Musophilus
Samuel Daniel
[Power above powers]
Power above powers ! O Heavenly Eloquence !
That with the strong rein of commanding words
Dost manage, guide, and master the eminence
Of men's affections, more than all their swords !
Shall we not offer to thy excellence,
The richest treasure that our wit affords?
Thou that canst do much more with one poor pen,
Than all the powers of princes can effect ;
And draw, divert, dispose, and fashion men,
Better than force or rigour can direct !
Should we this ornament of glory then,
As the unmaterial fruits of shades, neglect?
Or should we careless come behind the rest
In power of words, that go before in worth ;
Whenas our accent's equal to the best,
Is able greater wonders to bring forth ;
When all that ever hotter spirits express'd,
Comes better'd by the patience of the north.
And who—in time—knows whither we may vent
The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores
This gain of our best glory shall be sent
To enrich unknowing nations with our stores?
What worlds in the yet unformed Occident
May come refin'd with the accents that are ours?
Or, who can tell for what great work in hand
The greatness of our style is now ordain'd?
What powers it shall bring in, what spirits command?
What thoughts let out ; what humours keep restrain'd?
What mischief it may powerfully withstand ;
And what fair ends may thereby be attain'd?
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Dedication to Daniel's 'Musophilus':
To the right Worthy and Judicious
Favorer of Vertue, Master
Fulke Grevill.
I Doe not here upon this hum'rous Stage
Bring my transformed Verse, apparelled
With others passions, or with others
rage;
With loves, with wounds, with factions furnished:
But here present thee, onely modelled
In this poore frame, the forme of mine owne heart:
Where, to revive my selfe, my Muse is led
With motions of her owne, t'act her owne part;
Striving to make her now contemned Art,
As faire t'her selfe as possibly she can'
Lest, seeming of no force, of no desert,
She might repent the course that she began;
And, with these times of dissolution, fall
From Goodnesse, Vertue, Glory, Fame and all.
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Language Lessons: Linguistic Colonialism, Linguistic Postcolonialism, and the Early Modern English Nation
Richard Helgerson
...At the very time, then, that the English were remembering their lost glory in France and beginning to think hard about finding a place for themselves and their language in the New World, they were also growing more acutely aware of themselves as having been colonized. Indeed, for some, colonial subjection had not yet ended. The signs of its continuance were, they insisted, all around them. Not only did Latin remain, as it would for another century or more, the language of learning in England, but until the mid-sixteenth century Latin had also been the language of public worship--the mark of a papal suzerainty that outlasted Roman imperial governance by more than a millennium. And to that "Babylonian yoke," as it was often called, was added a "Norman yoke" that dated back to William's conquest in 1066 and that could still be felt in the law French that dominated proceedings in the courts of the common law. 6 There was even the threat, experienced first in the 1550s when Mary Tudor and her Spanish consort Philip were on the throne and renewed in 1588 with the approach of the "invincible" armada, that a Spanish yoke would be piled on the others and that the English would join the natives of the New World as subjects of a universal Spanish Empire. "Stoop, England, stoop," wrote Richard Eden in the preface to his translation of Peter Martyr's Decades of the New World, a book Eden dedicated to Philip and Mary, "and learn to know thy lord and master, as horses and other brute beasts are taught to do." 7 Clearly, England, as a province of Spain, would not be venting the treasure of its tongue to the unformed Occident--or to much of anyone else either. In the 1530s, Parliament, in affirming the separation of the English church from the church of Rome, declared "that this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted [End Page 291] in the world." 8 For us, the term "empire" may suggest control over a far flung territory and a multitude of peoples, and such longings were certainly associated with the term in the sixteenth century. After all, it was then that the phrase "the British Empire" was first used with the thought of overseas conquest. 9 But when Parliament called England an empire, absolute sovereignty at home rather than the extension of power abroad was the prime concern. And only gradually did the linguistic implications of even this local notion of exclusive national sovereignty become apparent. Replacing Latin with English in the liturgy of the English church was an important early step, first taken in 1550 under Edward VI, reversed under the Catholic Mary, and reinstated under Elizabeth. Replacing law French with English in the proceedings of the common law was a late step, taken only in 1650 by Parliament, after the execution of Charles I, as another way of declaring the now fully sovereign English nation free of its "Norman" overlord. 10 Between those two dates, between the middle of the sixteenth century and the middle of the seventeenth, England undertook an extraordinary series of efforts aimed at making what Merry Wives of Windsor calls "the king's English" worthy the imperial status parliament had claimed for the realm. What that meant was gaining for the English language a degree of eloquence, perspicuity, regularity, fixity, and accomplishment that would make it a fit rival to the great ancient and modern languages of political and cultural rule. But it also meant pushing to the side not only foreign imports like liturgical Latin and law French but various debased and unreformed versions of itself as well. 11 Absolute sovereignty of the sort England was now claiming made the English language both an instrument and an object of rule.
A phrase that in other contexts I have made much of speaks still more directly to this issue. In his correspondence with Gabriel Harvey, Spenser laments, "Why, a God's name, may not we, as else the Greeks, have the kingdom of our own language." 12 Spenser and Harvey, along with several other young writers, were answering a call that had been made twenty years earlier by Roger Ascham in his highly influential pedagogical treatise, The Schoolmaster. They were trying to write English verse in conformity with the rules of the quantitative meter that had governed Greek and Latin poetry. And they were having problems. English just would not cooperate. Thus Spenser's burst of frustration. But what interests me here is the sense Spenser shared with his generation and with the generation or two that preceded his that English was seriously in need of reformation and that the way to reform it was to impose on it a model of eloquence and order borrowed from Greek and Latin. The way to make English worthy of sovereignty was to make it as much like the sovereign languages it was called on to displace as possible. To rule, English had to be ruled.
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Jonson, on Shakespeare
He was (indeed) honest, and of
an open, and free nature: had an excellent
fancy; brave notions, and gentle expressions:
wherein he flowed with that facility, that
sometime it was necessary he should be
STOP'D: sufflaminandus erat; as Augustus said
of Haterius. His wit was in his own power;
would the RULE of it had been so too."
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Jonson, then Cartwright Ruled Shakespeare's Quill:
From 'To the Deceased Author of these Poems' (William Cartwright)
by Jasper Mayne
...And as thy Wit was like a Spring, so all
The soft streams of it we may Chrystall call:
No cloud of Fancie, no mysterious stroke,
No Verse like those which antient Sybils spoke;
No Oracle of Language, to amaze
The Reader with a dark, or Midnight Phrase,
Stands in thy Writings, which are all pure Day,
A cleer, bright Sunchine, and the mist away.
That which Thou wrot'st was sense, and that sense good,
Things not first written, and then understood:
Or if sometimes thy Fancy soar'd so high
As to seem lost to the unlearned Eye,
'Twas but like generous Falcons, when high flown,
Which mount to make the Quarrey more their own.
For thou to Nature had'st joyn'd Art, and skill.
In Thee Ben Johnson still HELD SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL:
A QUILL, RUL'D by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,
As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.
Thy Lamp was cherish'd with suppolied of Oyle,
Fetch'd from the Romane and the Graecian soyle. (snip)
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Jonson (of Shakespeare)
And though thou hadst small Latine, and lesse Greeke,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seeke
For names;
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W. Towers to William Cartwright:
...Thy skill in Wit was not so poorely meek
As theirs whose LITTLE LATIN AND NO GREEK
Confin'd their whole Discourse to a Street-phrase,
Such Dialect as their next Neighbour's was;
Their Birth-place brought o’th’stage, the CLOWN and Quean
Were full as dear to them as Persian Scean.
Thou (to whom Ware, thus offer’d, smelt as strong
As the CLOWN'S foot)
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Arraigning the Scurra Shakespeare:
William Cartwright
...Shakespeare to thee was dull, whose best jest lyes
I'th Ladies questions, and the Fooles replyes;
Old fashion'd wit, which walkt from town to town
In turn'd Hose, which our fathers call'd the CLOWN;
Whose wit our nice times would obsceannesse call,
And which made Bawdry passe for Comicall:
Nature was all his Art, thy veine was FREE
As his, but without his SCURILITY;
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Academ Roial
[Bolton's] 'earliest version of this proposal was directed to King James through the mediation of the Duke of Buckingham, to whom Bolton was distantly related; the pages reproduced in Plate 21 capture the spirit of the entire venture. The primary function of the new Academy - the proposal grandly, if somewhat vaguely promised - was to be the promotion of ORDER, DECORUM, and DECENCIE (words emphatically described in large upper-cased letters) and the suppression of Confusion and Deformitie. As Bolton's thoughts developed, he proposed more specific functions to the Academy: that it should control the licensing of all non-theological books in England, for example, keep a constant register of 'public facts', monitor the translation of all learned works, hold meetings every quarter and annually on St. George's Day. (Donaldson, Ben Jonson, a Life, p.366)
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English translation of Bolton's salute to Jonson in Volpone
To Each University, Concerning Benjamin Jonson.
This man is the first, who studying Greek antiquities and the monuments of Latin theatre as an explorer, by his happy boldness will provide the Britons with a learned drama: O twin stars favour his great undertakings. The ancients were content with praise of either [genre]; this Sun of the Stage handles the cothurnus [i.e. tragedy] and the sock [i.e. comedy] with equal skill: Volpone, thou givest us jokes; thou, Sejanus, gavest us tears. But is any lament that Jonson's muses have been cramped within a narrow limit, say, you [universities], on the contrary: 'O most miserable [people], who, though English, know the english language inadequately or know it not at all (as if [you were] born across the sea), the poet will grow with time, he will transform his native land, and himself become the English Apollo.'
E. Bolton
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Droeshout - An Irregular Figure
Regular \Reg"u*lar\ (-l?r), a. [L. regularis, fr. regula a rule, fr. regere to GUIDE, to RULE: cf. F. r['e]gulier. See Rule.]
1. Conformed to a rule; agreeable to an established rule,
law, principle, or type, or to established customary
forms; normal; symmetrical; as, a regular verse in poetry;
a regular piece of music; a regular verb; regular practice
of law or medicine; a regular building.
2. Governed by rule or rules; steady or uniform in course,
practice, or occurence; not subject to unexplained or
irrational variation; returning at stated intervals;
steadily pursued; orderly; methodical; as, the regular
succession of day and night; regular habits.
3. Constituted, selected, or conducted in conformity with
established usages, rules, or discipline; duly authorized;
permanently organized; as, a regular meeting; a regular
physican; a regular nomination; regular troops.
4. Belonging to a monastic order or community; as, regular
clergy, in distinction dfrom the secular clergy.
5. Thorough; complete; unmitigated; as, a regular humbug.
[Colloq.]
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...Never did so much strength, or such a spell
Of Art, and eloquence of papers dwell.
For whil'st he in colours, full and true,
Mens natures, fancies, and their humours drew
In method, order, matter, sence and grace,
Fitting each person to his time and place;
Knowing to move, to slacke, or to make haste,
Binding the middle with the first and last:
He fram'd all minds, and did all passions stirre,
And with a BRIDLE GUIDE the Theater.
Shackerley Marmion, Josonus Virbius
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An Essay on Criticism
(Snip)
Great Wits sometimes may gloriously offend,
And rise to faults true Critics dare not mend;
From vulgar bounds with brave DISORDER PART,
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of Art,
Which, without passing thro' the judgment, gains
The heart, and all its end at once attains.
(snip)
But tho' the ancients thus their RULES invade,
(As Kings dispense with laws themselves have made)
Moderns, beware! or if you must offend
Against the precept, ne'er transgress its end;
Let it be seldom, and compell'd by need;
And have at least their precedent to plead;
The Critic else proceeds without remorse,
SEIZES YOUR FAME, and puts his laws in force. -- Alexander Pope
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Jonson withholding Fame:
Cartwright, William, Jonsonus Virbius
...Blest life of Authors, unto whom we owe
Those that we have, and those that we want too:
Th'art all so good, that reading makes thee worse,
And to have writ so well's thine onely curse.
Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate
That servile base dependance upon fate:
Successe thou ne'r thoughtst vertue, nor that fit,
Which chance, and th'ages fashion did make hit;
*Excluding those from life in after-time*,
Who into Po'try first brought luck and rime:
Who thought the peoples breath good ayre: sty'ld name
What was but noise; and getting Briefes for fame
Gathered the many's suffrages, and thence
Made commendation a benevolence:
THY thoughts were their owne Lawrell, and did win
That best applause of being crown'd within..
