Church Government is not to be had in a day, that the Primitive Church adapted itself to temporal circumstances, and that the creation of a theocracy represented by ministerial rule in every parish would be intolerable. The better scholar, he says, the colder schismatic. We must have mutual charity or Church and State will be overthrown. Perhaps nothing wiser or more far-sighted was ever written in the whole of the 16th century.⁴

Next year Richard Harvey (who since we last heard of him had been ordained and become rector of Chislehurst in Kent)⁵ took up the challenge which Gabriel had apparently declined. In his work Plaine Percevall, while professing a desire to reconcile Martinists and anti-Martinists, he attacked the group of anti-Martinist writers in general. It included, of course, Greene, Lyly and Nashe. In another treatise, issued early in the same year, 1590, The Lamb of God, he went out of his way to attack Nashe in particular for the arrogance with which in his epistle prefixed to Green's Menaphon he had criticised contemporary writers of more account than himself. Dr. McKerrow quotes the passage, ‘Iwis this Thomas Nash, one whome I neuer heard of before (for I cannot imagin him to be Thomas Nash our Butler of Pembrooke Hall, albeit peraduenture not much better learned) sheweth himselfe none of the meetest men, to censure Sir Thomas Moore, Sir Iohn Cheeke, Doctor Watson, Doctor Haddon, Maister Ascham, Doctor Car, my brother Doctor Haruey, and such like.’

After this the war of words slumbered till it was revived in Greene's Quip for an Upstart Courtier, published in July, 1592, just at the time when Gabriel Harvey was overwhelmed in the trouble brought on him by the death of his brother John.

John Harvey had married a daughter of Thomas Mead,⁶ by whom he had had two daughters, Joan and Elizabeth. He had received a license to practise medicine from the University of Cambridge on 12 June, 1587, and had since been practising at King's Lynn.⁷ Gabriel was with him in his last hours. ‘I can neuer forget,’ he says, ‘that sweete voice of the dying Cignet: ô frater, Christus est optimus Medicus & meus solus Medicus. Vale Galene, valete humanæ Artes; nihil diuinum in terris, præter animum aspirantem ad cœlos. That best and his onelie Phisition knoweth what spiritual physicke I commended vnto him, when I beheld in his meager and ghastly countenance, that I cannot rehearse without some fit of compassion.’⁸

John Harvey was no sooner dead than a violent quarrel broke out between his widow and her brother-in-law. She declared later that Gabriel, having profited by her ignorance and sickness, had obtained for himself letters of administration of his brother's goods, and on the strength of these had deprived her of all that she had, and with his father's connivance had taken into his possession bonds given to John Harvey for money which he had lent his father and Gabriel out of his wife's portion.⁹ As a matter of fact, administration of John Harvey's goods during the minority of his daughters was granted to Gabriel on 12 October. But Martha Harvey had herself obtained letters of administration on 26 August. It was no doubt with the desire of upsetting these last-mentioned letters that Gabriel (whose Fellowship at Trinity Hall had now expired¹⁰) came up to London at the end of August, and in London he was detained by this same family quarrel till the following July.

All this time he was living, as Nashe tells us, in the house of his printer, Wolfe, in St. Paul's Churchyard, though the plague was raging for part of the time and the churchyard was the burial place of five parishes. According to the same authority, he was utterly impecunious, and ran up a bill of £36 with Wolfe for the printing of Pierce's Supererogation and for his board, though so full of compliments and fine speeches that a visitor took him at first sight for the Usher of a dancing-school.

Sorely stricken by the loss of his beloved brother, harassed by the attacks of his sister-in-law (whether he had given just occasion for them or not we do not know), Gabriel was lashed to fury by a passage in Greene's Quip (published in July), which heaped insult on his father the rope-maker, his brothers and himself,¹¹ as well as by a scornful account of Richard Harvey, which Nashe inserted in his Pierce Pennilesse, in reply to Richard's attack on him in The Lamb of God.

Harvey had intended on coming to London to take legal action against Greene for his slander on his father, but he had only been in London a few days when he heard that Greene had died (2 September) after offering 10s. or 20s. to the printer of his book to expunge the passage on the Harveys. Unfortunately for Harvey's after-fame, he did not allow these facts to cool his animosity, and he hurried out a Letter in which he savagely attacked Greene's character, while giving a pitiless account of his miserable end. Harvey's conduct was scarcely Christian, but it is extenuated by the deep love which bound him to his father and brothers.

His letter was written on 5 September, three days after Greene's death, and, as Dr. McKerrow argues, was at once published by itself, though later, perhaps in December, 1592, it appeared again as the second of Foure Letters.¹² The first letter purported to be written by Mr. Christopher Bird, of Saffron Walden, and was commendatory of Harvey; the second, third and fourth were by Harvey himself. In the third, after defending himself against Lyly's remarks on his old correspondence with Spenser, he turns to Nashe, and deals with his attack on his brother Richard.¹³

Who in that Vniuersity can deny, but M. Haruey read the publike Philosophie Lecture with special good liking, and many will say with singular commendation, when this mightie lashing Gentleman … was not so much as idoneus auditor ciuilis scientiæ.

He defends his father:¹⁴

Fewe Sonnes haue felinger cause to loue, or reuerence, or defend their Fathers, then my selfe: but his dealing is such, where he tradeth: and his liuing such where he conuerseth, that he may easely shame himselfe, which goeth-about to shame him, or vs in him. I will not trouble you with the rehearsall of his inheritance, which I could haue wished more then it was: yet was it more … then the inheritances of both their Fathers together.

He wishes no more contention:¹⁵

I hope this winde hath not shaken any suche corne, but fellow-schollers, (as Dr. Caius would say), and now forsooth fellow-writers, may bee made friendes with a cup of white wine, and some little familiar conference, in calme and ciuile termes. I offer them my hande: and request their:

He appeals to Nashe to put his talents to better use:¹⁶

Good sweete Oratour, be a deuine Poet indeede … and with heroicall Cantoes honour right Vertue, & braue valour indeede; as noble Sir Philip Sidney and gentle Maister Spencer haue done, with immortall Fame …

He includes him already¹⁷ among

the deere Louers of the Muses: and namely the professed Sonnes of the-same: Edmond Spencer, Richard Stanihurst, Abraham France, Thomas Watson, Samuell Daniell, Thomas Nash, and the rest, whome I affectionately thancke for their studious endeuours, commendably employed in enriching, & polishing their natiue tongue, neuer so furnished, or embellished as of late.

In his Fourth Letter Harvey complains of a decline in serious literature, and speaks contemptuously of the writers then in fashion:¹⁸

They are fine men, & haue many sweete phrases: it is my simplicity, that I am so slenderly acquainted with that dainty stile: the only new fashion of current eloquence in esse: far surpassing the stale vein of Demosthenes, or Tully: Iewel, or Harding: Whitgift, or Cartwright: Sidney, or Spencer.

He declares that his own inclinations are not for controversy:¹⁹

That little I haue done, I haue done compelled, and would wish vndone, rather then any storme of Debate … should insue thereof: let them glory in Pen-scolding and Paper-brabling, that list: I must not, I can not, I will not … good honest youthes, spare an old Truante, meeter now to play the Dumme Dog … then the bauling Cur, … no felicity [compared] to a commodious intercourse of sweete study, sweeter conuersation, and sweetest action … Only my determination is, rather to be a Sheepe in Wolfes printe, then to suffer my selfe or my deerest frendes, to be made Sheepe in the wolfes walke: and onely my request is, that euery discreete, and courteous minde, will as considerately weigh the cause, as censoriously note the effect.

Harvey appended to the four letters a number of sonnets, called Greene's Memoriall, which show that he was not so wedded to classical metres as to disdain the verse-form then most in fashion, and that, if the highest regions of poetry were beyond his reach, he could at least write verse lofty in tone and sentiment. I append one of these compositions, not as being the best, but as it shows that admiration for wise statesmen and brave soldiers which is so characteristic of Harvey. Whether this is the quality of a ‘Pedant,’ others may determine.

“SONNET XIII.”

HIS INTERCESSION TO FAME.

Liue euer, valorous renowned Knightes;
Liue euer, Smith, and Bacon, Peereles men:
Liue euer, Walsingham, and Hatton wise:
Liue euer, Mildmayes honorable name.
Ah, that Sir Humfry Gilbert should be dead:
Ah, that Sir Philip Sidney should be dead:
Ah, that Sir William Sackeuill should be dead:
Ah, that Sir Richard Grinuile should be dead:
Ah, that braue Walter Deuoreux should be dead:
Ah, that the Flowre of Knighthood should be dead,
Which, maugre deadlyest Deathes, and stonyest Stones,
That coouer worthiest worth, shall neuer dy.
          Sweete Fame, adorne thy glorious Triumph new:
          Or Vertues all, and Honours all, adieu.

At the end of his own sonnets, Harvey printed the sonnet which Spenser had addressed to him in 1586.

Harvey's Foure Letters provoked a rejoinder from Nashe, who, in January, 1593, in his Strange Newes Of the intercepting certaine Letters, violently denounced him for his attack on the dead Greene. To this Harvey replied with Pierces Supererogation (dated 27 April, 1595)—a chaotic piece in which he strangely inserted his reply to Paphatchet written four years before. In the part of the work written for the present occasion, he again expresses his dislike of controversy and his admiration for heroic action. He seems constantly glad to escape from Nashe and expatiate on some congenial theme. When Nashe is the topic he loses himself in the most clumsy and tasteless kind of humour, to which the biting satire of his character-study of Dr. Perne stands in marked contrast.

Pierces Supererogation was not published, as Dr. McKerrow argues, till the autumn. It contains a preliminary letter of Harvey's, dated ‘at London: this 16 of July.’ Immediately after this date Harvey must have been recalled to Saffron Walden, as his father was buried there on the 25th. From Saffron Walden he addressed a letter to his printer, Wolfe, which seems to have been published together with Pierces Supererogation. It was entitled A New Letter of Notable Contents, and expresses a certain backwardness to accept the apology which he understood that Nashe was about to make to him. It has an independent interest in its references to the death of Marlowe, which had taken place on 1 June. Harvey shows that he was quite ignorant of the true circumstances; and in his ‘sonnet’, The Wonderful Year, assumes that the poet had fallen a victim to the Plague.

I give a few passages from Pierces Supererogation.

He declares his unwillingness to write for the public:²⁰

I protest, I haue these many yeeres, not in pride, but in iudgement, scorned, to appeere in the rancke of this scribling generation: and could not haue bene hired with a great fee, to publish any Pamflet of whatsoeuer nature, in mine owne name, had I not bene intollerably prouoked.

The spirit of the times is against serious literature:²¹

To be a Ciceronian, is a flowting stocke … The Ciceronian may sleepe til the Scogginist hath plaid his part: … no profession, to the faculty of rayling; all harsh, or obscure, that tickleth not idle phantasies with wanton dalliance, or ruffianly iestes.

In his own justification he gives the names of some who have commended him:²²

M. Bird,²³ M. Spencer, Monsieur Bodin, … M. Thomas Watson, a notable Poet; M. Thomas Hatcher, a rare Antiquary; M. Daniel Rogers of the Court; Doctor Griffin Floyd, the Queenes professour of lawe at Oxforde; Doctor Peter Baro a professour of diuinity in Cambridge; Doctor Bartholmew Clark, late Deane of the Arches; Doctor William Lewen, Iudge of the prerogatiue Court; Doctor John Thomas Freigius, … Sir Philip Sidney; M. Secretary Wilson: Sir Thomas Smith: Sir Walter Mildmay; milord the bishop of Rochester; milord Treasurer; milord the Earle of Leicester.

English writers should be worthy of an heroic age:²⁴

Ingland, since it was Ingland, neuer bred more honorable mindes, more aduenturous hartes, more valorous handes, or more excellent wittes, then of-late, … The date of idle vanityes is expired: awaye with these scribling paltryes: there is another Sparta in hande, that indeede requireth Spartan Temperance, Spartan Frugality, Spartan exercise, Spartan valiancye, Spartan perseuerance, Spartan inuincibility: and hath no wanton leasure for the Comedyes of Athens. …

Read the report of the worthy Westerne discoueries, by the said Sir Humfry Gilbert: the report of the braue West-Indian voyage by the conduction of Sir Frauncis Drake: the report of the horrible Septentrionall discouereyes by the trauail of Sir Martin Forbisher: the report of the politique discouery of Virginia, by the Colony of Sir Walter Raleigh: the report of sundry other famous discoueryes, & aduentures, published by M. Rychard Hackluit in one volume, a worke of importance: the report of the hoatt welcom of the terrible Spanishe Armada to the coast of Inglande, that came in glory, and went in dishonour: the report of the redoubted voyage into Spaine, and Portugall, whence the braue Earle of Essex, and the twoo valorous generals, Sir John Norris, and Sir Frauncis Drake returned with honour: the report of the resolute encounter about the Iles Azores, betwixt the Reuenge of England, and an Armada of Spaine: in which encounter braue Sir Richard Grinuile most vigorously and impetuously attempted the extreamest possibilities of valour and fury … who of reckoning, can spare any lewde, or vaine tyme for corrupt pamphlets?

He extends his praise to skilful mechanics:²⁵

He that remembreth Humfrey Cole, a Mathematicall Mechanician, Matthew Baker a ship-wright, Iohn Shute an Architect, Robert Norman a Nauigatour, William Bourne a Gunner, Iohn Hester a Chimist,²⁶ or any like cunning, and subtile Empirique, … is a prowd man, if he contemne expert artisans, or any sensible industrious Practitioner, howsoeuer Vnlectured in Schooles, or Vnlettered in bookes.

In his Letter of Notable Contents Harvey would again have writers exercise themselves on great themes:²⁷

Some I know in Cambridge; some in Oxford; some in London; some elsewhere, died [i.e. dyed] in the purest graine of Art, & Exercise: but a few in either, and not many in all: that vndoubtedly can do excellently well, exceedingly well. And were they thorowghly employed according to the possibility of their Learning & Industry, who can tell, what comparison this tongue might wage with the most-floorishing Lãguages of Europe: or what an inestimable crop of most noble and soueraine fruite, the hand of Art, and the Spirite of Emulation might reape in a rich, and honorable field? Is not the Prose of Sir Philip Sidney, in his sweet Arcadia, the embrodery of finest Art, and daintiest Witt? Or is not the Verse of M. Spencer in his braue Faery Queene, the Virginall of the diuinest Muses, and gentlest Graces? Both delicate Writers: alwayes gallant, often braue, continually delectable, somtimes admirable.

Before the publication of Pierces Supererogation and the New Letter, overtures of friendship had been made to Nashe by friends of Harvey acting on his behalf, and Nashe had inserted an expression of penitence in his Christs Tears over Ierusalem. Harvey has been attacked for having replied to this recantation with fresh invective, and no doubt this was how Nashe saw his conduct. But Dr. McKerrow has shown that when Harvey wrote the New Letter, he had not seen Nashe's printed words, and it is quite likely, as Dr. McKerrow suggests, that the New Letter and Pierces Supererogation, being already in the printer's hands, were issued without Harvey's consent to recoup Wolfe for Harvey's debts to him. Nashe, however, naturally withdrew his expression of penitence in the second edition of Christs Tears.

According to Nashe²⁸ Harvey remained some six months at Saffron Walden after his arrival there in July, 1593. He then returned to London with a prentice of Wolfe's, whom he had retained as a servant during the six months, but without the £36 due to Wolfe, who accordingly had him arrested. He was released from Newgate through the Rev. Robert Harvey, of St. Albans, Wood Street, who stood bond for him merely for his name's sake, and found a lodging for him. If we are to believe Nashe, Harvey left his benefactor in the lurch and escaped to Saffron Walden, where he ‘mewd and coopt vp himselfe inuisible, being counted for dead & no tidings of him,’ till in the autumn of 1595 Nashe came across him accidentally at Cambridge. Both men happened to be staying in the same inn, the Dolphin, though Harvey, we are told, subsisted on the Trinity Hall commons ‘as the greatest curteisie hee could doo the House whereof he was, to eate vp their meate and neuer pay anie thing’,²⁹ and in consequence came into conflict with his hostess for ‘lying in her house a fortnight, and keeping one of the best Chambers, yet neuer offring to spend a penie.’ Nashe's description of his antagonist shows us Gabriel as he was in his years of disappointment and decay.

To describe … his complexion … it is of an adust swarth chollericke dye, like restie bacon, or a dride scate-fish: so leane and so meagre, that you wold thinke (like the Turks) he obseru'd 4. Lents in a yere: … his skin riddled and crumpled like a peice of burnt parchment … For his stature, he is such another pretie Iacke a Lent as boyes throw at in the streete, and lookes, in his blacke sute of veluet, like one of those ieat droppes which diuers weare at their eares in stead of a iewell. A smudge peice of a handsome fellow it hath beene in his dayes, but now he is olde and past his best … cares haue so crazed him, and disgraces to the verie bones consumed him; amongst which hys missing of the Vniuersitie Oratorship, wherin Doctor Perne besteaded him, wrought not the lightliest with him; and if none of them were, his course of life is such as would make anie man looke ill on it, for he will endure more hardnes than a Camell, who in the burning sands will liue foure dayes without water & feedes on nothing but thistles and wormewood & such lyke; no more doth he feed on anie thing, when he is at Saffron-Walden, but sheepes trotters, porknells, and butterd rootes; and other-while in an Hexameter meditation, or when hee is inuenting a new part of Tully, or hatching such another Paradoxe as that of Nicholaus Copernicus was, who held that the Sun remains immoueable in the center of the World & that the Earth is moou'd about the Sunne, he would be so rapt that hee would remaine three dayes and neither eate nor drinke, and within doores he will keepe seauen yeare together, and come not abroad so much as to Church.

Harvey desired a meeting or conference, says Nashe,

… wherein all quarrels might be discust and drawne to an attonement, but … I had no fancie to it, for once before I had bin so cousend by his colloging, though … we neuer met face to face … nor could it settle in my conscience to loose so much paines I had tooke in new arraying & furbushing him, or that a publique wrong in Print was to be so sleightly slubberd ouer in priuate.

Nashe had, in fact, already written a reply to Pierces Supererogation, namely, Haue with you to Saffron Walden, and he did not want to lose the money it would bring him. In this most brilliant and rollicking work he gives an account of Harvey's life, from which I have already largely quoted, and which in the main, I believe, does not stray very far from the truth. It appeared in 1596.

Like Dr. McKerrow, I doubt if Harvey made any rejoinder: for I also hold that The Trimming of Thomas Nashe is not his work. In any case, to quote Dr. McKerrow once more: ‘The conclusion of the whole matter is to be found in the order of Whitgift and Bancroft, given on 1 June, 1599, “that all Nasshes bookes and Doctor Harvyes bookes [among others] be taken wheresoeuer they maye be found and that none of theire bookes bee euer printed hereafter.”’³⁰

What is the impression left on one by the controversy?

With regard to Harvey, I am ready to accept his assurances that the controversy was uncongenial to him—it interrupted the course of continued study which he had resolved on. He was drawn into it from a feeling that he would be expected to defend his father, his brothers and himself from an attack which the recent death of his brother John had made very bitter to him. But in such a fray he was out of his element. That he could write powerfully and nobly is seen by his praises of his age and its heroes, and by his most sober and wise treatment of the Marprelate writers; that he could write powerfully, though not nobly, by his biting pages on Dr. Perne. When he turned to such topics he was himself. In dealing with Nashe, having no humour, he had to descend to vituperation, and here he showed that ground of commonness and coarseness which underlay his veneer of gentility. He is still a great scholar and in a sense a great man, but a great man who tries to do something that is beneath his powers and fails hopelessly.

Nashe's hatred of Harvey did not go very deep, I think. To a humourist deep-seated hatred is hardly possible. There was a point in the controversy when he held out his hand to his adversary, and when, as he thought, Harvey played him false. Even after this, in his Haue with you to Saffron Walden, he is ready here and there to put in a charitable word for his opponent. He seems to feel some sense of the pathos of Harvey's life, the high hopes that he had once inspired in a troop of powerful friends, and his present poverty and friendlessness. But Nashe knows that in this sort of warfare he has the advantage, and he fights with a light heart and a rollicking enjoyment of it all. For my part I cannot read him without liking him. He is at bottom a gentleman, licentious it may be (and he acknowledges that Harvey was not licentious) but not foulminded. He does not stoop to notice Harvey's mere abuse, but gives us a delightful picture of the man as a humourist would see him, and utterly exposes those little artifices and falsities to which Harvey's Machiavellian principles and his want of money made him inclined. If Nashe never sinks so low as Harvey, he never rises so high. He has not that width of reading, that philosophical mind, that power of writing, that Harvey can show when he is on his true ground; he is a journalist and humourist of genius, and Harvey no humourist but a thinker and statesman.

This controversy with Nashe over, Gabriel Harvey publishes nothing more. His abstinence is quite in accordance with his frequently expressed dislike of writing—a dislike no doubt increased by his ill-success in crushing Nashe and by the contempt which Nashe had publicly thrown on him, but a dislike which had its roots earlier. He had published nothing for many years before Greene's Quip roused him in 1592.³¹ But if Harvey had ceased to write, his personal ambitions were not yet quite extinguished.³² Dr. Preston, Master of Trinity Hall, died in 1598, and he had not breathed his last when Harvey made one more effort to get the place he had lost in 1585. He had lost it then by the interposition of Royal authority in favour of his rival. He would try to gain it by the same means.

And so on 8 May he addresses Sir Robert Cecil in a letter which is given in full by Grosart³³ and in abstract in the Calendar of Hatfield MSS. issued by the Historical MSS. Commission (viii. 160). I give the abstract, adding a few words here and there from Dr. Grosart's text in brackets.

G. H. to Sir Rob. Cecil, 1598, May 8.

You cannot be ignorant how special favour it pleased as well my lord your father as my lady your mother to vouchsafe me many years since & I must never forget [the report of sum … frends] how much I was beholden to you for some good words uttered of me [whiles you were] in the Low Countries at the time of that weighty treaty with the Prince of Parma. In which respects I am the bolder to petition you in a suit wherein I earnestly solicited your parents some twelve years since, not without pregnant hope of speeding either by [the ordinary course of] election, or their favour, had not the Queen's mandate overruled the case. Dr. Preston, the master of that Hall, is either now dead or past hope of recovery. I should think myself at the last someway happy, if by the only means of my good Lord Treasurer and your good Honour, I might procure the gracious favour that preferred Mr. Preston to that mastership: first by the letter of your predecessor, Mr. Secretary Walsingham, for the stay of the election till her Majesty's pleasure were known, and then by her mandate for the election of Mr. Preston, which course made him master of that college, where otherwise he could no way have [requested, or] purchased one voice: and I then might have gotten it by pluralitie [of voices] [whereof I supposed myself sure]. Now having some years discontinued my place there, and but two of the company left that were fellows then, [and I using no plausible or pleasing means, after the fashion of the world] I know not how far I might prevail with them, the more in respect of some new doctors sojourning there since, much my punies in seniority and never fellows of the college, whereas I was fellow there sum fifteen years after I had been fellow eight years in Pembroke Hall. I can say for myself that I have spent so great part of my age either in reading the best authors extant, as well in Law as in other [emploiable] faculties, or in writing some discourses of private use or public importance. [For in all my studies and exercises, especially since I was Doctor] I had ever an earnest and curious care of sound knowledge, [and esteemed no reading or writing without matter of effectual use in esse] as I hope should soon appear if I were settled in a place of competent maintenance. Some men would have used more plausible [means of insinuation] to my good Lord Treasurer, that have not written half so much in honour of his weighty & rare virtues, as I can impart at your leisure for the perusal of such exercises. But I sought but his honour & fame: as I did in sundry royal cantos (nigh as much in quantity as Ariosto) in celebration of her Majesty's most glorious government, some of them devised many years past at the instance of the excellent knight and my inestimable dear friend Sir Philip Sidney, some since the renowned victory in '88, which, nevertheless, I intended not to publish in the lifetime of the Queen, had not some late provoking occasions enforced [an alteration of my purpose: but in case of mortalitie, or a thousand casualties in foreign travel, I meant to commit them to … sum … frend].

Now, if my good Lord Treasurer or yourself shall not disallow of them, it imports me to bestow a little time in the transcripting and reforming of them, & to publish them, with other tracts and discourses, some in Latin, some in English, some in verse, but much more in prose; some in Humanity, History, Policy, Law, and the soul of the whole body of Law, Reason; some in Mathematics, Cosmography, the Art of Navigation, the Art of War, the true Chymique without imposture (which I learned of Sir Thomas Smith not to contemn) and other effectual practicable knowledge. I speak it not any way to boast. For I can in one year publish more than any Englishman hath hitherto done. But thereof more at fitting opportunity. Now concerning my present petition, if I might obtain a stay of that election and then the Queen's mandate on my behalf, surely I should hold myself to be the most bounden unto your Honour of any scholar in England.

Walden 8 May.

We cannot imagine that Sir Robert Cecil made any reply to this forlorn appeal. Neither Cambridge nor London had any room for Gabriel Harvey; even at Saffron Walden he probably never held any public office. For another thirty-three years he lived on, a disappointed man, in the scenes of his schoolboy triumphs, till at last, on 11 February, 1630-1, the Walden Burial Register enters his name ‘Mr. Doctor Gabriell Harvey.’ He had reached the age of eighty or perhaps eighty-two. His mother had been buried on 14 April, 1613: Richard Harvey had died at Chislehurst early in 1630, still in his last will showing his lifelong devotion to the elder brother.³⁴

In nomine Dei. I Richard Harvei make my will Anno Christi 1625° Augusti mensis 25° die. ffirst I commend my spirit unto thy hands, ô God, Then I yeild my body to Christian buriall.

As for my moveable goods in money, or in bookes, or in householdry, or in lynnen, or in woollen, or any brasse pewter, and such as the catalogue of my bookes and the note of myne other moveables shew, these I bequeath to my brother Gabriell Harvei, and hym only I make mine heyre, with these condicions:—1. That he shall out of my goods aforesaid give to Richard Lyon, thelder son of my sister Alse, the summe of ffivetie pounds to be paide to hym so soon as maie be. 2. He shall give to Gabriell Lyon the younger sonne of my sister Alse the sum of twentie pounds, to be paid hym in like manner. 3. He shall give amonge the sonnes of my sister Marie thirtie pounds, to be paid them equallie so soon as maie be. But if my brother Gabriell Harvey dye before me, my will is that all my moveable goods aforesaid shall be divided among the said sonnes of my said sisters. The sonnes of Alse shall have two parts of them, and the sonnes of Marie shall have the third part, all as equallie as they can be divided. I make my cosen John Gyver, and desire him to be with Phillipp Collins, my brother-in-law, executors of this will. Richard Harvei, my seale. Witnesses to the will: John Ellis the elder, John Ellis the younger.

Vera copia Teste me Gabriele Lyon No^rio pub^co35

How had Gabriel Harvey spent those long last years? Our only direct evidence is the following note by Thomas Baker:³⁶ ‘I have seen an elegy on Dr. Harvey of Safron Walden composed by William Pearson dated an: 1630. By that it would seem he practised physic and was a pretender to astrology.’ This account is corroborated by Harvey's marginalia, which seem to show an increasing interest in the study of medicine, and in physical speculations and experiments. We know of few books purchased by Harvey in those last years: the two last on our list show, however, the persistence of his love for his old favourites in literature, Speght's Chaucer, 1598, and Sidney's Arcadia, 1613. He probably had some little property at Walden,³⁷ and eked out a living by amateur doctoring among his poorer neighbours: but spent most of his time over his books, unless some visitor came to whom he could pour forth his recollections of the friends of his youth, Leicester and Sidney, and Spenser.³⁸

It is a strange conclusion to the life of the brilliant young Humanist who aspired to be a great statesman, but was only a dreamer of great dreams, if dreams can be called great, which have no other definite object than the attainment of personal mastery. We may feel that we cannot appraise with exactitude the character of any man who lived 300 years ago. Yet I think we may also feel in Harvey's case that, whatever he was, the common view of him has been a very wrong one. He was not a pedant, who saw nothing good outside the classical writers of Greece and Rome; he was not a Puritan, nor inclined to Puritanism, except so far as the Puritan was a philosophical critic of the shortcomings of existing institutions; and however we may regret his posthumous attacks on Greene and Perne, we shall refuse to admit that so devoted a son and brother, so beloved a friend of Spenser, was a man of exceptionally bad heart.

Notes

1. Note in the Variorum Shakespeare (1811 and 1821) before Hamlet. Harvey's copy of Speght's Chaucer has been supposed to have perished in the fire which destroyed Bishop Percy's library. Mrs. Stopes, however, assures me that it exists, and that an account of its contents will shortly be published.

2. Globe Spenser, [Complete Works of Edmund Spenser, ed. R. Morris. The Globe Edition. London, 1869], p. xxxviii.

3. ‘And one will we coniure vp, that writing a familiar Epistle about the naturall causes of an Earthquake, fell into the bowells of libelling, which made his eares quake for feare of clipping.’ (The Complete Works of John Lyly, ed. R. Warwick Bond, Oxford, 1902, iii. 400.) He calls Harvey the son of a ship-wright or a Tiburnian wright.

4. Had Harvey by this time abandoned his crusade in favour of classical metres in English? It would seem so from the tone of contempt with which he says, ‘I long sithence founde by experience, how Dranting of Verses, and Euphuing of sentences did edifie.’ (Works, ii. p. 131.)

5. Richard Harvey was ordained Deacon and Priest by Richard Howland, Bishop of Peterborough, on 12 December, 1585, and was collated to the Rectory of Chislehurst, Kent, on 1 October, 1586, by Bishop Young, of Rochester, the late master of Pembroke Hall, who was patron of the living. He compounded for first fruits on 4 October. Perhaps he did not go to reside at Chislehurst at once, as he was not licensed to preach till 18 September, 1587. Even then there appears to have been something irregular about his position, as on 6 December, 1596, according to the Register of the Bishop of Rochester, he was again collated to the rectory, and on the 10th again compounded for first fruits. Nashe (1595) accuses him of incontinency, and says he ‘lost his Benefice and his Wench both at once, his Benefice for want of sufficiencie, and his Wench for want of a Benefice.’ (Works, iii. 85.) We hear that he transcribed the earlier parish registers. (History of Chislehurst by E. A. Webb, &c., 1899, p. 65.) He must have died before 10 June, 1630, when his successor, Richard Chace, was instituted.

   A Richard Harvey was collated to the Rectory of Woldeham (near Rochester) on 23 July, 1596, but only held it for three months, as his successor, W. Nicholson, was collated on 4 November. Similarly a Richard Harvey was collated to the rectory of Maplescombe on 29 November, 1610. Whether either of these was the Rector of Chislehurst is not clear.

6. One of the Judges of the Queen's Bench, 3 February, 1578, died 20 May, 1585. His estate of Wendon Lofts passed to his son, Sir Thomas, b. 1558, d. 1617.

7. He dates a dedication to Sir Chr. Hatton in his book A Discoursive Probleme Concerning Prophesies (1588), ‘At Kingslynn … this xx of August, 1587.’

8. The Works of Gabriel Harvey, D.C.L., ed. A. B. Grosart, London, 1884-5, i. 188.

9. Chancery Proceedings, 2nd Series (1579-1621), 241, No. 63 (Record Office).

10. Christopher Wivell was admitted to the fellowship which ‘Gabriel Havry’ [sic] ‘nuper habuit’ on 22 January, 1591-2. (Note from Mr. H. E. Malden).

11. The passage was cancelled in later copies of the Quip and is now lost.

12. Foure Letters and Certaine Sonnets especially touching Robert Greene, and other parties, by him abused, 1592.

13. Harvey's Works, i. 201.

14. ibid. i. 205-6.

15. ibid. i. 215.

16. ibid. i. 217.

17. ibid. i. 218.

18. ibid. i. 234.

19. ibid. i. 235.

20. Works (Grosart), ii. 33.

21. ibid. ii. 53.

22. ibid. ii. 83.

23. Christopher Bird, of Saffron Walden, a letter from whom precedes Harvey's Foure Letters. He was married to Mrs. Mary Gale, 28 May, 1578; and buried 25 Oct., 1603 (S. Walden Registers).

24. ibid. ii. 95.

25. ibid. ii. 289.

26. Hester's prospectus of his wares with Gabriel Harvey's lineations and signature is preserved in the British Museum.

27. Works (Grosart), i. 265.

28. iii. 93-97.

29. According to Nashe (iii. 88), Harvey, when a Fellow of the College, had never been able to pay his Commons. After he ceased to be a Fellow, he told his friends that he had still an ‘out-brothership’ which brought him in 10s. a year, and his library, worth £200, remained in the College. One wonders if he ever removed it to Saffron Walden. Nashe's account of Harvey's usual impecuniosity is curiously illustrated by the Account Books of Pembroke College, which the Bursar, Mr. H. G. Comber, kindly allowed me to inspect. When Harvey left Pembroke in 1578, the following sums were debited to him in the college accounts ‘pro arreragijs in Anno 1576 xl^s—for two peny messes taken downe in Mr. Harvey's yeare l^s.’ This debt of 90s. continued to be entered in the college accounts till the year 1638, when Harvey had been dead seven years.

30. Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers, ed. E. Arber (London, 1875-94), iii. 677.

31. Cf. the opening of the third of his Foure Letters: ‘Albeit for these twelue, or thirteene yeares,’ etc. (Works, i. 176).

32. In 1595, William Covell, the author of Polimanteia, speaks of Harvey as living ‘without preferment,’ and ‘to learnings iniurie unregarded.’ (The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. R. B. McKerrow, London, 1910, v. 10.)

33. Harvey's Works, iii. xxv.

34. The text of the will which I give follows the original copy preserved at Somerset House (Register of the Consistory Court of Rochester, book xxi. f. 454). It is given not quite accurately in Webb's History of Chisleburst, p. 406.

35. With the copy of the will at Somerset House some other papers are preserved. The first is only to be read in part. It shows that the two executors named in the will, John Gyver and Philip Collyn (who sign this document), renounced the execution of it and desired that administration should be granted to ‘Gabriel Harvey doctor of the lawes.’ The paper is dated ‘10th daie of June 1630’, and is witnessed by John Ayer and Richard Lyon.

    The second document is dated ‘xi Junij 1630’, and shows that Mr. Wyan, as proctor for Gabriel Harvey, appeared before the Bishop of Rochester's Chancellor, Dr. Edmund Pope, and, as the executors named in Richard's will had renounced execution, begged that administration should be granted to Gabriel Harvey.

    Gabriel himself died, as we have seen, in the following February, apparently before he had completed the administration of his brother's estate or made a will of his own. (I have searched at Somerset House for a will or letters of administration but without success.)

    Accordingly on 20 April, 1631, administration of Richard's goods ‘de bonis non admin. per Gabrielem Harvey etiam defunctum’ was granted to Alice Lyon, natural sister of the deceased.

36. Baker MSS., Cambridge University Library, xxxvi. 107. The elegy mentioned is now lost.

37. Nashe says that he spoke of ‘rents’ coming in even before his father's death (Works, iii. 91).

38. Mr. Mackail has suggested to me that Milton on one of his journeys to or from Cambridge may have stopped at Saffron Walden to hear tales of Spenser from the lips of ‘Hobbinol’.