English writer, eldest son of a ropemaker of Saffron-Walden, Essex; born about 1545. He matriculated at Christs College, Cambridge, in 1566, and in 1570 was elected fellow of Pembroke Hall. Here he formed a lasting friendship with Edmund Spenser, and it has been suggested (Athen. Cantab. ii. 258) that he may have been the poets tutor. Harvey was a scholar of considerable weight, who has perhaps been judged too exclusively from the brilliant invectives directed against him by Thomas Nashe. Henry Morley, writing in the Fortnightly Review (March 1869), brought evidence from Harveys Latin writings which shows that he was distinguished by quite other qualities than the pedantry and conceit usually associated with his name. He desired to be epitaphed as the Inventour of the English Hexameter, and was the prime mover in the literary clique that desired to impose on English verse the Latin rules of quantity. In a gallant, familiar letter to M. Immerito (Edmund Spenser) he says that Sir Edward Dyer and Sir Philip Sidney were helping forward our new famous enterprise for the exchanging of Barbarous and Balductum Rymes with Artificial Verses. The document includes a tepid appreciation of the 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 |
But eh! what news do you hear of that good Gabriel Huffe-Snuffe, | |
Known to the world for a foole, and clapt in the Fleete for a Runner? |
His extant Latin works are Ciceronianus (1577); G. Harveii rhetor, sive 2 dierum oratio de natura, arte et exercitatione rhetorica (1577); Smithus, vel Musarum lachrymae (1578), in honour of Sir Thomas Smith; and G. Harveii gratulationum Valdensium libri quatuour (sic), written on the occasion of the queens visit to Audley End (1578). The Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey, A.D. 157380 (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 Gabriel Harvey. After Greenes death Harvey published Foure Letters and certaine Sonnets (1592), in which in a spirit of righteous superiority he laid bare with spiteful fulness the miserable details of Greenes later years. Thomas Nashe, who in power of invective and merciless wit was far superior to Harvey, took upon himself to avenge Greenes memory, and at the same time settle his personal account with the Harveys, in Strange Newes (1593). Harvey refuted the personal charges made by Nashe in Pierces Supererogation, or a New Prayse of the Old Asse (1593). In Christes Teares over Jerusalem (1593) Nashe made a full apology to Harvey, who refused to be appeased, and resumed what had become a very scurrilous controversy in a New Letter of Notable Contents (1593). Nashe thereupon withdrew his apology in a new edition (1594) of Christes Teares, and 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 retorted in The Trimming of Thomas Nashe Gentleman, by the high-tituled patron Don Richardo de Medico campo (1597).
His complete works were edited by Dr. A. B. Grosart with a Memorial Introduction for the Huth Library (18841885). See also Isaac Disraeli, on Literary Ridicule, in Calamities of Authors (ed. 1840); T. Wartons History of English Poetry (ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1871); J. P. Colliers Bibliographical and Critical Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language (1865), and the Works of Thomas Nashe. See also Literary Criticism.