Sonnets, especially touching Robert Greene and other parties
by him abused, 1592," there is one, which, with great
originality of conception, has an equal vigour of style, and
causticity of satire, on Robert Greene's death. John Harvey
the physician, who was then dead, is thus made to address the
town-wit, and the libeller of himself and his family. If
Gabriel was the writer of this singular Sonnet, as he
undoubtedly is of the verses to Spenser, subscribed Hobynol,
it must be confessed he is a Poet, which he never appears in
his English hexameters:--

JOHN HARVEY the Physician's Welcome to ROBERT GREENE!

"Come, fellow Greene, come to thy gaping grave,
Bid vanity and foolery farewell,
That ouerlong hast plaid the mad-brained knaue,
And ouerloud hast rung the bawdy bell.
Vermine to vermine must repair at last;
No fitter house for busie folke to dwell;
Thy conny-catching pageants are past[86],
Some other must those arrant stories tell;
These hungry wormes thinke long for their repast;
Come on; I pardon thy offence to me;
It was thy living; be not so aghast!
A fool and a physitian may agree!
And for my brothers never vex thyself;
They are not to disease a buried elfe."

[86] Greene had written "The Art of Coney-catching." He was a great
adept in the arts of a town-life.

[87] Sir Egerton Brydges in his reprint of "Greene's Groatsworth of
Wit," has given the only passage from "The Quip for an Upstart
Courtier," which at all alludes to Harvey's father. He says
with great justice, "there seems nothing in it sufficiently
offensive to account for the violence of Harvey's anger." The
Rev. A. Dyce, so well known from his varied researches in our
dramatic literature, is of opinion that the offensive passage
has been removed from the editions which have come down to us.
Without some such key it is impossible to comprehend Harvey's
implacable hatred, or the words of himself and friends when
they describe Greene as an "impudent railer in an odious and
desperate mood," or his satire as "spiteful and villanous
abuse." The occasion of the quarrel was an attack by Richard
Harvey