"He looks, indeed, like a case of tooth-pickes, or a lute-pin stuck in
a suit of apparell. An Vsher of a dancing-schoole, he is such a _basia
de vmbra de vmbra de los pedes_; a kisser of the shadow of your feetes
shadow he is!"
This is, doubtless, a portrait resembling the original, with its
Cervantic touches; Nash would not have risked what the eyes of his
readers would instantly have proved to be fictitious; and, in fact,
though the _Grangerites_ know of no portrait of Gabriel Harvey, they
will find a woodcut of him by the side of this description; it is,
indeed, in a most pitiable attitude, expressing that gripe of
criticism which seized on Gabriel "upon the news of the going in hand
of my booke."
The ponderosity and prolixity of Gabriel's "period of a mile," are
described with a facetious extravagance, which may be given as a
specimen of the eloquence of ridicule. Harvey entitled his various
pamphlets "Letters."
"More letters yet from the doctor? Out upon it, here's a packet of
epistling, as bigge as a packe of woollen cloth, or a stack of salt
fish. Carrier, didst thou bring it by wayne, or by horsebacke? By
wayne, sir, and it hath crackt me three axle-trees.--_Heavie_ newes!
Take them again! I will never open them.--My cart (quoth he,
deep-sighing,) hath cryde creake under them fortie times euerie
furlong; wherefore if you be a good man rather make mud-walls with
them, mend highways, or damme up quagmires with them.
"When I came to unrip and unbumbast[89] this _Gargantuan_ bag pudding,
and found nothing in it but dogs tripes, swines livers, oxe galls, and
sheepes guts, I was in a bitterer chafe than anie cooke at a long
sermon, when his meat burnes.
"O 'tis an vnsconscionable vast gor-bellied volume, bigger bulkt than
a Dutch hoy, and more cumbersome than a payre of Switzer's galeaze
breeches."[90]