JONSON, HOR AC E A N D T H E C L A SSIC A L T R A DI T ION
The influence of the Roman poet Horace on Ben Jonson has often been acknowledged, but never fully explored. Discussing Jonson’s Horatianism in detail, this study also places Jonson’s densely intertextual relationship with Horace’s Latin text within the broader context of his complex negotiations with a range of other ‘rivals’ to the Horatian model, including Pindar, Seneca, Juvenal and Martial. The new reading of Jonson’s classicism that emerges is one founded not upon static imitation, but rather upon a lively dialogue between competing models – an allusive mode that extends into the seventeenth-century reception of Jonson himself as a latter-day ‘Horace’. In the course of this analysis, the book provides fresh readings of many of Jonson’s best-known poems – including ‘Inviting a Friend to Supper’ and ‘To Penshurst’ – as well as a new perspective on many lesser-known pieces, and a range of unpublished manuscript material. is Lecturer in Latin literature at the University of Cambridge. She is an active translator of early modern Latin, contributing to several major recent translation projects. In addition, she has published a range of articles on classical material in Jonson, Donne and Milton, and on the reception of Virgil, Horace and Pindar.
JONSON, HOR ACE A N D T H E C L A SSIC A L T R A DI T ION V IC TOR I A MOU L
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge , Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/ © Victoria Moul Th is publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Moul, Victoria, – Jonson, Horace and the classical tradition / Victoria Moul. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ---- (hardback) . Jonson, Ben, ?––Criticism and interpretation. . Jonson, Ben, ?––Knowledge–Rome. . Jonson, Ben, ?––Knowledge– Latin Literature. . Classicism–England–History–th century. . Horace–Influence. . English poetry–Roman influences. I. Title. . ′.–dc ---- Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
For my parents, with love and gratitude
Contents
Acknowledgements List of abbreviations
page ix x
Introduction: imitation, allusion, translation: reading Jonson’s Horace
Jonson’s Odes: Horatian lyric presence and the dialogue with Pindar
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
Competing voices in Jonson’s verse satire: Horace and Juvenal
Poetaster : classical translation and cultural authority
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
Conclusion: More remov’ d mysteries: Jonson’s textual ‘occasions’
Appendix: manuscript transcriptions Bibliography Index of passages discussed General index
vii
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council and to St John’s College, Cambridge for support during my doctoral work, and to The Queen’s College, Oxford for the pleasure and privilege of a Junior Research Fellowship which has allowed me to prepare this monograph for publication. I am also grateful to several presses for permission to reproduce material that appeared in earlier forms in their books and journals. A version of Chapter was published as ‘Ben Jonson’s Poetaster : Classical Translation and the Location of Cultural Authority’, in Translation and Literature, (), –. Portions of Chapter are developed from work first published in ‘Versions of Victory: Ben Jonson and the Pindaric Ode’, The International Journal of the Classical Tradition, (), – and ‘The Poet’s Voice: Allusive Dialogue in Ben Jonson’s Horatian Poetry’, in Luke Houghton and Maria Wyke (eds.), Perceptions of Horace: a Roman Poet and His Readers (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. Finally, some sections of Chapter are based upon observations I made in ‘Translation as Commentary? The Case of Ben Jonson’s Ars Poetica’, Palimpsestes, (), –. For encouragement and advice on this material and more widely, thanks are due to Charles Martindale, Philip Hardie, Raphael Lyne and David Norbrook; and above all to Colin Burrow. Many friends and colleagues have been a reliable source of support, advice and welcome distraction; among these, I would like to thank in particular Myles Lavan, Edward Holberton, Femke Molekamp and John Hyman. Finally, I would like to name with lasting gratitude Lea Chambers, Jonathan Katz and Denis Feeney, with whom I first read Horace.
ix
Abbreviations
H&S OCT OED STC
C. H. Herford, Percy Simpson and Evelyn Simpson (eds.), Ben Jonson, vols. (Oxford University Press, –) Oxford Classical Text Oxford English Dictionary, nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ) A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland; And of English Books Printed Abroad –, nd edn, vols. (–)
Jonson’s verse is cited from H&S. Titles of collections are abbreviated as follows: Forest UV UW
The Forest ( folio) Ungathered Verse The Underwood ( folio)
x
Introduction Imitation, allusion, translation: reading Jonson’s Horace To the admired Ben: Johnson to encourage him to write after his farewel to the stage. alludinge to Horace ode . Lib: Musis amicus &c Ben, thou arte the Muses freinde, greife, and feares, cast to the winde: who winns th’Emperour, or Sweade sole secure, you noethinge dreade. Inhabitante neer Hyppo-crene, plucke sweete roses by that streame, put thy lawrel-crownet on. What is fame, if thou hast none? See Apollo with the nine sings: the chorus must be thine. John Polwhele
Benjamin Jonson, born in , worked under, and latterly for, three successive monarchs before his death in . A close contemporary of Shakespeare, he wrote in almost every important literary genre of his age, from the satires and epigrams fashionable in the s to the elaborate court masques of the early seventeenth century. His influence in most of these forms – including lyric, epigram, stage comedy and verse epistle – continued to be felt for several generations. A Catholic for a substantial portion of his adulthood, his personal life was colourful, including imprisonment, murder, high patronage and poverty. He befriended (or alienated), rivalled and collaborated with many of the great men of his
This touching and typical example of contemporary reception of Jonson’s Horatianism is transcribed from John Polwhele’s notebook, Bodleian MS English poet. f. , r. I have edited it only lightly. Line refers to the invasion of Germany by Gustav Adolf of Sweden in , which brought Swedish forces into the Thirty Years’ War and led to the first major Protestant victory of the conflict at Breitenfeld in . The poem is printed in H&S, vol. , p. but that transcription omits line . Semi-diplomatic transcriptions of all unpublished manuscript material are given in the Appendix.
Introduction: reading Jonson’s Horace
day, both in England and abroad, including Shakespeare (who took a part in his play Sejanus), John Donne, Inigo Jones and the classical scholars Thomas Farnaby and Daniel Heinsius. But at almost every turn of this long, varied and highly public career his chief literary model, the man whose memory he honoured and whose achievement he claimed to outdo, was not any one of his talented contemporaries, but a Roman poet of the first century : Quintus Horatius Flaccus; ‘thy Horace’. That Jonson liked to think of himself as Horace, and that this identification was considered realistic enough to be accepted by many of his followers, has often been acknowledged in passing in the scholarly literature. Jonson has, moreover, long been recognised as a poet of classical imitation in general, for whom ‘imitation’ carries a moral as well as aesthetic force. Several of these critics have offered helpful and intelligent readings of individual ‘Horatian’ poems, but none have developed a sustained account of Jonson’s Horatianism, and no monograph exists devoted to Jonson’s appropriations of Horace. This book aims to fill that gap, discussing all of the more significant instances of Horatian allusion, imitation or translation in Jonson’s verse (and the satirical comedy, Poetaster, which stages Jonson as Horace himself). Such a survey demonstrates the extent of Jonson’s Horatianism,
Thomas Randolph, ‘A Gratulatory to Mr. Ben. Johnson for his adopting of him to be his Son’, line . Printed in Poems with the Muses looking-glasse: and Amyntas· By Thomas Randolph Master of Arts, and late fellow of Trinity Colledge in Cambridge (Oxford: printed by Leonard Lichfield printer to the Vniversity, for Francis Bowman, ), STC (nd edn)/, pp. –. Addressing himself, Jonson refers to ‘thine owne Horace ’ in the ode he composed after the hostile critical reception of The New Inn in (H&S, vol. , p. , line ). See for instance Richard S. Peterson, Imitation and Praise in the Poems of Ben Jonson (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, ) and Burrow’s remarks on Jonson’s Horatian satire (Colin Burrow, ‘Roman Satire in the Sixteenth Century’, in Kirk Freudenburg (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –). Jonson’s ‘classicism’ is a critical commonplace, and by ‘classicism’ is meant, among other things, self-conscious imitation of the style and form of Greek and Roman writers, including Juvenal, Seneca, Tacitus, Martial and Cicero among the Romans, and Lucian, Homer and Pindar among the Greeks. A great deal has been written on Jonsonian imitation in its many senses. Of particular importance are: Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, ), pp. –; Peterson, Imitation and Praise ; Katharine Eisaman Maus, Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind (Princeton University Press, ). The fullest account is found in Joanna Martindale, ‘The Best Master of Virtue and Wisdom: the Horace of Ben Jonson and His Heirs’, in Charles Martindale (ed.), Horace Made New (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. See also Robert B. Pierce, ‘Ben Jonson’s Horace and Horace’s Ben Jonson’, Studies in Philology, (), –. For a particularly imaginative example of a reading of an individual Horatian poem, see Bruce Boehrer, ‘Horatian Satire in Jonson’s “On the Famous Voyage”’, Criticism, (), –. A list of passages discussed, in both Jonson and Horace, is given in a separate index.
Introduction: reading Jonson’s Horace
but also its importance to Jonson’s literary persona: Jonson used Horace, and his relationship to the Roman poet, to model his own self-conscious poetic ‘authority’ (a well-established topos of Jonsonian criticism), to mark his laureate role as a poet of courtly panegyric, and to insist upon his artistic freedom despite the network of patronage and financial dependence within which he was compelled to operate. That these functions are sometimes in conflict is testimony to the subtlety and depth that Jonson found in Horace, and to the attention with which he read the Latin poet: in several respects Jonson’s response to, and appropriation of Horatian themes anticipates much more recent developments in classical criticism. The relationship between Jonson and Horace was widely noted – and sometimes mocked – by his seventeenth-century contemporaries. In time the association between them, and so between a certain kind of Horatianism and the royalism of Jonson’s Stuart career, became central to the reception and perception of Jonson and Horace alike in the troubled years of the mid seventeenth century. This book is focused upon Jonson’s work, not his Nachleben, but I have at several points discussed instances of his own reception among friends and followers (often from unpublished manuscript sources). This largely untapped material is important supplementary evidence, shedding light on the various associations and identifications between Horace and Jonson in the minds of his seventeenthcentury readers.
Several recent studies of the Satires and Epistles , for instance, have focused upon their nuanced exploration of the balance between freedom and dependency in Horace’s address to his patrons, superiors, equals and subordinates. Work of this kind is of great help in reading the ambiguities of Jonson’s poems of praise. I am thinking in particular of Kirk Freudenburg, Th e Walking Muse: Horace on the Th eory of Satire (Princeton University Press, ); Denis Feeney, ‘ V C S M: Poetry, Principate and the Traditions of Literary History in the Epistle to Augustus’, in Denis Feeney and Tony Woodman (eds.), Traditions and Contexts in the Poetry of Horace (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –; R. Hunter, ‘Horace on Friendship and Free Speech: Epistles I. and Satires I.’, Hermes , (), –; W. R. Johnson, Horace and the Dialectic of Freedom: Readings in Epistles I (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, ). Ellen Oliensis’ chapter on the Ars Poetica makes no reference to Jonson’s translation of the poem but is nevertheless perhaps the single most suggestive guide to Jonson’s fascination with the Ars (Ellen Oliensis, Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority (Cambridge University Press, ). Jonson’s translation is discussed in Chapter , pp. –. Thomas Dekker calls him ‘Horace the Second’ in the Dedication to Satiro-mastix or Th e vntrussing of the humorous poet. As it hath bin presented publikely, by the Right Honorable, the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants; and priuately, by the Children of Paules. (London: Edward White, ), o, STC (nd edn)/, and the play makes much of this connection throughout.
Introduction: reading Jonson’s Horace :
When I write of Jonson’s ‘Horatianism’, I do not mean to imply that Jonson’s English poetry regularly sounds like Horace’s Latin (whatever that might mean), or that the experience of reading Jonson always or often resembles that of reading Horace’s work. Even a very detailed and extended allusive interaction with another text is not the same thing as a reproduction: Virgil alludes constantly to Homer in the Aeneid, and an awareness of that conversation is crucial to the reader’s experience of Virgil, and of his or her pleasure in it. But that is not to say that Virgil is always very much like Homer. On the contrary, the pathos and beauty of Virgil’s text arise in part from the ways in which the reminiscences of Homer draw our attention to the unHomeric features of the Aeneid: we are moved by Aeneas’ austere farewell to Ascanius, for instance, because of what it lacks in comparison with the scene between Hector, Andromache and the baby Astyanax in Iliad . Some of the difficulty we find in reading Jonson’s Horace emerges from this distinction between intertextuality and resemblance: to follow an intertextual conversation, a reader must know well the text, or texts, that form the ground of the engagement – well enough to note divergences from the model. She must also expect to make such connections and comparisons, and enjoy making them. Even the well-educated modern reader does not necessarily find it easy to read in this way. This is partly because modern education, unlike the Renaissance schoolroom, does not encourage us to know a narrow range of texts extremely well (to the point of extensive memorisation). But it is also because even if we
Perhaps the single most useful discussion of Renaissance modes of imitation is to be found in George W. Pigman, ‘Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance’, Renaissance Quarterly, (), –. He suggests three primary ‘modes’ of intertextuality, which he terms ‘transformative’, ‘dissimulative’ and ‘eristic’. We can, I think, see traces of all three in Jonson’s appropriation of Horace, but the most directly relevant is the ‘eristic’ mode, by which a ‘continual insistence on conflict [in the imitative relationship] suggests that a text may criticize, correct, or revise its model’ (). Jonson’s texts very often cite Horace, for instance, only to ‘cap’ the Latin text – to go one better. The best recent overview of early modern education and its effect upon the reading and interpretation of classical texts can be found in the introduction to Craig Kallendorf, The Other Virgil: ‘Pessimistic’ Readings of the Aeneid in Early Modern Culture, Classical Presences (Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. Kallendorf ’s notes are an invaluable guide to further bibliography on the topic. For more detailed information on the Elizabethan schoolroom in particular, see T. W. Baldwin, William Shakspere’s Small Latine and Lesse Greeke, vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ).
The Jonsonian ‘edition’
have read closely in classical literature, the texts in which we read Virgil or Horace do not generally encourage us to make these sorts of connection or comparison. By contrast, the classical editor of the Renaissance – such as Thomas Farnaby or Daniel Heinsius, with both of whom Jonson corresponded – was naturally concerned to establish the Latin or Greek text upon which he was working, but also to point out connections between texts: one aspect of what we would now call ‘intertext’. He also, typically, makes judgements about these comparisons – that is, editorial comment not only sets up parallels or points out differences between passages but also adjudicates between them, on both moral and aesthetic grounds. Early modern editors are not squeamish about stating their preference, or claiming (for instance) that Horace is better than Pindar – to name one example which is, as we shall see, directly relevant to Jonson’s experiments in English lyric form. ‘ ’ It is often remarked that Jonson’s printed texts – even, or especially, the texts of the masques, that most ephemeral of genres – closely resemble contemporary editions of the Latin and Greek classics, complete, in many cases, with extensive notes upon the classical parallels or sources of his work. In the case of the folio of Jonson’s Workes, this resemblance extends even down to the type used for its setting. This quirk of Jonsonian self-presentation, aptly dubbed ‘editorial authorship’ by Joseph
These editorial interventions are also literally ‘paratextual’, surrounding the text densely on three sides in many early modern classical editions. Examples of such debates, with which Jonson would certainly have been familiar, appear in several contemporary editions or works of criticism. See, for instance, Julius Scaliger, Poetices libri septem ([Lyons]: Apud Antonium Vincentium, ), o, Book . Roger Ascham describes Pindar and Horace as ‘an equall match for all respectes’ (Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster, ed. John E. B. Mayor (London: Bell and Daldy, ), Book , p. ). For further information on this topic, see: Stella P. Revard, Pindar and the Renaissance Hymn-Ode: –, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ), pp. –. On the bibliographic originality and importance of this folio, see Martin Butler, ‘Ben Jonson’s Folio and the Politics of Patronage’, Criticism, (), –; D. Heyward Brock, ‘Ben Jonson’s First Folio and the Textuality of His Masques at Court’, Ben Jonson Journal , (), –; Richard C. Newton, ‘Jonson and the (Re)Invention of the Book’, in Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (eds.), Classic and Cavalier: Essays on Jonson and the Sons of Ben (University of Pittsburgh Press, ), pp. –; Jennifer Brady and W. H. Herenden (eds.), Ben Jonson’s Folio (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, ); Martin Butler (ed.), Re-Presenting Ben Jonson: Text, Performance, History (New York: Macmillan, ); and Douglas A. Brooks, From Playhouse to Printing House: Drama and Authorship in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, ), Chapter . Loewenstein stresses the extent to which
Introduction: reading Jonson’s Horace
Loewenstein, has been much discussed in recent years, most richly and convincingly by Loewenstein himself. But although Loewenstein speaks perceptively of imitatio and its place in Jonson’s poetics, he locates it – and its significance – within the emergent rhetoric of the ‘possession’ of intellectual property. I want to take on board much of Loewenstein’s excellent work; but this book is not primarily concerned with Jonsonian ‘possessiveness’. Rather I am interested in the way in which Jonsonian intertextuality itself, especially in the juxtaposition of competing classical ‘voices’, invites the reader, as surely as Jonson’s sometimes hectoring prefaces, prologues and dedications, to construct an authorial voice that compares, judges and even claims to outdo his classical sources. Of course Horace is not the only classical author whom Jonson read with attention. His works are filled with references to, and imitations of, Tacitus, Juvenal, Martial, Seneca, Pindar and Lucian as well as the poets of the Greek Anthology and many neo-Latin authors. Horace is not a major presence in all of Jonson’s works – he is of less importance, for instance, to his later comedies (which are in any case not the subject of this book) – and the play Sejanus, which, like Poetaster, is built substantially from translation, is based not upon Horace but Tacitus. What is striking about Jonson’s Horatianism is that even when Jonson uses his poetry to think about and engage with other authors, he so often does so in juxtaposition, contention or conversation with an Horatian voice.
Jonson’s textual originality predates the folio (Loewenstein, Ben Jonson and Possessive Authorship (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –). Joseph Loewenstein, Possessive Authorship. He uses the phrase ‘editorial authorship’ in Chapter . Genette notes the complicating effect of editorial notation upon the conventional construction of the author by the reader (Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge University Press, ), p. ). Jonson’s ‘authorial’ editorial interventions – including prefaces, glosses and dedications as well as extensive marginal notation – collapse that distinction between editor and author. ‘Jonson had long since made the ethics of imitation his own proper problematic. His unrivalled importance for the historiography of intellectual property stems from the centrality of this problematic not only to his professional and intellectual career, but also, it seems, to his very sense of self ’ (Loewenstein, Possessive Authorship, p. ). Even in Sejanus, however, Jonson defends the form of his play in the prefatory letter with a reference to his forthcoming edition of Horace’s Ars Poetica: the implication is that even if this is not an Horatian play at a textual level, it is the kind of thing a modern Horace might have written. Loewenstein comes close to what I mean when he writes that ‘one way of mapping Jonson’s creative development would be to follow the process by which other literary models – Aristophanes, Lucian, Cicero, but above all, Martial – jostle Horace’, although he makes this observation in passing and does not follow up his own suggestion (Loewenstein, Possessive Authorship, p. ). The difference between the list of ‘rivals’ to Horace suggested by Loewenstein here and those with which this book is concerned probably stems from the fact that his book is concerned primarily with Jonsonian drama, this one with Jonson’s verse; although Loewenstein does in general underplay Jonson’s Horatianism.
Rivals to Horace in Jonson’s verse
: ’ Recent work on classical (especially Latin) literature, making use of – if not wholly adopting – post-structuralist theories of the wide-ranging scope of intertextuality, has expanded our sense of the ways in which one text may evoke another (or several others). Focusing in particular upon the poets of Augustan Rome, these critics have explored the extent to which not only the content but also the context of a source text may be evoked by a range of allusive strategies; and, most significantly, how these activated sub-texts and sub-contexts contribute to the creation of meaning in the literature – of Virgil or Horace, for instance – under consideration. The subtlety and potential scope of this kind of reading has not been much applied to Jonson. Th is is the case despite the acknowledged density of classical (especially Roman) material in Jonson’s work, the centrality of close textual study of Roman authors to Renaissance education, and the fact that classical editions of Jonson’s own day were typically concerned to point out instances of ‘imitation’ between one ancient text and another. A broad understanding of intertextuality – including imitation, allusion and translation – is fundamental to my discussion of Jonson’s Horace. Although the specific terms and texts of the allusive ‘dialogue’ with Horace (and, especially, the political and cultural force they bear) varies in the course of Jonson’s career, and between different poetic genres, the relationship itself is a constant feature of his work, and the central topic of this book. Both early and late, in poems dating from the s just as in late odes of the s, we find Jonson’s relationship to Horace played out in the negotiations between Horatian and Pindaric lyric models and their associated modes of praise and poetic power. This aspect of Jonson’s Horatianism is discussed in Chapter . Chapter is concerned with Jonson’s epigrams and epistles and, more widely, the poetics of his address to patrons and noble friends. In these poems, an analogous ‘dialogue’ emerges between the ambiguous ‘freedom’ of Horatian hexameter verse
I am thinking in particular of: Stephen Hinds, Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge University Press, ); Gian Biagio Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets, ed. and trans. Charles Segal (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ); Don Fowler, ‘On the Shoulders of Giants: Intertextuality and Classical Studies’, Materiali e Discussioni, (), –; Charles Martindale, Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Cambridge University Press, ) and Lowell Edmunds, Intertextuality and the Reading of Roman Poetry (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, ).
Introduction: reading Jonson’s Horace
(the Satires and Epistles) and rival models of address found in Martial’s epigrams and Seneca’s philosophical letters. In Jonson’s satiric poetry, explored in Chapter , a related kind of ‘freedom’ – to criticise rather than to praise – sees both Horatian and Juvenalian models of satiric verse invoked and allowed, as it were, to ‘compete’. In Poetaster – a play very explicitly about imitation, both aesthetically and morally – the Horatian voice contests and finally, in its pervasiveness, triumphs over Ovidian, Virgilian and even Homeric models, as well as a wide range of contemporary dramatic material (including references to plays by Marlowe, Marston, Dekker, Chapman and Shakespeare). The bravura demonstration of imitatio in the play ranges from structural resemblance, through extended allusion or imitation, to close translation and even outright borrowing (or ‘plagiary’). Poetaster is the main subject of Chapter . But it is not only the details of printed presentation that invite the Jonsonian reader to enter into an assessment – an editorial ‘adjudication’ – of the competing models (Horace and Pindar, or Horace and Martial, for instance) that stand behind a text. Jonson’s work was circulated widely in manuscript, both before and after his death; and contemporary verse manuscripts and miscellanies are filled, too, with examples of classical imitation and translation – especially of Horace – which are in varying ways and to varying degrees ‘Jonsonian’. The epigraph to this introduction, Polwhele’s consolatory ode on the failure of The New Inn, is an example of just this kind of thing. Polwhele uses a version of Horace to honour and console Jonson: by doing so, he flatters Jonson, but also implies and acknowledges the success of Jonson’s own project of selfpresentation as Horace. Manuscript evidence of various kinds, including copies of Jonson’s own poetry as well as the translations and imitations of others, reveal a great deal about how Jonson’s ‘Horatianism’ was read by his contemporaries and immediate successors. In manuscript miscellanies, individual choices in the editing, titling and ordering of poems are often suggestive in this respect. In Bodleian MS Rawlinson Poetry , for instance, Forest (‘To Sir Robert Wroth’) is titled ‘To Sir Robte Wroth in / prayse of a Countrye
There has been very little work on such material in relation to Jonson’s classicism, though Riddell’s notes on marginalia are a useful starting point (James A. Riddell, ‘Seventeenth-century Identifications of Jonson’s Sources in the Classics’, Renaissance Quarterly, (), –).
Whose Horace?
lyfe: / Epode’. The subtitle ‘epode’ invites the reader to associate the poem with Horace, Epodes ; and that association is further strengthened when we compare the title of Forest with the titling of Jonson’s own translation of Epodes , which appears a few pages earlier in the manuscript: ‘An: Ode in Horace in Prayse / of a Countrye lyfe, Translated:’. If we read the Wroth poem as primarily a response to, or version of Epodes – that is, if we prioritise the Horatianism of the poem over, say, its models in Martial – our interpretation of the piece may be significantly altered. Details of this kind reach behind Jonson’s own powerful, almost obsessive, attempts to control his readers’ responses, and give some indication of the extent to which his Horatianism was noted by his contemporary readers, and what significance they attached to it. In addition to evidence of this kind, which points to how Jonson was read and his poetry understood by his contemporaries, manuscript material offers a wealth of information about the broader literary culture to which Jonson responded and which he in turn helped to shape. Surviving verse manuscripts testify, for instance, to a culture of classical translation and imitation that extended to the imitation and even the translation (into Latin) of Jonson himself. This cultural context, in which the practice of translation, a paradigmatic school exercise, remained a focus of literary energy and creative response in adulthood is essential background for an understanding of, for instance, Jonson’s unfashionably ‘close’ translations of Horace (such as the Ars Poetica) as well as the many explorations of close translation that are embedded in his works. That broader culture is not the main focus of this book, but it informs and supports my readings of Jonson’s Horatianism, and I discuss various examples of Jonson’s own reception alongside his close translations in Chapter (‘Translating Horace, translating Jonson’). If Horace is indeed so important to Jonson, why has the relationship gone relatively unremarked? The answer is in part, I think, to do with the ‘version’ of Horace most alive to Jonson and his contemporaries. For the modern well-educated reader – even the classicist who does not specialise in Horace – the most familiar features of Horatian style, his ‘signature
Bodleian MS Rawlinson Poetry , r. Bodleian MS Rawlinson Poetry , r. The implications of this manuscript evidence for our reading of the poem in question is discussed in Chapter , pp. –.
Introduction: reading Jonson’s Horace
elements’, are probably a certain notion of Stoic ‘resignation’, a perception of (sometimes discomfiting) political loyalty, and above all a beautifully expressed commitment to ‘wine, women and song’ in the face of time and death. Other possible strong associations are his social position as a friend of Virgil, a favourite of Maecenas, and finally also of Augustus; and perhaps the peculiar concentration and elusive force of his lyric style. In each of these cases, the perception of Horace is founded upon the Odes. With a couple of exceptions – ‘Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes’ (Forest ); or perhaps ‘My Picture left in Scotland ’ (UW ), with its rueful pose of aging self-deprecation – these are not likely to be the first associations we have with Jonson’s verse. The so-called ‘Cavalier Poets’, the self-consciously imitative ‘Sons of Ben’ are by these criteria much more Horatian than Jonson himself, and criticism has to some extent reflected that perception. Jonson’s Horatianism, by contrast, has been undernoticed and inadequately described partly because his version of Horace is quite different to ours: his ‘favourite’ passages – the individual poems and sections of poems to which he returns most frequently over the course of a long career – are drawn largely from the hexameter verse, the Satires and Epistles (currently mainly the preserve of professional classicists) and the unfashionably panegyric Odes IV. Jonson took Horace’s moral authority – like his own – seriously. It is not just a matter of genre. The themes with which ‘Jonson’s Horace’ are most prominently concerned are also unfashionable – of the Odes, for instance, he concentrates upon Horace’s boldest and least ironic declarations of the poet’s power to immortalise (Odes I., III., IV. and IV.). Amongst the hexameter verse, the favoured passages are concerned with male friendship (the Epistles, plus a few epistolary odes), or with the negotiation of freedom and power, in politics and art alike (the Satires, Epistles
Charles Martindale offers an excellent overview of the various constructions of Horace at different periods in his introductory essay to Horace Made New (‘Introduction’, in Charles Martindale and David Hopkins (eds.), Horace Made New: Horatian Influences on British Writing from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. The Song. To Celia (‘Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes, / And I will pledge with mine’) is actually modelled upon sections of the Epistles of Philostratus. ‘My Picture left in Scotland ’ does have many elements of the lyric Horace: an aging authorial voice, an ironic awareness of physical decline, a sense of real humour as well as convincing pain and desire. It is however unusual among Jonson’s lyric. Joanna Martindale gives an excellent, albeit brief, account of the relationship between Jonson’s Horatianism and that of his successors (J. Martindale, ‘The Best Master of Virtue and Wisdom’). Certainly included in this list are: Odes I., III., IV., IV. and IV.; Satires I., II. and II.; Epistles I., I. and I.; portions of the Ars Poetica. A list is included in the index of passages discussed.
Implications and directions
and Ars Poetica). Some passages, such as Odes IV., to which Jonson returned almost obsessively, combine these themes: that poem is one of Horace’s boldest statements of the ‘monumentalising’ power of verse, and lies on the margin between lyric and verse letter. To read Jonson’s Horatianism well, we must reread Horace. This study will contribute to our understanding of Jonson’s classicism, his poetics and the nature of his authority as it was constructed both by himself and by others during and after his lifetime. But the conclusions presented here are significant, too, for students of the period more generally. It may be true that Jonson’s patterns of thought and connection were more deeply and specifically intertextual than those of many of his contemporaries; but the sophistication of the allusive ‘conversation’ in his work is not unique. Other early modern authors benefit from attention of this kind, as does the study of classical reception in the period. Donne’s Horatianism has, for instance, been relatively little studied (perhaps because it is most evident in the less popular verse satires and epistles), but exhibits a very similar kind of intertextual sophistication to that we find in Jonson. Amongst studies of classical reception, the possibility of ‘negative’ or equivocal appropriations of major authors has produced some of the most interesting work of recent years. Craig Kallendorf has reminded us that we, in our twentieth- or twenty-first-century sadness or cynicism, are not uniquely sophisticated in our sensitivity and response to the compromising sorrow and ambiguities of the Aeneid. Jonson can easily seem a brash or self-satisfied author to the modern reader, a much less satisfying persona
Jonson was particularly interested in explorations of the inequalities and varieties of power between the poet and his patron (as in Odes I., Epistles I. and I., for instance), the poet and his noble friends (many of the Epistles and Ars Poetica), and the poet and his slave (as in Satires II.). Putnam describes the ‘monumentalising’ effect of Odes IV. in his analysis of the poem (Michael C. J. Putnam, Artifices of Eternity: Horace’s Fourth Book of Odes (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, ), pp. –). References to this poem are found in UV , UW and Forest , among others. This material is discussed in Chapter , pp. –. See Victoria Moul, ‘Donne’s Horatian Means: Horatian Hexameter Verse in Donne’s Satires and Epistles’, John Donne Journal , (), –. Verse by Jonson and Donne circulated very widely in the same manuscript collections in this period, and in some cases attribution remains hard to determine between them and other more minor members of their circle. I am thinking in particular of Kallendorf, The Other Virgil . We could compare the ambiguous role of Virgil in Poetaster, discussed in Chapter .
Introduction: reading Jonson’s Horace
than that of Shakespeare, or Donne, or even the bold and troublesome young Marlowe (we might be inclined to like Jonson more if he had died a little earlier). But his urgent reading and rereading of Horace is far from strident or unworried. On the contrary, Jonson’s powerful and sustained response to the complexities and compromises of Horatian ‘libertas’, the problem of freedom in a climate of patronage, amounts to a compelling interpretation, especially of the hexameter verse. Jonson, in accord with his time and culture as well as his own personality, takes Horace seriously in all the ways that we, currently, find hardest to appreciate – as a laureate poet of politicised praise, as a literary critic, as a moralist and as a friend. Jonson’s departures from Horace – the determination, for instance, to read and write into Horace a hope for stability that the Latin so often denies – are among the most moving and emotionally sophisticated passages in Jonson’s work. There is no doubt that we read Jonson better, and may appreciate him more, if we read Horace – his Horace – with attention and respect. That is the chief aim of this book. But it works the other way too. I have known and loved Horace for more years than I have been reading Ben Jonson; but I read, and will continue to read Horace the better for Jonson’s help.
Jonson’s Odes: Horatian lyric presence and the dialogue with Pindar
Me, in whose breast no flame hath burned Lifelong, save that by Pindar lit … Rudyard Kipling
Katharine Maus, writing of Jonson’s relationship to Horace, remarks that for the ‘first two-thirds of his career his model is the moral satirist Horace’, rather than the Horace of the Odes. She is right to stress the centrality of Horatian satire to Jonson’s project – a role to be explored in Chapters and – but I would like to challenge her dismissal of the lyric Horace. Horatian lyric influence is in fact discernible across a very wide range of Jonson’s texts, including epistles, masques, drama, translation and prefatory material. Moreover, this engagement is marked by an almost obsessive return to a handful of key odes (I., III., IV. and IV.), all of them powerful statements of the poet’s intention and ability to create work which will prove immortal. The fact of this consistent engagement, and its significance, has not been discussed. Michèle Lowrie traces the ‘personal narrative’ of Horace’s career in the course of the Odes from ‘light lyrist to serious praise poet’. Jonson’s early assumption of Horace’s voice at his most politically and poetically established (especially in the odes of Book IV) launches his own poetic trajectory directly into the end of this story: from the earliest texts of his career, Jonsonian authority is figured in Horatian vatic terms. Moreover, each of the Horatian odes to which Jonson most systematically alludes is indebted to a Pindaric model. (Such selectivity is noticeable because it is not true of Horace’s lyric in general, which draws its models from a
Rudyard Kipling, ‘A Translation: Horace, Bk V, Ode ’, Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Definitive Edition (London: Hodder and Stoughton, ), p. . Maus, Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind , p. . The best general overview of Jonson’s Horatianism remains Joanna Martindale, ‘The Best Master of Virtue and Wisdom’. Michèle Lowrie, Horace’s Narrative Odes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), p. .
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
wide range of Greek lyric verse, including Sappho, Alcaeus and Anacreon, among others.) Although Jonson’s late ode for Cary and Morison (UW ) is widely acknowledged as an imitation of Pindar, there has been little consideration of the implications of his adoption of a Pindaric mode of praise. The second part of this chapter accordingly considers Jonson’s appropriation of – and finally contention with – Pindaric style and tone in the odes composed throughout the course of his writing life. Even in the earliest examples (Forest , for instance, discussed below), Jonson’s work deploys Horatian material to express not only poetry’s lasting power, but also its ability to immortalise those whom it addresses – a rhetorical turn Horace himself conspicuously avoided in his lyric until his very latest work (Odes IV. and IV.). The obscure Bandusian fountain is ironically committed to posterity at III., and many of the erotic lyrics tacitly centre upon the contrast between the swift passing of youth and beauty and its arrest in Horace’s poetry, but even the most straightforwardly panegyric of the political odes (IV., IV., IV. and IV., for example) never entirely escape an edge of recusatio – the poet’s refusal to write political epic – and nor do they promise directly to immortalise the regime of which they speak. This is in contrast to Pindar, almost every one of whose victory odes promises immortality of just this kind; indeed that hope is the central point and purpose of those poems, which emphasise the necessity of achievement and the memory of that achievement for true glory. In this sense, Jonson’s fixation upon IV. and IV. is much more Pindaric than it is Horatian. Odes IV. and feature in Jonson’s work from the earliest years of his literary career until late in his life. Early examples include line of IV., appended as the motto at the end of Ungathered Verse , an early poem in praise of Thomas Palmer’s The Sprite of Trees and Herbes (–). Similarly, the dedication to Camden inserted in the Huntington copy of the quarto of Cynthia’s Revels () takes its pointed epigraph
On the reception of Pindar at this period in general see Revard, Pindar and the Renaissance HymnOde. Shafer gives a brief but useful overview of the Pindaric and Horatian material in Jonson’s odes (Robert Shafer, The English Ode to : an Essay in Literary History (New York: Gordian Press, ), pp. –). A briefer version of some of the arguments of this chapter can be found in Victoria Moul, ‘Versions of Victory: Ben Jonson and the Pindaric Ode’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition, (), –. Instances of this theme in Pindar are so numerous that an exhaustive list would be extremely long. Examples can be found at: Olympians ., .–, .–, Pythian .– and –, Pythian .–, Isthmian .–, Nemean .– as well as Nemean .– (discussed below) and –. Citations of Pindar refer to the Oxford Classical Text edition: C. M. Bowra (ed.), Pindari Carmina cum fragmentis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ).
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
from IV.: ‘Non Ego te meis / Chartis inornatum silebo’ (‘I shall not pass you over in silence / leaving you without lustre in my works’, IV..–). These two late Horatian odes, perhaps more than any other individual texts, are central to Jonson’s negotiation of poetic power and praise, and they demand some attention in their own right. Lying at the heart of Horace’s fourth (and last) lyric collection, they are traditionally treated as a pair (or, in conjunction with the seventh ode, on the inevitability and obscurity of death, a trio). Odes IV., addressed to Censorinus, begins by distinguishing the poet’s art from that of the sculptor or the painter: Donarem pateras grataque commodus, Censorine, meis aera sodalibus, donarem tripodas, praemia fortium Graiorum, neque tu pessima munerum ferres, divite me scilicet artium quas aut Parrhasius protulit aut Scopas, hic saxo, liquidis ille coloribus sollers nunc hominem ponere, nunc deum. sed non haec mihi vis, non tibi talium res est aut animus deliciarum egens. gaudes carminibus; carmina possumus donare et pretium dicere muneri.
(Odes IV..–)
I would gladly present bowls and fine bronzes, Censorinus, to my comrades; I would give them tripods, the prizes for brave Greeks – and you would carry off not the least of those rewards, if only I were rich in the arts which Parrhasius or Scopas advanced, the one in stone, the other in liquid colours skilled at presenting now a man, now a god. But this is not in my power, and you have no shortage of such luxuries, either mentally or materially: poetry is your delight; I can give poems, and tell the value of the gift.
Horace names the Greeks ‘Parrhasius … aut Scopas’ () as examples of a sculptor and a painter, and in the opening lines their work is associated with the description of what the poet will not give (though he claims
The Latin text of Horace is taken from the OCT edition: Edward C. Wickham (ed.), Q. Horatii Flacci Opera (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ). Th roughout the book, translations from Latin and Greek are my own unless otherwise noted.
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
he would if he could) – that is, bowls, bronzes and tripods, the prizes for athletic victories. Horace’s claim that this is not ‘mihi vis’ (‘not my strength’, or ‘not in my power’, ) looks in several directions: he cannot do so because he is not wealthy; and also because his society is not that of Pindar, and he is not writing odes for athletic victories. But the connection to – and repudiation of – Pindaric form runs deeper than that. Pindar’s poems repeatedly associate themselves with the image of an object: a cup, a wreath, a building. Horace reminds us of this Greek tradition, and he claims that he is not part of it. But Pindar too distinguishes his art from the ‘static’ work of a sculptor: ‘I am no sculptor, to work unmoving statues that stand resting upon their base’ (Nemean .–). Horace’s strikingly confident self-representation, described by Putnam as ‘a speaker who is very much dominant’, both evokes and distances himself from Pindar and his style. The poem’s development of Pindar’s favourite theme – that songs create glory – is accordingly stark. In Pindar’s odes the achievement of the addressee, his athletic prowess, the nobility and excellence of the aristocratic sponsor, the prizes awarded for victory, and the fame-winning ‘prize’ of the poem itself are all closely associated with one another, densely interrelated. Horace’s tone, by contrast, unbinds these associations in bluntly prosaic language: ‘neque / si chartae sileant quod bene feceris, / mercedem tuleris’ (‘and if historical documents make no mention of your fine achievements, / you’ll receive no recompense for them’, –). The historical and mythological characters mentioned in the latter half of the poem, both Roman and Greek, owe their immortality to the Muse and the Muse alone: quid foret Iliae Mavortisque puer, si taciturnitas obstaret meritis invida Romuli? ereptum Stygiis fluctibus Aeacum virtus et favor et lingua potentium vatum divitibus consecrat insulis. dignum laude virum Musa vetat mori: caelo Musa beat.
The ode is, for example, imagined as a palace in the opening lines of Olympian and a treasurehouse at Pythian .–; as a drinking bowl at the beginning of Olympian , and a memorial column at Nemean .. The ode conveys fame like ‘winged wreaths’ in the fi nal lines of Olympian (–). Putnam, Artifices of Eternity, p. .
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
What would he have been, the child of Ilia and Mars, if grudging silence had hindered the fulfilment of what Romulus deserved? The strength, the approval and the speech of powerful poets save Aeacus, snatched from the Stygian waves, and install him in glory on the isles of the fortunate. The Muse forbids the death of the man who deserves praise: the Muse by her blessing raises him to heaven. (Odes IV..–)
In a line which teases our Pindaric expectations, Horace declares: ‘virtus et favor et lingua potentium / vatum divitibus consecrat insulis’ (‘the strength, the approval and the speech of powerful / poets install [Aecaus] in glory on the isles of the fortunate’, –). In the world of the Pindaric victory ode, the abstract nouns of line are divided up amongst the participants – ‘virtus’, strength and excellence (Greek ‘arete’) is the province of the victorious athletes and princes, as well as of poets, each in their own realm; whereas ‘favor’ (‘approval’) is bestowed by the noble patrons and by the Muse. The ‘lingua’ – the tongue, or speech – suggests poetry perhaps, but ‘potentium’ (‘of powerful [people]’) leads us to expect that we are talking here of the patrons, the powerful men whose excellent achievements and approval the poet requires in order to furnish him with commissions and subject matter alike. Teasingly delayed until the next line, the noun qualifying ‘potentium’ is revealed instead to be ‘vatum’ – it is the poets, after all, who claim the power. The wealth of the line (‘divitibus’ means literally ‘rich’) turns out to belong not to the patrons or nobles, men who are rich as the poet, as he began the poem by stating, is not; but rather to the ‘isles of the fortunate’, an afterlife of happiness and prosperity only attained, even by the richest of men, with the poet’s help. Jonson’s late poem ‘To the right Honourable, the Lord Treasurer of England. An Epigram’ (UW ), dating from between and , is based in structure and sentiment upon Horace, Odes IV. – Censorinus is replaced as addressee by Lord Weston, the Lord Treasurer. If to my mind, great Lord, I had a state, I would present you now with curious plate Of Noremberg, or Turkie; hang your roomes Not with the Arras, but the Persian Loomes. I would, if price, or prayer could them get, Send in, what or Romano, Tintoret, Titian, or Raphael, Michael Angelo,
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes Have left in fame to equall, or out-goe The old Greek-hands in picture, or in stone. (UW .–)
The relationship is telling: the Greek artists enumerated by the Latin poem (Parrhasius and Scopas, ) are replaced with classics of the Italian Renaissance (‘Romano, Tintoret, / Titian, or Raphael, Michael Angelo’, –) who are said to ‘equall, or out-goe / The old Greek-hands in picture, or in stone’ (–). The Greek artists who have been surpassed by their Renaissance successors are now unnamed – and so unknown – just as surely as the heroes or nobles who lack a poet to immortalise them. Jonson’s poem uses Horace’s in another way, too. The core compliment to Lord Weston is that he, unlike mere artists or sculptors, can perform the actions that earn a statue – provide, as it were, the subject for memorial: This I would doe [present Weston with paintings or sculptures], could I thinke Weston one Catch’d with these Arts, wherein the Judge is wise As farre as sense, and onely by the eyes. But you I know, my Lord; and know you can Discerne betweene a Statue, and a Man; Can doe the things that Statues doe deserve, And act the businesse, which they paint, or carve. What you have studied are the arts of life; (–)
This is a graceful tribute, and the transformation of the Latin ‘artium’ () into the (better) ‘arts of life’ () is particularly fine. But Horace’s poem is also about the inadequacy of painting and sculpture – for all their finery, neither of these arts immortalises as surely as poetry: non incisa notis marmora publicis, per quae spiritus et vita redit bonis post mortem ducibus, non celeres fugae reiectaeque retrorsum Hannibalis minae, non incendia Carthaginis impiae eius, qui domita nomen ab Africa lucratus rediit, clarius indicant laudes quam Calabrae Pierides (Odes IV..–)
Neither marbles carved with well-known public deeds, through which breath and life return to fine
Jonson’s verse is cited from Herford and Simpson. I have, however, modernised i/j and u/v, and expanded manuscript contractions where H&S print them in original form.
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
leaders after death, nor the rushed escape of Hannibal, or his threats now converted into retreat, nor the blazing of wicked Carthage – none of these make known the name of the man who returned with profit from conquered Africa more clearly than the praises of the Calabrian Muses.
This thought is rooted in Pindar, and Jonson signals his recognition of that with his compliment to Weston: ‘But you I know, my Lord; and know you can / Discerne betweene a Statue, and a Man’ (–). Pindar’s Nemean begins with the distinction between the maker of statues (which are fixed and immovable) and the mobile, living power of the poet’s song: ‘I am not a sculptor, to work unmoving statues that stay standing upon their base. But on every ship and in every boat, sweet song, go forth from Aigina spreading your news …’ (Nemean .–). Jonson flatters Weston by telling him that he is better and worth more than a great sculptor, or a great work of art. But the gap between Jonson’s compliment and Horace’s ode – which tells us that it is poets who are better than artists and sculptors – sets up the close of the poem. Typically, Jonson has displaced Horace’s statement about his own powers from the body of the poem (lines –, quoted above) to its close, ensuring that the poem ends not, elliptically, with Liber (Bacchus, the god of wine and freedom, as in IV.), or with the virtue of the addressee (as in IV.), but rather with Jonson himself, and a glance at Horace, Odes III.: though I cannot as an Architect In glorious Piles, or Pyramids erect Unto your honour: I can tune in song Aloud; and (happ’ly) it may last as long. (–)
Jonson’s ode for Lord Weston appears to be uncharacteristically modest: in fact, the poem relies upon its relationship with Horace – and the educated reader’s appreciation of it – to communicate its message. The fame even of the Greeks is contingent upon their immortalisation
The man in question is Scipio Africanus, whom Horace need not name because he has been so thoroughly immortalised by Ennius. In fact, Horace adds to Ennius’ power by collapsing Scipio Africanus with Scipio Aemilianus, who razed Carthage in , two decades after Ennius’ death. (See Putnam, Artifices of Eternity, p. .) In Odes III. Horace claims to have built a monument more lasting than bronze, and loftier than the pyramids.
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
in Horace’s (or Jonson’s) verse; and the same, we deduce, goes for Lord Weston, however virtuous he may be. O D E S . . The early poem, the ‘Epistle. To Elizabeth Countesse of Rutland’ (Forest ), engages at length not only with Odes IV. and , but also with I. and III.. This choice of models is itself an astute reading of Horace: IV. and show Horace at the peak of his career and lyric self-confidence, with what Nisbet and Hubbard term a ‘new awareness of his own distinction and his power to confer immortality on others’ characteristic of his fourth book. The impression that in these pieces Horace fulfils the prophecy of his own greatness found in I. and III. is reinforced by the metre of IV., the central piece of Book IV: the only other poems in this unusual ‘lesser asclepiad’ are Odes I. and III., ‘bookend’ proclamations of poetic power and assurance for the unitary first three books. Written for New Year’s Day , the Rutland epistle is a useful starting point for considering this particular intertextual conversation in more depth. The central movement of this long poem in praise of Elizabeth (written probably in the hope of eliciting patronage) is a dense tapestry of borrowings from Horace: Beautie, I know, is good, and bloud is more; Riches thought most: But, Madame, thinke what store The world hath seene, which all these had in trust, And now lye lost in their forgotten dust. It is the Muse, alone, can raise to heaven, And, at her strong armes end, hold up, and even, The soules, shee loves. Those other glorious notes, Inscrib’d in touch or marble, or the cotes Painted, or carv’d upon great-mens tombs, Or in their windowes; do but prove the wombs, That bred them, graves: when they were borne, they di’d, That had no Muse to make their fame abide.
A similar engagement with this cluster of Odes is found in UW (‘An Ode’), which borrows from Odes IV. the structural motif of a catalogue of poets and those they have sung. In the final lines of the poem Jonson claims that just as successive generations of poets have promoted their beloved to immortality, so shall he. Another late poem is very blunt: ‘For in the Genius of a Poëts Verse, / The Kings fame lives. Go now, denie his Teirce’ (UW .–). The warrant for one tierce of wine yearly is dated March ; UW presumably postdates this. R. G. M. Nisbet and Margaret Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace: Odes, Book I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), pp. xxxvii–xxxviii.
Forest and Horace, Odes IV. and IV.
How many equall with the Argive Queene [Helen], Have beautie knowne, yet none so famous seene? A was not first, that valiant was, Or, in an armies head, that, lockt in brasse, Gave killing strokes. There were brave men, before A, or I, or all the store, That H brought to Troy; yet none so live: Because they lack’d the sacred pen, could give Like life unto ’hem. Who heav’d H Unto the starres? or the Tyndarides? Who placed J A in the skie? Or set bright A crowne so high? Who made a lampe of B hayre? Or lifted C in her chayre? But only Poets, rapt with rage divine? And such, or my hopes faile, shall make you shine.
(–)
The poem’s cast of characters is largely derived from the two central odes of Horace’s fourth book: Helen, the ‘Argive Queene’ (), ‘I’ () and ‘H’ () all appear in IV. (lines , and respectively); ‘H’ () is in heaven in both Odes IV. (line ) and Forest ; and the ‘Tyndarides’ () appear at IV... The central thought of Jonson’s epistle (‘A was not first, that valiant was’, ) redrafts the Latin of Odes IV.: primusve Teucer tela Cydonio direxit arcu; non semel Ilios vexata; non pugnavit ingens Idomeneus Sthenelusve solus dicenda Musis proelia; non ferox Hector vel acer Deiphobus gravis excepit ictus pro pudicis coniugibus puerisque primus. vixere fortes ante Agamemnona multi; sed omnes illacrimabiles urgentur ignotique longa nocte, carent quia vate sacro.
(Odes IV..–)
Nor was Teucer the first to aim arrows from a Cretan bow; Troy was not troubled just the once; mighty Idomeneus or Sthenelus were not the only ones to fight battles worth poetic retelling; ferocious Hector or swift Deiphobus did not
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes bear heavy blows for the sake of their chaste wives and their children before anyone else. Before Agamemnon there lived many brave men; but all are weighed down unwept and unknown by long night, because they lack a sacred bard.
Finally, lines – (‘It is the Muse, alone, can raise to heaven … The soules, shee loves’) translate IV.. (‘caelo Musa beat’). The comparison of poetry to sculpture and painting in particular (–) is similarly indebted to Horace. The phrase ‘because they lack’d the sacred pen’ () suggests ‘carent quia vate sacro’ (‘because they lack a sacred bard’, IV..), and both of these elements reach behind Horace to Horace’s model in Pindar, Nemean : ‘κα μεγάλαι γ ρ λκα / σκότον πολν μνων χοντι δεόμεναι’ (‘For great deeds of courage / remain in deep darkness when they lack songs’, –). Like Jonson’s poem (‘Th at H brought to Troy ’, ), Pindar’s ode goes on to mention Homer, and Jonson’s poem, again like Pindar, suggests that the greatness of the hero in question has not only been remembered but actually enhanced by the poet: ‘I believe that Odysseus’ story / has become greater than his actual suffering because of Homer’s sweet verse’ (Nemean .–). Apparently wilful obscurities in Jonson’s diction are illuminated by the Latin text. The phrase ‘[t]hose other glorious notes, / Inscrib’d in touch or marble’ (–) is unclear without reference to the Latin: ‘non incisa notis marmora publicis’ (‘not marbles carved with public records’, IV..). Knowledge of the Latin line clarifies the sense of ‘notes’ to include ‘renowned’ or ‘well-known’ as well as ‘marks’. The whole thing is in fact a dense kind of pun: Horace’s phrase ‘notis … publicis’ does not tell us who or what those ‘well-known public deeds (or men)’ actually are. For all their ‘publicness’ they are rendered precisely unknown by Horace’s failure to name them (unlike Lollius and Censorinus, the dedicatees of IV. and ). These ‘well-known’ deeds are conspicuously obscure, not only because they go unsung, but also because the meaning of the word ‘notes’ is unclear without its own poetic history. But these lines are not the limit of the intertextual ‘conversation’. Jonson’s vision of poetic success is also derived from Horace:
Compare Forest .–. See also Pindar Isthmian .–, which connects Ajax and ‘all the sons of the Hellenes who went to Troy’ () with Homer who has made them honoured and remembered (–). Ajax also appears in Horace, Odes IV. and Forest ..
Forest and Horace, Odes IV. and IV. when time shall bring To curious light, the notes, I then shall sing, Will prove old O act no tale to be: For I shall move stocks, stones, no lesse than he. Then all, that have but done my Muse least grace, Shall thronging come, and boast the happy place They hold in my strange poems, which, as yet, Had not their forme touch’d by an English wit. There like a rich, and golden pyramede, Borne up by statues, shall I reare your head, Above your under-carved ornaments, And show, how, to the life, my soule presents Your forme imprest there
The originality of the author’s ‘strange poems’ (–) echoes Odes IV.: ‘non ante vulgatas per artis / verba loquor socianda chordis’ (‘By arts never before revealed / I speak words to accompany the lyre’, IV..–). This claim to literary innovation is reminiscent, too, of Horace, Odes III..–, an echo confirmed by the ‘rich, and golden pyramede’ (, compare ‘pyramidum altius’, Odes III..). As noted above, the only other of Horace’s poems to share the metrical scheme of IV. are Odes III. and I.. Accordingly, these lines promise to Elizabeth to ‘reare your head’ (); whereas Horace’s opening lyric claims ‘I shall strike the stars with my uplifted head’ (I..), Jonson typically goes one better and offers to knock Elizabeth’s head, rather than his own, upon the stars among which he has the power to number her. The virtuous Lollius of Odes IV. is praised because he has ‘rejected the gifts (presumably bribes) of guilty men with a high-minded expression’ (‘reiecit alto dona nocentium / vultu’, IV..–). By contrast, the ‘noble ignorants’ of Jonson’s poem are rejecting poetry – unlike, so the poet hopes and suggests, the wise and virtuous Elizabeth, the Lollius of her age: But let this drosse carry what price it will With noble ignorants, and let them still, Turne, upon scorned verse, their quarter-face: With you, I know, my offring will find grace. (–)
But at least part of the force of the English poem is to establish that those things – bribes and poems – are not so different after all. Jonson claims that his poetry can not only replace, but actually better, a gift of gold; but the offer is still inherently financial: a pleased patron will pay the poet. For all this enjoyment of the self-aggrandising possibilities of Horatian lyric, the poem
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
is alive to the mercenary subtext of the relationship described: although the poet may have real power to immortalise, we are reminded that this immortalisation is also something that the patron can buy. This subtext is centred in Forest upon the resonant term ‘grace’: ‘with you, I know, my offring will find grace’ (). The suggestion that Elizabeth, unlike the ‘noble ignorants’, appreciates the value of poetry and will recompense it in kind reflects an undertone of Odes IV.: ‘gaudes carminibus; carmina possumus / donare et pretium dicere muneri’ (‘We can grant songs / and name the value of such a gift,’ –). Most translations avoid anything so stark (Quinn considers the line ‘hardly serious’), but it is perfectly possible to translate these lines: ‘You enjoy poetry: I can give poems – and tell you how much they cost.’ Horace’s poem goes on to modify the position: poems are valuable because they (unlike other art) can confer immortality, but the immediate sense of that line – ‘honestly, a “Horace” is worth something too’ – lingers in the memory. The apparently ‘mercenary’ remarks scattered throughout Pindar’s odes are also a much-commented-upon feature of his style, although as Kurke notes they always, like Jonson’s remark here, make it clear that the patron as well as the poet profit from the exchange. Thus Forest demonstrates several key aspects of Jonson’s engagement with Horace, and in particular with Horace at his most vatic and Pindaric. But there is in addition a playfulness to this self-conscious compression of so many Horatian topoi in the course of one poem. The climax of the epistle even includes a promise that Jonson will effect all this immortalisation ‘not with tickling rimes, / Or common places, filch’d’ (–). This despite the fact that his poem does of course rhyme, and moreover that his Horatian hit-parade, if not quite describable as ‘commonplaces’, include some of the most audacious and most famous portions of Horatian lyric. : F O R E S T ( F O R E S T ) The tenth poem of the Forest, to which I would now like to turn, is another early example of allusive ‘competition’ between Horace and Pindar, held
Kenneth Quinn (ed.), Horace: the Odes (Basingstoke: Macmillan, ), p. . Leslie Kurke, The Traffic in Praise: Pindar and the Poetics of Social Economy (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, ), pp. –. Th is term ‘fi lch’ recurs in Poetaster, V..– in the phrase ‘fi lching by translation’. Poetaster, performed in , is exactly contemporaneous with the Rutland ode.
Horace and Pindar in Forest and
within Jonson’s own verse. The poem, and that which follows it, was originally composed for Robert Chester’s Loves martyr (), a rather mysterious publication which also includes Shakespeare’s strange ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’. In the Forest, however, where it was reprinted, the poem introduces a sequence of pieces – an epode, two epistles, and an ode – the combination of which is specifically Horatian. All the more so, when we note that Forest is itself a version of one of the odes, the ambiguous twelfth ode of Horace’s first book, which begins: ‘What man or hero, will you take up, / Clio, to celebrate on the lyre or clear flute? / which god? whose name will the playful / echo resound?’ (–). A contemporary marginal note in the folio makes the same connection: ‘In Imitat: Ode . Lib: . Horat: / Incipient: Quem virum aut etc.–’. As so often in the portions of Horace that Jonson chooses to imitate, these lines are themselves a reminiscence of Pindar, in this case the familiar opening of Olympian : ‘τίνα θεόν, τίν’ ρωα, τίνα δ’ νδρα κελαδήσομεν;’ (‘What god, what hero, what man shall we sing?’, ). Horace has wittily reversed the order of Pindar’s elements, beginning with ‘man’, and adding the ‘quem deum?’ (‘or perhaps a god?’, ) almost as an afterthought. Jonson’s poem has in turn collapsed these three options to ‘what subject?’, focusing instead upon the ‘nomen’, the ‘great name’ of the poet’s chosen dedicatees – although the line typically manages to suggest that their very immortality, their ‘heaven’ is a function of their place in art: And must I sing? what subject shall I chuse? Or whose great name in Poets heaven use? For the more countenance to my active Muse? (–)
H&S also print the Proludium, a poem identified convincingly as an earlier draft of Forest , sent to Sir John Salisbury of Lleweni and preserved in manuscript. It does not bear the same relationship to Odes I. as the later version, although it does incorporate several Horatian features. Riddell, ‘Seventeenth-century Identifications of Jonson’s Sources in the Classics’, . The version printed in Chester’s Loves martyr has ‘we’ for ‘I’ in both cases in the first line, perhaps an echo of the Greek. The whole of Odes I. is arguably indebted to Olympian (see Eduard Fraenkel, Horace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), pp. –). The link between Odes I. and Olympians is pointed out by the earliest of the editions of Horace which Jonson is known to have owned (and the only one which predates his earliest major odes). The edition in question is Bernadini Parthenii Spilimbergii in Q. Horatii Flacci Carmina atq. Epodos Commentarii Quibus Poetae artificium, & uia ad imitationem, atq. ad Poetice scribendum aperitur (Venice: apud Dominicum Nicolinum, ), o, p. r (Mmr) (hereafter Spilimbergii). The relevant comment on Odes I. is found at r (Hr)-v (Hv). Jonson’s copy is held in Cambridge University Library (X..). In suggesting connections between contemporary readings of classical texts and Jonson’s appropriations of them, I have where possible referred to editions Jonson is known to have owned.
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
But Jonson’s version works a reversal upon Horace just as Horace had upon Pindar. The Latin poem offers seven possible divine subjects: Jove (–), Pallas Athene (), Bacchus (), Artemis (), Apollo (), Hercules () and the heavenly twins (). Forest takes four of these (Hercules, Phoebus, Bacchus and Pallas), names them, slyly, in reverse order, and then rejects – rather than includes – them one by one: H alas his bones are yet sore, With his old earthly labours. T
’exact more, Of his dull god-head, were sinne. Ile implore P. No? tend thy cart still. Envious day Shall not give out, that I have made thee stay, And foundred thy hot teame, to tune my lay. Now will I beg of thee, Lord of the vine, To raise my spirits with thy conjuring wine, In the greene circle of thy Ivy twine. P, nor thee I call on, mankinde maid, That, at thy birth, mad’st the poore Smith affraid, Who, with his axe, thy fathers mid-wife plaid.
(–)
This is imitation of Horace, undoubtedly; it is also imitation of Horace’s own challenging imitation; and finally it is a kind of deflation. We might expect this lively renunciation of the pagan gods of ‘poets’ heaven’ to be followed by a pious shift to Christian devotion, somehow annexed to the royal court, in place of the political pieties of the latter part of Horace’s poem. But that is not the move Jonson makes. Instead, he continues to reject further pagan divinities – Mars, Venus, Cupid and Hermes – and ends, rather abruptly, with the declaration that none of these gods could be enough to persuade him to take ‘My Muse up by commission: No, I bring / My owne true fire. Now my thought takes wing, / And now an Epode to deepe eares I sing’ (–, the italics are present in the folio text). This unexpected conclusion pointedly jettisons the whole second half of Horace’s poem – piously devoted to mentioning virtuous Roman heroes, and finally Caesar himself – in favour of the poet’s own moral ideals as expounded in Forest (the ‘Epode ’ to which Forest refers). More specifically, it subverts the formal model that
For details of Jonson’s library, see: David McPherson, ‘Ben Jonson’s Library and Marginalia: an Annotated Catalogue’, Studies in Philology, (), – and Robert C. Evans, Habits of Mind: Evidence and Eff ects of Ben Jonson’s Reading (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, ). Although Horace’s invocation of the Roman heroes is not without irony, either: his choice of a ‘subject’ is disingenuous, since he repeatedly dodges just this kind of dutiful mythmaking.
Horace and Pindar in Forest and
the opening of the poem invokes: namely, that of a victory ode. For all the differences between them, the movement of Horace’s poem shares much in common with Pindar’s: both will climax with the celebration of a named victor (Theron of Acragas, in Olympian , and Augustus, the ‘Caesar’ of Odes I.), and both hymn that victor in terms of the mounting glory of his family line. It is not just that Jonson’s poem jettisons this development, or that it implicitly replaces the expected victor with Jonson himself (‘my owne true fire’, ; ‘And now an Epode to deepe eares I sing’, ). It does both of these in language which at once appropriates and rejects the combined Horatian and Pindaric inheritance (in ancient literature, ‘epodes’ are found in Greek tragic choruses, Pindar’s choral odes, and in Horace’s early part-lyrical, part-satirical collection). The phrase ‘Now my thought takes wing’ () is derived from Pindar; but the final stanza of Jonson’s poem explicitly refuses to endorse a poetic subject determined by another’s request or payment: no ‘beautie’, however great or divine, ‘should take / My Muse up by commission’. Both Horace and Pindar, the poem implies, wrote of Caesar and of Theron because they were paid to do so. If Forest is still in any sense a victory ode, this victory belongs solely to the poet. The sequence of explicitly ‘Horatian’ poems in the Forest is concluded by the penultimate poem of the collection, the ‘Ode. To Sir William Sydney, on his Birth-Day’ (Forest ). The ode has attracted little comment, either structurally or in terms of its content. In his perceptive article Anthony Miller argues that the ode is indebted both to Pindaric epinicia and the Roman ‘genethliacon’, or birthday poem, although he admits that the austerity of the ethical admonition in Forest is rather different from anything found in the Roman genre. Horace’s odes for a birthday or other occasion (such as III. or III., as well as IV., to which Miller compares this ode), even when they include broadly ‘serious’ material on aging, or the importance of good birth (e.g. III..–), typically end by modulating in an ironic and understated fashion away from such themes. Odes IV., for instance, which opens with the busy preparations for a celebration in a manner reminiscent of Forest , concludes not with solemn advice, but with the distracting pleasures
For a ‘winged’ song or technique in Pindar, see: Isthmian . (last line); Nemean .; Pythians . and . (note also Horace, Odes II., discussed below). Pindar several times mentions payment for his work. Anthony Miller, ‘“These forc’d ioyes”: Imitation, Celebration, and Exhortation in Ben Jonson’s Ode to Sir William Sidney’, Studies in Philology, (), –.
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
of Phyllis – ‘come now, the last / of my loves’ (–) – and her delightful song (–). Nor is it only tone which distinguishes this poem from Horace’s work: the six stanzas of ten lines each are much longer than anything found in Horace, and the variety of line length is also unHoratian. This day sayes, then, the number of glad yeeres Are justly summ’d, that make you man; Your vow Must now Strive all right wayes it can, T’out-strip your peeres: Since he doth lacke Of going backe Little, whose will Doth urge him to runne wrong, or to stand still. (Forest .–)
Rather, the poem is in this as in several other formal features, Pindaric. In the folio edition of Jonson’s Workes, the combination of varied line-length and undifferentiated stanzas, as Miller remarks, ‘resembles the shape of Pindar’s odes in Renaissance editions’. He cites as Pindaric the use of gnomic wisdom, the comparison of virtue to an athletic contest (‘[t]’out-strip your peeres’; ‘to runne wrong, or to stand still’, and ), the ‘bold’ introduction of the poet’s own voice, and the connection of an addressee’s virtue and excellence to the virtuous example of his ancestors. Miller also comments upon the surprising combination of these Pindaric features not, apparently, with celebration of achieved virtue, but rather with incitement to virtue. The ‘victor’ of this victory ode hardly emerges as victorious at all. William Sidney was knighted in and died in ; this poem presumably commemorates the intervening birthday. Lisle C. John first connected William’s apparent underachievement with the serious tone of this poem, describing it as a ‘courteous but serious admonition to him to make himself worthy of his name’. Much of the tension and originality of the piece derives from this juxtaposition of factors: a victory ode which seems to urge triumphant virtue rather than (not in addition to) celebrating a recent achievement. The poet’s role in prompting and then immortalising
Miller, ‘These forc’d ioyes’, , n. . Lisle C. John, ‘Ben Jonson’s “To Sir William Sidney, on his Birthday”’, Modern Languages Review, (), – ().
Pindar and Horace in Jonson’s early odes
such achievement lies just below the surface of the poem: ‘So may you live in honor, as in name, / If with this truth you be inspir’d’ (–). If Horace’s odes generally slide away from the exigencies of ‘commissioned’ celebration with the graceful sidesteps of recusatio, or the muted ironies of an oblique lyric conclusion, Jonson’s poem seems to confront the relationship between poet and celebrant by choosing a celebrant – a ‘victor’ – barely worthy of the address. : ’ The scope of this technique is apparent if we compare the ambiguous address of Forest to the very different, but related, effects of UV , in which the poet addresses himself. Although undated, the connections between this poem and the final lines of the ‘Apologetical Dialogue’ to Poetaster () suggests that it belongs to around this time; it is titled ‘Ode’ in two (related) manuscript sources. UV exhibits several of those Pindaric features characteristic of the early Jonsonian ode: we find, once again, verses of longer length than an Horatian stanza, with a wide variety of line length and a complex rhyme scheme. The poem is self-conscious about its own efficacy, as the poet urges himself to further heights: ‘Wee’l rip our Richest veynes / And once more stryke the eare of tyme w th those Fresh straynes’ (–). Pindar frequently addresses himself in this way, and it is identified as a distinguishing feature of his style: ‘At once now, sweet lyre, weave out the tune’ (Nemean .–). In Nemean the poetic effort is compared to an athletic jump (–) and then to the hoisting of sails (–). The Muse is a speeding chariot at Isthmian .–; and at Isthmian . the poet hopes to light a ‘beacon-fire of hymns’. Similarly vivid metaphorical examples of poetic action are to be found in almost every ode. Moreover, the prayer of the final stanzas incorporates a compressed mythological reference reminiscent of Pindar’s elliptic and allusive mythic material: Throwe, Holye Virgin, then Thie Chrystall sheild Aboute this Isle, and Charme the rounde, as when Thou mad’st in open Feild
BL MS Harley , r; Bodleian MS Rawlinson , v.
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes The Rebell Gyantes stoope, and Gorgon Envye yeild, Cause Reverence, yf not Feare, Throughout their generall breastes, And by their takeinge, lett it once appeare Whoe worthie winne, whoe not, to bee wyse Pallas guests.
(–)
An oblique allusion to a myth broadly relevant to the theme of the poem is a Pindaric feature. In this case, the Gorgon is reimagined as ‘Envy’, a personification appropriate to the specifically artistic context of the opening stanzas, which lament the fate of the unpatronised poet in modern times. It is this modern ‘Gorgon’ whom the speaker hopes Athene will defeat – although the provocative juxtaposition of ‘Holye Virgin’ and ‘this Isle’ (, ) also suggests England’s medieval reputation for Marian devotion. Pallas’ intervention in Perseus’ battle with the Gorgon Medusa is rehearsed at some length in Pythian . Significantly, this poem is the only one of Pindar’s extant epinicia to celebrate a musical victor, Midas of Acragas, who won the pipe-playing contest in . Pythian is (unusually) monostanzaic, as are Jonson’s early Pindaric odes; and the four Greek stanzas of eight lines each are comparable to the five stanzas of nine lines of UV . The Athene episode, the structural myth of Pindar’s poem, relates how piping was invented by Athene in imitation of the sound of the Gorgons as they lamented for Medusa after Perseus beheaded her (–; –). Whereas Pindar’s victory odes usually work to associate athletic (and political) victory with the poetic ‘victory’ which immortalises it, in this poem these two categories are brought uniquely close together. But the allusive texture of UV is further complicated by the opening three stanzas, which allude not primarily to Horace or Pindar, but rather to Juvenal’s seventh satire, on the deprivation and indignity of the poet and artist’s state in the Rome of his day. One of Jonson’s favourite satiric texts, Satires , explicitly compares the status of the poet in Juvenal’s time to the favourable conditions enjoyed by Horace and Virgil under the patronage of Maecenas. Juvenal’s poem systematically invokes the language of Horatian poethood (‘vatem egregium’, ) and mentions Horace and Maecenas in particular, only to undercut this terminology with an aside that doubts the existence of any such ‘vates’: ‘I can’t come
Related passages in the ‘Apologetical Dialogue’ to Poetaster are discussed in Chapter , pp. –. The opening of Jonson’s ode also resembles that of Pindar’s Isthmian , which contrasts the poets of the past, who sang for love, with those of today, who do so for payment.
Pindar and Horace in Jonson’s early odes
up with an example of one, though I feel sure such a type exists’ (). UV imitates this tone of bitter nostalgia for a past age: Yff Men, and tymes were nowe Of that true Face As when they both were greate, and both knewe howe that Fortune to imbrace, By Cherissheinge the Spirrites y t gave their greatnesse grace (–)
In UV the truest sign of recognising and ‘embracing’ the good fortune of living in a blessed age is for the ‘great’ to cherish those ‘spirits’ (that is, people; but people with a frisson of inspiration about them) who grant the great their ‘grace’. This is a reversal of what we might expect: the first ‘grace’ of the poem is not the ‘thanks’ (that is, recompense) the patronised poet might hope for, but rather the ‘grace’ (immortality) for which the discerning and generous patron has cause to hope. As Hegel, writing of Pindar, puts it: ‘He himself has not the honor of having sung the praises of victors, for it is they who have acquired honor by being made the subject of Pindar’s verse … The fame which his heroes may claim is only an appendage to the fame of the lyric poet.’ The juxtaposition of Juvenalian satiric material with the vatic assurance of lyric is discussed in Chapter . In this poem that transition is marked quite clearly at line : Yett: since the bright, and wyse, Mynerva deignes Uppon soe humbled earth to cast hir eyes: Wee’l rip our Richest veynes And once more stryke the eare of tyme w th those Fresh straynes (–)
The curious image, poised between the medical and geological, of ‘rip our Richest veynes’ alludes to Horace’s description of the truly great poet: ‘Whether a praiseworthy poem is the result of nature, or of art / is often a topic of debate: personally, I do not see what good is study without a rich vein [divite vena] of talent / nor what the use is of talent that is crude and untrained’ (Ars Poetica, –, italics mine). The paradox of the promise ‘once more’ to produce poetic strains which
The ‘grace’ of line refers, by contrast, to what the poet can hope for – in this age, only the ‘Ivye, or the Bayes’ () rather than, by implication, any actual payment. G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox, vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), vol. , p. . Similar idioms are found at Epistles I.. and Odes II..–.
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
are nevertheless ‘fresh’ is, in this context, an acknowledgement of the concomitant power and risk of the allusive complexity of the poem. The literary authority of the lyric form – which also borrowed earlier poets’ declarations of absolute originality to reinforce its own ‘freshness’ – is always in danger of becoming merely ironic. The narrative dynamic introduced by the Juvenalian (satiric) voice, of despair and cynicism overcome by renewed Augustan lyric confidence, is at once an acknowledgement of this danger, and a response to it. But the Pindaric features of the poem, as described, are significant. The divinely aided outcome for which the poet prays is not only a modulation into lyric, but precisely a victory: a victory of lyric poetry, and of the lyric poet – like that of Midas – over his competitors. The odes to Sir William Sidney (Forest ) and to the poet himself in UV are poems of combined celebration and exhortation; both are delivered by a poet speaking in a lofty and self-conscious tone, pregnant with its own power; and all juxtapose glory and honour (usually of a kind associated specifically with poetic immortality) with worldly envy, failure or disappointment. In the fantasy ‘victory’ of UV , the speaker imagines a divinely sponsored regime in which the poet’s power to confer ‘grace’ is both recognised and appropriately repaid: a movement which at once arouses envy and defeats it, and which secures glory and reverence for the poet and those of whom he sings. Two further early odes, both of which have attracted very little comment, offer the clearest and most fully developed examples that we find in Jonson before UW of this combination of Horatian elements with Pindaric form: UW , the ode to Desmond, and UV , the ‘Ode Allegorike’ prefixed to Holland’s Pancharis (). Both poems engage with, and rewrite, the definition of ‘victory’ that deserves celebration, and the relationship of this victory to the poet himself.
Th is powerful fantasy is fulfi lled – or at least described as such – in Jonson’s masques. Between and he wrote twenty-five masques for the court of James I (a further two were performed for Charles I in ). Jonson’s detailed directions and descriptions of the action in the texts he prepared for publication make much of the harmonious unity of song and dance, especially in the final stages, and the tone of this harmonious achievement typically combines adulation with a didactic edge. Both in tone and in verse form many of the climactic songs strongly resemble the major odes – particularly compelling examples are found in The Golden Age Restored ( or ) which, like UV , imagines Pallas Athena as the driving force in restoring the glories of Astraea’s rule, assisted by the poets. The Irish Masque at Court (/) similarly concludes with the summoning of an ‘immortal bard’ (). The influence of Pindar upon Jonson’s development of the masque form deserves further consideration and I hope to explore this aspect in greater detail in future work.
The Desmond ode and the definition of glory
, , James, Earl of Desmond died young in , having spent most of his life a prisoner through no fault of his own: born around , he was incarcerated from childhood, first as a guarantor for his father’s behaviour, and then in exchange for his freedom. UW seems to date from the period immediately preceding his eventual release in October , at a point at which his freedom appeared possible, although not yet secured. The imagery of the poem alludes repeatedly to Desmond’s imprisonment and implies that the Queen may soon grant him his liberty. The fifth and central stanza of the ode focuses upon Desmond’s innocence and the injustice of his treatment: Nor thinke your selfe unfortunate, If subject to the jealous errors Of politique pretext, that wryes a State, Sinke not beneath these terrors: But whisper; O glad Innocence, Where only a mans birth is his offence, Or the dis-favour Of such as savour Nothing, but practise upon honours thrall. O vertues fall, When her dead essence (like the Anatomie In Surgeons hall) Is but a Statists theame, to read Phlebotomie.
(–)
Anthony M. McCormack, ‘Fitzgerald, James fitz Gerald, Fifteenth Earl of Desmond (c. – )’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, ) (www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/). The fourth stanza was printed in Englands Parnassus in October , implying that the poem was complete by that date. A copy of the poem in Jonson’s hand survives (Christ Church MS. ). Mark Bland’s useful description of the volume in which that copy appears supports a date of around . (See Mark Bland, ‘“as Far from All Reuolt”: Sir John Salusbury, Christ Church MS. and Jonson’s First Ode’, English Manuscript Studies, (), –.) Bland further suggests that the poem may originally have been addressed to the Earl of Essex, and only later redescribed as a poem for Desmond (the Christ Church holograph does not name an addressee). The poem’s stress upon the addressee’s innocence, however, fits Desmond’s history better than that of Essex. If the Christ Church MS dates, as it appears to do, from soon after the poem’s original composition, we might expect to find in it alternative readings more appropriate to Essex. In his transcription of the Christ Church MS, Bland reads ‘favour’ in line where H&S print ‘savour’. The handwriting of the MS is ambiguous, and ‘savour’ seems to me superior. In line the MS has ‘white Essence’, which could suggest ‘drained of blood’ as well as ‘pure’. A ‘statist’ is a politician or statesman.
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
‘Thrall’ at this period can mean imprisonment as well as enslavement, adding to a series of images of confinement in the poem (‘every chincke’, ; ‘knit Circle of her Stonie Armes’, ; ‘her cold embraces’, ). The final lines of the stanza are difficult. Since phlebotomy is, literally, the cutting of veins, the sentence seems to refer to the tendency to ignore true virtue while attending instead to a man’s ‘blood’ – that is, his birth, and the precedent set by his parents. Jonson is saying that a man should be judged on his own merits – and, unlike Desmond, given a chance to display them. The opening stanza of UW appropriates echoes from almost the complete set of those Horatian passages which have already emerged as Jonsonian favourites: Where art thou, Genius? I should use Thy present Aide: Arise Invention, Wake, and put on the wings of Pindars Muse, To towre with my intention High, as his mind, that doth advance Her upright head, above the reach of Chance, Or the times envie: Cynthius, I applie My bolder numbers to thy golden Lyre: O, then inspire Thy Priest in this strange rapture; heat my braine With Delphick fire: That I may sing my thoughts, in some unvulgar straine.
(–)
In the ‘advancement’ of this ‘upright head’ we hear, as in Forest , the close of Odes I.: ‘but if you include me among the lyric bards, / I’ll strike the stars with my uplifted head’ (–). ‘Bolder numbers’ invokes several of Horace’s declarations of poetic (and especially metric) innovation, but perhaps especially the statement on – significantly – Pindar’s dithyrambic style at Odes IV..–: ‘per audaces nova dithyrambos / verba devolvit numerisque fertur / lege solutis’ (‘[Pindar] unrolls new words / in bold dithyrambs, and is borne along by metres / freed from convention’).
The theme is a Jonsonian favourite; compare for instance ‘To Kenelm, John, George’ in the eighth part of ‘Eupheme’ (UW ), or Forest .–. See also Horace’s statements of technical innovation at Odes III..– (combining Greek song with Italian metres), Epistles I..– and Epistles II... The Christ Church holograph (MS. ) has ‘flowing’ rather than ‘bolder’. It was probably altered because ‘flowing’ became a central feature of Dekker’s satire upon Jonson’s style in Satiro-mastix (I..–). But ‘flowing numbers’ may also be derived from Odes IV.: ‘numerisque … solutis’ (–).
The Desmond ode and the definition of glory
‘Thy Priest’ () is also Horatian: throughout the Odes the term ‘vates’ denotes – as it does here – the company of great lyric poets. In this opening stanza Jonson has collapsed the hopeful aspiration of Odes I. with the declaration of its fulfilment in Odes IV., a poem which, like this ode, claims to have passed beyond envy, and which also mentions a golden instrument: ‘now I am less bitten by the tooth of envy’ () followed by ‘o, testudinis aureae’ (‘o, golden tortoise-shell [i.e. lyre]’, ). Whereas at the opening of his first book of odes, Horace hoped to be included in the ranks of the lyric poets, in his final book he proclaims that ambition fulfilled. Thus Jonson’s early poem not only appropriates Horace’s confident lyric hope, but collapses the narrative arc of Horatian achievement, promoting this new poet directly to the glorious fulfilment of lyric power. Just as Horace fitted Greek song to Italian metres, Jonson is fitting the ‘bolder numbers’ of his innovative English verse to the ‘golden lyre’ that belongs at once to Apollo and to Pindar ( ‘Χρυσέα φóρμιγξ’, Pythian .). He is doing so, moreover, through a self-conscious opening flurry of Horatian echoes, but in explicit hope of emulating Pindar’s winged muse, the only ancient poet invoked by name: ‘Arise Invention, / Wake, and put on the wings of Pindars Muse’ (–). The opposite fate – of ‘buried virtue’ – is, according to the poem’s description, exactly Desmond’s predicament, the predicament that Jonson’s verse will overcome: Then shall my Verses, like strong Charmes, Breake the knit Circle of her Stonie Armes, That hold<s> your spirit: And keepes your merit Lock’t in her cold embraces, from the view Of eyes more true (–)
The poem concludes with the same sentiment, hopeful that: our faire Phoeb<e>’s shine, Shall light those places, With lustrous Graces, Where darknesse with her gloomie-sceptred hand, Doth now command (–)
Odes I..; II..; III.. (‘Musarum sacerdos’); IV..; IV.. and IV... A ‘winged’ style is a Pindaric commonplace. Compare Isthmian . (last line); Pythians . and ..
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
This description of the salvation from darkness and death at the hands of the poet and his divinely inspired art remind us inexorably of the possibility of the reverse for those who pass unsung. Although the theme is expressed in Odes IV., this is a much more characteristically Pindaric sentiment than it is an Horatian one. One of the most familiar formulations of it occurs at Nemean .–: ‘for great deeds of valour remain in darkness if they lack hymns.’ Although he considers the poem a failure, Paul Fry acknowledges more clearly than any other critic the fundamentally Pindaric nature of its structure, describing the complex transitions of the imagery of light and dark as ‘quite genuinely Pindaric transferences’. Like UV , Forest and even UW (another, though much slighter, Jonsonian ode), the stanza form is once again closer to Pindar than any other model. The gnomic statements are also typically Pindaric: ‘Palme growes straight, though handled ne’re so rude’ (); in the fourth stanza as it is printed in Englands Parnassus (), lines – are pointed as gnomic. One of the instances of Pindar’s description of poetic skill as ‘winged’ occurs in Nemean (‘winged craft’ (), on this occasion describing Homer’s style rather than his own). Like UW , Nemean (in common with many of Pindar’s odes) returns repeatedly to images of darkness and light; in particular, it contains one of the starkest of Pindar’s articulations
See also Nemean .–. Paul H. Fry, The Poet’s Calling in the English Ode (New Haven: Yale University Press, ), p. . See also Martin Vöhler, Pindarrezeptionen: Sechs Studien zum Wandel des Pindarverständnisses von Erasmus bis Herder, Bibliothek der klassischen Altertumswissenschaften (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, ), pp. –. Fry’s provocative reading is marred by the omission of lines – in his quotation on page ; as a result, he considers the ‘mind’ of line to be confusingly female (because of the ‘her’ in line ), and ascribes it to Desmond. Fry is right to note the shifting pronouns of Jonson’s poem – itself, I believe, an attempt to imitate Pindaric transitions – but the transcription error has confused him. ‘His mind’ refers to Pindar, and ‘ her upright head’ to Pindar’s muse, who is naturally female. It is Pindar’s mind that has advanced the muse’s head ‘above the reach of Chance, / Or the times envie’ (–). The clauses are still densely packed, but not quite so incomprehensible. I discuss this poem further in ‘A Mirror for Noble Deeds: Pindaric Form in Jonson’s Odes and Masques’, in Peter Agocs, Richard Rawles and Chris Carey (eds.), The Reception of the Victory Ode (London: Institute of Classical Studies, forthcoming). See H&S, vol. , p. . For Pindar’s gnomic statements, see M. M. Willcock (ed.), Pindar: Victory Odes: Olympians , , ; Nemean ; Isthmians , , (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. ‘Pointing’ in this context refers to the insertion of inverted commas at the beginning of a line or lines (though not at the end), indicating their ‘gnomic’ status. Willcock describes Pindar’s gnomic statements as ‘moralising or proverbial reflections arising mostly from the consideration of athletic success’; he adds that they are deployed either amidst passages of circumstantial detail or as transitional devices (p. ).
The Desmond ode and the definition of glory
of the connection between darkness and the obscurity of the man uncelebrated in verse: κα μεγάλαι γ ρ λκα σκότον πολν μνων χοντι δεόμεναι · ργοις δ& καλο'ς σοπτρον (σαμεν )ν σν τρόπ*, ε+ Μναμυσύνας 0κατι λιπαράμπυκος ερηται ποινα μόχθων κλυτα'ς 2πέων οιδα'ς. (Nemean .–)
For great deeds of valour remain in deep darkness if they lack hymns. We know of a mirror for noble deeds in only one way, if, by the grace of Mnemosyne [memory] with the shining crown, one finds a recompense for his labours in poetry’s famous songs.
The rich metaphorical language of Jonson’s second stanza is similarly concerned with light and dark – specifically, the connection between Desmond’s ‘honour’, the poet’s attention through his ‘verses’, and the resultant disruption of the ‘cold embrace’ which keeps Desmond’s merit unknown (‘Lock’t in her cold embraces, from the view / Of eyes more true’, –). This ‘cold embrace’ is, literally, a prison, but it is also both death and obscurity. Moreover, Jonson places at the heart of the complex connections between poet, addressee and the glory of his virtue the image of a reflection: Rich beame of honour, shed your light On these darke rymes; that my affection May shine (through every chincke) to every sight Graced by your Reflection! (–)
The syntax and imagery here are very tangled, miming the interdependence of the honour and the verses: without the ‘rich beame’ of Desmond’s honour, the verses remain ‘darke’ (that is, obscure; and also, presumably, nonsensical: without a subject). But in combination with that honour, it is Jonson’s affection – his message – that will ‘shine … to every sight’: that is, achieve true fame. The reflective image is ambiguous: it is not clear whether it is the poet’s ‘affection’ that is to be ‘graced by your [Desmond’s] Reflection’, and so reach many eyes; or whether it is ‘every sight’ that, in apprehending Jonson’s affection (that is, the verse itself),
Similar imagery is found in Forest , the epistle to Lady Aubigny. Her virtuous ‘reflection’, we discover at the climax of the poem, is dependent upon looking in ‘this truest glasse’ () of the poem itself.
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
will find itself so ‘graced’. The whole of the sentence is densely composed so as to entangle most effectively the agency of Desmond’s honour and Jonson’s verse: ‘We know of a mirror for noble deeds in only one way ’ (, italics mine). Although there is no direct analogue in Nemean for the powerful metaphor of ‘rich beame of honour’, at Isthmian . we do find a ‘beam of noble deeds, forever unquenched’, which refers specifically to the lasting fame of one whose achievement has been celebrated in song with an ‘immortal voice’ (). Both ‘beams’ suggest the dependency, even of virtue, upon poetic celebration for the enduring light of glory. In the final stanza, light is once again aligned with virtue but also with fame: Desmond’s heart ‘flames clearest’ (), but for all that he needs and wants the ‘light’ of a grace which is at once, ambiguously, royal favour (and pardon), literal freedom from imprisonment, and the ‘light’ of (poetic) memory: But to your selfe, most loyal Lord, (Whose heart in that bright Sphere flames clearest, Though many Gems be in your bosome stor’d, Unknowne which is the Dearest) If I auspitiously divine, (As my hope tells) that our faire Phoeb<e>’s shine, Shall light those places With lustrous Graces, Where darknesse with her gloomie-sceptred hand, Doth now command; O then (my best-best lov’d) let me importune, That you will stand As farre from all revolt, as you are now from Fortune. (–)
Nemean likewise returns to an image of darkness, not this time of obscurity as such but of ‘blame’, the opposite of true fame: ‘I am a guest friend. Warding off dark blame, / like streams of water I shall bring genuine fame / with my praises to the man who is my friend, / for that is the proper reward of good men’ (–). Jonson’s final stanza is characterised by ambiguous pronouns and an ever-receding conditional. The whole sentence from ‘But to your selfe’ () to ‘Doth now command’ () is syntactically incomplete: the verb which we expect to be governing ‘But to your selfe’ (perhaps ‘I pay tribute’) never appears; we are lost instead in the ever-deferred possibilities of royal grace and favour, pitched in terms which remind us of the conditionality of poetic favour as well.
The Desmond ode and the definition of glory
In Pindar, it is the poet, not the monarch or victor, who dispenses grace: σν 4ρσέ5 δέ νιν κωμάξομαι τερπν ν 2πιστάζων χάριν. (Isthmian .–, the final lines of the poem)
With Orseas I shall celebrate him in song, sprinkling delightful grace.
In UW Phoebe/Cynthia/Elizabeth is associated by her name with the god of poetry (Phoebus/Cynthius/Apollo) and also – through her imagery of light – with the ‘beame of honour’ that is Desmond’s own conduct. When the poet claims ‘If I auspitiously divine, / (As my hope tells) that our faire Phoeb<e>’s shine, / Shall light those places / With lustrous Graces’, even the uncertainty of Elizabeth’s favour has become syntactically subordinate to the poet’s own ‘auspitious divining’ – two words chosen to return us unequivocally to the vatic language with which the poem began. Politically, the balance here is a very delicate one: the allusions to the Queen’s uncertain favour – ‘faire Phoeb<e>’s shine’ (, ‘drad Cynthia’s’ in the MS) – are clear enough, and Jonson’s later title (‘writ in Queene Elizabeth’s time’) draws attention to the fact. But the feminine pronoun is powerfully ambiguous throughout the poem. The pronoun of ‘[h]er upright head’ which is ‘advance[d] … above the reach of Chance, / Or the times envie’ (–) presumably refers, as noted above, not to Elizabeth but to Pindar’s muse. But the female possessive pronoun is, as Fry remarks, initially confusing. Similarly striking is the female personification of imprisonment at lines –: ‘the knit Circle of her Stonie Armes, / Th at hold<s> your spirit: / And keepes your merit / Lock’t in her cold embraces’. Defeated virtue is apparently female (‘her dead essence’, ) and so of course is Phoebe (or Cynthia) (), namely the Queen; but ‘darknesse’ () is also personified with the feminine pronoun, and moreover with an attribute – ‘her gloomiesceptred hand’ () – which recalls the Queen herself. She – whether ‘drad [dread]’, as in the MS, or ‘faire’ () – is ambiguously associated with both darkness and light; mercy and imprisonment; and in each instance, in both stanzas two and five, her transition from one to the other is mediated by the speaker of the poem, the poet himself: ‘my affection … my Verses’, (–); ‘If I auspitiously divine, / (As my hope tells)’, (–).
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
The impression is of a poem not so much about the relationship of Desmond to the Queen as about that of the poet to the monarch and to Desmond alike, and the suggestion of the poet’s effective intervention. But perhaps the most significant feature of the Pindaric formal and allusive structure of the poem is that such an unequivocally victorious form should be used to celebrate something clearly not a victory at all – Desmond’s release would be, if anything, only a minor concession. Jonson is claiming, in a kind of defiant reappropriation of his Pindaric models, that Desmond’s ‘virtue’ (in the Christian sense, without the Pindaric overtones of surpassing achievement) is – or could be – enough to constitute a victory in its own right. But in advising Desmond of this possibility, he insists too, and most forcibly, on the impossibility of separating his addressee’s potential glory from the poetic form which that glory must take: a poetic ‘grace’ which merges imperceptibly with royal ‘grace’ and the lustrous appeal of virtue itself. To paraphrase Pindar: Desmond’s virtue could be as blazing as gold, if it is celebrated in a hymn – a hymn that would make his real Fortune, far from being distant, equal to that of royalty herself: ‘a song of noble deeds, makes a man equal in fortune to kings’ (Nemean .–). The tension in this poem, noted but not fully analysed by Fry, is rooted in the impossibility of distinguishing the queen’s undoubted power to ‘release’ Desmond from obscurity from Jonson’s own equivalent, and more glorious, promise. Thus the reader’s identification of the poem as a Pindaric victory ode is central to its effect: by appropriating the genre, Jonson is redefining what may be termed a victory. Even an unvictorious (in fact non-existent) public career becomes glorious in the hands of the poet. The two elements – the glory (of athletic victory) and its immortal memory (conferred by the poet) – held so tightly together in Pindar are provocatively prised apart by Jonson. In his epinicion, the poet’s power to seal glory with memory tips over into the creation of that glory. As we shall see, Jonson continued over the course of his career to work out the implications for the poet of this version of the ‘victory ode’. ’ ‘ ’: , The ‘Ode Allegorike’ (or ‘ λληγορικ7’, UV ) exhibits a similar pattern. Prefixed to Hugh Holland’s Pancharis (), the poem is a commendation of Holland as poet, and (by implication) of the scope and ambition
Horace, Pindar and the king in the ode for Holland
of his epic project. Pancharis narrates the courtship of Katherine and Owen Tudor, glorifying and memorialising the foundation of a dynasty which culminated in Queen Elizabeth. The final pages of the volume outline two further forthcoming books which were never produced. UV has received even less critical attention than the ode for Desmond. Shafer, for instance, whose remarks are otherwise useful, notes that ‘Pindar is incidentally mentioned in its third stanza, but there is nothing in the least Pindaric about the poem’. By contrast, I hope to demonstrate that the Pindaric elements of the ode associate very closely Holland’s achievement, Jonson’s recognition of it, Mountjoy’s military success (introduced in the centre of the poem in imitation of Pindar’s climactic descriptions of the victorious athlete) and finally the king’s overlordship of all these elements: interdependent facets of the majesty of his realm, held together by the poet’s memorialising power. Mountjoy’s spectacular success at Kinsale in , followed by Tyrone’s unconditional surrender in December , is here emblematic of the peace-restoring might of the new monarch, just as a victory ode associates an athlete’s success with the wealth and pre-eminence of the sponsoring ruler. The extended conceit of the poem imagines Holland, known for his dark colouring, as a black swan, uniquely favoured of Apollo. This image is a response to Pancharis itself, the opening lines of which establish both the author’s ‘darkness’ and his taste for an Horatian tone (‘Of me thy priest’): I Sing Queene Katharine and my countryman [Owen Tudor]. O Love (if I before thy Altare spread, Blacke though I be, have oft lookt pale & wan; And as white Turtles there have offered, As are those that thy whiter mother drawe) Draw neere, and with her Myrtle decke the head Of me thy priest, that am too rudely rawe, Nor once have bin baptized in the spring Of Helicon, which yet I never saw. A pinion plucke me out of thine owne wing: And let they godhead more propitious be Vnto my thoughts while others loves I sing, Then in mine owne it hath beene vnto me. (Pancharis, B, lines –)
Hugh Holland, Pancharis: The first Booke. Containing The Preparation of Loue betweene Owen Tvdyr, and the Qveene, Long since intended to her Maiden Maiestie: And now dedicated To Th e Invincible Iames, Second and greater Monarch of great Britaine, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, with the Islands adiacent (London: by V. Simmes for Clement Knight), o, STC (nd edn)/. Entered on the Stationers’ Register, August . Shafer, The English Ode, p. .
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
UV answers this preface at several points. Whereas Holland contrasts his darkness unfavourably with the brightness of Venus’ turtledoves, Jonson makes his ‘blackenesse’ a sign of Apollo’s special favour (‘And Phoebus love cause of his blackenesse is’, ). Holland’s modesty in lines – alludes to Persius’ Prologue (–); UV responds to and counters that engagement: Holland, as a black swan, is given a tour by Apollo of all the sites of inspiration that Persius claims he has not visited, or dreamed of visiting: Marke, marke, but when his wing he [Holland, the black swan] takes, How faire a flight he makes! How upward, and direct! Whil’st pleas’d Apollo Smiles in his Sphaere, to see the rest affect, In vaine to follow: This Swanne is onely his, And Phoebus love cause of his blackenesse is. He shew’d him first the hoofe-cleft Spring, Neere which, the Thespiad’s sing; The cleare Dircaean Fount Where Pindar swamme; The pale Pyrene, and the forked Mount : And, when they came To brookes, and broader streames, From Zephyr’s rape would close him with his beames.
(–)
Holland’s modest request that he be granted a single ‘pinion’ from Cupid’s wing (Pancharis, ) is answered by his transformation into the swan of Jonson’s poem – and, finally, by the assertion that Holland and ‘C, once high flying / With Cupids wing’ (–) are one and the same. Holland’s conventional self-deprecation, modelled upon Persius, is transformed into the much loftier register of an ode: a genre irrevocably associated with impressive mythological and tonal range (for the poet) and lasting fame (for the laudandus). But Persius is not the main classical source of the poem. In content and structure, UV is indebted to the final ode of Horace’s second book (Odes II.), a poem which Quinn describes as ‘a provisional ironic assertion of the poet’s immortality, in anticipation of the definitive statement of the claim … in III.’. As such, this poem stands with Odes I. and
Quinn, Horace: the Odes, p. .
Horace, Pindar and the king in the ode for Holland
III. as part of the immortalising superstructure of Horace’s three lyric books. Jonson’s own edition of Horace makes the connection between the poet’s ‘divine’ verse and a kind of immortality, and glosses the transformation of II. as alluding to both the mental swiftness and the musical sweetness of the poet’s song. The poem engages with Odes II. in several respects. Like the speaker of that poem, Holland has become a bird, but this metamorphosis is elided; the opening lines concentrate instead on the swan’s change of plumage. Like Horace’s poet, with ‘no weak or borrowed wing’ (–), Holland’s originality and inimitability are stressed. Transformed into a bird, Horace will travel (that is, his works will reach) to the far corners of the empire: the Bosphorus, Syrtes, Colchian and Dacian tribes, the Geloni and Spaniards, the Rhone (II..–). Jonson’s swan is urged to ‘saile from Coast to Coast’ (), and the list of place names marks out the extent not of Roman, but rather of emergent British rule: ‘Mône ’ (, Anglesey); ‘Cluid ’ (, the vale of Clwyd in Denbighshire, Holland’s native town); ‘Iërna maine’ (, the Irish sea); ‘Eugenian dale’ (, referring to the Eoghanachts of Munster); ‘Hebrid Isles’ (); ‘Orcades’ (, the Orkneys); to ‘utmost Thule ’, ‘Caledon’, ‘Grampius mountaine’, ‘Loumond lake’, ‘Twedes … fountaine’ (–), before returning through England (‘Tine ’ (), ‘Humber … Owse ’ (), ‘Trent ’ ()). By his eventual return to London (‘Tames’, ) he reaches peoples from all the nations of Europe gathered in the capital. This careful Britishness connects the reach of Holland’s fame with the dedication of the volume: ‘To the Invincible Iames, Second and greater Monarch of great Britaine, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, with the Islands adiacent’ (Pancharis, title page). Jonson’s potential readers are rather more far-flung than Horace’s: ‘Baphyre’ () refers to the Baphyrus in Macedonia, often identified with Helicon, whereas Horace has ‘the drinker of the Rhone’ (II..). But both poets are likewise bound to be inspired – ‘rap’t / With entheate rage, to publish their bright tracts’ (–). The ‘tracts’ in question literally refer, at this point in the poem, not to Holland’s (or Jonson’s) poetry, but to Mountjoy’s military exploits; but the terms ‘publish’ and ‘tracts’ combined with the Horatian allusion suggest literary fame. This blurring of the distinction between military and poetic excellence is
Spilimbergii, r (Aa r) – v (Aav). Originally intended for Elizabeth, James had succeeded by the time of the publication of Pancharis.
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
central to the poem, and, as we shall see, especially associated with its Pindaric features. The point of Horace’s metamorphosis is that, as a bird, he will not die: ‘I shall not … die / nor shall I be confined to the Stygian wave’ (–). Jonson’s swan, too, is made for immortality. Although ‘dayly dying’ (), the swan is destined for the conventional apotheosis of a constellation. The multiple metamorphosis – to swan, to black swan, to constellation – typically ‘outdoes’ Horace’s already ironically overstated original. All this promised glory, however, is evident only to the poetic speaker, who explicitly styles himself a prophet in language which echoes the ‘vates’ () of Odes II.: ‘But these are Mysteries / Conceal’d from all but cleare Propheticke eyes’ (–). But Odes II. is not the only formative model for the poem. The lyric description of Holland as a swan recalls Horace Odes IV., in which Pindar is the ‘Dircaean swan’ (IV..). Pindar is the only poet mentioned by name in Jonson’s poem: one of the sites Apollo shows Holland is ‘the cleare Dircaean Fount / Where Pindar swamme’ (–). (The detail of ‘swamme’ suggests we are meant to imagine Pindar in the form of a swan, since Holland’s black swan is also ‘swimming’ in the first stanza.) Horace Odes IV. is also, as already noted, famous for its statement of the inimitability of Pindar: ‘Whoever strives to emulate Pindar, / Iulus, strives with Daedalus’ help / on waxen wings only to give / his name to a glassy sea’ (IV..–). Jonson, too, describes how Apollo: ‘Smiles in his Sphaere, to see the rest [the other swans] affect, / In vaine to follow’ (–). Holland’s swift and lofty flight – the exaltation of his verse – is inimitable. Both II. and IV. engage glancingly with martial themes, and both are a kind of recusatio. In II. the Europe-wide range of this Horace-bird echoes the extent of Augustus’ emerging empire: it is a statement, albeit a mildly absurd one, about the parity of achievement between the two. Odes IV., by contrast, refers directly to Augustus’ achievements abroad and indeed anticipates the festivities upon his return in . But as a ‘victory ode’ for Augustus it is highly ambiguous; Horace defers the task of praise not once but twice. It is deferred first, and most obviously, by claiming that it is Iulus Antonius, to whom the poem is addressed, who will more suitably celebrate Caesar’s triumph (–, –). (Although, typically, the poem demonstrates Horace’s ability in precisely the task for which he claims inadequacy.) The second of the poem’s ‘deferrals’ is more subtle. Odes IV. begins by invoking the impossibility of imitating Pindar, the very poet most strongly and magnificently associated with songs of victory. Horace demurs to
Horace, Pindar and the king in the ode for Holland
write a victory song for Caesar (although he demonstrates that he could), and he politely passes the job on to Iulus, a younger poet – except that he begins his poem by telling him that attempting to rival Pindar (that is, at least possibly, to write a victory ode) is doomed to failure. Both II. and IV., then, provocatively associate military dominance and poetic sway, while IV. flirts with, but steps back from, a Pindaric song of victory. By contrast, military victory lies at the heart of Jonson’s poem, and the triumphant soldier in question is identified by name, like a victorious athlete (or sponsor) in a Pindaric victory ode. In the sixth and seventh stanzas a grammatically and syntactically complex movement slides the focus of the poem from the swan to Charles Mountjoy. Lord Mountjoy was sent to succeed Essex in quelling rebellion in Ireland in ; he besieged Kinsale in Munster and eventually defeated Tyrone when he attempted to relieve the town. The sixth stanza begins by ‘steering’ the swan’s flight from Wales over the Irish sea to Munster: From thence, display thy wing againe Over Iërna maine, To the Eugenian dale; There charme the rout With thy soft notes, and hold them within Pale That late were out. “Musicke hath power to draw, “Where neither Force can bend, nor Feare can awe.
(–)
In this, the poem echoes the shift in Odes II. from proper names denoting simply conventional ‘far-reaches of the world’ (the Bosphorus, Syrtes, Gaetulians and Hyberboreans, –) to areas of contemporary Roman military engagement (the Colchians, Dacians, Geloni, Spaniards and Rhone-drinkers, –). At this point, however, Jonson’s poem moves quite differently from his Latin model. Odes II. makes no mention of the power of music to ‘charme the rout’; but this connection between music and military victory (which brings peace) is famously made in the opening stanzas of Pindar’s first Pythian: You quench even the spearing thunderbolt of everlasting fire … For even mighty Ares sets aside the point of his spears, and soothes his heart in sleep …
The genre is described within the poem, Odes IV..–.
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes But those whom Zeus does not love, they are struck with fear at the sound of the Muses’ song, over the land and over the mighty sea. (Pythian .–, –, –)
Pythian goes on to associate the Muses’ silencing of the enemies of Zeus with the conquering of the Phoenicians and Etruscans (the enemies of Hieron), and the ‘harmonious peace’ (‘σύμφωνον … 9συχίαν’) which results: With your help a man who is a ruler, and instructs his son, by honouring his people may incline them to harmonious peace. Son of Kronos, I beg you, grant that the Phoenician and Etruscan war-cry should remain at home, now that they have seen how their proud aggression brought disaster for their fleet before Cumae. (Pythian .–)
Similarly, Mountjoy’s ‘command / Hath all beene Harmony’ (–), a deliberate blurring of the distinction between the ‘harmony’ of peaceful coexistence and its musical, or poetic, sense. In this way Mountjoy’s success is associated with Hieron, the nominal ‘victor’ of the chariot race, but in fact the tyrant of Syracuse and founder of Aitna (for which he is celebrated in Pythian ), effectively the sponsor of the winning chariot team. But as we shall see, the final ‘victor’ of the poem is not Mountjoy, but rather Holland’s Pindaric swan, and behind him Jonson himself. Similarly, Pythian is one of several Pindaric odes to conclude with a recognition of the dependence of rulers upon poets for lasting fame (–; –). Nor is this feature the only point of comparison between UV and Pythian . The first Pythian, with its five triads of strophe, antistrophe and epode, has exactly the same number of stanzas as the ‘Ode Allegorike’. Two of the stanzas are set off by ‘gnomic’ statements, carefully denoted as such by inverted commas at the beginning of the line – lines – above, and ‘So much doth Virtue hate, / For stile of rarenesse, to degenerate’ (–). This incorporation of proverbs or conventional wisdom is also a Pindaric feature. We can notice, too, the poet’s (in this case, significantly, Jonson’s, not Holland’s) addresses to himself: ‘Now must we plie our
The lack of a triad pattern of strophe, antistrophe and epode does not detract from this point. Even the more faithful of Pindaric imitations at this period rarely imitated this aspect of Pindaric structure, and in fact Jonson’s own later Cary-Morison ode (UW ) was one of the very first to do so.
Horace, Pindar and the king in the ode for Holland
ayme; our Swan’s on wing’ (). The closest parallel to this in Pindar is at Olympian .–: ‘πεχε ν<ν σκοπ= τόξον, γε θυμέ· τίνα βάλλομεν / 2κ μαλθακ?ς α@τε φρενAς εBκλέας C-/ ϊστος Fέντες;’ (‘Now aim the bow at the mark, come, my heart. At whom / do we shoot, and this time launch from a kindly spirit our arrows of fame?’). The allusion suggests that even in his praise of another great poet, it is Jonson who commands a Pindaric range of possible topics and themes: ‘Thanks to the gods, I have thousands of paths [for my song] in every direction’ (Isthmian .). Moreover, the preceding strophe of Olympian begins by mentioning Achilles’ killing of Memnon and, significantly, Kyknos (or Cycnus) – the same hero, famous for being turned into a swan, who features in UV : He [Achilles] killed Hektor, Troy’s unconquerable and indefatigable pillar, he gave Kyknos to death and Dawn’s Ethiopian son [Memnon]. Under my arms there are many swift arrows in their quiver that speak to those who understand; but in general [or: among the multitude] interpreters are required. (Olympian .–)
The distinction between ‘those who understand’ (the poet and the elite among his audience) and ‘the rest’ figures prominently in UV : ‘But these are Mysteries / Conceal’d from all but cleare Propheticke eyes’ (–). In the highly charged context of Odes IV. (‘whoever strives to emulate Pindar’, ) this pointed imitation of Pindar alongside Horace is a potent claim to authority. Jonson’s poem evokes the Horatian odes, and in doing so flirts with the politics of the recusatio, but chooses not after all to ‘refuse’. UV invokes the geographical scope of Roman imperial power and connects it with the reach and influence of poetic fame. Holland’s Pancharis is the first book of a projected three-book epic, recounting the romantic and (in a planned second book) martial virtue of the ancestors of Queen Elizabeth. Jonson’s tribute to Holland makes the range of his poetic influence imperial in its scope, and associates that poetic power with the military might of Mountjoy’s triumph. These nuances are flattering both to Holland and to James’ British rule, but they also cast Jonson
There are several other less close parallels, as Pindar very often uses this kind of abrupt break-off, and ‘aiming’ metaphor, to effect a transition (compare Isthmian .–). Editions owned by Jonson gloss a difficult Greek expression at line with ‘apud vulgus’, ‘among the ordinary people’, though modern editors prefer the interpretation ‘in general’ or ‘altogether’.
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
himself – not, finally, Holland – as Pindar, the essential celebrant and immortaliser of all this achievement, military and poetic alike. This is finally a victory ode, not a poem about the failure or refusal to write a victory ode, but it is a victory ode in which the chief victor celebrated is not (for all his structurally central position and military glory) Mountjoy, nor the king, whose name is never mentioned, but rather a (would-be) epic poet; and, behind him, Jonson himself, with his ‘cleare Propheticke eyes’ (). From these early odes, all interestingly concerned with redefining the kind of ‘victory’ central to a ‘victory ode’, we can turn to the widely acclaimed Cary-Morison ode with a greater understanding of its technique. - ( U W ) Jonson’s late Pindaric ode, To the immortall memorie, and friendship of that noble paire, Sir L C, and Sir H. M (UW ), has attracted much more critical attention than any of the other poems discussed in this chapter, although opinion is divided as to its success and unity. Like the earlier odes, UW is composed of long stanzas of irregular line length, but unlike them it adopts also the Pindaric sequence of strophe, antistrophe and epode (translated by Jonson as ‘turn’, ‘counter-turn’ and ‘stand’). We can note too the presence of gnomic statements (as at lines –, cited below), abrupt transitions and bold use of enjambment across the stanza break (‘Ben // Jonson’, –). The poet addresses his ‘tongue’ () in a manner derived from Pindar, who very often speaks of his song, its power and potential, as his ‘tongue’ (Nemean .; Isthmian .; Pythian .). Stella Revard connects the natural metaphor of the beautiful third ‘turn’ (–) with similar Pindaric images, also central to their poems. The complex
Wesley Trimpi, for instance, thought it too long, and the opening stanzas ill-judged (Wesley Trimpi, Ben Jonson’s Poems: a Study of the Plain Style (Stanford University Press, ), p. ). Recent (and mostly more sympathetic) readings of the poem include: Susanne Woods, ‘Ben Jonson’s Cary-Morison Ode: Some Observations on Structure and Form’, Studies in English Literature, –, (), –; Fry, The Poet’s Calling, pp. –; Ian Donaldson, ‘Jonson’s Ode to Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison’, Studies in the Literary Imagination, (), –; Mary I. Oates, ‘Jonson’s “Ode Pindarick” and the Doctrine of Imitation’, Papers in Language and Literature, (), – and Stella P. Revard, ‘Pindar and Jonson’s Cary-Morison Ode’, in Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (eds.), Classic and Cavalier: Essays on Jonson and the Sons of Ben (University of Pittsburgh Press, ), pp. –. The unity of Pindar’s odes has likewise long been a topic of critical debate. Revard, ‘Pindar and Jonson’s Cary-Morison Ode’, p. . On Pindar’s natural metaphors, see Deborah Steiner, The Crown of Song: Metaphor in Pindar (London: Duckworth, ), pp. –.
The Cary-Morison ode ( UW )
shifting metaphor which refers to the poem itself as first ‘garland’ () and then ‘Asterisme ’ () is also Pindaric. Above all, the poem makes liberal use of structuring myths. At its heart lies a compressed version of the Dioscuri myth told, at much greater length, in Nemean : The Counter-turne. Call, noble Lucius, then for Wine, And let thy lookes with gladnesse shine: Accept this garland, plant it on thy head, And thinke, nay know, thy Morison’s not dead. Hee leap’d the present age, Possest with holy rage, To see that bright eternall Day: Of which we Priests, and Poëts say Such truths, as we expect for happy men, And there he lives with memorie; and Ben The Stand. Jonson, who sung this of him, e’re he went Himselfe to rest, Or taste a part of that full joy he meant To have exprest, In this bright Asterisme: Where it were friendships schisme, (Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry) To separate these twiLights, the Dioscuri; And keepe the one halfe from his Harry. But fate doth so alternate the designe, Whilst that in heav’n, this light on earth must shine.
(–)
Compare lines – with Pindar, Nemean : Exchanging places one after another in succession for one day at a time they dwell with their dear father Zeus, the other in the depths of the earth in the hollows of Therapna living out an equal fate. (Nemean .–)
Compare the elaborate comparisons of the poet’s song to a garland of gold, white ivory and coral at Nemean .–, or ‘honey mixed with white / milk, which the stirred foam tops, / a draught of song’ (Nemean .–). I am indebted to Oates, ‘Jonson’s “Ode Pindarick” ’, for this point.
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
The correspondence creates a moving association: in Pindar, the brothers’ story is told at length, and Polydeuces’ grief at Castor’s death (Nemean .–) reverberates in Jonson’s poem. More controversial is the tale, derived from Pliny, with which the poem begins: the ‘Infant of Saguntum’ (), who retreated back into the womb in horror at the destruction wreaked by Hannibal. Peterson describes this opening as an ‘antic and grotesque foil’, although he does not connect this term, as he might have done, with the ‘foil’ terminology of Pindaric criticism. But a myth which apparently bears only vestigial relation to the rest of the poem is a feature of the Pindaric ode, and prodigious or significant births occur at several points in Pindar’s mythic genealogies: the child Aclepius is snatched from the womb as his mother is burned alive at Pythian .–, and Olympian is structured around two mythical births (of Evadne, – and her son Iamos, –). I think Donaldson and Fry, among others, are right to read the opening of Jonson’s poem as having an obliquely ironic relationship to the rest of the ode, but it is an irony rooted in our recognition of its Pindaric antecedents. In that, it is a small-scale example of Jonson’s transformative relationship to the genre as a whole. Stella Revard notes that Jonson’s ode, like those of Pindar, is concerned with ‘the role of the poet as the praiser of good men’ as well as with eponymous heroes. More interestingly, she also connects this poem with Nemean . The first ground for this association is the central natural metaphors, concerned in both cases with trees and flowers, though to very different effect. Jonson’s stanza, widely excerpted and anthologised, contrasts the long-lived but unimpressive achievement of an ancient tree with the passing glory of a lily: It is not growing like a tree In bulke, doth make man better bee; Or standing long an Oake, three hundred yeare, To fall a logge at last, dry, bald, and seare: A Lillie of a Day, Is fairer farre, in May, Although it fall, and die that night; It was the Plant, and flowre of light. In small proportions, we just beautie see: And in short measures, life may perfect bee.
(–)
Peterson, Imitation and Praise, p. . Steiner notes that Pindar characteristically ‘sees victory both in terms of what it is, and of what it is not, comparing and contrasting it with like and unlike’ (Steiner, Crown of Song, p. ). Revard, ‘Pindar and Jonson’s Cary-Morison Ode’, p. . The phraseology of this image is also indebted to Seneca (Epistles ).
The Cary-Morison ode ( UW )
Pindar’s metaphor is concerned with the uncertain waxing and waning of talent and virtue (that difficult term, ρετή) even in families of the finest pedigree: Ancient virtue produces strength which varies between the generations of men; even the dark fields do not produce their crop continually, nor do trees desire, in every cycle of the years, to bear sweet-smelling blossom of equal richness, but they vary. (Nemean .–)
The second ground of Revard’s comparison is connected to these metaphors, and is of especial interest. She compares the two poems on the grounds of their focus upon the limitation of achievement, and upon death: ‘both Jonson and Pindar make the flower or the abundantly flowering tree their symbol for an excellence attained briefly or only sporadically’. Several features of Nemean set it apart from other odes by Pindar: it is not long, has no mythological element and commemorates not an athletic victory, but Aristagoras’ installation onto the governing council of Tenedos. Its tone is unusually muted, dwelling insistently on human mortality and constraint. Most strikingly, although it celebrates Aristagoras’ athletic ability, at its heart lies an explanation for his failure to fulfil his athletic potential: The over-cautious expectations of his parents held back their son’s strength, and prevented him from competing in the games at Pytho and Olympia. For, by my oath, I believe that if he had gone to Castalia and the well-wooded hill of Cronos, he would have returned home with more honour than his opponents. (Nemean .–).
Mary Lefkowitz remarks that, among Pindar’s works, ‘[t]his apology for non-accomplishment of deeds never attempted is unique’. In Nemean this unusual focus upon the limitations of human achievement makes us reluctant to call the poem an epinicion at all. But the Cary-Morison ode works quite differently. The vividly Pindaric style unambiguously transforms apparent failure and loss into the ‘victory’ (and immortality) of triumphant virtue: ‘Hee [Morison] leap’d the present
Revard, ‘Pindar and Jonson’s Cary-Morison Ode’, p. . She also makes connections between Jonson’s poem and Isthmian . Mary R. Lefkowitz, ‘Pindar’s Nemean XI’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, (), – ().
Horace and Pindar in Jonson’s Odes
age, / Possest with holy rage, / To see that bright eternall Day’ (–). In UW Jonson insists on creating victory out of very muted success, and in UV the military and imperial victory which we expect to be central functions as a Pindaric myth or metaphor, highlighting instead the poet’s triumph. In the Cary-Morison ode Jonson similarly creates victory from the apparent defeat and disappointment of a young man’s premature death. As in the early odes we have already considered, that victory is associated firmly with the poet: ‘And there he [Morison] lives with memorie; and Ben // Jonson, who sung this of him’ (–; Jonson’s name is split across the break between stanzas). Morison’s state as ‘Possest with holy rage’ () is an explicit version of poetic inspiration, the ‘furor poeticus’ that features in Poetaster, and the ‘entheate rage’ () that seizes even the far-flung Macedonian who encounters Holland’s work (and, by implication, Jonson’s) in UV . The final lines of the ode movingly end where the structure and tone of the poem invites us to begin – with one of Pindar’s youthful victors and the spreading word of his triumph: Λάμπωνος υFAς Πυθέας εBρυσθεν7ς νίκη Νεμείοις παγκρατίου στέφανον, οJπω γένυσι φαίνων τερείνας ματέρ’ ο+νάνθας Cπώραν, (Nemean .–)
[Tell that] Pytheas, the mighty son of Lampon has won the crown for the pancratium in the Nemean games, although he is not yet showing on his cheeks the fruiting-season [or: ripeness of life, maturity], the mother of the soft down upon the vine’s leaf.
The close of Jonson’s ode echoes the image of the beardless youth, applying it to both Cary and Morison at once; but Jonson has appropriated, too, the delicate and almost untranslatable agricultural metaphor of autumn plenty: ‘two so early men, / … / Who, e’re the first downe bloomed on the chin, / Had sow’d these fruits, and got the harvest in’ (–).
On this striking fording of the line-break, and its Pindaric connections, see – of John Lemly, ‘Masks and Self-portraits in Jonson’s Late Poetry’, English Literary History, (), –; Oates, ‘Jonson’s “Ode Pindarick”’, –; and Woods, ‘Ben Jonson’s Cary-Morison Ode’, –. I am indebted to Fitzgerald for the suggested connection between UW and Nemean , although he does not point out the allusion under discussion. (William Fitzgerald, Agonistic Poetry: the Pindaric Mode in Pindar, Horace, Holderlin, and the English Ode (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), pp. –.)
The Cary-Morison ode ( UW )
Oates claims that ‘[b]y choosing Pindar as his model for the “CaryMorison ode” Jonson was aiming at a goal that was among the highest and most difficult a Renaissance poet could seek, that of creating not only a new artifact, but a new genre’. By new genre, she clarifies, she includes the ‘Englishing’ of a classical form, but Jonson’s adoption of the Pindaric victory ode is, as we have seen, generically innovative even in comparison with Horace and Pindar themselves. Claiming, like Pindar, to grant immortality to his addressee; and in so doing setting himself, as poet, in powerful contention even with military and royal power, Jonson is also doing something which Pindar does not do – crafting from worldly defeat and disappointment a celebration of a different kind of ‘victory’. The formal originality of the Cary-Morison ode deserves continued notice, but the roots of that innovation, as I hope to have demonstrated, lie in the earliest years of Jonson’s career, and in a creative contention between Horatian and Pindaric tone which structures Jonsonian lyric. From the beginning, Jonson constructs his lyric as hyper-Horatian, determined to emulate and out-do Horace at his most vatic – that is, when he is most like Pindar.
Oates, ‘Jonson’s “Ode Pindarick”’, –.
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
No simple word, That shall be utter’d at our mirthfull boord, Shall make us sad next morning: or affright The libertie, that wee’ll enjoy to night. Epigrams , ‘Inviting a Friend to Supper’, – (closing lines)
Although the commixture of Nations, confluence of Ambassadors, and the relation, which the affaires of Our Kingdomes have had towards the businesse and interests of forraine States, have caused, during Our Regiment, greater opennesse, and libertie of discourse, even concerning matters of State, (which are no Theames, or subjects fit for vulgar persons, or common meetings) then hath been in former times, used or permitted; And although in Our owne Nature, and Judgement, Wee doe well allow of convenient freedome of speech … Yet neverthelesse, forasmuch as it is come to Our eares, by common report, That there is at this time a more licentious passage of lavish discourse, and bold Censure in matters of State, then hath been heretofore, or is fit to be suffered, Wee have thought it necessary, by the advice of Our Privie Councell, to give forewarning unto Our loving Subjects, of this excesse and resumption … [A Proclamation against excesse of Lavish and Licentious Speech of matters of State (Whitehall, December ).]
Epigram , ‘Inviting a Friend to Supper’, is one of Jonson’s best-known and most anthologised poems. This lovely invitation piece was – and remains – widely imitated (Thom Gunn’s fine poem, ‘An Invitation’, is modelled upon it); and it is of course itself an imitation. All the
James F. Larkin and Paul L. Hughes (eds.), Stuart Royal Proclamations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), pp. –. A very similar proclamation was issued in the following year, July . Thom Gunn, Collected Poems (London: Faber and Faber, ), pp. –. The poem was first printed in The Man with Night Sweats (London: Faber and Faber, ). The imitation is discussed by Stefan Hawlin, ‘Epistemes and Imitations: Thom Gunn on Ben Jonson’, Proceedings of the Modern Languages Association, (), –. Charles Martindale describes Gunn’s poem as ‘“Horatian” sermo, from ’ (Martindale, ‘The Horatian and Juvenalesque in English Letters’, in Kirk Freudenburg (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. – (p. ). See also pp. –.
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
commentaries upon the poem note that it is indebted in particular to three of Martial’s ‘invitation’ epigrams, ., . and .. Jonson’s epigram is structured around a ‘menu’, a deftly handled enumeration of various kinds of food and drink (lines –), and the poem is essentially an artfully varied list. Whereas the Latin epigrams on which it is modelled all make a humorous point of the relative simplicity of the proposed meal (which is similar in each case), Jonson’s menu is comically extravagant – and unreal: And, though fowle, now, be scarce, yet there are clarkes, The skie not falling, thinke we may have larkes. Ile tell you of more, and lye, so you will come: Of patrich, pheasant, wood-cock, of which some May yet be there; and godwit, if we can: Knat, raile, and ruffe too. (–)
This strange evocation of hoped-for plenty – luxuries extravagantly imagined, but (we suspect) unlikely to materialise – has attracted a good deal of instructive commentary. Only Thomas Greene, however, confronts the most surprising feature of the poem’s intertextuality: that despite the recognisable patchwork of imitation from which it is composed, the overall effect – the blend of reticence, humour and respect – is not much like Martial in either tone or texture: [Like Martial’s epigram] the body of Jonson’s ostensibly consists of a list of nouns, related metonymically. But in Jonson the real subject has nothing to do with the accumulation of dishes; it lies in the spirit of the voice ordering this
There are many attractive and interesting accounts of this widely anthologised poem. See for instance: Joseph Loewenstein, ‘The Jonsonian Corpulence; or, the Poet as Mouthpiece’, English Literary History, (), –; Greene, The Light in Troy, pp. –; Robert Cummings, ‘Liberty and History in Jonson’s Invitation to Supper’, Studies in English Literature, –, (), –; Robert C. Evans, ‘ “Inviting a Friend to Svpper”: Ben Jonson, Friendship, and the Poetics of Patronage’, in David G. Allen and Robert A. White (eds.), Traditions and Innovations: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Newark: University of Delaware Press, ), pp. –; Michael C. Schoenfeldt, “The Mysteries of Manners, Armes, and Arts”: “Inviting a Friend to Supper” and “To Penshurst”, in Claude J. Summers and TedLarry Pebworth (eds.), ‘The Muses Common-weale’: Poetry and Politics in the Seventeenth Century (University of Pittsburgh Press, ), pp. –. In all three Latin epigrams the proposed meal begins with lettuce and leeks, followed by tunny fish served with egg. The meat course features bacon and poultry in each of the poems. Epigrams . makes no mention of a further course, but the other two epigrams offer fruit and wine, followed (in . only) by olives, chickpeas and beans. Jonson’s poem concentrates at greatest length upon the various, and increasingly extravagant and unlikely game birds. On the possible historical resonance of this list, see Cummings, ‘Liberty and History’. Loewenstein is perhaps the best recent example (Loewenstein, ‘Jonsonian Corpulence’ and Possessive Authorship, pp. –).
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
series, subtly modulated from line to line but never crossing the limits of smiling respect and courteous banter. This spirit has no name in the poem, although toward the end a few words emerge that help to circumscribe it. It might be located grossly by the phrase ‘civilised urbanity’.
This is an exceptionally sensitive analysis. Greene pinpoints, too, the moment of the poem’s ‘turn’ to serious ethical content at line , and the moral weighting in those final lines of the key terms ‘free, but moderately’, ‘innocently’, ‘simple word’ and, finally, ‘libertie’: Of this we will sup free, but moderately, And we will have no Pooly’, or Parrot by; Nor shall our cups make any guiltie men: But, at our parting, we will be, as when We innocently met. No simple word, That shall be utter’d at our mirthfull boord, Shall make us sad next morning: or affright The libertie, that wee’ll enjoy to night.
(Epigrams .–)
That ‘libertie’, Greene suggests, ‘will do duty as the culminating thematic term, vitalized, redefined, and expanded by the entire preceding poem … which thus becomes a mistranslation of Martial’s “libertas” (..), a mere reference to wit unblemished by conversational malice’. I think Greene is right to focus upon the key word ‘libertie’, and to describe Jonson’s appropriation of it as an expansion, in his words a ‘thickening’ of its force in Martial . (‘libertas’, ). accedent sine felle ioci nec mane timenda libertas et nil quod tacuisse velis: de prasino conviva meus Scorpoque loquatur, nec faciant quemquam pocula nostra reum (Epigrams ..–)
And in addition there’ ll be fun without malice, free conversation for which no-one need fear the next morning or which you’ d wish you hadn’t said. Let my guest talk about Scorpus and the ‘green’ team; I wouldn’t want my cups to get anyone put on trial.
Greene, The Light in Troy, pp. . Greene, The Light in Troy, p. . References to Martial are to the OCT edition, M. Val. Martialis Epigrammata , edited by W. M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ; nd edn, ). Greene, The Light in Troy, p. . The Latin text I have given here is not that of the OCT, but the text as it appears in Shackleton Bailey’s Loeb edition (D. R. Shackleton Bailey (ed. and trans.), Martial: Epigrams, Loeb Classical Library, vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, )). This is because the Loeb text is closer to the texts found in most early modern editions of Martial. Scorpus was a charioteer.
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
‘Freedom of speech’ is too wide-ranging and political a phrase for what Martial seems to have in mind – the Latin poem expands upon his idea of relaxed ‘libertas’ by suggesting that he and his guests should talk about sport. But ‘freedom of speech’ is close to the gloss offered for the word by Thomas Farnaby: Libertas loquendi, cuius nos non poeniteat proximo mâne, vel propter difficilem aliquem convivam vel qui dicta foris eliminet, reumque faciat. Freedom of speech, which will be no source of repentance for us the following morning, whether on account of some difficult fellow-guest, or because of another who spreads our conversation abroad, and makes a defendant of us.
Farnaby’s edition of Martial’s Epigrams was only published in , a year before Jonson’s folio, and possibly several years after the original composition of Epigrams . But in his preface Farnaby thanks Jonson for his help with the edition in memorable terms, praising him as a scholar in his own right as well as a poet, a man ‘most highly skilled in all poetic arts, and the most precise investigator of ancient history, customs and rituals’ and particularly expert at extracting the deepest meanings from texts. Greene’s analysis of Jonson’s poem is excellent on what Epigrams does not resemble – that is, surprisingly, Martial; but he does not go so far as to suggest any positive model for its tone of humour and respect. Farnaby’s gloss on the word ‘libertas’, however, tacitly incorporates a quotation, a suggested allusion, that associates Martial’s poem with an important predecessor, an earlier Latin poem which Martial himself may have had in mind: Horace, Epistles I., the only one of Horace’s verse letters to take the form of a dinner invitation. The phrase ‘vel qui dicta foris eliminet’ is a quotation from that poem: ‘ne fidos inter amicos / sit qui dicta foras eliminet’ (Epistles I..–); ‘that there should be no one who might carry outdoors what was said between loyal friends’. There are several points of connection between Jonson’s epigram and the Horatian epistle. Horace’s poem, like Jonson’s, stresses the simplicity of the host’s home: ‘both my poore house, and I’ (); ‘If you’re prepared
M. Val. Martialis epigrammaton libri Animaduersi, emendati et commentariolis luculenter explicati (Londini : Excudebat Felix Kingstonius impensis Gulielmi Welby, ), STC (nd edn)/, A r. Farnaby’s preface, like the commentary, is in Latin; these translations are my own. Several of Horace’s odes also take the form of invitation poems (for instance, Odes I. and III., both addressed to Maecenas). As is often the case in commentaries of this period, Farnaby does not indicate that he is quoting here: the cross-reference to Horace is incorporated into the explanatory prose of the note and presented simply as a gloss. Mayer notes that the use of ‘eliminet’ here to mean ‘broadcast’ is ‘a unique sense of an archaic verb’ (Roland Mayer (ed.), Horace: Epistles Book I, Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics (Cambridge University Press, ), p. ). The verb’s literal meaning is ‘to turn out of doors’ (that is, beyond the ‘limen’ or doorway) or (in a reflexive construction) to ‘go out’.
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
to recline as a guest on modest furniture, and if you’re not afraid of a simple dinner of vegetables only, I’ll expect you, Torquatus, at my house at sunset’ (Epistles I..–). The Horatian poem, like Martial . and Jonson’s epigram, describes relaxed speech. But whereas Martial’s conversation will be relaxed because confined to unimportant topics (those sports teams), Horace hints that they will speak freely on account of the select company he will provide, composed only of like-minded friends and acquaintances: haec ego procurare et idoneus imperor et non invitus, ne turpe toral, ne sordida mappa corruget naris, ne non et cantharus et lanx ostendat tibi te, ne fidos inter amicos sit qui dicta foras eliminet, ut coeat par iungaturque pari. (–)
These are the things I command myself to provide – and I’m able to do so and not unwilling: that no dirty cloth, no soiled napkin should wrinkle your nose; that the goblet and dish should reveal you to yourself; that, here among loyal friends, there should be no one present to carry what’s been said beyond the door; that like may meet like and be joined together.
The prototypically Horatian tone in his passage is hard to translate; but it amounts to a very different experience from Martial’s sometimes crude irreverence (the laxative effects of lettuce never pass unmentioned in his menus, for instance). In the phrase ‘ne non et cantharus et lanx / ostendat tibi te’ Horace promises Torquatus that the cup (‘cantharus’) and dish (‘lanx’) will be so well polished that he will be able to see his own reflection in them; but the phrase ‘ostendat tibi te’ (, ‘show you to yourself’) hints at a more serious meaning. The virtues of good hospitality on display merge with the ethical virtues of self-knowledge: Horace offers, with considerable humour and irony, an understated opportunity for selfimprovement as well as good company and fine wine. The idea that the invited guest will not regret or incur punishment for his conversation is also present in Horace’s poem, as it is in Jonson’s, though in a different form: mitte levis spes et certamina divitiarum et Moschi causam: cras nato Caesare festus
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
dat veniam somnumque dies; impune licebit aestivam sermone benigno tendere noctem. (–)
Dismiss insubstantial hopes, the struggle for wealth and Moschus’ case: tomorrow the day of celebration for the birth of Caesar gives an excuse for sleeping in; without fear of punishment we shall be permitted to prolong the summer night with friendly conversation.
A further glance towards Horace lies at the centre of the poem: And Ile professe no verses to repeate: To this, if ought appeare, which I not know of, That will the pastrie, not my paper, show of. (Epigrams , –)
Jonson promises not to recite his own verse, and adds a sidelong piece of apparent self-deprecation: if his poetry shows up at all, it will be as words ‘printed’ on the pastry after sheets from his book have been used to wrap the baked goods. The motif is the exact opposite of the menu: most of the food is named only to be dismissed – Jonson would like to promise all these dishes, but we understand that they are largely extravagant fantasy, to be taken as such (‘Ile tell you of more, and lye, so you will come’, ). His poetry, on the other hand, is explicitly ruled out only to be let back in. Moreover, even the form of his apparent modesty aligns Jonson with both Horace and Martial. Unpopular verse used to wrap food or spices is one of Jonson’s favourite motifs, and typically it combines apparent selfdeprecation with an implicitly self-aggrandising poetic pedigree: both Martial and Horace imagine their work meeting this fate. These points of comparison, combined with the association implied by Thomas Farnaby’s edition, suggest that Jonson had Epistles I. as well as Martial’s ‘invitation’ epigrams in mind as he worked on ‘Inviting a Friend to Supper’. This connection is further confirmed by an interesting (and, to my knowledge, unpublished) manuscript translation of the Horatian epistle dating from the mid seventeenth century. It is found in
Moschus was a rhetorician convicted of poisoning, despite being defended by both Asinius Pollio and Torquatus. Augustus’ birthday was , or September; September is a warm month in Rome. See Loewenstein, Possessive Authorship, pp. –. Martial, ..– and Horace, Epistles II..–. Horace’s striking version appears to collapse the poet with the emperor himself (see Feeney, ‘Vna cum Scriptore Meo’). Compare the ‘Apologetical Dialogue’ to Poetaster, lines – (discussed further in Chapter , pp. –). See also Donne, ‘Satyre V’, line .
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
a miscellany compiled by Philip Kynder which includes several poems by him and his friends. This translation, signed only ‘J. J.’, is addressed to another anonymous man, ‘S. B.’ (where Horace has Torquatus) but also mentions Kynder by name. In this way the translation responds to, and recreates, the sense of a close circle of intimate ‘well-matched’ friends that is evoked by Horace and Jonson alike: Horatius Anglicissans To S: B an inuitation to a Cupp of Ale Hor. Epist. . l. , As Horace did his frend Torquatus, I On the same terms inuite your Company. … There will be stout & honest Ben And Robin that has seene manners & men. And Melborns syren Pask – whose pulpitt art Charmes euery thing y t has a head or hart Iudicious Kynder –, honest Bradford too Vnless some wench or widdow be to woe There will be place & drinke for more.
Several features of the translation and of its expansion of or departure from the Latin suggest a connection with Jonson’s well-known epigram. Describing the ‘ale’ he promises to supply (rather than the wine of Horace’s poem), the author has expanded substantially upon lines – of the Latin (‘You will drink wine bottled when Taurus was consul for the second time, between marshy Minturnae and Petrinum near Sinuessa. If you have anything, send for it, or else do as you’re told’):
Spelt ‘Kynder’ at most points in the manuscript, his name is spelt ‘Kinder’ elsewhere. I have used the former because it appears in this form in the material under discussion. A writer and doctor, Kynder was born in and died in or after . His miscellany includes considerable antiquarian material in addition to original poetry and prose. See Peter Davidson and Ian William McLellan, ‘Kinder, Phillip’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, ) (www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/). Earlier in the manuscript a short letter from ‘J.J.’ is glossed by Kynder himself as ‘Mr Joynes’. Other entries in the notebook reinforce this effect. The translation of Epistles I. is followed by a translation of Horace, Odes IV. (to Phyllis), dedicated to ‘his much loueing, more beloued most learned frend. Mr. P. Kynder’. The affectionate tone is enhanced by the similarity between the names ‘Phyllis’ (spelt as ‘Phillis’ in the poem) and ‘Phillip’. Bodleian MS Ashmole , r-v. These lines correspond to lines – of the Latin poem, though with substantial expansions. A marginal ‘’ keys this passage to a transcription of the relevant Latin lines at the foot of the translation. As the translation is to my knowledge unpublished, a complete transcription of the poem can be found in the appendix. The area referred to is in Latium near the border with Campania. The author of the translation has transferred his version of these details to describe the dinner venue rather than the origin of the alcohol.
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
Then meete vs at the house thou know’st soe well Where the ould widdow rich Ale vs’d to sell By the parke gate wch peasants woont to pass From Donnington to Bradfords preaching place Ale of fitt age thee waites there, wch was brew’d When Cinthia now in Wane her hornes renew’d I that haue paide for’t hope it will be Ale To French or Spanish iuice scorning to vayle If you accept place & condition, say To Morrow after dinner is the day.
Jonson too boasts of the excellence of the ‘Canary-wine’ () that he plans to buy, and also mentions a particular inn (‘Which is the Mermaids, now, but shall be mine’, ). ‘I that haue paide for’t hope it will be Ale / To French or Spanish iuice scorning to vayle’ is reminiscent of the humorous uncertainty of Jonson’s extravagant proposed menu. ‘Stout and honest Ben’ no doubt corresponds to a particular member of Kynder’s circle, but the phrase may be chosen, too, to remind us of Jonson (who was notoriously both fat and direct). The clearest reference to Jonson’s poem, however, is found in the closing couplet of the translation. Horace ends by advising Torquatus ‘tu quotus esse velis rescribe, et rebus omissis / atria servantem postico falle clientem’ (–), ‘Write back and say how many you’d like to attend; then set your business affairs aside, and use the back door to avoid the notice of the client waiting in the hall.’ The dinner has been designed and proposed to Torquatus, a busy man, as a chance to forget his cares. The force of this anonymous translation is rather different: Say if the men & number please, & say Whether wee may expect you on the day. Then stealing by ye back wayes cheate ye eyes Of your malicious prying parish spyes.
The busy lawyer’s clients are replaced by ‘your malicious prying parish spyes’, and the change brings the poem much closer to Epigrams , which ends by promising freedom from government informers (‘And we will have no Pooly’, or Parrot by’, ). This alteration resonates earlier in the translation too. The author of this version has expanded that important clause ‘ne fidos inter amicos / sit qui dicta foras eliminet’ (–) which is, as we have already seen, important to Jonson’s epigram, to introduce a
Donnington is near Telford, northwest of Birmingham.
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
suggestion of specifically legal ‘freedom’ and constraint similar in tone to the close of Epigrams : Friends too, that if in freedome you things speake That the states peace Constructiuely may breake Shall carrie nothing ore the threshold when Wee part
‘J. J.’s translation of Epistles I. is evidently the product of a close circle of male friends, modelling themselves upon the milieu of Horace’s Epistles in what we might term an ‘aspirational’ manner. But it is also, I think, conscious of Jonson’s ‘Inviting a Friend to Supper’ – Kynder and his friends perceive an Horatian register as aspirational partly because of its connection with Jonson and his circle in the previous generation. This combined evidence – Farnaby’s link between Martial . and Epistles I.; and the translation of I. that seems to associate it with Epigrams – suggests that we may be right to read Jonson’s epigram as modelled partly upon Horace. Jonson has used the pieces of Martial to make a poem not only interestingly unlike Martial but, more specifically, like Horace. Epigrams is, as it were, an ‘Horatian’ translation of Martial. What difference does this importation of the Epistles make to our reading of Jonson’s poem? Most importantly it goes some way towards explaining the combined humour and seriousness of Jonson’s tone, as described by Thomas Greene. Much more than Martial’s Epigrams, Horace’s Epistles evoke a circle of ‘amicitia’ of various degrees: the poet addresses men junior or equal to him as well as nobles and patrons. Trimpi remarks that Epigrams is a ‘description of a friend, not of a dinner’; and, as such, it is closer to a verse epistle than to the ‘menu epigrams’ from which it takes its parts. In fact, ‘Inviting a Friend to Supper’ is, of all the epigrams, the poem that most closely resembles a verse epistle (albeit to an unnamed guest, unlike Epistles I., which names Torquatus). It is also, as we have seen, a beautiful evocation of what Greene describes as that ‘refinement of pleasure, that mingling of the senses, the intelligence, and the sociable which [Jonson] finally chooses to call “ ‘liberty’ ”. But I want to consider
Bodleian MS Ashmole , v. The second line of this extract is difficult, especially the sense of ‘Constructively’. The OED, however, cites a example of the word used to mean ‘by way of interpretation; inferentially’ (‘constructively’, adv, ) and I think this must be the meaning intended here: the suggestion is that the addressee might say something which could be interpreted as breaking the ‘state’s peace’. Trimpi, Ben Jonson’s Poems, p. . Greene, The Light in Troy, p. .
Horace and Martial in the Epigrams
now the significance of this observation for our reading of the Epigrams as a whole.
EPIGR A MS
We have seen that the ‘Horatianising’ of Epigrams is built upon elements – of form, theme and detail – taken from Martial; and the same is true of most, if not all, of the Epigrams. For the poet and reader of Jonson’s day, the epigram was associated with Martial more strongly than with any other Latin poet, and by the early s Jonson was writing in what was already a fairly well-developed English genre (and by English I mean both English and Latin epigrams written in England). His collection has much in common with many of these other examples, and with the model offered by Martial’s fourteen books: short poems, often satiric (especially of social vice and pretension), some of them crude in a sexual or physical way. Jonson’s collection balances praise (of named friends and patrons) and blame (of anonymous figures named only by their attributes) almost equally, and in that he departs from Martial, whose work is more dominated by satire and vitriol. But the combination is not itself original: Martial too has a proportion of poems in praise and honour of nobles and patrons, especially in his first book. Several of Jonson’s
The composition of Latin epigrams, and the translation of Latin epigrams into English and vice versa, was a common school exercise. Evidence of this pattern of thinking and writing survives in many miscellanies and commonplace books, in which topical (often scurrilous or obscene) epigrams frequently circulate in both Latin and English. Useful overviews of the development of the epigram in English literature include: Mary Thomas Crane, ‘Intret Cato: Authority and the Epigram in Sixteenth-century England’, in Barbara Kiefer Lewalski (ed.), Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, ), pp. –; Hoyt Hopewell Hudson, The Epigram in the English Renaissance (Princeton University Press, ); T. K. Whipple, Martial and the English Epigram from Sir Thomas Wyatt to Ben Jonson, University of California Publications in Modern Philology (Berkeley: University of California Press, ); J. P. Sullivan, ‘Martial and English Poetry’, Classical Antiquity, (), –; R. V. Young, Jr., ‘Jonson, Crashaw and the Development of the English Epigram’, Genre (), –. See also Chapter of J. P. Sullivan, Martial: the Unexpected Classic. A Literary and Historical Study (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. ‘When we use the term “epigram” today what comes to mind is more or less what Martial made of the form: closure, pointedness, wit, concision, and satire’ (William Fitzgerald, Martial: the World of Epigram (University of Chicago Press, ), p. ). The tendency to crudity in epigrammatic humour is evident, for instance, even in the three invitation epigrams discussed above: . and . both make a point of the laxative effects of certain vegetables; . is sexually suggestive. The patterned use of real names and satiric pseudonyms (such as ‘Lippe, the Teacher’, Epigrams and ‘Hornet’, Epigrams ) is a distinctive feature of Jonson’s collection. See Edward Partridge, ‘Jonson’s Epigrammes : the Named and the Nameless’, Studies in the Literary Imagination, (), –.
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
individual poems are translations or extended imitations of a single Martial epigram (such as Epigrams , indebted to Martial .); others (like Epigrams ) resemble ‘composite’ translations. Some of Jonson’s notable ‘subgenres’ – such as his moving epigrams for dead children, his own and others – are also inherited directly from Martial (though Martial’s children are largely the offspring of slaves or freedmen). Finally, Jonson – like several of his contemporaries – makes his debt to Martial evident by a poem naming him (‘To the Ghost of Martial’, Epigrams ), and by the opening sequence of his book: Jonson’s first four poems address, in order, the reader, the book, his bookseller and King James. The corresponding sequence in Martial addresses the reader first; then the reader, but with reference to the bookseller; third, the book; and fourth, Caesar. The correspondence continues, but at this point Jonson begins to work in some variation: his sixth epigram, and the first typically satiric one, is only two lines long: T A. If all you boast of your great art be true; Sure, willing povertie lives most in you.
This corresponds to Martial’s fifth poem, also a single couplet, also the first satiric (or at least non-panegyric) piece: Do tibi naumachiam, tu das epigrammata nobis: vis, puto, cum libro, Marce, natare tuo. I give you a sea battle, you give me epigrams: you want, I think, to go for a swim, Marcus, along with your book.
Martial’s poem is addressed, as it were, to himself – he imagines Caesar, the subject of his fourth epigram, replying with humorous scorn: ‘I put on the performance of a sea battle for you [perhaps part of the celebrations for Domitian’s triumph over the Chatti, held in ], and all you offer me is this book of epigrams – evidently you deserve a dunking !’ Jonson’s corresponding poem is not nearly so modest, although like Martial’s it is concerned with the overestimation of skill (‘If all you boast of your great art be true’, ), and also like Martial it incorporates a reference to the
Compare, for instance, Martial . and Jonson’s touching expansion upon that brief poem in Epigrams (‘Epitaph on S. P. a child of Q. El. Chappel’). Martial . remembers a slave-girl, Canace, who died at seven years old, the same age as Jonson’s son was at his death (Epigrams ). Howell discusses the particular spectacle that is probably meant (Peter Howell, A Commentary on Book One of the Epigrams of Martial (London, Athlone Press, ), pp. –).
Horace and Martial in the Epigrams
poet’s own work: Jonson’s dramatic version of the folly of the alchemist was first performed in . This is not the only way in which Jonson’s opening sequence outdoes Martial’s: Jonson inserts an additional poem to his king, Epigrams , ‘On the Union’ (that is, the union of Scotland and England upon the accession of James I in ). Jonson’s royal addressee, we are evidently meant to conclude, is both more impressive than Caesar and more impressed by these poems addressed to him. Whereas Martial’s fourth poem invites the emperor to be amused by his epigrammatic ‘ioci’ (‘jokes’, ), and hopes for his tolerance, Jonson’s fourth epigram describes King James not as a good-humoured member of an audience, but rather as himself a poet – indeed the ‘best of Poets’ () – and as such the most honourable (and, we might assume, most stringent) judge of the poetry offered to him: ‘Whom should my Muse then flie to, but the best / Of Kings for grace; of Poets for my test ?’ (.–). So there is a sense of rivalry here – between Jonson and Martial over the seriousness of the genre, and the kind of readerly attention it might expect even from the most important of men – and, more dangerously, between Jonson and the king, poet to poet. Th is rivalrous version of panegyric (which is unlike anything found in Martial) links the Epigrams with the tone and technique of the major odes, discussed in Chapter . Lyric is not the only other Jonsonian genre the epigrams evoke. The second epigram, ‘To my Booke’, describes the reader’s expectations of Jonson’s work not in terms of lyric or comedy, but as satire. And, like Epigrams , this important programmatic poem makes something Horatian out of the pieces of Martial. I give the poem in full: T B It will be look’d for, booke, when some but see Thy title, Epigrammes, and nam’d of mee, Thou should’st be bold, licentious, full of gall, Wormewood, and sulphure, sharpe, and tooth’d withall; Become a petulant thing, hurle inke, and wit, As mad-men stones: not caring whom they hit. Deceive their malice, who could wish it so. And by thy wiser temper, let men know Thou are not covetous of least selfe-fame, Made from the hazard of anothers shame:
The play was first printed in . It was reprinted in the Workes of , in which the Epigrams also appeared.
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles Much lesse with lewd, prophane, and beastly phrase, To catch the worlds loose laughter, or vaine gaze. He that departs with his owne honesty For vulgar praise, doth it too dearely buy.
Herford and Simpson note that lines – are indebted to Martial, ..– : ‘ut mea nec iuste quos odit pagina laesit / et mihi de nullo fama rubore placet.’ Martial assures the reader that ‘my page has not harmed even those it justly loathes, / and I take no pleasure in fame earned at the expense of another’s blush’. Just as the poem to Caesar dismisses his epigrams as ‘jokes’, Martial here claims that his verse amounts to harmless sport: ‘ludimus innocui: scis hoc bene’, ‘I’m playing harmlessly: as you well know’ (). The same theme is central to the prose preface to Martial’s Epigrams, which also stands behind Jonson’s ‘To my Booke’. The preface asks readers to refrain from malicious interpretation of the poems; Jonson’s poem expects such misinterpretation – and even, arguably, suggests it. Jonson’s epigram is rhetorically odd. It is taken up almost completely with a detailed evocation of what his work is not (a rather similar rhetorical technique, though to different effect, to that in the catalogue of extravagant but fictional foodstuffs in Epigrams ). Lines – describe others’ (satiric) expectations; lines – the poet’s own description of the character his book does not possess. The satirist the poet claims not, in fact, to be is of a recognisable type: the gall, the teeth, the suggestion of physical attack, the comic exaggeration and the implied moral worry (what if satirists positively enjoy others’ sin and corruption?) are all typical elements of the verse and stage satire of the s, as described by Jonson himself in the ‘Apologetical Dialogue’ to Poetaster (): Author : They [whom I attack] know I dare To spare or baffle ’em, or squirt their eyes With ink or urine. Or I could do worse, Armed with Archilochus’ fury write iambics Should make the desperate lashers hang themselves; Rhyme ’em to death, as they do Irish rats In drumming tunes. Or, living, I could stamp Their foreheads with those deep and public brands
Martial’s preface is concerned only briefly with what his epigrams will not do – that is, name names in a bold and (he implies) outdated manner: he claims that his poetic games speak always with ‘reverentia’ (‘reverence’ or ‘respect’, ), however lowly the target; and he distinguishes his practice in this regard from ancient writers who ‘made abusive remarks using not only real names, but even great ones’ (–). He insists upon the lack of seriousness in his work: ‘Let Cato not enter my theatre; if he does come in, let him simply watch’ (–).
Horace and Martial in the Epigrams
That the whole company of Barber-Surgeons Should not take off, with all their art and plasters. (Poetaster, ‘Apologetical Dialogue’, –).
If the opening lines of Jonson’s second epigram remind us of the aggressive poses of the young satirists of the s (of which Jonson himself was one), then the final lines of the poem balance that recent, ‘tooth’d’ tradition with a quotation from Roman satire. The curious expression ‘catch the worlds loose laughter’ (, meaning, presumably, to ‘prompt’ it), is a translation from Horace, Satires I..–: ‘solutos / qui captat risus hominum famamque dicacis’ (‘he who tries to prompt the loose laughter of men, and earn the reputation of a wit’). Satires I. is one of the most programmatic of Horace’s satires: that is, it sets out to explain and to justify the genre itself. It is also one of Jonson’s favourite poems, and the source of many of his engagements, both brief and extended, with Horatian satire. The context of the phrase under discussion here is worth some attention: ‘laedere gaudes’ inquit, ‘et hoc studio pravus facis.’ unde petitum hoc in me iacis? est auctor quis denique eorum vixi cum quibus? absentem qui rodit amicum, qui non defendit alio culpante, solutos qui captat risus hominum famamque dicacis, fingere qui non visa potest, commissa tacere qui nequit, hic niger est, hunc tu, Romane, caveto.
(–)
‘You enjoy wounding people’ says one, ‘and you do so with spiteful care.’ Where did you find this accusation that you hurl at me ? Is there anyone at all, among those I’ve lived with, who’ll claim responsibility for it ? The man who savages an absent friend, who fails to defend him when someone else blames him, the man who tries to prompt the loose laughter of men and earn the reputation of a wit,
The ‘Apologetical Dialogue’ itself incorporates an epigram (lines –, reprinted as Epigram , ‘To True Souldiers’), demonstrating the association for Jonson between epigram and satire. Epigrams also feature in the satiric action of Thomas Dekker’s Satiro-mastix, in which Horace (that is, Jonson) distributes various epigrams attacking Tucca (III.i.–). As is often the case, Jonson stretches the meaning of an English word in conversation, as it were, with the Latin. ‘Catch’ meaning ‘prompt’ or ‘evoke’ (as opposed to ‘obtain’) is not listed in the OED. The precise meaning of the line is clear only if the reader has the Latin phrase in mind. Freudenburg discusses this feature of Satires I. (Freudenburg, The Walking Muse, pp. – and –). Similar programmatic features are found in Satires II. and, to a lesser extent, in I. and I.. Poetaster, discussed in Chapter , is heavily indebted to Satires I..
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles the man who can invent things he hasn’t seen, and who is unable to keep a secret entrusted to him: that’s the blackguard, Roman, beware of him.
Horace imagines here the kind of charges that might be laid against his verse – that he takes pleasure in harming others – and claims in reply that real wickedness lies in the covert betrayals of the opportunistic social climber. These are social vices; Jonson’s epigram collapses these failings with artistic failures of taste and judgement: ‘He that departs with his owne honesty / For vulgar praise, doth it too dearely buy’ (–). The book itself will confound its critics and remain tasteful and honest, even if that means short of admirers. Jonson’s second epigram – a generic form undeniably derived from Martial – turns out to voice an extract from Horace, and moreover of Horace speaking in propria persona in defence of his own new genre. In fact, that trope – of the unpopular (but good) poetry versus the widely read (but bad) verse of the vain and frivolous poet – is also central to Satires I.. Just before the section quoted above, Horace expounds precisely this point, and the link between the two passages makes sense, too, of the transition between Epigrams and : Sulcius acer ambulat et Caprius, rauci male cumque libellis, magnus uterque timor latronibus; at bene si quis et vivat puris manibus contemnat utrumque. ut sis tu similis Caeli Birrique latronum, non ego sim Capri neque Sulci; cur metuas me ? nulla taberna meos habeat neque pila libellos, quis manus insudet vulgi Hermogenisque Tigelli. nec recito cuiquam nisi amicis, idque coactus, non ubivis coramve quibuslibet. in medio qui scripta foro recitent sunt multi quique lavantes: suave locus voci resonat conclusus. inanis hoc iuvat, haud illud quaerentis, num sine sensu, tempore num faciant alieno.
(–)
Keen-nosed Sulcius and Caprius walk about, horribly hoarse and equipped with booklets,
Compare Epigrams ‘To Lucy, Countesse of Bedford, with Mr.. Donnes Satyres’: ‘But these [Donne’s Satyres], desir’d by you, the makers ends / Crowne with their owne. Rare poemes aske rare friends. / Yet, Satyres, since the most of mankind bee / Their un-avoided subject, fewest see’ (–). The modern consensus is that Sulcius and Caprius are probably professional informers – hoarse from denouncing their victims in court, and armed with legal writs (‘libellis’) rather
Horace and Martial in the Epigrams
both of them a great source of fear for robbers: but if a man lives well and keeps his hands clean, he can scorn them both. Although you may be like Caelius and Birrius the robbers, I need not resemble Caprius or Sulcius: why should you fear me ? No stall or column will display my little pamphlets, for the hands of the crowd and of Hermogenes Tigellius to sweat over; I don’t recite to anyone – except to my friends, and then only when forced, and not just anywhere, or in front of anyone at all. There are some who recite what they’ve written in the middle of the forum – in fact there are many – and even at the baths. The enclosed space makes the voice echo agreeably: for the foolish a source of delight, but not for those who think to ask whether they’re behaving without taste or at an inappropriate time.
Jonson’s third epigram is addressed ‘To my Booke-seller’. In it the poet concedes (as Horace does not) that he must entrust his work to the bookseller and allow it to be sold (‘lye upon thy stall’, ); but he hopes, to humorous effect, that the book might preserve at least some dignity and autonomy. (In contrast, Martial’s second epigram tells us exactly where to find the stall in question.) He would rather the book not sell at all, and be used instead as wrapping, than lower itself to grubbing for an ignorant readership: To lye upon thy stall, till it be sought; Not offer’d, as it made sute to be bought; Nor have my title-leafe on posts, or walls, Or in cleft-sticks, advanced to make calls For termers, or some clarke-like serving-man, Who scarse can spell th’hard names: whose knight lesse can. If, without these vile arts, it will not sell, Send it to Bucklers-bury, there ’twill, well.
As we have already noted, the position of this poem is modelled upon Martial, whose third epigram in his first book also considers his book’s future career – in Martial, the young book is eager to be off, to try his luck amongst the Roman populace. But once again, Jonson has made over Martial’s poem in imitation of Horace. The link to Satires I. brings
than pamphlets of verse (Horace’s ‘libellos’ of line ). The diminuitive (‘libelli’) implies scorn (for the informers) and routine poetic self-deprecation (by Horace of his own work, ‘my little pamphlets’). ‘In case you’re not aware of where I’m on sale, and go wandering all over the town, you’ll be sure to find your way with me as your guide: look for Secundus, a freedman of learned Lucensis, behind the doorway of Peace and Pallas’ forum’ (lines –). Martial’s personification of the young book is itself already Horatian, derived from Epistles I..
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
the second and third epigrams together as a programmatic unit, and ‘To my Booke-seller’ ends with a glance at a second major exposition of the purpose of Horatian hexameter in Epistles II.. That poem, a long ‘literary critical’ verse letter, ends with an ambiguous moment of self-deprecation, as the poet imagines himself – or rather, the scroll of his book – first as the emperor, and then as wrapping for pepper and spices: et una cum scriptore meo, capsa porrectus operta, deferar in vicum vendentem tus et odores et piper et quidquid chartis amicitur ineptis. (Epistles II..–)
and together with my writer, laid out in a covered box, I’ ll be borne down to the district where they sell incense and perfume and pepper, and whatever else is wrapped in useless pages.
The movement of the final verse paragraph of the poem is elliptic, but this idea is associated with the costs of popularity: the successful poet might, like an emperor, find himself burdened by crude images of himself, in flattery and in ‘ill made verses’ (). The closing motif of Epigrams works in the same way: Jonson declares himself uninterested in those ‘vile arts’ of currying unworthy attention – better his book should be sent off to ‘Bucklers-bury’, that is, an area full of grocers’ shops, with plenty of demand for wrapping: the London equivalent of Horace’s ‘vicum vendentem’ (‘selling district’). Jonson sets up his book of epigrams – both as individual poems, and as a sequence – in such a way that the most alert reader will notice the Horatian reworking of Martialian material. These epigrams, we understand, are satires in the Horatian, not Juvenalian, sense of the term: literature for a particular and educated audience, intended to be morally improving but not senselessly vicious. But this ‘Horatianising’ move is at work in the epigrams of praise and honour as well as in the satiric material. I want to explore this by looking at a few of the epigrams addressed to various members of the Roe family, and their context in the collection. : Jonson’s Epigrams includes seven poems addressed to members of the Roe family – three to Sir John Roe, his close friend (Epigrams , and ), two to Sir William Roe (Epigrams and ) and a pair to Sir Thomas
An Horatian sequence: the Roe epigrams
Roe (Epigrams and ). I want to use several of this sequence of particularly moving poems to explore Jonson’s ‘Horatianising’ of the serious commendatory epigrams. At the centre of the collection, Epigram encourages William to action: T W R When Nature bids us leave to live, ’tis late Then to begin, my Roe: He makes a state In life, that can employ it; and takes hold On the true causes, ere they grow too old. Delay is bad, doubt worse, depending worst; Each best day of our life escapes us, first. Then, since we (more then many) these truths know: Though life be short, let us not make it so.
There are various possible classical sources for the sentiment of the poem. The clearest allusion is to Virgil, Georgics III.–: ‘Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi / prima fugit’, ‘for wretched mortals, each best day of life / is the first to flee’. This gloomy prospect is not much relieved by the reference to Martial. Epigrams ., to which Jonson’s poem also alludes, is about the lack of freedom available to men who depend for their livelihood upon others: nunc vivit necuter sibi, bonosque soles eff ugere atque abire sentit, qui nobis pereunt et imputantur. Quisquam vivere cum sciat, moratur ? (–)
As things are [given that we are not rich], neither of us lives for himself. We feel our good days slip away and leave us; they are wasted, and put to our account. Does any man, knowing the way to live, defer it?
Jonson’s poem, by contrast, implies that both poet and addressee possess the freedom to behave autonomously, to take charge without
The Roe family was wealthy and distinguished. John, probably knighted in , was the eldest son of William Roe of Higham Hill in Essex. Upon his death in , John inherited the estate of Higham-Bensted at Walthamstow. John himself died young, in January , and Sir William, his younger brother, inherited from him. Sir Thomas Roe, their cousin, was an eminent explorer, and became ambassador to the Mughal court in India between and . For further details, see Alvaro Ribeiro, ‘Sir John Roe: Ben Jonson’s Friend’, Review of English Studies, (), –; H&S, vol. , pp. – and the entry on Sir Thomas Roe in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Seneca discusses these lines in epistle .
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
waiting for ‘leave to live’. Jonson certainly has an eye upon the social restrictions of which Martial complains – that word ‘depending’ () is typically slippery: Jonson probably has a passage of Seneca in mind, in which ‘pendet’ means to ‘wait for the next day’ before taking action. But the phrase suggests, too, the limitations of social and financial dependence: a key theme, as we have seen, of Horace’s Epistles as of Jonson’s. But Jonson’s epigram insists – despite everything – upon the reality of freedom. The poem’s optimism and incentive to action aligns the epigram not with Martial (or Virgil) but with Horace. The closest parallel is probably to Epistles I.: dimidium facti qui coepit habet: sapere aude: incipe. qui recte vivendi prorogat horam, rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis: at ille labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum. (Epistles I..–)
He who has begun a task has half completed it: dare to be wise: begin ! The man who puts off the moment for living well, he’s just an ignorant country type who waits for the river to flow right out; and yet it slips past and goes on slipping, forever rolling.
Significantly, these lines are addressed to Lollius, the same name to which both Epistles I. and Odes IV. are dedicated – two of Jonson’s favourite poems, and among the passages of Horace to which he most frequently alludes. Appropriately enough, Epistles I. is addressed explicitly to a young man. Lollius was apparently a student of rhetoric at Rome at the time of the poem’s composition, and the final lines of the epistle refer to him as a boy: nunc adbibe puro pectore verba puer, nunc te melioribus offer. quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem testa diu. (Epistles I..–)
Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae, ix.: ‘Maxima porro vitae iactura dilatio est … Maximam vivendi impedimentum est exspectatio, quae pendet ex crastino, perdit hodiernum’; ‘Indeed, delay is the single greatest threat to life … hopeful expectation, which depends upon the morrow, and wastes today, is the greatest obstacle to living.’ I am indebted to H&S for this reference, and the allusion to Martial .. ‘Volubilis’ in this position links this rolling river of time as it passes with the elusive Ligurinus – also associated with moving water – at the close of Odes IV.. Jonson’s beautiful translation of that poem is discussed in Chapter , pp. –.
An Horatian sequence: the Roe epigrams
Now, while still a boy, drink in my words with a pure heart, now entrust yourself to those better than you. If a jar is steeped in liquid when it is newly made, it will keep the scent long after.
William was John Roe’s younger brother, and the poem appears to allude to the loss that he and the poet had shared: ‘since we (more than many) these truths know’ () – that is, that life is short. In this sense, the poem’s allusive logic tracks its emotional structure: the grief familiar to both poet and addressee, and perhaps the main point of connection between them, is transformed and restructured as an incentive towards active and virtuous life; similarly, the gloomy commonplaces drawn from Virgil, Martial and Seneca are given new (and affectionate) force by their encounter with Horace and the epistolary form. Jonson’s language of fixity (‘makes a state’, ; ‘takes hold’, ) responds to, and attempts to stay the river that flows in Horace’s poem. The pathos lies most of all in the admission of the impossibility of that task, and the knowledge of its failure for two men who have lost the friend and brother they loved: ‘Though life be short, let us not make it so’ (). The injunction of Epigrams seems to be related to the congratulations offered to William’s distinguished cousin, Sir Thomas Roe. In Epigrams Jonson returns to the Horatian motif: T S T R Thou hast begun well, Roe, which stand well too, And I know nothing more thou hast to doo. He that is round within himselfe, and streight, Need seeke no other strength, no other height; Fortune upon him breakes her selfe, if ill, And what would hurt his vertue makes it still. That thou at once, then, nobly maist defend With thine own course the judgement of thy friend, Be always to thy gather’d selfe the same: And studie conscience, more then thou would’st fame. Though both be good, the latter yet is worst, And ever is ill got without the first.
This is a more specifically and extensively Horatian poem than Epigrams . Those middle lines, the description of achieved virtue, are a version of one of Jonson’s best-loved passages, the description of the truly ‘free’ man from Satires II.: quisnam igitur liber? sapiens sibi qui imperiosus, quem neque pauperies neque mors neque vincula terrent,
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles responsare cupidinibus, contemnere honores fortis, et in se ipso totus, teres, atque rotundus, externi ne quid valeat per leve morari, in quem manca ruit semper fortuna. (Satires II..–)
Who then is free? The wise man who commands himself, whom neither poverty nor death nor chains terrify, a man strong enough to defy his passions and despise public honours: a brave man, whole in himself, smooth and round, able to prevent anything outside himself lingering upon his smooth surface: whenever Fortune attacks such a man she maims only herself.
Elsewhere Jonson makes dramatic use of the ironic context of this speech – Horace’s slave, Davus, exploits the temporary freedom of speech granted by the Saturnalia to point out to his master that he, Horace himself, prey to his passions just as Davus is, is no freer than a slave. Here Horace’s ironically distanced vision of moral freedom is delivered seriously: Thomas Roe has achieved, and can strive to maintain precisely that state – namely freedom – for which Martial cannot hope in Epigrams .. But Jonson’s poem is not without an edge. Sir Thomas has apparently achieved (‘Thou hast begun well, R, which stand well too’, ) what William was urged to do: ‘He makes a state / In life, that can employ it’ (Epigrams .–); ‘dare to be wise – / begin!’ (Epistles I..–). The rhetorical form of this poem to a more senior Roe is typically enigmatic. Jonson assures Sir Thomas that ‘I know nothing more thou hast to doo’ (). Beginning well, that is, is enough: ‘dimidium facti qui coepit habet’ (Epistles I..). But perhaps not quite enough: the praise of the subsequent four lines (–), which seem to describe Roe’s achieved state, modulate in the latter half of the poem into instruction rather than description: ‘Be alwayes to thy gather’d selfe the same: / And studie conscience, more then thou would’st fame’ (–). Sir Thomas must ensure that his continued good
See the discussion of Forest in Chapter , pp. –. For Jonson, the etymological connection, via Latin (‘sto, stare’, to stand), between ‘stand’ and ‘state’ is always present in both words. Like ‘still’, ‘standing’ is a strong term of ethical approbation in Jonson’s verse. As well as ‘situation’ or ‘position’, ‘state’ can mean grandeur and ceremony at this period, especially of a royal nature, or even the throne itself (OED, state, n., ). Peterson is particularly good on the ‘paradoxical combination of motion with fi xity’ in Jonson’s poetry of praise (Peterson, Imitation and Praise, p. ). For the ‘gather’d selfe’ compare ‘Live to that point I will, for which I am man, / And dwell as in my Center, as I can’ (UW , ‘An Epistle answering to one that asked to be Sealed of the Tribe of B’, –) and ‘And like a Compasse keeping one foot still / Upon your Center, doe your Circle fi ll / Of generall knowledge’ (UW , ‘An Epistle to Master J S’, –). On
Horatian equanimity: Sir John Roe and Epistles I.
behaviour justifies ‘the judgement of thy friend’ () – that is, presumably, Jonson himself. The form of Jonson’s Epigrams is indebted to Martial, as is well known. In reshaping that material, it is not just that Jonson has reintroduced the moral seriousness self-consciously banished by Martial. The presentation of that generic project (especially in the programmatic opening sequence), of the ethical terms of the poet’s judgement, of his friends and enemies and of the poet himself are all modelled upon Horace’s hexameter verse: the social engagement of the Satires and Epistles. In Jonson’s hands, the English epigram becomes a kind of distillation and combination of those two related Latin genres. These are epigrams by way of Horace. In the examples studied so far – whether of praise or blame – the Horatian content conveys the poet’s moral authority: a moral authority rather different from anything found in Martial. The tonal subtlety introduced by the Horatian voice in the Epigrams is not, however, limited to this kind of authorisation; it is also, as we saw in that stirring accretion of the vocabulary of political freedom in Epigrams , a source of emotional depth. : E P I S T L E S . I want to end this section with some comments on one of three of Jonson’s epigrams addressed to his close friend, Sir John Roe, who died, allegedly in Jonson’s arms, around . It is a short poem, and can be given in full: O S J R (Epigrams ) What two brave perills of the private sword Could not effect, not all the furies doe,
the versions of this idea in Jonson, see Thomas M. Greene, ‘Ben Jonson and the Centered Self ’, Studies in English Literature, –, (), –. Th is bold move invites comparison with a similar turn at line of UW , Jonson’s verse epistle to Sir Edward Sackville. Turning ethical praise to his own vindication is a typical move of Jonson’s poetry of praise. Epigrams , also addressed to Sir Thomas, continues the theme: what matters is what Roe has done, not his reputation with the masses. Martial concludes his prose preface to the first of the epigrams: ‘non intret Cato theatrum meum, aut si intraverit, spectet’, ‘Let Cato not enter my theatre – or, if he does, let him watch.’ Valerius Maximus records that Cato left the theatre during a peformance in in order not to inhibit the actors by his presence. Cato’s formidable reputation for unwavering morality makes him here an emblem of moral seriousness – an element Martial claims will be absent from his work. In Horace’s own work, both satires and verse epistles are described as ‘sermones’ (Satires I.., I.. and , II.., II..; Epistles II.., II..). The term is borrowed from Lucilius. In contrast, the word ‘satira’ appears only twice (Satires II.. and II..). The others are Epigrams and . Roe’s own poems are printed in Appendix B of Grierson’s edition of Donne (Herbert J. C. Grierson (ed.), The Poems of John Donne, Edited from the
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles That selfe-divided Belgia did afford; What not the envie of the seas reach’d too, The cold of Mosco, and fat Irish ayre, His often change of clime (though not of mind) What could not worke; at home in his repaire Was his blest fate, but our hard lot to find. Which shewes, where ever death doth please t’appeare, Seas, serenes, swords, shot, sicknesse, all are there.
At the centre of the epigram the line ‘His often change of clime (though not of mind)’ refers us to one of Horace’s best-known formulations: ‘caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt’ (‘men who rush across the sea change only their weather, not their hearts’, Epistles ..). In fact, the poem emerges from the correspondence. It is implied that Roe, like Bullatius (the addressee of Horace’s verse epistle), has travelled widely – in the Low Countries (divided along lines of religious faction since ), Russia and Ireland. The reference to an epistle – by definition correspondence between separated, but living, friends or acquaintances – itself contributes to the pathos. Jonson’s poem is perforce ‘On’ Roe, not ‘To’ his dead friend. Ironically, despite his travelling and adventuring, Roe has died ‘in his repaire’ – that is, his ‘habitual abode or retreat’, at home. But the associations with Horace’s epistle do not end there. The Latin poem sees Horace assuring Bullatius that with a ‘balanced mind’ everything one seeks – all the secrets of ‘living well’ – are to be found here where the poet writes from, or indeed anywhere, wherever you happen to be (Epistles I..–): strenua nos exercet inertia: navibus atque quadrigis petimus bene vivere. quod petis hic est, est Vlubris, animus si te non deficit aequus. Energetic inactivity wears us out: in boats and chariots we seek a good life. But what you seek is here and it’s at Ulubrae, if your balanced mind does not desert you.
Old Editions and Numerous Manuscripts with Introduction and Commentary, vols. (Oxford University Press, ; repr. ), vol. , pp. –). A version of this discussion of Epigram appears in Victoria Moul, ‘The Poet’s Voice: Allusive Dialogue in Ben Jonson’s Horatian Poetry’, in Luke Houghton and Maria Wyke (eds.), Perceptions of Horace: a Roman Poet and His Readers (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. Roe seems to have served in Ireland, as his name is included on a list of discharged captains (Ribeiro, ‘Sir John Roe’, –). Ribeiro also discusses the possible dates of his service in the Low Countries and of a visit to Russia.
Jonson’s verse epistles and Horace, Epistles I.
In Jonson’s poem, it is not the ‘balanced mind’ of wise retreat that proves reliable, but death itself, and the final lines of the English epigram play a moving variation upon the structure of the Latin ending: Which shewes, where ever death doth please t’appeare, Seas, serenes, swords, shot, sicknesse, all are there.
The emphasis upon the location rather than, as we might more intuitively expect, the unanticipated timing of death connects the end of the epigram with the unimportance of one’s location in Horace’s poem. But this insignificance that is offered as a source of comfort for Bullatius is the root of Jonson’s sorrow and loss: when death strikes home it makes no difference where we are. In this short poem to a close friend our recognition of a stock figure from Horace’s hexameter verse opens up a deeper emotional register by means of an implied conversation with the Latin epistle. Jonson’s poem recognises, according to Christian tradition, that for Roe himself his death may have proved a blessing (‘his blest fate’, ); but the contrast with Horace’s poem about living (not dying) well increases the pathos of the speaker’s loss. Roe’s death is more upsetting – and, crucially, precisely more unexpected – because the allusion to Horace in line leads us to anticipate that what Roe has evaded in travel and adventure but found ‘at home in his repaire’ () was his aequus animus, the conventional solace and wisdom of Stoic retreat. : ’ E P I S T L E S . Part of the emotional force of Epigrams lies in the tension between the invoked verse epistle (addressed, by implication, to a living friend) and the epigram as an epitaph. We have in fact several pieces of evidence that Jonson and John Roe exchanged verse letters in the early years of the sixteenth century, including Roe’s own verse epistles to Jonson. Jonson’s verse epistles – of which many are extant, and several others may yet remain to be identified in manuscript – differ from the epigrams in that they are addressed, at least ostensibly, solely to the virtuous: friends, nobles and patrons, or potential patrons. They include
See also Roe’s ‘To Ben. Johnson, Jan. ’ and ‘To Ben Johnson, Novembris, ’ (in H&S, vol. , pp. –) and Donne, Verse Letters to Several Personages (W. Milgate (ed.), John Donne: the Satires, Epigrams and Verse Letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, )).
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
several of the most significant poems of the Forest and Underwood collections, and range in date from (Forest ) to the early s (UW ). There is also some suggestion of a conversational ‘exchange’ of epistles – UV (‘An Epistle to a Friend’), for instance, evokes a correspondence in its opening lines, and apparently quotes from the addressee’s own poem: Censure, not sharplye then, but mee advise before, I wryte more verse, to bee more wyse. Soe ended yor Epistle, myne beginns Hee that soe Censureth, or adviseth synns, The emptye Carper, scorne, not Creditt wynns. (UV .–)
In one manuscript this epistle is followed immediately by two verse letters addressed to Jonson which are now attributed to Sir John Roe, suggesting that it may have been considered by the compiler of the collection as part of this correspondence. Given the Horatianism of the Roe poems in the Epigrams, it is worth noting that UV is also indebted to Horace. Little know they, that proffesse Amitye and seeke to scant her comelye Libertye, Howe much they lame hir, in hir propertye: And lesse they knowe, that being Free to use That Frindship, wch noe Chaunce, but Love did Chuse, Will unto Lycence that Free Leave Abuse: It is an Acte of Tyranye, not Love, In Course of Frindshipp, wholie to reprove: And Flatterye, w th Frindes humors: still to move. From each of wch, I labor to Free, yett, yf w th eythers vyce, I tainted bee, Forgive it as my Frayltie, and not mee.
These lines – taken from the shared portion of UV /UW – revolve around freedom, and especially the freedom of speech proper to friendship: the man who does not speak his mind to his friend ‘lame[s]’ their relationship and deprives it of the ‘comelye Libertye’ proper to that state;
There is some variation in the generic descriptions of this material: Forest is, for instance, described as an elegy rather than an epistle in several manuscript sources. Bodleian Rawlinson Poetry , fols. v– v. UV shares its fi fteen final lines with the poem printed as UW (‘An Epistle to a friend’). I suspect several of Jonson’s early poems to unspecified friends may have been written for Roe, including perhaps the ode beginning ‘High-spirited friend’ (UW ). I notice that Wesley Trimpi has also suggested this connection (Trimpi, Ben Jonson’s Poems, pp. – and –).
Jonson’s verse epistles and Horace, Epistles I.
but the opposite extreme, the abusive ‘Licence’, speaking too freely, is equally damaging. This idea is derived quite closely from Horace, Epistles I., concerned with the poet’s handling of powerful friends. Epistles I. is a letter addressed, like Epistles I. and Odes IV., to Lollius, a well-born ‘amicus’ (‘amice’, ), on how (as a poet) to cultivate and satisfy one’s wealthy patron – all this in a collection which begins by testing the boundaries of Horace’s own duty of obedience towards his wealthy patron, Maecenas (Epistles I.). The closest verbal parallel to I. – and the key to the allusion – is the phrase ‘Little knowe they, that proffesse Amitye’ (UV .). This is also the first line of the section which is replicated in UW , implying that these final lines were originally a separate unit. This phrase ‘proffesse Amitye’ corresponds closely to the compressed Latin phrase ‘professus amicum’, ‘having professed yourself a friend’, from the end of the second line of the Latin poem. But the associations are not limited to this tag: Horace’s poem, too, advises Lollius in terms of that opposition of extremes: Si bene te novi, metues, liberrime Lolli, scurrantis speciem praebere, professus amicum. ut matrona meretrici dispar erit atque discolor, infido scurrae distabit amicus. est huic diversum vitio vitium prope maius, asperitas agrestis et inconcinna gravisque, quae se commendat tonsa cute, dentibus atris, dum vult libertas dici mera veraque virtus. virtus est medium vitiorum et utrimque reductum.
(Epistles I..–)
If I know you well, Lollius, frankest of men [‘liberrime’], you dread seeming like a sponger, having declared yourself a friend. Just as a respectable married woman and a prostitute are unlike one another and don’t go together, so is a friend far removed from a disloyal parasite. There is an opposite vice to this one [that is, being a parasite], almost worse: that is, a boorish rudeness, inappropriate and abrasive, which commends itself with scraped skin and black teeth, while wishing to give an impression of unsullied free speech and true virtue. But virtue is a mid-point between vices, distant from both extremes.
‘Amicus’ is a key word in I., as are various terms associated with ‘libertas’ or its loss (‘liberrime’, ; ‘dum vult libertas dici mera veraque virtus’, ; ‘lenibus imperiis’, ). The same opposition of extremes appears in the same order (albeit more mutedly) in UW (‘An Epistle to Master Arth: Squib ’): ‘For that is first requir’d, A man be his owne. / But he that’s toomuch that, is friend of none’ (–).
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
UV is a minor piece but it is only one of several such ‘friendship’ epistles, most of them probably later works: a cluster of Jonson’s mature verses either name friendship in the title or take the conduct of civilised friendship as their main theme (e.g. UW , , ). Included under the rubric of ‘friendship’ is a wide variety of apparent equals (the ‘friend’, Colby, of UW ), men obviously junior to the poet (‘An Epistle answering to one that asked to be Sealed of the Tribe of B’, UW ) as well as those with power over him (UW , to Sir Edward Sackville). In this range they resemble Horace’s Epistles, likewise concerned with the epistolary bridging of real inequalities of status and significance (between Maecenas and Horace, Horace and junior poets, Horace and his steward): inequalities at once obscured and revealed by the rhetoric of ‘friendship’. Interestingly, two contemporary verse miscellanies containing several of Jonson’s poems also include a translation of the latter half of Epistles I. (lines –). The manuscripts in question are Bodleian Rawlinson Poetry and BL Harley MS – the first of these is also the manuscript in which UV immediately precedes Roe’s verse letters to Jonson. Both manuscripts date from between and and include poems by Jonson which had not yet been published in printed form; both are anonymously compiled by professional scribes. The version of Epistles I. has not currently been attributed to Jonson, although this close translation, beginning at line of the Latin poem, bears many Jonsonian features, especially in comparison with his other verse epistles, and I understand that it is to be included under works possibly ascribed to Jonson in the forthcoming Cambridge edition. The poem is discussed in greater depth in Chapter , pp. –; whether by Jonson, Roe or another member of their circle, its presence in a collection that includes verse epistles by both Jonson and Roe is suggestive of the perceived ‘Horatianism’ of that genre.
Jonson is not the only poet to be writing in this way. Donne’s verse epistles cover a similar range, and several engage specifically with Horace (see Moul, ‘Donne’s Horatian Means’, –). Although neither manuscript is simply a reduced version of the other (since both contain poems the other does not include), they are clearly closely related. In particular, those poems which they do share (forty-seven in total, including eight by Jonson) appear, without exception, in the same order in both manuscripts. The Bodleian manuscript is in the hand of the ‘feathery’ scribe, to whom Beal devotes a chapter of his book: Peter Beal, In Praise of Scribes: Manuscripts and Their Makers in Seventeenth-century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), pp. –. Two pages (fols. v–r) are reproduced on pages –. I am grateful to Colin Burrow, the editor of the poems for this edition, for initially alerting me to the existence of this translation. For further discussion of Jonson’s close translations, see Chapter .
Poet as benefactor in the epistle to Sackville
Jonson uses an Horatian mode, in both epigrams and verse epistles, to explore a theme that resonates throughout his career: how to speak freely in verse, and the ethical implications of not only addressing, but also instructing one’s superiors. The greatest challenge to such freedom – the ‘libertie’ of ‘Inviting a Friend to Supper’ – is the indebtedness of the recipient to his patron (part of the powerful ‘freedom’ of that poem lies in the poet’s imagined extravagance of provision: indebting his noble friend, not himself). Jonson repeatedly uses both epigrams and epistles to test and articulate his indebtedness: to his friends, his patrons, his teacher (Epigram , to Camden); and also to Martial and (as we shall see) to Seneca. The voice of Horace, however – to whom in one sense he owes most – repeatedly marks out not the author’s debt, but his freedom. , The most striking example of this feature of Jonson’s Horatianism is found in a long and complex epistle, dating perhaps from around and addressed to Edward Sackville, UW (‘An Epistle to Sir Edward Sacvile, now Earle of Dorset’). Herford and Simpson describe the poem as ‘modelled on the Epistulae Morales of Seneca, whose treatise De Beneficiis it utilizes lavishly, assimilating the thought even where it does not directly reproduce the turn of phrase’. The link is further confirmed by the heavy markings in the opening chapters of De Beneficiis in one of Jonson’s editions of Seneca, which often correspond closely to the passages used in
As H&S point out, Sir Edward succeeded as fourth Earl of Dorset on March , hence the addendum to the title, ‘now Earle of Dorset’. UW therefore presumably precedes this date, but it is otherwise undated. A manuscript copy of this poem is extant among the Portland papers (Portland MS Pw V. , pp. –). It is titled ‘A Poeme by the way of thankfull Acknowledgement sent and dedicated to Sr Edward Sacvile’, and it may preserve a version predating Sackville’s succession. The reference to Coriat (Thomas Coryate) in line may suggest a date after the publication of his most notorious book, Coryat’s Crudities, in . Edward was born in . It seems unlikely that Jonson’s poem is addressed to a boy, although certain lines and tone may imply a young man: following an extended series of metaphors of the smooth and steady pace of moral growth, if it is not to ‘goe out in nothing’ (), the poet adds: ‘[y]ou that see / Their difference, cannot choose which you will be ’ (–, italics mine). Th is perhaps suggests a date around or , as Sackville came of age. I am grateful to Colin Burrow for alerting me to the existence of the Portland manuscript and for permission to consult his transcription. H&S, vol. , p. . Seneca’s prose was read much more widely in Jonson’s day than our own – the De Beneficiis alone was translated three times in England between and , including versions by Arthur Golding () and Thomas Lodge (). (On these, see Knud Soerensen, Thomas Lodge’s Translation of Seneca’s ‘De Beneficiis’ Compared with Arthur Golding’s Version ([Aarhus]: Gyldendal, )).
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
the poem. Dating from around , the De Beneficiis is a lengthy treatise in seven books on the morality of giving and accepting gifts. The treatise is organised notionally as a letter, addressed to the aptly named Aebutius Liberalis. Structurally, however, Jonson’s poem resembles an Horatian verse epistle: like those poems, UW moves from personal address and philosophical seriousness in the opening lines, through a central satiric passage, and concludes with a declaration of the poet’s (and addressee’s) thoughtful and virtuous distinction from that satiric world, albeit one leavened with humour and self-deprecation: ‘No more are these of us, let them then goe, / I have the lyst of mine owne faults to know, / Looke to and cure’ (–). The poem begins by announcing the theme of the De Beneficiis: the importance of an awareness of the proper ‘how’, ‘where’ and ‘when’ in granting benefits, and in expressing gratitude for them. If, Sackvile, all that have the power to doe Great and good turns, as wel could time them too, And knew their how, and where: we should have, then, Lesse list of proud, hard, or ingratefull Men. (–)
Seneca’s treatise begins: ‘Among the many and various errors of those who live their lives rashly and carelessly, I could hardly mention anything more unworthy, excellent Liberalis, than the fact that we do not know either how to grant benefits, nor how to accept them’ (Ben. I..). Jonson’s poem stresses the numbers of the ungrateful, as does Seneca (‘turba ingratorum’, ‘the crowd of ungrateful men’, Ben. I..). Certain phrases are translated directly; compare, for instance: ‘For benefits are ow’d with
Jonson’s copy is L. Annaei Senecae Philosophi scripta quae extant: … Cum indicibus certissimis (Paris: apud Marcum Orry, ), Glasgow University Library (Special Collections B-y.). Th is volume, which bears Jonson’s signature (now partly obscured) and motto as well as characteristic marginalia, is not included in McPherson’s description of Jonson’s library but is described in Evans, Habits of Mind , pp. –. Evans includes detailed descriptions, keyed to a modern edition, of which sections of the text are marked; where appropriate I have given a reference to Evans’ description of the marking. Jonson probably owned more than one edition of Seneca’s prose in his lifetime, but the correspondences suggest that this was the edition he used in preparing UW . Maus discusses Jonson’s use of Seneca, though she has comparatively little to say about the verse epistles (Maus, Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind ). See François-Regis Chaumartin, Le De Beneficiis de Seneque, sa signification philosophique, politique et sociale (Lille and Paris: Atelier National de Reproduction des Theses, ) and Brad Inwood, Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ). Th is structure is replicated in several of Jonson’s long poems modelled upon Horatian hexameter, for instance UW (‘An Epistle to a Friend, to perswade him to the Warres’) and UW (‘An Epistle answering to one that asked to be Sealed of the Tribe of B’). A similar combination of Senecan material and Horatian form is found in UW (‘Epistle To a Friend’).
Poet as benefactor in the epistle to Sackville
the same mind / As they are done,’ (–) and ‘eodem animo beneficium debetur, quo datur’ (Ben. I..). Herford and Simpson’s annotations on these parallels are full and accurate, although they do not completely convey the density of correspondence between the two texts. Seneca’s expansive and sometimes repetitive style in this treatise is efficiently compressed (a similar effect to that seen in the paraphrases of Seneca in Discoveries) and individual verse sentences often find parallels in several separate Senecan passages. An example of this occurs at lines –: Can I owe thankes, for Curtesies receiv’d Against his will that do’s ’hem? that hath weav’d Excuses, or Delayes? or done ’hem scant, That they have more opprest me, then my want? Or if he did it not to succour me, But by meere Chance? for interest? or to free Himselfe of farther trouble, or the weight Of pressure, like one taken in a streight?
Herford and Simpson cite De Beneficiis I.., from which the strait (‘angusto vero’) is certainly taken. But we could also note close parallels at I..– (‘on the other hand, benefits are unwelcome … which are either forced from the donor, or casually dropped’), II.. and II... At II.. Seneca claims that even a small gift, given promptly, gains more gratitude than a more valuable one the conferral of which is ‘laggard and long thought-over’. Lines – of Jonson’s poem reiterate the point in imitation of Seneca’s repetitious style: ‘He neither gives, or do’s, that doth delay / A Benefit; or that doth throw ’t away.’ Jonson has, moreover, deftly and recognisably transformed Seneca’s instructions on how to give into a portrait of Sackville as the perfect (Senecan) giver, fulfilling those very instructions: You then, whose will not only, but desire To succour my necessities, tooke fire, Not at my prayers, but your sense; which laid The way to meet, what others would upbraid; And in the Act did so my blush prevent, As I did feele it done, as soone as meant (–)
Similarly, Seneca recommends that benefits should be conferred promptly; Jonson’s conscious blush () is also derived from Seneca, in the passage
The first of these is marked in Jonson’s edition (Evans, Habits of Mind, p. ).
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
quoted below, as I think is the metaphor of ‘coming to meet’ the recipient (‘beneficia … occurrentia’). As so often, the strained English is quickened by comparison with the Latin text: Gratissima sunt beneficia parata, facilia, occurrentia, ubi nulla mora fuit nisi in accipientis verecundia. Optimum est antecedere desiderium cuiusque, proximum sequi. Illud melius, occupare ante quam rogemur, quia, cum homini probo ad rogandum os concurrat et suff undatur rubor, qui hoc tormentum remittit, multiplicat munus suum. (Ben. II..) The benefits which are most gratefully received are those which are ready and easy to obtain, that come to meet us, and where there is no delay except out of regard for the recipient’s embarrassment. It is best to anticipate each person’s desire; next best is to follow it. It is better to forestall the request before it is made, since an upright man finds his lips stuck together when he comes to ask, and he blushes deeply. The man who spares him this torment multiplies his gift.
The grateful voice of the poem takes the part of the ‘upright man’ (‘homini probo’) by his appropriation of the Senecan blush (‘my blush’, ), and goes on to fulfil in greater detail the terms of proper Senecan gratitude: ‘You cannot doubt, but I, who freely know / This Good from you, as freely will it owe’ (–). ‘Freely’ renders Seneca’s ‘libenter’ (although translated below as ‘gladly’, the word also suggests freedom): docendi sunt libenter dare, libenter accipere, libenter reddere et magnum ipsis certamen proponere, eos, quibus obligati sunt, re animoque non tantum aequare sed vincere … (Ben. I..) they are to be taught to give gladly, to accept gladly, gladly to return the favour and to have as their great aim not only to equal but actually to outdo in deed and spirit alike those to whom they are obliged …
Jonson’s grateful recipient has learnt his Senecan lesson; but the barely muted tension of the oxymoronic ‘freely owe’ is redolent of Horace’s ‘dialectic of freedom’, and it is this Horatian paradox that animates the end of the poem. The final thirty-line movement of the poem is structured around a series of images of ethical growth: the virtuous man is like a triumphal arch, completed by the final addition of the keystone (–) and admired by
The earlier part of this passage is marked in Jonson’s copy (Evans, Habits of Mind , p. ). The Portland MS cited above has ‘truly’ for ‘freely’ here. Th is useful phrase is taken from Johnson’s suggestive book on Epistles I (W. R. Johnson, Horace and the Dialectic of Freedom: Readings in Epistles I (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, )).
Poet as benefactor in the epistle to Sackville
others (–). But the closing lines of this long poem come as something of a surprise: the poet returns to the theme of De Beneficiis, exploring the tension between the language of freedom and equality and that of payment and debt – a tension which, as we have seen, is present, although muted, in Seneca’s prose, and explored in Horace’s Epistles. At this point the significance of the poem’s ‘voice’ – that it speaks in the persona of the recipient, not dispenser, of gratia – becomes fully apparent. The poem ends not just with a reminder that with honour and power comes a responsibility to the less fortunate, but with an unequivocal command – to the patron and benefactor – that he must continue to deserve the love of Jonson himself, the apparently indebted speaker: You know (without my flatt’ring you) too much For me to be your Indice. Keep you such, That I may love your Person (as I doe) Without your gift, though I can rate that too, By thanking thus the curtesie to life, Which you will bury; but therein, the strife May grow so great to be example, when (As their true rule or lesson) either men, Donnor’s or Donnee’s, to their practise shall Find you to reckon nothing, me owe all.
(–, the end of the poem)
The daring contradiction of these lines (Sackville has no need of Jonson as a guide; but here’s some advice anyway) is amusing, and the implied threat is clear: if he loses Jonson’s love, he might get no more poems. The gesture of defiant independence which lies unstated behind that forceful ‘[w]ithout your gift’ is reminiscent of Epistles I, which flirts throughout, by fable and allusion, with the possibility of rejecting Maecenas’ patronage in preference for artistic independence: ‘If this story is levelled at me, I’ll give everything back’ (Epistles I..). Jonson goes even further in the involved ambiguities of lines –. The syntax at this point is tortuous, but the penultimate line is itself an Horatian allusion to the end of the Ars Poetica: ‘tu [Piso] seu donaris seu quid donare voles cui, / nolito ad versus tibi factos ducere plenum /
The ‘story’ in question is of the bloated fox in the grain bin, who must starve before he can leave; but the poem is addressed to Maecenas. The insistence upon social autonomy is connected to the assertion of philosophical independence with which the Epistles begin: ‘nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri’, Epistles I... The importance of this gesture, its resonance throughout the Epistles, and the pervasive language of freedom and entrapment is well described by Oliensis, Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority, pp. –. She herself interestingly employs the metaphor of financial debt which Seneca denies but cannot escape (cf. p. , on Epistles I.).
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
laetitiae’ (‘Whether you’ve given someone a gift, or want to do so, / don’t invite him to hear your verses when he’s full / of gladness’, –). The lines are mistranslated by Jonson in his translation of the Ars Poetica as ‘whether yo’ are given to, or giver are’, the same meaning as they bear here. In the Ars Poetica they are also a warning, in that case of the dangers of indebtedness clouding poetic judgement; and the reference draws our attention to the presentation to a patron of, specifically, a poem (potentially, in fact, this poem: the potent unstated beneficium of Jonson’s version of Seneca): But you, my Piso, carefully beware, (Whether yo’are given to, or giver are) You doe not bring, to judge your Verses, one, With joy of what is given him, over-gone. (–, corresponding to – of the Latin text)
Jonson’s translation makes the implied caution of the Latin verse much more emphatic, labouring the warning in particular (there is no proper name or ‘carefully beware’ in the Latin text) and unpacking the compressed phrase ‘plenum / laetitiae’: in Horace, the exact cause of that ‘gladness’ is left implicit. These features are shared by the Sackville poem, and the sense of indebtedness in particular is picked up by the ambiguous conclusion. The syntax of these final nine lines is very difficult. The phrase ‘to life’ is probably adverbial (I am indebted to Colin Burrow for this suggestion), dependent upon ‘thanking’, and where the ‘curtesie’ refers back to the (mysterious) gift for which the speaker is thanking Sackville himself. The overlap of the two terms perhaps alludes to Jonson’s habitual fascination with the Latin term ‘gratia’ and its variety of meanings (including both ‘thanks’ and ‘courtesy’). The resultant ‘strife’ () is between Jonson’s insistent gratitude and Sackville’s determination not to allow him to feel indebted. The construction after ‘shall / Find … ’ (of which ‘either men’ is presumably the subject) suggests that ‘me’ like ‘you’ is a direct object of ‘find’, in which case we must supply a further ‘to’ (‘to reckon nothing … to owe all’) to make the constructions equal (or, possibly, the ‘me’ is in imitation of a Latin accusative and infinitive construction). In that case, the sense is: ‘They shall find [that] you reckon nothing [to their practice], [and]
For further discussion of Jonson’s Ars Poetica , see Chapter , pp. –. The Ars Poetica includes the phrase ‘nedum sermonum stet honos et gratia vivax ’ (, italics mine). De Beneficiis includes an extended digression on the ‘Graces’, and their relationship to the theme of the treatise (Ben. I..–I..). In Jonson’s edition this passage is the subject of the longest of all his marginal marks (cf. Evans, Habits of Mind , p. ).
Poet as benefactor in the epistle to Sackville
that I owe all’. It is this distinction – that Sackville attributes (‘reckons’) nothing to their giving and receiving (that odd ‘practise’) while Jonson owes everything to it – which becomes the donors’ and donees’ ‘true rule or lesson’. If this is indeed the sense of these lines, then their underlying message is rather abrupt. For all the talk of mutual ‘freedom’ in the giving and receiving (–), and the hint that Jonson’s ‘grace’ (his thanks, ) lies in the poem’s naming of his donor (–), the close of the poem makes the difference in their situations quite stark. The whole network of gift and favour is ultimately insignificant to Sackville, central to Jonson – and the starkness of that message is highlighted by the blunt language of financial dependence: ‘donor’, ‘donee’, ‘reckon’. We are returned at once to the guiding metaphor both employed and rejected by Seneca, and which animates, too, the tense negotiations of patron and poet in Horace’s Epistles. But there is, typically, a further ambiguity in those final words: the distance of the verb and subject of the subordinate clause (‘me owe all’) from their object (‘to their practise’), and the emphatic verbal phrase (‘owe all’) following the accusative ‘me’ also suggests, to the ear, precisely the opposite: that it is the speaker (‘me’) to whom ‘all’ is owed. If we have read the movement of the preceding thirty lines with attention, we recognise that this is Jonson’s point: however generous and noble he might be, without this poem Sackville too will ‘goe out in nothing’ (), and indeed the speaker’s insistence in that passage that Sackville ‘cannot choose which [he] will be’ suddenly reads quite differently. It is not only that the choice (between ‘going out in nothing’ and the immortality of the triumphal arch) is obvious; it is also out of his hands. In this poem Horatian form and tone structure a meditation on indebtedness and freedom the terms of which are drawn from Seneca. Seneca’s ethics of gracious and finely judged reciprocity carve a version of Stoic freedom out of the realities of social relations and commitments. In her discussion of the connections between Roman amicitia and beneficium, Miriam Griffin claims that the giving and receiving of benefits are not purely secondary to existing friendship relations, but rather that ‘acts of beneficence are presented as creating a relationship of amicitia’. In Jonson’s poem the ‘Senecan’ speaking voice is transferred, in a manner
The OED lists this meaning of ‘attribute’ as the only sense of the verb which can be followed by ‘to’ in this way and at this period. Jonson’s use presumably also glances towards the common, and more explicitly financial meaning (as in a ‘reckoning’), as discussed. Miriam Griffin, ‘De Beneficiis and Roman Society’, Journal of Roman Studies, (), – ().
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
unparalleled in Seneca’s own works, to a socially inferior, and ostensibly ‘indebted’ party; and the poem – the translation, the paraphrase, the demonstration of scholarship as well as of friendship – is the gratia that he gives in exchange. This piece is at once a translation of a treatise on giving and receiving benefits and a demonstration of that art; and just as the Epigrams transformed Martial, so this is an ‘Horatian’ translation of Seneca, sealed as such by that slippery final sentence. UW is not the only one of Jonson’s epistles to demonstrate this combination. The slippage between ‘freely’ and ‘gladly’ (between, as it were, ‘libenter’ and ‘libertas’) is as central to Jonson’s conception of good art as it is to virtuous friendship. His poetry as a whole forms an extended demonstration of, and meditation upon, the possible ways in which one can act and respond ‘freely’ to social constraint – and, repeatedly, relates that stoically inflected search for meaningful freedom to the poet’s language and function: his particular libertas. :
UW
UW , ‘An Epistle to Master J S’, is the most straightforwardly panegyric of Jonson’s epistles, and it is one of Jonson’s boldest statements of the identity of ethical (especially social) and aesthetic virtue. In common with Jonson’s other verse epistles (and in imitation of Horace’s), the poem begins by announcing its theme: in this case, the discernment of poetic (and, by association, ethical) good style. Selden’s various forms of exemplary virtue (in teaching, generosity, seeking the truth) are described in artistic, and indeed markedly literary terms (citing workmanship, style and judgement). Appropriately enough, the poem begins with a reference to Horace’s Ars Poetica: I know to whom I write. Here, I am sure, Though I am short, I cannot be obscure: Lesse shall I for the Art or dressing care, Truth, and the Graces best, when naked are.
For other examples of financial imagery applied to friendship see: UW (also an epistle, including the very Senecan paradox that the poet will gain by giving); UW (another epistle); the closing lines of UW are a kind of compressed version of UW ; UW envisages the benefits of friendship as income (–); Jonson’s letter to Drayton describes its own tribute as the payment of a ‘reck’ning’ (UV .). In a more light-hearted tone, Epigram (‘To Fine Grand’), in the form of a versified invoice, imagines the addressee dreading the poem ‘as’t were … a borrowers letter’ (). The poem was printed in the prefatory material to Selden’s Titles of honor (London: William Stansby for John Helme, ), o, STC (nd edn)/.
Character and style: ethical poetics and UW Your Booke, my Selden, I have read, and much Was trusted, that you thought my judgement such To aske it: though in most of workes it be A pennance, where a man may not be free, Rather than Office, when it doth or may Chance that the Friends affection proves Allay Unto the Censure. Yours all need doth flie Of this so vitious Humanitie.
(UW .–)
The first couplet recasts (and rejects) Horace, Ars Poetica –: ‘brevis esse laboro, / obscurus fio’ (‘when I strive to be brief, I become obscure’). In his translation of the Ars Poetica, Jonson uses almost the same terms: ‘My selfe for shortnesse labour; and I grow / Obscure’ (–). But if the relationship to Selden is straightforward in its praise, the relationship between the poem and the Horatian epistle it begins by invoking is more contentious. Horace, at the beginning of his longest poem (the Ars Poetica is also an epistle), says: ‘when I strive to be brief, I become obscure’. Jonson, under the influence of the virtue (and impeccable style) of his addressee, is stating the opposite: that he can be both clear and concise. Indeed, the engagement with, and inversion of, the Horatian text goes further than this; compare: ‘maxima pars vatum … / decipimur specie recti’ (‘in general, we poets … are taken in by an outward appearance of what’s right’, –) with Jonson’s ‘Lesse shall I for the Art or dressing care, / Truth, and the Graces best, when naked are’ (–). Once more, the Jonsonian text corrects the Horatian one: this (Selden-esque) Jonson will not fall into the trap to which Horatian poets – perhaps himself included – are usually susceptible. Whereas Selden’s style has an achieved perfection, Jonson’s poem relates the process of his own authorial improvement: Though I confesse (as every Muse hath err’d, And mine not least) I have too oft preferr’d Men past their termes, and prais’d some names too much, But ’twas with purpose to have made them such. Since, being deceiv’d, I turne a sharper eye Upon my selfe, and aske to whom? and why? And what I write? and vexe it many dayes Before men get a verse: much lesse a Praise; So that my Reader is assur’d, I now Meane what I speake: and still will keepe that Vow.
Horace himself twice specifies the Graces as naked (Odes III.. and IV..); he also refers to ‘Veritas’ (Truth) as ‘nuda’ at Odes I...
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles
The description of careful authorial revision in lines – is also derived from Horace. At lines – of Satires I., a poem concerned explicitly with defending his poetic practice, Horace compares Lucilius’ rambling mode to the concise and revised style appropriate to his own day, specifically advocating careful correction (‘saepe stilum vertas’, ‘turn your pen round often [i.e. to erase]’, ), and connecting that precision with a withdrawal from mass adulation: the good poet should be content with a small but select group of readers. Once again, the distinction between ethical and aesthetic advice is blurred: the Horatian material guarantees not (as we might expect) the excellence of Jonson’s style, or its enduring literary worth, but rather his sincerity: ‘So that my Reader is assur’d, I now / Meane what I speake: and still will keepe that Vow’ (–). Writing well (that is, like Horace) and meaning what he writes amount to the same thing. UW conflates, from the beginning, literary and ethical commendation: ‘[Your affection] all need doth flie / Of this so vitious Humanitie’ (–). Selden’s (literary) virtue is so great that he will not lead any friend into the (literary and ethical) ‘vice’ of dissembling true judgement. The image is carefully reused several lines later: ‘But I on [your books] farre otherwise shall doe, / Not flie the Crime, but the Suspition too’ (–). Jonson’s poem begins by invoking the Ars Poetica, and the Latin verse paragraph to which we are pointed concludes: ‘in vitium ducit culpae fuga, si caret arte’ (‘avoiding a fault will lead to error, if one lacks art’, Ars P. ). In literary terms, Horace states that avoiding one kind of error (too dull a theme) soon leads to a fatal flaw (incongruous decoration) unless one is very skilful. Jonson has tacitly equated this with a different, albeit still Horatian, syllogism: as Horace points out in Epistles I., in a passage which we have already looked at in connection with UV , attempting to avoid unfriendly offence may lead to dishonesty of judgement: If I know you well, Lollius, frankest of men [‘liberrime’], you dread seeming like a sponger, having declared yourself a friend. Just as a respectable married woman and a prostitute are unlike one another and don’t go together, so is a friend far removed from an untrustworthy parasite. … [This kind of man] is excessively obsequious and an entertainer on the lowest couch; he so dreads the rich man’s nod, so carefully repeats his speeches and picks up his words even while they’re falling from his lips that you would think he was a boy repeating his lessons to a ferocious teacher
Character and style: ethical poetics and UW
or a mime-actor playing the second part. (Epistles I..– and –)
Selden’s influence apparently allows Jonson to avoid both sets of vices, the stylistic and the social alike. It allows him, in short, to be ‘free’ () without fear of offence: though in most of workes it be A pennance, where a man may not be free, Rather than Office, when it doth or may Chance that the Friends affection proves Allay Unto the Censure. Yours all need doth flie Of this so vitious Humanitie.
(–)
Appropriately enough, the poet goes on to admit previous errors of judgement – now overcome – in terms which engage directly with Horace’s declaration that ‘decipimur specie recti’, ‘we [poets] are taken in by the appearance of what’s right’. Both the admission of error (‘I have too oft preferr’d / Men past their termes’, –) and the resultant attentive care (‘I turne a sharper eye / Upon my selfe, and aske to whom? and why? / And what I write?’ –) recast in terms of literary composition advice on managing social relations also borrowed from Horace’s eighteenth epistle (Epistles I..– and –): protinus ut moneam, si quid monitoris eges tu, quid, de quoque viro, et cui dicas saepe videto. (Epistles I..–)
To continue my advice – if indeed you have any need of an advisor – pay frequent attention to what you say, and of whom and to whom you say it. qualem commendes, etiam atque etiam aspice, ne mox incutiant aliena tibi peccata pudorem. fallimur et quondam non dignum tradimus: ergo quem sua culpa premet, deceptus omitte tueri, ut penitus notum, si temptent crimina, serves tuterisque tuo fidentem praesidio
(Epistles I..–)
The lowest couch is the senior one, where the host sat – accompanied by his parasitical hanger-on Nasidienus in Satires II.., whose role was partly to amuse the other guests. The second actor in a mime often merely echoed or imitated the actions of the first player. Line is the point at which the translation found in Bodleian MS Rawlinson Poet. and BL MS Harley begins (‘And if I forth advise, (if any need / of my advise thou hast)’).
Horatian libertas in Jonson’s epigrams and epistles Check again and again what type of person you’re backing, to make sure other men’s failings don’t shortly cause you embarrassment. Sometimes we make a mistake and recommend someone unsuitable: so if you’ve been deceived, don’t protect a man who has only himself to blame for his suff ering; save yourself so that if charges are brought against a man you know really well, you may help and defend him when he’s relying upon your protection.
Horace makes it clear that one aspect of true friendship – and a reason to be sure of a friend’s real worth – is to defend him against unfair attack. This idea of defence also recurs in Jonson’s poem, as he commends Selden for dedicating the Titles of honor to his friend Edward Hayward: He [Hayward] will not only love, Embrace, and cherish; but he can approve And estimate thy Paines; as having wrought In the same Mines of knowledge; and thence brought Humanitie enough to be a friend, And strength to be a Champion, and defend Thy gift ’gainst envie.
(UW .–)
Once again – as in UW and Epigrams (‘To Sir Thomas Roe’) – Jonson has rewritten Horatian advice as achieved fact. Selden is a good scholar because he is a good man; and his written style is excellent, because, again, his mastery of social virtue (especially friendship) is so complete. The implication is that this fulfilment of Horatian ideals is actually made possible by the virtue of the addressee. Even in this most directly panegyric of epistles, the structuring classical material is both flattering (to the addressee) and aggrandizing (to the speaking poetic voice): Selden’s associated ethical and literary excellence is recognised by, and sealed with, the poet’s acknowledgement of it, and that acknowledgement at once invokes, and outdoes, the Horatian paradigm of good taste. Typically, Jonson ends the poem not with Selden’s virtue, or that of his friends, but with his own poetic ‘wealth’ and virtue in having such a subject to extol: O how I doe count Among my commmings in, and see it mount, The Gaine of your two friendships! Hayward and Selden! two Names that so much understand!
Compare Epigrams (‘To my Muse’), ‘Away, and leave me, thou thing most abhord, / That hast betray’d me to a worthlesse lord; / Made me commit most fierce idolatrie / To a great image through thy luxurie’ (–).
Conclusion
On whom I could take up, and ne’re abuse The Credit, what would furnish a tenth Muse! But here’s no time, nor place, my wealth to tell, You both are modest. So am I. Farewell.
(UW .–)
For the poet to be able to ‘guarantee’ the validity of his language, in a society in which, as he himself repeatedly proclaims, language itself is subject to corruption, he must be able to demonstrate, at the very least, the independence of his poetic voice. In particular, he must distance himself from the charge of flattery or subservience, a task made harder by the realities of his financial dependence upon benefaction. The framework of civilised friendship, or ‘amicitia’, for which frank free speech and judgement, in ethical and aesthetic matters alike, is essential, is one way that Jonson tackles this problem. Jonson’s epigrams and verse epistles both enact and create this world in which taste, judgement and honesty are bound up together – and in which poetry and the poet act as guarantors of a form of speech that negotiates these conflicting demands without being itself corrupted. The ideal ‘liber amicus’ is both ‘free’ himself (that is, free from slavish dependence of any kind) but also ‘free-speaking’; free to speak the truth with moderation but accuracy: ‘Sonne, and my Friend, … I know / What, by that name, wee each to other owe, / Freedome, and Truth’ (UW .–). Accordingly, the greatest threat to this equilibrium, and to the poet’s role in society as Jonson seeks to define it, is the perversion, misrepresentation or neglect of the proper balance between ‘licence’ and ‘liberty’. As the dismissive noble asks in UW (‘A speach according to Horace’): Who’ll informe Us, in our bearing, that are thus, and thus, Borne, bred, allied? what’s he dare tutor us? Are we by Booke-wormes to be awde? must we Live by their Scale, that dare doe nothing free? Why are we rich, or great, except to show All licence in our lives? (UW .–)
This disruptive claim to ‘licence’ is the stuff of satire, and the subject of my next chapter.
Competing voices in Jonson’s verse satire: Horace and Juvenal
Chapters and have been concerned primarily with poetic praise, albeit often praise of a rather didactic or self-aggrandising kind. But both the Epigrams, with their alternating patterns of commendation and reproof, and the verse epistles, most of which are marked by extended satiric passages, demonstrate Jonson’s abiding interest in the poet’s power to blame as well as to praise. Horace, too, is a poet both of praise (in the Odes and Epistles) and of blame (in the Satires and Epodes); and Horace’s satire acts for Jonson as a foil and an answer to the artistic and ethical problems raised by Juvenalian anger. In this chapter I want to trace the development of this satiric texture in the course of Jonson’s work, beginning with its roots in the carefully positioned classicism of the ‘comical satires’. : As with verse epistles, there are generic problems raised by any discussion of ‘satire’. In the critical literature, a distinction is often made between the modern sense of satire as a ‘mode’ of writing, applicable across genres, and a more clearly defined generic ‘identity’ for satire in the Elizabethan period. This generic ‘identity’ should not, however, be overstated. The generic affiliations of many individual poems are still the subject of debate, despite several attempts to itemise what constitutes an Elizabethan satire.
The clearest overview is probably Angela J. Wheeler, English Verse Satire from Donne to Dryden: Imitation of Classical Models (Heidelberg: Carl Winter-Universitätsverlag, ), pp. –; see also A. L. Prescott, ‘The Evolution of Tudor Verse Satire’, in Arthur F. Kinney (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, – (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. Kernan is also still useful: Alvin Kernan, The Cankered Muse: Satire of the English Renaissance, Yale Studies in English (New Haven: Yale University Press, ).
Jonsonian satire: problems and definitions
Nevertheless, the various manifestations of the satiric trend in the s are unified, as has been widely noted, by the adoption of classical models (especially Juvenal), a pose of scathing social critique, and a disdain in particular for the rise of insincere and unskilful poets. But even the most archetypally ‘satiric’ collections typically also included epistolary poetry, and sometimes epigrams. Grandsen notes that ‘some of the liveliest Elizabethan satire is to be found in prose … and in the drama’; neither of these are fully developed aspects of the classical genre, though Horace’s Satires incorporate features of both. Nor is the use of classical models limited to Juvenal, but includes Horace, Persius and Martial as well as satiric modulations of Tacitus and other prose writers. Bruce Boehrer’s ingenious suggestion that Jonson’s unusual poem ‘The Famous Voyage’ (Epigrams ) may itself be meant in homage to Horace’s equally problematic Satires I. demonstrates the range of models – and therefore the range of responses – which could be encompassed by classical ‘satire’. The satire of Epigrams emerges from the broader generic tradition of Horace’s Satires – poems marked by their variety of form, tone and content. The extent to which Jonson himself is a ‘satiric’ poet is a subject of considerable debate. The broadly satiric bent of his work is widely acknowledged, especially a preoccupation with the description and identification of social vice and folly, and an interest in the role of the poet to point out and potentially to remedy these failings. Some critics make much of the fact that Jonson did not entitle any of his poems ‘satires’ (with the exception of UW , ‘A Satyricall Shrub’), although the title of UW (‘A speach according to Horace ’) refers to the Latin word ‘sermones’ (literally, ‘speeches’), a term Horace used of both his Satires and Epistles.
For the prominence of social critique see: K. W. Grandsen (ed.), Tudor Verse Satire (London: Athlone Press, ), pp. –; Wheeler, English Verse Satire, pp. –. For the importance of Juvenal, see for example: Kathryn A. McEuen, ‘Jonson and Juvenal’, Review of English Studies, (), – (); Kernan, The Cankered Muse, pp. –. Thomas Lodge, A fig for Momus: containing pleasant varietie, including in Satyres, Eclogues, and Epistles (London: Clement Knight, , °, STC (nd edn)/), for instance, includes both ‘satires’ and ‘epistles’; Everard Guilpin’s collection Skialethia or, A shadowe of truth, in certaine epigrams and satyres (London: Nicholas Ling, , °, STC (nd edn)/) both satires and epigrams. Grandsen, Tudor Verse Satire, p. . Braund emphasises the importance of Persius to the development of sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury satire (Susanna Morton Braund (ed.), Juvenal: Satires Book I (Cambridge University Press, ), p. ). Boehrer, ‘Horatian Satire in Jonson’s “On the Famous Voyage”’. Grandsen’s excellent introduction also makes this connection (Grandsen, Tudor Verse Satire, p. ). UW is in fact much closer to an Horatian satire than an epistle; it is also a poem of particular rhetorical force and coherence, and (unlike most of Jonson’s long poems) it lacks an addressee.
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
The majority of the ‘satiric’ passages in Jonson’s longer verse occur in poems which are either explicitly or implicitly epistolary. Although many critics have noted that Jonson’s satiric persona is broadly Horatian, they have not connected this feature with the blurred distinction in his work between satire and epistle, despite the fact that this ambiguity is itself Horatian. Similarly, commentators regularly remark upon Jonson’s use of material drawn from Juvenal and Horace, but there has been little attempt to discuss the overall significance or effect of this combination, or of the intertextual conversation between the two. The most thoughtful work on Jonson as a satirist is largely confined to the early ‘comical satires’ and the later stage comedies. Criticism and commentary of Jonson’s own day drew a sharp distinction between Juvenalian and Horatian satire (and usually expressed a preference for one or the other). Scaliger’s well-known description in the Poetices (which Jonson owned) captures the traditional characterisation: ‘Iuvenalis ardet, instat aperte, iugulat. Persius insultat. Horatius irridet’, ‘Juvenal burns, he threatens openly, he goes for the throat. Persius scoffs. Horace laughs.’ This description reverberates in later critical discussion and is reflected in the Elizabethan satirists themselves: Wheeler notes, for instance, that Hall’s six books of satires are half ‘Horatian’ (‘Tooth-lesse’) and half ‘Juvenalian’ (‘byting’). The critical afterlife of this memorable distinction has sometimes been distorting – upon readings of Horace and Juvenal themselves as much as on those of their Renaissance imitators. The relationship between Horace and Juvenal, moreover, is not simply one of difference and distinction. The satires of both Juvenal and Horace ultimately withdraw from the furious and personal denunciation which the genre seems to promise. As Freudenburg and Ruffell, among others, have pointed out, Horace’s first explicitly programmatic satire (Satires I.) at once proclaims his inheritance of ‘libertas’ (‘free-speech’) from the old comedy, and also narrows the meaning of that term away
Jonson’s term ‘speach’ is no doubt intended to highlight this feature of the piece. For Horace’s own use of the term ‘sermo’ see, among others, Satires I.., I.. and , II.., II..; Epistles II.., II... The word is borrowed from Lucilius. In contrast, the word ‘satira’ appears only twice (Satires II.. and II..). Scaliger, Poetices, p. . Wheeler, English Verse Satire, p. . Juvenal’s characterisation as the ‘indignant’ satirist is, for instance, too often repeated without question or nuance. While his earlier satires (Books –, satires –) are marked by a ‘saeva indignatio’ of this kind, the later poems exhibit a rather wider range of voices, and even an outright rejection of his trademark ‘indignatio’.
Jonsonian satire: problems and definitions
from its powerful political and philosophical implications, confining it to the realm of polite society. The promised personal invective aimed at prominent and named individuals never materialises. Despite his similar endorsement of the ‘Lucilian model’ Juvenal concludes his very first poem by abandoning the living entirely in preference for the dead (‘I’ll see what I can make of those / whose ashes are buried by the Via Flaminia and the Via Latina’, Satires .–). (Famous men, including Domitian, were buried in tombs along these roads.) Throughout the collection that follows, identifiable victims belong to the previous generation: Juvenal writes, as Henderson puts it, ‘in the previous generation’s present tense’. For all the ‘indignation’ and urgency of Juvenal’s satiric personae, this is an even more radical retreat from free invective than the Horatian compromise. Moreover, Juvenal’s work (like that of Persius) is itself an engagement with, and response to, Horatian satire; much of the force of Juvenal’s ‘indignatio’ is derived from the implied contrast with Horace’s text and society alike. Colin Burrow summarises this aspect of Juvenal well: Juvenalian satire is not just not Horatian satire. It is satire in which Juvenal has blasted the shaping nodes of Horatian satire out of form, and in which he blames history for having done so … The relationship of the satirist to constituted authority also, and consequentially, becomes far more uneasy than that represented by Horace … Juvenalian satire also defines the primary impulses of Horatian satire by ruthlessly departing from them.
It is my contention in this chapter that in his career-long engagement with Roman satire, Jonson uses and responds to Juvenal in just this way: as a creative counterpoint to the Horatian tenor he seeks to restore. The implied redemptive progression from Juvenalian author (and Juvenalian society) back to Horace animates Jonsonian satire from the late s to
See I. A. Ruffell, ‘Beyond Satire: Horace, Popular Invective and the Segregation of Literature’, Journal of Roman Studies, (), – (especially –); Freudenburg, The Walking Muse, especially pp. –. See also: Niall Rudd, The Satires of Horace, nd edn (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –; Hunter, ‘Horace on Friendship and Free Speech’. John Henderson, Writing Down Rome: Satire, Comedy, and Other Off ences in Latin Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), p. . For Juvenal’s evocation of past literature and society, see: G. B. Townend, ‘The Literary Substrata to Juvenal’s Satires’, Journal of Roman Studies, (), –; Shadi Bartsch, Actors in the Audience: Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), especially Chapter ; J. G. Griffith, ‘The Ending of Juvenal’s First Satire and Lucilius, Book ’, Hermes, (), –. Of the Elizabethan satirists, Prescott similarly notes: ‘Their taste for whips, growls, fi lth, teeth, venom, vomit, quills, caustics, scalpels, and the sour yet heady wine of Diogenes’ barrel, is largely bravado’ (Prescott, ‘The Evolution of Tudor Verse Satire’, p. ). Burrow, ‘Roman Satire in the Sixteenth Century’, pp. – (p. ).
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
the end of his life. This productive ‘dialogue’ has implications not only for the authorial persona these works imply, but also for the relationship to patrons and other figures of authority they construct – whether in criticism, praise, or a combination of the two. For that reason, Jonson’s negotiations of praise and of satire are closely associated; sometimes – as in ‘To Penshurst’ – in surprising ways. ‘ ’: Early in his career, Jonson tackled satire in a succession of ‘comical satires’ composed between and : Every Man Out of His Humour (), Cynthia’s Revels () and Poetaster (). Generically original, these plays are also concerned to define their relationship to both classical and Elizabethan antecedents. They explore the possibilities and distinctions of the Juvenalian and Horatian satirist in the figures of Asper, Macilente, Cordatus, Crites, Tucca and Horace. Kernan describes Every Man Out of His Humour as ‘practically a dramatic diagram of formal satire as the Elizabethans understood it’. Although only Every Man Out of His Humour, the first of these plays, was termed a ‘comicall satyre’ on initial publication – the latter two received this title only in the folio – there are clear points of unity between the three: each includes the self-conscious representation on stage of a ‘critic’ or ‘poet’ figure who lays claim to the power of the satirist, even if he prefers not to use it. The importance of the connection between satire and praise is also evident in the ‘comical satires’: the suppressed ending of Every Man Out of His Humour brought Queen Elizabeth herself on stage; Cynthia’s Revels ends with Cynthia, an idealised version of the Queen; and Poetaster ’s final act is presided over by Augustus. The Induction of Every Man Out of His Humour is one of the clearest examples in Elizabethan literature of the explicit programmatic adoption of a genre: as pointed as, and much more extended than, Guilpin’s bold appropriation of the opening of Juvenal Satire in his own first poem. Even the composite Horatian motto to the play advertises Jonson’s generic innovation: it begins with the phrase ‘non aliena meo pressi pede’ (‘I have
There is evidence of a similar dynamic in other poets of the time. Richard Middleton’s long satire, Time’s Metamorphosis, ends with a rejection of Juvenalian satire in favour of an Horatian mode (Richard Middleton, Epigrams and satyres (London: Nicholas Okes for Joseph Harison, ), o, STC (nd edn)/). Kernan, The Cankered Muse, p. . Guilpin, Skialethia , Cr-C v.
The ‘comical satires’: testing satiric models
not placed my foot in others’ footsteps’). One of Horace’s several versions of the Callimachean motif of poetic originality, this line is drawn from a passage which establishes the author as a literary ‘princeps’ or leader, and which refers directly to Horace’s own most ‘aggressive’ verse form, the Epodes: libera per vacuum posui vestigia princeps, non aliena meo pressi pede. qui sibi fidet dux reget examen. Parios ego primus iambos ostendi Latio, numeros animosque secutus Archilochi, non res et agentia verba Lycamben. (Epistles I..–)
I was a leader, the first to plant free footsteps on virgin soil, I placed my feet where none had gone before. He who trusts in himself will rule the swarm. I was the first to show Parian iambics [i.e. the Epodes] to Latium, following the rhythms and tone of Archilochus, but not the themes or the words that bothered Lycambes [one of Archilochus’ victims].
This quotation has Jonson, at the start of his stage career, assume the role of the mature Horace, looking back on the earlier achievements from a position of assured laureateship. Moreover, as Angus Fletcher points out, the ambition and originality of the ‘comical satires’ lies also in their engagement with – and attempts to combine – Horatian and Juvenalian voices: ‘By attempting to “mixe” Juvenal’s justification for Satire with Horace’s poetic edict, Asper is struggling with an issue that the majority of Elizabethan writers simply ignored.’ Fletcher’s term ‘mixing’ refers to Asper’s combination of allusions to Juvenal followed, after some persuasion, by Horace in the Induction to Every Man Out of His Humour. The first three hundred lines of the play are a veritable miscellany of programmatic statements, both of the satirist’s motive and intent, and also of the obstacles he is likely to face, drawn from Juvenal and Persius as well as Horace. Asper begins as Juvenal does: Who is so patient of this impious world, That he can checke his spirit, or reine his tongue? … Who can behold such prodigies as these, And have his lips seal’d up? not I … (Asper, Induction, –; –)
Angus Fletcher, ‘Jonson’s Satiric-Comedy and the Unsnarling of the Satyr from the Satirist’, Ben Jonson Journal , (), – (–).
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires difficile est saturam non scribere. nam quis iniquae tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus, ut teneat se (Juvenal, Satires .–)
It’s hard not to write satire. For who is so tolerant [‘patiens’] of this wicked city, so iron-like, that he can restrain himself?
There are further allusions to Juvenal, noted by H&S at lines (Juvenal .–) and – (Juvenal .–) and to Persius’ prologue at line (Persius, Prologue, ). Horace, Satires II.. is also quoted verbatim (in Latin) at line . Cordatus and Mitis in turn offer two traditional objections to satire: the ultimate futility of the satiric project (Cordatus, lines –): ‘Unlesse your breath had power / To melt the world, and mould it new againe, / It is in vaine, to spend it in these moods’, and the danger of recriminations (Mitis, –): ‘A, (I urge it as your friend) take heed, / The dayes are dangerous, full of exception, / And men are growne impatient of reproofe.’ We are reminded of the slave Davus’ deflating interjections (Horace, Satires II.), and Trebatius’ warnings of political and legal danger (Horace, Satires II., dramatised by Jonson in Poetaster, III. ): ‘Horace; I fear thou draw’st no lasting breath, / And that some great man’s friend will be thy death’ (Poetaster, III..–). It is characteristic of the ironic tone of the Induction that Asper takes aim at unworthy imitators (a commonplace of Roman satire) with lines themselves drawn from Horace and Persius: O, how I hate the monstrousness of time, Where every servile imitating spirit, (Plagu’d with an itching leprosie of wit) In a meere halting fury, strives to fling His ulc’rous body in the Thespian spring, And streight leap’s forth a Poet! but as lame As V, or the founder of Cripple-gate. (Induction, –)
The combination of ‘servile’ and ‘imitating’ alludes to Horace’s exclamation ‘o imitatores, servum pecus’, ‘o you imitators, you slavish herd’ (Epistles I..). Lines – engage with the opening lines of Persius’ Prologue to his Satires in which the poet mocks conventional poetic pretensions – drinking from Hippocrene on Helicon, or dreaming of an encounter with the Muses, as described by Hesiod, Callimachus, Ennius and Propertius:
The ‘comical satires’: testing satiric models
I have not rinsed my lips in the nag’s fountain nor do I remember dreaming upon double-peaked Parnassus, in order to emerge in this way, all of a sudden, a poet! (Persius, Prologue, –)
The ‘itching leprosie of wit’ is also perhaps indebted to Horace; the mad poet of the closing lines of the Ars Poetica is suffering from ‘mala … scabies aut morbus regius’ (), translated by Jonson in his version of the poem as ‘the yellow Jaundies’ or ‘the leprosie’ (–). Asper’s initial ‘fearless’ persona, however, owes more to Juvenal’s characterisation of Lucilius (Juvenal, Satires I.–) than to Juvenal himself: I feare no mood stampt in a private brow, When I am pleas’d t’unmaske a publicke vice. I feare no strumpets drugs, nor ruffians stab, Should I detect their hatefull luxuries: No brokers, usurers, or lawyers gripe, Were I dispos’d to say, they’re all corrupt. I feare no courtiers frowne, should I applaud The easie flexure of his supple hammes.
(Every Man Out of His Humour, ‘After the second Sounding’, Grex, –)
Both Horace and Juvenal proclaim, but do not fulfil, their freedom to attack named individuals: the reader well-versed in classical satire is not surprised that, for all his bluster, Asper is quickly persuaded to modify his position. He leaves to don his costume with an Horatian promise of satiric laughter as well as fury: Now gentlemen, I goe To turne an actor, and a Humorist, Where (ere I doe resume my present person) We hope to make the circles of your eyes Flow with distilled laughter: if we faile, We must impute it to this onely chance, “Arte hath an enemy cal’d Ignorance. (Every Man Out of His Humour, Induction, –).
Closing Jonson’s career as ‘comical satirist’, the ‘Apologetical Dialogue’ appended to Poetaster (and probably performed only once) makes an instructive comparison to the Induction. Jonson ends his experiment with ‘comical satire’ by renouncing it, apparently for tragedy: But I leave the monsters To their own fate. And since the Comic Muse
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires Hath proved so ominous to me, I will try If Tragedy have a more kind aspect. (Poetaster, ‘Apologetical Dialogue’, –)
Both Kaplan and Fletcher read the ‘Apologetical Dialogue’ as a retreat from satire, an admission of failure of a kind. Kaplan thinks that the failure of the project lies largely with the dialogue itself and the contradictions between its definitions and defence of satire and that of the rest of the play. She points out that the Author claims to be beyond anger (–), but that at certain points in the dialogue he is ‘clearly enough (at least potentially) angry’. Or I could do worse [than physical attack with ink or urine], Armed with Archilochus’ fury write iambics Should make the desperate lashers hang themselves (‘Apologetical Dialogue’, –)
These lines allude to the tradition of Archilochean (and Hipponactean) iambics that lies behind Horace’s Epodes. More specifically, they refer to Horace’s self-conscious retrospective of his life’s work at Epistles I.: I was the first to show the iambics of Paros to Latium, keeping the rhythms and spirit of Archilochus, but not his themes or the words which hunted Lycambes … [Alcaeus, unlike Archilochus] doesn’t look for a father-in-law to smear with invective, or make a noose for his bride out of his notorious poetry. (Epistles I..–; –).
Within its allusive context, the Author’s speech in the ‘Apologetical Dialogue’ is less a threat than a declaration of poetic originality: like Horace, the Author could replicate earlier invective but chooses not to. Moreover, the reference to Horace is drawn from that same passage of Epistles I. to which the Induction of Every Man Out of His Humour
M. Lindsay Kaplan, The Culture of Slander in Early Modern England , Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. Fletcher, ‘Jonson’s Satiric-Comedy’, p. . Kaplan, The Culture of Slander, p. . Kaplan’s argument is marred by her curious misreading of ‘coursest’ () as a positive attribute of the ‘thread’ spun by the Fates, apparently making the Author contradict himself. ‘Coursest’ here is a negative term. The spinning of thread as a metaphor for writing poetry appears in Horace (Satires II..), and Horace uses the phrase ‘poems drawn out to a fine thread’ (i.e. highly refined, Callimachean) in his pastiche of fruitless poetic labours at Epistles II... The context is appropriate to this scene and is perhaps the source for Jonson’s phrase. See also Epodes .– and Ars Poetica : ‘Archilochum propio rabies armavit iambo’, ‘fury armed Archilochus with his own iambus’.
The ‘comical satires’: testing satiric models
alludes. The author’s recusatio here is meant to alert us at once both to the (renounced) possibility of Juvenalian fury and venom (those ‘monsters’ which the Author chooses to ‘leave’), and also – behind it, framing it, as it were – to the Horatian mode of originality to which that gesture refers. Kaplan has read a statement of literary choice as one of character or mood. The Author is presenting his stoic and self-righteous quietism not as a failure of nerve but as an aesthetic option (like Horace’s move away from invective or the promise of invective in the Epistles). The allusion to Archilochus is a recusatio of a kind: the Author is clear that he could write like Archilochus if he so desired; as such, he is already (in ) claiming to be the artistic equivalent of Horace at the height of his career – a move very similar to the aggrandising appropriation in Jonson’s earliest lyric of Odes IV. and , as discussed in Chapter . Both the unfulfilled threat of violent naming and shaming and the literary posturing of that recusatio are integral elements of the Horatian satiric/epistolary mode. Nor is that the only part of this speech which is drawn from Horace. The Author ends with a comforting vision of his own ‘prints’ (upon his opponents heads) lasting while their inferior work: Shall, like a figure drawn in water, fleet, And the poor wretched papers be employed To clothe tobacco, or some cheaper drug. (‘Apologetical Dialogue’, –)
This image is derived from one of the most memorable evocations of the poet’s status in the whole of Horace’s work, the same passage that stands behind the close of Jonson’s third epigram. At the end of Epistles II. Horace is addressing Augustus on the excellence of his taste in poets, especially Virgil and Varius (–); he moves from this into a recusatio, a refusal to write epic verse on the grounds of his inadequate poetic ability, much as he would (he says) like to do so (–). Horace’s poem then performs its extraordinary shift in which the poet imagines himself as the (dead?) emperor, the recipient of gifts and the patroniser of poets (‘cum scriptore meo’, ‘along with my writer’, ) but also as the book itself (‘capsa porrectus operta’, ‘laid out in a sealed chest’, ). Moreover, that blend of emperor, poet and book is envisaged carried aloft past the
On Jonsonian appropriations of Horatian recusatio, see also Chapter , pp. –. The image of poetic oblivion when parchment is consigned to wrap foodstuff s is a commonplace of ancient literature (compare, for instance, Martial ..–). The Horatian lines are, however, the closest parallel.
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
street-sellers who wrap their goods in ‘useless pages’ – that is, lesser poets, whose work will not endure: nec prave factis decorari versibus opto, ne rubeam pingui donatus munere, et una cum scriptore meo, capsa porrectus operta, deferar in vicum vendentem tus et odores et piper et quidquid chartis amicitur ineptis. (Epistles II..–)
I have no desire to be extravagantly praised in ill-made verses, only to blush when presented with a crude gift, and, together with my writer, laid out in a closed chest, be carried down the street where they sell incense and perfumes and pepper, and anything else which is wrapped in useless papers.
We may be unconvinced by the Author’s implied account, in the ‘Apologetical Dialogue’, of his literary success in a new genre; but the Horatian audacity of that claim is central to its force. The ‘Apologetical Dialogue’ ends, perhaps surprisingly, not with Horace, but with Juvenal: a series of Juvenalian references structure and animate the final forty-five lines (–). The Author complains: O this would make a learn’d and liberal soul To rive his stainèd quill up to the back, And damn his long-watched labours to the fire – Things that were born when none but the still night And his dumb candle saw his pinching throes – (‘Apologetical Dialogue’, –)
This corresponds to lines in Juvenal’s seventh satire on the failures of patronage: But if you had any idea that you might hope for some kind of protection for your work from some other benefactor, and this is why the sheets of yellow parchment continue to be filled, you’ d better call quickly for firewood and off er what you’ve written as a gift to Vulcan, Venus’ husband, the god of fire, or else shut your pamphlets away and let the bookworms drill them through.
For my reading of this passage and my understanding of its importance, I am indebted to Denis Feeney – both to his article, ‘Vna Cum Scriptore Meo’, and to his excellent teaching. The collapse of poet and royal patron is a theme which recurs in Jonson’s work: see Chapter on Jonson’s odes, and compare Horace’s acclamation of Virgil in Poetaster : ‘See here comes Virgil; we will rise and greet him. / Welcome to Caesar, Virgil. Caesar, and Virgil / Shall differ but in sound’ (Poetaster V..–).
The ‘comical satires’: testing satiric models
Break your pen, poor wretch, and destroy the battle-scenes you’ve stayed awake over. (Satires .–)
But Jonson’s ‘Author’ is in contention with Juvenal, not in agreement with him. These lines are followed by the Author’s rejection of what in Juvenal is presented unequivocally (if paradoxically, given that Juvenal apparently continues to write) as despairing advice. This lack of patronage ‘would make’ the learned poet despair and destroy his work (–, cited above) ‘Were not his own free merit a more crown / Unto his travails than their reeling claps’ (–). It is this realisation of the true ‘crown’ of ‘free merit’ – not despair – that prompts the Author into lofty silence and (he implies) a new genre: ‘This ’tis, that strikes me silent, seals my lips, / And apts me rather to sleep out my time’ (–). The penultimate image of the ‘Dialogue’ is also drawn from Juvenal’s seventh satire: Once, I’ll say [assay; attempt] To strike the ear of time, in those fresh strains As shall, beside the cunning of their ground, Give cause to some of wonder, some despite, And unto more, despair to imitate their sound. I that spend half my nights and all my days, Here in a cell, to get a dark, pale face, To come forth worth the ivy or the bays, And in this age can hope no other grace – Leave me. There’s something come into my thought That must and shall be sung, high and aloof, Safe from the wolf’s black jaw and the dull ass’s hoof.
(‘Apologetical Dialogue’, –)
qui facis in parua sublimia carmina cella, ut dignus uenias hederis et imagine macra. spes nulla ulterior (Satires .–)
You who craft lofty poetry in a narrow room, hoping to emerge worthy of an ivy-garland, and with a thin face. You can’t hope for anything better.
But although Jonson’s lines include a recognisably close translation of Juvenal, their use here transforms the force of the Latin. In Juvenal’s poem the satirist is addressing poets writing epic (‘vigilata proelia’, that is, ‘battlescenes you have stayed awake over’, ) in the hope of reward. As part of an extended critique of the contemporary collapse of patronage, he warns
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
them that they cannot expect to grow rich in this way (–). He contrasts this situation explicitly with that of Augustan Rome – the Rome of Horace (), Virgil () and Maecenas (); the Rome, in fact, of Poetaster. The presence of these lines at this point in the ‘Apologetical Dialogue’, when we have, as it were, stepped back with the Author into contemporary Elizabethan England, establishes a similar dynamic between Roman and Elizabethan times as, in Juvenal, pertains between Augustan Rome and the Rome of his own day. But this point, which is itself satiric, is not the limit of their force. The Author/satirist is not speaking, as Juvenal at least pretends he is, to a hapless and hopeless poet of unfashionable verse, but as the poet. The puny statue (‘imagine macra’, in which ‘macra’ (‘skinny’, ) hints at the poet’s own penury and artistic insignificance) has been suppressed; the ivy (‘hederis’, ) of which he hopes to be worthy has been expanded to include the more unequivocally triumphant laurel (‘bays’, ) of the poet laureate. This version frames the poet’s labour in terms of his ‘fresh [that is, original] strains’, which will – rather, in fact, like the renounced power of invective – cause others to ‘wonder’, ‘despair’ and ‘imitate’ (–). Finally, whereas Juvenal’s epigrammatic ‘spes nulla ulterior’ (‘there’s no further hope’, ) highlights both the poet’s ultimately mercenary motives (the ‘hope’ is for real financial support) and their inevitable disappointment, Jonson’s expanded version creates quite a different effect: ‘And in this age can hope no other grace’ (). The cynicism and the expectation of being under-appreciated remains, but that word ‘grace’, as so often in Jonson’s work, alters the force of the lines. Suggesting ‘thanks’ (and so by extension the reciprocity of patronage), it also implies that the very fact of being worthy of ivy and bays – that is, of being a true poet – is a sign of that divine favour and acclaim that Pindar would call ‘grace’. It may be that the poet can hope for no other grace – but he retains the considerable blessing of his poethood itself. This is a note that Juvenal never strikes, and it is alien, too, to Horace’s Satires. It is, however, consonant with the mature Horace of the Odes, and indeed Jonson reused these lines in an ode of his own. As in the Induction to Every Man Out of His Humour, the ‘dialogue’ between Juvenalian and Horatian material at the close of Poetaster models Jonson not only as Horace, but specifically as a version of Horace which incorporates, in satiric form (the mark of his early career), the vatic confidence and achievement of his ultimate laureateship.
Cf. the ‘Ode’, UV .–, discussed in Chapter , pp. –.
Horace and Juvenal in the verse epistles
: In Forest , the ‘Epistle. To Elizabeth Countesse of Rutland’, written for New Year , we find replicated exactly this nexus of associations: Juvenal’s denial of the possibility of effective patronage, answered by a vatic (that is, lyric) Horatian assurance of its possibility, which is structured, once more, around that resonant term ‘grace’. Forest , however, although an epistle (a genre related to satire, as described above), is clearly a poem of praise rather than blame, and I have already discussed it as such in Chapter , pp. –. Throughout his career, Jonson would continue to explore the relationship of satire to praise (especially of the monarch), and the poet’s connecting role between these two poles of artistic expression. In so doing, he continued, too, to probe the generic resources of the Roman satirists, and especially of the lively and contentious conversation between Horatian and Juvenalian satiric models. The Horatian fabric of Forest has already been examined. But the poem begins with an impressive opening sentence, nineteen lines long, of unmistakably satiric tenor: Whil’st that, for which, all vertue now is sold, And almost every vice, almightie gold, That which, to boote with hell, is thought worth heaven, And, for it, life, conscience, yea, soules are given, Toyles, by grave custome, up and downe the court, To every squire, or groome, that will report Well, or ill, onely, all the following yeere, Just to the waight their this dayes-presents beare; While it makes huishers serviceable men, And some one apteth to be trusted, then, Though never after; whiles it gaynes the voyce Of some grand peere, whose ayre doth make rejoyce The foole that gave it; who will want, and weepe, When his proud patrons favours are asleepe; While thus it buyes great grace, and hunts poore fame; Runs betweene man, and man; ’tweene dame, and dame; Solders crackt friendship; makes love last a day; Or perhaps lesse: whil’st gold beares all this sway, I, that have none (to send you) send you verse. (Forest .–)
The striking and faintly blasphemous image of ‘almightie gold’ () is probably indebted to Juvenal’s more extended passage on the deification of wealth from the first satire (Juvenal, Satires .–). The rest of Juvenal’s
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
poem enumerates the many ways in which money reigns supreme – including, for instance, the elevation of wealth over birth (–, compare ‘give pride fame, and peasants birth’, Forest .) and the ceaseless round of pandering and flattery which characterise the corrupt society: exactly the topic of Jonson’s opening lines. In a poem like the epistle to Elizabeth, which requires a concise sketch of the depth of artistic and social corruption, the Juvenalian tone is an effective shorthand for a whole series of stock tropes and complaints. The greater the bankruptcy of meaning to which these opening lines can allude, the more dramatic the poet’s eventual redemption of it, and the more powerful is his grateful trust in Elizabeth’s contrasting judgement and generosity: ‘With you, I know, my offring will find grace’ (). Once again, ‘grace’ stands variously for appreciation, proper payment, and the quasi-divine gift of literary immortality. The first of Jonson’s masques to develop fully the satiric/panegyric alternation of anti-masque and masque uses a related passage to signal the redemption of corruption by (royal) grace: Tis that imposter P, the god of money, who ha’s stolne L’ ensignes; and in his belyed figure raignes the world, making friendships, contracts, marriages and almost religion; begetting, breeding, and holding the neerest respects of mankind, and usurping all those offices in this Age of gold, which L himselfe perform’d in the golden age. ’Tis he, that pretends to tie kingdomes, maintaine commerce, dispose of honours, make all places and dignities arbitrarie from him: even to the verie countrey, where L’ name cannot be ras’d out … ’Tis you, mortalls, that are fooles; and worthie to be such, that worship him: for if you had wisdome, he had no godhead. (Love Restored, –)
Forest in fact goes on to recreate precisely the milieu – that of idealised Augustan patronage, created by allusions to Horace’s most confident odes – which Juvenal so vociferously claims has ceased to exist. Moreover, it attributes that triumphant redirection, a literal reversal of literary history, to Elizabeth herself (as well, of course, as the poet’s own genius). Another piece in praise of a wealthy noblewoman, Forest (‘Epistle. To Katherine, Lady Aubigny’), similarly associates the turn towards her and her virtue with a move into Horatian language, and specifically that of the assured laureateship of the Odes: Grow, grow, faire tree [Katherine’s family], and as thy branches shoote, Heare, what the Muses sing about thy roote, By me, their priest (if they can ought divine) …
The final phrase of this passage also alludes to Juvenal, Satires .–. The masque was written for Twelfth Night, . These lines are spoken by Robin Goodfellow.
Horace and Juvenal in the verse epistles
It shall a ripe and timely issue fall, T’expect the honors of great ’A: And greater rites, yet writ in mysterie, But which the Fates forbid me to reveale. (Forest .–; –)
The movement of the first fifteen lines of the poem, however, is satiric, condemning the folly of the times but asserting the satirist’s personal commitment to praise virtue and attack vice. In doing so, the poet even claims to be putting himself at personal risk: as I am at fewd With sinne and vice, though with a throne endew’d; And, in this name, am given out dangerous By arts, and practise of the vicious, Such as suspect them-selves, and thinke it fit For their owne cap’tall crimes, t’indite my wit (Forest .–)
Such warnings are, as we have already seen, a commonplace of Roman satire. But this is not just a generalised satiric position (though it is that). Jonson’s epistle opens with an echo of Juvenal’s curious poem to Calvinus (also the thirteenth in its collection): ‘’Tis growne almost a danger to speake true / Of any good minde, now: There are so few’ (Forest .–); ‘Good men are rare indeed: count, there are scarcely as many / as there are gates to Thebes, or mouths of the wealthy Nile’ (Juvenal, Satires .–). Those around Jonson and Lady Aubigny, just like the people Juvenal describes, go so far as to ridicule the virtuous: ‘The bad, by number, are so fortified, / As what th’have lost t’expect, they dare deride’ (Forest .–); ‘Don’t you know / the laugh your naivety raises in the crowd?’ (Juvenal, .–). Jonson’s concise satiric sketch is much briefer than Juvenal’s, and the tone is different – Juvenal is resigned to the state of affairs, Jonson’s satirist is not. But the same key complaint can be identified in both. Jonson’s poem claims that: ‘Men are not just, or keepe no holy lawes / Of nature, and societie’ (–) and Juvenal’s lament similarly focuses upon the failure of religious and social codes since the ‘golden age’ (Juvenal, Satires .–). Juvenal’s sinners, like Jonson’s, are oblivious to their own fate until it catches up with them. Above all, this most resigned and most nearly Horatian of Juvenal’s satires conceals a literary as well as an ethical message. The language in which Juvenal describes the predictability of Calvinus’ plight is the (inverted) language of the neoterics. Unlike the self-conscious proclamations of the
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
poets, Calvinus’ complaint is worn out and common to all: ‘casus multis hic cognitus ac iam / tritus et e medio fortunae ductus acervo’ (‘Many others are acquainted with this kind of bad luck, and by now / it’s something of a cliché, a standard kind of ill-fortune’, –). The terms ‘tritus’ (‘well-worn’) and ‘acervus’ (‘the crowd’) are associated in Augustan literature with literary cliché. The poet, in his now anti-satiric role as the mirror to Katherine’s virtue, presents her life in terms which engage, under the guise of moral comment, with exactly this vocabulary of artistic identity: Wherewith, then, Madame, can you better pay This blessing of your starres, then by that way Of vertue, which you tread? what if alone? Without companions? ’Tis safe to have none. In single paths, dangers with ease are watch’d: Contagion in the prease is soonest catch’d. This makes, that wisely you decline your life, Farre from the maze of custome, error, strife, And keepe an even, and unalter’d gaite
(Forest .–)
The virtues of Jonsonian style, as well as its originality, are by implication associated with, and derived from, Katherine’s goodness, her rarity: ‘My mirror [the poetry] is more subtile, cleere, refin’d, / And takes, and gives the beauties of the mind’ (–). Once again, then, a virtuous addressee, to be immortalised by Jonson in his most Horatian vein, is set against an explicitly Juvenalian satiric background. Jonson’s Horatian move into panegyric exposes the defeatism at the heart of Juvenal’s position. It is not just that Jonson, like Juvenal, acknowledges the corruption of the world and the pointlessness of artistic endeavour (albeit an acknowledgement made from inside the poetic form). Jonson’s ‘satirist’ is lifted out of his despondency by the twin – and associated – pressures of Horatianism and the power of his addressees’ virtue. Jonson is interested in addressing one of the central dilemmas of the satiric voice: namely, how satiric poetry might be both true (society is that bad) and efficacious (rather than merely pointless). We are reminded of Cordatus: ‘Unlesse your breath had power / To melt the world, and mould it new againe, / It is in vaine, to spend it in these moods’ (Every Man Out of His Humour, Induction, –). In his reversal of literary history away from Juvenal’s despair and back to Horatian laureateship Jonson is modelling this kind of redemption, and, by implication, just such a powerful ‘breath’ (poetic voice/song/spirit).
See also Horace, Epistles I..–: ‘non aliena meo pressi pede’, discussed above.
Underwood : satire or epistle?
This manner of using Juvenal amounts to a reading of him. In Jonson’s work, satiric meaning emerges from the possibility of redemption from the reality that satire describes: the relentless negativity of Juvenalian rhetoric, for all its stylistic verve, does not stand uncontested. Repeatedly, the challenge to it is a literary challenge, and specifically an Horatian one: the possibility of immortality, or at the least, survival, which the lyric poet offers both himself and his subject. Jonson, like so many of his contemporaries, was powerfully attracted by Juvenal – but he wanted to argue with him too, and the voice of his contention is Horatian. UNDERWOOD
:
Like UW to Sackville, discussed in the previous chapter, UW (‘An Epistle to a Friend, to perswade him to the Warres’), probably dating from around , displays several structural features indebted to Horace’s Epistles: namely, an epistolary form, an exhortatory opening on the theme of virtue (confined to the first lines in UW ), a satiric central movement (the large majority of Jonson’s poem), followed by a self-conscious turning away from this satiric scene, and a Stoically inflected retreat in the final lines (–). UW contains probably the highest density of allusions to Juvenal’s Satires of any of Jonson’s poems. It is not hard to draw up a list of general correspondences of theme and tone: the widespread corruption, focused upon money, luxury and sex, combined with the indignant exclamatory tone of the verse: ‘O, these so ignorant Monsters!’ (). The double standard which makes adultery acceptable – even expected – among the rich and fashionable (UW .–) is a Juvenalian theme; compare for instance lines – of Juvenal’s eleventh satire: ‘Adultery is a disgrace among the middle classes: but the same behaviour / is considered chic and amusing when it’s the rich doing it.’ Jonson’s epistle goes on to describe husbands who pimp out their own wives in their very presence: He that will follow but anothers wife, Is lov’d, though he let out his owne for life: The Husband now’s call’d churlish, or a poore Nature, that will not let his Wife be a whore; Or use all arts, or haunt all Companies That may corrupt her, even in his eyes. (–)
The exact date of this poem is a matter of some debate. The most thorough discussion is by Butler (–), who makes a convincing case for placing it in or , at the very beginning of the wars rather than when they had ceased to be a novelty (Martin Butler, ‘The Dates of Th ree Poems by Ben Jonson’, Huntington Library Quarterly, (), –).
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
This passage, too, has its origins in Juvenal, this time in the first satire, lines –. Casual abortion (‘kild like her Embrions’, UW .) is mentioned three times in Juvenal’s Satires, at ., – and (in a particularly unpleasant image) at .–. The physical and fi nancial degradation of the unfashionable poet (UW .–) also has Juvenalian parallels: compare, for instance, Satires .–, the whole of the seventh satire, and the humiliation of the client in the fi fth. Th is is a long way from Horace’s depiction of the client–patron relationship, even at his most acerbic. The most striking of these correspondences, however, is the direct quotation from Juvenal at lines –: ‘If nature could / Not make a verse; Anger; or laughter would’. The lines are close to a translation of Juvenal Satires . (‘si natura negat, facit indignatio versum’, ‘if nature refuses to do so, anger makes a verse’). But the mention of laughter – very much not in Juvenal’s original – is an Horatian touch. We might think of Horace Satires I..–: ‘A joke very often cuts through difficult issues more forcefully and effectively than seriousness.’ At the end of his first book of epistles Horace links anger and laughter when he describes how often he has been moved either to fury or to amusement by the ‘servum pecus’, the ‘slavish herd’ of his imitators (Epistles I..–, a favourite Jonsonian passage). Horace refers in these lines explicitly to literary imitators of an inferior kind, whereas Jonson’s ‘ignorant Monsters’ () are thoughtless fashion victims at court; but Jonson’s poem, like Horace’s, insists throughout on the analogy between morality and aesthetic value, social and literary good taste. As Kirk Freudenburg remarks – of Horace, but the point is just as accurate for Jonson – ‘Life-style and [poetic] style in Horace are one and the same.’ In fact, these lines are a miniature interwoven compendium of programmatic statements from the classical satirists, comparable to the ‘Apologetical Dialogue’ appended to Poetaster and discussed above. As well as the echo of Horace’s ‘o imitatores, servum pecus’ at line , Jonson’s question, ‘Who can behold their Manners, and not clowd- / Like upon them lighten?’ (–), for all its unusual imagery, is a version of Juvenal’s famous lines, already used by Jonson in the Induction of Every
Satire .– in particular bears comparison with Epigrams (‘To Fine Lady Would-be’). The depiction of patronage in Horace’s Satires is broadly positive; the edginess to the client– patron relationship which pervades the Epistles (cf. for instance the pointed Philippus and Mena story at I.), although powerful, is of a very different kind. Freudenburg, The Walking Muse, p. .
Underwood : satire or epistle?
Man Out of His Humour : ‘It is hard not to write satires: for who could endure / this terrible city, however iron-hearted, and restrain himself [from satire]’ (Satires .–). The ‘set’ of satirical allusions is completed by Jonson’s description of these ‘monsters’’ obsession with determining ‘[h]ow they may make some one that day an Asse’ (). Persius’ first satire promises a scandalous revelation, which it finally imparts: ‘But I’ll bury it [the revelation] here. I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it myself: / Who is there who doesn’t have the ears of an ass? [i.e. everyone does]’ (–). Jonson’s depiction of moral and social degradation in UW focuses upon the corruption of language: the ambitious man nurses ‘praises begg’d, or (worse) / Bought Flatteries’ (–), which become ‘his owne curse’ (); objects and values are called by the wrong names: ‘what we call / Friendship is now mask’d Hatred’ (–); ‘To do’t with Cloth, or Stuffes, lusts name might merit; / With Velvet, Plush, and Tissues, it is spirit’ (–). Indeed, this first half of the poem is neatly concluded (and summed up): ‘Thus they doe talke’ (). The persistent punning (‘famevaynes’ (vain/vein, ); ‘Baud’ (board/bawd, ), ‘Masters both of Arts and lies’, ) is an aspect of this corruption: a kind of in-poem demonstration of Jonson’s point about the slipperiness of meaning in the hands of the corrupt. At the heart of the poem is the ‘poore single flatterer, without Baud’ () – by implication, the poet, compromised by poverty and neglect. This ‘single’ figure, for all his feeble pathos, is the still point at the centre of the verse paragraph (lines –), a final crescendo of satire before the change of tone at line . The focus is upon the collapse of language into flattery and subservience: a failure of independence as well as of meaning. Towards the end of the poem this loss is equated with the loss of even the ‘formes’ of men, a term suggestive of a metaphysical (as well as physical) collapse: Yet this is better, then To lose the formes, and dignities of men, To flatter my good Lord, and cry his Bowle Runs sweetly, as it had his Lordships Soule. (–)
The relevance of this particular concern (the rise of flattery) to the poet’s own position emerges in the lines which follow. In the climactic final third of the poem the poet is threatened with the loss of his
On the contemporary significance of this ‘revelation’, see J. P. Sullivan, ‘Ass’s Ears and Attises : Persius and Nero’, American Journal of Philology, (), –.
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
own (poetic) voice, subsumed by the flattery and insincerity which surrounds him: will he [the Lord in question], When I am hoarse, with praising his each cast, Give me but that againe, that I must wast In Sugar Candide, or in butter’d beere, For the recovery of my voyce? (–)
The dense and tumbling syntax of these lines – the almost overwhelming verbal noise of insincerity – literally seems to ‘overcome’ the key statement: ‘Flattry’s growne so cheape / With him’ (–). But buried in these lines is an uncomfortable vision of the ‘poore single flatterer’, so lacking in patronage that he becomes ‘nothing’: ‘As a poore single flatterer, without Baud, / Is nothing, such scarce meat and drinke he’le give’ (–, the ‘he’ here is the patron). The economic realities of the poor poet’s position are bluntly revealed: for lack of ‘Baud’ and not being a ‘slave to boote’ () he will starve, and this is not presented (as we might have expected) as a choice between virtuous non-flattery and descent into insincerity. The flattery is taken for granted: the choice is whether or not to extend the moral compromise which already, inescapably, exists into sinful action: even the rejected poet, who balks at behaving slavishly, flatters his would-be patron as a matter of course. The way out of this nightmare vision, and the mark of a transition from satiric material to ethical injunction, is the verse letter itself: ‘Friend, flie from hence; and let these kindled rimes / Light thee from hell on earth’ (–, italics mine). Similarly, this long poem ends by reminding Colby (and us) that the poem and the advice it offers go together: ‘These [verses] take, and now goe seeke thy peace in Warre, / Who falls for love of God, shall rise a Starre’ (–, the final lines of the poem). The closing movement of the epistle (lines –), much shorter than the satiric vision which precedes it, outlines what Colby should do: Goe, quit ’hem all. And take along with thee, Thy true friends wishes, Colby, which shall be, That thine be just, and honest; that thy Deeds Not wound thy conscience, when thy body bleeds; That thou dost all things more for truth, then glory, And never but for doing wrong be sory; That by commanding first thy selfe, thou mak’st Thy person fit for any charge thou tak’st; That fortune never make thee to complaine,
Satire and praise in the opening of the Forest But what she gives, thou dar’st give her againe; That whatsoever face thy fate puts on, Thou shrinke or start not, but be alwayes one; That thou thinke nothing great, but what is good, And from that thought strive to be understood.
(UW , –)
The content of these lines – the message of Stoic self-mastery – is rooted in the Horatian hexameter, and so too is the form of the transition; as we saw in the previous chapter, Horace’s verse epistles often make a move into philosophical distance and self-control in their final section. In the earlier examples of Forest and , the Horatian ‘voice’ which finally answered Juvenalian corruption was indebted primarily to the Odes; here it is the Horatian epistolary form which works to guarantee the virtue and objectivity of the authorial voice. Whereas the Juvenalian satirist is trapped by the paradox that his subject – the stuff of his poetry – is the very corruption he claims to attack, the Horatian epistolary turn of the close of UW creates an authorial space which engages with, but steps beyond, the satiric. : F O R E S T In the range of material so far discussed, satiric material of a Juvenalian kind is contrasted with – and answered by – an Horatian assurance (whether derived from the lyric or hexameter poetry), which works to guarantee the poet’s ability to speak reliably even in a society spoilt by falsehood and deceit. The creative dynamic between satire and praise is a recurring pattern – noticeably present, for instance, in the contrast of anti-masque and masque developed by Jonson for performance at court. In the final sections of this chapter I would like to turn to a sequence of poems, generally read and received as straightforwardly panegyric, in which the presence of satiric material ironises or disturbs, to varying degrees, our reception of that praise. The Forest collection of , after an initial short verse (‘Why I write not of Love’) proceeds with a series of three long poems of , and lines respectively, all three of which present allied ideals: of noble country life in ‘To Penshurst’ (Forest ) and ‘To Sir Robert Wroth’ (Forest ), and of a ‘gentlewoman’s’ retreat from the ‘world’ in Forest . None of them is entitled a satire, and they have not been commented upon as a series, although Grandsen’s excellent anthology of Tudor verse satire perceptively
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
concludes with Forest and . Nevertheless, each of these poems features what we might term satiric ‘intrusion’ – an adjunct to, and arguably in contention with, the central matter of praise. FOR EST
, ‘ ’
In a transition very similar to that discussed in UW , the concluding movement of Forest (‘To the World’) turns for comfort and resolution to Stoically inflected commonplaces. Subtitled ‘A farewell for a Gentle-woman, vertuous and noble’, it is spoken in propria persona by a female protagonist who finally (and conventionally) resolves to seek peace in herself, to rise above the fear of death and to despise the vagaries of fortune: No, I doe know, that I was borne To age, misfortune, sicknesse, griefe: But I will beare these, with that scorne, As shall not need thy false reliefe. Nor for my peace will I goe farre, As wandrers doe, that still doe rome, But make my strengths, such as they are, Here in my bosome, and at home.
(–, the final lines of the poem)
We recognise here, once again, the echo of a favourite Horatian passage, those final lines from Epistles I. that Jonson reworked so movingly in the epigram to Roe (Epigrams , discussed in Chapter , pp. –): caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt. strenua nos exercet inertia: navibus atque quadrigis petimus bene vivere. quod petis hic est, est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit aequus. (Epistles I..–)
Those who rush overseas change the weather, not their hearts. Energetic inactivity wears us out: in boats and chariots we seek a good life. But what you seek is here and it’s at Ulubrae, if your balanced mind does not desert you.
Similar concluding statements of virtuous self-sufficiency and calm, as, for example, in Horace Satires II. (Davus’ speech to Horace) and the end of Juvenal Satires , are, for all their compelling power, nuanced by the sheer volume of satiric material that surrounds them. Juvenal’s
Grandsen, Tudor Verse Satire, pp. –.
Forest , ‘To the World’
tenth satire, for instance (much like UW ), devotes almost the whole of its enormous length ( lines) to describing the stupidity and vice of actual human wishes. Only the final ten lines of the poem set out what men ought to hope for, and, in context, those lines seem more wistful than realistic. Even the much-cited expression of Stoic commonplaces in Horace, Odes III..– is oddly nuanced by its context: apparently an introductory passage to a lyric on Roman virtue and heroism, the poem is in fact dominated by Juno’s speech of abiding hatred and enmity towards Rome (lines –). In each of these cases then – all poems to which Jonson alludes more than once – the motif of the ‘good life’ or the ‘free man’ is held within a satiric or aggressive context that threatens to undermine, or at least complicate, the moral message: we may still accept this vision as an ideal, but it is hard, reading these poems, to believe that it is wholly attainable. Forest , unlike several other poems from the collection, has not been widely anthologised, and has attracted little critical attention. But here I want to consider some of the ways in which Jonson’s poem is, surprisingly, operating in a similar way to these classical models; and how, despite its carapace of apparently conventional poise, the gendered voice of the poem points towards how we really are as much as how we ought to be – how it works, that is, satirically. The body of the poem – a fairly long one, at sixty-eight lines – is taken up with a description of the corrupt and deceiving ‘world’, addressed in the second person (‘False world, good-night’, ). As, for instance, in Donne’s ‘Satyre I’, that world is increasingly strongly personified as the poem progresses. At first a ‘stage’ (line ) (such as life at court or in the public eye), this corrupting world then becomes an active agent, addressed directly as ‘thou’: ‘Doe not once hope, that thou canst tempt / A spirit so resolv’d to tread / Upon thy throate’ (–). As an agent, this world is equipped not only with ‘nets’ and ‘formes’ (–) but also ‘gifts’ and
UW (‘An Epistle answering to one that asked to be Sealed of the Tribe of B’) begins with a version of the opening of III., but almost the entire (-line) poem is taken up with satiric material. Arthur Quiller-Couch included the poem in his Oxford Book of English Verse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), no. (‘A Farewell to the World’), but he prints lines – followed by lines –end without comment or any indication that this is an emended version. The substantial cuts effectively make the poem conform to the popular lyric of ‘Stoic commonplaces’, examples of which (such as Sir Henry Wooton’s ‘The Character of a Happy Life’ and Thomas Campion’s ‘The Man of Life Upright’) were circulating extremely widely in the period. Quiller-Couch’s radical emendation suggests that he sensed that the poem was not quite what it seemed, or what he wanted it to be.
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
‘curtesie’ (–). Finally, the renounced world itself is held responsible for the female speaker’s abuse and betrayal: My tender, first, and simple yeeres Thou did’st abuse, and then betray; Since stird’st up jealousies and feares, When all the causes were away. (–)
The tone is one of a discarded lover, and specifically a female one, subject by virtue of her sex to reputation-damaging seduction and betrayal. The suggestion of a youth wasted by corruption and seduction combines ironically with the ‘vertuous’ detail of the title. Oddly, this suggestion of specifically sexual sin and regret becomes a feature of the speaker’s characterisation of the ‘world’ itself. At lines – the sinful world is described in the terminology of insult aimed traditionally at the aged courtesan or prostitute: I know too, though thou strut, and paint, Yet art thou both shrunke up, and old, That onely fooles make thee a saint, And all thy good is to be sold.
The poem seems, in fact, for all that the speaker is supposedly ‘vertuous and noble’, to be soaked in the awareness of a very highly gendered kind of sexual sin: of having been seduced and betrayed, and also of being old, ‘shrunke up’, no longer even worth seducing – a description transferred in that latter case to the world, but vividly revealing of the speaker’s thoughts and associations. The world becomes both the, presumably male, agent of her destruction, and the alarming vision of her possible female future. It is significant, then, that at the heart of the poem lies a passage on the fear of returning, despite one’s best intentions, to sinfulness: Or, having scap’d, shall I returne, And thrust my necke into the noose, From whence, so lately, I did burne, With all my powers, my selfe to loose? What bird, or beast, is knowne so dull, That fled his cage, or broke his chaine, And tasting ayre, and freedome, wull Render his head in there againe?
(–)
I think ‘form’ here alludes to the Latin sense of ‘forma’ meaning ‘beauty’ as well as more generally ‘shape’ or ‘appearance’. As a form is also a hare or deer’s lair or hide, it also contributes to the hunting imagery of the passage (‘nets’, ; ‘baits’, ), and perhaps suggests a lurking deviousness. Compare Horace, Odes I., III. and IV..
Forest , ‘To the World’
The centre of this image is in fact quite a close translation of a passage from Horace, Satires II.: ibis sub furcam prudens, dominoque furenti committes rem omnem et vitam et cum corpore famam. evasti: credo, metues doctusque cavebis: quaeres quando iterum paveas iterumque perire possis, o totiens servus ! quae belua ruptis, cum semel eff ugit, reddit se prava catenis? (Satires II..–)
You know what you’re doing when you submit to the yoke, and when to a master who rages in madness you entrust all your fortune, your life, and your reputation along with your body. Suppose you have escaped: then, I imagine, you’ ll have learnt your lesson – you’ ll be fearful and cautious. But no – you’ ll actually look for the opportunity to be terrified again, to face disaster, O you are a slave many times over! What beast, who’s burst its chains and escaped once, perversely returns to them again?
In this Latin passage Davus, Horace’s slave, liberated by the conventional freedoms of the Saturnalia to speak his mind, addresses his master and points out that Horace is no more free than he; specifically, in the lines that surround this passage, that they are both sexually obsessed by an unsuitable woman, despite the dangers of such behaviour (‘someone else’s wife has you in thrall; a prostitute has captured Davus,’ ). The poem is both subtle and funny on degrees of slavery (we are reminded of the ‘poore single flatterer’ who refuses to be a ‘slave to boote’). Forest ends, as we have seen, with the ‘gentlewoman’ of the title declaring her true freedom in her resolution to accept life calmly, bear the ills that come to her and find her strength and peace in herself. Satires II. has a similar evocation of real freedom – a popular passage, to which Jonson himself alluded repeatedly. But in Satires II. those lines are heavily ironic. In them, the slave Davus claims mockingly that Horace (like himself, he admits), for all his good resolutions, precisely will put his head back in the (sexual) noose. In its original context, that description of virtuous self-sufficiency is presented to his master, Horace, as a description of exactly what he, that is Horace, has failed to be: tu mihi qui imperitas alii servis miser atque duceris ut nervis alienis mobile lignum.
Versions of this passage are found at Epigrams (‘To Sir Thomas Roe’) and UW (‘Eupheme’ ), section , ‘The Mind’, lines –.
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires quisnam igitur liber? sapiens sibi qui imperiosus, quem neque pauperies neque mors neque vincula terrent, responsare cupidinibus, contemnere honores fortis, et in se ipso totus, teres, atque rotundus, externi ne quid valeat per leve morari, in quem manca ruit semper fortuna. potesne ex his ut proprium quid noscere? … eripe turpi colla iugo; ‘liber, liber sum’ dic age. non quis; urget enim dominus mentem non lenis et acris subiectat lasso stimulos versatque negantem. (Satires II..– and –)
As for you – you order me around but you’re the base servant of another master and like a wooden puppet you’re moved by somebody else’s strings. Who then is free? The wise man who commands himself, whom neither poverty nor death nor chains terrify, a man strong enough to defy his passions and despise public honours: a brave man, whole in himself, smooth and round, able to prevent anything outside himself lingering upon his smooth surface: whenever Fortune attacks such a man she maims only herself. Can you recognise any one of these attributes as your own? … Snatch your neck from the vile yoke; come on, say ‘I’m free, I’m free’ – but you can’t. For a master – and not a gentle one – is plaguing your mind, he stabs at your weary body with his spurs and forces you round if you shy.
Davus, Horace’s slave, points out that for all his ‘free speech’ – that is, his writing of satire – Horace the poet is no freer than his slave, and it is in this context that Davus claims that Horace is even more servile than creatures who do at least learn from their earlier entrapments: the passage translated in Forest .–. Once we hear Davus the slave speaking in this ‘gentlewoman’s’ lament, her closing resolution – her declaration, in effect, ‘I’m free, I’m free’ – is disturbed and undermined. We know that in Horace, Davus describes freedom only to demonstrate the extent to which both he and his master are enslaved. But it is not just that Horace, like Davus, behaves slavishly: the vice neither Horace nor Davus can free himself from, the ‘vile yoke’ (II..–) they cannot tear off is specifically one of sexual enslavement. As Davus describes, in lines that precede and follow this passage, they are both, master and slave, in comic sexual thrall to an unsuitable woman, despite the dangers of such behaviour (in Davus’ case a prostitute, in Horace someone else’s wife, whom he must see covertly and in ignominious
Forest , ‘To the World’
disguise). Davus even claims that he, a slave seeing a prostitute, is in a better position than his master, in a passage notoriously expurgated until very recently and still regularly toned down in translation: te coniunx aliena capit, meretricula Davum: peccat uter nostrum cruce dignius? acris ubi me natura intendit, sub clara nude lucerna quaecumque excepit turgentis verbera caudae, clunibus aut agitavit equum lasciva supinum, dimittit neque famosum neque sollicitum ne ditior aut formae melioris meiat eodem. tu cum proiectis insignibus, anulo equestri Romanoque habitu, prodis ex iudice Dama turpis, odoratum caput obscurante lacerna, non es quod simulas? metuens induceris atque altercante libidinibus tremis ossa pavore.
(Satires II..–)
Another man’s wife has you enslaved, a whore has Davus. Which of us commits a sin more deserving of crucifixion? When nature in all her ferocity drives me on, naked, in bright lamp-light, some girl welcomes the strokes of my great swollen tail, or lustfully urges on with her buttocks the horse laid on his back. And when she sends me off I’m not hungry or panicking that some richer man of more impressive shape will piss in the same place. You, on the other hand, throw off the marks of your rank, your equestrian ring and your Roman clothes [i.e. white toga], and you betray your standing as a juror preferring to be base Dama [a typical slave’s name], hiding your scented head with a dark hood. So aren’t you then exactly what you’re pretending to be? Fearfully you make your way in and your very bones shake with terror as fear struggles with lust.
The ‘vertuous and noble’ woman of Forest , as the subheading describes her, thus addresses the world she renounces in terms which suggest a history of sexual shame; moreover she does so in the voice of an impudent slave, reproaching his master for his sexual slavishness. Once we have noted and activated the allusion, this becomes a much funnier – and
In ancient Rome crucifi xion was a punishment restricted to slaves. The verb ‘drives on’ (‘intendit’) could be used of an erection. The implied sexual position here – with the woman on top – was considered perverse and immodest, as was any very active movement on the part of the female partner: both markers in this passage of the prostitute’s depravity.
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
much more discomfiting – poem on the impossibilities of freedom than the ‘Stoic liberty’ lyrics which at first glance it appears to resemble. We may suspect that this woman, for all her apparent resolution, is unlikely to bid farewell to the world – or the world’s men – quite as categorically as she hopes; and we hear instead, perhaps, a hint of pique, of one step or sally in the cycle of attraction and rejection. Jonson in ‘False world, good-night’ ventriloquises a woman who turns out to be quoting – and in some respects enacting – Horace; but she plays not only Horace, but Horace addressing himself, with scorn and humour, in the voice of his own slave – his own ultimate and inescapable slavishness. Beneath the surface of Jonson’s poised classicism lurks satire of the most troubling kind, and this is not the only poem in the opening sequence to incorporate satiric material in a surprising way. FOR EST
, ‘ ’
A similar subtlety of allusive texture characterises Forest (‘To Sir Robert Wroth’). The vision of the golden age of fertility and effortless abundance, as described in that poem, is indebted, as has been often pointed out, to a range of classical models: primarily, the second of Horace’s Epodes; Martial . (itself an imitation of Epodes ); the description of the Golden Age in Virgil, Georgics II.–; and Horace, Odes II.. Formally, the poem most closely resembles the second epode, both in length ( lines to the epode’s ) and in metre (the iambic metre of the epode is formed of couplets of twelve and eight syllables; ‘To Sir Robert Wroth’ alternates between lines of ten and eight). They are structurally related, too: in both poems the extensive description of a rural idyll, delivered in very similar terms, takes up almost the whole of the poem. Jonson’s engagement with the second epode is demonstrated by his close translation of it (UW , ‘The praises of a Countrie life’), which employs the same metrical pattern as Forest . Certain phrases of the epistle to Wroth are borrowed directly from the Latin poem: ‘un-bought provision’ at line translates ‘dapes inemptas’ (Epodes ., ‘unbought viands’ () in Jonson’s translation), and the ‘greedie thrush’ shot at line renders ‘turdis edacibus’ (Epodes ., ‘th’eating Thrush’ () in Jonson’s translation).
Pierce describes Forest as a ‘better version of Epode than Jonson’s translation’ (Pierce, ‘Ben Jonson’s Horace’, ).
Forest , ‘To Sir Robert Wroth’
The beginning of Forest , ‘[h]ow blest art thou’, reminds us of the famous opening line of the epode: ‘Beatus ille qui procul negotiis, ut prisca gens mortalium, paterna rura bubus exercet suis, solutus omni faenore, neque excitatur classico miles truci, neque horret iratum mare, forumque vitat et superba civium potentiorum limina.
(Epodes .–)
Happie is he, that from all Businesse cleere, As the old race of Mankind were, With his owne Oxen tills his Sires left lands, And is not in the Usurers bands: Nor Souldier-like started with rough alarmes, Nor dreads the Seas inraged harmes: But flees the Barre and Courts, with the proud bords, And waiting Chambers of great Lords.
(Jonson’s translation, UW .–)
The Latin poem enumerates various undesirable forms of city life from which the country-dweller is freed: namely, business affairs (‘negotiis’, ), owing money (‘omni faenore’, ), the harsh life of a soldier or sailor (lines –), the demands of the forum () and the necessity to call upon potential patrons or powerful supporters (–). The first twelve lines of Forest follow a similar pattern, emphasising Wroth’s freedom from obligations to social superiors (–) and from the culture of extravagance and debt (–): How blest art thou, canst love the countrey, W, Whether by choice, or fate, or both; And, though so neere the citie, and the court, Art tane with neithers vice, nor sport: That at great times, art no ambitious guest Of Sheriffes dinner, or Maiors feast. Nor com’st to view the better cloth of state; The richer hangings, or crowne-plate; Nor throng’st (when masquing is) to have a sight Of the short braverie of the night; To view the jewells, stuffes, the paines, the wit There wasted, some not paid for yet!
(–)
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
The poem returns to this set of themes in the extended priamel of lines –, in which Jonson urges Wroth to avoid the strain and moral dangers of a list of professions: as a soldier (–), a barrister or avaricious merchant (–), and finally a corrupt courtier (–). But Horace’s epode has a well-known sting in its tail: in the final four lines, the whole poem is belatedly revealed to be the speech of Alfius, a self-deceiving moneylender who, for all his talk, will return almost at once to usury: These thoughts when Usurer Alphius, now about To turne mere farmer, had spoke out, ’Gainst th’Ides, his moneys he gets in with paine, At th’Calends, puts all out againe. (Jonson’s translation, UW .–)
Forest (unlike UW ) is not a translation, and it closes, in a pattern with which we are now familiar, with a description of – and encouragement towards – virtuous attitude and behaviour (–): Wroth is already well set up; he should rest content with and be grateful for what he has, unafraid of poverty or death: And, howsoever we may thinke things sweet, He [God] alwayes gives what he knowes meet; Which who can use is happy: Such be thou. Thy morning’s, and thy evening’s vow Be thankes to him, and earnest prayer, to finde A body sound, with sounder minde; To doe thy countrey service, thy selfe right; That neither want doe thee affright, Nor death; but when thy latest sand is spent, Thou maist thinke life, a thing but lent.
(Forest .–)
Details of this description (including ‘a body sound, with sounder minde’) are indebted to the final lines of Juvenal’s tenth satire, and the connection is a fertile one. Juvenal’s evocative (and much-reproduced) sketch of a kind of desire congruent with calm virtue is destabilised by the unwieldy bulk (all lines) which precedes it, devoted to describing the capacity for corrupt human longing. Alfius’ stirring, and not dissimilar, vision of a rural idyll is revealed, finally, not as reality or resolution, but a meaningless ‘wish’, instantly to be set aside. In this double context there is a final delicate irony in the closing lines of ‘To Sir Robert Wroth’: ‘That neither want doe thee affright, / Nor death; but when thy latest sand is spent, / Thou maist thinke life, a thing
Forest , ‘To Sir Robert Wroth’
but lent’ (–). The financial language of the rhyme – ‘spent’, ‘lent’ – draws attention to the reversal of priorities in the man of upright heart, who will finally be able to view with equanimity the impermanence not only of the ‘short braverie of the night’ (), but of life itself. But by shadowing the vocabulary of debt from the close of Horace’s epode we are also brought back, in a cynical rush, to the moneylender, who, it is now revealed, has been speaking all along. Bodleian MS Rawlinson Poetry interestingly includes a copy both of this poem to Wroth and also of Jonson’s own close translation of Epodes , the only translation of an epode by him that we have. That this combination is not accidental, at least for the compiler of the manuscript or of the manuscript from which it derives, is suggested by the titling of the Wroth poem: ‘To Sir Robte Wroth in: prayse of a Countrye lyfe: Epode:’. Although it has no such heading in the folio, the Wroth poem is identified as an ‘epode’, and the phrasing of the title is very similar to the heading the manuscript gives to Jonson’s translation of the second epode a few pages earlier: ‘An Ode in Horace in Prayse of a Countrye lyfe, Translated:’. Clearly the compiler of this manuscript has made the connection between Epodes and the Wroth poem, whether of his own accord or by taking his cue from the source of his copies. But if we are persuaded by these factors to feel that the tone of the poem, the exhortation to Wroth to retired country virtue, is somehow destabilised, what are we to make of that? It is I think interesting, at the least, to know that on his death in Wroth left his wife, Lady Mary Wroth, an estate burdened with , of debt, a vast sum, and one which consumed much of her widowhood in repeated legal cases to protect herself from prosecution. If we hear Horace in this poem, if we gather that it takes its shape and its tone from the second epode, then we hear, too, an irony, obviously, but also a speaking voice – of the poet, of Jonson, of Horace, ultimately of Alfius. The voice of the poem ceases to be transparent, and the taste and shape of its authority shifts from the generalising, patchwork of allusions style of grand classicism to which it is usually ascribed to something more
Bodleian MS Rawlinson Poetry , r. Bodleian MS Rawlinson Poetry , r. Th is translation was not printed until the folio, in which it appears in parallel text, although it was composed in or before , when Jonson read it to Drummond. The MS may in fact predate the folio. Wroth’s widow, Lady Mary Wroth, subsequently sued for protection against debt collection in , , and . For details of the Wroths’ marriage and financial situation, see Mary Ellen Lamb, ‘Wroth, Lady Mary (?–/)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, ) (www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/).
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
personal, more interesting, more amusing, rather more cynical and immediate: a deliverer of truths with an agenda, and moral absolutes laced with social realism. Forest and thus emerge as poems of praise, and specifically of ethical praise, which are destabilised by the presence of competing satirical voices. These overtones suggest that the ethical ideals which the poems expound may be (at least for some speakers, some of the time) self-delusory, or primarily performative. In both cases, the satiric material challenges our reception of the speaking voice of the poem. This dynamic is even more a feature of Forest , ‘To Penshurst’, to which I now turn. FOR EST
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Herford and Simpson note that fish and eels that generously offer themselves to the fisherman in lines – of ‘To Penshurst’, Jonson’s famously consummate and classicising country-house poem in honour of the Sidney estate, are suggested by the mock-epic turbot in Juvenal, Satires .–: ‘[the fisherman is addressing Domitian] et tua seruatum consume in saecula rhombum. / ipse capi uoluit’, ‘devour a turbot saved especially for the days of your rule. / He wanted to be caught.’ Jonson’s version of this conceit rather labours the point: the partridge, too, is ‘willing to be kill’d’ (), and carp, pike and eels all prove themselves keen to be eaten: The painted partrich lyes in every field, And, for thy messe, is willing to be kill’d. And if the high-swolne Medway faile thy dish, Thou hast thy ponds, that pay thee tribute fish, Fat, aged carps, that runne into thy net. And pikes, now weary their owne kinde to eat, As loth, the second draught, or cast to stay, Officiously, at first, themselves betray. Bright eeles, that emulate them, and leape on land, Before the fisher, or into his hand.
(–)
Hardman suggests that Oppian may also lie behind this image (C. B. Hardman, ‘Penshurst’s Co-operative Fish’, Notes and Queries, (), –). H&S, among many others, rightly note the influence of Martial . upon the whole first half of Jonson’s poem. Details such as the ‘painted partrich’ (‘picta perdix’, ) and the passage concerned with the un-empty-handed rustics (‘nec venit inanis rusticus salutator’, ) are derived directly from Martial’s Latin. But the overtones detected by Cain – the implications of tribute and predation, and the literary resonances of flattery in the ‘fish-pond’, discussed below – are not found in Martial’s poem (William E. Cain, ‘The Place of the Poet in Jonson’s “To Penshurst” and “To My Muse”’, Criticism, (), –).
Forest , ‘To Penshurst’
But what are we to make of the inclusion of this farcical scene from Domitian’s reign of terror, now transposed to the apparent idyll that is Penshurst? This is not simply an example of satiric allusions reinforcing and deepening satiric scene-setting (as, broadly, in Forest and ). The reference becomes still more unsettling when we consider its context in the Latin poem. Juvenal’s line continues: ‘ipse capi voluit’. quid apertius? et tamen illi surgebant cristae. nihil est quod credere de se non possit cum laudatur dis aequa potestas. (Satires .–)
‘It wanted to be caught.’ What could be more blatant? But still his [Domitian’s] comb rose with pleasure. There is nothing at all that godlike power won’t believe of itself when it comes to being praised.
This is perhaps the most explicit denunciation of flattery in Juvenal. An elliptic aside in the Conversations with Drummond seems to allude to Jonson’s particular interest in this passage: ‘He made Much of that Epistle of Plinius, wher ad prandium non ad notam is & yt other of Marcellinus who plinie made to be removed from the table, & of the Grosse Turbat.’ Critics have, however, been reluctant to connect this anecdote with ‘To Penshurst’. Wheeler is typical in her conclusion that ‘Jonson … presumably did not wish the element of insincere flattery to enter his complimentary poem’, but I want to press this conclusion: the ‘gross turbot’ is not the only discomfiting element lurking in the shadows of Penshurst’s apparent idyll. Most readers of this poem have taken it very much at face value, and ‘To Penshurst’ is often cited as an example of Jonson’s most accomplished and classicising panegyric: ‘Jonson is not only describing a manor but celebrating a way of life.’ But a few critics have pointed out destabilising elements concealed in the rhetorical movement of the poem, and particularly in the repeated negations – the speaker’s apparent need to describe precisely what (for the poet-retainer) Penshurst is not. This technique
Conversations with William Drummond, –. Wheeler, English Verse Satire, pp. –. Philip Hobsbaum, ‘Ben Jonson in the Seventeenth Century’, Michigan Quarterly Review, (), – (). Cubeta is rare in his honest admission of the problems that the appropriation of Juvenal causes an attentive reader of the poem (Paul M. Cubeta, ‘A Jonsonian Ideal: To Penshurst’, Philological Quarterly, (), –). Katharine Maus expresses slight unease at the climactic image of the poet feasting at Sidney’s table, but claims that: ‘Jonson phrases his displacement of his host in carefully conditional form. He usurps the center stage, and then turns his usurpation into a compliment to his patron’s generosity’ (Maus, Ben Jonson and the Roman Frame of Mind , p. ).
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
inevitably suggests that other places (and times, and poems) are like that, but it also brings to mind exactly those negative features the absence of which the poet is so careful to proclaim. William Cain’s article presents an excellent concise articulation of this feature of the poem. On the uncomfortable evocation of tribute, predation and even cannibalism within the animal kingdom in lines –, he comments: ‘it is hard not to feel some anxiety in these lines from the poem, as the poet introduces potentially disturbing details about life at Penshurst only to displace them away from the Sidney family’, and he goes on to make a similar point about lines –, – and –. The poem takes pains not only to praise the hospitality of the Sidney household, but specifically to deny that particular corruptions take place: And though thy walls be of the countrey stone, They’are rear’d with no mans ruine, no mans grone, There’s none, that dwell about them, wish them downe; But all come in, the farmer, and the clowne: And no one empty-handed, to salute Thy lord, and lady, though they have no sute. (–)
The penultimate of these lines is derived from Martial ., line : ‘nec venit inanis rusticus salutator’, ‘nor does a countryman come emptyhanded to pay his respects’; just as in Martial, Jonson’s version of the visitor brings rural gifts (a capon, ‘rurall cake’, nuts, apples, cheese, –). In the Latin poem, that list concludes with farmers’ daughters bringing gifts from their mothers in woven baskets (–); Jonson’s version of that detail is rather different – in ‘To Penshurst’, the daughters, like the country foodstuffs, are by degrees cast as the offerings themselves: And no one empty-handed, to salute Thy lord, and lady, though they have no sute. Some bring a capon, some a rurall cake, Some nuts, some apples; some that thinke they make The better cheeses, bring ’hem; or else send By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend This way to husbands; and whose baskets beare An embleme of themselves, in plum, or peare. (Forest .–)
W. Cain, ‘The Place of the Poet’, . On this ‘negative’ tendency in Jonson’s poems of praise, see also Richard Newton, ‘ “Ben. / Jonson”: the Poet in the Poems’, in Alvin Kernan (ed.), Two Renaissance Mythmakers: Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, ), pp. – and Catherine Bates, ‘Much Ado about Nothing: the Contents of Jonson’s “Forrest” ’, Essays in Criticism, (), –.
Forest , ‘To Penshurst’
Jonson’s ‘to salute’ () renders Martial’s ‘salutator’ (), and it is worth attending to the force of the Latin term. In its context in Martial the word is a slightly incongruous interpolation, intentionally reminiscent not of the country but of the city life to which the poet is comparing his rural idyll. The verb ‘salutare’, ‘to greet’, is the term used for the early morning attendance of the client upon his patron and superior. Its use here, combined with ‘nec … inanis’ (‘not empty-handed’), is ironic: Martial is emphasising the extent to which ‘morning-callers’ in the countryside are free from the kind of mercenary relationships of city life. The term is, moreover, associated in the ‘sportula-’ (dole-out) dominated world of Juvenal’s Satires with the dependency and penury of inferior ‘friends’. The ironic edge of the word in the Latin poem prepares us for the hint of a double meaning that persists in Jonson’s line: ‘And no one emptyhanded, to salute / Thy lord, and lady, though they have no sute’ (–). Are we meant to understand that the people are glad to come and share their produce, even though they have nothing in particular to ask for: that is, like Martial’s country-dwellers, they live outside the mercenary parameters of city life? Or is it rather that even if you don’t have something for which to press your ‘suit’, you still don’t dare come empty-handed? The shadowy presence of that second reading (augmented by the vivid denial of ‘ruine’ and ‘grone’ in line ), is perhaps strengthened by the departure from the model. Martial’s ‘salutator’ is not directly greeting anyone in particular, and there is no mention of a possible ‘suit’, absent or otherwise. The suggestion of attendance upon the ‘lord and lady’ however, combined with the (denied) possibility of some kind of request reactivates the satiric overtones of the term. Moreover, the particular kinds of corruption and inequality which the poem is at such pains to deny follow the contours of satire on court life in general, and several Juvenalian passages in their detail. The image of the poet-guest at ‘liberall boord’ () is indebted – negatively, as it were – to Juvenal’s fifth satire, in which the satirist complains of the poet’s unequal treatment in terms very reminiscent of these lines. The rhetorical question: ‘But what can this (more than expresse their love) / Adde to thy free provisions, farre above / The neede of such? whose liberall boord doth flow, / With all, that hospitalitie doth know!’ (–) echoes Juvenal’s ironic description of the long-suffering client’s eventual summons: ‘Your greatest wish. What more could you want?’ (Satires .–). Servants hover offensively behind Juvenal’s guest: ‘You’re not entrusted with any of the gold – or, if you are, a waiter is stationed there like a guard to count the jewels, and keep an eye on your sharp fingernails’ (–). Jonson,
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
in direct contrast, maintains: ‘Here no man tells my cups; nor, standing by, / A waiter, doth my gluttony envy’ (–). In fact, the allusion, once activated, helps to make sense of Jonson’s line: by ‘telling’ the cups, he means counting them (‘numeret’ in the Latin), checking that none of the jewelled goblets have disappeared. Jonson’s assertion of the waiter’s attentiveness (‘but gives me what I call’, ) and his denial that he is envious of the guest he waits upon (‘nor … doth my gluttony envy’, –) are both equally pointed. At line Juvenal’s guest has trouble attracting the attention of his waiter (unlike the host and more privileged guests), and the long-suffering speaker puts it down to resentment: ‘it makes him angry, to wait upon an ancient dependent; your every request annoys him, and even the fact that you’re reclining while he’s on his feet’ (–). When he is finally served, it is ‘murmure’ () – with a grumble. At lines – ‘To Penshurst’ calls attention to the wholly equal sharing of meat, beer, bread and wine between guests and host: Where comes no guest, but is allow’d to eate, Without his feare, and of thy lords owne meate: Where the same beere, and bread, and selfe-same wine, That is his Lordships, shall be also mine. (–)
This too contrasts with, but reminds us of, Juvenal’s poem, which dwells at length upon the differences between guest and host in the quality of the wine (Satires .–; –), the bread (–) and the various other dishes. In conversation with Drummond, Jonson apparently told an anecdote based upon this passage: ‘being at ye end of my lord Salisburie’s table with Inigo Jones & demanded by my Lord, why he was not glad My Lord said he yow promised I should dine with yow, bot I doe not, for he had none of his meate, he esteamed only yt his meate which was of his owne dish’ (Conversations with William Drummond –). Finally, very late in the poem, Jonson’s approbation of the chastity of Penshurst’s mistress (as opposed to widespread sexual infidelity) returns us discomfortingly to the commonplace complaints of Juvenalian satire: ‘His children thy great lord may call his owne: / A fortune, in this age, but rarely knowne’ (–). Once again, the form of the praise reminds
The Latin lines quoted refer to the ‘jewels’ (‘gemmas’) rather than the cups themselves, but the Latin terms ‘phialas’ () and ‘pocula’ () both make it clear that cups or goblets are meant. Martial explores a similar idea at ., and Juvenal seems to have had this poem in mind in writing his fifth satire.
Satire and lyric reprise: Underwood
us – almost to the point of scepticism – of the everyday (satirical) reality of avarice and dishonesty. But this pattern of allusive interaction begins not with the general ‘corrections’ to Juvenal’s satiric description, but with a specific allusion to the possibility of flattery (that silent ‘quid apertius?’). Without the prompting of the explicit Juvenalian reminiscence of the ‘co-operative fishes’, and its associations with outright flattery, none of these surrounding associations would be activated, or less clearly so. The passage discussed above ends with the striking line: ‘As if thou, then, wert mine, or I raign’d here’ (). Although it is an effective statement of the equality with which he is treated, the use of ‘raign’d’ is provocative. The speaker is flirting with the implications of his nod to Juvenal: namely, that all he says could be dismissed as flattery of the grossest kind. But he escapes from this accusation by his careful reversal of the tropes of satire in the second half of his poem. It is precisely because he, the poet, is treated so well – is deemed equal and well provided for – that this poem cannot, within the traditions of Juvenalian satire, be satiric at all. Whereas in other examples of Jonson’s deployment of satiric allusion a Juvenalian vision of corruption is set up in opposition to, and ultimately to be redeemed by, an Horatian poetics of ennobling linguistic glory and power, the satiric intrusion in this poem is more destabilising. The insistent refraction of an Augustan-styled idyll of virtue and, above all, freedom through the ‘fallen’ lens of Juvenalian allusion works at the very least to highlight the fragility of the vision the poem offers. But the deepening effect of that ambiguity at the heart of the poem is also enriching: itself a freedom of speech. If Penshurst is not quite as perfect as the opening movement of the poem might suggest – if even the Sidneys are not averse to a hint of flattery – it is much more attractive than the ostentatious buildings to which it is compared; not only because her ‘lord’ dwells in safety, but because at its heart reigns the poet himself, and a poet left free to claim (or to convince us) that his tolerated presence is indeed a kind of kingship: ‘As if thou, then, wert mine, or I raign’d here’ ().
R EPR ISE : UNDERWOOD
Twenty-five years after Jonson first tackled the relationship between Horatian and Juvenalian satire in the ‘comical satires’, we find an
Th is kind of exploration of the limits of the poetic autonomy bears comparison, in particular, with the use of Horace’s Satires in Poetaster, as discussed in Chapter .
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
unremarked poem, UW (‘An Elegie’), dealing with an assured lightness of touch with these same themes. Herford and Simpson date ‘An Elegie’ to around . In common with several of Jonson’s long poems of this period (including UW and , mentioned above) the bulk of the poem is satiric in a broadly Juvenalian manner, with its satire focused upon lechery and vulgar ostentation in manners and dress – and, forcibly, the combination of the two: It is not likely I should now looke downe Upon a Velvet Petticote, or a Gowne, Whose like I have knowne the Taylors Wife put on To doe her Husbands rites in, e’re ’twere gone Home to the Customer: his Letcherie Being, the best clothes still to praeoccupie. (–)
The conceit of this combination is extended to the point at which clothing itself – the mere trappings of wealth – becomes the object of lust: An Officer there, did make most solemne love, To ev’ry Petticote he brush’d, and Glove He did lay up, and would adore the shooe, Or slipper he left off, and kisse it too, Court every hanging Gowne, and after that, Lift up some one, and doe, I tell not what. (–)
The theme of lines –, that in a decadent society parents are made anxious by their children’s beauty, out of fear of sexual corruption, is derived directly from Juvenal’s tenth satire, lines –. (In Juvenal’s version, it is beautiful sons who should cause the most anxiety, whereas UW focuses upon girls.) But the predatory corrupters of youth in UW are, in an amusing variation upon the expected theme, poets; and, by pointed implication, this aged but amorous poet himself: But then consent, your Daughters and your Wives, (If they be faire and worth it) have their lives Made longer by our praises. Or, if not, Wish, you had fowle ones, and deformed got; Curst in their Cradles, or there chang’d by Elves, So to be sure you doe injoy your selves. Yet keepe those up in sackcloth too, or lether, For Silke will draw some sneaking Songster thither. (–)
In this light-hearted version of Roman satire, the misplaced vulgarity of sexual and material lust becomes the lust of the minor poets (‘Songsters’,
Satire and lyric reprise: Underwood
) for an inspiring theme: ‘There is not worne that lace, purle, knot or pin, / But is the Poëts matter’ (–); ‘witnesse he / That chanc’d the lace, laid on a Smock, to see, / And straight-way spent a Sonnet’ (–). The variation is amusing, but it is also a perceptive response to one of the structural paradoxes of Roman satire: that the poet-satirist is implicated in the corruption he condemns because it is his theme – without it there is nothing of which he can speak. Throughout his career, as we have seen, Jonson’s satire confronts this problem of the implication of the satirist in the world he condemns by creating an Horatian counterpoint to the satiric perspective: a counterbalance, structured around praise and virtue, which seeks to guarantee the virtue and reliability of the poet’s voice. Here, in UW , Jonson evokes, and destabilises, exactly this technique. The poem begins with a tongue-in-cheek parade of the speaker’s laureate credentials: Let me be what I am, as Virgil cold; As Horace fat; or as Anacreon old; No Poets verses yet did ever move, Whose Readers did not thinke he was in love. Who shall forbid me then in Rithme to bee As light, and active as the youngest hee That from the Muses fountaines doth indorse His lynes, and hourely sits the Poets horse? Put on my Ivy Garland, let me see Who frownes, who jealous is, who taxeth me.
(–)
The association of laureateship (‘my Ivy Garland’) and the inevitability of jealousy (‘Who frownes, who jealous is, who taxeth me’) is a prominent theme, for instance, of Poetaster. Another of Jonson’s favourite assertions – of the poet’s power to immortalise – is similarly subject to erotic pastiche: ‘But then consent, your Daughters and your Wives, / (If they be faire and worth it) have their lives / Made longer by our praises’ (–; note the matter-of-fact and deflating parenthesis). The poem is animated by a self-puncturing humour at the expense of the distinctive and aggrandising allusive patterns of the poet’s younger
The massed hordes of inferior poets (‘It is a ryming Age’, ) are themselves a satiric commonplace. See Persius, Satires .–; Juvenal, Satires .–; Horace, Satires I.. and ; Epistles II..–. Lines – probably allude to Persius’ Prologue, –, another favourite text. The allusion itself is deflating: the ‘light’ and ‘active’ ‘youngest hee’ to whom the speaker compares himself is, in Persius, a self-important ‘instant poet’ (‘ut repente sic poeta prodirem’, ‘so all at once I’ll emerge as a poet’, ). The mention of ivy also probably refers to this passage (‘hederae sequaces’, ).
Horace and Juvenal in Jonson’s satires
self: patterns which set Juvenalian satire up against the vatic promise of Horatian laureateship. But in Jonson’s poetry, as we have seen, satiric material is not reduced merely to an enhancing backdrop, a kind of foil to real praise and virtue. The ‘reality’ of those virtues, and the noble milieu in which they are repeatedly located, is itself open, as in ‘To Penshurst’, to intrusion and subversion by satiric texts and a satiric perspective. The power and pathos of the redemptive dynamic leading us from Juvenal to Horace, and from Jonson’s corrupt and flattering contemporaries to (he implies) the virtuous poet (Jonson himself), lie in the fragility of this dynamic, and the possibility of its reverse. I will turn now to a dramatic – and satiric – staging of that Horatian redemption in Jonson’s early play Poetaster.
Poetaster: classical translation and cultural authority
In previous chapters we have seen how Jonson employed allusion to appropriate a range of classical genres, including odes, epigrams, epistles and verse satires. In each case, the potency of these adaptions and redeployments resides in their intertextual ‘dialogue’: the way in which the Horatianism of these pieces is set up against, and in contested conversation with, alternative models of tone and genre (Pindar’s epinicia, Martial’s epigrams, Juvenalian satire). Furthermore, in each case these ‘conversations’ are as politically as they are culturally significant, dealing provocatively with the exigencies and possibilities of the poet’s relationship with the great. Whereas those earlier chapters considered a range of Jonsonian examples in each mode, in this chapter I want to look closely at just one work, the early comical satire Poetaster. Tom Cain concludes his essay on the satiric force of Poetaster by remarking that it: ‘emerges as a play that demands a more prominent place in the Jonson canon than it is normally given’. This chapter is in part an attempt to attend to Poetaster as he suggests, and this attention takes two forms. Firstly, I think it is worth focusing upon the play as a work both composed of and, in some sense, about the act of translation; a work in which translations, as well as the translator, continually challenge us to consider their place in the office of the ‘poet’. Poetaster is,
Tom Cain, ‘ “Satyres, That Girde and Fart at the Time”: Poetaster and the Essex Rebellion’ in Julie Sanders, Kate Chedgzoy and Susan Wiseman (eds.), Refashioning Ben Jonson: Gender, Politics and the Jonsonian Canon (Basingstoke: Macmillan, ), pp. – (p. ). In preparing this chapter I am very much indebted to Cain’s excellent edition of the play (Ben Jonson, Poetaster, Revels Plays (Manchester University Press, )). A version of this chapter was published in Translation and Literature, (), –. On this topic see: Margaret Tudeau-Clayton, ‘Scenes of Translation in Jonson and Shakespeare: Poetaster, Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Translation and Literature, (), – and Jonson, Shakespeare and Early Modern Virgil (Cambridge University Press, ). In the course of this chapter I wish to take issue with her conclusions about the perception and deployment of translation in Jonson’s play, although many of her observations are acute and her attention to the theme of translation itself is important.
Translation and authority in Poetaster
quite explicitly, about the negotiation of the social and aesthetic distinctions between ‘poet’ and ‘poetaster’, but it frames this debate within the broader allusive context of the similar negotiation in Horace’s Satires. As an authorial strategy, this is both aggressively self-confident (because it associates Jonson with Horace himself) and strikingly submissive (where is Jonson if so much of this is Horace?). Secondly, I want to use a fuller understanding of the allusive fabric of the play to put some pressure upon the critical consensus that pertains regarding its close. Although several critics have stressed the powerful role of the poets themselves in magnifying and shaping Augustus’ authority, the view that the final scenes present an idyllic and equally balanced relationship between Horace, Virgil and Augustus is very widespread. In this chapter I argue that the many ‘translations’ and allusions of the play help to place Augustus’ taste and judgement in question and finally subordinate even his majesty to the organising – and immortalising – power of Horatian verse. The real cultural authority of the play is invested not in the emperor, nor even in Virgil, but rather in Horace, whose Satires structure the play as a whole, and inside whose authorial framework even Act V’s fragment of the Aeneid is held. For all Virgil’s acknowledged virtue and excellence, it is the adaptive and absorbent satiric mode, incorporating epic and lyric, Roman and Elizabethan material alike, which allows us to ‘see’ most clearly the dangers of absolute power, and the proper role of the poet as counsellor to the great. These political implications are, moreover, rooted in the details of the textual transactions around and through which the play is carried out, and which have been under-read by critics – both in terms of the depth and detail to which Poetaster is indebted to other texts, and the extent to which these debts and borrowings structure the action. P OE TA ST E R :
Virgil’s eventual resounding endorsement of Horace’s art and life alike refers specifically to his ‘translating’, which he defends strongly against criticism:
‘[Virgil] stands at the absolute centre (with Augustus) of a circle of being/truth’ (TudeauClayton, Jonson, Shakespeare and Early Modern Virgil , p. ). Kaplan refers to ‘Poetaster ’s attempt to realign early modern perceptions of the relations of poet to state along the lines of the idealized Augustan model’ (Kaplan, The Culture of Slander, p. ). See also Norbert H. Platz, ‘Jonson’s Ars Poetica: an Interpretation of Poetaster in Its Historical Context’, Elizabethan Studies, (), –. Alan Sinfield’s article is an instructive exception to this consensus: Alan Sinfield, ‘Poetaster, the Author, and the Perils of Cultural Production’, Renaissance Drama , (), –. My phrase ‘cultural authority’ is derived from that essay.
Poetaster: a translated play
And for his true use of translating men, It still hath been a work of as much palm In clearest judgements, as t’ invent or make. (V..–)
Virgil is answering one after another the terms of the accusations against Horace, and he begins with that of ‘translation’. The phrase ‘translating men’ is grammatically elusive; these ‘men who translate’ could refer to the characters of Horace’s Satires, although it is Jonson’s versions of these characters in Poetaster who are noticeable for their ‘translation’ of material. We might also read ‘men’ as the object of ‘translating’, perhaps referring to the wealth of imported material and characters in the play. Although Horace does allude on several occasions to the sources of his work in Greek models (Archilochus at Epistles I..–; the Lesbian poets (Sappho and Alcaeus) at Odes I..), this imitation is nowhere cited as grounds for criticism. The accusation of ad hominem invective, by contrast, does have a textual basis in one of the most programmatic of the Satires (I..– and –). In this way Poetaster ’s vision of a Horace besieged by his critics is a dramatisation of the satiric persona of the Satires – that is, of Horace’s early career – transferred to the political scenery of his later laureateship, when he was highly favoured by Augustus. In Jonson’s epigrams and longer verse we have already seen several examples of this ‘collapse’ of the Horatian career, by which Jonson recasts Horace’s earliest works with the laureate assurance of his later years. But the attack upon and eventual defence of Horace’s ‘translating’ practice speak much more directly to the reader of Poetaster than of the Satires. The terms of Demetrius’ comically bad invective against Horace, read aloud by Tibullus in Act V, scene three, targets for attack Horace’s verse (both satiric and lyric), his arrogance, his translations (by which he means plagiarisms) and his social climbing: . [Reads.] Our Muse is in mind for th’ untrussing a poet; I slip by his name, for most men do know it: A critic that all the world bescumbers With satirical humours and lyrical numbers.
Since I have so often referred to the notes in Tom Cain’s excellent edition, the text of Poetaster is also cited from Cain. The force of this criticism of satire and its importance for Jonson are discussed in Chapter , pp. –. Th is is not the only historical inaccuracy: the banishment of Ovid, which is dramatised in the play, took place in , after Horace’s death, whereas the elegiac poet Gallus, who also appears, died in .
Translation and authority in Poetaster . [Aside] Art thou there, boy? And for the most part himself doth advance With much self-love, and more arrogance. . [Aside] Good again! And, but that I would not be thought a prater, I could tell you he were a translator. I know the authors from whence he has stole, And could trace him too, but that I understand ’em not full and whole. . [Aside] That line is broke loose from all his fellows: chain him up shorter, do. The best note I can give you to know him by Is that he keeps gallants company: Whom I would wish in time should him fear, Lest after they buy repentance too dear. Subscribed Demetrius Fannius. (V..–)
This set of charges make as plausible an attack upon Jonson as they do upon Horace; but I want to focus here upon Jonson/Horace as a ‘translator’. ‘Translating’ recurs as a term of attack at IV.., and the final indictment in Act V, by which both Demetrius and Crispinus are condemned, again refers to this accusation (‘fi lching by translation’, V..–). The centrality of ‘translation’ both to the attack upon Horace and to Virgil’s vindication of him highlights the importance of the term to the play as a whole: by the closing scenes ‘translation’ has been firmly defined not as plagiary but as art – and one at which Horace/Jonson most especially excels. Loewenstein notes perceptively that Virgil’s peculiar phrase, ‘translating men’ ‘not only keeps alive the ambiguity of “translation,” retaining inter-linguistic translation as a kind of leading case for a whole range of imitative practices, but … also specifies the object of imitation as the emulable poets themselves’. ‘Translation’ in the play applies, too, to the surprising and multiple correspondences between characters (Ovid, Marlowe and Aeneas; Julia and Dido; even, as we shall see, Ovid
The title of the play as it appears in the first edition – Poetaster or The Arraignment – invites us to read this scene as climactic. The alternative heading, The Arraignment, is also the title cited by Envy in the Induction (line ). Some years later, Drummond records in his Conversations: ‘his inventions are smooth and easie, but above all he excelleth in a translation’ (Conversations with William Drummond, –). The Virgil of Poetaster, speaking of Horace, anticipates this assessment of Jonson’s own poetic strengths. ‘Plagiarism’ is also a term under contention in the play. The final indictment refers to both Crispinus and Demetrius as a ‘plagiary’ (V..–), presumably a reference to their apparent ‘plagiarism’ of Horace (IV..–). Loewenstein, Possessive Authorship, pp. –.
Poetaster: a translated play
and Caesar himself) and the pervasive presence of appropriation in all its forms. At IV..– Demetrius frames his grudge against Horace in terms which are very close to those of the final scene, and curiously paradoxical: ‘Ay, and tickle him i’ faith for his arrogancy and his impudence in commending his own things, and for his translating. I can trace him i’ faith.’ Horace’s ‘translating’ is apparently so obvious that he can be ‘traced’ – tracked or scented out, as in hunting – with ease. But he is also guilty of commending his ‘own things’: poems, presumably, which despite their ‘translation’ are his own. If we read Horace as Jonson himself, then Demetrius’ critique is in fact rather accurate: large sections of the play are made up from fragments of another author’s work, whether strictly translated (that is, between languages) or directly ‘carried across’ from one author to another, as in the quotations and misquotations from contemporary dramatists that litter the play. But Jonson also returns time and again to the creative utilisation of Jonson/Horace’s ‘own things’ – that is, the Satires themselves. The play makes memorable use of passages of Ovid and Virgil read aloud – and, on both occasions, rudely interrupted; and these passages are, as every commentator concedes, extremely literal renderings of their Latin models. But that ‘literal’ quality (to which I shall return) only serves to emphasise, by their very recognisability, that they are translations. Nor are these the only examples: the first three scenes of the third act of Poetaster derive both plot and (more loosely; but still quite closely) their dialogue from the ninth poem of Horace’s first book of Satires, and the fifth scene of this act is (another) very ‘literal’ translation of Horace’s programmatic defence of his genre in Satires II.. Herford and Simpson also note that Crispinus’ song at II..– is loosely based upon Martial .. Ovid’s burlesque farewell scene draws upon (the historical) Ovid’s own Tristia as well as echoing Romeo and Juliet. Many of the details of the divine banquet of IV. are drawn from no less a source than the first book of the Iliad. The Ovidian passage is, moreover, something akin to the ‘filching’ of a ‘translation’: it varies only slightly from Marlowe’s version of
A similar charge is levelled against Crites (Cynthia’s Revels III..–). Poetaster I..– (Ovid, Amores I.) and V..– (Virgil, Aeneid IV.–). Th is scene probably postdates the production of the play and may never have been performed. See H&S, vol. , p. ; also T. Cain (ed.), Poetaster, p. . See T. Cain (ed.), Poetaster, p. . See H&S, vol. , pp. –, and discussion below.
Translation and authority in Poetaster
these lines in his edition of the Elegies – one form of ‘translation’ nested within another. Moving from interlingual ‘translation’ or imitation to the ‘carrying across’ of literary material, the second half of Poetaster III. is a patchwork of borrowings from other contemporary plays, as the actors appear to offer a medley of their repertoire. Identified sources include Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, Chapman’s Blind Beggar of Alexandria and The Battle of Alcazar, although the precise references of several other passages are now obscure. The dress and demeanour of the actors would certainly have helped the audience to recognise the sources in question. Finally, and most memorably, in V. Horace ‘purges’ Crispinus and Demetrius of vocabulary derived from Marston and Dekker respectively (with traces of Shakespeare and Hall). Thus Demetrius himself is hardly exempt from the ‘translation’ of which he accuses Horace; his own literary style is in some sense ‘translated’. More significantly, his complaint in IV. (cited above) forms part of a network of ironies in the surrounding lines which turn upon the issues of translation and plagiary – and specifically ‘translation’ (in various forms) from Horace himself. Ironically, his own song at IV..– is ‘borrowed’ (as Tibullus notes, ) from Horace; its dedication to ‘Canidia’ is also an (inappropriate) adoption – Canidia is, as Gallus points out, ‘Horace his witch’ () in the Satires and Epodes. The irony of ‘borrowing’ continues: Tucca, appalled at the suggestion that Crispinus has used Horace in this way, suggests a competition between Crispinus and Horace: ‘He shall write with Horace for a talent, and let Maecenas and his whole College of Critics take his part’ (–). The idea comes, inevitably, from the (historical) Horace, in Satires I., where the poet reports that Crispinus himself makes just such a suggestion: ‘See, / Crispinus challenges me at long odds: “Take up your writing tablet, if you please, / and I’ll take mine: let’s fix a place, a time / and judges; let’s see which one of us can write more.”’ (Satires I..–). In his next intervention (–) Tucca attacks Horace as a ‘satirical rascal’ in a speech much of which is lifted directly from the Satires – Tucca is here playing the part of the satirist’s critic from Satires
The edition in question, published with John Davies’ Epigrams, was one of those proscribed and burnt following the ‘Bishops’ Ban’ of . For a fuller discussion, see T. Cain (ed.), Poetaster, p. , n. . III..– comes from Balthazar’s speech in Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy II..–, –, –, –; lines – are also drawn from that play (II..–). Tom Cain points out that Jonson slightly misquotes as well as reorders the lines. Lines III..– are from Chapman’s Blind Beggar of Alexandria; III..– come from The Battle of Alcazar II..–. Cain notes lines – and – as other instances of allusions to plays which cannot now be traced.
Poetaster: a translated play
I..–, a critic in this case who uses Horace’s own portrait of a critic, and indeed his own words, to attack Horace for, among other things, copying others. Ironically, the only moment at which the characters themselves identify a song as plagiarism (‘Why! The ditty’s all borrowed! ’Tis Horace’s; hang him, plagiary!’, IV..–) refers to perhaps the only lyric passage in the play that appears to have no direct model: Crispinus has botched even his attempt to take part in the trend for translating. Cain marks Tucca’s imitation of Satires I. as extending from lines (‘fly him; he carries hay in his horn’) to (‘not a bawd or a boy that comes from the bake-house but shall point at him’) of Poetaster IV.: . Alas sir, Horace! He is a mere sponge, nothing but humours and observation; he goes up and down sucking from every society, and when he comes home squeezes himself dry again. I know him, I. . Thou sayest true, my poor poetical Fury, he will pen all he knows. A sharp, thorny-toothed satirical rascal, fly him; he carries hay in his horn. He will sooner lose his best friend than his least jest. What he once drops upon paper against a man lives eternally to upbraid him in the mouth of every slave tankard-bearer or water-man; not a bawd or a boy that comes from the bake-house but shall point at him. ’Tis all dog and scorpion: he carries poison in his teeth and a sting in his tail. Fough! Body of Jove! I’ll have the slave whipped one of these days for his satires and his humours, by one cashiered clerk or another. (IV..–)
In fact, Horace’s carping critic of the Satires claims not that every slaveboy or old woman (‘et pueros et anus’, ) will ‘point at’ the poet, but rather that the poet longs for them all to know of his work: that is, his attacks upon others. The sense of that clause is translated by Tucca’s previous remark: ‘What he once drops upon paper against a man lives eternally to upbraid him in the mouth of every slave tankard-bearer or water-man’ (–). Tucca has in fact conflated Satires I..– with another passage of Horace of very different tenor. At Odes IV..–, at the height of his fame, Horace addresses Melpomene: ‘totum muneris hoc tui est, / quod monstror digito praetereuntium / Romanae fidicen lyrae’ (‘It is entirely by your grace / that I am pointed out by passers-by / as Rome’s lyric poet’).
Tudeau-Clayton claims this to be the first instance of the term ‘plagiary’ in English ( Jonson, Shakespeare and Early Modern Virgil , p. ), but Burrow corrects her in his review of her book (Colin Burrow, review of Margaret Tudeau-Clayton, Jonson, Shakespeare and Early Modern Virgil , Translation and Literature, (), –).
Translation and authority in Poetaster
This last is a declaration not of the poet’s unpopularity, but rather of the opposite. Tucca’s confused conflation of Horace’s own words writes into the scene Horace’s eventual lyric supremacy. In fact, the extent of the play’s dependence upon Horace’s ‘own things’ is more substantial than has been noted. The scene mentioned above is embedded in the developing plot by a series of references to the Satires which pervades Poetaster, and which reaches beyond the obvious, close and extended versions of Satires I. and II.. It is this sustained engagement to which I now turn. P OE TA ST E R
S AT I R E S
In Poetaster IV., as we have seen, Tucca is cast as an anonymous critic from Horace’s own fourth satire, one instance of a consistent pattern that identifies the ‘poetasters’ of the play with objects of derision or criticism in the Satires. Similarly, Hermogenes Tigellius derives his name from Horace, and the running joke of II. – that Hermogenes refuses to sing when asked, but once begun, refuses to stop – is a dramatisation of the opening lines of Satires I., in which Tigellius is named (lines –) as an example of this tendency: Omnibus hoc vitium est cantoribus, inter amicos ut numquam inducant animum cantare rogati, iniussi nunquam desistant. Sardus habebat ille Tigellius hoc. (Satires I..–)
Singers all share this vice. Among friends, when they’re asked to sing, they never agree. When no one suggests it, they won’t stop. That Sardinian, Tigellius, he was like that.
Accordingly Hermogenes repeatedly refuses to sing between lines and of Poetaster II. (‘’Cannot sing’ (, and ); ‘Thank you Madam, but ’will not sing’ ()), and Tibullus articulates Horace’s point: ‘Tut, the only way to win him, is to abstain from entreating him’ (–). But once goaded into it by Crispinus he refuses to stop: ‘You shall hear me sing another; now will I begin’ (); ‘Why ’tis but a short air, ’twill be done presently, pray’ stay; strike music’ (–). Just in case we have missed the allusion, Julia reiterates the point, translating the first line of the Latin
Hermogenes is named at Satires I.. (identified as a ‘cantor’), I.. and I..; Tigellius at Satires I.., I.. and I... The names are brought together at I.. and I... Classical editors distinguish between the (apparently already dead) Tigellius of Satires I. and I. and the man named in I., I. and I., but if Jonson was aware of a possible distinction he collapsed them in creating the cast of Poetaster.
Poetaster and the Satires of Horace
cited above: ‘’Tis the common disease of all your musicians that they know no mean to be entreated, either to begin or end’ (–). Crispinus, too, has his roots in Horace. Jonson has taken the name (and perhaps the suggestive ‘ineptus’, meaning ‘foolish’ or ‘unskilled’, with which it is associated in the Latin text) and conflated him with the unnamed ‘pest’ of Satires I., who also claims to be a poet. This conflation is foreshadowed, for the alert reader, in the second act. Hermogenes’ ungenerous response to Crispinus’ poetic performance is to remark: ‘Sir, all this doth not yet make me envy you, for I know I sing better then you’ (II..–). At line of Satires I., the unnamed ‘pest’ claims: ‘What I sing, even Hermogenes might envy.’ The remark characterises the pervasive envy of the circles in which Hermogenes and Crispinus move (in contrast to Horace and Virgil’s generous mutual praise), but it also affirms the connection between Horace’s ‘pest’ and the Crispinus of Poetaster. Establishing this connection early in the play adds to the irony at the beginning of Act III, scene , when Crispinus, newly decided to become a poet, catches sight of Horace with the words: . [Aside] ’Slid, yonder’s Horace! They say he’s an excellent poet. Maecenas loves him. I’ll fall into his acquaintance if I can; I think he be composing as he goes i’ the street. Ha! Tis a good humour, and he be: I’ll compose too. (III..–)
Scripted by the Satires, Crispinus is, as it were, already speaking from inside Horace’s own poem: he is himself the composition he hears ‘Horace’ singing. A similar extended engagement with the Satires occurs in V. – the scene, with which we began, which (appropriately enough) includes Caesar’s defence of Horace’s ‘translating men’. Lines –, in which Horace is generously quick to forgive Demetrius, are a version of Satires I..–, in which the poet name-drops a string of Roman worthies, as well as ‘several others, learned types and friends / whom I carefully pass over’ (–). The Latin passage is one of the funnier examples of Horace puncturing his own self-importance. Jonson’s version runs as follows: . If this be all, faith I forgive thee freely. Envy me still, so long as Virgil loves me, Gallus, Tibullus, and the best-best Caesar;
The name, characterised as ‘ineptus’, appears in the poem in question (Satires I..–) and recurs several times in Satires I (I.., I..). Compare V..–: ‘While these, with many more, / Whose names I wisely slip.’
Translation and authority in Poetaster My dear Maecenas. While these, with many more, Whose names I wisely slip, shall think me worthy Their honoured and adored society, And read and love, prove and applaud my poems, I would not wish but such as you should spite them.
(V..–)
Jonson has rewritten Horace’s cast of friends to include Gallus, Tibullus and, ‘the best-best Caesar’ (). Jonson’s abbreviated introduction (‘Envy me still’, ) replaces the list in Horace’s poem of the unworthy to whom the poet claims to be immune (Satires I..–). That list includes a cast of names (Demetrius, Hermogenes, Tigellius) familiar from Poetaster : men moveat cimex Pantilius, aut cruciet quod vellicet absentem Demetrius, aut quod ineptus Fannius Hermogenis laedat conviva Tigelli? (Satires I..–)
Is that louse Pantilius going to bother me? or will Demetrius torment me, because he gets at me when I’m not there? or because foolish Fannius, Hermogenes Tigellius’ sponging guest, attacks me?
The significance of this scene is reinforced by Demetrius’ admission, immediately beforehand, that it was Horace’s social as well as poetic superiority that roused his envy: . In troth, no great cause [for maligning Horace], not I, I must confess, but that he kept better company for the most part than I, and that better men loved him than loved me, and that his writings thrived better then mine and were better liked and graced. Nothing else. (V..–)
The correspondences between the two ‘casts’ extend beyond mere names. In Horace Satires I., the poet describes all the kinds of men who, prey to a range of vices and hence vulnerable to satiric attack, ‘fear verses, hate poets’ (Satires I..). It is in this passage, too, that Albius is mentioned by name (). The vices listed in Satires I. include: avarice (), wretched ambition (), lust for both married women and boys (),
In Horace, it is Fuscus who is ‘optimus’ at line ; Virgil is so termed at Satires I..–. Th is line immediately precedes the imaginary critic’s attack, lines –, a version of which Tucca repeats at IV..–. Albius is mentioned in Horace for his greed for bronze collecting (Satires I..) – note his admiration of ‘great gilt andirons’ at Poetaster II... Both of Demetrius Fannius’ names are also derived from the Satires (I.., I.., I..–), where he is associated with Hermogenes Tigellius. Tom Cain notes the textual origin of these names, although he does not discuss further Jonson’s recreation of the milieu suggested by Horace.
Poetaster and the Satires of Horace
infatuation with silver and bronze () and relentless preoccupation with business (–). It is noticeable that the villains of the play between them demonstrate all of these faults: Tucca is preoccupied with money owed to him (for example at I..–), Albius with enhancing his social standing (throughout II.), and Albius’ undiscerning greed for gain is accentuated with an allusion to Juvenal (II..–; Juvenal, Satires .–). Crispinus takes Tucca to meet Chloe, a married woman (III..–) and Tucca, speaking in the presence of Chloe’s husband, uses mythological references to imply either her adultery or rape: ‘Which of these is thy wedlock, Menelaus [he is addressing Albius], thy Helen, thy Lucrece, that we may do her honour, mad boy?’ (IV..–). Chloe herself desires Crispinus: at IV..– she checks that Mercury (the part played by Crispinus) ‘has to do’ with her own character, Venus. Tucca at III..– presumes that Histrio will prostitute the child actors (‘You’ll sell ’em for engles, you’). Even Ovid, acting Jupiter, refers to a child as Ganymede (IV..) and flirts with Chloe (as Venus) in front of his wife (IV..–). The final poem of Horace’s first book of satires ends by turning from a discussion of poetic style to a delineation of possible readers into two groups. Gallus and Tibullus move in the course of Jonson’s play from the dubious margins of Ovid’s circle – which Crispinus, Hermogenes, Albius and Tucca were allowed to enter in the banquet scene – to Horace’s in Act V (and, as it were, Satires I.). In the course of Poetaster, a play plotted and structured by the Satires, we discover who are the poets and who the poetasters, but also the extent to which this aesthetic failure is associated with ethical vice. We are left in no doubt that the work as a whole – rather than just ‘Horace’ himself – is Horatian, and this impression is confirmed when we notice that Virgil has already in Poetaster V. spoken ‘Horace’s lines’: . Before you go together, worthy Romans, We are to tender our opinion, And give you those instructions that may add Unto your even judgement in the cause, Which thus we do commence: first you must know That where there is a true and perfect merit There can be no dejection; and the scorn Of humble baseness oftentimes so works In a high soul upon the grosser spirit, That to his blearèd and offended sense
See also Cain’s note on this passage. ‘Engles’ are young male prostitutes.
Translation and authority in Poetaster There seems a hideous fault blazed in the object, When only the disease is in his eyes. Here-hence it comes our Horace now stands taxed Of impudence, self-love and arrogance By these who share no merit in themselves, And therefore think his portion is as small. For they from their own guilt assure their souls If they should confidently praise their works, In them it would appear inflation; Which in a full and well-digested man Cannot receive that foul abusive name, But the fair title of erection. And for his true use of translating men, It still hath been a work of as much palm In clearest judgements, as t’ invent or make.
(V..–)
Although not exactly equivalent, lines – are a version of Satires I..– on the double standard friends employ in assessing others’ faults as opposed to their own: ‘Since you scrutinise your own sins through bleared eyes, covered in ointment, / Why in examining friends’ faults are you as keen-eyed / As an eagle or an Epidaurian snake?’ Being ‘blear-eyed’ (‘lippus’) is associated specifically with Crispinus at the close of the first satire (Satires I..–). Virgil, in his defence of Horace, speaks in Horace’s words. The metaphor of the bleared eyes, the imperfect vision (both moral and aesthetic) of Horace’s critics, is given as an explanation of why Horace comes to be so unfairly charged; but it is also, in Virgil’s mouth, an instance of the tendency to translate others’ words for which Horace is reproached by those same critics (‘And for his true use of translating men’, ). That same tendency, Virgil claims, is just as worthy of adulation as ‘t’ invent, or make’ if viewed with ‘clearest judgements’ (, italics mine) – an appropriate echo of the visual metaphor. Virgil’s endorsement is an important moment of justification (much more significant, as we shall see, than Caesar’s approval); but it is also, we are meant to notice, scripted by Horace himself. I shall return to further examples of this Horatian ‘scripting’, even of Virgil, in the latter part of this chapter. The cumulative force of translation in the play is not, however, limited to Jonson’s insistent self-fashioning as Horace, the repeated tumbling of the other characters into unwitting Horatianism, mouthing Horace’s words even as they attempt to decry Horace for his readiness to mouth the words of others. Jonson’s various modes of translation in Poetaster also
Horace, Satires II. and Caesar’s ‘attentive ear’
destabilise the figure of Caesar, and the apparently ‘ideal’ relationship of shared and mutually assured authority between Caesar and the poets at the end of the play – a relationship which has been received largely at face value by critics. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton, in the most extended attempt to link the translation practice of the play with its depiction of the relationship between poetry and power in the (nascent) imperial court, compares the scene in which Virgil reads from his Aeneid to Shakespearian translation scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She claims that while the Shakespearian scenes are ‘expanding the sense of the English tongue … in contrast, Jonson’s scene of translation in Poetaster projects (in the sense of working for as well as imagining/seeing) the naturalization of a bounded, single, stable, and transcendent authorial identity as well as a stable, “purified”, and bounded vernacular – a vernacular “owned” by a socio-political elite (Virgil’s stage audience) and regulated by the linguistic practices of the poet/translator at its centre’. There is certainly something impressively controlling and pointed about the wealth of importing going on in this play, the confidence involved in staging oneself not only as Horace, but a version of Horace who gets everyone else’s lines too. But in the context of the insistent appropriation of others’ work, in so many different forms throughout the play, combined with the centrality of ‘translation’ and ‘filching’ to the charge levelled against the character Horace, this appropriation hardly seems to be ‘stable’ or ‘silent’. The self-conscious exuberance of this varied ‘translating’ challenges Tudeau-Clayton’s sense that the play presents a ‘naturalization’ of a controlled authorial persona, in which the act of translation itself has become somehow ‘transparent’. Not only is translation in the play highly self-conscious, it is also repeatedly directed towards the destabilisation of Caesar’s authority in the final scenes. It is this aspect to which I now turn. ,
S AT I R E S
. ’ ‘ ’
The most extended scene of literal, interlingual translation which is ‘internal’ to the play – that is, not presented dramatically as translation, unlike the passages of Virgil and Ovid read aloud – is undoubtedly
Tudeau-Clayton, ‘Scenes of Translation’, p. . ‘Where Jonson silently suppresses the mediation of translator and actor, Shakespeare selfconsciously fore-grounds them’ (Tudeau-Clayton, ‘Scenes of Translation’, ).
Translation and authority in Poetaster
Poetaster Act III, scene five, the dramatisation of Horace, Satires II.. Although often remarked upon, it has generally been condemned dramatically. But this strikingly close translation, in a play riven with translation and adaption, is very far from being ‘transparent’. Several critics have noted the expansion of line , where Jonson glosses the Latin ‘scribam’ (‘I shall write’, Satires II..) as ‘I will write satires still, in spite of fear’; but this is in fact just one of a collection of alterations or expansions of the Latin text which here, as so often, serves to intensify in Jonson’s version the threat in Trebatius’ words. Satires II. is a programmatic poem that sets out many of the themes to unfold in Horace’s second book of satires. Its theme of the conflict between the ‘laws’ invoked by Trebatius, the establishment lawyer, and the poetic ‘laws’ cited by Horace reflects the legal and poetic themes of Poetaster. Frances Muecke describes how Horace’s poem ‘dramatises the independence of literature and the law as ‘genres’ or ‘verbal systems’. In Poetaster, Jonson stages a fantasy of the poet’s attainment of legal power. Satires II. is also, and significantly, a key text for Horace’s (and, by adoption, Jonson’s) recusatio, and Jonson’s version does not tone down this aspect of the poem; if anything, it is heightened. In fact, Cain reads the translations of Virgilian epic and Ovidian elegy incorporated in the play as a form of (Horatian) recusatio. Although he does not go on to follow up this perceptive remark, and nor does he relate this ‘large-scale’ recusatio to the inclusion of III. itself, his comment points the way to much of what I hope to draw out. The conventional recusatio of Satires II. is set up in lines – by Trebatius’ suggestion: ‘aude / Caesaris invicti res dicere, multa laborum / praemia laturus’ (‘Dare / to tell the deeds of unconquered Caesar;
‘As a contribution to literature, as an excursus on the theory of satire, as an exercise in translation, the scene possesses distinct interest. But coming as part of the dramatic continuum of Poetaster it forms a most ill-fitting and unwelcome intrusion’ (Jonas A. Barish, ‘Jonson and the Loathèd Stage’, in William Blissett, Julian Patrick and R. W. van Fossen (eds.), A Celebration of Ben Jonson: Papers Presented at the University of Toronto in October (University of Toronto Press, ), pp. – (p. )). Frances Muecke (ed.), Horace: Satires II (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, ), p. . On the recusatio of lines – see Muecke, Satires II, pp. –. Muecke points out that this early example of an Augustan recusatio incorporates all the stock features of the topos (p. ). Th is trope of self-deprecating refusal lies at the heart of the delicate negotiations between poet and patron in Augustan verse. ‘Jonson offers an example of Virgilian epic in Poetaster, as he does an Ovidian love scene: in both cases, though, he is continuing to imitate Horace, who developed the recusatio, the poem which in refusing to adopt a certain style actually exemplifies that style, as a way of coming to terms with the limitations he imposed on his own poetic range’ (T. Cain (ed.), Poetaster, p. ). Cain understates the political significance of the recusatio in Augustan literature.
Horace, Satires II. and Caesar’s ‘attentive ear’
you’ll carry off / many prizes for your labours’). Lines – of Jonson’s version – Horace’s reply and the ensuing exchange – are at several points substantially expanded versions of the Latin text, although critics have not remarked upon this. Here Jonson translates ten lines of Latin hexameter in twenty lines of English verse. That portion of the scene runs as follows: [ .] Or, if such love of writing ravish thee, Then dare to sing unconquered Caesar’s deeds, Who cheers such actions with abundant meeds. . That, father, I desire; but when I try I feel defects in every faculty; Nor is’t a labour fit for every pen To paint the horrid troops of armèd men, The lances burst in Gallia’s slaughtered forces, Or wounded Parthians tumbled from their horses: Great Caesar’s wars cannot be fought with words. . Yet what his virtue in his peace affords, His fortitude and justice, thou canst show, As wise Lucilius honoured Scipio. . Of that my powers shall suffer no neglect, When such slight labours may aspire respect; But if I watch not a most chosen time, The humble words of Flaccus cannot climb Th’ attentive ear of Caesar. Nor must I With less observance shun gross flattery, For he, reposèd safe in his own merit, Spurns back the glozes of a fawning spirit.
(III..–)
[ ] aut si tantus amor scribendi te rapit, aude Caesaris invicti res dicere, multa laborum praemia laturus. : cupidum, pater optime, vires deficiunt: neque enim quivis horrentia pilis agmina nec fracta pereuntis cuspide Gallos aut labentis equo describat vulnera Parthi. : attamen et iustum poteras et scribere fortem, Scipiadam ut sapiens Lucilius. : haud mihi deero, cum res ipsa feret: nisi dextro tempore, Flacci verba per attentam non ibunt Caesaris aurem, cui male si palpere recalcitrat undique tutus.
(Satires II..–)
In quotations from Satires II. I have added character names to the text in the interests of clarity.
Translation and authority in Poetaster
The first of these additions comes at line of the English text. After the conventional brief demonstration of the epic skill the poet claims not to possess, Jonson’s Horace adds: ‘Great Caesar’s wars cannot be fought with words.’ The line bears no relation to any part of the Latin text. Moreover, it adds a surprising edge to the standard recusatio-formula, which depends upon claiming, rather, that Caesar’s wars cannot be fought with my words (although actually, it is implied, I could if I wanted to). Jonson here is typically deft and sure-footed in his negotiation of the classical trope, but cannot resist going one (blunter) stage further. In the weakest sense, the additional line facilely claims that words cannot fight a war for us. But there remains, beneath the surface, the suggestion of another meaning: that words – poetry – cannot be used to do this specific thing; that is, fight Caesar’s wars: write imperial epic. The sense of confrontation between the poet’s literary power and the emperor’s demands is heightened by the tendency of Jonson’s translation to limit the dissonance between legal and literary vocabulary which is a feature of the Latin poem. Conversely, it writes into the text an insistence on the poet’s power and authority more pointed than the Latin original. In the opening lines of the scene, the Latin term ‘legem’ has an ambiguous force, oscillating between legal and aesthetic ‘law’: Sunt quibus in satira videar nimis acer et ultra legem tendere opus; sine nervis altera quidquid composui pars esse putat, similisque meorum mille die versus deduci posse. Trebati, quid faciam praescribe. (Satires II..–)
[:] There are some who think that I am too savage in my satire and strain the work beyond lawful limits. The other party hold that everything I’ve composed is cowardly, lacks nerve, and that verses similar to mine could be churned out at a thousand a day. Trebatius, what am I to do? Give me your professional advice. . There are, to whom I seem excessive sour, And past a satire’s law t’ extend my power: Others that think whatever I have writ Wants pith and matter to eternise it, And that they could in one day’s light disclose A thousand verses such as I compose. (III..–)
The ambiguity of ‘legem’ is lost in Jonson’s version, in which the meaning is more clearly literary: ‘And past a satire’s law t’ extend my power’ (). On the
Horace, Satires II. and Caesar’s ‘attentive ear’
other hand, his translation of ‘opus’ (the standard word for a literary work) as ‘power’ suggests that the poet has failed to limit his ‘power’ as is proper in a lowly genre. The following two lines (–) present the opposite literary vice – poetry that lacks nerve and ambition. Jonson translates that latter weakness as poetry which fails to ‘eternise’ itself. There is no term corresponding to ‘eternise’ in the Latin text. Just as in the original, Jonson’s Horace is incapable of winning the argument – because either raising or lowering his tone will be criticised – but the terms in which his ‘not winning’ are framed have been crucially altered. Rather than a quibble between literary and legal ‘law’, the reader is encouraged to think in terms of the poet’s capacity (‘power’) to immortalise, and his proper deployment of that potential. Something rather similar is in operation at the end of the scene. The scale of Jonson’s expansion of the Latin is greater here than at any other point in the poem: the last four lines of Horace’s poem become ten (–). The expansion has accordingly been noted by various commentators and several interpretations have been attributed to it. As well as being expanded, the momentum of the final lines is slightly altered in the English version: the suggestion of complete pardon is transferred from the poet and onto the lawyer Trebatius, increasing its authority. In Horace’s poem, the speaker ‘Horace’ suggests two possible and distinct ways out, after conceding that the author of ‘mala … carmina’ (‘wicked verses’, ) would be rightfully persecuted: : si mala condiderit in quem quis carmina, ius est iudiciumque. : esto, si quis mala; sed bona si quis iudice condiderit laudatus Caesare? si quis opprobriis dignum latraverit, integer ipse? : solventur risu tabulae, tu missus abibis. (Satires II..–)
: If a man writes bad [of poor quality; or libellous] verses against another, he is liable to law and prosecution. : Certainly, if they’re bad verses; but what if he’s made good ones, and been praised for them in Caesar’s judgement? If he’s barked at someone who’s deserving of blame, while he himself is innocent? : Then the case will be dismissed with a laugh, and you’ ll get away with it and be sent on your way.
Tom Cain notes the expansion and remarks that it emphasises ‘the probity and privilege of the Horatian satirist’ ((ed.), Poetaster, p. ). Burrow reads it as part of a wider pattern demonstrating that ‘Jonson wants to tap the security offered by Horace and Horatian satire, but his imitation is overshadowed by unease’ (‘Roman Satire in the Sixteenth Century’, p. ). I explore an aspect of this ‘unease’ below.
Translation and authority in Poetaster
Horace’s first suggestion is that he might rather be a good poet and (crucially) be praised as such by Caesar (–); secondarily, and separately, he might indeed ‘bark’ (‘latraverit’) – that is, indulge in the harsh criticism appropriate to a satirist – but might do so justly at one deserving reproof, when he himself is free from blame (‘integer ipse’, ). Jonson’s version transfers the detail of ‘opprobriis dignum’ (‘deserving of reproach’, ) to Trebatius’ speech, but essentially has Trebatius reiterate and affirm what Horace has already suggested: [ .] There’s justice, and great action may be sued ’Gainst such as wrong men’s fames with verses lewd. . Ay, with lewd verses, such as libels be, And aimed at persons of good quality. I reverence and adore that just decree; But if they shall be sharp yet modest rhymes, That spare men’s persons and but tax their crimes, Such shall in open court find current pass, Were Caesar judge, and with the maker’s grace. . Nay, I’ll add more: if thou thyself, being clear, Shalt tax in person a man fit to bear Shame and reproach, his suit shall quickly be Dissolved in laughter, and thou thence set free. [Exeunt]
(Poetaster, III..–)
In fact, throughout Horace’s speech (–) Jonson’s language interprets the Latin in a very particular way. The joke with which the Latin poem concludes turns upon the reading of ‘mala … carmina’ and ‘bona [carmina]’, and is once again – as in the opening lines – dependent upon the comical overlap between two professional vocabularies. A ‘malum carmen’ in this context is legal jargon for libel, whereas Horace’s term, by contrast, is an aesthetic judgement. Jonson’s version avoids translating ‘bona’ entirely, replacing it with the adaption of Martial noted above. He has elided too the changing force of Horace’s ‘Caesare’ (): a Caesar who acts as judge (‘iudice’, , suggesting a courtroom setting), but who is apparently judge of an author he has already praised (‘laudatus’, ), a rather unlikely legal scenario. In the Latin, ‘laudatus Caesare’ undoes in a single word the menace that Trebatius has not quite articulated: Horace can voice the threat (that the judge we mean, the one we fear, is actually
These lines also include an imported fragment translated from Martial. Horace’s phrase ‘sed bona’ () becomes ‘But if they shall be sharp yet modest rhymes, / Th at spare men’s persons and but tax their crimes’ (–), derived from Martial ..–. Th is is a favourite Jonsonian passage, and its relevance here is obvious.
Horace, Satires II. and Caesar’s ‘attentive ear’
Caesar (‘iudice … Caesare’)) only because it is neutralised even as it is voiced, by that assured and assuring ‘laudatus’. Jonson’s reading of this crucial line is perhaps the most enigmatic of the whole scene. In his re-division of the Latin material between Horace and Trebatius, the translation of this line becomes Horace’s final comment: ‘Such shall in open court find current pass, / Were Caesar judge, and with the maker’s grace’ (–). That adjectival ‘laudatus’, so carefully placed and reassuring in the Latin, has been transmuted into the strange phrase ‘and with the maker’s grace’ with which this Horace ends his speech. Both ‘maker’ and ‘grace’ are resonant words in Jonson’s private lexicon. On several occasions he plays upon the etymological origin of ‘poetry’ (‘poiesis’) in the Greek verb for ‘make’, and his use of the term ‘grace’ typically responds to the range of meaning incorporated in the Latin term ‘gratia’ (thanks, blessing and payment, with a further hint of its theological connotations). ‘Maker’ suggests the poet himself, but, especially in combination with the term ‘grace’, it carries too a religious overtone: in this version of the poem, the last word on the decision goes not to Caesar, but, depending on our reading, either to the poet himself, with the help of ‘grace’ (‘integer’, perhaps?) or even to the ultimate Maker, the only power greater even than Caesar’s. On one level, this shift in tone and emphasis away from the legalism of Horace’s satire serves a simple dramatic purpose: the legalistic word-play of the Latin version is less relevant to the narrative, while the double affirmation, by poet and lawyer alike, of the justice of deserved reproach is an appropriate preparation for the denouement of the play. The important distinction between Crispinus’ charges against Horace, and Horace and Virgil’s denunciation of Crispinus, is the moral status of the characters involved. Crispinus is envious; Horace and Virgil paradigmatically virtuous. The importance of this moral distinction is cast into greater relief by the unsettling similarity between the content of Crispinus’ envious accusations – that ‘Horace’ is guilty of translating – and the actual experience of the play as a work which is, as we have seen, charged with, and structured around, translated material. But the role played by this scene – and in particular by its divergence from its model – is not limited to this kind of structural and thematic endorsement. The other major locus of disjunction between Jonson’s text and Horace’s importantly centres around Caesar, and the poet’s relationship to him. At line of Satires II. Trebatius responds to Horace’s refusal to write military epic with a straight-faced suggestion that he could still praise Caesar’s virtues: ‘But [even if you can’t write effective military epic]
Translation and authority in Poetaster
you could write of [Caesar] himself, both just and courageous, as wise Lucilius wrote of Scipio’ (–). Jonson’s version expands the line to emphasise more clearly the distinction between the options; they have become specifically peace-time virtues in contrast to the martial themes of epic: ‘Yet what his virtue in his peace affords, / His fortitude and justice, thou canst show, / As wise Lucilius honoured Scipio’ (Poetaster III..–, italics mine). Horace’s reply to this suggestion is, in the Latin, a dextrous sidestep: ‘Indeed I shall not fail myself, / When the material is available’ (–). Apparently a form of courteous agreement, it is, however, not clear what ‘not failing oneself’ might amount to; nor indeed can we be sure that such material will ever present itself. Jonson’s Horace replies: ‘Of that my powers shall suffer no neglect, / When such slight labours may aspire respect’ (–). ‘Slight labours’ has no correspondence in the Latin. On the one hand, the poet celebrates the thought that such a pleasant and therefore un-arduous (‘slight’) task might be enough to gain him high favour. But there is more than a hint here that any attempt to write about Caesar’s peaceful virtue might find itself rather short of material. Caesar’s greatness at III.. (‘Great Caesar’s wars’) is moreover echoed ominously at line where, although not a complete interpolation, Jonson again expands upon the Latin. Satires II..– forms the climax of the satire: the point at which Horace declares most clearly that he will continue to write (–) and Trebatius makes the threat to the headstrong poet most explicit (–): [ :] dives, inops, Romae seu fors ita iusserit exsul, quisquis erit vitae scribam color. : o puer, ut sis vitalis metuo, et maiorum ne quis amicus frigore te feriat. (Satires II..–)
[ :] Whether rich, poor, at Rome or, if chance commands, as an exile – whatever the colour of my life shall be, I will write. : Child, I’m afraid that your life will be short, and that some friend of the powerful will strike you with a chill.
In the lines that follow, Trebatius’ threat is progressively obscured by Horace’s rehearsal of constructive satire, of which the powerful Scipio and Laelius actually approved, followed by Trebatius’ final amused concession, discussed above. Trebatius’ wording at this central point is carefully
Horace, Satires II. and Caesar’s ‘attentive ear’
vague: ‘maiorum ne quis amicus’ (‘some friend of the powerful’, ) and Jonson’s version is equally non-specific: ‘And that some great man’s friend will be thy death’ (III..). Nevertheless, the replacement of the plural (‘maiorum’ – a friend of those more important than you) with the singular ‘some great man’s friend’, and the echo of the earlier phrase ‘great Caesar’ adds a threatening edge: there is a suggestion that the ‘great man’ in question may be Caesar himself. Alan Sinfield, writing of Virgil’s defence of Horace in Act V, comments that that speech ‘effaces what actually makes malicious interpretations so crucial: the regime of state terror that depends upon a system of informers and arbitrary penalties’. The shadow of that threat – the non-specific ‘frigor’ the satiric poet risks at the hands of ‘some great man’s friend’ – is visible in Horace’s encounter with Trebatius in III.. Sinfield is right to point out that the same looming presence is discernible, too, in the terms of Horace’s response at Poetaster V..–: A just man cannot fear, thou foolish tribune, Not though the malice of traducing tongues, The open vastness of a tyrant’s ear, The senseless rigour of the wrested laws, Or the red eyes of strained authority, Should, in a point, meet all to take his life. His innocence is armour ’gainst all these.
But the link is more than just thematic. Connecting these sections is a powerful allusive association, traceable, too, elsewhere in the play. The lines cited above are identified by Herford and Simpson as alluding to Horace, Odes III..–, and the parallel structure (although not the details) of the two passages is clear enough. The mention of ‘traducing tongues’ (one thinks of Lupus) and of the ‘senseless rigour of the wrested laws’ (Trebatius comes to mind) are appropriate to the plot as it has so far unfolded. But the ‘open vastness of a tyrant’s ear’ is reminiscent, too, of Caesar’s ‘attentam … aurem’, his ‘pricked’ or ‘alert’ ear at Satires II... The combination of this image of Caesar’s expectant attention with examples of verbal dishonesty – whether malice or flattery – is one which recurs uncomfortably throughout the play.
Sinfield, ‘Perils of Cultural Production’, . Odes III..–: ‘Neither the passion of a populace clamouring for wicked deeds, nor the expression of a threatening tyrant, can shake a man who is just and tenacious of his purpose, whose resolve is firm – nor even the south wind, the stormy general of the restless Adriatic, nor the mighty hand of Jove the thunderer. If the world cracks and collapses, the ruins will fall down upon him unafraid.’
Translation and authority in Poetaster
In this regard, it is worth returning to Poetaster III., and to Jonson’s version of the Latin lines in question, which once again offer a substantial expansion upon the original: But if I watch not a most chosen time, The humble words of Flaccus cannot climb Th’ attentive ear of Caesar. Nor must I With less observance shun gross flattery, For he, reposèd safe in his own merit, Spurns back the glozes of a fawning spirit. (III..–)
nisi dextro tempore, Flacci verba per attentam non ibunt Caesaris aurem, cui male si palpere recalcitrat undique tutus. (Satires II..–)
Unless it’s the right moment, Flaccus’ words won’t reach Caesar’s pricked ear, and if you stroke him clumsily, he’ll kick out all around to keep himself safe [or: even though he’s already safe].
The simple ‘tutus’ of the Latin () has been expanded into: ‘reposèd safe in his own merit’ (). Both versions carry an ironic force, though the irony is working differently. The final word of line , Horace’s ‘tutus’ fatally undermines the already uncomfortably irreverent image of Caesar built up in the preceding line – a Caesar who must be properly ‘stroked’ (‘palpere’, ), since the wrong handling will cause him to ‘kick out all around’ (‘recalcitret undique’, ). The wary language of horse-breaking – and the implied necessity of flattery (‘stroking’) under the guise of careful handling – is surprising; but that final ‘tutus’ reveals Caesar’s swiftness to anger as paranoia: all the time he is perfectly ‘safe’. The ambiguous heart of the passage comes at lines – of the English, in which the double negatives and tortuous circumlocution leave Jonson’s meaning poised uncertainly between opposite extremes. ‘With less observance’ is an adverbial clause meant to be taken with ‘shun’: Jonson’s Horace is saying ‘I must not shun gross flattery with any less care than I give to waiting for the best time’, that is, I must be very careful to avoid gross flattery. But the sentence teeters upon the verge of saying: ‘I must not (‘nor must I’) be so careless as to shun gross flattery’ – that is, I must assiduously continue to flatter. With that hidden meaning present, if just out of sight,
The final position of the nominative adjective ‘tutus’ admits of either a proleptic reading (‘to keep himself safe’) or a concessive one (‘although he is safe’).
Horace, Satires II. and Caesar’s ‘attentive ear’
the flattery of ‘reposèd safe in his own merit’, and the explicit mention of the ‘fawning spirit’ in the final lines acquire an added ironic edge. A similar juxtaposition of the prince’s ‘safety’ and the receptivity of his ‘ear’ is found in Act IV. Maecenas caps Horace’s condemnation of Lupus with a pronouncement (pointed as gnomic in the folio text) which uneasily suggests that his own trust in Caesar’s judgement is not absolute – note the ‘I hope’ (): . Caesar doth know it [Horace’s condemnation of Lupus], wolf, and to his knowledge, He will, I hope, reward your base endeavours. Princes that will but hear, or give access To such officious spies, can ne’er be safe: They take in poison with an open ear, And, free from danger, become slaves to fear. (IV..–)
Maecenas makes clear that the ‘safety’ of the over-suspicious prince is no real security, and the acuity of his remark is revealed in the final engagement with this topos towards the end of the play. At the climactic moment of betrayal in Act V Caesar’s response to Lupus’ interruption similarly engages with this Latin passage: . What noise is there? Who’s that names Caesar? . A friend to Caesar. One that for Caesar’s good would speak with Caesar. . [To Gallus] Who is’t? Look, Cornelius. . [To Caesar] Asinius Lupus. . O, bid the turbulent informer hence. We have no vacant ear now to receive The unseasoned fruits of his officious tongue. . [To I Eques] You must avoid him there. . I conjure thee, as thou art Caesar, or respect’st thine own safety, or the safety of the state, Caesar, hear me, speak with me, Caesar; ’tis no common business I come about, but such as being neglected may concern the life of Caesar. . The life of Caesar? Let him enter. Virgil, keep thy seat. (V..–)
In the lines preceding this, Horace accuses Lupus of ‘pretending / To be the props and columns of his [Caesar’s] safety, / The guards unto his person and his peace’ (IV..–). The power of this accusation is enhanced by its allusion to several instances of the historical Horace’s tribute to Maecenas, as protector both of himself (Odes II..–, ‘columen’; Odes I.., ‘praesidium’) and, significantly, of Caesar (Epodes .–). The allusive resonance helps to reinforce the significance of Maecenas’ closing remarks.
Translation and authority in Poetaster
Tellingly, it is Lupus’ appeal to Caesar’s life and safety (‘thine own safety’, –) which makes Caesar change his mind (‘The life of Caesar? Let him enter’, ). For all his apparently enthralled attention to the description of the wicked ‘fama’ (rumour), in the reading of Virgil, Aeneid IV that immediately precedes this scene, Caesar is slow to recognise the personification of that monster when it intrudes into his own court. Caesar’s failure here is one of judgement, but it is also specifically (and ominously) a failure of that particular kind of combined aesthetic and moral discernment which would allow him to see the connection between the literature he admires and the political realities of the court. In this network of parallels, the play connects Caesar’s susceptibility to flattery – one kind of verbal deceit, hung upon Caesar’s ear at Satires II. – with an equally dangerous readiness to listen to malicious lies. Although Caesar does finally dismiss and condemn Lupus, and clear Horace, this pattern of doubts about the possible dangers of (epic) flattery as well as the base malice of the inept poetaster continue to speak throughout the final scenes. We can never quite trust Caesar, because he remains this Caesar, the Caesar of the ‘attentam … aurem’, the pricked ear, ready for all his safety to ‘kick out all around’ if not handled quite carefully enough. We have seen, then, the extent to which Poetaster is structured around ‘translation’ understood in its broadest sense: not only the most explicit passages taken from Ovid and Virgil, but rather a myriad details of plot, dialogue or song, as well as whole scenes, are defined by their relationship to other texts. Repeatedly, the most structurally significant texts – the ones from which the action takes its lead – are Horace’s Satires; as has been shown, the characters ‘participate in’, in some sense act out, the content of these poems throughout the play. Ironically, it is the character ‘Horace’ who is accused – and acquitted – of ‘translation’ which amounts to stealing. The overall impression of ‘Horace’ as guiding author is powerful; an author, moreover, authoritative enough to incorporate examples of genres outside his own (Virgil and his epic; Ovid’s elegy). The fact of this structural primacy, once its extent is realised, sets even the final scenes of Caesar’s (and the other poets’) endorsement of Virgil within an overarching Horatianism. But if our confidence in Caesar’s ability to distinguish between flattery and sincerity, malicious informing and real loyalty, is thereby impaired, the final scenes do still seem to express Caesar’s respect for, and excellent taste in, poetry and the power of the poet – especially the epic poet Virgil. Given Jonson’s consistent tendency to associate ethical goodness with aesthetic excellence or good taste, this too deserves further scrutiny.
The Aeneid and Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage ’
AENEID
’
DIDO, QUEEN OF C A RTH AGE
Helgerson remarks of Virgil in Poetaster that ‘[his] very perfection put him out of reach. He is in his way as distant from Horace, and thus from Jonson, as was Ovid.’ I want to put some pressure upon this assumption and consider the ways in which Virgil is in fact caught up in the structures, both textual and political, that pervade the play, overlaying his apparent ‘perfection’ with associations borrowed both (surprisingly) from the Ovid/Marlowe figure of Poetaster, and from Horace himself. Virgil’s much-anticipated entrance in Act V, together with his recitation from the fourth book of the Aeneid, is heralded by Caesar as climactic: here, at last, is true poetry; the moral and artistic version of the perfection Ovid claimed that Julia represented, but with the crucial distinction that the virtue of Virgil, and of his poetry, is in some sense real. This expectation weighs upon Virgil’s eventual appearance, and especially upon the passage of the Aeneid which Jonson has him recite – a close translation which in its position towards the end of the play echoes, and invites comparison with, Ovid’s recitation of Amores I. in the opening scene. The story of Dido and Aeneas’ doomed and destructive love, rendered disastrous by the interference of rumour, has obvious similarities to the story of Ovid and Julia. The divisive and dangerous role of ‘fama’ – who exaggerates the sin in reporting it to Iarbas – has equally evident relevance to this play in which Horace himself will shortly be denounced unfairly. Virgil pointedly breaks off with ‘this monster’ as Lupus bursts onto the stage, although Caesar, as noted above, fails to make the connection. The erotic threat to epic purpose as well as the associative link between the newly banished Ovid and Aeneas, the founder of Rome, make a tempting case for reading Jonson’s selection of this passage as another kind of buried recusatio within the broader Horatian framework: a refusal to write epic or fully condone it, even when dramatising Virgil.
Helgerson, Self-Crowned Laureates: Spenser, Jonson, Milton and the Literary System (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), p. . Note that within the play the choice of a passage is determined by a version of the sortes Virgilianae (V..–), a kind of prophetic game in which Virgil’s Latin text, opened at random after posing an important question, was understood to offer an answer. Th is invites us to view the passage chosen as significant to the action. The selection of a passage from Aeneid Book IV also accords with Donatus’ report that Virgil’s eventual agreement to show Caesar his work extended only to books II, IV and VI. See T. Cain (ed.), Poetaster, p. . As Watkins demonstrates, there was a strong Renaissance tradition of reading, or (re)writing, Dido as a generic threat (John Watkins, The Specter
Translation and authority in Poetaster
But this straightforward interpretation of the choice of passage to accord with a broader reading of recusatio in the play is problematised by the great popularity of the Dido books throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and their position at the heart of Renaissance debates about the meaning and role of poetry itself – in general, as Watkins outlines, a writer who believed that poetry’s prime purpose is not to edify would defend Dido (as Ovid did) or parody the passage. A moralised reading of the Aeneid, which viewed Book IV as central both poetically and didactically, was commonplace in Jonson’s own day. The folio edition of Virgil’s Works owned by Jonson introduces Book IV in just these terms: Of them all, this book is considered by everyone, even by the ancients, the most elegant … in it [Book IV] Virgil most greatly displayed his genius … and he did this, so that minds desirous and intent upon honesty might shrink from it [the content of the plot] with even greater care.
To this extent, then, Jonson’s deployment of the passage can be taken at face value, as an example of Virgil at his (widely acknowledged) best: most affecting, and therefore most effective, offering an excellent lesson in moral restraint and purpose – a perfect balance to Ovid’s demonstration of debased, albeit eloquent, sensuality. But as well as editions and commentaries, a further index of contemporary reception of the Dido story is its incorporation or development in original literature. In this respect, Marlowe’s play Dido, Queen of Carthage comes to mind, and doubly so when we remember that the topos of a misguided but irresistible love affair is constructed to echo the subplot concerning Ovid and Julia – Ovid who begins the play by reciting ‘his’ verse in a translation recognisably derived from Marlowe’s versions of the Amores. Ovid’s exuberant language in the scenes of parting from Julia is frequently Marlovian, and Tom Cain also characterises Ovid’s closing epigraph as ‘Marlovian/Chapmanesque’.
of Dido: Spenser and Virgilian Epic (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, ), pp. –). Watkins, Specter of Dido, p. . Jacob Pontanus (ed.), Symbolarum Libri XVII quibus P. Virgilii Maronis Bucolica, Georgica, Aeneis, ex probatissimis auctoribus declarantur, comparantur, illustrantur, vols. (Augsburg: Praetorius, ; facsimile repr. New York: Garland, ), columns –. Translation mine. Dido was published in quarto in . The title page mentions Thomas Nashe as well as Marlowe as author, but the play is now considered to be very largely, if not wholly, Marlowe’s work. Described by Loewenstein as ‘Marlowe’s pioneering attempt to find a popular theatrical idiom for neo-classical imitation’, it is an important precedent to Poetaster (Possessive Authorship, p. ). References are to Gill’s text (Roma Gill (ed.), The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe, vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), vol. I). T. Cain (ed.), Poetaster, p. .
The Aeneid and Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage
The divine banquet scene of Poetaster (IV.), in which Ovid, Julia, Gallus, Tibullus and the rest dress up as divinities resembles both in structure and tone the opening scene of Dido, Queen of Carthage. In Jonson’s version Ovid plays Jupiter; Julia is Juno; Gallus, Apollo; Cytheris, Pallas Athene; Tibullus, Bacchus; Plautia, Ceres; Albius, Vulcan; and Chloe, Venus. Finally, Tucca is offered the part of Mars and Crispinus that of Mercury. Dido, Queen of Carthage begins with a scene set in the heavenly court, during which Venus approaches Jupiter to request his protection for Aeneas against Juno’s determined opposition. But Jupiter, the king of heaven, is ‘discovered … dandling Ganymede upon his knee’ and he opens the play with the words: ‘Come, gentle Ganymede, and play with me. / I love thee well, say Juno what she will’ (I..–). As in Poetaster, the Olympians are imagined in terms of comically erotic jealousy and intrigue. Both plays were written for, and performed by, the children’s company at Blackfriars. Marlowe’s arresting divine ‘framework’ for his version of the Aeneid is ostensibly justified by Virgil’s passing allusion to the source of Juno’s hostility towards the Trojans (and especially Aeneas) in Jupiter’s habitual infidelity: ‘Deep in [Juno’s] mind there remained lodged / the judgement of Paris and the injustice of the insult to her beauty, / her hatred for that whole race [of Trojans] and the honours granted to snatched Ganymede’ (Aeneid I.–). Both versions of classical divinity are irreverent and anthropomorphic; both focus upon Jupiter’s infidelity and Juno’s jealousy, although in Marlowe’s version Juno is not on stage – her jealousy only reported – and Jupiter’s lasciviousness is aimed solely at the boy Ganymede. The ‘divine’ scenes in both plays share a common source in Iliad, Book XV. Irritated with his wife for her interference on the Greeks’ behalf at Troy, Zeus threatens Hera and reminds her of how he bound her and suspended her among the clouds. Marlowe’s Jupiter promises to punish Juno for striking Ganymede in much the same terms. In Jonson’s Poetaster, Ovid, playing Jupiter, also threatens Julia (as Juno/Hera) with violence (IV..–; –; –), but the specifically Homeric threat belongs to Julia, not Ovid, laced provocatively with the suggestion that poets (Homer, Ovid, Jonson himself) are fallen gods: [as Juno]. I will find fault with thee, King Cuckold-Maker! What, shall the king of gods turn the king of good fellows, and
For the impact of this fact upon the erotic content and agency of Marlowe’s play see Clare R. Kinney, ‘Epic Transgression and the Framing of Agency in Dido Queen of Carthage ’, Studies in English Literature, –, (), –. Compare Iliad XV.– and Dido I..–.
Translation and authority in Poetaster have no fellow in wickedness? This makes our poets, that know our profaneness, live as profane as we. By my godhead, Jupiter, I will join with all the other gods here, bind thee hand and foot, throw thee down into earth, and make a poor poet of thee, if thou abuse me thus.
(Poetaster IV..–)
This is not the only point of comparison between the two scenes. In Marlowe’s version the excess of Jupiter’s language, together with his doting attendance upon Ganymede with promised and immediate gifts, reflects and prefigures Dido’s erotic obsession with Aeneas in the body of the play. Ganymede makes an appearance in Jonson’s scene, too, and although Jupiter’s immediate interest is apparently in Venus (Chloe), it is made clear that Juno also suspects Ganymede: ‘Pyrgus [playing Ganymede]. Nay, today she [Juno] had me in inquisition too’ (Poetaster, IV..). The network of associations this sets up is provocative. In Dido, Jupiter and Ganymede prefigure Marlowe’s version of Dido and Aeneas; Jonson’s Jupiter and Juno are played (within the play) by Ovid and Julia, who are then connected, by Virgil’s recitation, to Dido and Aeneas. These correspondences are further tightened if we remember that in his second book of the Tristia, as part of an ongoing (and vain) attempt to persuade Augustus to mercy, Ovid cites the popularity of exactly this section of the Aeneid as evidence that even the loftiest poetry is at some level about love. The scenes of farewell between Ovid and Julia in Act IV are moreover reminiscent of Marlowe in their verbal excess and also allude, in Julia’s repeated returns, to Ovid’s leave-taking of his wife in Tristia III (as well as Romeo and Juliet). Perhaps most strikingly of all, the disrespectful banquet Jonson attributes to Ovid is a version of Augustus’ ‘dinner of the twelve gods’ which, as Cain remarks, ‘features prominently in Suetonius’ list of the emperor’s vices’. This reassignment of well-known historical material intensifies Ovid’s debauchery, perhaps, but in so doing reminds us of the ambiguities in Augustus’ own reputation. For all that Caesar sets up a pointed contrast between Ovid and Virgil, the correspondences continue to accumulate. The apparent contrast – but also the parallel – is marked out by Caesar’s use of the same term (‘abstract’) in his lyrical vision of perfect poetry (‘The most abstract and perfect’, Poetaster V..) as Ovid had used of Julia (‘The court’s the
Tristia II.–. The last two of these lines are quoted in the Latin commentary upon Book IV in the edition cited in note . Ovid makes the same point about the Iliad (Tristia II.–), among other works. T. Cain (ed.), Poetaster, p. . Suetonius, Divus Augustus .
The Aeneid and Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage
abstract of all Rome’s desert, / And my dear Julia th’ abstract of the court’, IV..–). In a phrase reminiscent of Ovid’s diction in that speech, Caesar in the next scene goes on to describe Virgil himself as ‘Rome’s honour’ (emphatically twice, V.. and ) and finally, more uncomfortably, identifies Virgil with himself: . See, here comes Virgil; we will rise and greet him. Welcome to Caesar, Virgil. Caesar and Virgil Shall differ but in sound; to Caesar, Virgil Of his expressed greatness shall be made A second surname, and to Virgil, Caesar. (V..–)
We can of course read this series of connections as evidence of Caesar’s virtuous adoption of the kind of language which Ovid, in his elegiac fervour, has abused. But there is a further set of correspondences between Caesar and Marlowe – already associated with Ovid by the translation of the first scene – which may add to our unease. In Poetaster V. Caesar is finally goaded – by Virgil’s decorous refusal of the proffered chair – to a passionate denial not only of custom but of heaven and even of fate, ‘fatum’, that ruling power of the Aeneid: ‘The course of heaven and fate itself in this [i.e. in raising Virgil over Caesar] / Will Caesar cross, much more all worldly custom’ (V..–). Horace is then quick to limit Caesar’s statement to ‘custom’ alone – ‘Custom in course of honour ever errs, / And they are best whom fortune least prefers’ (–) – and Caesar duly adopts Horace’s interpretation (–), but the boldness of the initial statement persists. Just for a moment, Caesar, who will not forgive Ovid for his misplaced passion or for his impersonation of the gods, sounds like Ovid himself (‘O mighty Ovid! What the sway of heaven / Could not retire, my breath hath turnèd back’, IV..–), but also like the Ovidian Marlowe’s Jupiter or Dido, as they promise their lovers the power to: ‘Controule proud Fate, and cut the thred of time’ (Dido I..). But the comparison is perhaps not as fleeting as all that. In Virgil’s humble but reluctant acquiescence to Caesar’s request (Poetaster V..–) we might hear an echo of Aeneas’ unwilling but gracious opening to Book II of the Aeneid: . And could great Caesar’s expectation Be satisfied with any other service I would not show them [his verses of the Aeneid ] (V..–)
Translation and authority in Poetaster
But within this already ‘Virgilian’ framework, the resemblances between this scene and Aeneas’ reception by Dido echo not so much (the historical) Virgil’s text, as Marlowe’s uncanonical rewriting of it. Despite substantial portions of direct translation, or close paraphrase, the complete effect of Marlowe’s work is very different from its Virgilian prototype. In particular, the balance of material (as opposed to emotional) power between Dido and Aeneas – as between the child Ganymede and Jupiter in the opening scene – is profoundly unequal. Where Virgil’s Aeneas is able to present Dido with a royal sceptre, crown and necklace, Marlowe’s Dido insists that Aeneas, impoverished as he is, should sit in her seat, leading to an almost comic wrangle about the propriety of her suggestion: : Sit in this chaire and banquet with a Queene, Aeneas is Aeneas, were he clad In weedes as bad as ever Irus ware. : This is no seate for one thats comfortles, May it please your grace to let Aeneas waite; For though my birth be great, my fortunes meane, Too meane to be companion to a Queene. : Thy fortune may be greater than thy birth, Sit downe Aeneas, sit in Didos place … : This place beseemes me not, O pardon me. : Ile have it so, Aeneas be content … : In all humilitie I thanke your grace.
(II..–)
In Poetaster Caesar’s insistence, as soon as Virgil’s arrival is announced, that a chair should be set for him at his right hand, ‘where ’tis fit, / Rome’s honour, and our own, should ever sit’ (V..–) leads to a very similar dispute which verges upon the absurd. In the next scene Caesar announces: ‘See then this chair, of purpose set for thee / To read thy poem in: refuse it not’ (V..–). Virgil articulates his unworthiness, with great self-consciousness, using the same categories – of birth and wealth – as does Marlowe’s Aeneas, although by these criteria he is even less deserving than the hero he has created: . It will be thought a thing ridiculous To present eyes, and to all future times A gross untruth that any poet, void
In a pointed reversal of Virgil’s account, Dido brings gifts to Aeneas, who is unable to reciprocate (compare Aeneid I.–); her wealth and paradoxical ‘kingliness’ accentuates Aeneas’ emasculation.
Whose Virgil? Virgil and Horace in the final scenes
Of birth or wealth or temporal dignity, Should with decorum transcend Caesar’s chair. (Poetaster V..–)
This version of Aeneas’ reception scene, in which Virgil is, appropriately enough, ‘playing’ Aeneas, casts Augustus as Dido, hardly a flattering comparison; but even less so when the Dido in question is not so much Virgil’s noble but suffering queen as Marlowe’s rapacious one – a Dido framed by and reflected in a lustful Jupiter in thrall to a boy. We should remember once again that both Jonson’s play and Marlowe’s were produced by the children’s company: a cast composed entirely of pre- or barely adolescent boys, Kinney’s ‘troupe of Ganymedes’. The association between Jonson and Marlowe’s scenes unsettles our reception of both Virgil and Augustus. Despite the eff usive tribute to him in Poetaster V., Virgil’s ‘distance’ from both Horace and from Ovid/Marlowe is not as complete as Helgerson claims. There is certainly a kind of blandness to Virgil in Poetaster, an absence of character, both dramatically and allusively: apart from the translated portion of Aeneid IV, I cannot trace any of Virgil’s lines to a source in the extant works of the historical Virgil. But Virgil’s speaking ‘voice’ in the play is actively blurred beyond this kind of ‘absence’. We have already seen how Virgil speaks ‘Horace’s’ lines in Act V, scene three, and just as the Virgil of V. seems to enter into a rather un-epic version of his own epic poem, so his artistic identity is again confused in the final scene. After Crispinus has vomited up all his curious vocabulary, Virgil prescribes for him a course of reading, a ‘strict and wholesome diet’ (Poetaster V..), consisting of Cato, Terence and (though only with the assistance of a tutor) Orpheus, Musaeus, Pindar, Hesiod, Callimachus, Theocritus and Homer. He follows this prescription with instructions on written style, designed to prevent Crispinus from lapsing back into artistic failure (V..–). This concise tutorial bears no relation to any of Virgil’s extant works, but it does resemble quite closely certain sections of Horace’s
Kinney, ‘Epic Transgression’, . ‘[Virgil] is in his way as distant from Horace, and thus from Jonson, as was Ovid.’ Helgerson, Self-Crowned Laureates, p. .
Translation and authority in Poetaster
advice to poets in the Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica. As well as several specific correspondences, the tone of advice from an elder poet to a more junior one is reminiscent of the epistles to Florus (Epistles I. and II.) and the Pisos (II., or Ars Poetica). Both Cato and Terence are mentioned by Horace at various points; and Jonson’s ‘old Cato’ (Poetaster V..) corresponds to ‘priscus’, the adjective by which he is twice described in Horace (Epistles II.. and Odes III..). Of the Greek names that Virgil invokes, four (Orpheus, Pindar, Callimachus and Homer) are mentioned by Horace in a literary critical context. More significantly, the rhetorical move which rejects Plautus and Ennius in favour of Greek texts (‘Shun Plautus and old Ennius’, V..) echoes the Ars Poetica, where Horace urges the study of Greek models (Ars Poetica –) and claims in the same passage that both Ennius (–) and Plautus (–) are overrated. It is not only Virgil’s advice on the literary canon that echoes Horace. The second half of his speech (–) is concerned with good literary style, and this too bears comparison with similar passages in the literary critical epistles. Virgil’s advice centres upon judicious language, advising Crispinus to consider his ‘matter’ before individual ‘words’. The advice is obviously relevant to Crispinus’ demonstrated fondness for recondite vocabulary. But at Epistles II.. Horace too advises against seeking words (‘verba’) without proper attention to the subject; similarly, towards the beginning of the Ars Poetica he stresses that a well-chosen topic will naturally bring ‘facundia’ (‘eloquence’) and ‘lucidus ordo’ (‘clear arrangement’) (–). The necessity of careful editing – ‘But let it pass, and do not think yourself / Much damnified if you do leave it out’ (V..–) – is another Horatian commonplace. In Epistles II. Horace claims that careful choice of words will allow the poet’s verse to flow ‘vehemens et liquidus’ (), a similar claim to Virgil’s assurance to Crispinus: ‘This fair abstinence / In time will render you more sound and clear’ (Poetaster V..–).
Jonson’s own translation of the Ars Poetica is discussed in Chapter , pp. –. Cato is also mentioned at Epistles I..– and Ars Poetica ; Terence at Satires I.. and Epistles II... Orpheus at Ars Poetica , Pindar at Epistles I.. (as well of course as many allusions in the Odes), Callimachus at Epistles II.. and Homer at Satires I... Plautus is similarly criticised at Epistles II..–; Ennius, mentioned at Epistles II.., heads the list of early Roman poets whom Horace considers often overestimated, and his failings are also mentioned at Satires I.. – a particularly resonant poem for Poetaster. Jonson’s translation of this passage is discussed in Chapter , pp. –. Examples are found at Ars Poetica – and – as well as Epistles II..– and –.
Caesar, Horace and poetic immortality
Thus Virgil, the acknowledged master-poet, whom Caesar associates so strongly with his own power, reminds us of a Marlovian version of his own Aeneas upon his entrance, and then, in the closing scene of the play, sets Crispinus on the road to redemption with literary advice derived not from his own work, but from Horace’s. , At the disruption of the mock-divine banquet, Caesar’s fury is in contrast to Horace and Maecenas’ appeals for mercy (‘O, good my lord, forgive: be like the gods’, IV..), and their tolerant response to the scene is confirmed by Horace’s description of ‘innocent mirth / And harmless pleasures, bred of noble wit’ (IV..–). Norbert Platz accounts for the discrepancy between this and the apparently ‘ideal’ Caesar of the final scenes by confronting the possibility of inconsistency directly: ‘Whereas in the earlier part of the play the Prince is the type of monarch whom Jonson as a poet actually had to cope with, at the end he becomes the ideal centre of a utopian realm, a kind of wishful projection into the future.’ But we have already seen how the imagery of the emperor’s ‘open ear’ places Caesar’s judgement in doubt throughout the play; and in the final act, despite the apparent clarity of the distinction between Ovid/ Marlowe’s sensuous abandon and the virtuous excellence of Caesar and Virgil, their interaction seems for a few minutes to be scripted by Marlowe himself. Nor is this the only doubtful moment in the final scenes. As late as V. Caesar makes exactly the error of judgement that we know from the Satires Maecenas did not make when he first met Horace. Seeking opinions of Virgil, Caesar asks Horace: ‘Horace, what sayest thou, that are the poorest, / And likeliest to envy or to detract?’ (Poetaster V..–). At Satires I..– Horace recalls of Maecenas: ‘I consider it a great achievement / that I pleased a man like you – a man who can tell the difference between the honourable and the base – / not because of an eminent father, but by the integrity of a man’s life and character.’ Yet Act V begins with the beautiful verse of the first scene, a veritable concord of praise – of poetry, from Augustus; of Augustus, from the poets. Whatever doubts we harbour elsewhere, here Caesar’s taste and judgement seem unimpeachable. But in a play so insistently in conversation with classical models, it is no surprise that the fluent poetry of
Platz, ‘Jonson’s Ars Poetica’, p. .
Translation and authority in Poetaster
this scene is also indebted to earlier texts; moreover, despite the great difference in tone between the mutual panegyric of V. and the satiric tenor of much of the rest of the play, several passages in this scene also have their origins in Horace, and in particular in the more mature Horace of the Odes. Caesar begins the scene with a grandiloquent description of Roman triumph: . We that have conquered still to save the conquered, And loved to make inflictions feared, not felt, Grieved to reprove, and joyful to reward, More proud of reconcilement than revenge, Resume into the late state of our love Worthy Cornelius Gallus and Tibullus. You both are knights; and you, Cornelius, A soldier of renown, and the first provost That ever let our Roman eagles fly On swarthy Egypt, quarried with her spoils.
(V..–)
Cain usefully keys Caesar’s opening lines to the final sentence of Anchises’ advice to Aeneas in the underworld in Aeneid VI: tu regere imperio populos, Romane memento (hae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem, parcere subiectis et debellare superbos. (Aeneid VI.–)
You, Roman, must remember to rule over the nations (for these will be your arts), to teach your ways when you enforce peace, to show mercy to the conquered and to crush the proud in war.
These lines bear an obvious relevance to the Augustan age of expanding empire in which Virgil wrote, and in the Carmen Saeculare Horace attributes a very similar kind of courtesy to the defeated to Augustus himself: quaeque vos bubus veneratur albis clarus Anchisae Venerisque sanguis, impetret, bellante prior, iacentem lenis in hostem. (Carmen Saeculare –)
The description of Augustus in terms of Anchises perhaps indicates that Horace himself had the passage of Aeneid VI in mind.
Caesar, Horace and poetic immortality
Those things which the glorious blood of Anchises and of Venus [i.e. Aeneas] asks of you as he honours you with white oxen, may he be granted them: to be first victorious in battle, and then gentle to his enemy when he lies before him.
Secondly, Augustus’ description of the victory over Egypt in terms of eagles and their prey (eagles suggest the Roman standards) engages with two famous passages from the Odes. At Odes I., describing the defeat of Cleopatra, Caesar is compared to a hawk in pursuit of gentle doves: ‘accipiter velut / mollis columbas’ (–), and the triumphal panegyric of Odes IV., celebrating the youthful victories of the Nerones, begins with an extended Pindaric comparison of Drusus to a young eagle learning to hunt his prey. As Cain notes, Jonson’s term ‘quarried’ (V..) similarly describes a hawk learning to hunt. The praise of Caesar which follows also includes Horatian elements: . Your majesty’s high grace to poesy Shall stand ’gainst all the dull detractions Of leaden souls, who, for the vain assumings Of some, quite worthless of her sovereign wreaths, Contain her worthiest prophets in contempt. . Happy is Rome of all earth’s other states To have so true and great a president For her inferior spirits to imitate As Caesar is, who addeth to the sun Influence and lustre, in increasing thus His inspirations, kindling fire in us. . Phoebus himself shall kneel at Caesar’s shrine And deck it with bay garlands dewed with wine To quit the worship Caesar does to him, Where other princes, hoisted to their thrones By fortune’s passionate and disordered power, Sit in their height like clouds before the sun, Hind’ring his comforts, and by their excess Of cold in virtue, and cross heat in vice, Thunder and tempest on those learned heads Whom Caeasar with such honour doth advance.
(Poetaster V..–)
Maecenas’ ‘worthiest prophets’ (V..), meaning poets, glosses the Horatian ‘vates’, a term found in several of the odes (II..; IV..). The extravagance of Gallus’ and Horace’s description of Caesar echoes the solar imagery of Augustus which pervades Odes IV. The closest parallel is found at IV..–: ‘When your face shines down like the
Translation and authority in Poetaster
spring / upon your people, the day goes by more happily / and the sun shines more brightly.’ The deification of Caesar – implied by Horace’s mention of ‘Caesar’s shrine’ () – finds many parallels in the Odes, although the suggestion that Phoebus himself might worship there is Jonson’s addition. The latter part of this extract is hard to follow, but the key is in those ‘learned heads’ of line . Like the ‘worthiest prophets’ mentioned by Maecenas (), the term means ‘poets’. The difference between Caesar and other monarchs, according to all three characters here, is not finally in his political success or military glory, but in his patronage, his ‘high grace to poesy’ (). He may, remarkably, appear to add ‘influence and lustre’ even to the sun (–) – but a close reading of Gallus’ speech reveals that he does so not on his own account, but ‘in increasing thus / His inspirations [that is, his inspiration of us, his poets], kindling fire in us’ (–). Caesar expresses such reverence to Phoebus – so much so that Phoebus himself is compelled to requite it – because he nurtures and protects Apollo’s favourites, the poets, unlike other (lesser) monarchs, who are not so discerning. This sequence of extravagant panegyric is in fact a powerful redefinition of Augustus’ unparalleled fame and power as dependent upon his patronage, created and sustained by the poetry that preserves his name. Most surprisingly of all, perhaps the most beautiful of Caesar’s verse paragraphs conceals a reference to Horace so close to the original Latin that it is nearer a translation than an allusion: She [Poesy] can so mould Rome and her monuments Within the liquid marble of her lines That they shall stand fresh and miraculous, Even when they mix with innovating dust. In her sweet streams shall our brave Roman spirits Chase and swim after death with their choice deeds Shining on their white shoulders; and therein Shall Tiber and our famous rivers fall With such attraction, that th’ ambitious line Of the round world shall to her centre shrink To hear their music. And for these high parts Caesar shall reverence the Pierian arts.
(Poetaster V..–)
See also Odes IV..–. For a divinised Augustus, see for instance Odes I..– and III..–.
Caesar, Horace and poetic immortality
For all the imperial grandeur of this vision, line is in fact a direct translation, not (as we might expect) of Virgil at his most high-flown, but rather of a phrase from one of Horace’s most explicit and sexualised odes, Odes II., describing not a manly Roman youth but a Greek-named girl: ‘non Chloris albo sic umero nitens / ut pura nocturno renidet / luna mari’, ‘nor Chloris, her white shoulder shining / as the clear moon gleams reflected in / the sea at night’ (–). Caesar’s deft annexation of the language of poetic and political immortality preserves at its heart not an epic, but a lyric demonstration of that immortality, and the boldness of the transformation alerts us to the Horatian material in the surrounding lines. Caesar is unwittingly proving his point, if not quite how he means it: this eroticised Horatian image will indeed survive, but the type of ‘brave Roman’ that it will preserve is as much Horatian as it is Augustan – indeed it is Horace’s texts that will shape and mediate what ‘Augustan’ comes to mean. The structural force of ‘translation’ in this play is central and pervasive. It is not just that the deployment of ‘translated’ texts – understood in its broadest sense – is much more extensive than previously noted; nor that this whole network of adaption and adoption is insistently placed within an Horatian framework, although both of these observations are true of Poetaster. The play’s concern with the connections between ethical and aesthetic excellence – and even the details of the kind of vice most to be avoided – is also derived from Horace’s Satires. More than this, the apparent ‘idealism’ of the depiction of Virgil and Caesar in the closing scenes is attenuated by the competing echoes in which it is communicated. The allusive dynamic of the play cuts both ways: Caesar’s authority is undermined by the Horatian, satiric ‘voice’, and even Virgil is given Horace’s lines rather than his own, but it is Horace’s voice too – the panegyric mode of the last book of the Odes in particular – which is heard in Caesar’s eulogy of poetry, and the poets’ of Caesar. It is Horace who questions Caesar’s glory, but it is also Horace who creates it. Sinfield remarks, regarding the use of classical models in the play, that they challenge Jonson and his audience ‘to make sense of their own developing reality in newly emergent material conditions. Poetaster is not documenting the author function, it is helping to constitute it.’ I began this chapter by noting that Jonson’s strategies of translation in Poetaster,
Sinfield, ‘Perils of Cultural Production’, .
Translation and authority in Poetaster
like Horace’s Satires themselves, are at once aggressive and submissive, and this alternation is reflected in the work they are doing in the play. It is the multiple ‘translations’ of Poetaster – which at once subvert and create Augustan political and artistic power – that Virgil calls ‘true’, and it is translation in the stricter sense to which I now turn.
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
But above all he excelleth in a translation …
This book began with John Polwhele’s touching, if slightly incoherent, version of Horace, Odes I. reframed and retranslated so as to comfort Jonson for the failure of The New Inn. Polwhele’s poem lies somewhere between a translation and an imitation – Polwhele himself describes it as ‘alludinge to’ Horace’s ode. The ode is in fact one of two pieces of Horatian translation, both entered by Polwhele on the same page of his notebook, and both addressed to Jonson. The second is very short: Horace de arte poet. Multa renascentur quae iam cecidere, cadentque, quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet vsus. Much is reuiu’de was dead, not vnderstood, that may bee’ excellent, if the Whimme be good. Jo: Polw:
Polwhele’s fragment of translation is not very literal – it elides completely, for instance, the point that this passage of Horace is concerned with the life and status of words in a language (and, by association, with the poet’s choice of diction). Polwhele’s version of the lines makes them, instead, about Jonson’s own literary reputation: he implies that it is Jonson’s own work (and perhaps specifically The New Inn) that has died for lack of understanding, but will be revived when public opinion is once more ‘good’.
Conversations with William Drummond, –. Bodleian MS Eng. poet. f. , r; the cited lines are Ars Poetica –. A more literal translation would be: ‘Many words that have now fallen out of use shall be reborn, and those that are now held in high esteem will die, if popular usage so wills it.’ Jonson’s own translation of this passage is discussed below. Polwhele’s ‘not understood’ has no analogue in the Latin at all; though it is rather well chosen. Jonson himself makes much of the proper ‘understanding’ of his work: ‘Pray thee, take care, that tak’st my booke in hand, / To reade it well: that is, to understand’ (Epigrams ).
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
We have already seen, in the study of Poetaster in Chapter , how closely and thoughtfully Jonson engaged with extended translation (above all of Horace) in addition to the range of intertextual and allusive strategies that mark all his work. G. A. E. Parfitt remarks that ‘such formal translations as [Jonson] produced represent only one extreme of a habit of mind which, for good or ill, is constantly at work in his poetry’. Jonson’s extant works include several translations, including the major translation of the whole of the Ars Poetica, which was revised at least once; but he must certainly have completed more close translations, and not only of Horace, which do not survive. It is possible that a few such pieces remain to be identified in manuscript collections. Despite the obvious importance of translation to Jonson’s mode of composition, his close translations of Horace have attracted little critical attention. This is partly evidence of a much more general neglect of literary translation. But for students of the early seventeenth century, the omission is particularly distorting: manuscript miscellanies and commonplace books testify to the enormous popularity of certain translations and imitations, but also to the natural ease with which even very modest poets turned to classical translation to express themselves. While minor lyrics of this period are frequently conventional to the point of anonymity, the classical translations found in commonplace books and miscellanies are often, as in Polwhele’s notebook, surprisingly personal. This chapter is concerned, broadly, with Jonson as a translator of Horace: broadly, because I discuss here not only his own translations of Horace, but also those of others, made in conscious imitation or emulation of Jonson, and even translations of Jonson’s own work (a move which, like Polwhele’s poem, accords him Horatian status). This material helps to confirm and define contemporary understandings of Jonson’s ‘Horatianism’ and its place in the culture of translation in which it arose.
The other most sustained example of close translation reframed in dramatic form is Jonson’s Sejanus, in large part a translation (and ultimately a completion) of portions of Tacitus’ Annals. The dramatic conversation that play creates between the Latin and English text, between Tacitus (the author) and Tiberius (the emperor) is sadly beyond the scope of this book. G. A. E. Parfitt, ‘The Nature of Translation in Ben Jonson’s Poetry’, Studies in English Literature, –, (), – (). Charles Tomlinson writes eloquently of ‘what we still choose to forget, namely the centrality of poetic translation to the whole history of English poetry. Th at history has to be rewritten, because the presence of translation in it changes the balance of conventional assessment that still often rates poetic translation as a poor cousin of original verse’ (Charles Tomlinson, ‘Why Dryden’s Translations Matter’, Translation and Literature, (), – ()).
Jonson’s Ars Poetica ’
A R S POETIC A
As we have seen, Jonson uses Horace – even meticulously close and textually attentive imitations of Horace’s Latin – to express his own authorial freedom and autonomy, even, or especially, when he speaks as a court poet or dependent. It is unsurprising, then, that his close translations of Horace should also be marked by this motif, and in particular by an obsessive interest in the poet’s status and his liberty. The most substantial translation of this kind, and the most important, is his version of Horace’s Ars Poetica. Horace’s longest work, routinely (if misleadingly) described as a versified treatise on poetic technique, is unfashionable today: unfashionable even amongst classicists, and certainly so amongst non-specialists. Its enormous influence and importance to the understanding of literary art throughout the Renaissance and early modern period is a commonplace of criticism; but the poem itself – what it was for, or how it is meant to be read – is not often well discussed. The same is very much true of Jonson’s translation, which is rarely mentioned except to dismiss or condemn. Jonson’s interest in the poem is evident from several sources, not only his translation: in one of Jonson’s copies of Horace, the Ars is heavily marked; he alludes to the poem repeatedly in Discoveries; and UW (‘An Epistle to Master J S’) emerges, as we saw in Chapter , from a kind of ‘correction’ of the opening of the Latin poem. This is an important detail: UW is concerned to define (and associate) both literary and ethical virtue, and it is also a peculiarly Jonsonian mix of the
Jonson himself was no doubt partly responsible for raising the profi le of the Ars Poetica , as C. H. Sisson points out: ‘[despite weaknesses in the translation] Ben Jonson did bring the Ars before the English literary public in such a way that it could not thereafter be ignored, and he may be said thereby to have opened a literary epoch … It is in his sympathy with the Horatian literary temper, and its singular combination of the inventive and the critical that the real reach of Jonson’s literary influence is felt. For a whole generation, and perhaps more, Jonson exercised in the seventeenth century something like the decisive influence of Ezra Pound in the twentieth. For this reason alone, his tips as to what was worth reading, especially something so immediately relevant to the poet’s task as the Ars, were not likely to be thrown away’ (C. H. Sisson, In Two Minds: Guesses at Other Writers (Manchester: Carcanet, ), pp. –). H&S consider the translation ‘wooden’ (H&S, vol. , p. ) and Charles Martindale, in his defence of that which, borrowing from Dryden, he terms ‘metaphrase’, remarks that this particular work ‘it may be conceded, is rather dogged’ (Martindale, ‘Unlocking the Word-hoad: In Praise of Metaphrase’, Comparative Criticism, (), ). See, for instance, Discoveries , , –, and . UW is discussed at length in Chapter , pp. –. The heavily marked edition of Horace is Spilimbergii; Jonson’s copy is Cambridge University Library X... Jonson also owned a separate edition of the Ars Poetica with a commentary by Aldus Manutius the younger: In Q. Horatii Flacci … librum de Arte Poetica … commentarius, ed. Aldus Manutius (Venice: apud Aldum, ), o (McPherson, no. ).
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
purest panegyric and the most extravagant authorial confidence. With Selden as his subject, Jonson implies, he will outdo Horace with ease. Its form is significant too: UW is an Horatian verse epistle, with all that that entails – philosophical seriousness; a public statement about a particular relationship; and an interest in the artistic possibilities as well as the constraints imposed by social relations. The Ars Poetica is also an epistle – albeit a very long one, addressed to the young Piso brothers – and those features of Horatian epistolary verse are found in the Ars too. In addition, it presents a remarkable and very hard to define blend of theory and practice. Every attempt to summarise, subdivide or rationalise the content of the poem as a systematic ‘treatise’ of definable rules or principles has proved to be unsatisfactory. As Brink demonstrates, the poem is neither a versified treatise with ‘separate chapters’, nor a work whose subject matter is largely incidental. Sisson offers perhaps the best summary of this: The contribution of Horace was neither to lay down a set of absolute prescriptions nor to upset the course of Latin literature. Indeed that literature went into decline not long after his day, apparently without benefiting from his advice. The valuable thing about the Ars is the presence of a mind immensely accomplished in the practice of literature, and with a just appreciation of the point it occupied among the performances of the time. Horace’s mind was not only equally but – a much rarer thing – simultaneously critical and creative … It is from a very ripe and wary mind that we have the Ars Poetica.
I think Sisson (whose own translation of the Ars Poetica is impressive) is right to stress that the significance of this now little-read work does not lie in any particular prescriptions, but rather in the reader’s experience of a mind which is, as he puts it, ‘simultaneously critical and creative’. For Jonson, who consistently represented himself as both artist and critic – and indeed insisted upon the necessary union of these functions in the laureate poet – this aspect of the poem must have been particularly attractive, especially in combination with the social significance of the poem’s form and address. The Piso brothers are younger than Horace – and only,
I summarise here the argument found in C. O. Brink, Prolegomena to the Literary Epistles (Cambridge University Press, ) and Horace on Poetry: The ‘Ars Poetica’ (Cambridge University Press, ). Sisson, In Two Minds, p. . Brink’s conclusion is not dissimilar: ‘[the AP] represents imaginatively, in a way no conceptual prose could, not only views on poetry but the ancient feeling for poetry … The Ars may well be seen as a poetic restatement of H.’s own poetry’ (Brink, Horace on Poetry, p. ).
Jonson’s Ars Poetica
we deduce, very beginner poets – but they are of noble status and he is not. The Ars offers a discussion of literary art, written by a practising poet at the height of his powers, and delivered in a form which not only acknowledges but actually enacts the embeddedness of the poet within his society. By far the best exposition of the social and political interest of the Ars Poetica – for readers of Jonson and Horace alike – is by Ellen Oliensis, whose portrait of Horace is at almost every turn strongly reminiscent of Jonson himself: On the one hand, the Ars is a profoundly normative text-book that not only describes but helps enforce the rules of the game the Piso brothers are about to enter. This game, like the ludus Horace declines to reenter at the start of Epistles I, involves social as well as poetic performance; Horace is teaching the Piso brothers how to fashion their selves as well as their poems … What Horace teaches the Piso brothers is finally not what to do or not to do but what he can do and they cannot. Horace’s disquisition on the art which is the source of his authority (social and poetic) is addressed to an audience that boasts conventional social advantages Horace cannot claim, and this conjunction of subject matter and audience produces an extremely volatile blend of authority and deference: a “masterwork” which is also a study in self-defacement, an educational essay which is also an exercise in antididaxis.
Jonson’s version of Horace’s Ars Poetica is the product of at least two distinct periods of translation and revision. Although both versions of his translation were finally published in (one in the duodecimo edition of the Poems, the other in the folio), the former of these dates from , while the latter certainly postdates Daniel Heinsius’ critical reorganisation of the text, published in and followed by Jonson. There is also evidence of a lost ‘preface’ to the work, tantalisingly in the form of a dialogue with John Donne, and apparently read to Drummond in , but lost in the fire of .
Oliensis, Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority, pp. –. Chapter (pp. –) deals with the Ars Poetica. Jonson’s translation is quoted from the folio version, unless noted otherwise. The Latin is quoted from the text printed on the facing page in the folio (although, since the volume was prepared posthumously, this was not necessarily the edition of the text that Jonson himself was using). Where there is a discrepancy, a second reference is to the relevant line numbers in the OCT edition of Horace’s works. ‘[T]o me he read the Preface of his arte of Poesie, upon Horace Arte of poesie’ (Conversations with William Drummond –). See also the epistle To the Readers prefaced to Sejanus (): ‘But of this [that a playwright need not adhere to ancient laws of drama] I shall take more seasonable cause to speake; in my Observations upon Horace his Art of Poetry, which (with the Text translated) I intend, shortly to publish’ (–).
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
Jonson’s engagement with Horace is evidently very deep; furthermore, this poem seems for him to have been central to that engagement. Stanley Stewart writes: ‘We must conclude that, for Jonson … translation of the Ars Poetica, more than a labour of love, amounts to a statement of his critical manifesto.’ It must therefore have especial importance for any study of Jonson’s Horatianism: such a major project of translation is not only an act of homage; it is also, in the most literal sense, an opportunity to speak for – and as – Horace himself. If new readers who want to refer to an English version read the Ars with Jonson’s English alongside the Latin (as it was published in the folio), then for these readers Horace is Jonson. : A R S P O E T I C A Jonson’s translation of the Ars is notoriously ‘literal’ – that is, it attempts to follow Horace’s text minutely, and to preserve where possible even the details of Latin word order, sometimes to the extent of obscuring the meaning or movement of the English line. Modernisations or incorporated ‘glosses’ on Roman cultural terms are kept to a minimum, and most proper names are retained (the Pisos are actually named more often in Jonson’s version). But this close translation is not without its idiosyncrasies and expansions. If there is one consistent tendency, it is to clarify (even blunten) Horatian ambiguity in order to align the Latin poem more closely with Jonson’s characteristic preoccupations. Even, or perhaps especially in this extremely close interaction, we can see Jonson translating – and creating – a ‘Jonsonian’ Horace. Moments of this kind often have their origin in glosses or expansions upon obscure or difficult sections of the Latin. An example of this tendency is found at lines –: Rich men are said with many cups to plie, And rack, with Wine, the man whom they would try, If of their friendship he be worthy, or no:
Stanley Stewart, ‘Jonson’s Criticism’, in Richard Harp and Stanley Stewart (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ben Jonson (Cambridge University Press, ), pp. – (p. ). The emphasis upon the Pisos’ names perhaps reflects the importance of naming in Jonson’s verse more generally. Minor alterations include translating the goddess Minerva as ‘nature’ at line (Latin , OCT ) and the occasional rephrasing of specifically Roman social vocabulary (such as ‘our grave men’ () for ‘centuriae seniorum’ (Latin , OCT )). Arguably, a reader is more likely to take a very close translation ‘as’ Horace; an obviously freer or more paraphrastic version may be more likely to encourage her to ‘check’ the Latin.
Jonsonian metaphrase in the Ars Poetica
When you write Verses, with your judge do so: Looke through him, and be sure, you take not mocks For praises, where the mind conceales a foxe. Reges dicuntur multis urgere culullis, Et torquere mero, quem perspexisse laborant, An sit amicitiâ dignus. Si carmina condes, Nunquam te fallant animi sub vulpe latentes.
(–)
These lines are part of a longer passage (Latin –) discussing the importance of honest criticism to the poet: a section likely to be of particular interest to Jonson, given his lasting preoccupation with honesty and flattery as they apply both to social relationships and to art. Several lines in this passage, including these four, are underlined in his copy of Horace held in the Cambridge University Library. Line –, ‘you take mocks / For praises’, is an interpolation, evidently intended to clarify the meaning of a difficult Latin phrase: ‘Si carmina condes, / Nunquam te fallant animi sub vulpe latentes’ (‘If you’re going to construct verses, / Never allow the thoughts lurking inside the fox to trap you’, –). The line probably alludes to the fable (found in Phaedrus and Aesop) in which a crow, persuaded by a fox’s flattery to sing, drops the cheese he was carrying in his mouth. What ‘lurks within’ a fox is his wicked intention; what traps the unwary is the fox’s flattery. Jonson’s ‘mocks’ and ‘praises’ clarify the meaning of the line; but they are not a neutral addition. The expansion stresses the comparison between the rich man testing his friends and the poet testing his ‘judge’ – that is, the one who passes judgement upon his work (quite often, one imagines, a rich patron or potential patron). The link between rich man, potential prey to flatterers, and the successful poet ties the lines more closely to the preceding verse paragraph on the same topic (lines –, discussed
Compare UW (‘An Epistle to Master Arth: Squib ’): ‘So must we doe, / First weigh a friend, then touch, and trie him too:’ (–); ‘Turne him, and see his Threds: looke, if he be / Friend to himselfe, that would be friend to thee. / For that is first requir’d, A man be his owne. / But he that’s too-much that, is friend of none’ (–). This is one of many articulations found in Jonson’s Horatian verse epistles of the ‘freedom’ proper to friendship (and, according to Jonson, to art). Modern texts read ‘laborent’ (subjunctive) and ‘fallent’ (future indicative). Cambridge University Library, X... In addition to the Ars Poetica , Satires I., I. and (especially) I. are also heavily marked. There is no evidence that the underlinings are Jonson’s – they are not accompanied by his characteristic marginal signs – but the correspondence between the underlined sections and the passages to which he most often alludes, or which are expanded in his translation, suggests that they probably are. Jonson must have owned several editions of Horace in the course of his writing life; this is perhaps the one he was using at one phase of his work on the Ars Poetica.
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
below), and to Jonson’s favourite theme: the difficulty (and necessity) of maintaining social and artistic integrity despite the need to gain and retain favour. The suggestion, more laboured than in the Latin, is of the potential moral equality between a poet and the kind of man who might be his patron. That link is further stressed by the translation of ‘reges’ (‘kings’ or ‘princes’ – with a hint, perhaps, of the exotic East to Roman readers) simply as ‘Rich men’ (), a much more everyday (and directly relevant) phenomenon. The suggestion of possible insincerity, which remains latent here, is explicit in the preceding passage: Just as a Crier That to the sale of Wares calls every Buyer; So doth the Poet, who is rich in land, Or great in money’s out at use, command His flatterers to their gaine. But say, he can Make a great Supper; or for some poore man Will be a suretie; or can helpe him out Of an entangling suit; and bring ’t about: I wonder how this happie man should know, Whether his soothing friend speake truth, or no.
–
Ut praeco ad merces turbam qui cogit emendas, Assentatores iubet ad lucrum ire Poëta Dives agris, dives positis in foenore nummis. Si verò est, unctum qui rectè ponere possit, Et spondere levi pro paupere, & eripere atris Litibus implicitum; mirabor, si sciet interNoscere mendacem verumque beatus amicum.
(–)
These lines are rich in ironic resonance with Jonson’s own poetic occasions: not least the generous host, like Sir Robert Wroth (Forest ), the Sidneys at Penshurst (Forest ), or even – in his fantasy version of compelling generosity – the poet himself in Epigrams , all defined partly by their ability to ‘make a great Supper’ (). For the poet, an insincere appraisal of his work is as damaging as flattery to the great statesman; for the Pisos, the young poet-aristocrats to whom the Ars is addressed, the two may of course overlap, just as they do here (this rich man is also a
Compare the material on debt and gift between poet and patron in Chapter , pp. –. As a topos, this theme is itself Horatian, and a feature of the Satires and Epistles in general; but here, as at several points, Jonson’s reading is starker than the original lines. Lines and – are underlined in Cambridge University Library X...
Jonsonian metaphrase in the Ars Poetica
poet). Jonson translates ‘beatus’ (), which very often means ‘rich’, as ‘happie’ (); but that apparently ‘happie’ man may find himself caught in a web of duplicitous speech (‘calls’, ‘Crier’, ‘flatterers’). What such a man needs, of course, is an honest critic, a straight-talking fellow-poet, Jonson/Horace himself. The following passage includes a surprising (and much noted) mistranslation, repeated in an allusion to these lines at the close of UW (‘An Epistle to Sir Edward Sacvile, now Earle of Dorset’): But you, my Piso, carefully beware, (Whether yo’are given to, or giver are) You doe not bring, to judge your Verses, one, With joy of what is given him, over-gone: (–)
Tu seu donaris, seu quid donare voles cui, Nolito ad versus tibi factos ducere plenum Laetitiae. (–)
The phrase ‘tu seu donaris, seu quid donare voles cui’ () means ‘whether you have given, or plan to give, anything to anyone’. Jonson has apparently misread ‘donaris’ as the present indicative passive rather than (an abbreviated form of) the future perfect active ( = ‘donaveris’). The mistake is revealing: Horace, addressing the young noble, assumes that his addressee’s role is always to be a generous donor; Jonson, however, is keen to stress the reciprocity of patronage on both sides, and in UW he uses a version of these lines to surprise us, at the close of that most ‘indebted’ poem, with an insistence upon what the patron owes to the poet. The Latin here has a light touch – the phrase ‘plenum / Laetitiae’ (–) leaves unspecified what, exactly, has caused such joy, whereas Jonson’s lines, adding ‘what is given him’, leave us in no doubt. His version sounds less like a suggestion that we should bear the praiser’s circumstances in mind, and more like a warning against outright bribery. Throughout this sequence Jonson’s version has insisted upon the potential corruption of speech, especially in flattery, and the dangers this presents to literary judgement and true friendship alike: a danger, moreover, which helps to associate – as, in some sense, equals – the powerful nobleman (as the Pisos will be and Horace/Jonson will not) and the laureate poet (as Horace certainly is; as Jonson would like to be; and as the Pisos may hope to become). We are reminded of Ellen Oliensis’
UW is discussed in Chapter , pp. –.
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
point: ‘What Horace teaches the Piso brothers is finally not what to do or not to do but what he can do and they cannot.’ The poet, according to Jonson’s version of Horace, must be especially on guard against the corruption of language and base insincerity; but this is because the real power to immortalise – indeed, to immortalise and rejuvenate language itself – is also properly his. At another well-known passage of the Ars we find a similar kind of systematic expansion: Ficta, voluptatis causâ, sint proxima veris. Nec quodcunque volet, poscat sibi fabula credi: Neu pransae Lamiae vivum puerum extrahat alvo. Centuriae seniorum agitant expertia frugis: Celsi praetereunt austera poëmata Rhamnes. Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci, Lectorem delectando, pariterque monendo. Hic meret aera liber Sosiis: hic & mare transit, Et longum noto scriptori prorogat aevum.
(–; OCT –)
Let what thou fain’st for pleasures sake, be neere The truth; nor let thy Fable thinke, what e’re It would, must be: lest it alive would draw The Child, when Lamia’has din’d, out of her maw. The Poêms void of profit, our grave men Cast out by voyces; want they pleasure, then Our Gallants give them none, but passe them by: But he hath every suffrage, can apply Sweet mix’d with sowre, to his Reader, so As doctrine, and delight together go. This booke will get the Sosii money; This Will passe the Seas, and long as nature is, With honour make the farre-knowne Author live.
(–)
This is a version of one of Jonson’s favourite Horatian maxims, the poetic blend of ‘profit’ with ‘pleasure’. His interest in this idea is reflected in the translation: the lines possess a tighter consistency and focus than the
Oliensis, Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority, p. . Lines – are underlined in Cambridge University Library X... That combination is invoked, for instance, in the Epilogue to The Staple of Newes (‘Thus have you seene the Makers double scope, / To profit, and delight ’, –) and the Prologue to Every Man Out of His Humour (‘To please, but whom? attentive auditors, / Such as will joyne their profit with their pleasure, / And come to feed the understanding parts: / For these, Ile prodigally spend my selfe’, Asper, –).
Jonsonian metaphrase in the Ars Poetica
Latin, and the importance of the dichotomy is increased by the repeated echoing of the opposing terms followed by a firmer insistence upon the artistic power of their successful resolution. By contrast, the thought of the Latin lines, while clearly discernible, is more loosely and tangentially connected. Horace employs a cluster of different terms, associated in context by the parallel thoughts, but rhetorically distinct: ‘voluptatis causâ’ (), ‘proxima veris’ (), ‘expertia frugis’ (), ‘austera’ (), ‘utile’ and ‘dulci’ (), ‘delectando’ and ‘monendo’ (). Meaning something like ‘pleasure’, ‘near to the truth’, ‘devoid of fruit[fullness]’, ‘harsh’, ‘useful’, ‘sweet’, ‘by pleasing/giving enjoyment’ and ‘by warning’, these terms become in Jonson’s text: ‘for pleasures sake’ (), ‘neere / The truth’ (–), ‘void of profit’ (), ‘want they pleasure’ (), ‘Sweet mix’d with sowre’ () applied to the reader ‘so / As doctrine, and delight together go’ (–). The collection of abstract nouns is starker and more uniform than the Latin modulation between nouns, adjectives and gerunds (the adjectives ‘sweet’ and ‘sowre’ in line are likewise acting as, or very close to nouns), and this uniformity in parts of speech helps to connect the series of contrasts as parallel to one another. Jonson’s repeated term ‘pleasure’ (tacitly implied a third time by the phrase ‘our Gallants give them none’, ) contributes to this effect. Similarly, the terms ‘truth’ and ‘doctrine’ are much closer to one another in register than the Latin ‘proxima veris’ and ‘monendo’, and the convergence heightens the solemnity of both. The general raising of the tone shifts, too, the implication even of the closest translations: whereas Horace’s phrase ‘proxima veris’ suggests, sensibly but slightly prosaically, that the reader’s credulity should not be stretched too far, Jonson’s ‘truth’, in the proximity of ‘doctrine’, ‘command’ and ‘precepts’ (lines –) becomes a more seriously ethical injunction. This is an example of what Greene calls the ‘quiet, progressive enrichment of nouns … a multiplication of referential direction that is not quite metaphor, not quite pun, not quite etymological throwback (though all these may be suggested) but rather a kind of gradually heightened verbal luminosity of exfoliation … This means for the imitative relationship the emergence of mistranslations that become so densely charged as to overpower the original Latin expression without ever parodying it.’
Greene, The Light in Troy, p. . Greene is here writing of the Cary-Morison ode (UW ), not the close translations, but his remarks seem to me to be a peculiarly accurate description of Jonson’s rendering of abstract nouns in general. His comments on the importance of ‘libertie’ to Epigrams , discussed in Chapter , pp. –, is related to this point.
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
We see the same ‘abstracting’ power at work in the lines that introduce this theme: O, when once the canker’d rust, And care of getting, thus, our minds hath stain’d, Thinke wee, or hope, there can be Verses fain’d In juyce of Cedar worthy to be steep’d, And in smooth Cypresse boxes to be keep’d? Poëts would either profit, or delight, Or mixing sweet, and fit, teach life the right.
(–)
Ad haec animos aerugo, & cura peculi, Cum semel imbuerit, speramus carmina fingi Posse linenda cedro, & levi servanda cupresso ? Aut prodesse volunt, aut delectare Poëtae, Aut simul & iucunda, & idonea dicere vitae. (–)
The translation of both ‘frugis’ (, OCT ) and ‘prodesse’ () as ‘profit’, and of both ‘iucunda’ () and ‘dulci’ (; OCT ) as ‘sweet’ establishes a strong link between the two passages, and the relatively high-flown tone of the abstractions sets up the surprising transition of the closing lines of the paragraph: This booke will get the Sosii money; This Will passe the Seas, and long as nature is, With honour make the farre-knowne Author live. (–; the Latin text is cited above)
Jonson captures here the humorously matter-of-fact transition to purely financial concerns (‘get the Sosii money’) but his version of the second ‘hic’ clause is rather different from its source. In Latin, the hope of lasting fame is handled lightly (‘hic & mare transit, / Et longum noto scriptori prorogat aevum’, ‘this book crosses the sea / and procures a long
These are lines – in modern editions of the Latin text. Both in modern editions, and in the edition from which Jonson would first have worked (which may have been the copy of Spilimbergii in Cambridge University Library, X..), these lines appear in Latin shortly before the passage (–) discussed above and introduce its theme. The translation printed in the duodecimo edition accords with this conventional arrangement. In his revisions of the translation, however, Jonson followed the rearrangements of the Latin text suggested by Daniel Heinsius, and as a result in the folio text these lines appear instead at –. Lines – are underlined in Cambridge University Library X... ‘When this rusty canker, this concern for gain / has once stained the mind, can we hope that poems might be crafted / which deserve to be smeared with cedar-oil [a preservative] and kept encased in smooth cypress?’ The OCT text reads ‘an’ for ‘ad’ at .
Jonsonian metaphrase in the Ars Poetica
life for the well-known writer’) and the juxtaposition of the booksellers’ financial success with ‘success’ (that is, fame) for the poet is amusing. Of line , Brink remarks: ‘This is humorous in style, but in fact the promise of wide and lasting fame in the next verse means what it says. The apparently flat “mixture” of utile and dulce reveals what elsewhere in this poem and in the Odes would be called glory.’ Jonson’s careful framing of the lines has lost some of the deadpan ‘flatness’ of the expression, and with it the wit, but instead presses it much closer to what Brink terms ‘glory’, and in particular to that preoccupation with immortality which animates Jonson’s favourite portions of Horatian lyric, such as Odes IV. and IV.. The result is a shift in tone between Latin and English. Jonson’s version has added the detail ‘honour’, of which there is no mention in the Latin (Horace’s successful writer might equally be infamous). But most striking are the two expansions of ‘nature’ and ‘live’. The Latin has nothing corresponding to the forceful ‘live’ at the end of the sentence, and Jonson’s translation differs in its sense. Horace’s text claims that the book itself will grant the well-known author a long life, or an old age – that is, of renown for his work. The phrase ‘long as nature is’, ambiguously adverbial (with ‘make’) or adjectival (significantly, with either the book or the ‘Author’), is a substantial expansion of ‘longum … aevum’. Jonson’s addition of ‘nature’ extends the comparison of the author’s immortality not to the empire (the terms of the extent of Ovid’s fame at Metamorphoses, XV.–), or even to Roman culture (as in Horace, Odes III.) – both of which will fi nally fade and which, for Jonson and his readers, have already done so – but rather to ‘nature’ herself. The laureate poet speaks here, in ‘Jonson’s Horace’, more clearly and with less doubt or irony than he does in the Latin text: Jonson’s translation of Horace reveals the terms of Jonson’s identification with the Latin poet, and the ways in which he reads him. This sense of almost moral importance – the same tone as we find, for instance, in the adapted Horatian material in Forest (‘Epistle. To Elizabeth Countesse of
Brink, Horace on Poetry, p. . Jonson’s ‘live’ echoes several other famous Horatian lines. Compare for instance: Epistles I..– (‘et mihi vivam / quod superest aevi’), Satires II.. (‘vive memor, quam sis aevi brevis’) and Epistles I.. (‘nulla placere diu nec vivere carmina possunt’). The final lines of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, themselves indebted to Horace, also include both ‘aevi’ and ‘vivam’ in a similar context.
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
Rutland’) – seeps, too, into Jonson’s version of the details of the poet’s art, the specific choices of subject and diction: Take, therefore, you that write, still, matter fit Unto your strength, and long examine it, Upon your shoulders. Prove what they will beare, And what they will not. Him, whose choice doth reare His matter to his power, in all he makes, Nor language, nor cleere order ere forsakes. The vertue of which order, and true grace, Or I am much deceiv’d, shall be to place Invention. Now, to speake; and then differ Much, that mought now be spoke: omitted here Till fitter season. Now, to like of this, Lay that aside, the Epicks office is.
(–)
Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, aequam Viribus, & versate diù, quid ferre recusent, Quid valeant humeri. Cui lecta potenter erit res, Nec facundia deserit hunc, nec lucidus ordo. Ordinis haec virtus erit, & venus, aut ego fallor, Ut iam nunc dicat, iam nunc debentia dici, Pleraque differat, & praesens in tempus omittat. Hoc amet, hoc spernat promissi carminis autor.
(–)
Jonson’s translation of lines – of the Latin is a substantial expansion; a literal translation might read: ‘As for him, whose subject matter is suitably chosen, neither eloquence nor clear structure shall desert him.’ The conversion of the adverb (‘potenter’, ) to an abstract noun (‘his power’, ) balancing the noun ‘res’ (‘his matter’, ) is much more forceful than the Latin. The past participle ‘lecta’ has also become an abstract noun, ‘choice’ (), and combined with the addition of the verb ‘reare’ (which has no analogue in the Latin) transforms Horace’s more muted and eminently reasonable suggestion into something grander. ‘Lecta’
Lines – in the duodecimo edition, the text of which is as follows: ‘Take therefore, you that write, a subject fit / Unto your strength, and long be turning it: / Prove what your shoulders will, or will not beare. / His choise, who’s matter to his power doth reare, / Nor language nor cleare order will forsake: / The vertue and grace of which, or I mistake, / Is now to speak, and even now to differ / Much that mought now be spoke, omitted here / Till fitter season; now to like to this, / Lay that aside, the Epicks office is.’ The translation of ‘potenter’ is tricky: Rudd suggests ‘within his capabilities’, but admits that this meaning has no exact parallel in Thesaurus Linguae Latinae ; he offers ‘effectively’ as a more defendable, if less satisfactory option (Niall Rudd (ed.), Horace Epistles Book II and Epistle to the Pisones (‘Ars Poetica’) (Cambridge University Press, ), p. ).
Jonsonian metaphrase in the Ars Poetica
(‘picked out, chosen’) anticipates the judiciousness with which the fine poet of the following lines will choose his words and topics (– of the Latin). Jonson’s sentence suggests less a humble limiting of scope to that of which he is capable (albeit a trope which is always a double-edged suggestion in Horace, that lover of recusatio), but rather a raising of subject matter – almost an education or inculcation of it – in view of the poet’s potential. ‘Rear’ is moreover a resonant term in Jonson’s Horatian verse. Forest , as we have seen, alludes to Horatian aspirations and in doing so uses this verb to echo the combination of ‘feriam’ and ‘sublimi’ in Odes I..: There like a rich, and golden pyramede, Borne up by statues, shall I reare your head, Above your under-carved ornaments, And show, how, to the life, my soule presents Your forme imprest there (Forest .–)
Those lines are also concerned with ‘rearing’ (that is, raising) the subject matter to the poet’s power, but in the most exalted fashion: so great is the poet’s reach, we are meant to understand (as great, after all, as Horace’s), that the subject of his poem – Elizabeth – must be equally extraordinary. We hear in these lines the self-confident tones of the (Jonsonian) Horatian lyricist. This intensification of the sense of the Latin continues. Jonson translates ‘facundia’ (, ‘ease of speech’ or ‘eloquence’) as ‘language’ (), a much stronger and more widely applicable term than ‘facundia’. In doing so, he broadens the application of the line from stylistics (this is how to write smoothly and clearly) to something closer to metaphysics: what would it mean to ‘forsake language’? Further heightening is at work in Jonson’s handling of the ‘clere order’. The Latin here (lines –) is nuanced; a literal translation might run: ‘This is the strength of that order, and its charm – or else I am mistaken – / namely, that it says what should be said at any given moment, / and it sets aside or omits many things for the time being.’ The balance of the male quality (‘virtus’, ‘strength’) against the female (‘venus’, perhaps ‘charm’) is, as Rudd points
Th is expansion of the meaning is similar to the effect created by Jonson’s version of the opening lines of Satires II., translated as Poetaster III., and discussed in Chapter , pp. –. Compare the use of ‘rears’ in a suggestively similar context in UW (‘The mind of the Frontispiece to a Booke’), which combines many of the tropes familiar from Jonson’s more major poems in a single lyric.
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
out, almost untranslatable. Jonson’s version has: ‘[t]he vertue of which order, and true grace’ () – a line which fails to capture the delicate and almost gendered balance of the Latin, but imports something else in its place. Retaining ‘vertue’ for ‘virtus’, and combining it with the weighted phrase ‘true grace’ (the adjective is without analogue in the Latin) adds a trace of theology. A passage which in Horace describes the importance of the careful and elegant, but ultimately solely aesthetic, positioning of individual words for maximum effect, is elevated by Jonson’s diction into a mastery of language and form which hints at divine inspiration, and also at divine commendation of the poet’s own moral excellence. In line with this persistent intensification, the verse paragraph concludes with one of the most explicit alterations. At line the phrase ‘promissi carminis autor’ (, Horace means the author of a comissioned work) is translated with the striking phrase ‘the Epicks office’. There is no term for ‘office’ (cf. Latin ‘officium’, ‘duty’) in the Latin verse; the idea of duty and obligation is an expansion of the subjunctive verbs in the Latin (‘amet’, ‘spernat’; ‘should love’, ‘should reject’). But the key term is ‘Epick ’: used only here, the noun means ‘epic poet’ but conflates, in yet another aggrandising move, the great poet with his greatest poem. These lines noticeably jettison the subtext of ‘promissi carminis’, which implies that the poet is composing to order. Given Jonson’s evident interest in the challenges and dilemmas of patronage, and his appropriation of Horace’s Epistles to explore that theme, that omission is at first surprising. But in the context of the adaptions over the previous ten lines, the change of emphasis makes sense: the translation of this passage carefully suppresses any hint of craftsmanlike attention to detail, the day to day demands of composition, or the realities of payment, and replaces them with diction redolent of the vatic poet. The ‘Epick ’ of these lines owes a sacred duty to the state – perhaps even to humanity, or art in general – rather than any one patron, however noble. Moreover, the subtle but sustained pattern of alterations in this passage is an introduction to the important lines (– in Jonson’s translation) in which Horace discusses the poet’s right to verbal innovation (of which ‘Epick ’ is itself apparently an example) – and in particular, the poetic prerogative to restore lost words to the language. In this remarkable passage
Rudd (ed.), Epistles II, p. . Compare this expansive and almost theological translation of ‘facundia’ with that of Jonson’s translation of Odes IV. (UW ), discussed below. In that poem, Horace’s ‘facunda … verba’ (–) become Jonson’s ‘well-grac’d’ words. Th is instance is the only reference given by the OED for ‘epic’ as a noun meaning ‘an epic poet’.
Jonsonian metaphrase in the Ars Poetica
Jonson’s loving and meticulous translation of the Latin challenges Horace from within his own text: he refuses to allow Horace himself to say what his text appears to mean. It hath beene ever free, And ever will, to utter termes that bee Stamp’d to the time. As woods whose change appeares Still in their leaves, throughout the sliding yeares, The first-borne dying; so the aged state Of words decay, and phrases borne but late Like tender buds shoot up, and freshly grow. Our selves, and all that’s ours, to death we owe: Whether the Sea receiv’d into the shore, That from the North, the Navie safe doth store, A kingly worke; or that long barren fen Once rowable, but now doth nourish men In neighbour-townes, and feeles the weightie plough; Or the wilde river, who hath changed now His course so hurtfull both to graine, and seedes, Being taught a better way. All mortall deeds Shall perish: so farre off it is, the state, Or grace of speech, should hope a lasting date. Much phrase that now is dead, shall be reviv’d; And much shall dye, that now is nobly liv’d, If Custome please; at whose disposing will The power, and rule of speaking resteth still.
(–)
Licuit, semperque licebit, Signatum praesente notâ producere nomen. Ut silvae foliis pronos mutantur in annos, Prima cadunt; ità verborum vetus interit aetas, Et iuvenum ritu florent modò nata, vigentque. Debemur morti nos, nostraque: sive receptus Terrâ Neptunus, classes Aquilonibus arcet, Regis opus, sterilisve diù palus, aptaque remis, Vicinas urbes alit, & grave sentit aratrum: Seu cursum mutavit iniquum frugibus amnis, Doctus iter melius. Mortalia facta peribunt: Nedum sermonum stet honos, & gratia vivax. Multa renascentur, quae iam cecidêre, cadentque, Quae nunc sunt in honore, vocabula, si volet usus; Quem penes arbitrium est, & vis, & norma loquendi.
(–)
Lines – and – are underlined in Jonson’s copy of Horace, Cambridge University Library X...
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
The beautiful simile comparing words to budding and falling leaves in a forest (–) is based upon Homer, Iliad VI.–, as Glaukos, meeting Diomedes on the battlefield, describes the ultimate insignificance even of his own noble lineage (while simultaneously commemorating it). In Homer the comparison links not leaves and words, but leaves and men themselves. Horace’s poem responds and adds to its model, creating what Brink describes as a ‘three-sided’ simile: the forest leaves; our words; and we ourselves, along with all that is ours (‘nos nostraque’, ). Horace surprises us by stressing the impermanence not only of our mortal selves (which we expect by analogy with Homer) but also of our language. In the lines that end this passage, Horace defines language and its reference in terms of ‘use’: Mortal deeds shall perish, and no more shall the glory and charm of speech remain alive. Many words which have now fallen away will be reborn, and many which are now held in high esteem shall fall away, if common usage desires it; to it belongs the judgement, and the force and norm of speaking. (–)
Everything that is of man, Horace argues, is by definition mortal (the allusion to the Iliad has reminded us of that); and what is more ‘of man’ than speech itself? Although language will continue, individual words will always fall in and out of use. But Jonson’s translation, while faithful to the individual words, manages to create a different impression: ‘All mortall deeds / Shall perish: so farre off it is, the state, / Or grace of speech, should hope a lasting date’ (–). That ‘state’ is a particularly clear example of Jonson’s interest in stability. In its sense of ‘stateliness’ it is a possible, if oblique, translation of ‘honos’, but the word is chosen to catch at ‘stet’ too. ‘The state’ renders ‘stet honos’; by collapsing a verb and noun phrase into a single noun it amounts to a miniature demonstration of its own fiercely stabilising point.
‘Great-hearted son of Tydeus, why do you ask of my birth? / The generation of men is just like that of leaves. / The wind scatters one year’s leaves on the ground, but the forest / burgeons and puts out others, as the season of spring comes round. / So it is with men: one generation grows on, and another is passing away.’ Brink remarks: ‘The Horatian simile is (to my knowledge) unique in that it transfers from humanity to speech the comparison with leaves falling and growing, without abandoning the human aspect’ (Brink, Horace on Poetry, p. ). Greene offers a persuasive interpretation of this passage, though he does not discuss the transformation of Homer (Greene, The Light in Troy, pp. –). ‘State’ at this period can also mean ‘throne’. Compare the numinous line of Cynthia: ‘Seated, in thy silver chair, / State in wonted manner keepe’, Cynthia’s Revels V..–.
Jonsonian metaphrase in the Ars Poetica
Jonson then, rather typically, translates ‘gratia’ – here something like ‘charm’ – as ‘grace’, a word dense with theological implications including, of course, the promise of eternal life. Above all, the phrasing of these lines points us away from their literal meaning. There is not one explicitly negative word in the English to correspond to the Latin ‘nedum’ (), and the logical connection (everything mortal perishes; therefore so must speech itself) is obscured. On the contrary, the ‘state, / Or grace of speech’ seems almost to be held up in contrast to the perishing of all that is mortal – something which is undoubtedly remote (‘so farre off ’, ) but nevertheless in existence (‘so farre off it is’). Reading this line, we may conclude that the ‘state, / Or grace’ of language is the one thing that does endure. The end of the sentence does not do much to clarify matters: ‘so farre off it is, the state, / Or grace of speech, should hope a lasting date’ (–). As a translation of the Latin, the final clause must mean something like: ‘so unlikely is it that the glory and charm of speech could hope to last’. But in the English the logical connection is elided almost beyond perception. There is a similar tension in the translation of the final lines of this section: If Custome please; at whose disposing will The power, and rule of speaking resteth still. (–; Latin –)
Once more, the syntax is characteristically opaque. Without close reference to the Latin, the link between ‘custom’ and ‘whose’ is not obvious. Jonson’s translation captures well the striking personification in the Latin of ‘usus’ () as a lawgiver, but the suppression of ‘norma’ (included under ‘rule’) throws the emphasis further upon this personification. The cluster ‘disposing will … power … rule’ adds a theological tenor to this language of kingship. Moreover, the arrangement of the end of Jonson’s line, like those examined above, works against its own ostensible meaning: ‘resteth still’ adds to the Latin, and according to the logic of the translation must mean that the power of speech ‘resides now and always’ in the disposing will of custom. But the combination of two so deeply Jonsonian words (‘rest’ and ‘still’) suggests exactly the opposite: that the ‘rule of speaking’ is in some – possibly religious or divine – sense in fact profoundly stable.
Greene speaks of the ‘unassailable stability’ of the virtuous man, and virtuous language, in Jonson (Greene, The Light in Troy, p. ). Barish describes ‘an ideal of stasis in the moral and
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
In his version of this numinous passage, Jonson’s Horace holds out a vision of the possible constancy of language, and the potential for poetic power that this entails. He does so between the lines, as it were, of Horace’s declaration of the opposite; and he signposts this departure, characteristically, with abstract nouns of mounting resonance: ‘free’ (, a very strong translation of ‘licuit’), ‘state’ ( and ), ‘grace’ (), ‘power’ () and ‘rule’ (). Jonson’s translation speaks more clearly than the Latin itself of those Horatian themes with which Jonson is most consistently concerned: the poet’s freedom, his power and his grace. Jonson’s translation of the Ars Poetica is consistent not only with his enduring interest in (almost obsession with) Horace, but also with the kind of ‘Horace’ that his work typically constructs. A difficult, and rebarbatively Latinate translation of a long, subtle and unfashionable Latin poem is unlikely to attract great critical attention. But Jonson’s Ars Poetica deserves more than it has received, both as a translation and as a (hugely influential) interpretation of Horace. This book has been concerned throughout with Jonson’s modelling of Horace as much as with Horace’s influence upon Jonson. We have already noted the extent to which the literary society of which Jonson was such a prominent part was a culture of translation, both into and out of Latin. In the following section of this chapter I want to turn from Jonson’s own translation to his influential place in this culture of translation, and especially of Horace and of Horatianism. To what extent did Jonson’s insistent, and insistently Horatian articulation of the poet’s virtuous strength, his freedom and his autonomy – even within a network of dependence, and even when he speaks to the king – come to be associated not only with Jonson but also specifically with ‘Jonson’s Horace’? This is a large and challenging question, not least because we have no complete list, or even partial account of, for instance, verse translations in manuscript of the period; translations of Horace in particular (whether printed or in manuscript); neo-Latin Horatian or Pindaric odes; or collections which associate a Jonsonian style – or Jonson’s own works – with Horace, or with particular political or social positions or assumptions. I cannot hope to answer these questions fully; but I do want to discuss ontological realm’ (Barish, ‘Jonson and the Loathèd stage’, p. ). Oliensis notes that Horace’s simile already works against itself to some degree: ‘in effect not elegiac but assertive, moving from death to life and from age … to youth. Moreover, the simile does not, as we might have expected, signal the senior poet’s recognition that a fresh generation … is arising to take his place. It is Horace himself, the senior but also the modern poet, who is aligned here with the young upstarting world’ (Oliensis, Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority, p. ).
Translating Horace for Jonson
a handful of suggestive examples drawn from unpublished manuscript material. John Polwhele was far from unusual in recording in his commonplace book or miscellany a strong response to Jonson’s ode on The New Inn. Copies of the ode are almost ubiquitous in university or inns of court manuscripts of the s. One particularly clear example of a ‘Jonsonian’ manuscript of this type is St John’s College (Cambridge) MS . This anonymous manuscript, filled with poems by Carew, Corbet, Randolph, and Strode as well as Jonson and Donne, begins with Jonson’s ode and almost concludes with a response to him – a poem ‘Upon Ben Johnsons Magnetique Lady’ appears on v, only four pages from the end. That play was performed at Blackfriars in October , and the entire notebook seems to have been compiled within only a few years. Although this temporal concentration means it lacks the political range of Polwhele’s compositions, this too is a deeply Jonsonian collection, and it connects Jonson and his milieu with Horace at several points – it includes, for instance, several responses to ‘Come leave the loathed stage’, a transcription of Jonson’s ‘Pindarique Ode’ (that is, UW ), a copy of UW (‘To the right Honourable, the Lord Treasurer of England. An Epigram’, an imitation of Horace Odes IV.) and Herrick’s very extended imitation of Odes II. (‘Mr Herick to his friend Mr Weeks’). The collection contains, too, a copy of Francis Beaumont’s verse epistle to Jonson, beginning ‘The Sunne which doth the greatest comfort bringe’ (r). Written, like several of the Epistles, from the country to Jonson in town, this attractive poem is itself an imitation of Horace. The link between Jonson’s circle and Horatian verse epistles is particularly strong. It is evident too, for instance, in a manuscript miscellany I have already mentioned, Bodleian MS Rawlinson Poetry . The collection, in a fine scribal hand, shows evidence of careful organisation, including clusters and sequences of poems related by theme, author or both (although very few author names are given in the manuscript, it is dominated by the work of Jonson, Donne, Edward Herbert, John Harington
On this poem see Mark Bland, ‘Francis Beaumont’s Verse Letters to Ben Jonson and “The Mermaid Club”’, English Manuscript Studies –, (), – ( and –). St John’s College maintains an excellent website detailing their manuscript collections, which includes a list of the contents of MS S. (www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/manuscripts/ post_medieval).
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
and members of their circle). It includes one of only two copies of the poem printed by Herford and Simpson as UV (‘An Epistle to a Friend’), discussed in Chapter . That poem is concerned with maintaining the challenging balance between sincerity and tact, and, like several of the passages of the Ars Poetica discussed above, it links the social and the literary critical offices of the ideal friend. The poem commends its anonymous addressee – who may have been John Roe – and much like Horace’s verse epistles, combines ethical instruction with authorial self-deprecation (‘yett, yf w th eythers vyce, I tainted bee, / Forgive it as my Frayltie, and not mee’, –). In fact, the poem is structured around a reference to Epistles I., on the delicate mid-point between honesty and reverence to be maintained by the poet towards his patron. I have already discussed, in Chapter , several instances of Jonson’s engagement with that poem. It is interesting, then, that this manuscript also includes, alongside UV , several other pieces of Jonson, John Roe’s two verse epistles addressed to Jonson and a translation of the latter half of Epistles I. (lines –). The version of Epistles I. has not currently been attributed to Jonson, although the close translation, beginning at line of the Latin poem, bears many Jonsonian features, especially in comparison with his other verse epistles, and I understand that it is to be included under works possibly to be ascribed to Jonson in the forthcoming Cambridge edition. As it is currently unpublished, a complete transcription is to be found in the Appendix. The section translated (lines –end) forms a coherent ‘epistle’ of its own, and one which resembles the characteristic structure of Jonson’s verse letters: a self-deprecating opening which quickly moves to establish the question of ethical or social conduct under debate (compare for instance the opening lines of UW , and , all of which set out the ‘issue’ concisely in the opening lines):
The manuscript is in the hand of the ‘feathery’ scribe, to whom Beal devotes a chapter of his book: Beal, In Praise of Scribes, pp. –. Two pages (fols. v-r) are reproduced on pages –. Bodleian MS Rawlinson poet. , v-r. The poem is also found at Bodleian MS English poet. f. , p.. The translation is, to my knowledge, found in only one other manuscript collection, British Library Harley MS . Both date from between and and include poems by Jonson which had not yet been published in printed form; both are anonymously compiled by professional scribes. Although neither manuscript is simply a reduced version of the other (since both contain poems the other does not include), they are clearly closely related. In particular, those poems which they do share (forty-seven in total, including eight by Jonson) appear, without exception, in the same order in both manuscripts. I am grateful to Colin Burrow, the editor of the poems for this edition, for initially alerting me to the existence of this translation.
Translating Horace for Jonson
But, that I forth advice, (if any need of my aduise thou hast) Take often heed What, and of whom, and vnto whom thou speake; shun an inquirer, for his tounge will breake The seale of silence; and an open Eare Neuer retaynes, what trust reposeth there: Besydes, words, once lett forth, fly unrecall’d. (–)
The poem moves through a series of examples of how one should not behave with a powerful friend (– of the Latin; – of the translation), and concludes with a philosophical ‘retreat’, an insistence on the primary significance of virtue and self-possession. Jonson’s tendency to conclude poems of praise or address with ethical advice is derived from Horace, and this passage has much in common with, for instance, the closing lines of UW (‘An Epistle to a Friend, to perswade him to the Warres’), the end of Forest and the most explicitly philosophical passages of UW (‘An Epistle answering to one that asked to be Sealed of the Tribe of B’). The translation concludes: what then thinckes My frind, I meditate, or most doe crave? that I maie but possesse what now I haue Or, yf the gods will, lesse: That I may liue vnto my selfe, the remnant doth surviue of my short age: if ought surviving be, through their benevolence, that I maie see plenty of bookes about mee, and fitt store for my provision yearelie, and no more: Least elce, with doubtfull hopes, I wavering sway but it sufficient is, I only pray To Ioue, who giues, and takes, for lief and welth My constant mynde, I will prepare my selfe.
(–)
quid credis, amice, precari? sit mihi quod nunc est, etiam minus, et mihi vivam quod superest aevi, si quid superesse volunt di; sit bona librorum et provisae frugis in annum copia, neu fluitem dubiae spe pendulus horae. sed satis est orare Iovem qui ponit et aufert, det vitam, det opes: aequum mi animum ipse parabo. (Epistles I..–)
Th is is the Latin of the OCT. The Latin text used to prepare this translation may have read ‘donat’ for ‘ponit’ at line (cf. ‘giues, and takes’, line of the English).
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
Despite its fidelity to the Latin text, the shorter poem created by this abbreviated translation produces some different effects to the complete epistle on which it is based. The first half of the Latin poem, of rather more robust and satiric tone than the second, gives, overall, a more distanced impression of the relationship between the speaker and Lollius than is the case in this English extract. The translator has also, by small degrees, enhanced the prominence of ‘friendship’ as a theme (adding the word ‘friend’ at lines and (compare lines and of the Latin) and ‘of thy frindes’ (), where there is no such word in the Latin; similarly, ‘venerandi … amici’ (‘a revered friend’, ) has become the rather more intimate ‘adored frend’ ()). At lines – of the Latin poem, Horace claims that the cultivation (‘cultura’) of a powerful friend seems ‘sweet’ (‘dulcis’) – but only to those who lack experience (‘inexpertis’): ‘dulcis inexpertis cultura potentis amici: / expertus metuit’. The man with more knowledge of the world (the ‘expertus’) is afraid of such cultivation (‘metuit’). The translation makes ‘great frindships’ () – not that slippery ‘cultura’, ‘cultivation’ – the subject of the sentence: ‘Now for great frindships, they are sweet and deare / to men untraded; such as know them, feare’ (–). The English lines focus upon the fact of friendship rather than of its (artificial?) ‘cultivation’; and the phrase ‘great frindships’, rather than ‘the cultivation of a powerful friend’, obscures the social inequality and peformative effort marked by the Latin. In addition to the coincidences of text, theme and structure, all of which reflect Jonson’s preoccupations and the format of his verse epistles, several specific phrases also suggest a link to Jonson or his circle. Two lines of the translation are closely paralleled in UW (the epistle to Selden, the most straightforwardly commendatory of all Jonson’s epistles). Compare lines – of this translation (‘It is our fate, to erre / Sometymes, and worthlesse men to grace prefer’) with UW .–: ‘Though I confesse (as every Muse hath err’d, / And mine not least) I have too oft preferr’d / Men past their termes.’ The same rhyme pair, with similar sense, occurs in Roe’s epistle to Sir Nicholas Smyth, lines –: ‘And by their [Kings’] Place more noted, if they erre; / How they and their Lords unworthy men prefer.’ Lines – of the translation (‘Take often heed / What, and of whom, and vnto whom thou speake’) resemble UW .–: ‘Since, being deceiv’d, I turne a sharper eye /
The epistle to Smyth is not found in this manuscript (though Roe’s two verse epistles to Jonson are). It is printed along with eight other poems attributed to Roe, four of them verse epistles, in Appendix B of Grierson’s edition of Donne (Grierson (ed.), Th e Poems of John Donne, vol. , pp. –).
Translating Horace for Jonson
Upon my selfe, and aske to whom? and why? / And what I write?’, which themselves allude to Epistles I.. The possibility of dating this poem to the period of the friendship between Jonson and Roe is circumstantially augmented by the reference in line to ‘Chester’s tooth’: ‘For when thou seest a Chesters tooth to drawe / Blood of thy frindes’ (–). The phrase ‘Chesters tooth’ translates the Horatian phrase ‘dente Theonino’ (). The exact reference of ‘Theonino’ is unknown, but it is clear that the ‘tooth’ in question is a version of the common metaphor of biting to denote envy, malice or satiric attack. Charles Chester appears as a byword for satiric vitriol in several late Elizabethan works, including Jonson’s own Every Man Out of His Humour (), in which the character of Carlo Buffone was (according to Raleigh) based upon Chester. Chester died in London in , and the datable references to him are largely confined to the s and early s. Sir John Roe himself died around , and the main period of his friendship with Jonson was probably the years he spent in London between and . The reference to Chester is consistent both with those dates, and with the possible connection between Jonson and Roe. Finally, the place names ‘Digentia’ () and ‘Mandela’ (), references to the countryside around Horace’s country estate, are translated, in a rather charming section, as ‘hackney brooke’ () and ‘Low-layton’ (): me quotiens reficit gelidus Digentia rivus, quem Mandela bibit, rugosus frigore pagus, quid sentire putas? quid credis, amice, precari? (Epistles I..–)
When I am downe at hackney brooke and tast of the cold ryvolett; of whose free wast all the poore Clownage of Low-layton drinckes; that curld and frozen village: what then thinckes My frind, I meditate, or most doe crave? (–)
Hackney Brook ran through the parishes of Hackney, Leyton and Walthamstow, now areas of East London, and Roe’s family owned several properties in the area. William Roe, John’s father, owned the Manor of
The links between UW and Epistles I. are discussed in Chapter , pp. –. On Chester see: Matthew Steggle, ‘Charles Chester and Ben Jonson’, Studies in English Literature, –, (), –. I have also consulted Steggle’s article: ‘Chester, Charles (c.–)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, ) (www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/). Mentions are found in Sir John Harington, Everard Guilpin, Thomas Nashe, Thomas Dekker and Sir John Davies.
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
Higham Bensted in Walthamstow. These were left to John’s mother on his death, and passed to John when his mother remarried in . John’s uncle, Robert Roe, the father of Thomas Roe, the ambassador, and also a friend of Jonson’s, lived at Low Leyton. Modern Leyton, Walthamstow and Highams Park are within a mile or so of one another, and I think it likely that this rather touching localising translation confirms the association with Sir John Roe. The authorship of this accomplished translation, a poem in its own right, cannot, I think, be finally determined; but this collection of details – the documented closeness of the friendship between Jonson and the younger Roe, the circumstantial details, and the proximity of style and content to their extant epistles – strongly suggests either Jonson himself, or (perhaps more likely) Roe, his style influenced by Jonson, as the author. In this connection, it is of further interest that John Polwhele also chose to translate Epistles I.. His manuscript collection of verses and translations composed between the s and s is modelled closely upon Jonson’s work in style, form and theme, and especially in its appropriation of Horatian material. Among versions of several odes and epodes (including Odes IV., of especial importance to Jonson, as we have seen), Epistles I. is the only piece of hexameter verse Polwhele chooses to translate. Moreover, although he translates the whole of this long poem, he sets it up in terms of that same opposition between flattery and excessive frankness which animates several of Jonson’s poems, including UV (‘Censure, not sharplye then’) and UW (‘An Epistle to Master Arth: Squib ’): Horace lib: o Epist th to Lollius. Horace prscribs Lollius how to get great friends, & keepe them, first he inveighs against those who either flatter, or are too seuere (wch they falsely call a friendly Liberty) lastly he exhorts him to striue for those things, wch conduce to a quiet life.
Like the translation of Epistles I. in Rawlinson or the verse epistles of John Roe, Polwhele’s ‘Jonsonian’ translations and imitations of Horace are evidence of a habit of Horatian imitation associated with Jonson and his circle. But whereas John Roe and John Donne were friends of
Ribeiro, ‘Sir John Roe’, –. Thomas Roe was a lifelong friend of Donne’s, and evidently known to Jonson also, who addressed two epigrams to him (Epigrams and , the first of which is discussed in Chapter , pp. –). Polwhele’s notebook is Bodleian MS Eng. poet. f. ; Epistles I. is found at v-r. Bodleian MS English poet. f. , v.
Translating Horace for Jonson
Jonson, there is no evidence that this is true of Polwhele: although he entered Lincoln’s Inn in , and was very likely a member of Exeter College, Oxford before that, the many named friends and acquaintances in Polwhele’s notebook are all linked with either Oxford or the West Country, where he grew up. Polwhele’s self-conscious Jonsonian Horatianism, then, is of a different order from that of Roe: a more distanced, perhaps more aspirational, more readerly mode of emulation. It is also, interestingly, increasingly political. In the early pages it is clear that Jonson’s attraction for Polwhele resides partly in his association with the court – an early entry is a version of a widely circulated song, ‘The Five Senses’, from Jonson’s masque of , The Gypsies Metamorphosed; though Polwhele titles it ‘Ben : Johnsons prayer for King James, / A Caracter of his humours’. Polwhele’s royalist sympathies are evident, too, in the first complete translation of the notebook: immediately after the imitation of Odes I. and the fragment of the Ars Poetica – both, as we have seen, addressed to Jonson and casting him as Horace – we find a translation of Odes I., Horace’s declaration of lyric ambition addressed to Maecenas. Given its position, it is hard not to connect this poem also with Jonson – a further, if more elliptic, assurance of the validity and importance of his lyric vocation. But the first line (which, unlike the Latin, does not name Maecenas) makes more of his addressee’s ‘royalty’ than its Latin equivalent, which begins ‘Maecenas atavis edite regibus, / o et praesidium et dulce decus meum’ (‘Maecenas, born of a line of kings, / and o my bulwark and my sweet glory’, Odes I..–). Just as Polwhele’s transcription of Jonson’s masquing song is described as a ‘prayer for King James’, so this implicitly Jonsonian translation of Horace appears to address the king directly: Horace ode lib: Maecenas atauis &c Royal sr, my life, my Crowne: some in charriotts seeke renowne: soe swifte-gotten victorie wherls man to a deitie. some a popular vote doth raise:
Although there is no record of this John Polwhele at Oxford, many other members of the family attended Exeter College (including John’s father, Th omas Polwhele, who matriculated in ), as did a considerable proportion of the individuals named in Polwhele’s notebook (such as Sir Bevill Grenville, Sir John Eliott, and a close contemporary, Sir John Maynard, the friend from whom Polwhele received his notebook). Maynard matriculated in April , aged . Bodleian English poet. f. , r-v.
Translating Horace, translating Jonson others by ful Barnes gett praise, and the happie churle (Is wise) loues the vales, that made him rise. timerous mariners (for pay) praise their homes, yet saile away. quaffe grape-nectar when you dine. Hyppocren’s my Cup, and wine. some warre-trumpetts loue, I none, (but what fame doth sounde alone) he that leads a hunters life pricks awaye forgetts his wife If hee boares, and staggs doe rouse. I chace Daphne for my browes. I wth nymphs, and satyres dance in coole groues, by witt, not chance. warble Phoebus on thy strings, while the quier of muses sings. If wth Lyricks I be read, Starrs shal Lawreate my head.
Jonson’s ‘Farewell to the Stage’, written, like Polwhele’s Odes I., on the failure of The New Inn, announces his return to lyric poetry, and casts that decision both as a bold return to his proper calling, and as a move closely linked to his glorious service of the king. In fact, the final stanza of Jonson’s ode itself contains an allusion to Odes I.: Leave things so prostitute, And take the Alcaick Lute; Or thine own Horace, or Anacreons Lyre; Warme thee, by Pindares fire: And though thy nerves be shrunke, and blood be cold, Ere yeares have made thee old; Strike that disdaine-full heate Throughout, to their defeate: As curious fooles, and envious of thy straine, May, blushing, sweare no palsey’s in thy braine. But, when they heare thee sing The glories of thy King, His zeale to God, and his just awe o’re men; They may, blood-shaken, then, Feele such a flesh-quake to possesse their powers: As they shall cry, like ours
Bodleian English poet. f. , v. Polwhele’s use of ‘Lyrick’ () as a noun meaning ‘lyric poet’ here is comparable to Jonson’s use of ‘Epick’ for ‘epic poet’ at Ars Poetica .
Translating Horace for Jonson In sound of peace, or warres, No Harpe ere hit the starres; In tuning forth the acts of his sweet raigne: And raysing Charles his chariot, ’bove his Waine.
Horace’s first ode ends by declaring: ‘quod si me lyricis vatibus inseres, / sublimi feriam sidera vertice’ (‘but if you include me in the ranks of the lyric bards, / I will strike the stars with my uplifted head’, Odes I..–). Lines – of Jonson’s poem invoke that passage, but at the same time imply its negation: ‘As they shall cry, like ours … No Harpe ere hit the stars’. Jonson’s future verse for the king may be similar to Horace’s in its reach and majesty, but nothing – not even an Horatian ode – will have been quite ‘like’ it. It is I think probable that Polwhele’s translation of Odes I. is, therefore, one element of his support and vindication of Jonson’s vatic role as the king’s poet. Perhaps on account of this connection between Jonson, Horace and royalist poetics, Polwhele turns to translations of Horace, too, to express his pain and horror at the regicide in . These ‘political’ translations are among the most powerful entries in the notebook, and their force is augmented by the earlier ‘Jonsonian-Horatian’ material: by turning, at the loss of that court culture, back to the Latin author who was most closely identified with its chief protagonist – ‘thine own Horace’ – Polwhele expresses both his nostalgia for the courtly literary life represented by Jonson and his sorrow at its loss. The best of these is Polwhele’s version of Odes I.; apparently dating, like very many of the entries, from or : Horace lib: . Ode an Allegory to the people of Rome repayring the breaches of Ciuell war, wth newe auxilliaryes. poore Hulk wilt launch in a new storm, o stay! careene & calk thy leaks in a safe bay look on thy naked banks no oare where sun=burnt rowers tug’d before!
As noted above, the notebook also includes translations of two more of Jonson’s undoubtedly ‘favourite’ parts of Horace, Odes IV. and Epistles I.. Interestingly, there is also an ode rather in Jonson’s style, dated April , ‘Upon Van Helmonts Ternarye of paradoxes … Transalted [sic] by dr Charleton Phisitian to the late Kinge Charles the Martyr’ (r-r). Jan van Helmont (– ) was an early chemist and physician. See Walter Pagel, Joan Baptista van Helmont: Reformer of Science and Medicine (Cambridge University Press, ). From onwards, Polwhele turns also to Boethius, translating a very large number of the verses from the Consolation of Philosophy. I have noticed this combination of translations from Horace and Boethius in several royalist manuscripts of the period. The particular valency of this combination deserves further study.
Translating Horace, translating Jonson neere treacherous Aegypt thy mayne mast did wrack hark how the Helm, misne, Prowe in Tyber crack! thy Cabell spent, the giddy keele drunck wth impetuous waues doth reele strik thy top=gallant, & the tatterd sayle to thy deafe Sea=Gods, who thee nought avayle though built of Pontick pyne, wch stood the tallest ofspring in the wood. That ancient stock, & empty name n’er bost pylotts in storms trust not a gilded post Cast Anchor (if thou canst) beware the scornfull Hurrycanes to dare. distressed Gallye thou wert late my feare but now my Joyfull Hope, & tender Care veere o veere ho, the straights, & seas betweene aspiring Cyclades.
Most of this chapter has been concerned with Jonson’s own translations of Horace; in Polwhele’s notebook, as in the anonymous translation of Epistles I. or the translation of Epistles I. discussed in Chapter , we find translations of Horace which are also interpretations of Jonson and of the values and practices of his literary and social milieu. Even within his lifetime, however, the ‘Horatianising’ of Jonson went beyond those imitative examples. Jonson’s ode on the failure of The New Inn in is found repeatedly in manuscript collections of the s; very often it is accompanied by Thomas Randolph’s ‘Reply’, which answers the ode stanza for stanza and was often transcribed interpolated verse by verse with Jonson’s poem. Jonson’s ode, like many of the odes discussed in Chapter (and also many of the triumphal masque songs), is composed of long Pindaric stanzas, with ten lines of varying line length (see extract cited above). Again in common with many of Jonson’s other odes, the poem draws attention to its classically lyric features: ‘take the Alcaick Lute ; / Or thine owne Horace, or Anacreons Lyre ; / Warme thee, by Pindares fire’ (–).
Bodleian English poet. f. , v. Th is translation is followed immediately by a related poem, ‘The scope of the Allegory’ (r), which makes it clear that the poem is to be read as an indictment of the Roman civil war and, by extension, of contemporary English politics too. Compare the self-conscious references to Pindar and Horace in UW , , and UV , discussed in Chapter , pp. –.
Translating Jonson
Remarkably, no fewer than three of Jonson’s contemporaries and admirers translated this ode into Latin: one (John Earles) into alcaic stanzas, the metre used by Horace for his grandest and most ‘public’ poetry (such as the Roman odes, Odes III.–); the other two (William Strode and Thomas Randolph himself) into Latin pindarics modelled very closely upon the metrical scheme of Jonson’s own poem. Responding to the vatic seriousness of Jonson’s claim, these authors have used translation into (or almost, ‘back’ into) Latin to endorse his classical status in the strongest possible way. Moreoever, although the translations vary in their fidelity to Jonson’s English (Strode’s is the closest), all three make some attempt, in their Latin versions, to augment the association between Jonson and Horace. William Strode’s translation, by some margin the most closely faithful to Jonson’s English, nevertheless finds room for some additional Horatian touches. The most significant is at line . Jonson’s poem imagines the defeat of ‘curious fooles, and envious of thy straine’ (), who will be forced to concede, upon his return to lyric, that his verse is after all great. Strode translates them as ‘stolidè percontatrix ac invida turba’ (), the ‘stupidly inquisitive and envious mob’. ‘Turba’ is often the word Horace uses to denote the ‘mass’ readership that he rejects in favour of a select but sophisticated audience. ‘Percontatrix’, a word I have not found elsewhere, must be a feminine formation from ‘percontator, -oris, m.’ meaning ‘one who presses questions as an interrogator’. This very rare noun is in classical Latin found only in a play of Plautus, and in Horace, Epistles I., where it refers to the avid questioner (and therefore probable gossip)
The Latin translations by Earles, Strode and Randolph are printed in H&S, vol. , pp. –. Earles’ translation is found in British Library Additional MS , ff. –. William Strode’s version is in Bodleian MS Montagu d. . ff. – (the copy is in the hand of Sir Kenelm Digby). Randolph’s translation was printed in , but is also found in manuscript (Bodleian MS Rawlinson poetry , ff. – and Rawlinson poetry , f. ). Pindaric odes in Latin are an exclusively post-classical genre, but they are found very commonly in neo-Latin verse. The form may have been influenced by parallel text editions of Pindar himself, with the Greek translated into Latin on one side. They may also have been motivated by hopes of reaching a broader audience. Latin writing in this period had a much wider potential readership than work composed in English. James Binns, for instance, cites the translation of Francis Bacon and of Chaucer into Latin at this period. Sir Francis Kynaston’s Latin translation of Chaucer, he remarks, was intended ‘to preserve a great literary work from neglect, and to make it available both to a European audience, and to Kynaston’s own English contemporaries … [and] to transplant [Chaucer] in Latin format into the still thriving latinate culture of the day’ (J.W. Binns, Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: the Latin Writings of the Age, ARCA: Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs (Leeds: Francis Cairns, ), p. ). As at Satires I..–, ‘don’t strive to win the admiration of the crowd, / be content with just a few readers’.
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
whom the wise poet would do best to avoid: ‘percontatorem fugito’ (, ‘shun an inquirer’, in the Rawlinson translation). By choosing – and possibly coining – this unusual word, Strode reinforces the connection between Horace and Jonson, and stresses both Jonson’s popularity and his wisdom. Randolph’s ‘Horatianising’ of Jonson’s ode is more direct. He has chosen to make explicit the implied reference to – and outdoing of – Odes I. in the final stanza. Whereas Jonson partially conceals the full force of his claim in slippery word order (‘like ours … No Harpe ere hit the starres’, –), Randolph’s Latin version appropriates Horace’s vocabulary directly. The original Latin phrase, ‘sublimi feriam sidera vertice’, ‘I shall strike the stars with my uplifted head’, with the comic touch of ‘feriam’ (‘strike’) silenced, has become ‘Alto vertice praeteribit Astra’, ‘he will go beyond the stars with his lofty head’ – ‘go beyond’, that is, Horace too. John Earles’ translation – which, composed in four-line alcaic stanzas rather than the longer pindaric strophes, is already the most clearly Horatian – strengthens the link to Horace and introduces an association between Jonson’s address to himself in the ode, and his inspired lyric address to the king in the masques. This is clear from Earles’ translation of lines – of Jonson’s poem: Leave things so prostitute, And take the Alcaick Lute; Or thine own Horace, or Anacreons Lyre; Warme thee, by Pindares fire: (Jonson, –)
Tu iam prophanatam Minervam Sperne potens meliore pennâ; Magnique Flacci dum legis aemulus, Doctus vetustam restituas chelyn; Teioque inundatus liquore, Pindarico fovearis igni: (Earles, –)
Reject now the prophane Minerva [i.e. the lesser art of the stage] Powerful as you are with your better wing; While you follow the rule of mighty Horace, A learned poet, you restore ancient lyric style; And soaked in Teian liquor, You are warmed by Pindar’s fire.
The liquid or wine of the island of Teos refers to Anacreon; Horace uses this adjective at Epodes . and Odes I.. (‘fide Teia’, the ‘Teian lyre’).
Translating Jonson
Earles’ translation has omitted the ‘Alcaick Lute’ () and stressed both the importance of Horace (here ‘Magni Flacci’) and the extent to which Jonson’s imitation of Horace amounts to a ‘restoration’ of a venerable lyric style (‘chelyn’ means a tortoise-shell, that is, the lyre itself). This is a version of Horace’s own description of the innovations of his work in Epistles I.: ‘hunc ego, non alio dictum prius ore, Latinus / volgavi fidicen’ (‘I, a Latin poet, have made known this lyre [i.e. the lyric style of Alcaeus], which has never been sung by another before’, –). In Earles’ lines this Horatian restoration of Greek forms is associated with Jonson’s ‘meliore pennâ’, his ‘better wing’. This odd Latin phrase, which does not correspond to any phrase in Jonson’s ode, is reminiscent of Odes II., in which Horace describes his own magical transformation into a bird: ‘Non usitata nec tenui ferar / penna biformis per liquidum aethera / vates’ (‘I shall be borne on no common or feeble wing, a poet in double form, through the liquid air’, –). The ‘winged poet’ is also a Pindaric commonplace of which Jonson is particularly fond (‘Now my thought takes wing’ (Forest .)). Finally, Earles’ use of the phrase ‘better wing’ may in fact be a (translated) quotation from Jonson himself – appropriately enough, given the powerful royalism of the ode, from one of the climactic songs in his court masque of , News from the New World Discover’ d in the Moone : Looke, looke alreadie where I am, bright Fame, Got up unto the skie, thus high, Upon my better wing, to sing The knowing King, And make the musicke here, With yours on earth the same.
(Fourth (and final) Song, –)
In the masque Jonson’s ‘better wing’ is the wing of fame, conferred by the poet upon the king, and upon which the king’s own renown depends: ‘Fame, that doth nourish the renowne of Kings, / And keepes that fayre, which envie would blot out’ (–). Jonson’s readers, then, appreciated the classicising force of the close of his ode, and responded to it by making it a Latin poem, one not only more Horatian than Jonson’s original, but also more than Horatian: an acute
The masque was presented to the king at Whitehall on January and February , .
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
reading of the rhetorical force of Jonson’s typical – and, in this poem, slightly desperate – combined appropriation and bettering. The existence of these translations, and especially the evidence they offer of the attempt to endorse Jonson’s laureate claim by literally ‘making it Latin’, is of great interest. But Jonson’s ode itself is a sad and rather offputting poem, shrill in its defiance, and without the grace and poise of the songs from the masques to which it is clearly related. I want to conclude this chapter by returning to Jonson at his Horatian best, in the undated, but perhaps fairly late translation of Horace, Odes IV. (UW ). :
UW
I will give this very beautiful poem in full: Ode the first. The fourth Booke. To Venus. Venus, againe thou mov’st a warre Long intermitted, pray thee, pray thee spare: I am not such, as in the Reigne Of the good Cynara I was: Refraine, Sower Mother of sweet Loves, forbeare To bend a man, now at his fiftieth yeare Too stubborne for Commands so slack: Goe where Youths soft intreaties call thee back. More timely hie thee to the house, With thy bright Swans, of Paulus Maximus: There jest, and feast, make him thine host, If a fit livor thou dost seeke to toast; For he’s both noble, lovely, young, And for the troubled Clyent fyl’s his tongue, Child of a hundred Arts, and farre Will he display the Ensignes of thy warre. And when he smiling finds his Grace With thee ’bove all his Rivals gifts take place, He’ll thee a Marble Statue make Beneath a Sweet-wood Roofe, neere Alba Lake: There shall thy dainty Nostrill take In many a Gumme, and for thy soft eares sake
There is no evidence of the date of the poem. H&S, however, point out the parallel between line (‘a man, now at his fiftieth yeare’) and lines – of UW , ‘A Celebration of C in ten Lyrick Peeces: I. His Excuse for loving’: ‘Though I now write fiftie yeares, / I have had, and have my Peeres.’ There is some overlap between the two poems, and it is possible that the translation dates from around the same time, in about .
The moving statue: translating lyric and UW Shall Verse be set to Harpe and Lute, And Phyrgian Hau’boy, not without the Flute. There twice a day in sacred Laies, The Youths and tender Maids shall sing thy praise: And in the Salian manner meet Thrice ’bout thy Altar with their Ivory feet. Me now, nor Wench, nor wanton Boy, Delights, nor credulous hope of mutuall Joy, Nor care I now healths to propound; Or with fresh flowers to girt my temple round. But, why, oh why, my Ligurine, Flow my thin teares, downe these pale cheeks of mine? Or why, my well-grac’d words among, With an uncomely silence failes my tongue? Hard-hearted, I dreame every Night I hold thee fast! but fled hence, with the Light, Whether in Mars his field thou bee, Or Tybers winding streames, I follow thee.
Although the poet claims to be reconciled to the loss of the passing joys of youth (love, and garlands of flowers, –), he ends by articulating his failure to accept that loss (‘But, why, oh why …’, ). That failure is associated (paradoxically, in beautiful verse) with the loss of poetic ‘speech’: ‘cur facunda parum decoro / inter verba cadit lingua silentio?’ (‘Or why, my well-grac’d words among, / With an uncomely silence failes my tongue?’, –). The poet’s ‘silence’ contrasts with the grace and eloquence of the lawyer Paulus Maximus, the younger man whom Horace suggests Venus should pursue instead of him: ‘For he’s both noble, lovely, young, / And for the troubled Clyent fyl’s his tongue’ (–). The generic significance of the poem, opening Horace’s last and late collection of Odes and heralding a return to lyric as much as to love, has often been stressed in criticism. Philip Hardie, for instance, notes the way in which the ode establishes imagery that persists throughout Odes IV: Transience and fi xity are juxtaposed, and a possible resolution of the contrast between the two terms is offered by rephrasing them as life (likeness) and monumentality. As poetry performed to musical time and sung from the position of a first person singular, lyric is fleeting and ephemeral; and yet Horace seeks to make of it a monument, but of a kind immune to the obsolescence of the headstone of a forgotten dead man. The central image of the sentient statue of Venus is a symbol of what such poetry might be like.
Philip Hardie, ‘Vt Pictura Poesis? Horace and the Visual Arts’, in Niall Rudd (ed.), Horace : a Celebration: Essays for the Bimillenium (London: Duckworth, ), pp. – (p. ).
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
Terms of profound stability – ‘state’, ‘standing’ and ‘still’ – are, as we have seen, key markers in Jonson’s verse of ethical approbation and (quite often) of longing. This poem, in contrast, is filled with movement; it even, in a punningly literal translation of the Latin, begins with it (‘Venus, againe thou mov’st a warre’, ). The statue of Venus is as Hardie points out an ambiguous emblem – of memorial, of art that comes alive, of both stability (the still point in the dance) and of flux (the disturbance of love); and she is herself half alive, capable of smelling (–) and hearing (–), and surrounded by sound and movement. Even Jonson’s insistence upon a stable centre, a ‘gathered self’, breaks down before the onslaught of the lyric Venus, the powerful charm of this beautiful poem; in fact, Jonson’s fine translation adds to Venus’ victory. The translation of ‘dure’ as ‘hard-hearted’, and its displacement from the end to the beginning of the final stanza loses the almost abstract juxtaposition of ‘dure, volubilis’ with which Horace’s poem concludes: But, why, oh why, my Ligurine, Flow my thin teares, downe these pale cheeks of mine? Or why, my well-grac’d words among, With an uncomely silence failes my tongue? Hard-hearted, I dreame every Night I hold thee fast! but fled hence, with the Light, Whether in Mars his field though bee, Or Tybers winding streames, I follow thee. (–)
sed cur heu, Ligurine, cur manat rara meas lacrima per genas? cur facunda parum decoro inter verba cadit lingua silentio ? nocturnis ego somniis iam captum teneo, iam volucrem sequor te per gramina Martii campi, te per aquas, dure, volubilis. (Odes IV..–)
The Latin ode concludes with a series of contrasts, held in balance by the structure of the lines: ‘captum’ (‘caught’) and ‘volucrem’ (‘swift’) in line ; ‘per gramina’ (‘through the grasses’) and ‘per aquas’ (‘through the waters’)
‘But alas, why, Ligurinus, why / do occasional tears drip over my cheeks? / Why does my eloquent tongue slip / in the midst of its words into a silence which lacks honour? / At night, in dreams / at one moment I hold you, caught, at another I follow you as you flit / through the grasses of the Campus / Martius, follow you, hard-hearted, through the rolling waters.’
The moving statue: translating lyric and UW
in lines –; ‘dure’ (‘hard’) and ‘volubilis’ (‘flowing’) in line . Jonson’s version silences these pairs: there is no set of adjectives for ‘captum … volucrem’, and the English poem omits the ‘grasses’ (‘gramina’) of the Campus Martius, which in the Latin balance the ‘aquas’ and add to the effect of dreamlike and liquid movement. Jonson’s poem ends instead with the act of pursuit itself: ‘I follow thee’. The loss or failure of the final lines is more explicit in Jonson’s translation than in Horace’s poem. In the Latin, the poet alternates between grasping and losing Ligurinus, and both alterations are part of the dream: ‘nocturnis ego somniis / iam captum teneo, iam volucrem sequor’ (–, italics mine); ‘In dreams at night / now I hold you caught / now I follow as you fly’. Jonson’s version creates instead a temporal sequence – the poet first grasps his object, then loses it: ‘I hold thee fast! but fled hence’ (). He reinforces this shift with the addition of the phrase ‘with the Light’ (). In Jonson’s poem the speaker’s nightly possession of Ligurinus is illusory (‘I dreame every Night’, ), but his ongoing pursuit is brought into the waking, Roman world. Jonson’s version of Horace’s dream-scape has moreover been carefully Romanised. Where the Latin has only ‘gramina Martii / campi’, ‘the grasses of the Campus Martius’ and then unnamed, generalised ‘waters’, UW has ‘Mars his field’ and specifies the ‘streames’ as ‘Tybers’ (). Jonson’s version of Horace’s disappearing Ligurinus (a Greek name) recedes continually into insistently Roman venues (ones proper, moreover, to a Roman youth as he exercises); the emphasis stresses the distance between the world of Horace’s poem and Jonson’s version, but also the great ‘Romanness’ of that which the poet, and the poem, pursues. Hardie describes the marble (but sentient) statue of Venus in IV. as ‘a symbol of what such poetry might be like’ – that is, poetry which is at once lyric and monumental. That achievement is also, according to the terms of the poem, what Horace at first wants to defer to Paulus Maximus in a kind of recusatio. Forced by Venus to re-enter this poetic fray, the moving juxtapositions of the close of the poem are themselves an achievement of that ideal, both ‘dure’ and ‘volubilis’. The concluding lines of the English poem are, by contrast, doubly removed from the hoped-for reconciliation of stability and flux – firstly by the loss of that evocative combination (‘dure, volubilis’) and secondly
Hardie, ‘Horace and the Visual Arts’, p. .
Translating Horace, translating Jonson
by the altered temporal progression of the whole stanza. The reconciliation of which the poet speaks – the breathing marble, the hope of a perfect lyric – is lost more surely in Jonson’s poem than in Horace’s; but it is also found, in the very act of translation: that confrontation with the lyric and specifically Latin past which is in Jonson’s work a continual pursuit.
Conclusion More remov’d mysteries: Jonson’s textual ‘occasions’ In the introduction to his selection of Jonson’s poems, Thom Gunn remarks of UW (‘An Epitaph on Master V C’): ‘Whatever its source (and ‘sources’ are sometimes a bit like ‘occasions’) it emerges as a kind of discovery, the product of an exploration performed with a quietness and pertinacity suitable to its subject matter.’ If this book has been concerned with the range of textual interactions and strategies that can be encompassed by Gunn’s term ‘sources’, it has also dealt with the wide variety of ‘occasions’ to which odes, epigrams, epistles, dedicatory poems, plays, masques and translations respond. All of these genres are concerned with an encounter or an address, but in each case that is accompanied by the further ‘occasion’ of an encounter between the contemporary world and the ancient: above all, an encounter with Horace. What Gunn terms a ‘source’ itself creates an ‘occasion’. Jonson himself wrote of the role of ‘occasions’ in his art in the wellknown preface to Hymenaei (): This it is hath made the most royall Princes, and greatest persons (who are commonly the personaters of these actions) not onely studious of riches, and magnificence in the outward celebration, or shew; (which rightly becomes them) but curious after the most high, and heartie inventions, to furnish the inward parts: (and those grounded upon antiquitie, and solide learnings) which, though their voyce be taught to sound to present occasions, their sense, or doth, or should alwayes lay hold on more remov’d mysteries.
This passage insists that the ‘occasion’ of the performance is secondary to its ability to convey deeper and more mysterious truths, and the relationship between ‘occasion’ and ‘mystery’ is related syntactically to that between ‘riches … or shew’ and the ‘inward parts’, grounded upon ‘antiquitie’. That which is serious is, almost by definition, classical.
Thom Gunn, The Occasions of Poetry: Essays in Criticism and Autobiography, ed. Clive Wilmer (London: Faber and Faber, ), p. .
Conclusion: Jonson’s textual ‘occasions’
Gunn’s remark on ‘sources’ and ‘occasions’ collapses the distinction maintained in the preface to Hymenaei between ‘occasion’ and ‘antiquitie, and solide learnings’ – that is, Jonson’s classical sources. While ‘sources’ themselves may not necessarily be ‘occasional’ (though some, such as Pindar’s odes, obviously are), any given encounter with a classical text – reading, reproducing, translating, answering – certainly is. Jonsonian literature must, as the preface itself acknowledges, ‘sound to present occasions’. But Gunn’s passing insight reflects a central theme of this book: the social or political ‘occasion’ (at once incident and cause) which stands behind a Jonsonian poem – the hope for patronage, the dedication of a book, a death or (perhaps most likely) a combination of several such motivations – is not simply accompanied by the ‘more remov’d mystery’ of the encounter between classical texts. ‘To Penshurst’ both commemorates a social relationship and creates a textual one (in this case, between Jonson, Horace and Juvenal). But that is not all; the textual ‘encounter’ staged in these works – between Horatian and Pindaric modes of triumph, for instance; or between Senecan social entitlement, and the precarious self-positioning of the Horatian epistle – enacts the social or political encounter to which they are related. Jonson’s ‘Horatianism’ has been much acknowledged, but surprisingly little analysed. Over the course of this book, the ‘Horatianism’ that emerges is one shaped by this repeated social and intertextual jostling: if Jonson’s work can usefully be defined by its relationship to Horace, that relationship is an active one, of conversation, appropriation and rivalry rather than mere resemblance. What it is to be a Jonsonian Horace is, as we have seen, defined through the pressure exerted by rival allusive ‘sources’, but also by significant altercation with Horace himself: ‘Jonson’s Horace’ sets out to claim, and to achieve, laureate status – both poetically and politically – even in his earliest texts, a provocative ‘collapse’ of the staged Horatian career into a single bold declaration. That declaration – of lyric power in satiric contexts; of moral authority in lyric verse; of satiric insight even in the poetry of praise – is repeated throughout Jonson’s career and in every genre. But Jonson’s encounter with Horace is not the only means by which this ‘Jonsonian Horatianism’ is constructed. Jonson’s insistent identification with Horace only ‘works’ if we notice and accept it as such; and this book has been concerned, too, with some of the kinds of evidence available to us of Jonson’s own contemporary or near-contemporary reception: the encounter with Jonson as Horace – whether in direct address,
Conclusion: Jonson’s textual ‘occasions’
translation or imitation – that marks his self-definition as successful. Jonson’s Horatianism lays the foundations for the royalist Horatianism of the cavalier poets and their successors; and, ultimately, for the great age of translation in the latter seventeenth century. Jonson’s engagement with Horace pervades his work so deeply that it is almost transparent to us; and the same is often true of Jonson’s influence upon the poets who came after him. Thom Gunn, an admirer of Jonson’s, is a late example of just such a poet. His own most explicitly Jonsonian poem, ‘An Invitation’, is itself structured around both ‘source’ (in this case ‘To Penshurst’, ‘To Sir Robert Wroth’ and Epigrams , ‘Inviting a Friend to Supper’) and ‘occasion’ (an invitation to the poet’s brother). All three of Jonson’s poems upon which ‘An Invitation’ is modelled are, as we have seen, indebted to Horace, both in detail and (more importantly) in tone: all three are poems of characteristically Horatian ‘retreat’ (to the country, to the pleasures of food, wine and company), and all three exhibit that peculiarly Horatian blend of carefully judged praise, realistic wisdom and social satire. In this respect Gunn’s poem, too, emerges from that tradition of ‘Jonsonian Horatianism’. ‘An Invitation’ ends: so come home to dinner With my whole household, where they all excel: Each cooks one night, and each cooks well. And while food lasts, and after it is gone, We’ll talk, without a TV on, We’ll talk of all our luck and lack of luck, Of the foul job in which you’re stuck, Of friends, of the estranged and of the dead Or living relatives instead, Of what we’ve done and seen and thought and read, Until we talk ourselves to bed.
(–)
These are the simple pleasures of ‘To Penshurst’ and ‘Inviting a Friend to Supper’. But as we have seen, satire, with its suggestions of penury and corruption, intrudes upon ‘To Penshurst’; and the political and social exigencies of Tudor life are present in Epigrams : ‘And we
Cited from Thom Gunn, Collected Poems, p. . Some notes on the poem are found in Hawlin, ‘Epistemes and Imitations’. Charles Martindale also comments upon it briefly (Martindale, ‘The Horatian and Juvenalesque in English Letters’, p. ).
Conclusion: Jonson’s textual ‘occasions’
will have no Pooly ’, or Parrot by’ (). Gunn’s poem works in a similar manner: By then you will have noticed those Who make up Reagan’s proletariat: The hungry in their long lines that Gangling around two sides of city block Are fully formed by ten o’clock For meals the good Franciscan fathers feed Without demur to all who need.
(–)
The hungry queuing for food parallel the ‘rout of rurall folke’ () liberally accommodated in ‘To Sir Robert Wroth’, and the unstinting generosity of Penshurst ‘whose liberall boord doth flow, / With all, that hospitalitie doth know! / Where comes no guest, but is allow’d to eate’ (–), an invitation which extends even to ‘the farmer, and the clowne’ (). The description of charity, as in those poems, inevitably brings in its train an awareness of poverty, and of the poet’s own privileged position, by turns complacent and uneasy with that complacency. Political realities intrude, only to be acknowledged and set aside for the evening (‘Well, I think / After all that, we’ll need a drink’, –); and just as Jonson’s ‘talk’ is to be unhampered by government spies (Pooly and Parrot), so is Gunn’s proposed evening to consist of luxuriously unhindered conversation: ‘We’ll talk, without a TV on’ (). Where Jonson names Virgil, Tacitus, Livy, or ‘some better booke … Of which wee’ll speake our minds, amidst our meate’ (Epigrams .–), Gunn too promises conversation ‘[o]f what we’ve done and seen and thought and read’ (). Structurally, the poem’s alternating lines of ten and eight syllables reproduce the scheme of Forest (‘To Sir Robert Wroth’), and the delicate ironies of tone are also indebted to Jonson. Gunn off ers his brother ‘my room, sunk far from light, / Where cars will not drive through your night’ (–). Combined with the mock-pastoral details of the suburban wildlife (foxglove, mint, fern, ivy) ‘[b]eyond the fence’ (), these lines evoke the pastoral pleasures Jonson describes in his praise of Wroth’s country life, and ‘some coole, courteous shade, which … makes sleepe softer than it is!’ (Forest .–). Gunn’s praise for the life he describes, like Jonson’s for the country estates of his own day, seems at once both sincere and ironic: a speaking voice of marked attachment, affection and self-knowledge that goes back to Horace’s Epistles.
Conclusion: Jonson’s textual ‘occasions’
The three Jonson poems are, as described in Chapter , enlivened (and arguably ironised) by the classical material (Horace, Martial and Juvenal) which they incorporate. Jonson’s own poems have a similar role in Gunn’s ‘Invitation’. The mock pastoral of the view from the bedroom window is sharpened by comparison with ‘To Sir Robert Wroth’ and ‘To Penshurst’, with their full evocations of country peace: the disturbances of the city (prominent in the centre of Gunn’s poem) are ironically distanced not, as we might expect, by an invitation to the countryside itself, but simply by the offer of his own (quieter) room. In ‘To Sir Robert Wroth’ the corruption and decadence of the city intrude upon the country retreat, and Gunn’s pastoral landscape is in fact the heart of San Francisco, complete with the poor and the mad. The virtuous ‘whole household’ at prayer at the close of ‘To Penshurst’ () has become the ‘whole household’, each equally gifted at cooking (a kind of secular piety) in Gunn’s poem (‘so come home to dinner / With my whole household, where they all excel: / Each cooks one night, and each cooks well’, –). Gunn’s aside about the fingers of ivy on the window – ‘(Perhaps before you come I’ll snip them off.)’ () – echoes similar remarks in ‘Inviting a Friend to Supper’: ‘with a short-leg’d hen, / If we can get her’ (–); ‘Ile tell you of more, and lye, so you will come’ (). In both cases, the transparency of the ploy contributes to the speaker’s charm. But that self-indulgent charm is also part of the poem’s bite. Both distasteful political reality (the ‘jobless’, ‘whores’ and ‘crazies’ on the street, –) and virtuous charity (the ‘good Franciscan fathers’, ) are equally distanced from the speaker and his brother whom he addresses. What has been lost personally – the brothers’ own childhood (‘We’ll bolt our porridge down before it’s cool / As if about to go to school. / But we are grown-up now’, –); and ‘the estranged and … the dead’ () – is marked and suggested by what has been lost in the space between Jonson’s poems and Gunn’s: the possibility of pastoral virtue and of household prayer. ‘An Invitation’ invites and receives Jonson as much as his brother; the pathos of the hopeful future intimacy of the poem is emphasised by the brothers’ current distance, and that pathos extends to the distance, both temporal and political, between Gunn’s poem and Jonson’s. In Gunn’s most Jonsonian poem the encounter with the ‘source’ has become an element of the ‘occasion’, and the same is true of Jonson. In the space between remote ‘antiquity’ and the ‘present occasion’,
Conclusion: Jonson’s textual ‘occasions’
his poetry – acting as classical imitation, allusion, translation and commentary – claims for itself a paradoxical resolution of stability and flux, the power both to invigorate, and to quell, the rising swell of language itself: It hath beene ever free, And ever will, to utter termes that bee Stamp’d to the time. As woods whose change appeares Still in their leaves, throughout the sliding yeares (Ars Poetica, –)
licuit semperque licebit signatum praesente nota producere nomen. ut silvae foliis pronos mutantur in annos (Horace, Ars Poetica, –)
In these characteristic and lovely lines, Jonson’s translation elicits from Horace two things the Latin lines do not contain: the poetic counterpoise between mutability (‘change’, ‘sliding’) and endurance (‘still’, ‘throughout’), and a description of that linguistic and artistic achievement as a kind of freedom: ‘It hath beene ever free’ (the Latin verb ‘licet’ means merely ‘permissible’). As I hope to have shown, Jonson’s repeated encounter with the Horatian ‘source’ is also his single most significant ‘occasion’: the occasion of freedom and of poetry; and, for the poet, the hope and chance of libertas.
Appendix: manuscript transcriptions
I. A transcription of the translation of Horace, Epistles I..–, as found in MSS Bodleian Rawlinson Poetry , ff. r–r and British Library Harley , ff. v–r. The complete text of the Harley MS is given; the Rawlinson MS reading is noted where it differs from, or clarifies the Harley text. Unclear letters or words are placed within {…}. Deleted material is placed between <…>. Where I have expanded contractions, the supplied letters are marked in italics. Harley Bod. Rawl. Poet. Parte of the xviijth Epistle of Horace lib: Parte Off ’ the: : Epistle translated into English. ad Lollium of Horace, Lib: : Translated, into Englishe, Ad Lolleum./ But, that I forth advice, (if any need Butt, of my aduise thou hast) Take often heed take ‘ What, and of whom, and vnto whom thou speake; ‘ shun an inquirer, for his tounge will breake ‘ The seale of silence; and an open Eare ‘ Neuer retaynes, what trust reposeth there: ‘ Besydes, words, once lett forth, fly unrecall’d. ‘ Looke, that thy amorous liuer be not gull’d gald, ‘ With sight of Boy, or Wench, that shall attend ‘ In the fayre howse, of thy adored frend; ‘ For feare the Master of that beautious boy ‘ Or the deare maid, in suffering the enioy, to’enioye, ‘ Soe smale a guift, should there his bount’ expire bount’ expire ‘ Or rath the with denying thy desire or racke the ‘ Be throughly skild in him, thou wouldst commend ‘ Least, afterward, anothers Crime doe tend afterwardes ‘ Vnto thy shame. It is our fate, to erre ‘ Sometymes, and worthlesse men to grace prefer. ‘ Therfore, whose noted guilt doth him deiect,
Appendix
‘ And hath deceau’d the once, cease to protect. ‘ As thou would doe a frind intirely knowne; ‘ But, if these Crimes chaunce not to be his owne, ‘ But {footn} ed on him falsely; then, ‘tis Iust But, ffastned ‘ Thou keepe him safe, that in thy guard doth trust ‘ For when thou seest a {Chest}ers tooth to drawe Chesters ‘ Blood of thy frindes, dost thou not feel that iawe Iawe, ‘ Within a litle space approaching thee ‘ When the next wall’s on fyer, thyne is not free ‘ What now this neighbour frights maie thee at length and flames neglected swiftlie gather strength Now for v “ Now for great frindships, they are sweet and deare “ to men {untraded}; such as know them, feare, To men untraded, “ Then Lollius whilst thy barke is vnder sayle Then Lollyus, Mynde this “ The wynd may either change or fayle “ and thou be forced back to thine owne port “ Mens moods are str{a}ng, sad humors hate consort moodes are strange, sadd humors hate comfforte, “ with light, light, like with sa{der}, striving with slowe light, lyke, with sad, stirringe with slowe “ and tardye shun such as with arrow flowe/ with Action fflowe Your deepe canary knights your midnight men your everlasting drinckers, hate you, when you but deny a helth, albeit you sweare tis for your health, and that, indeed you feare, the c{ }dy vapours, that by night ascend The Crudye vapors vp from the stomack to the brayne, then freind, Strive to be sociable, cleare thie browe from signe of cloud. “Thee modest per son, now, “Is thought a close observer, darke, austere “and he that little speaks, sower and severe/ But amongest all I wish that thou shouldst read the learned; and of them aske how to lead an easie age: that thou be not disturb’d with euer=wanting Avarice; or curb’d with feare, or hope of things but meanlie good; T’enquire, if vertue take her better bloud , T’enquyre from learning purchast, or from natures gift; ffrom learninges what will extenuate care, and what true shrift will render thee vnto thie selfe a freind what makes the poore calme lief; whether the end pure calme lyfe,
Manuscript transcriptions {
} partly cut/worn off
r B{yn} honor, stile, and offices of state Byn, or in a gaine, thats sweet, and moderate; Or close retirement; that beguileing path. wich scarce the print of anie lyving hath. When I am downe at hackney brooke and tast hacknye of the cold ryvolett; of whose free wast all the poore Clownage of Low=layton drinckes; that curld and frozen village: what then thinckes My frind, I meditate, or most doe crave? My ffrind Imediate, that I maie but possesse what now I haue Or, at the gods will, lesse; That I may liue Or yf the gods will lesse, that I maye lyve vnto my selfe, the remnant doth surviue of my short age: if ought surviving be, through their benevolence, that I maie see plenty of bookes about mee, and fitt store for my provision yearelie, and no more: Least elce, with doubtfull hopes, I wavering sway but it sufficient is, I only pray To Ioue, who giues, and takes, for lief and welth My constant mynde, I will prepare my selfe./
II. A translation of Horace, Epistles I., found in Philip Kynder’s book (Bodleian MS Ashmole ), r-v. The marginal numbers key the translation to a transcription of the Latin text found before and after the English poem. r Horatius Anglicissans To S: B an inuitation to a Cupp of Ale Hor. Epist. . l. , As Horace did his frend Torquatus, I On the same terms inuite your Company. If thou canst brooke poor stooles a homely roome And Table wheron carpett neere did come Then meete vs at the house thou know’st soe well Where the ould widdow rich Ale vs’d to sell By the parke gate wch peasants woont to pass From Donnington to Bradfords preaching place Ale of fitt age thee waites there, wch was brew’d When Cinthia now in Wane her hornes renew’d
Appendix I that haue paide for’t hope it will be Ale To French or Spanish iuice scorning to vayle If you accept place & condition, say To Morrow after dinner is the day. Think not of beeing rich too soone; This age Few preists will purchase on a parsonage Nor vex thy troubled thoughts for what to say On the next fasting or thanksgiuing day ”Plaine truthe or sense to speake is noe safe case To betray both to humor tyme’s as base Defraud not then thy Genius: the vse Of natures gifts, or fortunes to refuse Is folly. Madness too spare to th’end When wee are dead posteritie may spend ’Fore I’le be accessarie to the bane Of my Contentment let churles think me vaine Then a free Cup theres nothing ha’s vpon Nature a nobler operation To burd’nous secretts it a portall opes And into high assurance strikes faint hopes Disburdens soules from greefe & does dispense Both valour, riches, art, & eloquence./ For other Circumstances these beside I am your Carefully seruant to prouide That all be clanely, nothing of offence To Nose or Eye or other tender sense Roome sweep’t cleane Napkin, cup, & to conuay Your Indian smoake Tonnells of purest clay. Freinds
v Friends too, that if in freedome you things speake That the states peace Constructiuely may breake Shall carrie nothing ore the threshold when Wee part; There will be stout & honest Ben And Robin that has seene manners & men. And Melborns syren Pas[k] - whose pulpitt art Charmes euery thing y t has a head or hart Iudicious Kynder -, honest Bradford too Vnless some wench or widdow be to woe There will be place & drinke for more. All these May bring theine shaddowes w th them if they please But Crowdes are hatefull; if too many come Makes a Confused noise, & fulsome Roome. Say if the men & number please, & say
Manuscript transcriptions
Whether wee may expect you on the day. Then stealing by ye back wayes cheate ye eyes Of your malicious prying parish spyes. Finis J: J.
III. Selected Horatian translations and imitations from John Polwhele’s notebook (Bodleian MS English Poetry f.) r To the admired Ben: Johnson to encourage him to write after his farewel to the stage. alludinge to Horace ode . Lib: Musis amicus &c Ben, thou arte the Muses freinde, greife, and feares, cast to the winde: who winns th’Emperour, or Sweade sole secure, you noethinge dreade. Inhabitante neer Hyppo-crene, plucke ^ sweete roses by that streame, put thy lawrel-crownet on. What Is fame, if thou hast none. See Apollo w th the nine sings, the chorus must be thine. Jo: Polw: Horace de arte poet. Multa renascentur quae ^ iam cecidere, cadentque, quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet vsus. Much Is reuiu’de was ^ dead , not vnderstood, that may bee’ excellent, if the Whimme be good. Jo: Polw: v Horace ode lib: Maecenas atauis &c Royal sr, my life, my Crowne: some in charriotts seeke renowne: soe swifte-gotten victorie wherls man to a deitie. some a popular vote doth raise: others by ful Barnes gett praise, and the happie churle (Is wise) loues the vales, that made him rise. timerous mariners (for pay) praise their homes, yet saile away. quaffe grape-nectar when you dine.
Appendix Hyppocren’s my Cup, and wine. some warre-trumpetts loue, I none, (but what fame doth sounde alone) he that leads a h[unt]ers life pricks awaye forgetts his wife corrected to If hee boares, and staggs doe rouse. [chace Daphne] I seek Lawrel for my browes. I wth nymphs, and satyres dance in coole groues, by witt, not chance. warble Phoebus on thy strings, while the quier of muses sings. If wth Lyricks I be read, Starrs shal Lawreate my head. Jo: Polw:
v Horace lib: . Ode an Allegory to the people of Rome repayring the breaches of Ciuell war, wth newe auxilliaryes. poore Hulk wilt launch in a new storm, o stay ! careene & calk thy leaks in a safe bay look on thy naked banks no oare where sun=burnt rowers tug’d before ! neere treacherous Aegypt thy mayne mast did wrack hark how the Helm, misne, Prowe in Tyber crack ! thy Cabell spent, the giddy keele drunck wth impetuous waues doth reele strik thy top=gallant, & the tatterd sayle to thy deafe Sea=Gods, who thee nought avayle though built of Pontick pyne, wch stood the tallest ofspring in the wood. That ancient stock, & empty name n’er bost pylotts in storms trust not a gilded post Ca[ ]le thine Anchor and Cast Anchor (if thou canst) beware the scornfull Hurrycanes to dare. distressed Gallye thou wert late my feare but now my Joyfull Hope, & tender Care veere o veere ho, the straights, & seas betweene aspiring Cyclades. r The scope of the Allegory
Manuscript transcriptions
What do’st thou frantick Rome? thy tempest sounds new wars, yet <when> gasping w th old mortall wounds sweare a firm peace: for canst thou haue auxiliaryes from the graue? Caesar, & Pompey fought to graspe the state the quarrell of our newe Trium=Virate th’impouerish’d giddy vulgar thronge not to the best syde, but a stronge. Abate yr Cruell pride least angry Gods brandish quick ^lighteninge & whiske scorpion=rods yr purple is too pale, they’l staine it deeper yet wth blood in grayne. Triumphant <most ancient> statu[e]’s, & vayne nam’s n’er bost pylotts in storms trust not a gilded post what must we trust too then, dispense w th life, to keepe good, Conscience. Most miserable Romans late my feare, but now my Joyfull hope, & tender Care, auoyde great factions, boldly saye this is my path, the good Leige waye. v Translation of Horace, Epistles I.
As this text is very heavily revised and corrected in the manuscript, with many deletions, interlinear additions and some passages which are impossible to read, I have given here an edited version. Where possible, I have retained the readings that seem to be the latest revisions; very mangled words or lines are marked with {…}. Polwhele has translated the entire poem; I have transcribed here the opening lines, and the latter portion (corresponding to the passage found translated in Rawlinson and BL ), as these are the sections most relevant to my argument. Horace lib: o Epist th to Lollius. Horace prscribs Lollius how to get great friends, & keepe them, first he inveighs against those who either flatter, or are too seuere (wch they falsely call a friendly Liberty) lastly he exhorts him to striue for those things, wch conduce to a quiet life. I well know noble Lollius you detest to break vppon thy friend a scurrilous Jeste then freind & Buffone do not differ more then the chast matrone, from a paynted whore
Appendix {so else is a contrary vice worse} a churlish rusticke grauetye morose biting with black=mouthd truth yet doth prtend true virtue, & meere freedom of a freind. but Noble Virtue keeps the golden meane The Buffone fills a Parysitick sceane geeres all belowe the salt w th a bold check, himselfe, yet trembling att his patrons beck soe doubles euery word, that accents fall like frightned pupells, who do whyning ball before a testy pedant, Acts in feare as young Tragedians when the Poets there.
r Nowe (if thou canst want I will giue Counsell) what, & to whome thou speakest, Consider well. busie Inquisiters abominate all Curious impertinents will prate. Slye Euesdroppers, that sulke vnder walls theire open eares will take, toungs giue what falls: v The word once out neuer retourns agayne. next do not ma[c]erate thy selfe invayne for a fine Catamites, or ffayre maydens guyle though both ar darlings in the marble pyle of thy great freind, oh let him not bestowe such triuiall gifts, or vex thee wth a noe. look whome thou dost commend least that the blame to others due be ransom’d wth thy shame. s’ar Cheated sometimes by a man not good defend him not, his vices vnderstood least that recriminated Innocence to be protected, want thy Confidence. dost thou not knowe detractors haue the face to traduce Noble Spirits, t’may be thy Case ? when thou dost see thy neighbours howse on fire look to thine owne too much neglected spire. those who want mighty freinds thinck that noth Ease such may be kept: but ’tis great Art to please. Now thy top=gallants vp, feare, least a Crack do split the ship, & thy great ffortuns wrack. dark melancholy Constitutions lowre
Manuscript transcriptions vpon the sanguine, they laugh att the sowre. a sedentary Cynick neuer Can Endure the actiue, he that lazy man. wth midnight drunkards if thou healthes put by swearing thine head will ake, they’l sta{b} they lye. frowne not, nor be too modest in the Towne r for that hath something in it of a clowne. reformed silence is too Stoicall. Converse wth schollers, read them aboue all, X they haue Apolloes beames, wch still inspires X thy rationalls wth moderate desires, soothinge thy fears, and wants, with a large scope freely to vse a profitable hope. Ask whether Learning, or good Nature giue the meanes to lessen Cares, that thou mayst liue in quiet peace wth a well chosen freind. Ask whether wealth or Honour that way tend, or that Ambitions high mightye Strife excells the recluse humble life. Burning wth thirst I to Coole digent goe, whereof Mendelians drink in a deepe snowe X finely refresh’d I cast a smacking looke X to Tantalize a kisse in the swifte brook what thinck you think I then ? what word I crave ? let mee not liue had I lesse then I haue for all my time to come, if there be more wth the propitious Gods for me in store, Good books, and spryghtly wine in a cleare cask choyce daynties till next yeare, no more Ile ask thus fi x’d indulge my Genius all the daye assur’d the donor will not take awaye, let Joue giue life, & health my selfe will find better then riches, a Contented minde. /
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Index of passages discussed
Specific portions of longer poems are indexed separately only where there is a substantial discussion of the lines in question. Odes I. –, , , , , , , I..– , , I. I. – I. – I. . I. , , I. II. II. II. II. II. , , , III. , III. III. III. III. III. III. –, , , , , , , IV. , – IV. , , –, , IV. , IV. , IV. , IV. IV. –, , –, , IV..– – IV..– – IV. –, , –, , IV..– – IV. – IV. IV. Satires I. ,
Gunn, Thom, ‘An Invitation’ – Holland, Hugh, Pancharis – Horace Ars Poetica –, , , , , , –, – – – – – – – – – – – – – –, – – Carmen Saeculare Epistles I. I. –, I. , I. , – I. , I. , –, I. , , , –, –, , –, I..– – I..– – I. , , , , I..– I..– – I..– – II. , , , , II..– , , – II.. , Epodes –, –
Index of passages discussed
Horace (cont.) I. I. , , I. , –, , , , – I..– – I..– – I. I. , I. , , I. , , , , , , I..– – II. , , , – II..– – II..– – II..– – II..– – II. II. II. , –, , , – II..– – II..– II..– – II..– – II..– – Homer Iliad Jonson Ars Poetica , – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Conversations with William Drummond , , , Cynthia’s Revels , , Discoveries Epigrams (‘To my Booke’) – (‘To my Booke-seller’) – (‘To King James’) (‘On the Union’) (‘To Alchymists’) – (‘To William Camden’) (‘On Sir John Roe’) , (‘On Sir John Roe) , –, (‘To the same’) ,
(‘To the Ghost of Martial’) (‘On Giles and Jone’) (‘To Fine Lady Would-bee’) (‘To my Muse’) (‘To William Roe’) , –, (‘To Fine Grand’) (‘To Sir Thomas Roe’) –, , –, , , (‘To the same’) –, , , (‘Inviting a Friend to Supper’) –, , , , , – (‘To True Souldiers’) (‘To William Roe’) (‘On the Famous Voyage’) Every Man Out of His Humour –, , ‘Farewell to the Stage’ (ode on the failure of The New Inn) , –, – Forest (‘Why I write not of Love’) (‘To Penshurst’) , –, , – .– – .– – .– – (‘To Sir Robert Wroth’) –, , –, , – .– .– – (‘To the World’) , –, .– .– – .– .– – (‘Song. To Celia’) –, (‘Epode’) (‘Epistle. To Elizabeth Countesse of Rutland’) , , –, , , –, , .– – .– – .– (‘Epistle. To Katherine, Lady Aubginy’) , , –, .– .– – .– .– (‘Ode. To Sir William Sydney, on his Birth-day’) –, , Hymenaei – Love Restored News from the New World Poetaster ‘Apologetical Dialogue’ , –, – I. ,
Index of passages discussed I. II. , II. , – III. III..– III. , III. , – III..– – IV. , –, IV..– – IV..– IV. , , – IV..– – IV. IV. IV..– IV. IV. V. , , , – V..– – V..– – V..– – V. , – V..– V..– V..– – V. , , , –, – V..– – V..– – V..– – V..– – Ungathered Verse , (‘Ode Allegorike’) , –, , (‘The Vision of B. J, on the Muses of his Friend M. D’) (‘Ode’) –, (‘An Epistle to a Friend’) , , , , see also: UW Underwood (‘A Celebration of C in ten Lyrick Peeces’) (‘My Picture left in Scotland ’) (‘An Epitaph on Master V C’) (‘An Epistle to Sir E S, now Earle of Dorset ’) , –, , , (‘An Epistle to Master J S’) –, –, (‘An Epistle to a Friend, to perswade him to the Warres’) , , –, , , (‘Epistle. To a Friend’) , (‘A Satyricall Shrub’)
(‘The mind of the Frontispiece to a Booke’) (‘An Ode to J Earle of Desmond , writ in Q E time, since lost, and recovered’) , –, (‘An Ode’) , (‘An Ode’) (‘An Epistle to a Friend’) , , see also: UV (‘An Elegie’) – (‘A speach according to Horace ’) , (‘An Epistle to Master Arth: Squib ’) , , , , (‘An Epistle answering to one that asked to be Sealed of the Tribe of Ben’) , , , (‘Epistle To Mr. A S’) (‘Epistle. To my L C’) (‘An Epigram, To the House-hold’) (‘Epigram. To a Friend, and Sonne’) , (‘To the immortall memorie, and friendship of that noble paire, Sir L C, and Sir H. M’) , , –, (‘To the Right Honourable, the Lord high Treasurer of England . An Epistle Mendicant’) (‘To the right Honourable, the Lord Treasurer of England . An Epigram’) , –, (‘Eupheme’) , (‘The praises of a Countrie life’) , (‘Ode the first. The fourth Booke. To Venus’) – Juvenal Satires , , , , – , , , – –, – – – , –, , – Marlowe, Christopher Dido, Queen of Carthage – II.. –
Martial preface , . . – . . . . , – . . –, . . . . . , – . Persius Prologue , –, Satire , Pindar Isthmiam Odes , , , , Nemean Odes , , ,
Index of passages discussed , –, , .– – – – Olympian Odes , .– Pythian Odes , – Seneca De Beneficiis – I. – I. II. – II. Virgil Georgics II III Aeneid I IV VI
General index
Allott, Robert see Englands Parnassus allusion see intertextuality Ascham, Roger Augustus, Caesar see Jonson, Poetaster, presentation of Augustus authority, poetic –, –, , – Beaumont, Francis Blackfriars, children’s company at , Bland, Mark Boehrer, Bruce Boethius Burrow, Colin , , , , , Cain, Tom , , , Cain, William Camden, William see Jonson, Epigrams Campion, Thomas ‘The Man of Life Upright’ Chapman, George Blind Beggar of Alexandria The Battle of Alcazar Carew, Thomas Chester, Charles Chester, Robert Loves martyr classical scholarship, early modern – see also Farnaby, Thomas; Heinsius, Daniel comical satires – see also Cynthia’s Revels, Every Man Out of His Humour and Poetaster Corbet, Vincent Cubeta, Paul M. Dekker, Thomas satirised in Poetaster Satiro-mastix , , Desmond, James, Earl of – see also Jonson, UW Donne, John , , , , , ,
Drummond, William, of Hawthornden see also Jonson, Conversations with Drummond Earles, John translation of Jonson into Latin by, – education, early modern – Englands Parnassus , Elizabeth I addressed by Jonson in UW – in Cynthia’s Revels in Every Man Out of His Humour epinicion, redefinition of, in Jonson’s odes –, , – epistles, verse, in Jonson’s circle – see also Sir John Roe Farnaby, Thomas , edition of Martial’s epigrams by, Feeney, Denis , Fletcher, Angus freedom of speech see libertas Freudenburg, Kirk , Fry, Paul. H. , Genette, Gerard gnomic statements in Jonson’s poetry , , grace, the significance of, in Jonson’s verse , , –, , , –, , , , – Grandsen, K. W. , Greene, Thomas M. , –, , , , Griffin, Miriam Guilpin, Everard , Gunn, Thom , – ‘An Invitation’ – Hardie, Philip , Harington, John Heinsius, Daniel , , , Helgerson, Richard
General index
Henderson, John Herbert, Edward Herrick, Robert Holland, Hugh and Pancharis –, – Horace Ars Poetica , as an epistle – and Virgil in Poetaster – Epistles: artistic independence in, –, –, ; friendship in, , –; imitations of, in Jonson’s circle –; move away from invective in ; translation of I. in Philip Kynder’s notebook – imitation of Pindar in –, – ‘libertas’ in , modern and early modern interpretations of –, Odes: IV., Jonson’s translation of –; promise of immortality in I., III., IV. and IV. –, , , ; translations of, in response to the regicide – Satires: II. and legal language –; II. and recusatio –, –; compared to Juvenal in early modern criticism ; related to Juvenal in Jonson’s work –, – see also index of passages discussed Horatianising of Juvenal – of Martial , of Seneca’s De Beneficiis – intertextuality –, , , , – in recent classical scholarship see also under named authors James I, King, addressed in Jonson’s Epigrams John, Lisle C. Jones, Inigo Jonson and freedom of speech see libertas and Juvenal , –, – and Martial –, –, – and Pindar , –, –, – and Seneca –, – and the culture of translation –, – and the role of the poet –, , –, – as editor of his own work – control of printed texts by – imitation of, in the later seventeenth century , , –, –
patronage see patronage self-presentation of, as Horace –, – and passim verse epistles by –, –; as distinct from epigrams –; relationship to satire of –; varieties of friendship in verse satire , –; incorporation of lyric self-confidence in , –; relationship to epistles of , –; the ‘Horatianising’ of Juvenal in –, – Jonson, works see also index of passages discussed folio of – Ars Poetica , translation of , – Epigrams –, –; general relationship to Martial of –; opening sequence of – Every Man Out of His Humour , , ; Horatian and Juvenalian models in –; Induction of – ‘Farewell to the Stage’ (ode on the failure of The New Inn) , –, –; translation into Latin of – Forest: satiric intrusion in the opening sequence of poems in –; satiric opening of Forest – Poetaster: Horace’s Ars Poetica in –; Horace’s Epistles in –; Horace’s Odes in –; Horace’s Satires in , , –, ; Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage in –, ; poetic immortality in –; presentation of Augustus in , –, , –, –, –; role of Ovid in , –; role of the poet in – , –; role of Virgil in , , –; the historical Horace in ; translation of Satires II. in –; use of the term ‘translating’ in –; Virgil’s defence of Horace in , , , The Gypsies Metamorphosed The New Inn, responses to the failure of , , The Staple of News Juvenal allusion to Horace in – compared to Horace in early modern criticism compared to Horace in Jonson’s comical satires – compared to Horace in Jonson’s verse epistles – see also index of passages discussed Kallendorf, Craig ,
General index Kaplan, M. Lindsay Kyd, Thomas, Spanish Tragedy Kynder, Philip translation of Epistles – in the notebook of – Kurke, Leslie Lefkowitz, Mary libertas (freedom of speech) , , , –, –, –, –, and friendship – and the ethics of address in Jonson’s epigrams and verse epistles and the limits of free speech in classical satire – Loewenstein, Joseph , , Lollius see also Horace, Odes IV. Epistles I. and Epistles I. Lowrie, Michele manuscript circulation and publication in –, verse epistles in – manuscripts Bodleian MS Ashmole , Bodleian MS English poetry f. Bodleian MS English poetry f. , , , , , Bodleian MS Montagu d. Bodleian MS Rawlinson poetry –, , , , , – Bodleian MS Rawlinson poetry Bodleian MS Rawlinson poetry British Library Additional MS British Library MS Harley , , Christ Church College (Oxford) MS , Nottingham University Portland MS Pw V. St John’s College (Cambridge) MS S. Marlowe, Christopher Dido, Queen of Carthage – Elegies Marston, John, satirised in Poetaster Martindale, Charles , Martindale, Joanna , Martial , –, combined with Horace in Jonson’s Epigrams – edited by Thomas Farnaby opening sequence of the Epigrams – preface to Epigrams Maus, Katharine , , Miller, Anthony ,
Mountjoy, Charles , , –, , Muecke, Frances Oates, Mary I. Oliensis, Ellen , , , Ovid , , , as a character in Poetaster – see also Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage ; index of passages discussed Pancharis see Holland, Hugh Parfitt, G. A. E. patronage , –, , –, –, –, , – see also grace Persius , –, , Peterson, Richard S. , , Pigman, George W. Pindar and the promise of immortality compared to Horace in early modern scholarship – imitated by Horace –, –, imitated by Jonson –, –, – see also index of passages discussed Platz, Norbert Polwhele, John , , , , – imitation of Odes I. by , , translation of Epistles I. by – translation of Odes I. by translation of Odes I. by – praise combined with satire in Jonson’s Epigrams – in Jonson’s odes – in the Roe epigrams – Putnam, Michael C. J. Quinn, Kenneth , Randolph, Thomas , , , his Latin translation of Jonson recusatio , –, –, – Revard, Stella , , – rivalry between Jonson and Martial between Jonson and the monarch see also intertextuality; Jonson Roe, family epigrams addressed to them – Roe, Sir John , –, , – translation of Epistles I. possibly to be attributed to Roe – Roe, Sir Thomas , , –, Roe, Sir William –
General index
royalism, in imitations of Jonson, , – Rutland, Elizabeth, Countess of Jonson, Forest satire – and praise in Jonson’s Epigrams – of the s – intrusion of, in the Forest collection – relationship of Jonson’s verse satire and epistles satire, classical Juvenal as a response to Horace in Jonson’s poetry –, – Juvenal vs. Horace in early modern criticism see also Persius Sackville, Sir Edward, Earl of Dorset see Jonson, UW Scaliger, Julius , Selden, John Titles of Honor , see Jonson, UW Seneca De Beneficiis and UW – Jonson’s ‘Horatianising’ of – Shafer, Robert , Shakespeare, William , , Romeo and Juliet , compared to Jonson , Sidney, William –,
see Jonson, Forest Sinfield, Alan , Sisson, C. H. Strode, William , Latin translation of Jonson by – style, literary, discussed in UW – translation as a school exercise as response to the regicide – in early modern culture , –, – in early modern manuscripts , , – of Jonson into Latin , – Tudeau-Clayton, Margaret , victory, redefinition of, in Jonson’s Pindaric odes – virtue, identity of ethical and aesthetic – Virgil , , , – and Horace in Poetaster – early modern reception of the Aeneid see also Jonson, Poetaster, translation of Virgil; index of passages discussed Weston, Lord see Jonson, UW Wooton, Sir Henry, ‘The Character of a Happy Life’ Wroth, Sir Robert see Jonson, Forest
