Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/89

Harvey and violently (, Autobiography of a Seaman, i. 357–9), that Gambier was obliged to bring him to a court-martial held at Portsmouth on 22–3 May. By this Harvey was dismissed the service; and though in the following year, 21 March 1810, he was reinstated in his rank and seniority by order in council, ‘in consideration of his long and meritorious services,’ he was never employed again. On 31 Jan. 1810 he was advanced to be vice-admiral of the blue. In January 1815 he was nominated a K.C.B.; became admiral on 12 Aug. 1819; in 1820 and again in 1826 was re-elected M.P. for Essex; and in February 1825 received the grand cross of the Bath. He died on 20 Feb. 1830, leaving issue six daughters. Of his two sons, the elder, a captain in the army, was killed at the siege of Burgos in 1812; the younger died in 1823.

 HARVEY, GABRIEL (1550?–1631), poet, was born at Saffron Walden, the eldest son of six children. His father, John Harvey, was a master ropemaker by trade, and various circumstances indicate that he was a prosperous man. He was able to send three sons to Cambridge [see (d. 1592), and ], and Gabriel himself speaks of him as one that ‘bore the chiefest office in Walden with good credite’ (Works, ed. Grosart, i. 160), and also as one ‘whose honesty no neighbour can empeach’ (ib. 250).

Gabriel, born about 1550, entered Christ's College; he matriculated 28 June 1566 (B.A. in 1569–70), and 3 Nov. 1570 was elected a fellow of Pembroke Hall. At Pembroke he formed the acquaintance of Spenser, the poet, who was admitted as a sizar the year before Harvey obtained his fellowship, and their acquaintance ripened into an intimacy which was terminated only by Spenser's death. Harvey, by virtue of his seniority, superior position, and real scholarship, exercised over his friend's youthful genius an influence from which the latter with difficulty shook himself free. Strongly attached to classical models, the pedantic college-fellow associated himself with a literary movement which aimed at imposing on the native poetic literature a servile imitation of the Latin. Harvey himself seems to have claimed to be the father of the English hexameter, and Spenser for a time was induced altogether to abandon rhyme. The latter tried hard to admire his friend's verse, and has immortalised him in his ‘Shepheards Calendar’ under the name of Hobbinol.

For college life, involving as it did frequent and close intercourse with men of diverse views and temper, Harvey was by nature ill adapted. 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. Thomas Neville, afterwards the eminent master of Trinity College, who held a fellowship at Pembroke at the same time as Harvey, declared of him that he ‘could hardly find it in his heart to commend of any man.’ With the majority of the fellows he would appear to have been continually at war, and the ill-feeling ran so high that when the time came for him to proceed M.A. they agreed to refuse him the necessary ‘grace’ from the college. It was not until after a delay of three months that he eventually in 1573 obtained his degree, and although he was shortly after appointed college tutor his relations with the society seem to have become permanently embittered.

For a short time Harvey read rhetoric in the public schools of the university (Letter Book, p. 164), and he was at one time a candidate for the readership in that branch of study. It was probably with the view of further recommending himself for the appointment that he composed his ‘Rhetor’ and ‘Ciceronianus,’ both published in 1577. He also besought Sir Thomas Smith (d. 12 Aug. 1577), to whom he appears to have been related (Works, i. 184), to use his exertions in his behalf. He seeks the office, he affirms, not in order that he may teach rhetoric, but that he may study it himself (Letter Book, p. 179). On the other hand we learn from his preface to the ‘Rhetor’ that his addresses, delivered in earlier years, were attended by overflowing audiences. In August 1578, when his fellowship at Pembroke was on the point of lapsing, the Earl of Leicester addressed an ‘earnest request’ to the master and fellows that his friend might be allowed to continue in it one year longer. The earl's intervention appears not to have been successful, and Harvey was compelled to look about elsewhere. He would seem at this time to have been hesitating as to his choice of a profession, and he first of all sought election to a fellowship at Christ's, with a view to the ministry. Disappointed in this quarter he turned to Trinity Hall. Here he claimed relationship with the master, Henry Harvey [q. v.], who probably advocated his claims, and Harvey, having declared his readiness to embrace the profession of a civilian, was elected a fellow of that society (18 Dec. 1578). Although