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Gabriel Harvey

January 01, 1970

Gabriel Harvey (c. 1552/3 – 1631) was an English writer. Harvey was a notable scholar, whose reputation suffered from his quarrel with Thomas Nashe. Henry Morley, writing in the Fortnightly Review (March 1869), has argued that Harvey's Latin works demonstrate that he was distinguished by qualities very different from the pedantry and conceit usually associated with his name.

This contemporary woodcut from Nashe's Have with You to Saffron-Walden depicts Gabriel Harvey "ready to let fly upon Ajax", a play on the name of the Greek warrior Ajax and the word 'jakes' (toilet).

Family edit

Gabriel Harvey was the eldest son of John Harvey (d.1593), a yeoman farmer and master ropemaker from Saffron Walden, Essex, and his wife, Alice (d.1613). He had two younger brothers, Richard and John (d. July 1592), and a sister, Mercy.[1]

Education edit

Harvey received his early education at the town's grammar school, and matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1566. In 1570 he was elected fellow of Pembroke Hall.[2] Here he formed a friendship with Edmund Spenser, who may[3] have been his pupil.

Promotion of hexameter verse edit

Harvey wished to be "epitaphed as the Inventour of the English Hexameter," and was a prime mover in a literary clique known as the Areopagus which attempted to impose the Latin rules of quantity on English verse. In a letter to "M. Immerito" (Edmund Spenser) Harvey says that Edward Dyer and Philip Sidney were helping forward "our new famous enterprise for the exchanging of Barbarous and Balductum Rymes with Artificial Verses." The letter includes a tepid appreciation of Spenser's Faerie Queene which had been sent to him for his opinion, and he gives examples of English hexameters illustrative of the principles enunciated in the correspondence. The opening lines--"What might I call this Tree? A Laurell? O bonny Laurell Needes to thy bowes will I bow this knee, and vayle my bonetto"—afford a fair sample of the success of Harvey's metrical experiments, which were an easy mark for the wit of Thomas Nashe. "He (Harvey) goes twitching and hopping in our language like a man running upon quagmires, up the hill in one syllable, and down the dale in another," says Nashe in Strange Newes, and he mimics him in the mocking couplet:

"But ah ! what news do you hear of that good Gabriel Huff-Snuff,
Known to the world for a fool, and clapped in the Fleet for a rhymer?"

Harvey influenced Spenser greatly for a short time, and the friendship lasted. Harvey is the "Hobbinoll" of his friend's The Shepheardes Calender, and into his mouth is put the beautiful song in the fourth eclogue in praise of Eliza. If he was really the author of the verses "To the Learned Shepheard," signed "Hobynoll" and prefixed to the Faerie Queene, he was a good poet spoiled. Harvey's genuine friendship for Spenser shows the best side of his character, which appeared uncompromising and quarrelsome to the world in general. In 1573 the bad feeling against him in his college was so strong that there was a delay of three months before the fellows would agree to grant him the necessary grace for his MA degree.

Career edit

He became reader in rhetoric in about 1576, and in 1578, on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Sir Thomas Smith at Audley End House, he was appointed to dispute publicly before her. In the next year he wrote to Spenser complaining of the unauthorized publication of satirical verses of his which were supposed to reflect on high personages, and threatened seriously to injure his career. In 1583 he became junior proctor of Cambridge University, and in 1585 was elected master of Trinity Hall, of which he had been a fellow from 1578, but the appointment appears to have been quashed at court. He was a protégé of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, to whom he introduced Spenser, and this connection may account for his friendship with Sidney. But in spite of patronage, a second application for the mastership of Trinity Hall failed in 1598.

In 1585 he received the degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford, and is found practising at the bar in London. Gabriel's brother, Richard Harvey, had taken part in the Martin Marprelate controversy, and had given offence to Robert Greene by contemptuous references to him and his fellow wits. Greene retorted by inserting a few lines in the first edition of his A Quip for an Upstart Courtier containing scathing remarks on the four Harvey brothers, drawing attention, among other things, to the fact that they were the sons of a ropemaker.[4][5] In 1599 Archbishop Whitgift made a raid on contemporary satire in general, and among other books the tracts of Harvey and Nashe were destroyed, and it was forbidden to reprint them. Harvey spent the last years of his life in retirement in Saffron Walden, dying there on 7 February 1631.

The Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey, AD, 1573–80 (1884, ed. E J L Scott, Camden Society), contains rough drafts of the correspondence between Spenser and Harvey, letters relative to the disputes at Pembroke Hall, and an extraordinary correspondence dealing with the pursuit of his sister Mercy by a young nobleman. A copy of Quintilian (1542), in the British Museum, is extensively annotated by Harvey.

Harvey was also a wordsmith and has been credited with the coining or first use of the word "jovial" (derived from the Latin for "pertaining to Jove or Jupiter"), circa 1590, as well as the words "conscious", "extensively", "idiom", "notoriety" and "rascality". This claim is supported by the criticism of rival Thomas Nashe, in which Nashe cites Harvey as the creator of the words, announces his dislike of Harvey's words, and then predicts Mr. Harvey's words will not stand the test of time. Etymologist Robert Hendrickson also cites Harvey's hand in creating these words in his book The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins.

Feud with Nashe edit

After Robert Greene's death Harvey published Foure Letters and certaine Sonnets (1592), in which he revealed the miserable details of Greene's later years. Nashe settled his personal score with the Harveys, in Strange Newes (1593). Harvey rebutted the personal charges made by Nashe in Pierce's supererogation, or a New Prayse of the Old Asse (1593). In a religious work, Christs Teares over Jerusalem (1593) Nashe made a full apology to Harvey, who however resumed the controversy in a New Letter of Notable Contents (1593). Harvey probably had not seen Nashe's apology in print when he wrote the New Letter of Notable Contents, but he knew something along those lines was rumoured. He refused to take reports of Nashe's change of heart at face value until he had the proof in black and white:

"Till a public injury be publicly confessed, and print confuted in print, I am one of St. Thomas' disciples, not over prest to believe..."

This certainly sounds as if Harvey had simply not seen a copy of Christs Teares at the time of writing New Letter. Nashe dramatically withdrew his apology in a new edition (1595) of Christes Teares. Harvey, he claimed, had hinted at wanting a reconciliation so that Nashe would make a public apology, and as soon as he did so he was made to look a fool for his pains:

"Impious Gabriel Harvey, the vowed enemy to all vows and protestations, plucking on with a private slavish submission a general public reconciliation, hath with a cunning ambuscado of confiscated idle oaths, welnear betrayed me to infamy eternal (his own proper chair of torment in hell). I can say no more but the devil and he be no men of their words."

It was nearly two years before Nashe replied to New Letter. When hearing that Harvey had boasted of victory, he produced the most biting satire of the series in Have with You to Saffron-Walden (1596). Harvey never responded. Later Richard Lichfield of Cambridge attacked Nashe in The Trimming of Thomas Nashe Gentleman (1597). He signed his work "by the high-titled patron Don Richardo de Medico campo", a play on his name (i.e. "leech-field"). This work was formerly attributed to Harvey.

Editions and commentary edit

His complete works were edited by Grosart with a Memorial Introduction for the Huth Library (1884–1885). See also Isaac Disraeli, on "Literary Ridicule," in Calamities of Authors (ed. 1840); Thomas Warton's History of English Poetry (ed. William Hazlitt, 1871); John Payne Collier's Bibliographical and Critical Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language (1865), and the Works of Thomas Nashe. There is a modern edition of Harvey's pamphlets with Thomas Nashe prepared as a PhD thesis by Peter Brynmor Roberts at the University of Cardiff (2010). A number of Harvey's annotated books have been digitised as part of the 'Archaeology of Reading in Early Modern Europe' project.[6]

Latin works edit

  • Ciceronianus (1577)
  • Gabrielis Harveii rhetor, vel duorum dierum oratio de natura, arte et exercitatione rhetorica (1577)
  • Smithus, vel Musarum lachrymae (1578), in honour of Sir Thomas Smith
  • Gabrielis Harveii gratulationum Valdensium libri quatuor, written on the occasion of the queen's visit to Audley End (1578)

Notes edit

  1. ^ Scott-Warren 2004.
  2. ^ ACAD & HRVY566G.
  3. ^ C.H. Cooper. Athena cantabrigienses ii. 258
  4. ^ McKerrow II 1958, pp. 77–8.
  5. ^ These remarks were cancelled in a version of the Quip which appeared shortly after the first version was published, and at the time McKerrow published his edition of Nashe's works, no copy of the first version containing the remarks on the Harveys was then known to exist. A copy containing the original remarks on the Harveys came to light in 1919, and is now at the Huntington Library (see McKerrow, vol. V, p. 77, and Supplement, in the same volume, pp. 73–4).
  6. ^ "Archaeology of Reading Viewer".

References edit

  • "Harvey, Gabriel (HRVY566G)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  • McKerrow, Ronald B. (1958). The Works of Thomas Nashe. Vol. IV. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. pp. 151–3.
  • McKerrow, Ronald B. (1958). The Works of Thomas Nashe. Vol. V. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. pp. 81–2, 87.
  • Newcomb, L.H. (2004). "Greene, Robert (bap. 1558, d. 1592)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11418. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) The first edition of this text is available at Wikisource: "Greene, Robert (1560?-1592)" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  • Scott-Warren, Jason (2004). "Harvey, Gabriel (1552/3–1631)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/12517. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)The first edition of this text is available at Wikisource: "Harvey, Gabriel" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
Attribution

Further reading edit

  • Chandler, Robert M. (1978). Gabriel Harvey's Rhetor: A Translation and Critical Edition (Thesis). University of Missouri.
  • Forbes, Clarence A. (1945). Gabriel Harvey's Ciceronianus. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
  • Prewitt, Kendrick (2003). "Gabriel Harvey". The Dictionary of Literary Biography. British Rhetoricians and Logicians, 1500–1660, Second Series. Vol. 281. Detroit: Gal. pp. 118–129.
  • Stern, Virginia F. (1979). Gabriel Harvey: His Life, Marginalia, and Library. Oxford: Clarendon.

External links edit

January 01, 1970
gabriel, harvey, 1552, 1631, english, writer, harvey, notable, scholar, whose, reputation, suffered, from, quarrel, with, thomas, nashe, henry, morley, writing, fortnightly, review, march, 1869, argued, that, harvey, latin, works, demonstrate, that, distinguis. Gabriel Harvey c 1552 3 1631 was an English writer Harvey was a notable scholar whose reputation suffered from his quarrel with Thomas Nashe Henry Morley writing in the Fortnightly Review March 1869 has argued that Harvey s Latin works demonstrate that he was distinguished by qualities very different from the pedantry and conceit usually associated with his name This contemporary woodcut from Nashe s Have with You to Saffron Walden depicts Gabriel Harvey ready to let fly upon Ajax a play on the name of the Greek warrior Ajax and the word jakes toilet Contents 1 Family 2 Education 3 Promotion of hexameter verse 4 Career 5 Feud with Nashe 6 Editions and commentary 7 Latin works 8 Notes 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External linksFamily editGabriel Harvey was the eldest son of John Harvey d 1593 a yeoman farmer and master ropemaker from Saffron Walden Essex and his wife Alice d 1613 He had two younger brothers Richard and John d July 1592 and a sister Mercy 1 Education editHarvey received his early education at the town s grammar school and matriculated at Christ s College Cambridge in 1566 In 1570 he was elected fellow of Pembroke Hall 2 Here he formed a friendship with Edmund Spenser who may 3 have been his pupil Promotion of hexameter verse editHarvey wished to be epitaphed as the Inventour of the English Hexameter and was a prime mover in a literary clique known as the Areopagus which attempted to impose the Latin rules of quantity on English verse In a letter to M Immerito Edmund Spenser Harvey says that Edward Dyer and Philip Sidney were helping forward our new famous enterprise for the exchanging of Barbarous and Balductum Rymes with Artificial Verses The letter includes a tepid appreciation of Spenser s Faerie Queene which had been sent to him for his opinion and he gives examples of English hexameters illustrative of the principles enunciated in the correspondence The opening lines What might I call this Tree A Laurell O bonny Laurell Needes to thy bowes will I bow this knee and vayle my bonetto afford a fair sample of the success of Harvey s metrical experiments which were an easy mark for the wit of Thomas Nashe He Harvey goes twitching and hopping in our language like a man running upon quagmires up the hill in one syllable and down the dale in another says Nashe in Strange Newes and he mimics him in the mocking couplet But ah what news do you hear of that good Gabriel Huff Snuff Known to the world for a fool and clapped in the Fleet for a rhymer Harvey influenced Spenser greatly for a short time and the friendship lasted Harvey is the Hobbinoll of his friend s The Shepheardes Calender and into his mouth is put the beautiful song in the fourth eclogue in praise of Eliza If he was really the author of the verses To the Learned Shepheard signed Hobynoll and prefixed to the Faerie Queene he was a good poet spoiled Harvey s genuine friendship for Spenser shows the best side of his character which appeared uncompromising and quarrelsome to the world in general In 1573 the bad feeling against him in his college was so strong that there was a delay of three months before the fellows would agree to grant him the necessary grace for his MA degree Career editHe became reader in rhetoric in about 1576 and in 1578 on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth s visit to Sir Thomas Smith at Audley End House he was appointed to dispute publicly before her In the next year he wrote to Spenser complaining of the unauthorized publication of satirical verses of his which were supposed to reflect on high personages and threatened seriously to injure his career In 1583 he became junior proctor of Cambridge University and in 1585 was elected master of Trinity Hall of which he had been a fellow from 1578 but the appointment appears to have been quashed at court He was a protege of Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester to whom he introduced Spenser and this connection may account for his friendship with Sidney But in spite of patronage a second application for the mastership of Trinity Hall failed in 1598 In 1585 he received the degree of D C L from the University of Oxford and is found practising at the bar in London Gabriel s brother Richard Harvey had taken part in the Martin Marprelate controversy and had given offence to Robert Greene by contemptuous references to him and his fellow wits Greene retorted by inserting a few lines in the first edition of his A Quip for an Upstart Courtier containing scathing remarks on the four Harvey brothers drawing attention among other things to the fact that they were the sons of a ropemaker 4 5 In 1599 Archbishop Whitgift made a raid on contemporary satire in general and among other books the tracts of Harvey and Nashe were destroyed and it was forbidden to reprint them Harvey spent the last years of his life in retirement in Saffron Walden dying there on 7 February 1631 The Letter Book of Gabriel Harvey AD 1573 80 1884 ed E J L Scott Camden Society contains rough drafts of the correspondence between Spenser and Harvey letters relative to the disputes at Pembroke Hall and an extraordinary correspondence dealing with the pursuit of his sister Mercy by a young nobleman A copy of Quintilian 1542 in the British Museum is extensively annotated by Harvey Harvey was also a wordsmith and has been credited with the coining or first use of the word jovial derived from the Latin for pertaining to Jove or Jupiter circa 1590 as well as the words conscious extensively idiom notoriety and rascality This claim is supported by the criticism of rival Thomas Nashe in which Nashe cites Harvey as the creator of the words announces his dislike of Harvey s words and then predicts Mr Harvey s words will not stand the test of time Etymologist Robert Hendrickson also cites Harvey s hand in creating these words in his book The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins Feud with Nashe editAfter Robert Greene s death Harvey published Foure Letters and certaine Sonnets 1592 in which he revealed the miserable details of Greene s later years Nashe settled his personal score with the Harveys in Strange Newes 1593 Harvey rebutted the personal charges made by Nashe in Pierce s supererogation or a New Prayse of the Old Asse 1593 In a religious work Christs Teares over Jerusalem 1593 Nashe made a full apology to Harvey who however resumed the controversy in a New Letter of Notable Contents 1593 Harvey probably had not seen Nashe s apology in print when he wrote the New Letter of Notable Contents but he knew something along those lines was rumoured He refused to take reports of Nashe s change of heart at face value until he had the proof in black and white Till a public injury be publicly confessed and print confuted in print I am one of St Thomas disciples not over prest to believe This certainly sounds as if Harvey had simply not seen a copy of Christs Teares at the time of writing New Letter Nashe dramatically withdrew his apology in a new edition 1595 of Christes Teares Harvey he claimed had hinted at wanting a reconciliation so that Nashe would make a public apology and as soon as he did so he was made to look a fool for his pains Impious Gabriel Harvey the vowed enemy to all vows and protestations plucking on with a private slavish submission a general public reconciliation hath with a cunning ambuscado of confiscated idle oaths welnear betrayed me to infamy eternal his own proper chair of torment in hell I can say no more but the devil and he be no men of their words It was nearly two years before Nashe replied to New Letter When hearing that Harvey had boasted of victory he produced the most biting satire of the series in Have with You to Saffron Walden 1596 Harvey never responded Later Richard Lichfield of Cambridge attacked Nashe in The Trimming of Thomas Nashe Gentleman 1597 He signed his work by the high titled patron Don Richardo de Medico campo a play on his name i e leech field This work was formerly attributed to Harvey Editions and commentary editHis complete works were edited by Grosart with a Memorial Introduction for the Huth Library 1884 1885 See also Isaac Disraeli on Literary Ridicule in Calamities of Authors ed 1840 Thomas Warton s History of English Poetry ed William Hazlitt 1871 John Payne Collier s Bibliographical and Critical Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language 1865 and the Works of Thomas Nashe There is a modern edition of Harvey s pamphlets with Thomas Nashe prepared as a PhD thesis by Peter Brynmor Roberts at the University of Cardiff 2010 A number of Harvey s annotated books have been digitised as part of the Archaeology of Reading in Early Modern Europe project 6 Latin works editCiceronianus 1577 Gabrielis Harveii rhetor vel duorum dierum oratio de natura arte et exercitatione rhetorica 1577 Smithus vel Musarum lachrymae 1578 in honour of Sir Thomas Smith Gabrielis Harveii gratulationum Valdensium libri quatuor written on the occasion of the queen s visit to Audley End 1578 Notes edit Scott Warren 2004 ACAD amp HRVY566G C H Cooper Athena cantabrigienses ii 258 McKerrow II 1958 pp 77 8 These remarks were cancelled in a version of the Quip which appeared shortly after the first version was published and at the time McKerrow published his edition of Nashe s works no copy of the first version containing the remarks on the Harveys was then known to exist A copy containing the original remarks on the Harveys came to light in 1919 and is now at the Huntington Library see McKerrow vol V p 77 and Supplement in the same volume pp 73 4 Archaeology of Reading Viewer References edit Harvey Gabriel HRVY566G A Cambridge Alumni Database University of Cambridge McKerrow Ronald B 1958 The Works of Thomas Nashe Vol IV Oxford Basil Blackwell pp 151 3 McKerrow Ronald B 1958 The Works of Thomas Nashe Vol V Oxford Basil Blackwell pp 81 2 87 Newcomb L H 2004 Greene Robert bap 1558 d 1592 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 11418 Subscription or UK public library membership required The first edition of this text is available at Wikisource Greene Robert 1560 1592 Dictionary of National Biography London Smith Elder amp Co 1885 1900 Scott Warren Jason 2004 Harvey Gabriel 1552 3 1631 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 12517 Subscription or UK public library membership required The first edition of this text is available at Wikisource Harvey Gabriel Dictionary of National Biography London Smith Elder amp Co 1885 1900 Attribution nbsp This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain Chisholm Hugh ed 1911 Harvey Gabriel Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 13 11th ed Cambridge University Press pp 41 42 Further reading editChandler Robert M 1978 Gabriel Harvey s Rhetor A Translation and Critical Edition Thesis University of Missouri Forbes Clarence A 1945 Gabriel Harvey s Ciceronianus Lincoln University of Nebraska Press Prewitt Kendrick 2003 Gabriel Harvey The Dictionary of Literary Biography British Rhetoricians and Logicians 1500 1660 Second Series Vol 281 Detroit Gal pp 118 129 Stern Virginia F 1979 Gabriel Harvey His Life Marginalia and Library Oxford Clarendon External links edit Harvey Gabriel Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol XI 9th ed 1880 p 501 Archival material relating to Gabriel Harvey UK National Archives nbsp Portraits of Gabriel Harvey at the National Portrait Gallery London nbsp Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Gabriel Harvey amp oldid 1167222572, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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