AN ELIZABETHAN PAMELA. AMONG the crowd of secondary figures that cluster round the giants of the Elizabethan age, Gabriel Harvey is not the least interesting. It is true there is a prejudice against him which is not altogether unreasonable. Of the pedantry and coxcombry which distinguished the University wits of the day he had his full share; and, thanks to his pursuit of a respectable academic career, he was a fellow of Pembroke Hall and took orders, he lacks that Bohemian glamour which still makes romantic such disastrous lives as those of his contemporaries, Robert Greene and Tom Nash. As intolerably prolix as they, he is more ponderous and more disagreeable: his principal work, "The Rhetor," is among the books which no one but specialists can read now. Perhaps the best that can be said for him is that, when he likes, he can write vigorous and racy English; but this would not have saved him from oblivion if he had not happened to touch at certain points the lives of greater men than himself. Not that the contact is altogether to his credit. At college he was the friend of Edmund Spenser, who embalmed him as Hobbinol in "The Shepherd's Calendar," and was even at one time so far influenced by him as to be infected with his passion for forcing English verse into classical metres,-an evil ex I. ample, surely, if we may judge by such specimens of Harvey's English hexameters as this typical couplet : "See Venus, archgoddess, how trimly she mastereth old Mars; See little Cupid, how he bewitcheth learned Apollo." And if the influence of Harvey's classicism over Spenser's genius, "moving through its clouded heaven, heaven," was malign, his controversy, or rather his interminable and scurrilous brawl, with Tom Nash, which filled a large part of his later life, does not leave any pleasanter impression of his character. Then, again, we remember his quarrels with the fellows of Pembroke, when they refused to pass the grace for his admission to the degree of M.A.; and when we read his whining letters to the Master, in which he complains that the only charge against him is the false one of being arrogant and unsociable, we suspect that he must have been an insufferable and "unclubbable" person indeed. But there is no profit now in discussing the rights and wrongs of these dusty disputes, of which the details are only interesting to the professed student of antiquities. object of these pages is to recall a little known but very curious and very human incident in Gabriel Harvey's domestic circle, or rather what purports to be such an incident. The It may lead us to reconsider the current estimate, if not of his personality, at any rate of his literary importance. But whatever the proper interpretation of the story to be related, it is worth reviving for its own sake as a vivid little fragment of drama, -as if a shutter were suddenly opened on a sharply illumined square of common life out out of the blackness of the past. Gabriel Harvey's father was a rope-maker established at Saffron-Walden. He seems to have been a tradesman of good estate, for he sent three sons, of whom Gabriel became the most eminent, to the neighbouring University of Cambridge. Besides these sons he had two daughters, of whom one called Mercy is the heroine of our tale. While the sons were at college, constantly moving to and fro between Cambridge and the home at Saffron - Walden, the daughters would stay at home and do their share of such work as milking and helping in the brew - house. Meroy was the good-looking one of the two girls. One windy autumn day in 1574, as she was passing a green where a game of bowls was in progress, her hat blew off There happened to be amongst the players a certain young nobleman (Gabriel Harvey calls him "Phil"), who at this moment looked up from his game. We can imagine the blown hair, the bright cheeks, the disordered dress: Phil saw, admired, and determined to conquer. A country maid, he would naturally think (if he thought at all), is fair game for a lord, even when the lord happens to be married,- for that Phil had a wife already is one of the only two facts that we are told about him, the other being that he was nephew to "my lady W." Accordingly, as the first step towards his wicked ends, he sent "his man P." to sound the maid and find out whether he would have any chance with her. P., with sound instinct, did not brusquer the affair by dazzling the rustic Danae with his master's magnificence, but took the less romantic course of appealing to her love of delicate food: he began by inviting her "to the eating of a couple of conies in the town," and within a few days followed this up by an even daintier lure. He "watched her going a-milking a mile a poor woman that bare the maid scattering in the wood, P. began to commence his master's suit." Mercy at first could not believe her ears. It was impossible that my lord "would motion any such suit to any other, having so goodly a lady of his own"; besides, "she was but a milkmaid and a plain country wench, and if my lord were so disposed he might have many & one at commandment far more likely than she." P.'s next move was to dispel these doubts by presenting her, as from my lord, with "a good fair silk girdle and a handsome pair of gloves"; within a few days he even brought her "a pretty inamelld ring, with this posy, Don Jamye, which he swore my lord took from his own hat not two hours before, whereon it was sewn, given him by his aunt." Meroy now began to marvel greatly; but she "pleaded for her honesty," and would go no further than modestly and humbly to thank my lord for his great condescension. Evidently a cool-headed creature, she had no notion of risking her virtue, though at the same time, naturally flattered and excited, she did not want to be rid too quickly of her glittering pursuer. The daughter of a Saffron-Walden tradesman can have had few chances of amusing herself in the sixteenth century, and no one will blame her for liking a little fun, or for letting herself be finally prevailed upon by P. so far as to grant his master an interview. This is how Gabriel Harvey tells the story of the assignation that came to nothing: "The day came, and my lord and P. came according to their appointment. But instead of the maid herself, which was not there, there were as it happened in the malthouse the maid's mother, her sister, and two of her father's servants, and in the parlour one of her brothers, that saw them come fair and softly up the street, and stay a pretty while at the door, looking of a like to be entertained of the maid; but she not being at hand, as they hoped for, they stepped both prettily into the entry, and P. went peering to the malthouse door to spy if she were there; but having one of his feet in the malt. house, he saw that he looked not after, and missed that he came for. Whereupon they conveyed themselves away as handsomely as they could, and were fain to get themselves homewards as they came, being well mired and wearied for their labours, besides that it was the mistiest and foggiest night that was that winter." My lord's plight, as he rides home through the mud and fog of the winter evening, is amusing, and yet may excite a certain compassion; for it is obvious that he is being played with by a girl who is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Naturally enough he was indignant, and P., by representing him as smarting under a sense of injury, succeeded in extracting from Mercy a letter, "which was as P. would have it, for then he thought her dead sure. The letter was a composition breathing humble but virtuous resolution: she exouses herself for breaking tryst, and goes on, "I have heard my father say, virginity is the fairest flower in a maid's garden, and chastity the richest dower a poor wench can have." It is signed "Pore M.," and a postscript asks my lord to "rend this paper all to pieces." My lord replied, and more letters passed between them, he pressing his suit, and she urging moral objections which he must have found extremely irritating. The upshot of the correspondence was that she allowed P. to arrange another interview, to take place on a Saturday, just a week before Christmas Day. This time Meroy kept her word, and they met in a room in a neighbour's house. My lord at once began to de clare his passion, and was becoming uncomfortably violent and importunate when there came a knocking at the door. The goodwife of the house, of course by arrangement with Mercy, had stolen out into the street at a side-door," and came and knocked aloud at her own door, and told one in the house Mercy's mother had sent for her in all haste." Small wonder that "my young lord fell to swearing. Here was good M., good M., and a great deal more. God confound me, if thou wants while I have," &c. But all was no use,-not even the "138. in testers and shillings" that he thrust into her hand; he had to let her go and be content with a promise to meet him again. Sunday, the day after Christmas Day, was fixed. "This Sunday" (so the narrative proceeds)" was a marvellous wet day, and suddenly there arose great waters, by reason of the rain and snow that fell together. Notwithstanding, the maid purposely took a journey a seven miles off in the morning before six o'clock, dreading the worst if my lord should chance to come. The rain continued the whole day, and yet P. in the morning came to the place appointed (he was fain to come on pattens because of the great wet), thinking verily to have the maid there. It was told him the maid was gone to a friend of hers this Christmas to make merry. But they thought she would be here again by New Year's Time. And this was all the news P. had to his master." It looks, in fact, as if Mercy had begun to think that things had gone far enough; or perhaps her family had discovered the affair. But how to break off without offending my lord, and without abandoning the role which she had hitherto kept up, of the meekly obedient handmaiden? An ingenious plan was devised. "By counsel of one she trusted well" she wrote my lord a long letter, beginning thus with doggerel verse: "My lord, I thank you heartily, I would I were able to requite The letter then went on to pro- wot to my brother of Cambridge concerning his coming down into the country." Thus if the letter is offered to her before company, she will have a plausible explanation ready. These instructions my lord duly carried out. But the "country fellow" was intercepted and the letter taken from him by Meroy's brother, who, as it seemed to be for him, broke the seal and read it. He then wrote to my lord, explain ing that by a mere chance he had lighted upon this letter addressed to himself, and expressing his astonishment at its contents: "Whereupon I was somewhat strangely affected on the sudden, musing greatly who this lusty suitor should be, and what should be meant by the lofty subscription within, and the subtle superscription without." And that is all we are told. The curtain abruptly drops. Darkness again swallows up Mercy and her noble persecutor and the astute P. trudging on pattens to perform his his nefarious errands through the East Anglian mud. Now there are several rather suspicious circumstances about this story. Under the title of "A Nobleman's Suit to a Country Maid," it is preserved for us in Gabriel Harvey's LetterBook-a document of a miscellaneous scrap-book character -into which the writer has copied with his own hand drafts of letters, verses, and sketches of various literary projects. This Letter-Book is best known as the source of certain pieces of information having an important bearing on Elizabethan literary history: in particular, it contains some heavily jocose letters to Spenser (whether they were intended to be actually sent is doubtful) which have often been quoted; and it is besides a repository of curious details about life at the university. But it is arid stuff for the most part, and, wedged in between heated letters on university politics and strings of conceited doggerel, satirical and amatory, the adventure of Gabriel's sister stands out as a strangely refreshing piece of unstudied realism. That it is real, in the sense of being a record of fact, II. has never been doubted; yet, if its truth be accepted, there are several difficulties that need to be explained away. In the first place, it must occur to every reader to wonder what motive Gabriel Harvey can have had for writing down in circumstantial detail a story which, if not greatly to his sister's discredit, is yet slightly damaging from the family point of view. The record could serve no good purpose,no such purpose as, for instance, is served by many of the draft letters in the book, which would obviously be useful for future reference. Apart from letters which it would be important for him to keep for business reasons, the book consists mostly of jottings of literary experiments written down for his private amusement; and, regarded as a narrative of what actually happened, the Nobleman's Suit could scarcely be brought under this head. In the second place, one cannot help feeling that there is a certain strangeness in the mere fact of Mercy having faircopied her letters and kept the rough drafts to give to her |