Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 14

"To a bead-roll of learned men and lords, he appeals, whether he be an a.s.se or no?"

Harvey had said, "Thomas Nash, from the top of his wit looking down upon simple creatures, calleth Gabriel Harvey a dunce, a foole, an ideot, a dolt, a goose cap, an a.s.se, and so forth; for some of the residue is not to be spoken but with his owne mannerly mouth; but he should have shewed particularlie which wordes in my letters were the wordes of a dunce; which sentences the sentences of a foole; which arguments the arguments of an ideot; which opinions the opinions of a dolt; which judgments the judgments of a goose-cap; which conclusions the conclusions of an a.s.se."[94]

Thus Harvey reasons, till he becomes unreasonable; one would have imagined that the literary satires of our English Lucian had been voluminous enough, without the mathematical demonstration. The banterers seem to have put poor Harvey nearly out of his wits; he and his friends felt their blows too profoundly; they were much too thin-skinned, and the solemn air of Harvey in his graver moments at their menaces is extremely ludicrous. They frequently called him _Gabrielissime Gabriel_, which quintessence of himself seems to have mightily affected him. They threatened to confute his letters till eternity--which seems to have put him in despair. The following pa.s.sage, descriptive of Gabriel's distresses, may excite a smile.

"This grand confuter of my letters says, 'Gabriel, if there be any wit or industrie in thee, now I will dare it to the vttermost; write of what thou wilt, in what language thou wilt, and I will confute it, and answere it. Take Truth's part, and I will proouve truth to be no truth, marching ovt of thy dung-voiding mouth.' He will never leave me as long as he is able to lift a pen, _ad infinitum_; if I reply, he has a rejoinder; and for my brief _triplication_, he is prouided with a _quadruplication_, and so he mangles my sentences, hacks my arguments, wrenches my words, chops and changes my phrases, even to the disjoyning and dislocation of my whole meaning."

Poor Harvey! he knew not that there was _nothing real_ in ridicule, _no end_ to its merry malice!

Harvey's taste for hexameter verses, which he so unnaturally forced into our language, is admirably ridiculed. Harvey had shown his taste for these metres by a variety of poems, to whose subjects Nash thus sarcastically alludes:--

"It had grown with him into such a dictionary custom, that no may-pole in the street, no wether-c.o.c.ke on anie church-steeple, no arbour, no lawrell, no yewe-tree, he would ouerskip, without hayling in this manner. After supper, if he chancst to play at cards with a queen of harts in his hands, he would run upon men's and women's hearts all the night."

And he happily introduces here one of the miserable hexameter conceits of Harvey--

Stout hart and sweet hart, yet stoutest hart to be stooped.

Harvey's "Encomium Lauri" thus ridiculously commences,

What might I call this tree? A lawrell? O bonny lawrell, Needes to thy bowes will I bow this knee, and vayle my bonetto;

which Nash most happily burlesques by describing Harvey under a yew-tree at Trinity-hall, composing verses on the weatherc.o.c.k of Allhallows in Cambridge:--

O thou wether-c.o.c.ke that stands on the top of Allhallows, Come thy wales down, if thou darst, for thy crowne, and take the wall on us.

"The hexameter verse (says Nash) I graunt to be a gentleman of an auncient house (so is many an English beggar), yet this clyme of our's hee cannot thrive in; our speech is too craggy for him to set his plough in; hee goes twitching and hopping in our language, like a man running vpon quagmires, vp the hill in one syllable and down the dale in another, retaining no part of that stately smooth gate which he vaunts himself with amongst the Greeks and Latins."

The most humorous part in this Scribleriad, is a ludicrous narrative of Harvey's expedition to the metropolis, for the sole purpose of writing his "Pierce Supererogation," pitted against Nash's "Pierce's Pennilesse." The facetious Nash describes the torpor and pertinacity of his genius, by telling us he had kept Harvey at work--

"For seaven and thirtie weekes s.p.a.ce while he lay at his printer's, Wolfe, never stirring out of doors, or being churched all that while--and that in the deadest season that might bee, hee lying in the ragingest furie of the last plague where there dyde above 1600 a weeke in London, ink-squittring and saracenically printing against mee.

Three quarters of a year thus immured hee remained, with his spirits yearning empa.s.sionment, and agonised fury, thirst of revenge, neglecting soul and bodies health to compa.s.se it--sweating and dealing upon it most intentively."[95]

The narrative proceeds with the many perils which Harvey's printer encountered, by expense of diet, and printing for this bright genius and his friends, whose works "would rust and iron-spot paper to have their names breathed over it;" and that Wolfe designed "to get a privilege betimes, forbidding of all others to sell waste-paper but himselfe." The climax of the narrative, after many misfortunes, ends with Harvey being arrested by the printer, and confined to Newgate, where his sword is taken from him, to his perpetual disgrace. So much did Gabriel endure for having written a book against Tom Nas.h.!.+

But Harvey might deny some of these ludicrous facts.--Will he deny?

cries Nash--and here he has woven every tale the most watchful malice could collect, varnished for their full effect. Then he adds,

"You see I have brought the doctor out of request at court; and it shall cost me a fall, but I will get him howted out of the Vniuersitie too, ere I giue him ouer." He tells us Harvey was brought on the stage at Trinity-college, in "the exquisite comedie of Pedantius," where, under "the finical fine schoolmaster, the just manner of his phrase, they stufft his mouth with; and the whole buffianisme throughout his bookes, they bolstered out his part with--euen to the carrying of his gowne, his nice gate in his pantofles, or the affected accent of his speech--Let him deny that there was a shewe made at Clarehall of him and his brothers, called Tarrarantantara turba tumultuosa Trigonum Tri-Harveyorum Tri-harmonia; and another shewe of the little minnow his brother, at Peter-house, called Duns furens, d.i.c.k Harvey in a frensie." The sequel is thus told:--"Whereupon d.i.c.k came and broke the college gla.s.s windows, and Dr. Perne caused him to be set in the stockes till the shewe was ended."

This "Duns furens, d.i.c.k Harvey in a frensie," was not only the brother of one who ranked high in society and literature, but himself a learned professor. Nash brings him down to "Pigmey d.i.c.k, that lookes like a pound of goldsmith's candles, who had like to commit folly last year with a milk-maid, as a friend of his very soberly informed me.

Little and little-wittied d.i.c.k, that hath vowed to live and die in defence of Brutus and his Trojans."[96] An Herculean feat of this "Duns furens," Nash tells us, was his setting Aristotle with his heels upwards on the school-gates at Cambridge, and putting a.s.s's ears on his head, which Tom here records in _perpetuam rei memoriam_. But Wood, our grave and keen literary antiquary, observes--

"To let pa.s.s other matters these vain men (the wits) report of Richard Harvey, his works show him quite another person than what they make him to be."

Nash then forms a ludicrous contrast between "witless Gabriel and ruffling Richard." The astronomer Richard was continually baiting the great bear in the firmament, and in his lectures set up atheistical questions, which Nash maliciously adds, "as I am afraid the earth would swallow me if I should but rehea.r.s.e." And at his close, Nash bitterly regrets he has no more room; "else I should make Gabriel a fugitive out of England, being the rauenousest slouen that ever lapt porridge in n.o.blemen's houses, where he has had already, out of two, his mittimus of Ye may be gone! for he was a sower of seditious paradoxes amongst kitchen-boys." Nash seems to have considered himself as terrible as an Archilochus, whose satires were so fatal as to induce the satirised, after having read them, to hang themselves.

How ill poor Harvey pa.s.sed through these wit-duels, and how profoundly the wounds inflicted on him and his brothers were felt, appears by his own confessions. In his "Foure Letters," after some curious observations on invectives and satires, from those of Archilochus, Lucian, and Aretine, to Skelton and Scoggin, and "the whole venomous and viperous brood of old and new raylers," he proceeds to blame even his beloved friend the gentle Spenser, for the severity of his "Mother Hubbard's Tale," a satire on the court. "I must needes say, Mother Hubbard in heat of choller, forgetting the pure sanguine of her Sweete Feary Queene, artfully ouershott her malcontent-selfe; as elsewhere I have specified at large, with the good leaue of vnspotted friends.h.i.+p.--Sall.u.s.t and Clodius learned of Tully to frame artificiall declamations and patheticall invectives against Tully himselfe; if Mother Hubbard, in the vaine of Chawcer, happen to tel one canicular tale, father Elderton and his son Greene, in the vaine of Skelton or Scoggin, will counterfeit an hundred dogged fables, libles, slaunders, lies, for the whetstone. But many will sooner lose their liues than the least jott of their reputation. What mortal feudes, what cruel bloodshed, what terrible slaughterdome have been committed for the point of honour and some few courtly ceremonies."

The incidents so plentifully narrated in this Lucianic biography, the very nature of this species of satire throws into doubt; yet they still seem shadowed out from some truths; but the truths who can unravel from the fictions? And thus a narrative is consigned to posterity which involves ill.u.s.trious characters in an inextricable network of calumny and genius.

Writers of this cla.s.s alienate themselves from human kind, they break the golden bond which holds them to society; and they live among us like a polished banditti. In these copious extracts, I have not noticed the more criminal insinuations against the Harveys; I have left the grosser slanders untouched. My object has been only to trace the effects of ridicule, and to detect its artifices, by which the most dignified characters may be deeply injured at the pleasure of a Ridiculer. The wild mirth of ridicule, aggravating and taunting real imperfections, and fastening imaginary ones on the victim in idle sport or ill-humour, strikes at the most brittle thing in the world, a man's good reputation, for delicate matters which are not under the protection of the law, but in which so much of personal happiness is concerned.

FOOTNOTES:

[80] Of AKENSIDE few particulars have been recorded, for the friend who best knew him was of so cold a temper with regard to public opinion, that he has not, in his account, revealed a solitary feature in the character of the poet. Yet Akenside's mind and manners were of a fine romantic cast, drawn from the moulds of cla.s.sical antiquity. Such was the charm of his converse, that he even heated the cold and sluggish mind of Sir John Hawkins, who has, with unusual vivacity, described a day spent with him in the country. As I have mentioned the fict.i.tious physician in "Peregrine Pickle," let the same page show the real one. I shall transcribe Sir John's forgotten words--omitting his "neat and elegant dinner:"--"Akenside's conversation was of the most delightful kind, learned, instructive, and, without any affectation of wit, cheerful and entertaining. One of the pleasantest days of my life I pa.s.sed with him, Mr. Dyson, and another friend, at Putney--where the enlivening suns.h.i.+ne of a summer's day, and the view of an unclouded sky, were the least of our gratifications. In perfect good-humour with himself and all about him, he seemed to feel a joy that he lived, and poured out his gratulations to the great Dispenser of all felicity in expressions that Plato himself might have uttered on such an occasion. In conversations with select friends, and those whose studies had been nearly the same with his own, it was a usual thing with him, in libations to the memory of eminent men among the ancients, to bring their characters into view, and expatiate on those particulars of their lives that had rendered them famous." Observe the arts of the ridiculer! he seized on the romantic enthusiasm of Akenside, and turned it to _the cookery of the ancients_!

[81] This pamphlet has been ascribed to John Lilly, but it must be confessed that its native vigour strangely contrasts with the famous _Euphuism_ of that refined writer. [There can, however, be little doubt that he was the author of this tract, as he is alluded to more than once as such by Harvey in his "Pierce's Supererogation;"--"would that Lilly had alwaies been _Euphues_ and never _Pap-hatchet_."--ED.]

[82] Tarleton appears to have had considerable power of extemporising satirical rhymes on the fleeting events of his own day. A collection of his Jests was published in 1611; the following is a favourable specimen:--"There was a n.o.bleman asked Tarleton what he thought of soldiers in time of peace. Marry, quoth he, they are like chimneys in summer."--ED.

[83] A long list of Elderton's popular rhymes is given by Ritson in his "Bibliographia Poetica." One of them, on the "King of Scots and Andrew Browne," is published in Percy's "Reliques,"

who speaks of him as "a facetious fuddling companion, whose tippling and whose rhymes rendered him famous among his contemporaries." Ritson is more condensed and less civil in his a.n.a.lysis; he simply describes him as "a ballad-maker by profession, and drunkard by habit."--ED.

[84] Harvey, in the t.i.tle-page of his "Pierce's Supererogation," has placed an emblematic woodcut, expressive of his own confidence, and his contempt of the wits. It is a lofty palm-tree, with its durable and impenetrable trunk; at its feet lie a heap of serpents, darting their tongues, and filthy toads, in vain attempting to pierce or to pollute it. The Italian motto, wreathed among the branches of the palm, declares, _Il vostro malignare non giova nulla_: Your malignity avails nothing.

[85] Among those Sonnets, in Harvey's "Foure Letters, and certaine Sonnets, especially touching Robert Greene and other parties by him abused, 1592," there is one, which, with great originality of conception, has an equal vigour of style, and causticity of satire, on Robert Greene's death. John Harvey the physician, who was then dead, is thus made to address the town-wit, and the libeller of himself and his family. If Gabriel was the writer of this singular Sonnet, as he undoubtedly is of the verses to Spenser, subscribed Hobynol, it must be confessed he is a Poet, which he never appears in his English hexameters:--

JOHN HARVEY the Physician's Welcome to ROBERT GREENE!

"Come, fellow Greene, come to thy gaping grave, Bid vanity and foolery farewell, That ouerlong hast plaid the mad-brained knaue, And ouerloud hast rung the bawdy bell.

Vermine to vermine must repair at last; No fitter house for busie folke to dwell; Thy conny-catching pageants are past[86], Some other must those arrant stories tell; These hungry wormes thinke long for their repast; Come on; I pardon thy offence to me; It was thy living; be not so aghast!

A fool and a physitian may agree!

And for my brothers never vex thyself; They are not to disease a buried elfe."

[86] Greene had written "The Art of Coney-catching." He was a great adept in the arts of a town-life.

[87] Sir Egerton Brydges in his reprint of "Greene's Groatsworth of Wit," has given the only pa.s.sage from "The Quip for an Upstart Courtier," which at all alludes to Harvey's father. He says with great justice, "there seems nothing in it sufficiently offensive to account for the violence of Harvey's anger." The Rev. A. Dyce, so well known from his varied researches in our dramatic literature, is of opinion that the offensive pa.s.sage has been removed from the editions which have come down to us.

Without some such key it is impossible to comprehend Harvey's implacable hatred, or the words of himself and friends when they describe Greene as an "impudent railer in an odious and desperate mood," or his satire as "spiteful and villanous abuse." The occasion of the quarrel was an attack by Richard Harvey, who had the folly to "mis-term all our poets and writers about London, _piperly make-plays_ and _make-bates_,"

as Nash informs us; "hence Greene being chief agent to the company, for he writ more than four other, took occasion to canva.s.s him a little,--about some seven or eight lines, which hath plucked on an invective of so many leaves."--ED.

[88] Nash was a great favourite with the wits of his day. One calls him "our true English Aretine," another, "Sweet satyric Nash,"

a third describes his Muse as "armed with a gag-tooth (a tusk), and his pen possessed with Hercules's furies." He is well characterised in "The Return from Parna.s.sus."

"His style was witty, tho' he had some gall; Something he might have mended, so may all; Yet this I say, that for _a mother's wit_, Few men have ever seen the like of it."

Nash abounds with "Mother-wit;" but he was also educated at the University, with every advantage of cla.s.sical studies.

[89] _Bombast_ was the tailors' term in the Elizabethan era for the stuffing of horsehair or wool used for the large breeches then in fas.h.i.+on; hence the term was applied to high-sounding phrases--"all sound and fury, signifying nothing."--ED.

[90] These were the loose heavy breeches so constantly worn by Swiss soldiers as to become a national costume, and which has been handed down to us by the artists of the day in a variety of forms. They obtained the name of _galeaze_, from their supposed resemblance to the broad-bottomed s.h.i.+p called a gallia.s.s.--ED.

[91] A cade is 500 herrings; a great quant.i.ty of an article of no value.

[92] Harvey's love of dress, and desire to indulge it cheaply, is satirically alluded to by Nash, in confuting Harvey's a.s.sertion that Greene's wardrobe at his death was not worth more than three s.h.i.+llings--"I know a broker in a spruce leather jerkin shall give you thirty s.h.i.+llings for the doublet alone, if you can help him to it. Hark in your ear! he had a very fair cloak, with sleeves of a goose green, it would serve you as fine as may be. No more words; if you be wise, play the good husband, and listen after it, you may buy it ten s.h.i.+llings better cheap than it cost him. By St. Silver, it is good to be circ.u.mspect in casting for the world; there's a great many _ropes_ go to ten s.h.i.+llings? If you want a greasy pair of silk stockings to shew yourself in the court, they are there to be had too, amongst his moveables."--ED.

[93] This unlucky Venetian velvet coat of Harvey had also produced a "Quippe for an Vpstart Courtier, or a quaint dispute between Veluet-breeches and Cloth-breeches," which poor Harvey declares was "one of the most licentious and intolerable invectives." This blow had been struck by Greene on the "Italianated" Courtier.

[94] "Pierce's Supererogation, or a new praise of the Old a.s.se,"