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Reason's Muse: Andrew Marvell, R. Fletcher, and the Politics of Poetry in the Engagement Debate*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
Extract
Andrew Marvell's “An Horatian ode upon Cromwel's return from Ireland” may not be the most famous seventeenth-century poem but it is perhaps the most enigmatic. Its elusive, haunting quality defies any strict interpretation, and, as Blair Worden has recently indicated, the poem refuses to fall neatly into any simple “royalist” or “Cromwellian” category. Rather, the “Horatian Ode” has the aspect of a cultural artifact, having captured and held the historical moment that tore asunder two ages: the pre-1649 past of hereditary monarchy with its confidence in the traditions bequeathed by time, and the immediate post-1649 future, when the English state was to be governed by brute strength and naked power. As such, it has become a testament to the “fundamental shift in English civilization, that when every reservation has been made, the middle of the seventeenth century brought about.” For Worden “An Horatian Ode,” with its ambivalent stance of neither approval nor condemnation of the rise of Cromwell, epitomizes the state of Renaissance poetry before T. S. Eliot's much lamented “disassociation of sensibility” took place.
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- Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1991
Footnotes
*
An earlier version of this paper was read at the Conference on Seventeenth-Century Studies, Durham, England, in July 1989. I wish to acknowledge the School of Graduate Studies, Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, which helped finance the journey to England, and the audience at Durham for bringing to my attention several points that till then had escaped me. My expression of thanks must also go to those who read and commented on an earlier draft of this paper: Professors S. E. Sprott, David Wootton, Paul Christianson, Daniel Woolf, and Blair Worden — who are all, it should be added, to be exculpated from the interpretations I set forth here.
References
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7 Cleveland was one of the most prolific anti-Parliament poets whose poems were included in Rump: Or an Exact Collection of the Choycest Poems and Songs relating to the Late Times…. (London, 1662)Google Scholar. Denham wrote “Cooper's Hill” in the early 1640s, and revised and republished it at least twice in the next decade. See O'Hehir, Brendan, Expans'd Hieroglyphicks: A Critical Edition of Sir John Denham's Cooper's Hill (Los Angeles, 1968)Google Scholar. For Lovelace, see Miner, Earl, The Cavalier Mode from Jonson to Cotton (Princeton, N.J., 1971)Google Scholar.
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23 The following tracts are to be found among the Thomason Collection at the British Library and are cited according to the identification numbers in Fortescue, G. K., ed., Catalogue of the Pamphlets-Collected by George Thomason, 1640–1661, 2 vols. (London, 1908)Google Scholar. [Nathaniel Ward] A religious demurrer, concerning submission to the present power, B.L., E530 (19); [Edward Gee] An exercitation concerning usurped powers wherein the difference betwixt civill authority and usurpation is stated, B.L., E585 (2); for the views of William Prynne, who also contested the validity of the Engagement on these terms (as well as on grounds of the ancient constitution), see Lamont, William, Marginal Prynne (London, 1968)Google Scholar.
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25 [Robert Sanderson] A resolution of conscience, (by a learned divine)…, B.L., E584 (8); [Edward Reynolds] The humble proposals of sundry learned and pious divines…, B.L., E585 (6).
26 The Royall Diurnall (For King Chairs II), March 18–26, 1650, p. 1Google Scholar.
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29 The Man in the Moon, January 9–16, 1650, p. 297Google Scholar.
30 For example, “On the happy Memory of Alderman Hoyle that hang'd himself,” and other verses collected in Rump (see n. 7).
31 The royalist alliance included Levellers, whose opposition to the Commonwealth, however, emphasized the illegal actions that brought it into being. See, Worden, Rump Parliament.
32 Francis Rous, The lawfulness of obeying the present government, B.L., E551 (22). For the importance of Rous' argument, see Skinner, , “Conquest and Consent,” pp. 83–87Google Scholar.
33 Cf. C. V. Wedgwood, who observes that royalists' writings “were not the prelude to action; they were the substitute for it” (Trial of Charles I, p. 212).
34 Commonwealth poets like Fisher Paine and George Wither, not to mention John Milton, appear to have abstained from such verse polemics.
35 Sharpe, and Zwicker, , Politics of Discourse, p. 10Google Scholar.
36 Worden, , “Andrew Marvell,” p. 179Google Scholar; for Marvell's close connection with Lovelace and other royalist poets, see Patterson, Annabel, Marvell and the Civic Crown (Princeton, 1978)Google Scholar. Interestingly, Hobbes also had an opinion on the proper concerns and the preferred style of poetry: see Hobbes, Thomas, “The Answer…to D'avenant's Preface,” Discourse upon Gondibert, in Taylor, E. W., ed., Literary Criticism of Seventeenth-Century England (New York, 1967), pp. 279–90Google Scholar.
37 Quoted in Frank, , Beginnings of the English Newspaper, p. 232Google Scholar.
38 After June 1650, the arguments concerned with the Engagement become heavily pro-Commonwealth. See Wallace, “The Engagement Controversy,” where only six disclaimers are listed among the twenty-seven pamphlets that address the issue in the final period of the debate.
39 He is probably Robert Fletcher, author of Ex Otio Negolium. See, however, Woodward, D. H., ed., The Poems and Translations of Robert Fletcher (Gainsville, Fla., 1970), pp. 4–10Google Scholar.
40 “Mercurius Heliconicus (Numb. 1), Or The Result of a Safe Conscience: Whether it be necessary to subscribe to the government now in being,” B.L., E622(14), II. 1–5. The other poems are: “Mercurius Heliconicus (Numb. 2), Or, a Short Reflection of Moderne Policy,” B.L., E623(13); “Radius Heliconicus, Or The Resolution of a Free State,” B.L., 669 f.15 (83).
41 Nedham, Marchamont, The Case of the Commonwealth of England (London, 1650)Google Scholar.
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43 See Ascham, Anthony, Of the Confusions and Revolutions of Governments (London, 1649)Google Scholar, excerpts of which are included in Divine Right and Democracy: An Anthology of Political Writings in Stuart England, ed. Wootton, David (Harmondsworth, 1986), 340–53Google Scholar. Quotation at p. 350.
44 The flippant and “cavalier” attitude taken by many royalists provoked an outcry from William Prynne, who quoted “a most wicked and base maxime of theirs, lately taken up among them, that, he is a fool that will not take it, and he is a knave that will not brake it” (Prynne, , A brief apology for all nonsubscribers [London, 1650], p. 14Google Scholar). Lord Lisle believed, however, that all royalists should take the Engagement, for, as he reasoned, “if things should break now, we which are the engagers, should carry a very ill character upon us, but if it grow general, it will grow nothing” (Underdown, , Pride's Purge, p. 264Google Scholar).
45 The internal evidence of the “Horatian Ode” suggests that it was written in the summer of 1650. Although the poem was not published until after Marvell's death, we can safely assume that it circulated in manuscript among Marvell's friends, who included not only Cavalier poets but also supporters of the Rump Parliament. See Patterson, Marvell and the Civic Crown; Worden, , “Classical Republicanism and the Puritan Revolution,” in History and Imagination: Essays in Honour of H. R. Trevor-Roper, eds. Lloyd-Jones, H., Pearl, V., and Worden, B. (London, 1981), p. 191Google Scholar. For a not too favorable assessment of “Radius Heliconicus,” see Wallace's remarks in “The Engagement Controversy,” p. 404.
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47 Lipsius was the main impetus behind the growth of neostoicism, but other European writers were also influential in its spread, particularly the Frenchman Pierre Charron. See Oestreich, Gerhard, Neostoicism and the early modern state, trans. McLintock, David (Cambridge, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the introductory essay in Kirk, Rudolf, ed., Tvvo Bookes of Constancie Written in Latin by Iustus Lipsius Englished by Sir John Stradling (New Brunswick, N.J., 1939)Google Scholar.
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49 I argue elsewhere that Lipsius rescued the principle of similitudo temporum from the assaults resulting from the advance of humanist techniques and the skeptical challenge of writers like Montaigne. This argument owes much to Grafton, Anthony, “Portrait of Justus Lipsius,” American Scholar 56 (1986–1987): 382–90Google Scholar. Cf. Burke, Peter, “A Survey of the Popularity of Ancient Historians, 1450–1700,” History and Theory 5 (1966): 135–152CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Levy, F. J., “Hayward, Daniel, and the Beginnings of Politic History in England,” Huntington Library Quarterly 50 (1987): 1–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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59 Cf. Worden, Blair, “Constancy,” London Review of Books, 20 January-3 February, 1983, p. 14Google Scholar.
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63 One prominent English neostoic who was critical of Lipsius' own practice of dissimulation was Bishop Joseph Hall. The latest study of Hall, however, denies he was a neostoic (McCabe, Richard A., Joseph Hall: A Study in Satire and Meditation [Oxford, 1982]Google Scholar).
64 Wallace, , “The Engagement Controversy,” p. 404Google Scholar.
65 The influence of Nedham's Case of the Commonwealth is much to the fore in terms of the content of this poem.
66 See Worden, , “Andrew Marvell,” pp. 150–51Google Scholar; Everett, Barbara, “The Shooting of the Bears: Poetry and Politics in Andrew Marvell,” in Andrew Marvell: Essays on the tercentenary of his death, ed. Brett, R. L. (Oxford, 1979), pp. 62–103, & 77Google Scholar.
67 Miner, The Cavalier Mode; McEuen, Classical Influence Upon the Tribe of Ben.
68 Worden, in “Andrew Marvell,” draws suggestive parallels between the position in which Horace found himself after the defeat of Roman republican forces and that expressed by Marvell in the “Ode.” Other interesting contrasts include Machiavelli and Marvell's contemporary James Harrington (pp. 162–68). David Norbrook, in “Marvell's ‘Horatian Ode’ and the Politics of Genre,” demonstrates that the Horatian legacy was by no means solely attuned to a Cavalier and Royalist audience (Healy, and Sawday, , ed., Literature and the English Civil War, pp. 148–53Google Scholar).
69 Rebholz, Ronald A., The Life of Fulke Greville (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar, makes this point clearly.
70 See Worden, , “Andrew Marvell,” pp. 169–72Google Scholar. For some incisive remarks on authorial intention, and commentary upon how contemporaries might well miss such ironical allusions, see Patterson, , Censorship and Interpretation, pp. 149–57Google Scholar, where Abraham Cowley's use of the historical/figurative Brutus in the 1650s is discussed. For Patterson's interpretation of the “Horatian Ode,” see Marvell and the Civic Crown, pp. 59–68Google Scholar.
71 For Essex, see below, n. 73 and 74. For Sidney, see Worden, , “Classical Republicanism and the Puritan Revolution,” pp. 186–87Google Scholar.
72 Ibid., for the perserverance and influence of this idea, see Fink, Z. S., The Classical Republicans (Evanston, 1945)Google Scholar.
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74 Ibid.; for a more detailed discussion of this phenomenon, see Grafton, Anthony and Jardine, Lisa, “‘Studied for Action’: How Gabriel Harvey Read his Livy,” Past and Present 129 (November 1990): 30–78Google Scholar.
75 As his annotations in his copy of the works of Tacitus (edited by Lipsius) reveal. The volume has survived and is held in the British Library, shelf-mark, C. 142e 13.
76 Cf. Burke, Peter, “Tacitism,” in Tacitus, ed., Dorey, T. A. (New York, 1969), 149–71, esp. 162–67Google Scholar; see also, Bradford, Alan T., “Stuart Absolutism and the ‘Utility’ of Tacitus,” Huntington Library Quarterly 46 (1983): 127–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where King James' distrust of Tacitist history is clearly depicted.
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78 The precept of prudentia mixta was widely debated among the first generation of Lipsian neostoics. Raleigh argued that only specific circumstances — such as war — warranted its practice; but Fulke Greville fully subscribed to it, although in his portrait of Sir Philip Sidney private and public virtue were neatly harmonized, with the consequence that dissimulation was made redundant.
79 Mazzeo, J. A., “Cromwell as Machiavellian Prince in Marvell's ‘Horatian Ode,’” Journal of the History of Ideas 21 (1960): 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Worden, , “Andrew Marvell,” pp. 162–65Google Scholar, and Norbrook, , “Marvell's ‘Horatian Ode,’” pp. 157–62Google Scholar.