Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur
"The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived."
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Harlequin-Horace
or, The Art of Modern Poetry
James Miller
...you can by the single wave of a HARLEQUIN'S WAND, conjure the whole Town every night into your Circle; where like a true Cunning Man, you amuse 'em with a few Puppy's Tricks while you juggle 'em out of their Pelf, and then cry out with a Note of Triumph,
Si Mundus vult Decipi,, Decipiatur.
And now, Sir, having given you a full and true account of your self, we come to say something of our selves, with a Word upon our Performance.
As to the following Piece, it is a System of the Laws of Modern Poetry establish'd amongst us by the Authority of the most successful Writers of the present Age, by which it appears that the Rules now follow'd, are in all Respects exactly the Reverse of those which were observ'd by the Authors of Antiquity, and which were set forth of old by Horace in his Epistle de Arte Poetica. In a word, Sir, it is *Horace turn'd Harlequin, with his Head where his Heels should be*; in which Posture we ween not but he will be well receiv'd by your worship, and in Consequence of that, by the whole Town.
--Nec Phoebo gratior ulla est
Quam sibi quoe Vari prescripsit pagina Nomen.
(To Phoebus is no page more welcome than that which is inscribed on its front with the name of Varus.) Virgil, Eclogue 6.11-12
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Bartholomew Fair: Jonson
T H E
I N D u C T I O N
O N T H E
S T A G E.
...It is further covenanted, concluded and agreed, That how great soever the expectation be, no Person here is to expect more than he knows, or better Ware than a Fair will afford: neither to look back to the Sword and Buckler-age of Smithfield, but content himself with the present. Instead of a little Davy, to take Toll o' the Bawds, the Author doth promise a strutting Horse-courser, with a leer-Drunkard, two or three to attend him, in as good Equipage as you would wish. And then for Kind- heart, the Tooth-drawer, a fine Oily Pig-woman with her Tapster, to bid you welcome, and a Consort of Roarers for Musick. A wise Justice of Peace meditant, instead of a Jugler, with an Ape. A civil Cutpurse searchant. A sweet Singer of new Ballads allurant: and as fresh an Hypocrite, as ever was broach'd, rampant. If there be never a Servant-monster i' the Fair, who can help it, he says, nor a Nest of Antiques? He is loth to *make Nature afraid* in his Plays, like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries, to MIX HIS HEAD with other MENS HEELS; let the concupiscence of Jigs and Dances, reign as strong as it will amongst you: yet if the Puppets will please any body, they shall be entreated to come in.
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Aegri Somnia - Sick Men's Dreams
Harlequin-Horace:
Or, the
Art of Modern Poetry
If some great Artist in whose Works conspire
The Grace of Raphael, and a Titian's Fire,
Should toil to draw the Portrait of a Fair
With Shaftsb'ry's Mien, and Harvey's pleasing Air;
A Shape that might with lovely Queenb'rough's vie,
The Smile of Vanbrugh, and a Hertford's Eye,
Thy Symmetry sweet Richmond! if 'ere Art
Could such sweet Symmetry as thine impart,
Like ORANGE cloath'd with every awful Grace,
And her bright Soul resplendent in the Face,
Till the whole Piece should a fair Venus shine
One finish'd Form, in ev'ry Part divine.
Tho' thus with all that's Justly pleasing fraught,
Our modern Connoisseurs would scorn the Draught.
Such Treatment Pope you must expect to find,
Whilst Art, and Nature in your WoRks are join'd.
'Tis not to Think with Strength, and Write with ease,
No -- 'tis the AEGRI SOMNIA now must please;
Things without Head, or Tail, or Form, or Grace,
A wild, forc'd, glaring, unconnected Mass.
Well! Bards (you say) like Painters, Licence claim,
To dare do any thing for Bread, or --Fame.
'Tis granted - therefore use your utmost Might,
To gratify the Town in all you write;
A Thousand jarring Things together yoke,
The Dog, the Dome, the Temple, and the Joke,
Consult no Order, but for ever steer
From grave to gay, from florid to severe.
To grand Beginnings full of Pomp and Show,
Big Things profest, and Brags of what you'll do,
Still some gay, glitt'ring, foreign Gewgaws join,
Which, like gilt Points on *Peter's Coat, may shine
Descriptions which may make your Readers stare,
And marvel how such pretty Things came There
(snip)
Suppose you're skill'd in the Parnassian Art,
To purge the Passions, and correct the Heart,
To paint Mankind in ev'ry Light, and Stage,
Their various Humours, Characters, and Age,
To fix each Portion in its proper Place
And give the Whole one Method, Form and Grace;
What's that to us? who pay our Pence to see
The great Productions of Profundity,
Shipwrecks, and Monsters, Conjurers, and Gods,
Where every Part is with the whole at odds.
With Truth and Likelihood we all are griev'd,
And take most Pleasure, when we're most deceiv'd,
Now wrote obscure, and let your Words move slow,
Then with full Light, and rapid Ardor glow;
In one Scene make your Hero cant, and whine,
Then roar out Liberty in every Line;
Vary one Thing a thousand pleasant Ways,
Shew Whales in Woods, and Dragons in the Seas.
To shun a Fault's the ready Way to fall,
Correctness is the greatest Fault of all.
What tho' in Pope's harmonious Lays combine,
All that is lovely, noble, and divine;
Tho' every part with Wit, and Nature glows,
And from each Line a sweet Instruction flows;
Tho' thro' the whole the Loves, and Graces smile,
Polish the Manners, and adorn the Stile?
Whil'st, Vertue's Friend, He turns the tuneful Art
From Sounds to Things, from Fancy to the Heart,
Yet slavishly to Truth and Sense tied down,
He impotently toils to please the Town.
Heav'n grant I never write like him I mention,
Since to the Bays I could not make pretension,
Nor Thresher-like, hope to obtain a Pension.
N'ere wait for Subjects equal to your Might,
For then, 'tis ten to one you never write;
When Hunger prompts you, take the first you meet,
For who'd stand chusing when he wants to eat?
Besides, Necessity's the keenest Whet;
He writes most natural, who's the most in Debt.
Take then no pains a Method to Maintain,
Or link your Work in a continu'd Chain,
But cold, dull Order gloriously disdain.
Now here, now there, launch boldly from your Theme,
And make surprising Novelties your Aim;
Bombast and Farce, the Sock and Buskin blend,
Begin with Bluster, and with Lewdness end.
(snip)
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Jonson, Discoveries
Censura de poetis. - Nothing in our age, I have observed, is more PREPOSTEROUS than the running judgments upon poetry and poets; when we shall hear those things commended and cried up for the best writings which a man would scarce vouchsafe to wrap any wholesome drug in; he would never light his tobacco with them. And those men almost named for MIRACLES, who yet are so vile that if a man should go about to examine and correct them, he must make all they have done but one blot. Their good is so entangled with their bad as forcibly one must draw on the other’s death with it. A sponge dipped in ink will do all:-
“ - Comitetur Punica librum
Spongia. - ” {44a}
Et paulò post,
“Non possunt . . . multæ . . . lituræ
. . . una litura potest.”
Cestius - Cicero - Heath - Taylor - Spenser. - Yet their vices have not hurt them; nay, a great many they have profited, for they have been loved for nothing else. And this false opinion grows strong against the best men, if once it take root with the ignorant. Cestius, in his time, was preferred to Cicero, so far as the ignorant durst. They learned him without book, and had him often in their mouths; but a man cannot imagine that thing so foolish or rude but will find and enjoy an admirer; at least a reader or spectator. The puppets are seen now in despite of the players; Heath’s epigrams and the Sculler’s poems have their applause. There are never wanting that dare prefer the worst preachers, the worst pleaders, the worst poets; not that the better have left to write or speak better, but that they that hear them judge worse; Non illi pejus dicunt, sed hi corruptius judicant. Nay, if it were put to the question of the water-rhymer’s works, against Spenser’s, I doubt not but they would find more suffrages; because the most favour common vices, out of a prerogative the vulgar have to lose their judgments and like that which is naught.
Poetry, in this latter age, hath proved but a mean mistress to such as have wholly addicted themselves to her, or given their names up to her family. They who have but saluted her on the by, and now and then tendered their visits, she hath done much for, and advanced in the way of their own professions (both the law and the gospel) beyond all they could have hoped or done for themselves without her favour. Wherein she doth emulate the judicious but PREPOSTEROUS bounty of the time’s grandees, who accumulate all they can upon the parasite or fresh-man in their friendship; but think an old client or honest servant bound by his place to write and starve.
Indeed, the multitude commend writers as they do fencers or wrestlers, who if they come in robustiously and put for it with a deal of violence are received for the braver fellows; when many times their own rudeness is a cause of their disgrace, and a slight touch of their adversary gives all that boisterous force the foil. But in these things the unskilful are naturally deceived, and judging wholly by the bulk, think rude things greater than polished, and scattered more numerous than composed; nor think this only to be true in the sordid multitude, but the neater sort of our gallants; for all are the multitude, only they differ in clothes, not in judgment or understanding.
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Preposterous Chatterton
K. K. Ruthven
University of Melbourne
I.
This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.
-William Shakespeare, Hamlet
The Oxford English Dictionary records two principal usages of the word "PREPOSTEROUS" that circulated contemporaneously in the sixteenth century. By the late nineteenth century only one was still current, and that was the pejorative sense defined as "contrary to the order of nature, or to reason or common sense; monstrous; irrational, perverse, foolish, nonsensical; in later use, utterly absurd." The other usage- listed first but rendered secondary and eventually obsolete by modernity-foregrounds the etymology of the word to articulate a politics of reversal: "having or placing last that which should be first; inverted in position or order." (snip) he ubiquity of preposterous readings calls for a supplementary literary history, the nuclear model for which is a rhetorical figure known to the ancient Greeks as hysteron proteron ("the later first"). "We name it the Preposterous," George Puttenham explained in The Arte of English Poesie (1589) when classifying hysteron proteron as a "manner of disordered speech," exemplified in the "English prouerbe, the cart before the horse." It is therefore treated with suspicion in symbolic systems that conceive of time as an arrow moving always and only from past to present. In logic, for instance, hysteron proteron names a type of fallacy in which the conclusion is said to antecede
the premises because one of them already assumes the proof for it.
As a subversive figure of disorder, hysteron proteron makes alternative literary histories possible by drawing attention to the preposterousness of various literary conventions at odds with common sense notions of sequence.
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Jonson, Discoveries
De corruptela morum. - There cannot be one colour of the mind, another of the wit. If the mind be staid, grave, and composed, the wit is so; that vitiated, the other is blown and deflowered. Do we not see, if the mind languish, the members are dull? Look upon an effeminate person, his very gait confesseth him. If a man be fiery, his motion is so; if angry, it is troubled and violent. So that we may conclude wheresoever MANNERS and FASHIONS are corrupted, language is. It imitates the public riot. The excess of feasts and apparel are the notes of a sick state, and the wantonness of language of a SICK MIND.
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http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.006...
Horace, Art of Poetry:
If a painter1 should wish to unite a horse's neck to a human head, and spread a variety of plumage over limbs [of different animals] taken from every part [of nature],2 so that what is a beautiful woman in the upper part terminates unsightly in an ugly fish below; could you, my friends, refrain from laughter, were you admitted to such a sight Believe, ye Pisos, the book will be perfectly like such a picture, the ideas of which, like a SICK MAN'S DREAMS, are all vain and fictitious: so that neither head nor foot can correspond to any one form. "Poets and painters [you will say] have ever had equal authority for attempting any thing." We are conscious of this, and this privilege we demand and allow in turn: but not to such a degree, that the tame should associate with the savage; nor that serpents should be coupled with birds, lambs with tigers.
In pompous introductions,3 and such as promise a great deal, it generally happens that one or two verses of purple patch-work, that may make a great show, are tagged on; as when the grove and the altar of Diana and the meandering of a current hastening through pleasant fields, or the river Rhine, or the rainbow is described. But here there was no room for these [fine things]: perhaps, too, you know how to draw a cypress:4 but what is that to the purpose, if he, who is painted for the given price, is [to be represented as] swimming hopeless out of a shipwreck? A large vase at first was designed: why, as the wheel revolves, turns out a little pitcher? In a word, be your subject what it will, let it be merely simple and uniform.
The great majority of us poets, father, and youths worthy such a father, are misled by the appearance of right. I labor to be concise, I become obscure: nerves and spirit fail him, that aims at the easy: one, that pretends to be sublime, proves bombastical: he who is too cautious and fearful of the storm, crawls along the ground: he who wants to vary his subject in a MARVELOUS MANNER, 5 paints the dolphin in the woods, the boar in the sea. The avoiding of an error leads to a fault, if it lack skill.
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Jonson, _Timber_
De progres. picturæ. {93} Picture took her feigning from poetry; from geometry her rule, compass, lines, proportion, and the whole symmetry. Parrhasius was the first won reputation by adding symmetry to picture; he added subtlety to the countenance, elegancy to the hair, love-lines to the face, and by the public voice of all artificers, deserved honour in the outer lines. Eupompus gave it splendour by numbers and other elegancies. From the optics it drew reasons, by which it considered how things placed at distance and afar off should appear less; how above or beneath the head should deceive the eye, &c. So from thence it took shadows, recessor, light, and heightnings. From moral philosophy it took the soul, the expression of senses, perturbations, manners, when they would paint an angry person, a proud, an inconstant, an ambitious, a brave, a magnanimous, a just, a merciful, a compassionate, an humble, a dejected, a base, and the like; they made all heightnings bright, all shadows dark, all swellings from a plane, all solids from breaking. See where he complains of their painting CHIMAERAS {94} (by the vulgar unaptly called grotesque) saying that men who were born truly to study and emulate Nature did nothing but MAKE MONSTERS AGAINST NATURE, which Horace so laughed at.
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Jonson -- Discoveries
(In the difference of wits, note 10)
Not. 10.--It cannot but come to pass that these men who commonly seek to do more than enough may sometimes happen on something that is good and great; but very seldom: and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest of their ill. For their jests, and their sentences (which they only and ambitiously seek for) stick out, and are more eminent, because all is sordid and vile about them; as lights are more discerned in a thick darkness than a faint shadow. Now, because they speak all they can (however unfitly), they are thought to have the greater copy; where the learned use ever election and a mean, they look back to what they intended at first, and <
http://home.att.net/~tleary/GIFS/DROUS.JPG
The true artificer will not run away from NATURE as he were AFRAID of her, or depart from life and the likeness of truth, but speak to the capacity of his hearers. And though his language differ from the vulgar somewhat, it shall not fly from all humanity, with the Tamerlanes and Tamerchains of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry it, as none but artificers perceive it. In the meantime, perhaps, he is called barren, dull, lean, a poor writer, or by what contumelious word can come in their cheeks, by these men who, without labour, judgment, knowledge, or almost sense, are received or preferred before him. He gratulates them and their fortune. Another age, or juster men, will acknowledge the virtues of his studies, his wisdom in dividing, his subtlety in arguing, with what strength he doth inspire his
readers, with what sweetness he strokes them; in inveighing, what sharpness; in jest, what urbanity he uses; how he doth reign in men's affections; how invade and break in upon them, and makes their minds like the thing he writes. Then in his elocution to behold what word is proper, which hath ornaments, which height, what is beautifully translated, where figures are fit, which gentle, which strong, to show the composition manly; and how he hath avoided faint, obscure, obscene, sordid, humble, improper, or effeminate phrase; which is *not only praised of the most, but commended (which is worse), especially for that it is naught*.
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Soul of the AGE!:
Jonson, _The Alchemist_
TO THE READER.
If thou beest more, thou art an understander, and then I trust thee. If thou art one that takest up, and but a pretender, beware of what hands thou receivest thy commodity; for thou wert never more fair in the way to be cozened, THAN IN THIS AGE, in poetry, especially in PLAYS: wherein, *now the CONCUPISCENCE of DANCES and of antics so reigneth, as to RUN AWAY from NATURE, and be afraid of her, is the only point of art that tickles the spectators*. But how out of purpose, and place, do I name art? When the professors are grown so obstinate contemners of it, and presumers on their own naturals, as they are deriders of all diligence that way, and, by simple mocking at the terms, when they understand not the things, think to get off wittily with their IGNORANCE. Nay, they are esteemed the more learned, and sufficient for this, by the many, through their excellent vice of judgment. For they commend writers, as they do fencers or wrestlers; who if they come in robustuously, and put for it with a great deal of violence, are received for the braver fellows: when many times their own rudeness is the cause of their disgrace, and a little touch of their adversary gives all that boisterous force the foil. I deny not, but that these men, who always seek to do more than enough, may some time happen on some thing that is good, and great; but very seldom; and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest of their ill. It sticks out, perhaps, and is more eminent, because all is sordid and VILE about it: as lights are more discerned in a thick darkness, than a faint shadow. I speak not this, out of a hope to do good to any man against his will; for I know, if it were put to the question of theirs and mine, *the worse would find more suffrages: because the most favour COMMON ERRORS*. But I give thee this warning, that there is a great difference between those, that, to gain the opinion of copy, utter all they can, however unfitly; and those that use election and a mean. For it is only the disease of the unskilful, to think rude things greater than polished; or scattered more numerous than composed.
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Liking Men:
Ben Jonson's Closet Opened
Lorna Hutson
University of St. Andrews
In the prologue to the revised text of Every Man In, Jonson distinguishes the play that he presents as the "first fruits" of his dramatic career from the offerings of the more popular Shakespearean tradition, in which playwrights disregarded neoclassical poetics, happily ignoring the principle of unity of time. He declares that he has not "so loved the stage" as to follow the example of his contemporaries, who
. . . make a child, now swaddled to proceed
Man, and then shoot up in one beard and weed,
Past threescore years; or, with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars,
And in the tiring-house bring wounds to scars.4
The often-heard complaint of earlier humanist authors against the chronicle drama's violations of temporal probability is here given a peculiarly Jonsonian inflection in the reference to "three rusty swords" and the quick-changes of "wounds to scars" backstage. Jonson, unlike Shakespeare, persistently draws attention to the "inert materiality" and "creaking contrivances" of theater. Here, of course, the demystification of these contrivances works to invalidate any techniques of illusion except for those of linguistic currency and contemporaneity. Jonson's play, unlike those chronicle histories of Shakespeare, will seem real because it offers images of "deeds, and language, such as men do use" in contemporary life, enlivened by examples of the unmanly commission of "POPULAR ERRORS":
I mean such ERRORS as you'll all confess
By laughing at them, they deserve no less:
Which, when you heartily do, there's hope left then
You that have so grac'd monsters may like men.
("Prologue," 26-30)
The ERRORS to be staged in Jonson's play for the delectation of the audience, then, are aspects of those plays they have elsewhere applauded or "grac'd." These will be on display as "monsters," foils against which what is likeable about "men" will appear. The category not just of men, but of "likeable men," is thus elided with the persuasive power of a verisimilar, unified dramatic action: "You that have so grac'd monsters"-that have clapped at ill-formed plays- may now direct a more discriminating and appreciative gaze at the "natural," "manly" form of this play.
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A Monstrous Figure:
http://home.att.net/~tleary/GIFS/DROUS.JPG
"The word PRODIGIALITER apparently refers to that fictitious monster, under which the poet allusively shadows out the idea of absurd and inconsistent composition. The application, however, differs in this, that, whereas the monster, there painted, was intended to expose the extravagance of putting together incongruous parts, without any reference to a whole, this prodigy is designed to characterize a whole, but deformed by the ill-judged position of its parts. The former is like a monster, whose several members as of right belonging to different animals, could by no disposition be made to constitute one consistent animal. The other, like a landscape which hath no objects absolutely irrelative, or irreducible to a whole, but which a wrong position of the parts only renders prodigious. Send the boar to the woods, and the dolphin to the waves; and the painter might show them both on the same canvas.
Each is a violation of the law of unity, and a real monster: the one, because it contains an assemblage of natural incoherent parts; the other, because its parts, though in themselves coherent, are misplaced and disjointed."
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.006...
A statuary about the Aemilian school shall of himself, with singular skill,6 both express the nails, and imitate in brass the flexible hair; unhappy yet in the main, because he knows not how to finish a complete piece. I would no more choose to be such a one as this, had I a mind to compose any thing, than to live with a distorted nose, [though] remarkable for black eyes and jetty hair.
Ye who write, make choice of a subject suitable to your abilities; and revolve in your thoughts a considerable time what your strength7 declines, and what it is able to support. Neither elegance of style, nor a perspicuous disposition, shall desert the man, by whom the subject matter is chosen judiciously.
This, or I am mistaken, will constitute the merit and beauty of arrangement, that the poet just now say what ought just now to be said, put off most of his thoughts, and waive them for the present.
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Bodies keep well in Stratford soil, Richard Wilson tells us, so that if Shakespeare's remains were ever to be exhumed we could test the likenesses offered in portraits of the Bard. Shakespeare is of course protected by the epitaph on his gravestone, but Ben Jonson, interred in a shaft grave in Westminster Abbey, has not been so fortunate: James Shapiro reminds us that nineteenth-century digging disturbed his corpse and revealed the ignoble fact that it was buried upside down.
(Anthony Parr)
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Author: Bacon, Francis, 1561-1626.
Title: Apophthegmes new and old. Collected by the Right Honourable,
Francis Lo. Verulam, Viscount St. Alban
Date: 1625
1. WHEN Queene Elizabeth had aduanced Ralegh, she was one day playing on the virginalls, and my Lo. of Oxford, & another Noble-man, stood by. It fell out so, that the Ledge, before the Iacks, was taken away, so as the Iacks were seene: My Lo. of Oxford, and the other Noble-man
smiled, and a little whispered: The Queene marked it, and would needes know, What the matter was? My Lo. of Oxford answered; That they smiled, to see, that when Iacks went vp, Heads went downe.
(snip)
24. Diogenes hauing seene that the Kingdome of Macedon, which before was contemptible & low, began to come aloft, when hee died, was asked; How he would be buried? He answered; With my face downeward; for within a while, the world will bee turned vpside downe, and then I shall lie right.
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Preposterous Fame:
_Volpone_, Jonson:
To the most N O B L E and most E Q U A L S I S T E R S,
The two Famous Universities,
For their Love and Acceptance shewn to his P O E M in the P R E S E N
T A T I O N,
B E N. J O H N S O N,
The Grateful Acknowledger, Dedicates both It and Himself.
Never (most Equal Sisters) had any Man a Wit so presently Excellent, as that it could raise it self; but there must come both Matter, Occasion, Commenders, and Favourers to it. If this be true, and that the Fortune of all Writers doth daily prove it, it behoves the Careful to provide well toward these Accidents; and, having acquir'd them, to preserve that part of Reputation most tenderly, wherein the Benefit of a Friend is also defended. Hence is it, that I now render my self grateful, and am studious to justifie the Bounty of your Act; to which, though your meer Authority were satisfying, yet it being an AGE wherein Poetry and the Professors of it hear so ill on all Sides, there will a Reason be look't for in the Subject. It is certain, nor can it with any Forehead be oppos'd, that the too much Licence of Poetasters in this Time, hath much deform'd their Mistris; that, every day, their manifold and manifest Ignorance doth stick unnatural Reproaches upon her: But for their Petulancy, it were an Act of the greatest Injustice, either to let the Learned suffer, or so Divine a Skill (which indeed should not be attempted with unclean Hands) to fall under the least Contempt. For, if Men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the Offices and Function of a Poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the Impossibility of any Man's being the good Poet, without first being a good Man. He that is said to be able to inform young Men to all good Disciplines, inflame grown Men to all great Vertues, keep old Men in their best and supream State, or as they decline to Childhood, recover them to their first Strength; that comes forth the Interpreter and Arbiter of Nature, a Teacher of Things Divine no less than Humane, a Master in Manners; and can alone (or with a few) effect the Business of Mankind: This, I take him, is no Subject for PRIDE AND IGNORANCE to exercise their failing Rhetorick upon. But it will here be hastily answer'd, That the Writers of these Days are other Things; that not only their MANNERS, but their NATURES are INVERTED, and nothing remaining with them of the Dignity of Poet, but the abused Name, which every Scribe usurps; that now, especially in Drammatick, or (as they term it) Stage-Poetry, nothing but Ribaldry, Prophanation, Blasphemy, all Licence of Offence to God and Man is practis'd. I dare not deny a great part of this, (and I am sorry I dare not) because in some Mens abortive Features (and would they had never boasted the Light) it is over-true: But that all are imbark'd in this bold Adventure for Hell, is a most uncharitable Thought, and, utter'd, a more malicious Slander. For my particular, I can (and from a most clear Conscience) affirm, That I have ever trembled to think toward the least Profaneness; have loathed the use of such foul and unwash'd Bawd'ry, as is now made the Food of the Scene: And, howsoever I cannot escape from some the Imputation of Sharpness, but that they will say, I have taken a pride, or lust, to be bitter, and not my youngest Instant but hath come into the World with all his Teeth; I would ask of these supercilious Politicks, What Nation, Society, or general Order or State I have provoked? What Publick Person? Whether I have not (in all these) preserv'd their Dignity, as mine own Person, safe? My Works are read, allow'd, (I speak of those are intirely mine) look into them: What broad Repoofs have I us'd? Where have I been particular? Where Personal? Except to a Mimick, Cheater, Bawd, or Buffon, Creatures (for their Insolencies) worthy to be tax'd? Yet to which of these so pointingly, as he might not either ingenuously have confest, or wisely dissembled his Disease? But it is not Rumour can make Men guilty, much less entitle me to other Mens Crimes. I know, that nothing can be so innocently writ or carried, but may be made obnoxious to Construction; marry, whilst I bear mine Innocence about me, I fear it not. Application is now grown a Trade with many; and there are that profess to have a Key for the decyphering of every thing: But let Wise and Noble Persons take heed how they be too credulous, or give leave to these invading Interpreters to be over-familiar with their Fames, who cunningly, and often, utter their own virulent Malice, under other Mens simplest Meanings. As for those that will (by Faults which Charity hath rak'd up, or common Honesty conceal'd) make themselves a Name with the Multitude, or (to draw their rude and beastly Claps) care not whose living Faces they intrench with their petulant Styles, may they do it without a Rival, for me: I chuse rather to live grav'd in Obscurity, than share with them in so PREPOSTEROUS a FAME. Nor can I blame the Wishes of those severe and wise Patriots, who providing the Hurts these licentious Spirits may do in a State, desire rather to see Fools and Devils, and those antick Relicks of Barbarism retriv'd, with all other ridiculous and exploded Follies, than behold the Wounds of Private Men, of Princes and Nations. For, as Horace makes Trebatius speak, among these,
------ Sibi quisque timet, quanquam est intactus, & odit.
And Men may justly impute such Rages, if continu'd, to the Writer, as his Spots. The Increase of which Lust in Liberty, together with the present Trade of the Stage, in all their Masc'line Enterludes, what Learned or Liberal Soul doth not already abhor? Where nothing but the Filth of Time is utter'd, and that with such impropriety of Phrase, such plenty of SolOEcisms, such dearth of Sense, so bold Prolepses, so rack'd Metaphors, with Brothelry able to violate the Ear of a Pagan, and Blasphemy, to turn the Blood of a Christian to Water. I cannot but be serious in a Cause of this nature, wherein my Fame, and the Reputations of divers Honest and Learned are the Question; when a Name so full of Authority, Antiquity, and all great Mark, is (through their Insolence) become the lowest Scorn of the Age; and those Men subject to the Petulancy of every vernaculous Orator, that were wont to be the Care of Kings and happiest Monarchs. This it is that hath not only rap't me to present Indignation, but made me studious heretofore, and by all my Actions to stand off from them; which may most appear in this my latest Work (which you, most learned Arbitresses, have seen, judg'd, and to my Crown, approv'd) wherein I have labour'd, for their instruction and amendment, to reduce not only the ancient Forms, but Manners of the Scene, the Easiness, the Propriety, the Innocence, and last the Doctrine, which is the principal End of Poesie, to inform Men in the best Reason of living. And though my Catastrophe may, in the strict rigour of Comick Law, meet with Censure, as turning back to my Promise; I desire the Learned and Charitable Critick, to have so much faith in me, to think it was done of Industry: For, with what ease I could have varied it nearer his Scale (but that I fear to boast my own Faculty) I could here insert. But my special aim being to put the Snaffle in their Mouths, that cry out, we never punish Vice in our Enterludes, &c. I took the more liberty; though not without some Lines of Example, drawn even in the Ancients themselves, the Goings-out of whose ComOEdies are not always joyful, but oft-times the Bawds, the Servants, the Rivals, yea, and the Masters, are mulcted; and fitly, it being the Office of a Comick Poet to imitate Justice, and instruct to Life, as well as Purity of Language, or stir up gentle Affections: To which I shall take the occasion elsewhere to speak. For the present (most Reverenced Sisters) as I have car'd to be thankful for your Affections past, and here made the Understanding acquainted with some Ground of your Favours; let me not despair their Continuance, to the maturing of some worthier Fruits: Wherein, if my Muses be true to me, I shall raise the despis'd Head of Poetry again, and stripping her out of those rotten and base Rags wherewith the Times have adulterated her Form, restore her to her primitive Habit, Feature, and Majesty, and render her worthy to be embraced and kist of all the Great and Master- Spirits of our World. As for the Vile and Slothful, who never affected an Act worthy of Celebration, or are so inward with their own vicious Natures, as they worthily fear her, and think it a high Point of Policy to keep her in contempt with their declamatory and windy Invectives; she shall out of just rage incite her Servants (who are Genus iritabile) *to spout Ink in their Faces, that shall eat farther than their Marrow, into their Fames; and not Cinnamus the Barber, with his Art, shall be able to take out the Brands; but they shall live, and be read, till the Wretches die, as Things worst deserving of Themselves in chief, and then of all Mankind*.
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Jonson's dedication to his Epigrammes.
TO THE GREAT EXAMPLE
OF HONOR AND VERTUE,
tHE MOST NOBLE
WILLIAM, EARLE OF PEMBROKE,
L. CHAMBERLAYNE, &C.
MY LORD.
While you cannot change your merit, I dare not change your title: It was that made it, and not I. Under which name, I here offer to your LO: the ripest of my studies, my Epigrammes; which though they carry danger in the sound, doe not therefore seeke your shelter: For, when I made them, I had nothing in my conscience, to expressing of which I did need a cypher. But, if I be falne into those times, wherein, for the likenesse of vice and facts, every one thinks anothers ill deeds objected to him, and that in their IGNORANT and guilty mouthes, the common voyce is (for their securitie) Beware the Poet, confessing, therein, so much love to their DISEASES, as they would rather make a partie for them, then be either rid, or told of them: I must expect, at you Lo: hand, the protection of truth, and libertie, while you are constant to your owne goodnesse. In thankes whereof, I returne you the honor of leading forth so many good and great names (as my verses mention on the better part) to their remembrance with posteritie. Amongst whom, if I have praysed, unfortunately , any one, that doth not deserve; or, if all answere not, in all numbers, the pictures I have made of them: I hope it will be forgiven me, that they are no ill pieces, though they be not like the persons. But I foresee a neerer fate to my book, then this: that the vices therein will be own'd before the vertues (though, there, I have avoyded all particulars, as I have done names) and that some will be readie to discredit me, as they will have the impudence to belye themselves. For, if I meant them not, it is so. Nor, can I hope otherwise. For, why should they remit any thing of their riot, their pride, their self-love, and other inherent graces, to consider truth or vertue; but , with the trade of the world, lend their long eares against men they love not: and hold their deare MOUNTEBANK, or JESTER, in farre better condition, then all the studie, or studiers of humanitie? For such, I would rather know them by their VISARDS, still, then they should publish their FACES, at their perill, in my Theater, where CATO, if he liv'd, might enter without scandall. Your Lo: most faithfull honorer,
Ben. Jonson
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To the Great Example of H O N O U R and V E R T U E, the most Noble
W I L L I A M
E A R L of P E M B R O K E , L O R D C H A M B E R L A I N, &c.
M Y L O R D,
I
N so thick and dark an IGNORANCE, as now almost covers the AGE, I crave leave to stand near your Light, and by that to be read. Posterity may pay your Benefit the Honour and Thanks, when it shall know, that you dare, in these JIG-GIVEN TIMES, to countenance a Legitimate Poem. I must call it so, against all noise of Opinion: from whose crude and airy Reports, I appeal to that great and singular Faculty of Judgment in your Lordship, able to vindicate Truth from Error. It is the First (of this Race) that ever I dedicated to any Person; and had I not thought it the best, it should have been taught a less Ambition. Now it approacheth your Censure chearfully, and with the same assurance that Innocency would appear before a Magistrate.
Your Lordships most faithful Honourer,
BEN. JOHNSON.
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Soul of an Ignorant Age:
Jonson, Discoveries
Ignorantia animae. - I know no disease of the soul but IGNORANCE; not of the arts and sciences, but of itself: yet relating to those it is a pernicious evil, the darkener of man's life, the disturber of his reason, and common confounder of truth: with which a man goes groping in the dark, no otherwise than if he were blind. Great understandings are most racked and troubled with it: nay, sometimes they will rather die than not to know the things they study for. Think then what an EVIL it is, and what good the contrary.
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De Shakspeare NOSTRAT. - Augustus in Hat. - I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, “Would he had blotted a thousand,” which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their IGNORANCE who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted;
