Note 85 — CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS: (continued 3)

Among those Sonnets, in Harvey’s “Foure Letters, and certaine 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.”