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Ben Jonson and the Classical School

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Felix E. Schelling
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Extract

“The words, classical and romantic, although, like many-other critical expressions, sometimes abused by those who have understood them vaguely or too absolutely, yet define two real tendencies in the history of art and literature. The ‘classic’ comes to us out of the cool and quiet of other times, as the measure of what a long experience has shown will at least never displease us. And in the classical literature of Greece and Rome, as in the classics of the last century, the essentially classical element is that quality of order in beauty, which they possess, indeed, to a pre-eminent degree. It is the addition of strangeness to beauty, that constitutes the romantic character in art; and the desire of beauty being a fixed element in every artistic organisation, it is the addition of curiosity to this desire of beauty that constitutes the romantic temper.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , 1898 , pp. 221 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1898

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References

Note 1 in page 221 Walter Pater, Appreciations, “Postscript,” p. 253 f.

Note 1 in page 222 Preface to Arnold's Poems, ed. 1854.

Note 1 in page 225 Epigrams, No. lxxvi, Fol. 1640, i, 22.

Note 1 in page 227 Jonson's Conversations with Drummond, Shakespeare Society, 1842, p. 8.

Note 2 in page 227 Ibid., p. 3.

Note 3 in page 227 Poems by John Keats, ed. Bates, 1896, p. 59.

Note 1 in page 228 Gosse, Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 2.

Note 2 in page 228 Henry Wood, “Beginnings of the ‘Classical’ Heroic Couplet in England: ” “At all events it was Sandys, and not Waller, who at the beginning of the third decade of the century, first of all Englishmen, made a uniform practice of writing in heroic couplets which are, on the whole, in accord with the French rule, and which, for exactness of construction, and for harmonious versification, go far towards satisfying the demands of the later ‘classical’ school in England.”—American Journal of Philology, xi, p. 73.

Note 1 in page 229 Gosse, From Shakespeare lo Pope, p. 19.

Note 1 in page 230 See in general Matthew Arnold's essay on “ The Literary Influence of Academies.”

Note 1 in page 232 Jonson's Conversations with Drummond, as above, p. 37.

Note 2 in page 232 Ibid., pp. 16, 2, and 3.

Note 3 in page 232 Preface to Matthew Arnold's Poems, ed. 1854.

Note 4 in page 232 See the many passages of the Discoveries which are no more than translations of the Institutes, and the weight given to the theories of Horace in the same book.

Note 5 in page 232 Prologue to Every Man out of his Humour, Fol. 1640, i, 74.

Note 1 in page 233 Ibid., i, 5.

Note 2 in page 233 Ibid., i, 74.

Note 3 in page 233 Conversations, as above, p. 2.

Note 4 in page 233 Ibid., p. 10.

Note 5 in page 233 Ibid., p. 9.

Note 6 in page 233 Ibid., p. 4.

Note 7 in page 233 See especially on this topic The War of the Theatres by J. H. Penniman, Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, Series in Philology, Literature and Archaeology, Vol. iv, No. 3, pp. 24-30, 53, 54.

Note 8 in page 233 See the Conversations, as above, passim.

Note 1 in page 234 Ben Jonson, English Worthies, p. 52.

Note 1 in page 235 Discoveries, ed. Schelling, p. 16. Cf. also, “ In her indagations often times new scents put her by, and she takes in errors into her by the same conduits she doth truths.”—Ibid., p. 28.

Note 2 in page 235 Ibid., 42.

Note 3 in page 235 Ibid., pp. 2, 4, and 1.

Note 4 in page 235 Ibid., p. 2.

Note 1 in page 236 As to versification, the following passages have been considered as typical, one hundred lines in each case:

1591, Spenser: (a) Mother Hubberd's Tale, lines 1-100, Riv. Ed., p. 99.

(b) “ ” “ ” 977-1077, p. 133.

1593, Marlowe, Hero and Leander, Sestiad I, lines 1-100, ed. Bohn, p. 157.

1598, Drayton, Rosamond to Henry II, England's Heroical Epistles, ed. Drayton, 1619, p. 105.

1600, Chapman, Hero and Leander, Sestiad VI, last 100 lines, as above, p. 226.

1603, Jonson: (a) A Panegyry on the Happy entrance of James our Sovereign to his first high session of Parliment in this Kingdom. Ed. 1640, i, 87.

1612 (b) To Penshurst, pr. in Fol. of 1616, ed. Bohn, p. 347.

1616 (c) The first XVII Epigrams and four lines of XVIII, excepting Epig. VIII, which is not in couplets, and Epig. XII, which has a peculiar movement, due to its subject, and is hence not a fair example, ibid., pp. 283-88.

1623 (d) An Execration on Vulcan, p. 461.

1631 (e) Elegy on Lady Winton, p. 552.

1636, Sandys: (a) Psalm LXXIII. Library of Old Authors, Sandys, ii, p. 204.

1638 (b) Paraphrase upon the Book of Job, ibid., i, 1.

1641 (c) Deo Optimo Maximo, ibid., ii, 403.

1660, Waller: (a) To the King, ed. Drury, p. 163.

1678-80 (b) On the Duke of Monmouth's Expedition, 1678, 48 lines. On the Earl of Roscommon's Translation of Horace, 1680, 52 lines, ed. Drury, pp. 212 and 214.

1660, Dryden: (a) Astraea Redux, Globe ed., p. 8.

1687 (b) Hind and the Panther, ib., p. 171.

1693 (c) Epistle to Sir Godfrey Kneller, ib., p. 264.

1713, Pope: (a) Windsor Forest, Chandos ed., p. 95.

1732 (b) Essay on Man, Epistle IV, lines 19-110, ibid., p. 218.

Note 1 in page 237 This table may be compared with that of the text below, p. 238. The count is made upon the passages mentioned in the note preceding this, and the averages of Spenser and Sandys are repeated from the other table for convenience of comparison. It will be noted that Sandys corresponds to Drayton in his use of the continuous line, and to Marlowe in the frequency of the medial caesura, whilst his freedom in the run-on line exceeds even that of Chapman.

Note 1 in page 239 See note above, p. 237.

Note 1 in page 241 See Ruffhead's Life of Pope, 1769, p. 410 seq.; also Pope, Amer. ed., 1854, i, clvi.

Note 2 in page 241 Astraea Redux, Dryden, Globe ed., p. 14.

Note 3 in page 241 First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace, To Augustus, 1737, Pope, Chandos ed., p. 313.

Note 1 in page 242 Dedication of A Paraphrase upon Job. Sandys, ed. Library of Old Authors, i, lxxix.

Note 2 in page 242 Epigram XXXV, To King James, fol. 1641, i, p. 12.

Note 1 in page 243 I add some typical instances of Jonson's use of this structure out of the scores that can be culled from his pages. These will be seen to involve nearly all the mannerisms afterwards carried to so artificial a degree of refinement by Pope himself, and to hinge, all of them, on a pointed, condensed and antithetical way of putting things.

Call'st a book good or bad as it doth sell. Epigram 3.

And I a poet here, no herald am. Epig. 8.

He that dares damn himself, dares more than fight. Epig. 16.

Blaspheme God greatly, or some poor hind beat. Epig. 28.

Look not upon thy dangers, but our fears. Epig. 51.

Note 1 in page 245 Epigram LXXXIX, fol. 1640, I, p. 25.