Sunday, March 7, 2021

Oxford and Sin of Self-Love

Spencer
Prefixed to "Nennio, or A Treatise of Nobility"

A discourse whether a noble man by birth or a gentleman by desert is greater in nobilitie, At London: Printed by Peter Short, and are to be solde [by J. Flasket} in Paules Churchyard at the signe of the blacke Beare, 1600

Whoso wil seeke, by right deserts, t'attaine,
Unto the type of true nobility;
And not by painted shewes, and titles vaine,
Derived farre from famous auncestrie:
Behold them both in their right visnomy
Here truly pourtray'd, as they ought to be,
And striving both for termes of dignitie,
To be advanced highest in degree.
And, when thou doost with equall insight see
The ods twixt both, of both the deem aright,
And chuse the better of them both to thee:
But thanks to him, that it deserves, behight;
To Nenna first, that first this worke created,
And next to Jones, that truely it translated.

Ed. Spenser.
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...But let them rest, that thus will rust: and for your selues, worthy Gentlemen, keepe your Armes bright; and thereby your names, your vertues, your soules: you shall be honoured in good mens hearts, whilst wanton and effeminate Gulls shall weaue and weare their owne disgraces.
Thomas Adams 1617

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A Wanton Trade of Living: Rhetoric, Effeminacy and the Early Modern Courtier
Jennifer Richards


...Elizabethan indifference to the effeminizing effects of the kind of courtiership described in Il cortegiano seems all the more inexplicable given contemporary fears of the manipulable, will-less and ungendered self. Such fears of effeminization were levelled at theatrical cross-dressing, at the translation of bawdy Italian romances, and at the foibles of Italian (and French) manners and fashions, but not, apparently, at the steady flow of “englished” Italian courtesy books, including Il cortegiano, which inculcate such tastes. It is not that Il cortegiano presents an unambiguous portrait of virtuous courtiership. In fact, Hoby’s translation captures for English readers the surreptitious practice and optimistic ends of an Italian courtier who aims to “allure” (adescare) his prince to him, and to “distille” (infondere) into his mind “goodness” and “contintencie” and “temperance”. In its fourth and final book its principal speaker, Ottaviano, promises to defend the courtier from the charge that his “precise faciouns” and “meerie talk” described in books I-III will make him “womanish” (effeminare), and susceptible “to a most wanton trade of livinge”. Yet, he appears naively (or disingenuously) to believe that a virtuous end justifies covert “womanish” means. On his view, the courtier aims to “enflame” (edditare) his prince to goodness and to “leade him throughe the roughe way of virtue…deckynge yt about with boowes to shadowe yt and strawinge it over with sightlye flowers, to ease (temperare) the greefe of the peinfull journey in hym that is but of a weake force.” With the help of “musike,” “armes,” “horses,” “rymes and meeter,” and “otherwhyle with communication of love,” the courtier keeps his prince “occupyed in honest pleasure,” using “these flickering provocations” (illecebra) to bring him to “some virtuous condicion,” “beguilinge him with a holsome craft, as the warie phistiens do, …whan they minister to yonge and tender children”(…)

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http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/emblem.php?id=FALc069


Because your beauty gave you too much satisfaction, Narcissus, it was turned both into a flower and into a plant of acknowledged insensibility. Self-satisfaction is the rot and destruction of the mind. Learned men in plenty it has ruined, and ruins still, men who cast off the method of teachers of old and aim to pass on new doctrines, nothing more than their own imaginings.

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Neither Safe Nor Dull


Rhodri Lewis

In the first chapter of his Arte of English Poesie (1589), George Puttenham distinguishes between the characteristics of the poet and those of the translator, to the disadvantage of the latter. The ‘poet makes and contrives out of his own brain both the verse and the matter of his poem, and not by any foreign copy or example, as doth the translator, who therefore may well be said a versifier, but not a poet’.1 The translator, in other words, may have the linguistic and technical skills required to make poetry, but he lacks the furor poeticus that endows true poetry with its prophetic, quasi-divine, qualities. While the poet is a vates with the ability to see beyond the realm of his own experiences and to transform this vision accordingly, the translator is a slave to the literary materials in front of him. Yet, as Puttenham’s Arte makes quite clear, the dividing lines between the tasks of the poet and the translator were, in reality, a good deal more opaque than Neoplatonic grandstanding about ‘inspiration’ would suggest. After all, the rhetorical mode of education espoused by humanist pedagogues favoured imitatio above all else: one became an early modern English orator or poet by studying the examples of Demosthenes, Cicero, Homer, and Virgil. Such imitation connoted virtue, and this virtue bore the stamp both of style and subject matter, verba and res. On this model, modern writers carried over to their own times the best of ancient Athens and Rome. Take the Greek metaphora, so called because it denotes the literary technique in which one term carries the meaning of another; the Latin equivalent is translatio and rests on the same etymological root. For the early moderns, the practices of imitation fashioned a kind of cultural translation, in which ancient literary forms and topics became a metaphor through which to dignify Elizabethan England, the France of the Pléiade, and many other national or cultural traditions.



These two models of poetic endeavour – one based on inspiration, the other on imitation – sat in uneasy though generally fruitful symbiosis. Yet by the middle of the English seventeenth century they had been pulled apart, a separation that would be confirmed decisively in the years after the Restoration in 1660. This was because 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. (By definition, the translator could not produce his work alone.) A good marker of this shift is that, as early as 1680, Dryden could rank imitation as one of the three subdivisions of translation, rather than as a discrete and often extra-poetic set of intellectual practices. One generation later, an even more vivid index of the cultural capital that had accrued to translating is that Pope was able to make himself a name and a fortune ‘translating’ works whose original language he could not read. Richard Bentley’s famous jibe that ‘It is a pretty poem, Mr Pope, but you must not call it Homer’ captures something both of Pope’s technical shortcomings in construing ancient Greek, and of why Pope did not have to be greatly troubled by them.

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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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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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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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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*,(castigated with writings of ancient authors?)
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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The Motives of Eloquence – Richard A. Lanham

Perhaps the serious premises have thrived because they flatter us. The rhetorical view does not. The rhetorical view of life is satirical, radically reductive of human motive and human striving. Rhetoric’s real CRIME, one is often led to suspect, is its candid acknowledgment of the rhetorical aspects of “serious” life. The concept of a central self, true or not, flatters man immensely. It gives him an identity outside time and change that he sees nowhere else in the sublunary universe. So, too, the theory of knowledge upon which seriousness rests. Here there is little to choose between a positivist reality and a Platonic, between realism and idealism. As Eric Havelock points out, “For Plato, reality is rational, scientific and logical, or it is nothing.” How reassuring to arrive at essence, Eleatic Being. How flattering that we, at whatever brave cost to ourselves, penetrate to the way things are, look, at the end of our quest, upon the true face of beauty “itself, of and in itself, always one being” [Symposium 211B]. How humiliating to be all this time only looking in a mirror.
At the heart of rhetorical reality lies pleasure. (…)

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What about someone who believes in beautiful things, but doesn't believe in the beautiful itself…? Don't you think he is living in a dream rather than a wakened state? (Plato, Republic 476c)

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‘Male deformities’: Narcissus and the Reformation of Courtly Manners in Cynthia’s Revels
in Ovid & the Renaissance Body

By Goran V Stanivukovic

Mario Digangi \

(snip)

...In this essay I want to pursue such an analysis by focusing on Ben Jonson’s early comedy Cynthia’s Revels (1600), which offers particular insight into the social and political implications of the Narcissus myth for early modern English culture. Originally entered in the Stationer’s Register as Narcissus, or the fountain of self-love, this quirky satire of courtly manners represents Jonson’s ‘only extended use of Ovidian material.: Jonson’s uncharacteristic recourse to Ovidian subjects in Cynthia’s Revels suggests his recognition of the Narcissus myth’s theatrical viability as a vehicle for satire. While Narcissus never appears as a character in the play, the Narcissus myth provides Jonson with vivid material for exposing the transgressive bodily practices of unauthorized courtiers, especially through the character of Amorphous (“the deformed”), whose affected manners violate orthodox prescriptions for male aristocratic comportment. The play’s ridicule of courtly affectation thus accords with early modern interpretations of the Narcissus myth that primarily associate self-love not with homoerotic desire but with effeminate manners: a clear sign of social, economic and political transgression. By contrast, the virtuously ‘masculine’ comportment of the true gentleman, according to a particular strain of early modern political ideology, justifies his status and exercise of power. Exposing illegitimate courtiers as effeminate narcissists, Cynthia’s Revels reveals the importance of an ideology of ‘civilized’ masculinity to early-seventeenth-century constructions of political legitimacy.
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Cynthia's Revels:

Act V. Scene I.

Mercury, Crites.

I
T is resolv'd on, Crites, you must do it.
Cri. The Grace divinest Mercury hath done me,
In this vouchsafed discovery of himself,
Binds my observance in the utmost terme
Of satisfaction, to his godly Will:
Though I profess (without the affectation
Of an enforc'd, and form'd austerity)
I could be willing to enjoy no place
With so unequal Natures. Mer. We believe it.
But for our sake, and to inflict just pains
On their PRODIGIOUS Follies, aid us now:
No man is, presently, made bad, with ill.
And good men, like the Sea, should still maintain
Their noble taste, in midst of all fresh humours,
That flow about them, to corrupt their Streams,
Bearing no season, much less salt of goodness.
It is our purpose, Crites, to correct,
And punish, with our laughter, this nights sport.
Which our Court-Dors so heartily intend:
And by that worthy scorn, to make them know
How far beneath the dignity of Man
Their serious, and most practis'd Actions are.
Cri. I, but though Mercury can warrant out
His Undertakings, and make all things good,
Out of the Powers of his Divinity,
Th' offence will be return'd with weight on me,
That am a Creature so despis'd, and poor;
When the whole Court shall take it self abus'd
By our Ironical Confederacy.
Mer. You are deceiv'd. The better Race in Court
Will apprehend it, as a grateful right
Done to their separate merit: and approve
The fit rebuke of so RIDICULOUS HEADS,
Who with their apish Customs, and forc'd Garbs,
Would bring the name of Courtier in contempt,
Did it not live unblemisht in some few,
Whom equal Jove hath lov'd, and Phœbus form'd
Of better Metal, and in better mould.

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Horace, Art of Poetry
Earl of Roscommon

Quintilius (if his advice were ask'd)
Would freely tell you what you should correct,
Or (if you could not) bid you blot it out,
And with more care supply the vacancy;
But if he found you fond, and obstinate
(And apter to defend than mend your faults)
With silenc leave you to admire your self,
*And without Rival hugg your darling Book.*
The prudent care of an Impartial friend,
Will give you notice of each idle Line,
Shew what sounds harsh, & what wants ornament,
Or where it is too lavishly bestowed;
Make you explain all that he finds Obscure,
And with a strict Enquiry mark your faults;
Nor for these trifles fear to loose your love;
Those things, which now seem frivolous, & slight,
Will be of serious consequence to you,
When they have made you once Ridiculous.

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Chapman, Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois

As these high men do low in all true grace,
Their height being privilege to all things base.
And as the foolish poet that still writ
All his *most self-lov’d verse> in paper royal,
Or parchment rul’d with lead, smooth’d with the pumice,
Bound richly up, and strung with crimson strings;
Never so blest as when he writ and read
The ape lov’d issue of his brain, and never
But joying in himself, admiring ever;
Yet in his works behold him, and he show’d
Like to a ditcher. So these painted men,
All set on out-side, look upon within,
And not a peasant's entrails you shall find,
More foul and measled, nor more starv’d of mind. (l.184-195)

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Catullus
“That Suffenus, O Varus, whom you know very well, is a charming fellow, and has wit and good manners. He also makes many more verses than any one else. I suppose he has got some ten thousand, or even more, written out in full ... imperial paper (chartae regiae), new rolls, new bosses, red ties, parchment wrappers; all ruled with lead, and smoothed with pumice. When you come to read these, the fashionable well-bred Suffenus I spoke of seems to be nothing but any goatherd or ditcher, when we look at him again; so absurd and changed is he. How are we to account for this? The same man who was just now a dinner table wit ... is more clumsy than the clumsy country [sic] whenever he touches poetry; and, at the same time, he is never so complacent as when he is writing a poem, he delights in himself and admires himself so much.

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Chapman, Revenge Of Bussy D'AmboisAct 2 sc 1

Clermont. Now, to my challenge. What's the place, the weapon?

Baligny. Soft, sir! let first your challenge be received.

Hee would not touch, nor see it.

Cler. Possible!

How did you then?

Bal. Left it, in his despight.150

But when hee saw mee enter so expectlesse,

To heare his base exclaimes of "murther, murther,"

Made mee thinke noblesse lost, in him quicke buried.

Quo mollius degunt, eo servilius.

Epict.

Cler. They are the breathing sepulchres of noblesse:

No trulier noble men then lions pictures,155

Hung up for signes, are lions. Who knowes not

That lyons the more soft kept, are more servile?

And looke how lyons close kept, fed by hand,

Lose quite th'innative fire of spirit and greatnesse

That lyons free breathe, forraging for prey,160

And grow so grosse that mastifes, curs, and mungrils

Have spirit to cow them: so our soft French Nobles

Chain'd up in ease and numbd securitie

(Their spirits shrunke up like their covetous fists,

And never opened but Domitian-like,165

And all his base, obsequious minions

When they were catching though it were but flyes),

Besotted with their pezzants love of gaine,

Rusting at home, and on each other preying,

Are for their greatnesse but the greater slaves,170

And none is noble but who scrapes and saves.

Bal. Tis base, tis base; and yet they thinke them high.

Cler. So children mounted on their hobby-horse

Thinke they are riding, when with wanton toile

They beare what should beare them. A man may well175

Compare them to those foolish great-spleen'd cammels,

That to their high heads beg'd of Jove hornes higher;

Whose most uncomely and ridiculous pride

When hee had satisfied, they could not use,

But where they went upright before, they stoopt,180

And bore their heads much lower for their hornes:Simil[iter


As these high men doe, low in all true grace,

Their height being priviledge to all things base.

And as the foolish poet that still writ

All his most selfe-lov'd verse in paper royall,185

Or partchment rul'd with lead, smooth'd with the pumice,

Bound richly up, and strung with crimson strings;

Never so blest as when hee writ and read

The ape-lov'd issue of his braine; and never

But joying in himselfe, admiring ever:190

Yet in his workes behold him, and hee show'd

Like to a ditcher. So these painted men,

All set on out-side, looke upon within,

And not a pezzants entrailes you shall finde

More foule and mezel'd, nor more sterv'd of minde.

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Upon Ben: Johnson, the most excellent of Comick Poets.


Mirror of Poets! Mirror of our Age!
Which her wholE Face beholding on thy stage,
Pleas'd and displeas'd with her owne faults endures,
A remedy, like Those whom Musicke cures,
Thou not alone those various inclinations,
Which Nature gives to Ages, Sexes, Nations,
Hast traced with thy All-resembling Pen,
But all that custome hath impos'd on Men,
Or ill-got Habits, which distort them so,
That scarce the Brother can the Brother know,
Is represented to the wondring Eyes,
Of all that see or read thy Comedies.
Whoever in those Glasses lookes may finde,
The spots return'd, or graces of his minde;
And by the helpe of so divine an Art,
At leisure view, and dresse his nobler part.
*NARCISSUS conzen'd by that flattering Well,
Which nothing could but of his beauty tell,
Had here discovering the DEFORM'D ESTATE
Of his fond minde, preserv'd himselfe with hate*,
(snip)
E Waller

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Spenser, Faerie Queene

To Oxford:

To the right Honourable the Earle
of Oxenford, Lord high Chamberlayne of
England. &c.

REceiue most Noble Lord in gentle gree,
The vnripe fruit of an vnready wit:
Which by thy countenaunce doth craue to bee
Defended from foule Enuies poisnous bit.
Which so to doe may thee right well befit,
Sith th'antique glory of thine auncestry
Vnder a shady vele is therein writ,
And eke thine owne long liuing memory,
Succeeding them in true nobility:
And also for the LOVE, which thou doest beare
To th'HELICONIAN YMPS, and they to thee,
They vnto thee, and thou to them most deare:
DEARE as thou art UNTO THY SELFE, so LOVE
That LOVES & honours thee, *as doth behoue*.

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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:

Jonson, on 'constraining' 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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From To the Deceased Author of these Poems (William Cartwright)

Jasper Mayne
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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Tom O'Bedlam - Anonymous

From the hagg and hungrie goblin
That into raggs would rend ye,
And the spirit that stands by the naked man
In the Book of Moones - defend ye!
That of your five sound senses
You never be forsaken,
Nor wander from your selves with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon.

(Chorus; sung after every verse)

While I doe sing "any foode, any feeding,
Feedinge, drinke or clothing,"
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
(snip)
The Gipsie Snap and Pedro

Are none of Tom's companions.
The punk I skorne and the cut purse sworne
And the roaring boyes bravadoe.
The meek, the white, the gentle,
Me handle touch and spare not
But those that crosse *Tom Rynosseros*
Do what the panther dare not.

With a host of FURIOUS FANCIES
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghostes and shadowes
I summon'd am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wild world's end.
Methinks it is no journey.
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Jonson, Cynthia's Revels, Act 1 Sc III

Amorphus:Dear spark of Beauty, make not so fast away.
Ecc. Away.
Mer. Stay, let me observe this *Portent* yet.
Amo. I am neither your Minotaure, nor your Centaure,
nor your Satyre, nor your Hyæna, nor your Babion, but
your meer Traveler, believe me.
Ecc. Leave me.
Mer. I guess'd it should be some travelling motion
pursu'd Eccho so.
Amo. Know you from whom you flye? or whence?
Ecc. Hence.
Amo. This is somewhat above strange! a Nymph of her
Feature and Lineament, to be so preposterously rude! well,
I will but cool my self at yon' Spring, and follow her.
Mer. Nay, then I am familiar with the issue: I'll leave
you too.
Amo. I am a *Rhinoceros*, if I had thought a Creature
of her symmetry, could have dar'd so improportionable,
and abrupt a digression...

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Title: Q. Horatius Flaccus: his Art of poetry. Englished by Ben:
Jonson. With other workes of the author, never printed before Date:
1640

...Those that are wise, a FURIOUS POET feare,
And flye to touch him, as a man that were
Infected with the Leprosie, or had
The yellow jaundis, or were truely mad,
Under the angry Moon: but then the boyes
They vexe, and careless follow him with noise.
This, while he belcheth lofty Verses out,
And stalketh, like a Fowler, round about,
Busie to catch a Black-bird; if he fall
Into a pit, or hole, although he call
And crye aloud, help gentle Country-men;
There's none will take the care to help him, then, For if one should,
and with a rope make hast
To let it downe, who knowes, if he did cast
Himselfe there purposely or no; and would Not thence be sav'd,
although indeed he could;
Ile tell you but the death, and the disease
Of the Sysilian Poet, Empedocles'
He, while he labour'd to be thought a god,
Immortall, took a melancholick, odd
Conceipt, and into burning Aetna leap't.Let Poets perish that will not
be kept.

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Davies, Scourge of Folly
Of the staid FURIOUS POET FUCUS.
Epig. 114

Fucus the FURIOUS POET writes but Plaies;
So, playing, writes: that’s, idly writeth all:

Yet, idle Plaies, and Players are his Staies;
Which stay him that he can no lower fall:

For, he is fall’n into the deep’st decay,
Where Playes and Players keepe him at a stay.

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Seneca


EPISTLE CXIV.

~CXIV+ ON STYLE AS A MIRROR OF CHARACTER

...In short, whenever you

notice that a DEGENERATE STYLE pleases the critics, you may be sure that character also has deviated from the right standard. Just as luxurious banquets and elaborate dress are indications of disease in the state, similarly a lax style, if it be popular, shows that the mind (which is the source of the word) has lost its balance. Indeed you ought not to wonder that corrupt speech is welcomed not merely by the more squalid mob but also by our more cultured throng; for it is only in their dress and not in their judgments that they differ. You may rather wonder that not only the effects of vices, but even vices themselves, meet with approval. For it has ever been thus: no man's ability has ever been approved without something being pardoned. Show me any man, however famous; I can tell you what it was that his age forgave in him, and what it was that his age purposely overlooked. * I can show you many men whose vices have caused them no harm, and not a few who have been even helped by these vices. Yes, I will show you persons of the highest reputation, set up as models for our admiration; and yet if you seek to correct their errors, you destroy them; for vices are so intertwined with virtues that they drag the virtues along with them.* (SNIP)

Some individual makes these vices fashionable - some person who controls the eloquence of the day; the rest follow his lead and communicate the habit to each other.

(note - communicate/infection - 'see thee in our waters yet appear')

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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.

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Every Man Out - Jonson


COB. Humour? mack, I think it be so indeed: what is this humour? it's some RARE thing, I warrant.

PIS. Marry, I'll tell thee what it is (as 'tis generally received in
these days): it is a MONSTER bred in a man by SELF-LOVE and affectation, and fed by folly.

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Every Man Out - Revised version
Cob. Humour? mack, I think it be so indeed: what
is that Humour? some rare thing I warrant.
Cash. Mary I'll tell thee Cob: It is a Gentleman-like
Monster, bred in the special gallantry of our Time, by
Affectation; and fed by Folly.
Cob. How? must it be fed?
Cash. Oh I, Humour is nothing if it be not fed.
Didst thou never hear that? it's a common Phrase, Feed
my Humour.
Cob. I'll none on it: Humour, avant, I know you
not, be gone. Let who will make hungry Meals for
your MONSTER-SHIP, it shall not be I.
***************************************
prodigialiter

Horace

25 decipimur specie recti : brevis esse laboro,
obscurus fio ; sectantem levia nervi
deficiunt animique ; professus grandia target ;
serpit humi tutus nimium timidusque procellae;
qui variare cupit rem prodigialiter unam,



30 delphinum silvis appingit, fluctibus aprum.
In vitium ducit culpae fuga, si caret arte.
Aemilium circa ludum f aber imus et ungues
exprimet et molles imitabitur acre capillos,



the result of a desire for variety,
as other faults are the result of the
desire to attain to some particular
virtue of style.'


' So it is, in seeking va-
riety of ornament, that one falls
into the absurdities of which I was
speaking above.' cupit: is anx-
ious, as the desires are expressed
above by strong words, laboro,
sectantem, professus. PRODIGIA-
LITER : a rare word, perhaps coined
by Horace (cf. Epist. 2, 2, 119) ;
to be taken with variare ; ' to in-
troduce such variety as to be LIKE
A MIRACLE,' 'to be wonderfully
varied.' unam: with emphasis,
at the end of the verse and in con-
trast to prodigialiter. The in-
stances in vs. 30 are merely vivid
expressions of the thought of vss.
1 6- 1 8 and especially vs. 20 f.
**************************************
Droeshout - Absurd Figure

absurd (adj.)
"plainly illogical," 1550s, from French absurde (16c.), from Latin absurdus "out of tune, discordant;" figuratively "incongruous, foolish, silly, senseless," from ab- "off, away from," here perhaps an intensive prefix, + surdus "dull, DEAF, mute," which is possibly from an imitative PIE root meaning "to buzz, whisper" (see susurration). Thus the basic sense is perhaps "out of tune," but de Vaan writes, "Since 'deaf' often has two semantic sides, viz. 'who cannot hear' and 'who is not heard,' ab-surdus can be explained as 'which is unheard of' ..." The modern English sense is the Latin figurative one, perhaps "out of harmony with reason or propriety." Related: Absurdly; absurdness.

***********************************
Two Magian Comedies: ‘The Tempest’ and ‘The Alchemist’


Harry Levin

If another confrontation between Shakespeare and Jonson is still allowable, then the challenger should be allowed to arm himself with one of his Latin epigraphs. So, on the title-page of Sejanus, the author warns the reader not to look for centaurs or gorgons or harpies; these particular pages will savour of man. The distich is quoted from Martial, an acknowledged kindred spirit ofJonson's, and it seems a curious point of departure for a tragedy, since Martial's epigram (x, iv) had excluded from his life-like pages such monstrous figures as Oedipus and Thyestes. Jonson cut the quotation conveniently short, yet it hints at the limitations that might emerge from a critical comparison of Sejanus or Catiline with Coriolanus or Antony and Cleopatra. For the younger playwright, always more interested in human machinations than in the workings of destiny, tragedy could be reduced to conspiracy. Hence it differed from comedy only to the extent that, in the words of the Prologue to Every Man in His Humour, crimes may differ from follies. That prologue, introducing a revision which shifted the setting from Italy to England, heralds a more realistic drama by condemning the extravagances and ineptitudes of the popular theatre. After casting an invidious glance at such rivals, and appealing for the more judicious laughter of the audience, it concludes by hoping: 'You, that haue so grae'd MONSTERS, may like men'.

******************************
2nd Folio of Shakespeare's Works (1632)
On worthy Master Shakespeare and his Poems.

(snip)


...To steere th' affections; and by heavenly Fire
Mould us anew. Stolen from ourselves-
This, and much more which cannot be express`d
But by himselfe, his tongue, and his own brest,
Was Shakespeare`s freehold; which his cunning braine
Improv`d by favour of the nine-fold traine,
The buskind Muse, the Commicke Queene, the grand
And lowder tone of Clio; nimble hand,
And nimbler foote of the melodious paire,
The silver-voyced Lady the most faire
Calliope, whose speaking silence daunts,
And she whose prayse the heavenly body chants.


These gently woo`d him, envying one another,
(Obey`d by all as Spouse, but lov`d as brother),
And wrought a curious robe of sable grave,
Fresh greene, and pleasant yellow, red most brave,
And constant blew, rich purple, guiltlesse white,
The lowly Russet, and the Scarlet bright;
Branch`d and embroidred like the painted Spring,
Each leafe match`d with a flower, and each string
Of golden wire, each line of silke; there run
Italian workes whose thred the Sisters spun;
And there did sing, or seeme to sing, the choyce
Birdes of a forraine note and various voyce.

********************************
Shakespeare and the Poet's War - James Bednarz


Referring to _Every Man Out of His Humour_, James Bednarz writes:

"Thus perhaps only in the First Quarto Jonson applied personal topicality to a play whose structure was from the start anti-Shakespearean, as he added to formal innovation a parody of the man and his work. It is through this set of allusions (in what became the defining style of the Poets' War) that he *conjoined in anecdotal form the body of the poet with the body of his work*.
*********************************
Cynthia's Revels, 1616 Folio, Jonson

Act IV, Sc V
Amorphus
And there’s her minion Crites! Why his advice more then Amorphus? Have
not I invention, afore him? Learning, to better that invention, above
him? And infanted, with pleasant travaile ---

*******************************
SUMMARY: Ode to Oxford in John Southern’s Pandora
To the right honourable the Earl of Oxenford etc.

Epode


No, no, the high singer is he
Alone that in the end must be
Made proud with a garland like this,
And not every riming novice
That writes with small wit and much pain,
And the (God’s know) idiot in vain,
For it’s not the way to Parnasse,
Nor it will neither come to pass
If it be not in some wise fiction
And of an ingenious INVENTION,
And INFANTED with PLEASANT TRAVAIL,
For it alone must win the laurel,
And only the poet WELL BORN
Must be he that goes to Parnassus,
And not these companies of asses
That have brought verse almost to scorn.

*****************************
Oxford was the 'great noble man' of England that had been praised by Southern in 1584. The discussion of invention and the phrase 'infanted with pleasant travel' also appeared to be spoken by Jonson's affected courtier Amorphus in Cynthia's Revels:

Puttenham, Arte of English Poesie (1589)


CHAP. XXII.

Some vices in speaches and {w}riting are always intollerable, some others now and then borne {w}ithall by licence of approued authors and custome. (snip)

Another of your intollerable vices is that which the Greekes call Soraismus, & we may call the [mingle mangle] as when we make our speach or writinges of sundry languages vsing some Italian word, or French, or Spanish, or Dutch, or Scottish, not for the nonce or for any purpose (which were in part excusable) but ignorantly and affectedly as one that said vsing this French word Roy, to make ryme with another verse, thus.

O mightie Lord or ioue, dame Venus onely ioy,

Whose Princely power exceedes ech other heauenly roy.

The verse is good but the terme peeuishly affected. Another of reasonable good facilitie in translation finding certaine of the hymnes of Pyndarus and of Anacreons odes, and other Lirickes among the Greekes very well translated by Rounsard the French Poet,
&
applied to the honour of a great Prince in France, comes our minion and translates the same out of French into English, and applieth them to the honour of a GREAT NOBLE MAN in ENGLAND (wherein I commend his reuerent minde and duetie) but doth so impudently robbe the French Poet both of his prayse and also of his French termes, that I cannot so much pitie him as be angry with him for his iniurious dealing (our sayd maker not being ashamed to vse these French wordes freddon, egar, superbous, filanding, celest, calabrois, thebanois and a number of others, for English wordes, which haue no maner of conformitie with our language either by custome or deriuation which may make them tollerable. And in the end (which is worst of all) makes his vaunt that neuer English finger but his hath toucht Pindars string which was neuerthelesse word by word as Rounsard had said before by like braggery. These be his verses.

And of an ingenious INVENTION, INFANTED WITH PLEASANT TRAVAILE.



¶3.22.7 Whereas the French word is enfante as much to say borne as a child, in another verse he saith.

I {w}ill freddon in thine honour.

¶3.22.8 For I will shake or quiuer my fingers, for so in French is freddon, and in another verse.

But if I {w}ill thus like pindar, In many discourses egar.

¶3.22.9 This word egar is as much to say as to wander or stray out of the way, which in our English is not receiued, not these wordes calabrois, thebanois, but rather calabrian, theban [filanding sisters] for the spinning sisters: this man deserues to be endited of pety larceny for pilfring other mens deuises from them
& conuerting them to his owne vse, for in deede as I would wish euery inuentour which is the very Poet to receaue the prayses of his inuention, so would I not haue a translatour be ashamed to be acknowen of his translation.

*****************
Alexander Pope's preface to his translation of The Iliad (1715):


HOMER is universally allow'd to have had the greatest Invention of any Writer whatever. The Praise of Judgment Virgil has justly contested with him, and others may have their Pretensions as to particular excellencies; but his Invention remains yet unrival'd. Nor is it a Wonder if he has ever been acknowledg'd the greatest of Poets, who most excell'd in That which is the very Foundation of Poetry. It is the Invention that in different degrees distinguishes all great Genius's: The utmost Stretch of human Study, Learning, and Industry, which masters every thing besides, can never attain to this. It furnishes Art with all her Materials, and without it Judgment itself can at best but steal wisely: For Art is only like a prudent Steward that lives on managing the Riches of Nature. Whatever Praises may be given to Works of Judgment, there is not even a single Beauty in them but is owing to the Invention: As in the most regular Gardens, however Art may carry the greatest Appearance, there is not a Plant or Flower but is the Gift of Nature. The first can only reduce the Beauties of the latter into a more obvious Figure, which the common Eye may better take in, and is therefore more entertain'd with. And perhaps the reason why most Criticks are inclin'd to prefer a judicious and methodical Genius to a great and fruitful one, is, because they find it easier for themselves to pursue their Observations through an uniform and bounded Walk of Art, than to comprehend the vast and various Extent of Nature.

*******************************************
Chapman and the 'Inverted World'

Author: Homer.

Title: Achilles shield Translated as the other seuen bookes of Homer,
out of his eighteenth booke of Iliades. By George Chapman Gent.

Date: 1598

dedicated to the Earl of Essex

To my admired and soule-loued friend Mayster of all essentiall and
TRUE KNOWLEDGE, M. Harriots.
TO you whose depth of soule measures the height,
And all dimensions of all workes of weight,
REASON being ground, structure and ornament,
To all inuentions, graue and permanent,
And your cleare eyes the Spheres where REASON moues;
This Artizan, this God of RATIONALL loues
Blind Homer;
(snip)
TRUE learning hath a body absolute,
That in apparant sence it selfe can suite,
Not hid in ayrie termes as if it were
Like spirits fantastike that put men in feare,
And are but bugs form'd in their fowle conceites,
Nor made forsale glas'd with sophistique sleights;
But wrought for all times proofe, strong to bide prease,
And shiuer ignorants like Hercules,
On their owne dunghils; but our formall Clearkes
Blowne for profession, spend their soules in sparkes,
Fram'de of dismembred parts that make most show,
And like to broken limmes of knowledge goe.
(snip)
Crownd with Heauens inward brightnes shewing cleare,
What true man is, and how like gnats appeare.
O fortune-glossed Pompists, and proud Misers,
That are of Arts such impudent despisers;
Then past anticipating doomes and skornes,
Which for selfe grace ech ignorant subornes,
Their glowing and amazed eyes shall see
How short of thy soules strength my weake words be,
And that I do not like our Poets preferre
For profit, praise and keepe a squeaking stirre
With cald on muses to vnchilde their braines
Of winde and vapor: lying still in paynes,
Of worthy issue; but as one profest
In nought but truthes deare loue the soules true rest.
Continue then your sweet iudiciall kindnesse,
To your true friend, that though this lumpe of blindnes,
This skornefull, this despisde, INVERTED WORLD,
Whose head is furie-like with Adders curlde,
And all her bulke a poysoned Porcupine,
Her stings and quilles darting at worthes deuine,
Keepe vnder my estate with all contempt,
And make me liue euen from my selfe exempt,
(snip)

Of you in whom the worth of all the Graces,
Due to the mindes giftes, might *EMBREW the faces*
Of such as skorne them, and with tiranous eye
Contemne the sweat of vertuous industrie.
But as ill lines new fild with incke vndryed,
AN EMPTY PEN with their owne OWNE STUFF applied
CAN BLOT THEM OUT: so shall their wealth-burst wombes
Be made with emptie Penne their honours tombes.

************************
Author.
...But, they that have incens'd me, can in Soul
Acquit me of that guilt. They know, I dare
To spurn, or bafful 'em; or squirt their Eyes
With Ink, or Urine: or I could do worse,
Arm'd with Archilochus fury, write Iambicks,
Should make the desperate lashers hang themselves;
RHIME 'EM TO DEATH, AS THEY DO IRISH RATS
In drumming Tunes. Or, living, I could stamp
Their foreheads with those deep, and PUBLICK BRANDS,
That the whole company of Barber-Surgeons
Should not take off, with all their Art, and Plaisters.
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 imploy'd
To clothe Tabacco, 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.

************************************
SONNET 111


O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
Pity me then and wish I were renew'd;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.
Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.