gs. Yet these are but the shortest prouerbes of his wit, for he
never bids a man good morrow, but he makes a speech as long as a
proclamation, nor drinkes to anie, but he reads a lecture of three
howers long, _de Arte bibendi_. O 'tis a precious apothegmatical
pedant."

It was the foible of Harvey to wish to conceal the humble avocation of
his father: this forms a perpetual source of the bitterness or the
pleasantry of Nash, who, indeed, calls his pamphlet "a full answer to
the eldest son of the halter maker," which, he says, "is death to
Gabriel to remember; wherefore from time to time he doth nothing but
turmoile his thoughts how to invent new pedigrees, and what great
nobleman's bastard he was likely to be, not whose sonne he is reputed
to be. Yet he would not have a shoo to put on his foote if his father
had not traffiqued with the hangman.--Harvey nor his brothers cannot
bear to be called the sonnes of a rope-maker, which, by his private
confession to some of my friends, was the only thing that most set him
afire against me. Turne over his two bookes he hath published against
me, wherein he hath clapt paper God's plentie, if that could press a
man to death, and see if, in the waye of answer, or otherwise, he once
mentioned _the word rope-maker_, or come within forty foot of it;
except in one place of his first booke, where he nameth it not
neither, but goes thus cleanly to worke:--'and may not a good sonne
have a reprobate for his father?' a periphrase of a rope-maker, which,
if I should shryue myself, I never heard before." According to Nash,
Gabriel took his oath before a justice, that his father was an honest
man, and kept his sons at the Universities a long time. "I confirmed
it, and added, Ay! which is more, three proud sonnes, that when they
met the hangman, their father's best customer, would not put off their
hats to him--"

Such repeated raillery on this foible of Harvey touched him more to
the quick, and more raised the public laugh, than any other point
of attack; for it was merited. Another foible was, perhaps, the
finical richness of Harvey's dress, adopting the Italian fashions on
his return from Italy, "when he made no bones of taking the wall
of Sir Philip Sidney, in his black Venetian velvet."[92] On this the
fertile invention of Nash raises a scandalous anecdote concerning
Gabriel's wardrobe; "a tale of his hobby-horse reuelling and
domineering at Audley-end, when the Queen was there; to which p