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stroke, and decide the controversy, with mutuall satisfaction. Martin bee wise, though Browne were a foole: and
Pappe-hatchet [Lyly] be honest, though Barrow be a knave: it is not your heaving and hoifing coile, that buildeth-
upp the walles of the Temple. Alas poore miserable desolate most-woefull Church, had it no other builders, but such
architects of their owne fantasies, and such maisons of infinite contradiction."20 Harvey never chose his words
lightly: with him they are always carefully worked over - and, some would say, overworked. He has very expertly
tarred Lyly with the brush of the "maisons of infinite contradiction".
Neither Lyly nor Nashe ever penned a denial of the accusation. But Nashe, on behalf of himself and his friend, went
to a great length to turn the accusation. He seized his chance in the devastating Have with you to Saffron-Walden, or,
Gabriel Harveys Hunt is up of 1596, a viciously effective exposé of Harvey's life and literary pretentions. Using his
already famous sobriquet of Pierce Pennilesse, Nashe at one point gives himself the observation, "& notwithstanding
all which Idees of monstrous excellencie, some smirking Singularists, brag Reformists, and glicking
Remembrancers (not with the multiplying spirite of the Alchumist, but the villanist) seeke to bee masons of infinite
contradiction& " 21
What on earth is this all about? The section is actually a parody of Harvey's writing style - all the more effective
because it strings together various overwrought phrases that Harvey had coined. Nashe proceeds to give the phrases
a second airing. Using the persona this time of Don Carneades de boune compagniola, Nashe guys Harvey as
follows:
"As, for an instance: suppose hee were to sollicite some cause against Martinists, were it not a jest as right sterling
as might be, to see him stroke his beard thrice & begin thus? & may it please you to be advertised, how that certain
smirking Singularists, brag Reformists, and glinking Remembrancers, not with the multiplying spirit of the
Alchumist, but the villanist, have sought to be Masons of infinite contradiction, and with their melancholy projects,
frumping contras, tickling interjections& against you, & the beau-desert & Idees of your encomiasticall Church
government& "22
What does this amount to? Is it simply aimed at Harvey's overripe prose? I doubt it. To begin with, there is more
than one clue in the passage that the attack on Lyly was a prime concern. In Pierces Supererogation Harvey, in
abusing Lyly, remarked that "A glicking Pro, and a frumping Contra, shall have much-adoe to shake handes in the
Ergo."23 Nashe has slyly included the expression "frumping contras", which surely only an inner circle of readers
could have been expected to recall was aimed at Lyly. In the Supererogation Harvey had also attacked the Nashe-
Lyly group in these terms: "Certes other rules are fopperies: and they that will seeke out the Archmistery of the
busiest Modernistes, shall find it nether more, nor lesse, then a certayne pragmaticall secret, called Villany, the verie
science of sciences, and the Familiar Spirit of Pierces Supererogation& it is the Multiplying spirit, not of the
Alchimist, but of the villanist, that knocketh the naile on the head, and spurreth out farther in a day, then the quickest
Artist in a weeke."24
The play off between "Alchimy" and "Villany" in the Supererogation reached its apotheosis when Harvey wrote:
"and in the baddest, I reject not the good: but precisely play the Alchimist, in seeking pure and sweet balmes in the
rankest poisons& O Humanity, my Lullius, or O Divinitie, my Paracelsus, how should a man become that peece of
Alchimy, that can turne the Rattes-bane of Villany into the Balme of honeste& "25
The sophisticated Elizabethan follower of the Harvey-Nashe feud (and there were many such), accustomed to
Harvey's penchant for paradoxical overstatement, would have gleefully remembered his preference for "seeking pure
and sweet balmes in the rankest poisons". It was of a piece with that fashionable "School of Night" movement,
exemplified in the poet George Chapman, which lauded darkness and night and associated connotations.
If Nashe was not depicting Harvey as babbling nonsense, what then? I think we are given a hint when Don
Carneades suggests that Harvey would "stroke his beard thrice" - for stroking one's cheek or face with a finger was a
mark of recognition among secret orders. A Mason's Confession of 1727 describes how "he gives the sign, by the
right hand above the breath, which is called the fellow-crafts due guard." The Grand Mystery of Free-Masonry
Discover'd (1724) describes a masonic sign thus: "Stroke two of your Fore-Fingers over your Eye-Lids three times."
Don Carneades' speech has, in actuality a deep meaning which is the opposite of the surface meaning of individual
phrases. Nashe, in other words, is portraying Harvey not as deploring, but as commending those who "sought to be
Masons of infinite contradiction".
What was Nashe getting at? There are mysteries even in the past of Gabriel Harvey. Circa 1578-80 he won
immortality by forming, with Edmund Spencer, Sir Edward Dyer and Sir Philip Sidney, a small literary circle
devoted to reforming English poetry, which Harvey described as a "new-founded areopagus" that was better than
"two hundred Dionisii Areopagitae". Dr. Moffet's memior of Sidney describes him as seeking out the mysteries of
chemistry "led by God with Dee as teacher and Dyer as companion". Harvey was, in fact, briefly secretary to Sir
Edward Dyer, the loyal confidante of John Dee and the "gold making" Edward Kelley. Harvey was probably too [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]