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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
THERE EXISTS, in Harleian MS. 7553 of the British Library, a set of seventeen Spiritual1 Sonnettes to the honour of God and hys Sayntes by H. C.. In his 1812 edition of the manuscript, Thomas Park attributed these poems to the Elizabethan courtier-poet and later recusant Henry Constable on the grounds of the ‘regular Italian structure, and the sainted names of those addressed’.’ Three years later, in his Heliconia, Park substantiated his attribution by reference to Constable's known Roman Catholicism and to a recantation found at the end of his secular sonnet cycle Diana in Dyce MS. 44: ‘When I had ended this last sonet and found that such vayne poems as I had by idle houres writ did amounte iust to the climatericall number 63, me thought it was high tyme for my follie to die and to employe the remnant of my wit to other calmer thoughts lesse sweet and lesse bitter’. The Dyce manuscript-like the Harleian-is not in Constable's own hand, and one scholar has recently thrown doubt on the authenticity of the recantation. Nevertheless, the Spirituall Sonnettes have without question continued to be considered as Constable's following Park's broad biographical and stylistic outline. The Harleian manuscript appears to date from the early years of the seventeenth century, and this has been assumed to be the likely date of composition for the sonnets as well.
1 Park, T., ed., The Harleian Miscellany, vol. 9 (1812) p. 491.Google Scholar
2 Park, T., ed., Heliconia, vol. 2 (1815).Google Scholar The Dyce MS. is in the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
3 Fleissner, R., Diana: Resolved to Love (Salzburg, 1980) pp. vii-viii.Google Scholar
4 Lee, S., Elizabethan Sonnets (1904) p. 131,Google Scholar and Upham, A. H., French influence in English literature (New York, 1908) p. 132.Google Scholar Lee's idea was followed by Collins, J. B. in Christian Mysticism in the Elizabethan Age (Baltimore, 1940) p. 137,Google Scholar and Upham's by Scott, J. in Les sonnets Elisabe'thains (Paris, 1929) p. 130ff.Google Scholar
5 Wickes, G., ‘Henry Constable's Spiritual Sonnets’, The Month, vol. 18, No. 1 (July 1957) pp. 30–40 Google Scholar (henceforth ‘Wickes, Month’).
6 Grundy, J., The poems of Henry Constable (Liverpool, 1960) p. 79.Google Scholar
7 Constable had in fact announced his intention of becoming a Catholic to a Portuguese Carmelite in 1589. See Wickes, G. ‘Henry Constable, Poet and Courtier, 1562–1613,’ in Biographical Studies (now Recusant History), 2, no. 4 (henceforth ‘Wickes, Biog. Stud. ”) p. 275.Google Scholar
8 See Bossy, J., The English Catholic Community, 1570–1850 (1975) p. 156.Google Scholar See Aveling, H., ‘The Catholic Recusancy of the Yorkshire Fairfaxes’, Part 1, in Biographical Studies, 3, No. 2, p. 88.Google Scholar
10 See Trappes-Lomax, T. B., ‘Some homes of the Dormer family’ Recusant History, 8, No. 3, p. 179.Google Scholar
11 Foley, Records, 6, p. 566.
12 Venerable English College Rome, Archive Liber 282, p. 31. I am grateful to Dr. Gary Lysaght, Assistant Librarian, for assistance and advice given to me in Rome.
13 Wickes. Biog. Stud., p. 278.
14 See Williams, M. E., The Venerable English College, Rome: A History (1979) p. 13.Google Scholar
15 Foley, Records, 6, pp. 1–66.
16 Wickes, Biog. Stud., p. 274.
17 Ibid., p. 276.
18 Louant, A., ed., Correspondence d'Ottavio Mirto Frangipani, Vol. 3 (Brussels, 1942) p. 157, note.Google Scholar
19 Foley, Records, 6, p. 26.
20 See Marron, Dom S., ‘The second Benedictine Mission to England’, Douai Magazine, New Series, Vol. 2, No. 3 (January 1923) p. 162.Google Scholar
21 Bossy, op. cit., pp. 27–28.
22 Diamond, A. J., Cardinal Federico Borromeo as a patron and a critic of the arts and his ‘Musaeum’ of 1625 (Ph.D., Ann Arbor, 1974) p. 9.Google Scholar
23 Ibid., p. 13.
24 Ibid., p. 66.
25 For this work see Rogers, D., ‘The Catholic Moderator: a French reply to Bellarmine and its English author Henry Constable’, Recusant History, 5, no. 6, pp. 224–235 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Bossy, J., ‘A propos of Henry Constable’, Recusant History 6, no. 5, pp. 228–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26 The Catholic Moderator—or, a moderate examination of the doctrine of the Protestants (London, 1623) p. 11.Google Scholar
27 Ibid. p. 12.
28 Pak, Heliconia, vol. 2, advertisement.
29 Wickes, Month, p. 35.
30 Southwell, R., Marie Magdalens Funeral Teares (London, 1591) p. 1 Google Scholar (verso).
31 B. Barnes, A Divine Centurie of Spiritual Sonnettes, 1595, and H. Lok, Sundrie Christian Passions, 1597.
32 Wickes, Month p. 34.
33 Grundy, op. cit. p. 158.
34 Diamond, op. cit., pp. 11–12.
35 Photograph in the Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London.
36 The Prodigal Son—an equivalent Protestant symbol of repentance (see Lok's seventh sonnet) — was painted by the Elizabethan miniaturist Isaac Oliver in a strikingly similar posture. This painting is now in the collection of the Duke of Portland.
37 See Wethey, H. E., The paintings of Titian, 3 (1975) p. 144.Google Scholar
38 Coope, C.. Federico Borromeo's ‘Musaeum’ (unpublished M. A. thesis, University of London, 1978) p. 37.Google Scholar On page 23 Ms. Coope dates Borromeo's intensified interest in Antique and Renaissance art to the early 1590s Rome period.
39 Borromeo, F., Musaeum (Milan, 1625) p. 24.Google Scholar
40 See Mirollo, J. V., The poet of the Marvelous: Giambattista Marino (New York, 1963) pp. 46–47.Google Scholar
41 Grundy, op. cit.., p. 59.
42 Wickes, Biog. Stud., p. 273.
43 Ibid., p. 281.
44 Ibid., p. 278.
45 Ibid., p. 290.
46 A Discoverye of a Counterfecte Conference (Paris, 1600).
47 See Wickes, Biog. Stud., p. 291; also Petti, A. G., ‘Unknown sonnets by Sir Toby Matthew’, Recusant History, 9, no. 3, pp. 123–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
48 Story, G. M. & Gardner, H., eds., Sonnets of William Alabaster (Oxford, 1959) p. xxxi.Google Scholar
49 Ibid., p. xxi.
50 Compare the sonnet ‘Death be not proud’ with Barnes’ ‘Death do thy worst’ (Centurie, 49).
51 Compare for example the respective conclusions of Constable's last Magdalen sonnet and Donne's ‘Batter my Heart’.
52 Hazlitt, W. C., ed., Diana: the sonnets and otherpoems of Henry Constable (1859) pp. v-vi.Google Scholar
53 Gilfillan, G., ed., The poetical works of Richard Crashaw and Quartes’ Emblems (Edinburgh, 1857) p. ix.Google Scholar
54 Crow, M. F., ed., Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles (1896) p. 87.Google Scholar