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Virgil, Dryden, Gay, and Matters Trivial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Arthur Sherbo
Arthur Sherbo*
Affiliation:
Michigan State University East Lansing
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Abstract

Recent criticism of John Gay's poetry has largely continued to slight its merit or to misread it. Trivia has been especially mishandled, the chief critical faults being the tendency on the part of some to take the poem too seriously and to overlook a number of aspects that reinforce its mock-georgic nature. Gay was completely aware of what he was doing at all times in Trivia, and it is only when one reads the poem closely, with Dryden's translation of Virgil in mind, that a great deal of what he was indeed doing is clearly revealed. Not only did Gay go to Dryden's Virgil for particular phrases: “certain signs” of the weather, the “spoils” of Russia's “bear,” “callow care,” and a number of others, but he also used single words in the unusual senses Dryden had already employed: “infest” to mean “attack,” “contagion” to mean “fire,” “laborious” to mean “undergoing trouble and hardship,” as well as others. There is a whole vocabulary, available in Dryden's Virgil, to which he could have helped himself, in addition to those borrowings that can be demonstrated. A number of passages in Trivia also take their point of departure from Dryden's Virgil. When one adds an occasional clear echo of the Bible or Milton, all intended to enhance the mock-dignity of his poem, there can be no doubt of Gay's poetic competence.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 85 , Issue 5 , October 1970 , pp. 1063 - 1071
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1970

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References

Note 1 in page 1063 “Menalcas' Song: The Meaning of Art and Artifice in Gay's Poetry,” JEGP, 65 (1966), 679.

Note 2 in page 1063 The Poetical Works of John Cay, ed. G. C. Faber (London, 1926). All references are to this edition.

Note 3 in page 1063 John Gay, Social Critic (New York, 1954), p. 72.

Note 4 in page 1064 The Plot of Satire (New Haven, Conn., 1965), pp. 45–49 et passim. All subsequent references to Kernan are given in the text.

Note 6 in page 1064 See John Aden, “The 1720 Version of Rural Sport and the Géorgie Tradition,” MLQ, 20 (1959), 228–32.

Note 6 in page 1064 See, too, John Philips, Cyder II. 169–76, where the “Fowler” also wreaks havoc among the birds, to the poet's horror.

Note 7 in page 1064 The “walking maid” (i.218), “the love-sick maid” (n.16), the “hooded maid” (rr.46), the “maid” (n.303), and “deluded maids” (n.341). And he can use “damsel” also (n.333).

Note 8 in page 1065 John Gay (New York, 1965), Chap, ii; see the last sentence for the “grudging” part.

Note 9 in page 1066 Compare Shenstone, Elegy IV, 1. 9, “the doubtful dawn,” and Akenside, Pleasures of the Imagination, 1.18, “the doubtful sun.”

Note 10 in page 1066 Respectively, i.133 and i.143; as in this case, italics hereafter will be mine unless otherwise indicated.

Note 11 in page 1066 Compare Pope, Windsor-Forest, 1. 313, “the marble weeps,” and Epitaph on Edmund Duke of Buckingham, 1. 5, “the weeping marble.” “Dissolves” in Gay's line has a history in itself; see Geoffrey Tillotson, Augustan Studies (London, 1961), pp. 74–75, and add, from John Ozell's translation of Le Lutrin: “Dissolved in ease the holy sluggard lay,” from the French of 1. 57 where there is no equivalent for “dissolved.”

Note 12 in page 1066 Compare, among many other possible examples, Gay's The Birth of the Squire, 1. 30, “horny spoils” and Dryden, The Hind and the Panther 1.267, “furry spoils.” The translator is always Dryden, unless otherwise indicated; the first quotation is always from Trivia.

Note 13 in page 1066 It is Jupiter whose nod is obeyed in Ovid; Homer's deities, principally Jove, also nod and are obeyed.

Note 14 in page 1067 And see Trivia ii.521, “various harms” and ii.556, “various odours.”

Note 15 in page 1067 “Misceo” is favored by Virgil; Dryden is fond of “mingling” blood and brains in the Aeneid. Compare Thomson, “Autumn,” 1. 987, “mingled murder.”

Note 16 in page 1067 Also, Dunciad (B) iv.248, “And Metaphysic smokes involve the Pole”; Blair, The Grave, 1. 608, “Involved in pitchy clouds of smoke and stench”; and Thomson, “Spring,” 1. 129, “involved in smoke.”

Note 17 in page 1067 Compare Dyer, The Ruins of Rome, 11. 13–14, “—Yet once again my Muse, / Yet once again, and soar a loftier flight,” and Somerville, Hobbinol i.2, “To raise ignoble Themes with Strains sublime.”

Note 18 in page 1067 See Georgics m.83, “The Generous Youth”; m.350, “gen'rous rage,” iii.617, “the Mastiff's Generous breed”; iv.399, “gen'rous Wine”;Paslorals v. 109,“gen'rous Vintage”; Aeneid i.271, “gen'rous Wine”; Palamon and Arcite iii.443, “gen'rous Horse.”

Note 19 in page 1068 Dryden uses the verb in this sense twice in Annus Mirabilis, at 11. 488 and 520.

Note 20 in page 1068 Dryden uses the word in The Hind and the Panther, 1. 98, and in the Aeneid vni.259; Milton in Paradise Lost x.253–54; “this Gulf / Impassable, Impervious.”

Note 21 in page 1068 Trivia 1.99–108, and iii.145–52; Georgics ii.187–246, esp. 11. 207–12, and 777 to the end. Compare Garth, The Dispensary iii. 179–84.

Note 22 in page 1068 See also Georgics iii.276; iv.403, 791.

Note 23 in page 1069 i.14, 24; ii, 215,231,374,392; iii.38,66.

Note 24 in page 1069 See also Virgil, Aeneid xii.338 and Dryden, Aeneid xii.696 for “smoaking” horses.

Note 26 in page 1069 Also n.371 and 583. Dryden uses the word 192 times, most frequently in the Aeneid.

Note 26 in page 1069 Also i.32; ii.359. In Dryden, 119 times.

Note 27 in page 1069 Compare Georgics ii.559, “From Vines the hairy Honours of their Head.”

Note 28 in page 1069 Pastorals 1.105; x.15, 84; Georgics i.376; ii.215; iii.427; Aeneid iii.670; vi.267; vii.662; ix.729, 770; xi.795, 881.

Note 29 in page 1070 Compare The Hind and the Panther i.178. “These last deduce him from th' Helvetian kind.” It may be worth noting that the index to Trivia (see above, p. 1065) contains two entries that further attest to interest in Ovid: “Coachman, his metamorphosis 2, 241” and “Vulcan metamorphos'd to a country farrier 1, 253.”

Note 30 in page 1070 Gay's Alecto and Orpheus simile, 1.203–04; the Scylla simile, 1.205–08; the Nisus and Euryalus simile, iii.97–100; the Scylla and Charybdis simile, in. 183–84 can all be found in the Pastorals and Georgics.

Note 31 in page 1070 “Menalcas' Song,” JEGP, 65 (1966), 678.

Note 32 in page 1071 Mrs. Spacks, John Gay, p. 48, takes this passage much too seriously. This is the sort of thing Pope does in The Rape of the Lock at iii. 104–24 and 121–24.

Note 33 in page 1071 Contrast Armens, John Gay, Social Critic, pp. 179–80.

Note 34 in page 1071 Augustan Studies, pp. 27–28. And see p. 84, where “A Pensive Steed” is one of the phrases in Pope's Homer that was to be auctioned.

Note 35 in page 1071 See Tillotscn, Augustan Studies, pp. 216–23, for an illuminating essay on the poem.