Eric Auerbach - Figura
..but the figure which was then regarded as the most important and seemed before all others to merit the name of figure was the hidden allusion in its diverse forms. Roman orators had developed a refined technique of expressing or insinuating something without saying it, in most cases of course something which for political or tactical reasons, or simply for the sake of effect, had best remain secret or at least unspoken. Quintilian speaks of the importance attached to training in this technique in the schools of rhetoric, and tells us how speakers would invent special cases, controversiae figuratae, in order to perfect and distinguish themselves in it.
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That Jonson was familiar with this special usage of figura appears in his posthumously published _Discoveries_. It is this book that provides the 'unlearned' reader - a reader unfamiliar with classical writings - with a key to Jonson's triumph over the 'unworthy' poetics of Oxford/Shake-speare, (unworthy in the sense of being unfit for the purposes of imitation and the humanist pedagogical project in general) - and how successful Jonson proved to be in removing Shake-speare from the sphere of the court as a maker of manners and replacing him with himself. Jonson's _Discoveries_ or _Timber_ is a critical key to the fountain of allusions and matter that are embedded in Jonson's First Folio poem written of 'his' Shake-speare - and it is the key that turns outward appearances or figurations of praise into figurations of blame.
Take for an example the lines that form the ridiculous Droeshout Figure of the First Folio. This is only one of Jonson's figurations of Shakespeare as he continues to change and alter Shakespeare's figure/form/shape (soul, monument, swan, constellation etc.) carrying us along as these figurations move us ever further from the truth.
Here is the Droeshout Figure's pedigree - to be found in Jonson's author of special interest - Horace:
Horace, Epistle I To Maecenas
If I meet you with *my hair cut by an uneven barber*, you laugh [at me]: if I chance to have a ragged shirt under a handsome coat, *or if my disproportioned gown fits me ill*, you laugh. What [do you do], when my judgment contradicts itself? it despises what it before desired; seeks for that which lately it neglected; is all in a ferment, and is inconsistent in the whole tenor of life; pulls down, builds up, changes square to round. In this case, you think I am mad in the common way, and you do not laugh, nor believe that I stand in need of a physician, or of a guardian assigned by the praetor; though you are the patron of my affairs, and are disgusted at the ill-pared nail of a friend that depends upon you, that reveres you.
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īnfāmia f (genitive īnfāmiae); first declension
bad reputation or repute, ill fame, dishonor, disgrace, infamy, reproach
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This I regard as history's highest function, to let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out for the reprobation of posterity that which is notorious for infamy. -- Tacitus
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The Mind of the Frontispiece to a Book
by Ben Jonson
From death and dark oblivion (near the same)
The mistress of man's life, grave history,
Raising the world to good or evil fame,
Doth vindicate it to eternity.
Wise providence would so; that nor the good
Might be defrauded, nor the great secured,
But both might know their ways were understood,
When vice alike in time with virtue dured.
Which makes that (lighted by the beamy hand
Of truth, that searcheth the most hidden springs,
And guided by experience, whose straight wand
Doth mete, whose line cloth sound the depth of things)
She cheerfully supporteth what she rears;
Assisted by no strengths, but are her own,
Some note of which each varied pillar bears,
By which as proper titles she is known
Time's witness, herald of antiquity,
The light of truth, and life of memory.
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The Restraint/Exclusion of Fancy/Oxford:
William Cartwright, to Jonson (in 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..
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"But that benefit which I consider most in it [rhyme], because I have not seldom found it, is, that it bounds and circumscribes the FANCY: for IMAGINATION in a poet is a faculty so WILD and lawless, that, like an high-ranging spaniel, it must have CLOGS tied to it, lest it outrun the judgment."
— Dryden, John (1631-1700)
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Jonson, on Shakespeare (Timber)
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 stopped.
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Rhodri Lewis:
...the visionary quality of the furor poeticus was by definition irrational, and easily contaminated by the threat of ‘enthusiasm’; as there was Restoration consensus that the civil wars had been the product of enthusiastic speech and writing, this contamination was fatal. Consequently, the imitative model of poetics – and with it, translation – came to have a new prestige and cultural importance as an antidote to such anxieties: in CONSTRAINING the poet’s FREEDOM to ERR, it was seen as doing important meta-literary work, and conferred an intrinsic mutuality on the literary enterprise:
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Milton
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, *Fancy's child*,
Warble his native wood-notes wild.
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The idea of ancient literary criticism
By Yun Lee
...In his treatise On Style, Demetrius declares that figured language must be employed if somebody wishes to address and to criticize eithera tyrant or a powerful individual, and he advocates this as a middle course between flattery, which is base, and direct criticism, which is dangerous. Ahl notes, in an essay entitled 'The Art of Safe Criticism', that Quintilian, Vespasian's imperial rhetorician, subsequently elaborates Demetrius' account of the political use of figured language at Institutio oratoria 9.2.66. Quintilian sets out three different occasions on which figured language, which he defines as language that is changed from its most obvious and uncomplicated usage by poetic or oratorical usage (9.1.13), may be employed. The first of these concerns when it is dangerous to speak openly; the second concerns propriety - where the Latin 'it is not fitting/suitable ('non decet' ) perhaps renders the Greek 'improper' (aprepes); while the third advocates the use of figured language where the novelty of such structures may produce delight and pleasure. Of these three occasions, the first is the most obviously political, and what Quintilian proposes is a need for the author in question to tread warily around authority, particularly as author and political leader may be at odds. The following section of the works suggests that the rhetorician has in mind the empire, figured as tyranny: he cites the use of rhetorical figures in school exercises which require pupils to produce speeches to instigate rebellion against despots without speaking too plainly to tyrants. (9.2.67).
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Jonson, _Discoveries_
Periodi.—Obscuritas offundit tenebras.—Superlatio.—Periods are beautiful when they are not too long; for so they have their strength too, as in a pike or javelin. As we must take the care that our words and sense be clear, so if the obscurity happen through the hearer’s or reader’s want of understanding, I am not to answer for them, no more than for their not listening or marking; I must neither find them ears nor mind. But a man cannot put a word so in sense but something about it will illustrate it, if the writer understand himself; for order helps much to perspicuity, as confusion hurts. (Rectitudo lucem adfert; obliquitas et circumductio offuscat. [116a]) We should therefore speak what we can the nearest way, so as we keep our gait, not leap; for too short may as well be not let into the memory, as too long not kept in. Whatsoever loseth the grace and clearness, converts into a riddle; the obscurity is marked, but not the value. That perisheth, and is passed by, like the pearl in the fable. Our style should be like a skein of silk, to be carried and found by the right thread, not ravelled and perplexed; then all is a knot, a heap. There are words that do as much raise a style as others can depress it. Superlation and over-muchness amplifies; it may be above faith, but never above a mean. It was ridiculous in Cestius, when he said of Alexander:
“Fremit oceanus, quasi indignetur, quòd terras relinquas.” [117a]
But propitiously from Virgil:
“Credas innare revulsas
Cycladas.” [117b]
He doth not say it was so, but seemed to be so. Although it be somewhat incredible, that is excused before it be spoken. But there are hyperboles which will become one language, that will by no means admit another. As Eos esse P. R. exercitus, qui cælum possint perrumpere, [118a] who would say with us, but a madman? Therefore we must consider in every tongue what is used, what received. Quintilian warns us, that in no kind of translation, or metaphor, or allegory, we make a turn from what we began; as if we fetch the original of our metaphor from sea and billows, we end not in flames and ashes: it is a most foul inconsequence. Neither must we draw out our allegory too long, lest either we make ourselves obscure, or fall into affectation, which is childish. But why do men depart at all from the right and natural ways of speaking? sometimes for necessity, when we are driven, or think it fitter, to speak that in obscure words, or by circumstance, which uttered plainly would offend the hearers. Or to avoid obsceneness, or sometimes for pleasure, and variety, as travellers turn out of the highway, drawn either by the commodity of a footpath, or the delicacy or freshness of the fields. And all this is called εσχηματισμενη or figured language.
Oratio imago animi.—Language most shows a man: Speak, that I may see thee. It springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so true as his speech. Nay, it is likened to a man; and as we consider feature and composition in a man, so words in language; in the greatness, aptness, sound structure, and harmony of it.
Structura et statura, sublimis, humilis, pumila.—Some men are tall and big, so some language is high and great. Then the words are chosen, their sound ample, the composition full, the absolution plenteous, and poured out, all grave, sinewy, and strong. Some are little and dwarfs; so of speech, it is humble and low, the words poor and flat, the members and periods thin and weak, without knitting or number.
Mediocris plana et placida.—The middle are of a just stature. There the language is plain and pleasing; even without stopping, round without swelling: all well-turned, composed, elegant, and accurate.
Vitiosa oratio, vasta—tumens—enormis—affectata—abjecta.—*The vicious language is vast and gaping, swelling and irregular: when it contends to be high, full of rock, mountain, and pointedness; as it affects to be low, it is abject, and creeps, full of bogs and holes. And according to their subject these styles vary, and lose their names: for that which is high and lofty, declaring excellent matter, becomes vast and tumorous, speaking of petty and inferior things; so that which was even and apt in a mean and plain subject, will appear most poor and humble in a high argument. Would you not laugh to meet a great councillor of State in a flat cap, with his trunk hose, and a hobbyhorse cloak, his gloves under his girdle, and yond haberdasher in a velvet gown, furred with sables? There is a certain latitude in these things, by which we find the degrees.
Figura.—The next thing to the stature, is the figure and feature in language—that is, whether it be round and straight, which consists of short and succinct periods, numerous and polished; or square and firm, which is to have equal and strong parts everywhere answerable, and weighed.
Cutis sive cortex. Compositio.—The third is the skin and coat, which rests in the well-joining, cementing, and coagmentation of words; whenas it is smooth, gentle, and sweet, like a table upon which you may run your finger without rubs, and your nail cannot find a joint; not horrid, rough, wrinkled, gaping, or chapped: after these, the flesh, blood, and bones come in question.
Carnosa—adipata—redundans.—We say it is a fleshy style, when there is much periphrasis, and circuit of words; and when with more than enough, it grows fat and corpulent: arvina orationis, full of suet and tallow. It hath blood and juice when the words are proper and apt, their sound sweet, and the phrase neat and picked—oratio uncta, et benè pasta. But where there is redundancy, both the blood and juice are faulty and vicious:—Redundat sanguine, quia multo plus dicit, quam necesse est. Juice in language is somewhat less than blood; for if the words be but becoming and signifying, and the sense gentle, there is juice; but where that wanteth, the language is thin, flagging, poor, starved, scarce covering the bone, and shows like stones in a sack.
Jejuna, macilenta, strigosa.—Ossea, et nervosa.—Some men, to avoid redundancy, run into that; and while they strive to have no ill blood or juice, they lose their good. There be some styles, again, that have not less blood, but less flesh and corpulence. These are bony and sinewy; Ossa habent, et nervos.
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Jonson
Ambition, like a torrent, ne'er looks back; And is a swelling, and the last affection a high mind can put off; being both a rebel unto the soul and reason, and enforceth all laws, all conscience, treads upon religion, *and offereth violence to **Nature's** self*.
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note - in his translation of Horace's 'Art of Poetry', Jonson translates 'Minerva' as 'Nature'.
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. (Jonson, _Bartholomew Fair_)
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Horace, Ars Poetica
"Tu nihil invita dices faciesve Minerva; id tibi judicium est, ea *MENS*."
"But you will say nothing and do nothing against Minerva's will; such is your judgement, such your good sense." (transl. Rushton Fairclough)
mens - the mind, disposition, feeling, character, heart, soul
You will neither say nor do anything with Minerva unwilling.
Invita Minerva/ Unwilling Minerva/Against Minerva
Honesta ambitio. -- If divers men seek fame or honour by divers ways, so both be honest, neither is to be blamed; but they that seek immortality are not only worthy of love, but of praise. (Jonson, _Timber Or Discoveries_)
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Representative selections from Jonson's _Timber Or Discoveries: Made Upon Men and Matter, As They Have Flow'd Out of His Daily Readings, Or Had Their Refluxe to His Peculiar Notion of the Times_
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 make all an even and proportioned body. *The true artificer will not run away from Nature (note - Minerva in Horace) 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 Tamer-chains 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.
Ignorantia animæ.—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 choose to 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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Soul of the Age!!
Jonson, 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.
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Ambition Has Roots in Roman Politics - Merriam-Webster
When candidates for public office in ancient Rome wanted to be elected, they had to do just what modern candidates must do. They had to spend most of their time going around the city urging the citizens to vote for them. The Latin word for this effort was ambitio, which came from ambire, a verb meaning “to go around.” Since this activity was caused by a desire for honor or power, the word eventually came to mean “the desire for honor or power.” This word came into French and English as ambition in the late Middle Ages. Later its meaning broadened to include “an admirable desire for advancement or improvement” and still later “the object of this desire.”
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Billy Budd, Melville - Death of Captain Edward Fairfax Vere
Under him (note- the Lieutenant)the enemy was finally captured and though much crippled was by rare good fortune successfully taken into Gibraltar, an English port not very distant from the scene of the fight. There, Captain Vere with the rest of the wounded was put ashore. He lingered for some days, but the end came. Unhappily he was cut off too early for the Nile and Trafalgar. The spirit that spite its philosophic austerity may yet have indulged in the most secret of all passions, AMBITION, never attained to the fulness of fame.
Not long before death, while lying under the influence of that magical drug which soothing the physical frame mysteriously operates on the subtler element in man, he was heard to murmur words inexplicable to his attendant—"Billy Budd, Billy Budd." That these were not the accents of remorse, would seem clear from what the attendant said to the Indomitable's senior officer of marines who, as the most reluctant to condemn of the members of the drum-head court, too well knew, tho' here he kept the knowledge to himself, who Billy Budd was.
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Billy Budd - noble foundling - 'Yes, Billy Budd was a foundling, a presumable by-blow, and, evidently, no ignoble one. Noble descent was as evident in him as in a blood horse.' (Melville, _Billy Budd_)
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Figurations of Authorship:
1850: "Hawthorne and His Mosses" by Herman Melville
"Would that all excellent BOOKS were FOUNDLINGS, without father or
mother, that so it might be we could glorify them, without including
their ostensible authors."
“I know not what would be the right name to put on the title-page
of an excellent book, but this I feel, that the names of all fine
authors are fictitious ones, far more than that of Junius,-- simply
standing, as they do, for the mystical, ever-eluding SPIRIT of all
BEAUTY, which ubiquitously possesses men of genius. PURELY IMAGINATIVE
as this FANCY may appear, it nevertheless seems to receive some
warranty from the fact, that on a personal interview no great author
has ever come up to the idea of his reader. But that dust of which our
bodies are composed, how can it fitly express the nobler intelligences
among us?”
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Shakespeare
If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune's bastard be unfathered,
As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.
No, it was builded far from accident;
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls
Under the blow of thralled discontent,
Whereto th' inviting time our fashion calls:
It fears not policy, that heretic,
Which works on leases of short-number'd hours,
But all alone stands hugely politic,
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.
To this I witness call the fools of time,
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.
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impression/figura
Harvey, Speculum Tuscanismi (satire thought to be directed at Oxford)
...Tell me in good sooth, doth it not too evidently appeare, that this
English Poet wanted but a good PATTERNE before his eyes, as it might
be some delicate, and choyce elegant Poesie of good M. Sidneys, or M.
Dyers (ouer very Castor, & Pollux for such and many greater matters)
when this trimme geere was in hatching: Much like some Gentlewooman, I
coulde name in England, who by all Phisick and Physiognomie too, might
as well have brought forth all goodly faire children, as they have now
some ylfavoured and DEFORMED, had they at the tyme of their
Conception, had in sight, the amiable and gallant beautifull Pictures
of ADONIS, Cupido, Ganymedes, or the like, which no doubt would have
wrought such deepe impression in their fantasies, and imaginations, as
their children, and perhappes their Childrens children to, myght have
thanked them for, as long as they shall have Tongues in their heades.
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Representative selections from Jonson's _Timber Or Discoveries: Made Upon Men and Matter, As They Have Flow'd Out of His Daily Readings, Or Had Their Refluxe to His Peculiar Notion of the Times_
Fama.—A Fame that is wounded to the world would be better cured by another’s apology than its own: for few can apply medicines well themselves. Besides, the man that is once hated, both his good and his evil deeds oppress him. He is not easily emergent.
Opinio.—Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing; settled in the imagination, but never arriving at the understanding, there to obtain the tincture of reason. We labour with it more than truth. There is much more holds us than presseth us. An ill fact is one thing, an ill fortune is another; yet both oftentimes sway us alike, by the error of our thinking.
Jam literæ sordent.—Pastus hodiern. ingen.—The time was when men would learn and study good things, not envy those that had them. Then men were had in price for learning; now letters only make men vile. He is upbraidingly called a poet, as if it were a contemptible nick-name: but the professors, indeed, have made the learning cheap—railing and tinkling rhymers, whose writings the vulgar more greedily read, as being taken with the scurrility and petulancy of such wits. He shall not have a reader now unless he jeer and lie. It is the food of men’s natures; the diet of the times; gallants cannot sleep else. The writer must lie and the gentle reader rests happy to hear the worthiest works misinterpreted, the clearest actions obscured, the innocentest life traduced: and in such a licence of lying, a field so fruitful of slanders, how can there be matter wanting to his laughter? Hence comes the epidemical infection; for how can they escape the contagion of the writings, whom the virulency of the calumnies hath not staved off from reading?
Sed seculi morbus.—Nothing doth more invite a greedy reader than an unlooked-for subject. And what more unlooked-for than to see a person of an unblamed life made ridiculous or odious by the artifice of lying? But it is the disease of the age; and no wonder if the world, growing old, begin to be infirm: old age itself is a disease. It is long since the sick world began to dote and talk idly: would she had but doted still! but her dotage is now broke forth into a madness, and become a mere frenzy.
Vulgi expectatio.—Expectation of the vulgar is more drawn and held with newness than goodness; we see it in fencers, in players, in poets, in preachers, in all where fame promiseth anything; so it be new, though never so naught and depraved, they run to it, and are taken. Which shews, that the only decay or hurt of the best men’s reputation with the people is, their wits have out-lived the people’s palates. They have been too much or too long a feast.
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.
Principes et administri - There is a great difference in the understanding of some princes, as in the quality of their ministers about them. Some would dress their masters in gold, pearl, and all the true jewels of majesty; others furnish them with *feathers, bells, and riband*, and are therefore esteemed the fitter servants. But they are ever good men that must make good the times; if the men be naught, the times will be such. Finis expectandus est in unoquoque hominum; animali ad mutationem promptissmo.
Mali Choragi fuere. -- It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing; that though the nakedness would show deformed and odious, the suiting of it might draw their readers. Some love any strumpet, be she never so shop-like or meretricious, in good clothes But these, nature could not have formed them better to destroy their own testimony and overthrow their calumny.
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Amorphus/Oxford - Shreds of Forms
Jonson, Cynthia's Revels, Fountain of Selfe-Love - fountain
.
fons (Latin)
Origin & history
From a Proto-Indo-European root cognate with Sanskrit धन्वति (dhanvati, "flows, runs"), perhaps *dʰen- ("to flow"). See also Danube.
Noun
fōns (genitive fontis) (masc.)
a spring, a fountain
Quaesitum ad fontem solos deducere verpus.
To guide only the circumcised to the fountain that they seek.
fresh water, spring water
(by extension) an origin, a source
note - flow facility necessary to be stopped
Horace - muddy fountain - carries along what should have been left behind
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De Shakespeare Nostrat 1
I REMEMBER the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, 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; and to justify mine own candor, for I loved the man, and do honor his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. 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 stopped. “Sufflaminandus erat,” 2 as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him: “Cæsar, thou dost me wrong.” He replied: “Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause; 3 and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.
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note to Horace, Epistle III
Pindarici fontis qui non espalluit haustus. By taking Draughts of Pindar's Fountain he means the imitation of his Style, as if Pindar had a Fountain peculiar to himself, whos Waters inspired him with Enthusiasm and Poetick Fire, or rather as if Pindar's Works were the very Fountain itself(...)
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Cynthia's Revels, Jonson - Amorphus/Oxford discoverer of the fountain of Selfe-Love.
Alciato's Book of Emblems
Emblem 69
Self-love
Because your figure pleased you too much, Narcissus, it was changed into a flower, a plant of known senselessness. Self-love is the withering and destruction of natural power which brings and has brought ruin to many learned men, who having thrown away the method of the ancients seek new doctrines and pass on nothing but their own fantasies.
http://www.mun.ca/alciato/e069.html
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DL Clark, Imitation
Most of what we call literary criticism in Greece and Rome was produced in an endeavor to discover the best models for imitation..
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Male impersonators: men performing masculinity
By Mark Simpson
According to the Greek myth Narcissus was told by the blind seer Teiresias when he was a child that he should live to a great age if he never knew himself. Narcissus grew up to be a beautiful young man but proud and haughty. An embittered youth, unrequited in his love for Narcissus, cursed him to love that which could not be obtained. One day on Mount Helicon Narcissus caught sight of his own reflection 'endowed with all the beauty that man could desire and unawares he began to love the image of himself which, although itself perfect beauty, could not return his love.' Narcissus, worn out by the futility of his love, turned into the yellow-centred flower with white petals named after him.
The myth tells us something about the relation of modern man to his own image. Narcissus is not seduced by his reflection in any common pool - he glimpses and falls in love with his reflection on Mount Helicon, the sacred mountain where Apollo, Artemis and the Muses danced: the symbolic centre of the arts. His reflection is not one of nature but an idealized image refracted through man's art. Thus his image is 'endowed with all the beauty that man could desire' and he falls in love with it. And like nineties Western man, Narcissus finds that it is a love that 'could not be obtained'.
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Shakespeare's Sonnets -
Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
And all my soul and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
'Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.
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Cynthia's Revels,
TO THE
SPECIAL FOUNTAIN of MANNERS,
The Court.
THou art a Bountiful and Brave Spring, and waterest all the Noble Plants of this Island. In thee the whole Kingdom dresseth it self, and is ambitious to use thee as her Glass. *Beware then thou render Mens Figures truly, and teach them no less to hate their Deformities, than to love their Forms*: For, to Grace, there should come Reverence; and no Man can call that Lovely, which is not also Venerable. It is not Powd'ring, Perfuming, and every day smelling of the Taylor, that converteth to a Beautiful Object: but a Mind shining through any Sute, which needs no False Light, either of Riches or Honours, to help it. Such shalt thou find some here, even in the Reign of C Y N T H I A, (a C R I T E S and an A R E T E.) Now, under thy P H œ B U S, it will be thy Province to make more: Except thou desirest to have thy Source mix with the Spring of Self-love, and so wilt draw upon thee as welcom a Discovery of thy Days, as was then made of her Nights. Thy Servant, but not Slave,
BEN. JOHNSON.
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Auerbach, Figura
These variants (note -usages of figura) had great vitality, and were to enjoy a significant career; "model," "copy," "figment, "dream image," (note - includes 'figment of fancy' and 'ghost' also mentions 'constellation') - all these meanings clung to figura. But it was in still another sphere that Lucretius developed his most ingenious use of the word. As we know, he professed the cosmogony of Democritus and Epicurus, according to which the world is built up of atoms calls the atoms primordia, principia, corpuscula, elementa, semina, and in a very general sense, he also called them corpora, quora concursus motus ordo positura figura (bodies whose combination, motion, order, position, figura") BRING *FORTH* the things of the world. But though small , the atoms are material and formed: they have infinitely divese shapes; and so it comes about that he often calls them "forms," figurae, and that conversely one may often translate figurae, as Diels has done, by "atoms." The numerous atoms are in constant motion: they move about in the void, combine and repel one another: a dance of figures. This use of the word does not seem to have gone beyond Lucretius; the Thesaurus cites only one other example of it in Claudian, at the end of the fourth century. in this small sphere, Lucretius' most original creation was without influence, but there is no doubt that of all the authors I have studied in connection with figura, it was Lucretius who made the most brilliant, though not the most historically important contribution.
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Jonson, Poetaster
Author
...But they that have incensed me, can in soul
Acquit me of that guilt. They know I dare
To spurn or baffle them, or squirt their eyes
With ink or urine; or I could do worse,
Arm'd with Archilochus' fury, write Iambics,
Should make the desperate lashers hang themselves;
Rhime them to death, as they do Irish rats
In drumming tunes. Or, living, I could stamp
Their foreheads with those deep and public brands,
That the whole company of barber-surgeon a
Should not take off with all their art and plasters.
And these my prints should last, still to be read
In their pale fronts; when, what they write 'gainst me
Shall, like a figure drawn in water, fleet,
And the poor wretched papers be employed
To clothe tobacco, or some cheaper drug:
This I could do, and make them infamous.
But, to what end? when their own deeds have mark'd 'em;
And that I know, within his guilty breast
Each slanderer bears a whip that shall torment him
Worse than a million of these temporal plagues:
Which to pursue, were but a feminine humour,
And far beneath the dignity of man.
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Shakespeare
O! lest the world should task you to recite
What merit lived in me, that you should love
After my death,--dear love, forget me quite,
For you in me can nothing worthy prove.
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I
Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
O! lest your true love may seem false in this
That you for love speak well of me untrue,
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
And so should you, to love things nothing worth.
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Horace
ODE XX.
TO MAECENAS.
I, a two-formed poet (biformis?), will be conveyed through the liquid air with no vulgar or humble wing; nor will I loiter upon earth any longer; and superior to envy, I will quit cities. Not I, even I, the blood of low parents, my dear Maecenas, shall die; nor shall I be restrained by the Stygian wave. At this instant a rough skin settles upon my ankles, and all upwards I am transformed into a white bird, and the downy plumage arises over my fingers and shoulders. Now, a melodious bird, more expeditious than the Daedalean Icarus, I will visit the shores of the murmuring Bosphorus, and the Gzetulean Syrtes, and the Hyperborean plains. Me the Colchian and the Dacian, who hides his fear of the Marsian cohort, land the remotest Gelonians, shall know: me the learned Spaniard shall study, and he that drinks of the Rhone. Let there be no dirges, nor unmanly lamentations, nor bewailings at my imaginary funeral; suppress your crying, and forbear the superfluous honors of a sepulcher.
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Restraining Edward de Vere/Restraining Fancy
Image, Rhetoric, and Politics in the early Thomas Hobbes
Todd Butler
In the publication of the Eight Books we thus find the culmination of the humanist Hobbes's earliest theories on political imagery, theories Hobbes had begun exploring several years before in the Discourses. Torn between fascination and distaste for the power of images to move the multitudes, Hobbes identifies the work of the imagination as the primary site for political conflict. Rhetoricians are perhaps to be distrusted and their words suspected, but their weapons are not to be abandoned. Instead the danger must be neutralized by reorienting private desires to public aims, a task that paradoxically requires the use of the imagination and its ability to create from all substances—words and stones—monuments that can instruct an audience properly and effectively. In translating Thucydides, Hobbes must ask of himself what he would demand of others, harnessing his private ambition, itself carefully hidden in his letter to Lady Devonshire, to the public task of maintaining the decorum of Caroline government. To be sure, Hobbes's attitude toward history and the role of the imagination would vary. In Leviathan Hobbes asserts that in histories "Fancy hath no place, but only in adorning the style." To some extent his insistence in Leviathan on the need for judgment's preeminence echoes the earlier conclusions he makes in his translation of Thucydides, though the sum of his earlier work is not nearly as insistent upon THE RESTRAINT OF FANCY as a whole. At this moment, for all his hostility toward Dionysius and Herodotus, Hobbes never charges them with being ineffectual or insignificant. While their rhetoric presents a substantial threat to the proper ordering of men's thought in a commonwealth, Hobbes must ultimately answer them in kind.
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THE RESTRAINT OF FANCY/'SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL' (and jonsonian-judgement's preeminence):
From To the Deceased Author of these Poems...William Cartwright (note- of the Tribe of Ben)
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)
(Restraining/Holding/Ruling Shakespeare's Quill/Jonson and Cartwright's Judgements' Preeminence)
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Earl of Oxford - Loss of Good Name
Fram’d in the front of forlorn hope past all recovery,
I stayless stand, to abide the shock of shame and infamy.
My life, through ling’ring long, is lodg’d in lair of loathsome ways;
My death delay’d to keep from life the harm of hapless days.
My sprites, my heart, my wit and force, in deep distress are drown’d;
The only loss of my good name is of these griefs the ground.
And since my mind, my wit, my head, my voice and tongue are weak,
To utter, move, devise, conceive, sound forth, declare and speak,
Such piercing plaints as answer might, or would my woeful case,
Help crave I must, and crave I will, with tears upon my face,
Of all that may in heaven or hell, in earth or air be found,
To wail with me this loss of mine, as of these griefs the ground.
Help Gods, help saints, help sprites and powers that in the heaven do dwell,
Help ye that are aye wont to wail, ye howling hounds of hell;
Help man, help beasts, help birds and worms, that on the earth do toil;
Help fish, help fowl, that flock and feed upon the salt sea soil,
Help echo that in air doth flee, shrill voices to resound,
To wail this loss of my good name, as of these griefs the ground.
E.O.
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The First Book of the Epistles of Horace.
EPISTLE I.
TO MAECENAS.
The poet renounces all verses of a ludicrous turn, and resolves to apply himself wholly to the study of philosophy, which teaches to bridle the desires, and to postpone every thing to virtue. Maecenas, the subject of my earliest song, justly entitled to my latest, dost thou seek to engage me again in the old lists, having been tried sufficiently, and now presented with the foils? My age is not the same, nor is my genius. Veianius, his arms consecrated on a pillar of Hercules’ temple, lives snugly retired in the country, that he may not from the extremity of the sandy amphitheater so often supplicate the people’s favor. Some one seems frequently to ring in my purified ear: “Wisely in time dismiss the aged courser, lest, an object of derision, he miscarry at last, and break his wind.” Now therefore I lay aside both verses, and all other sportive matters; my study and inquiry is after what is true and fitting, and I am wholly engaged in this: I lay up, and collect rules which I may be able hereafter to bring into use. And lest you should perchance ask under what leader, in what house [of philosophy], I enter myself a pupil: addicted to swear implicitly to the ipse-dixits of no particular master, wherever the weather drives me, I am carried a guest. One while I become active, and am plunged in the waves of state affairs, a maintainer and a rigid partisan of strict virtue; then again I relapse insensibly into Aristippus’ maxims, and endeavor to adapt circumstances to myself, not myself to circumstances. As the night seems long to those with whom a mistress has broken her appointment, and the day slow to those who owe their labor; as the year moves lazy with minors, whom the harsh guardianship of their mothers confines; so all that time to me flows tedious and distasteful, which delays my hope and design of strenuously executing that which is of equal benefit to the poor and to the rich, which neglected will be of equal detriment to young and to old. It remains, that I conduct and comfort myself by these principles; your sight is not so piercing as that of Lynceus; you will not however therefore despise being anointed, if you are sore-eyed: nor because you despair of the muscles of the invincible Glycon, will you be careless of preserving your body from the knotty gout. There is some point to which we may reach, if we can go no further. Does your heart burn with avarice, and a wretched desire of more? Spells there are, and incantations, with which you may mitigate this pain, and rid yourself of a great part of the distemper. Do you swell with the love of praise? There are certain purgations which can restore you, a certain treatise, being perused thrice with purity of mind. The envious, the choleric, the indolent, the slave to wine, to women–none is so savage that he can not be tamed, if he will only lend a patient ear to discipline.
It is virtue, to fly vice; and the highest wisdom, to have lived free from folly. You see with what toil of mind and body you avoid those things which you believe to be the greatest evils, a small fortune and a shameful repulse. An active merchant, you run to the remotest Indies, fleeing poverty through sea, through rocks, through flames. And will you not learn, and hear, and be advised by one who is wiser, that you may no longer regard those things which you foolishly admire and wish for? What little champion of the villages and of the streets would scorn being crowned at the great Olympic games, who had the hopes and happy opportunity of victory without toil? Silver is less valuable than gold, gold than virtue. “O citizens, citizens, money is to be sought first; virtue after riches:” this the highest Janus from the lowest inculcates; young men and old repeat these maxims, having their bags and account-books hung on the left arm. You have soul, have breeding, have eloquence and honor: yet if six or seven thousand sesterces be wanting to complete your four hundred thousand, you shall be a plebeian. But boys at play cry, “You shall be king, if you will do right.” Let this be a [man’s] brazen wall, to be conscious of no ill, to turn pale with no guilt. Tell me, pray is the Roscian law best, or the boy’s song which offers the kingdom to them that do right, sung by the manly Curii and Camilli? Does he advise you best, who says, “Make a fortune; a fortune, if you can, honestly; if not, a fortune by any means”–that you may view from a nearer bench the tear-moving poems of Puppius; or he, who still animates and enables you to stand free and upright, a match for haughty fortune?
If now perchance the Roman people should ask me, why I do not enjoy the same sentiments with them, as [I do the same] porticoes, nor pursue or fly from whatever they admire or dislike; I will reply, as the cautious fox once answered the sick lion: “Because the foot-marks all looking toward you, and none from you, affright me.” Thou art a monster with many heads. For what shall I follow, or whom? One set of men delight to farm the public revenues: there are some, who would inveigle covetous widows with sweet-meats and fruits, and insnare old men, whom they would send [like fish] into their ponds: the fortunes of many grow by concealed usury. But be it, that different men are engaged in different employments and pursuits: can the same persons continue an hour together approving the same things? If the man of wealth has said, “No bay in the world outshines delightful Baiae,” the lake and the sea presently feel the eagerness of their impetuous master: to whom, if a vicious humor gives the omen, [he will cry,]–”to-morrow, workmen, ye shall convey hence your tools to Teanum.” Has he in his hall the genial bed? He says nothing is preferable to, nothing better than a single life. If he has not, he swears the married only are happy. With what noose can I hold this Proteus, varying thus his forms? What does the poor man? Laugh [at him too]: is he not forever changing his garrets, beds, baths, barbers? He is as much surfeited in a hired boat, as the rich man is, whom his own galley conveys.
If I meet you with my hair cut by an uneven barber, you laugh [at me]: if I chance to have a ragged shirt under a handsome coat, or if my disproportioned gown fits me ill, you laugh. What [do you do], when my judgment contradicts itself? it despises what it before desired; seeks for that which lately it neglected; is all in a ferment, and is inconsistent in the whole tenor of life; pulls down, builds up, changes square to round. In this case, you think I am mad in the common way, and you do not laugh, nor believe that I stand in need of a physician, or of a guardian assigned by the praetor; though you are the patron of my affairs, and are disgusted at the ill-pared nail of a friend that depends upon you, that reveres you.
In a word, the wise man is inferior to Jupiter alone, is rich, free, honorable, handsome, lastly, king of kings; above all, he is sound, unless when phlegm is troublesome.
