HARVEY, GAERIEL (c. 1545-1630), English writer, eld est son of a ropemaker of Saffron-Walden, Essex, was born about He matriculated at Christ's college, Cambridge, in 1566, and in 1570 was elected fellow of Pembroke Hall. Here be formed a lasting friendship with Edmund Spenser, and it has been sug gested (Athen. Cantab. ii. 258) that he may have been the poet's tutor. Harvey was a good scholar, who has perhaps been judged too exclusively from the brilliant invectives directed against him by Thomas Nashe (q.v.). Harvey 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. Im merito (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 Arti ficial 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? 0 bonny Laurell Needes to thy bowes will I bow this knee, and vayle my bonetto" are sufficient to show that Harvey's metrical experiments pre sented a fair mark for Nashe's wit. "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 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?" Harvey exercised great influence over Spenser for a short time, and the friendship lasted even though Spenser's genius refused to be bound by the laws of the new prosody. Harvey is the Hob binoll of his friend's Shepheards 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. But Harvey's genuine friendship for Spenser shows the best side of a disposition uncompromising and quarrel some towards the world in general. In 1573 ill-will 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 M.A. degree. He became reader in rhetoric about 1576, and in 1578 disputed publicly before Queen Elizabeth on her visit to Sir Thomas Smith at Audley End. In 1585 he was elected mas ter of Trinity Hall, of which he had been a fellow from 1578, but the appointment appears to have been quashed at court. Gabriel's brother, Richard, had taken part in the Marprelate controversy, and had given offence to Robert Greene (q.v.) by contemptuous references to him and his fellow wits. Greene retorted in his Quip for an Upstart Courtier with some scathing remarks on the Harveys, the worst of which were expunged in later editions, drawing attention among other things to Harvey's modest par entage. After Greene's death Harvey published Foure Letters and certaine Sonnets (1592), in which in a spirit of righteous su periority he laid bare with spiteful fulness the miserable details of Greene's later years. For the controversy with Nashe which followed see NASHE, THOMAS. 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 at his native place, dying in 163o.
The Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey, A.D. 1S73-8o (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 correspond ence dealing with the pursuit of his sister Mercy by a young noble man.
Harvey's complete works were edited by Dr. A. B. Grosart with a "Memorial Introduction" for the Huth Library (1884-85) . G. C. Stone-Smith edited other fragments as Marginalia (Stratford-on-Avon, 1913) . See also Isaac Disraeli, on "Literary Ridicule," in Calamities of Authors (ed., 184o) ; T. Warton, History of English Poetry (ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1871) ; J. P. Collier, Bibliographical and Critical Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language (1865), and the Works of Thomas Nashe.