aid, "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 asse, 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 asse."[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
passage, 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-cocke on anie church-steeple, no arbour, no
lawrell, no yewe-tre