Gabriel Harvey
Gabriel Harvey (c. 1552/3 – 1631) was an English writer. Harvey was a notable scholar, whose reputation suffered from his quarrel with
Family
Gabriel Harvey was the eldest son of John Harvey (d.1593), a yeoman farmer and master ropemaker from
Education
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
Harvey wished to be "epitaphed as the Inventour of the English
"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
He became reader in
In 1585 he received the degree of
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
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
His complete works were edited by
Latin works
- 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
- ^ Scott-Warren 2004.
- ^ ACAD & 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
- "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)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11418. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) The first edition of this text is available at Wikisource: . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
- Scott-Warren, Jason (2004). "Harvey, Gabriel (1552/3–1631)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/12517. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)The first edition of this text is available at Wikisource: . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
- Attribution
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Harvey, Gabriel". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 41–42. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
Further reading
- 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
- Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. XI (9th ed.). 1880. p. 501. .
- "Archival material relating to Gabriel Harvey". UK National Archives.
- Portraits of Gabriel Harvey at the National Portrait Gallery, London