Poets doings, or els for envie of so many unworthy Quidams, which catch at the garlond which to you alone is dewe, you will be perswaded to pluck out of the hateful darknesse those so many excellent English poemes of yours which lye hid, and bring them forth to eternall light. Trust me, you doe both them great wrong, in depriving them of the desired sonne; and also your selfe, in smoothering your deserved prayses; and all men generally, in withholding from them so divine pleasures, which they might conceive of your gallant English verses, as they have already doen of your Latine Poemes, which, in my opinion, both for invention and Elocution are very delicate and superexcellent. And thus againe I take my leave of my good Mayster Harvey: from my lodging at London thys 10. of Aprill, 1579.-KIRKE, EDWARD? 1579, Spenser's Shepheards Calender, Epistle to Gabriell Harvey.

Therefore wyll I aduenture to sette them together, as two of the rarest witts, and learnedst masters of Poetrie in England. Whose worthy and notable skyl in this faculty, I would wysh if their high dignities and serious businesses would permit, they would styll graunt to bee a furtheraunce to that reformed kinde of Poetry, which Master Haruey did once beginne to ratify: and surely in mine opinion, if hee had chosen some grauer matter, and handled but with halfe that skyll, which I knowe he could haue doone, and not powred it foorth at a venture, as a thinge betweene iest and earnest, it had taken greater effect then it did.-WEBBE, WILLIAM, 1586, A Discourse of English Poetrie, ed. Arber, p. 36.

A proverb it is, as stale as sea-biefe, save a thief from the gallows and hee'le be the first to shew thee the way to Saint Gilesesse. Harvey I manifestly saved from the knot under the eare: Verily, he had hanged him selfe had I gone forwards in my vengeance; but, I know not how, upon his prostrate intreatie, I was content to give him a short Psalme of mercy. Now, for reprieving him when he was ripe for execution, thus he requites me. Sixe and thirty sheets of mustard-pot paper since that hath he published against me.

. Some few crummes of my booke hath he confuted: all the rest of his invention is nothing but an oxe with a

pudding in his bellie. . . . Maister Lillie, poore deceasses Kit Marlow, reverent Doctor Perne, with a hundred other quiet senselesse carcasses before the Conquest departed, in the same worke he hath most notoriously and vilely dealt with; and, to conclude, he hath proved him selfe to be the only Gabriel Grave-digger under heaven.--NASHE, THOMAS, 1594, Christ's Teares over Jerusalem.

This person, who made a great noise in his time, was born at Saffron-walden in Essex; and tho' his father was a ropemaker as Thomas Nash, a great scoffer, and his antagonist, tells us, yet he had rich kindred and was nearly allied to Sir Thomas Smith, the great statesman in Queen Elizabeth's reign.-WOOD, ANTHONY, 1691-1721, Fasti Oxonienses, vol. 1, p. 128.

Of this writer, so well known in his time, the author of many respectable works, and of no inferior accomplishments in learning or talents, very imperfect accounts are to be found in any of our biographical compilations. He certainly deserves a place among the national records of his countrymen.-BELOE, WILLIAM, 1807, Anecdotes of Literature and Scarce Books, vol. II, p. 197.

An author of considerable rank. Harvey was a pedant, but pedantry was part of the erudition of an age when our national literature was passing from its infancy; he introduced hexameter verses into our language, and pompously laid claim to an invention which, designed for the reformation of English verse, was practised till it was found sufficiently ridiculous. His style was infected with his pedantic taste; and the hard outline of his satirical humour betrays the scholastic cynic, not the airy and fluent wit. He had, perhaps, the foibles of a man who was clearing himself from obscurity; he prided himself on his family alliances, while he fastidiously looked askance on the trade of his father-a rope-manufacturer. He was somewhat rich in his apparel, according to the rank in society he held; and, hungering after the notice of his friends, they fed him on soft sonnet and relishing dedication, till Harvey ventured to publish a collection of panegyrics on himself and thus gravely stepped into a niche erected to Vanity.-DISRAELI, ISAAC, 1812-13, Literary Ridicule, Calamities of Authors.

He was a profound scholar, and no inelegant composer of verses: some of his productions evince great learning and research; and though it is impossible to admire his hobbling English hexameters (of which he pompously proclaimed himself the inventor), we cannot read his lines prefixed to "The Faerie Queene" without acknowledging their beauty.--DYCE, ALEXANDER, 1831-61, ed. Dramatie and Poetical Works of Robert Greene, p. 63.

A dry hard student, full of caustic wit, but not lacking, when the humor took him, grace and tenderness. He hurled fierce, stinging words in profusion at any one with whom he chanced to be offended, but to all who pleased him he was a warm and helpful friend. His genius was wasted in his efforts to naturalize the hexameter and other classical metres in English, and of this idle attempt he claimed to be the originator.-BOURNE, H. R. Fox, 1862, A Memoir of Sir Philip Sidney, p. 44.

He did not become a great man, or what he called "a megalander;" we may, if we will, class him with what is fossil or extinct in literature-its megatherium or dodo. But in his day he worked hard, aspired nobly, and left witness to his labour and his aspiration. Perhaps we do not care, for his own sake, to read the evidence, but set him aside as one of the small matters, if any there be, in which it is not worth while to be just. Then let him have the advantage of being not merely Gabriel Harvey, although to him that was something, but also Spenser's Hobbinol, which is to us more. He was, during some important years of Spenser's life, the poet's "long-approved and singular good friend" and counsellor. The counsel was outgrown, but not the friendship. To our credence as well as Harvey's, Spenser has left what he once called "the eternal memory of our everlasting friendship, the inviolable memory of our unspotted friendship, the sacred memory of our vowed friendship;" and it is a little due perhaps to Spenser that we should ascertain how much credit is due to the commentators who would have us think that he wrote in this way to a conceited pedant seven years older than himself.— MORLEY, HENRY, 1869, Spenser's “Hobbinol," Fortnightly Review, N. S. vol. 5, p. 274.

Harvey is a remarkable instance of the

refining influence of classical studies. Amid the pedantic farrago of his omnisufficiency (to borrow one of his own words) we come suddenly upon passages whose gravity of sentiment, stateliness of movement, and purity of diction remind us of Landor. These lucid intervals in his overweening vanity explain and justify the friendship of Spenser. Yet the reiteration of emphasis with which he insists on all the world's knowing that Nash had called him an ass, probably gave Shakespeare the hint for one of the most comic touches in the character of Dogberry.-LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 187590, Spenser, Prose Works, Riverside ed., vol. IV, p. 285, note.

Except to students of Elizabethan literary history, he has become an utterly obscure personage; and he has not usually been spoken of with much respect. CHURCH, RICHARD WILLIAM, 1879, Spenser, (English Men of Letters), p. 18.

Of no contemporary of equal notoriety in men's mouths over so many years, do we know so little as of him. The Damascus blade of Thomas Nashe wounded him mortally. He was speedily forgotten— though he lived on to an unusual age; and no one seems to have cared to rescue his memory from its swift and inexorable oblivion. Even his academic course is obscure and dateless. We have had to wait for these long centuries to learn the chief facts of it contained in his (socalled) "Letter-Book."-GROSART, ALEXANDER B., 1884, ed. Works of Gabriel Harvey, Memorial-Introduction, vol. I, p. ix.

He was emphatically of Mr. Carlyle's "acrid-quack" genus. lyle's "acrid-quack" genus.-SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1887, History of Elizabethan Literature, p. 232.

He was a man of arrogant and censorious spirit, far too conscious of his own considerable abilities, while but little disposed to recognise the merits and claims of others. . . . An overweening estimate of his own attainments and abilities, conjoined with disappointed ambition, seems to have rendered Harvey singularly sensitive and quarrelsome; and to his contemporaries he was best known by the scurrilous paper warfare in which he became involved with the writers Nashe and Greene.-MULLINGER, J. BASS, 1891, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xxv, pp. 83, 84.

PERSONAL

He spent the most of his life in Forraign parts. First in Hungary, under the Emperour, fighting against the Turks; three of which he himself killed in single duells; and therefore was authorized by Sigismund King of Hungary to bear three. Turks-heads, as an augmentation to his Armes. Here he gave intelligence to a besieged City in the night, by significant Fire-works formed in the aire, in legible characters, with many strange performances, the scene whereof is laid at such a distance, they are cheaper credited then. confuted. From the Turks in Europe he passed to the Pagans in America, where, towards the latter end of the Raign of Queen Elizabeth, such his perills, preservations, dangers, deliverances, they seem to most men above belief, to some beyond truth. Yet have we two witnesses to attest them, the Prose and the Pictures, both in his own Book; and it soundeth much to the diminution of his deeds, that he alone is the Herauld to publish and proclaim them. . . . Moderate men must allow Captain Smith to have been very instrumentall in settling the Plantation in Virginia, whereof he was Governour, as also Admiral of New-England. He led his old age in London, where his having a Prince's mind imprisoned in a poor man's purse rendered him to the contempt of such who were not ingenuous. Yet he efforted his spirits with the remembrance and relation of what formerly he had been, and what he had done. He was buried in Sepulchre's-Church Quire, on the South-side thereof, having a ranting Epitaph inscribed in a table over him, too long to transcribe.-FULLER, THOMAS, 1662, The Worthies of England, ed. Nichols, vol. I, p. 189.

Wherever upon this continent the Eng

lish language is spoken, his deeds should be recounted and his memory hallowed. His services should not only be not forgotten, but should be "freshly remembered." His name should not only be honored by the silent canvas and the cold marble, but his praises should dwell living upon the lips of men, and should be handed down by fathers to their children. Poetry

has imagined nothing more stirring and romantic than his life and adventures, and History, upon her ample page, has recorded few more honorable and spotless names.— HILLARD, GEORGE S., 1834, Life of Captain John Smith, Sparks's American Biography, vol. II, p. 397.

Captain John Smith united the strongest spirit of adventure with eminent powers of action. Full of courage and selfpossession, he was fertile in expedients, and prompt in execution. He had a just idea of the public good, and clearly discerned that it was not the true interest of England to seek in Virginia for gold and sudden wealth. "Nothing," said he, "is to be expected thence but by labor;" and as a public officer he excelled in its direction. The historians of Virginia have with common consent looked to him as the preserver of their commonwealth in its infancy; and there is hardly room to doubt that, but for his vigor, industry, and resolution, it would have been deserted like the Virginia of the north, and with better excuse. BANCROFT, GEORGE, 1834-82, History of the United States, vol. I, ch. vi.

"His body was deposited in Sepulchre's Church choir, on the south side thereof,' with a rather florid epitaph, of which the following are the first and last lines:

"Here lies one conquer'd that hath conquer'd kings!

Oh, may his soul in sweet Elysium sleep!"

The verses, some by men of mark, which accompany his "General Historie" and others of his works, are highly eulogistic of his private character and public deeds. Edward Robinson addresses him as

"Thou that to passe the world's four parts dost deeme

No more than 'twere to go to bed or drinke;" and Thomas Carlton relieves us of the fear that he was wont, soldier and sailor like, to "drinke" too easily, by the assertion, "I never knew a Warryer yet, but thee, From wine, tobacco, debts, dice, oaths, so free."

-ALLIBONE, S. AUSTIN, 1870, Dictionary of English Literature, vol. II, p. 2145.

He was perhaps the last professional knight-errant that the world saw; a free lance, who could not hear of a fight going on anywhere in the world without hastening to have a hand in it; a sworn champion of the ladies also, all of whom he loved too ardently to be guilty of the invidious offence of marrying any one of them; a restless, vain, ambitious, overbearing, blustering fellow, who made all men either his hot friends or his hot enemies; a man who down to the present hour has his celebrity in the world chiefly on account of alleged exploits among Turks, Tartars, and Indians, of which exploits he alone has furnished the history never failing to celebrate himself in them all as the one resplendent and invincible hero. TYLER, MOSES COIT, 1878, A History of American Literature, vol. I, p. 18. The truth of this story [of Smith's Rescue by Pocahontas], was never doubted till 1866, when the eminent antiquary, Dr. Charles Deane of Cambridge, Mass., in reprinting Smith's first book, the "True Relation" of 1609, pointed out that it contains no reference to this hairbreadth escape. Since then many American historians and scholars have concluded that it never happened at all; and, in order to be consistent, they have tried to prove that Smith was a blustering braggadocio, which is the very last thing that could in truth be said of him. The rescue of a captive doomed to death by a woman is not such an unheard-of thing in Indian stories. If the truth of this deliverance be denied, how then did Smith come back to James Town loaded with presents, when the other three men were killed, George Cassen in particular, in a most horrible

manner? And how is it, supposing Smith's account to be false, that Pocahontas afterwards frequently came to James Town, and was next to Smith himself, the salvation of the colony? The fact is, nobody doubted the story in Smith's lifetime, and he had enemies enough.ARBER, EDWARD, 1887, Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth ed., vol. XXII, p. 175.

The romantic life of Captain John Smith is too well known to need retelling. His character, too, needs no new light shed upon it. We must acknowledge that he was inordinately vain, fond of boasting, impetuous, imperious, restless, yet we know that his shrewdness, his indomitable courage, and his sound judgment more than once saved the Virginia Colony from ruin.-PATTEE, FRED LEWIS, 1896, A History of American Literature, p. 16.

Much controversy has arisen as to the truth of the stories published by Smith about his own adventures. But the modern historian, while recognising the extravagance of the details of many of the more picturesque of Smith's self-recorded exploits, is bound to give full weight to his record of his more prosaic achievements-in laying the solid foundations of the prosperity of the new settlement of Virginia. DOYLE, J. A., 1898, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. LIII, p. 72.

GENERAL

His style is simple and concise, his narratives bear the stamp of truth, and his descriptions are free from false ornament. -TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE, 1835, Democracy in America, tr. Reeve, vol. 1, p. 274.

I made acquaintance with brave Captain Smith, as a boy in my grandfather's library at home, where I remember how I would sit at the good old man's knees, with my favourite volume on my own, spelling out the exploits of our Virginian hero. I loved to read of Smith's travels, sufferings, captivities, escapes, not only in America, but Europe.-THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE, 1859, Henry Warrington in The Virginians, ch. xxx.

As students of literature we shall be drawn to Captain John Smith as belonging to that noble type of manhood of which the Elizabethan period produced so many examples the man of action who was also a man of letters, the man of letters who was also a man of action: the

wholsomest type of manhood anywhere to be found; body and brain both active, both cultivated; the mind not made fastidious and morbid by too much bookishness, nor coarse and dull by too little; not a doer who is dumb, not a speech-maker who cannot do; the knowledge that comes of books widened and freshened by the knowledge that comes of experience; the literary sense fortified by common sense; the bashfulness and delicacy of the scholar hovering as a finer presence above the forceful audacity of the man of the world; at once bookman, penman, swordsman, diplomat, sailor, courtier, orator.

As a writer his merits are really great-clearness, force, vividness, picturesque and dramatic energy, a diction racy and crisp. He had the faults of an impulsive, irascible, egotistic, and imaginative nature; he sometimes bought human praise at too high a price; but he had great abilities in word and deed; his nature was upon the whole generous and noble; and during the first two decades. of the seventeenth century he did more than any other Englishman to make an American nation and an American literature possible. TYLER, MOSES COIT, 1878, A History of American Literature, vol. 1, pp. 19, 38.

For twenty years he was a voluminous writer, working off his superfluous energy in setting forth his adventures in new forms. . . . He seldom writes a book, or a tract, without beginning it or working into it a résumé of his life.-WARNER, CHARLES DUDLEY, 1881, Captain John Smith, p. 278.

His zeal was greater than his discretion, and his industry was often fruitless; but as an explorer and describer of American men, soil, and possibilities, his service to the nascent colonies was unquestionable. This bald list of his adventures, discoveries, and doings explains his prominence in the American history of the seventeenth century. His voluminous writings deserve but a humble place in literature. Strictly speaking, they are a part of English, not American literature, for Smith's continuous residence on American soil was a matter of but two years' lasting; and, all told, he was in the New World but two years and eight months. It is uncertain what share Smith had in the writing of the works passing under his name; some

of his assertions (as the famous legend of the rescue of his life by Pocahontas) are questionable, and others demonstrably false. At their best, his books lack high literary merit, and are material for the historian rather than the critic.-RICHARDSON, CHARLES F., 1887, American Literature, 1607-1885, vol. 1, p. 64.

Captain Smith's writings have small literary value apart from the interest of the events which they describe and the diverting but forcible personality which they unconsciously display. They are the rough-hewn records of a busy man of action, whose sword was mightier than his pen.-BEERS, HENRY A., 1895, Initial Studies in American Literature, p. 14.

John Smith was the most picturesque figure in the early history of America; and his writings are like him-bold, free, highly colored.-MATTHEWS, BRANDER, 1896, An Introduction to the Study of American Literature, p. 16.

Smith's earliest book, "A True Relation of Virginia," was printed in London in 1608, the year of Milton's birth. It is a hurried, semi-official document, giving a sketchy account of the first year of the colony. When we read of the young captain's own busy doings in those critical months, building forts and palisadoes, planting, exploring, fighting, sojourning among the Indians, now as captive, now as guest, trading blue beads for corn and venison, we wonder that he found the moments in which to jot down his news at all. Yet heedless of art, all rough-andready as the headlong narrative is, the vigor of the man, and the reality of the situation make it graphic.-BATES, KATHARINE LEE, 1897, American Literature, p. 8.

Smith was a prolific and, no doubt, a rapid writer; but, like Sir Walter Raleigh, he made authorship merely an incident in a life crowded with dangers and brave deeds. As we might expect, he is not a finished writer; but his books are graphic and entertaining, and full of the vigor and power of the man. If his love of "brave adventure" and the spirit of the artist. made him occasionally draw upon his imagination to heighten the interest, at least some of his readers will secretly be thankful for the romance, and pardon the trifling lapses from truth.-PANCOAST, HENRY S., 1898, An Introduction to American Literature, p. 39.