ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

BEN JONSON AND THE ART OF INCLUSION
If it were not for their role as foils for the worthy many in The Epigrams, these
squibs might well belong in an almanac; but deliberately insubstantial as they
are, their presence heightens our sense of the value of naming as a distinguishing
human act and, in a further act of discrimination, they help to enshrine the
named community with whom Jonson affiliated: past and present poets, his
children, actors, patrons and patronesses, musicians, fellow soldiers; individuals
who, whether they were or not, in fact appear to be at the center of the poet’s
life. In deliberate contrast to contemporary epigrammatists, Jonson insisted that
his book follow Martial by being richly peopled and encomiastic and not just
salty and ill-tempered.
He makes this point with characteristic directness in “To My Mere English
Censurer” (emphasis on “Mere English”) when he remarks how “To thee my way
in epigrams seems new/When both it is the old way and the true.” 24 What is both
old and true is the significant element of “admiration” in the collection. (Jonson
uses “admire” here in its quasi-religious Latin sense of expressing wonder or
astonishment.) The many poems of praise—approximately one-third of the
collection, as in Martial—not only serve to set the author off from the new
wave. They combine to give the volume a feeling of substantial quality, a sense
of depth, balance, and emotional richness, a sense of being worth something in
the vision of a poet willing to honor others, to receive and in turn to be received.
And in at least one respect Jonson achieved what he set out to do, since this
group of encomia and eulogies includes a number of his most “admired”
performances: the four epitaphs, particularly the two on his children, the several
poems to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, the two to Donne, the poem to Camden,
and the several to the Roes, especially the one to Sir Thomas beginning “Thou
hast begun well, Roe” and concluding with a proverbial sentiment that identifies
one of Jonson’s keenest ideals:
Be always to thy gathered self the same,
And study conscience more than thou wouldst fame.
Though both be good, the latter yet is worst,
And ever is ill-got without the first.
In all of these poems, having a name is consequential. It provides the stamp of
individual being, a sign that differentiates one person from another and yet also
links that individual to a greater and firmer reality, which the epigram in turn
consecrates, although it does so in no single or simple way. “On Lucy, Countess
of Bedford,” for instance, hangs graciously but firmly on a regal summoning of a
place name in the last line, one that confirms Lucy’s position—and
independence—in an otherwise dominantly male society:
Only a learned and a manly soul
I purposed her, that should, with even powers,
The rock, the spindle and the shears control
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