[23] From 'The Guardian.' By leave of the editor.
It would be curious to trace the history of the value we now attach to
originality of ideas. Certainly, in the Middle Ages originality was but
lightly esteemed in comparison with the appearance of learning which is
obtained by frequent reference to older authors. Chaucer, for instance,
delights in acknowledgments of his indebtedness to 'oldé bookés,' and
even appears to have invented one or two authorities rather than take
the responsibility for his statements on his own shoulders. Moreover, in
many of his earlier poems his indebtedness to other writers is really
great. Thus in the 'Parliament of Foules' we find him taking hints from
Boccaccio, from Dante, from Alain de l'Isle, from Macrobius, Claudian,
and Statius. Despite this indebtedness his work remains essentially his
own; but his borrowings, especially from Boccaccio and De l'Isle, are
much more considerable than custom would permit to a modern poet.
Shakespeare's royal method of appropriation is something quite different
from this, and it is probable that the esteem for originality first
sprung up as an incident of that general revolt from the tyranny of
authority which marked the sixteenth century. By 1672, when the
'Rehearsal' was upon the stage, the habit of copying old authors had
become a subject for ridicule:--
'Why, sir,' says Bayes, 'when I have anything to invent I never trouble
my head about it as other men do, but presently turn o'er this book, and
there I have at one view all that Persius, Montaigne, Seneca's
'Tragedies,' Horace, Juvenal, Claudian, Pliny, Plutarch's 'Lives,' and
the rest have ever thought upon this subject, and so, in a trice, by
leaving out a few words, or putting in others of my own, the business is
done.' The bolt was apparently only shot into the air, and certainly had
not, as far as we can see, any special appropriateness to Dryden, whom
Bayes was mainly intended to satirise. But it is curious to note, though
Buckingham was probably quite ignorant of the fact, that when the words
were first spoken a poet was still living, in a quiet country parsonage,
to whom by way of caricature they might have been applied with
remarkable exactness. The poet was Robert Herrick, by common consent one
of the most individual and original of poets, from whose title to that
honour nothing in this paper will in any way detract. For Herrick's
borrowings assuredly were the outcome less of his poverty of thought
than of his wealth of music. A saying pleased him, and by putting in or
leaving out a few words he seems to have made it run into graceful verse
with an ease and charm which were wholly his own. A friend to whom the
present writer's Herrick-studies are more indebted than he can easily
express has made a special investigation into the borrowings, and the
results of his inquiries are extremely curious.[24]
[24] I am glad in reprinting this article to be allowed to give his
name, the Rev. C. P. Phinn.
It should, perhaps, be premised that, although Herrick does not draw our
attention to more than a small part of his indebtedness, he had
certainly no wish to conceal it. In the sole edition of his poems
published during his life --an edition which served the needs of his
few readers for a hundred and seventy-five years--a considerable number
of lines are printed in italics. Some of these lines represent a few
words of a speech, others are the quotation of a proverb or proverbial
saying, but the great majority indicate that the poet is translating
from a Latin author. The italicised lines do not by any means exhaust
Herrick's obligations to classical writers, and we may conjecture that
when preparing his poems for the press he underscored the passages of
which he happened to recollect the original, but that his memory in many
cases refused to serve him.
Herrick's poems are known to so many readers only by selections and
anthologies, that it will probably cause even professed students of
poetry some surprise to hear that among his heaviest creditors is the
prosaic Seneca, and that he is also considerably indebted to Tacitus,
and in some slight degree to Sallust. The popularity of the epigram
during the first half of the seventeenth century is an episode in the
history of English literature which has been too much ignored. Most of
the epigrams themselves are worth little or nothing--often less than
nothing, for many of them are vulgar or vile. Neither can it be said
that the men who wrote them--Sir John Davies, Bastard, Pick, Parrot, the
Mays, and the rest--are of great interest. But the popularity of the
epigram, as testified by such a collection as 'Wit's Recreation,' which
ran through five editions in the fourteen years, 1640-54, helps us
greatly to understand the transition from the luxuriant poetry which
flourished in the first half of the century to the colder and more
prosaic verse which we associate with Dryden. Now, of these epigrams
Herrick wrote somewhat more than his fair share, and they were so much
in the temper of the time that in the next edition of 'Wit's
Recreations,' which appeared after the publication of his 'Hesperides,'
the editors helped themselves liberally from his store. Some of these
epigrams had better never have been written, for Herrick, whose
sweetness at times almost cloys, was also master of a peculiarly
nauseating dirt, which his modern editors surely do well in refusing to
print. Most of these unpleasant verses he must take upon his own
shoulders, though for a considerable number he found his evil
inspiration in Martial. But for his cleaner epigrams he was often
indebted, as we have said, to Seneca and Tacitus, and the influence of
these authors may also be traced in some of the gnomic sayings which
occasionally heighten the effect of his best and most graceful poems.
Here are a few instances, chosen almost at random. Herrick's 'Safety on
the Shore':--
'What though the sea be calm? Trust to the shore;
Ships have been drown'd where late they danced before'--
is from Seneca, 'Ep.' 4: 'Noli huic tranquillitati confidere; momento
mare evertitur; eodem die ubi luserunt navigia, sorbentur.' In Herrick's
'No Bashfulness in Begging'--
'To get thine ends, lay bashfulness aside,
_Who fears to ask doth teach to be deny'd_'--
the line he italicises is from Seneca's 'Hippolytus' (ll. 594, 5)--'Qui
timide rogat ... docet negare.' So too in 'Loss from the Least'--
'Great men by small means oft are overthrown;
_He's lord of thy life who contemns his own_'--
the quotation is again from Seneca, 'Ep.' 4--'Quisquis vitam suam
contempsit tuae dominus est.'
If we turn now to Herrick's borrowings from Tacitus we may take as a
good example his couplet headed, 'Things mortal still mutable':--
'_Things are uncertain, and the more we get
The more on icy pavements we are set._'
Which is really a wonderful rendering of a saying of the Emperor
Tiberius reported in 'Annals' I. 72--'Cuncta mortalium incerta,
quantoque plus adeptus foret, tanto se magis in lubrico.' Another good
instance is supplied by 'The Eyes'--
''Tis a known principle in war,
The eyes be first that conquered are'--
where Herrick's not very lucid English is explained by 'De Moribus
German.' 43--'Primi in omnibus praeliis oculi vincuntur.' Or again, we
may take 'Revenge'--a rather longer verse than those we have hitherto
quoted:--
'_Man's disposition is for to requite
An injury before a benefit:
Thanksgiving is a burden and a pain,
Revenge is pleasing to us, as our gain_'--
where Herrick's original is Tacitus, 'Hist.' IV., 3:--'Tanto proclivius
est iniuriae quam beneficio vicem exsolvere; quia gratia oneri, ultio in
quaestu habetur.'
Herrick's obligations to Sallust are less important than those to Seneca
and Tacitus. In one case he mentions the historian by name:--
'Empires of kings are now, and ever were,
As Sallust saith, coincident to fear.'
The reference being to the spurious 'Epist. ad Cai. Caesar. de Rep.
Ordinanda.' 'Consultation'--
'Consult ere thou begin'st; that done, go on
With all wise speed for execution'--
is apparently suggested by the 'Nam et prius quam incipias consulto, et
ubi consulueris mature facto opus est,' of the opening of the
'Catiline.' There are some three or four other reminiscences about
equally close, but they are hardly worth special mention.
As might be expected, many of Herrick's borrowings, especially those
from Tacitus, have to do with politics, and commentators who have
mistaken his jottings from his common-place book for the expression of
his own principles have been rather confused by their alternate leaning
to absolutism and its reverse. Thus, in 'A King and no King'--
'_That prince who may do nothing but what's just
Rules but by leave, and takes his crown on trust_'--
the sentiment is remarkably 'thorough'; but the italics indicate a
quotation, and we can hardly be wrong in tracing the lines to the
'Thyestes' of Seneca:--
'Ubicunque tantum honeste dominanti licet,
Precario regnatur.'