3—
English Verse Panegyric, 1603–1660
The history of English verse panegyric begins with the Stuart succession. The traditional themes of restoration and limitation are first translated from the Latin by Samuel Daniel and Ben Jonson, whose panegyrics to James I provide model topics for a host of lesser poets anxious to celebrate, but also to restrict, the early Stuart monarchy. Thus established as a useful kind of poetry during the reigns of the first two Stuarts, panegyric is given a new significance and a new popularity by the poets of the mid-century, most notably by Abraham Cowley and Edmund Waller. Cowley transforms the oratorical conventions of panegyric by assimilating them to his conception of the Pindaric ode. Waller, on the other hand, transforms panegyric into a "branch of epic," making the king an epic hero. While these poets were raising panegyric to a place of considerable importance in neoclassical poetics, Andrew Marvell was challenging the very premises of the genre. Although Marvell's Cromwell poems do not belong to the tradition of panegyric, they do illuminate both the weaknesses and strengths of the
genre. Dryden's Restoration panegyrics respond directly to the tradition established by Daniel and Jonson and to the transformation effected by Cowley and Waller, indirectly to the challenge posed by Marvell.
Tradition
In his "panegyrike" on the accession of James I, Samuel Daniel declares 1603 to be a year of "Restauration" and identifies James with the restored ideals. "Religion comes with thee, peace, righteousnesse, / Judgement and justice . . ."[1] To develop the traditional pattern of prius . . . nunc . . . , Daniel rums predictably, although not very felicitously, to the seasonal cycle. "What a returne of comfort dost thou bring / Now at this fresh returning of our bloud, / Thus meeting with the opening of the Spring, / To make our spirits likewise to imbud" (129–132). By alluding to the "fresh returning of our bloud," Daniel reminds the people of the Stuart king's descent from the first Tudor and thus certifies James's right to the throne. Later in the poem Daniel is more explicit on this point.
The broken frame of this disjoynted State,
Being by the blisse of thy great Grandfather
[1] Samuel Daniel, A Panegyrike Congratulatorie Delivered to the Kings most excellent majesty, at Burleigh-Harrington in Rutlandshire, lines 554, 27–28, The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Samuel Daniel, ed. Alexander B. Grosart, 5 vols. (New York, 1963), I, 166, 144. This edition was originally published under the same title in 1885. The revival of interest in seventeenth-century political poetry has not included much discussion of panegyric as a genre or of Daniel's Panegyrike as a model. However, see Ruth Nevo, The Dial of Virtue, especially pp. 10–17, 27–30, 138ff. Although I am not always in agreement with this study, I have found it useful and am indebted to it.
Henry the seventh, restor'd to an estate
More sound than ever, and more stedfaster,
Owes all it hath to him, and in that rate
Stands bond to thee that art his successer:
For without him it had not beene begunne,
And without thee we had beene now undone . (321–328)
The natural and historical metaphors of restoration function as acknowledgments of the king's power. Specifically, this theme is aimed at those "vile disnatur'd Vipers" (102) who oppose the Stuart succession. Condemning any "impious workings" (101) that would "embroile the State" (105), Daniel develops the restoration theme as propaganda on behalf of the new king.
Like Daniel, Ben Jonson insists on popular obedience to the monarch. Instead of elaborating the conventional imagery of restoration, however, Jonson achieves his purpose by idealizing his public audience.
Some cry from tops of houses; thinking noise
The fittest herald to proclaims true joyes:
Others on ground runne gazing by his side,
All, as unwearied, as unsatisfied:
And every windore griev'd it could not move
Along with him, and the same trouble prove .[2]
A version of what can be called the "processional topos," this passage has several parallels in the neo-Latin poetry of the preceding century, most obviously in More's panegyric to Henry VIII.
[2] Ben Jonson, A Panegyre, on The Happie Entrance of James Our Soveraigne, To His first high Session of Parliament in this his Kingdome, the 19. of March, 1603, lines 41–46, Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson, 11 vols. (Oxford, 1941), VII, 114.
Quacunque ingreditur studio conferta videndi
Vix sinit angustam turba patere viam.
Opplenturcque domus, et pondere tecta laborant.
Tollitur affectu clamor ubique novo.
Nec semel est vidisse satis. Loca plurima mutant,
Si qua rursus eum parte videre queant .[3]
Wherever he goes, the dense crowd in their desire to look upon him leaves hardly a narrow lane for his passage. The houses are filled to overflowing, the rooftops strain to support the weight of spectators. On all sides there arises a shout of new good will. Nor are the people satisfied to see the king just once; they change their vantage points time and time again in the hope that, from one place or another, they may see him again.
The idea of universal acclaim for the monarch, common to both poems, had been given more exaggerated and yet more precise treatment in Erasmus's poem to Philip of Burgundy.
Ecce canunt reducem populusque patresque Philippum,
Clamat io reducem laeta undique turba Philippum,
Responsant reducem vocalia tecta Philippum,
Nec fallax ista est iteratae vocis imago:
Saxa enim reducem sentiscunt muta Philippum
Et recinunt reducem minime iam muta Philippum.[4]
Behold, the people and the lords sing of Philip returned. From all around a joyful crowd shouts a cry of triumph for Philip returned. Rooftops endowed with voices answer in response to the song of Philip returned, and that is no deceitful echo
[3] Thomas More, Carmen Gratulatorium, lines 45–48, The Latin Epigrams of Thomas More, ed. and trans. Leicester Bradner and Charles Arthur Lynch (Chicago, 1953), p. 17.
[4] Erasmus, Gratulatorium Carmen, lines 16–21, The Poems of Desiderius Erasmus, ed. C. Reedijk (Leiden, 1956), p. 275.
either; the mute rocks in fact perceive that Philip is returned and—not at all silent now—resound with the song for Philip returned.
While the incantatory repetitions here express the central idea of restoration, the phrase populuseque patrescque directs attention to the public audience itself. By uniting upper and lower classes, patres and populus, in celebration of the monarch, Erasmus gives the general idea of universal acclaim the particular force of national reconciliation. In this attempt he had been preceded by Claudian, who develops the same topos in his panegyric on Honorius's third consulship.
Quanti tum iuvenes, quantae sprevere pudorem
spectandi studio matres, puerisque severi
certavere senes, cum tu genitoris amico
exceptus gremio mediam veherere per urbem
velaretque pios communis laurea currus![5]
How many youths, how many matrons set modesty aside in eagerness to behold thee! Austere greybeards struggle with boys for places whence to see thee in the tender embraces of thy sire, borne through the midst of Rome on a triumphal chariot decked but with the shade of a simple laurel branch.
The public audience of the poem is thus idealized in terms of symbolically reconciled groups: old and young, men and women, as well as upper and lower classes. This idea can, moreover, be traced to Pliny's processional topos, which begins:
[5] Claudian, Panegyricus De Tertio Consulatu Honorii Augusti, lines 126–130, Claudian, trans. Maurice Platnauer, Loeb Classical Library, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1963), pp. 278–280.
Ergo non aetas quemquam non valetudo, non sexus retardavit, quo minus oculos insolito spectaculo impleret. Te parvuli noscere, ostentare iuvenes, mirari senes . . .[6]
Thus neither age, health nor sex held your subjects back from feasting their eyes on this unexpected sight: small children learned who you were, young people pointed you out, old men admired . . .
The processional topos, which provides a particularly clear demonstration of the continuity of panegyrical topics, expresses the idea of national reconciliation.
This idea is given formulaic statement by Thomas More in 1509:
Conveniunt igitur simul aetas, sexus, et ordo . . .[7]
The people gather together, every age, both sexes, and all ranks.
Jonson repeats the formula a century later. "No age, nor sex, so weake, or strongly dull, / That did not beare a part in this consent / Of hearts, and voices" (58–60). By uniting to witness the royal procession, the people express their joyful "consent" and implicitly their obedi-
[6] Pliny, Panegyricus, sec. 22, Pliny, Letters and Panegyricus, trans. Betty Radice, Loeb Classical Library, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1969), II, 370.
[7] More, Carmen Gratulatorium, 39. See for comparison, Andreas Ammonius, Elegia De Obitu Regis Henrici VII Et Felici Successione Henrici Octavi, lines 37–38: "Hic plebem proceresque sibi iuvenesque senesque / Vinciet, humani delicium generis . . ." Andreae Ammonii Carmina Omnia, ed. Clemente Pizzi (Florence, 1958), p. 17. This topos is discussed by Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York, 1953), p. 160: "One of the oddest flowers of rhetorical style appears in the assurance that every age and sex celebrates so-and-so—as if there were as many sexes as ages. 'Omnis sexus et aetas' becomes a standard formula."
ence, to the new king. In Jonson's Panegyre, then, the demonstrative function of traditional panegyric is preserved in the processional topos .
Popular obedience, however, is contingent on the future conduct of the king. To guarantee that the king will deserve obedience, Jonson calls on the goddess Themis (daughter of heaven and earth) to instruct James in his duties. Her instructions, although comparatively brief and narrated in the third person, parallel the speech of Theodosius in Claudian's panegyric on the fourth consulship of Honorius. For example, Themis argues that the king must not base public policy on private vice.
That they, by Heaven, are placed upon his throne,
To rule like Heaven; and have no more, their owne,
As they are men, then men. That all they doe,
Though hid at home, abroad is search'd into:
And, being once found out, discover'd lies
Unto as many envies, there, as eyes.
That princes, since they know it is their fate,
Oft-times, to have the secrets of their state
Betraid to fame, should take more care, and feare
In publique acts what face and forme they beare .(79–88)
Although Jonson might have garnered such unexceptionable sentiments from other writers, the most probable source is Claudian.
Hoc te praeterea crebro sermone monebo,
ut te totius media telluris in ore
vivere cognoscas, cunctis tua gentibus esse
facta palam nec posse dari regalibus usqnam,
secretum vitiis; nam lux altissima fati
occultum nihil esse sinit, latebrasque per omnes
intrat et abstrusos explorat fama recessus .[8]
[8] Claudian, IV Cons., lines 269–275, Platnauer, I, 306.
Of this too I cannot warn thee too often: remember that thou livest in the sight of the whole world, to all peoples are thy deeds known; the vices of monarchs cannot anywhere remain hid. The splendour of their lofty station allows nought to be concealed; fame penetrates every hiding-place and discovers the inmost secrets of the heart.
Moreover, just as Theodosius closes his speech by giving Honorius a list of historical exempla, Themis concludes by warning James not to imitate his great-uncle, Henry VIII.
Where acts gave licence to impetuous lust
To bury churches, in forgotten dust,
And with their mines raise the panders bowers:
When, publiaue justice borrow'd all her powers
From private chambers; that could then create
Lawes, judges, counsellors, yea prince, and state .(101–106)
Henry's reign thus becomes the prime historical example of private desire obscuring the public interest. It is to prevent a recurrence that Jonson instructs James.
One passage of instruction in this poem calls for particular attention. Themis stresses the argument that James must rule, not by force, but by example: "That kings, by their example, more doe sway / Then by their power; and men doe more obay / When they are led, then when they are compell'd" (125–127). These lines are also paraphrased from Claudian's panegyric on Honorius's fourth consulship:
componitur orbis
regis ad exemplum, nec sic inflectere sensus
humanos edicta valent quam vita regentis .(299–301)
The world shapes itself after its ruler's pattern, nor can edicts sway men's minds so much as their monarch's life . . .
This particular adaptation of Claudian has special significance because James himself had quoted the same passage in Basilikon Doron : "teach your people by your example; for people are naturallie inclined to counterfaite (like apes) their Princes maners, according to the notable saying of Plato expressed by the poet,'. . . componitur orbis regis ad exemplum, nec sic inflectere sensus humanos edicta valent auam vita regentis .'"[9] Jonson's instruction of James thus incorporates James's advice to his son, Prince Henry. In effect, Jonson catechizes the king according to the king's own principles as they had been announced in his treatise on royal education.
Jonson may well have borrowed this ingenious technique from Daniel, who vigorously attempts to restrict James's rule by reference to the ideals affirmed in Basilikon Doron . First, Daniel calls the king's attention to the book.
It is the greatest glory upon earth
To be a King, but yet much more to give
The institution with the happy birth
Unto a King, and teach him how to live:
We have, by thee, far more then thine owne worth,
That doth encourage, strengthen and relieve
Our hopes in the succession of thy blood,
That like to thee, they likewise will be good .(161–168)
Then, in subsequent stanzas, the poet adopts a variation on the Erasmian device of "exhorting to virtue under pretext of praise," instructing the king through a series of complimentary allusions to the king's book. The best ex-
[9] King James VI, Basilikon Doron, book 2, The Basilicon Doron of King James VI, ed, James Craigie, 2 vols. (Edinburgh and London, 1944), I, 53.
ample of the congruence between panegyrical convention and the king's treatise concerns the problem of flattery. In poetry, as in oratory, it had become conventional for the panegyrist to condemn flattery and, usually in the same breath, to urge the monarch to accept good advice.[10] Daniel (in language reminiscent of Walter Haddon's "Consiliis rectis attentam praebeat aurem . . .") urges the king to choose "counsels that lie right" (181). Daniel's technique of admonition, however, is simply to assume that James will choose good advisers. "We find the good shall dwell within thy Court; / Plaine zeale and truth, free from base flatterings" (178–179). Daniel's confidence is justified by a passage in Basilikon Doron where James had admonished his son on this very topic: "Choose then for all these offices, men of knowne wisdom, honestie, and good conscience; well, practised in the points of the crafte, that ye ordaine them for; and free of all factions and partialities: but speciallie free of that filthy vice of Flattery, the pest of all princes . . ."[11] More specifically than Jonson, Daniel has taken the king's avowed ideals and turned them into obligations, thereby circumscribing the king's future conduct.
To emphasize the theme of limitation, Daniel treats Basilikon Doron as a contractual agreement.
We have an everlasting evidence
Under thy hand, that now we need not dread
[10] The anti-flattery topos is often developed to secure the orator's right to advise the prince. First condemning any prince who countenances flattery, the orator points out that the perfect prince listens carefully to his advisers. The current prince cannot, therefore, condemn the advice offered in the panegyric without relinquishing his claim to perfection.
[11] James VI, Basilikon Doron, book 2, Craigie, I, 115.
Thou wilt be otherwise in thy designes
Then there thou art in those judiciall lines .(157–160)
Signed by the king, "those judiciall lines" have the force of law.
We have an earnest, that doth even tie
Thy Scepter to thy word, and binds thy Crowne
(That els no band can binde) to ratifie
What thy religious hand hath there set downe,
Wherein thy all commanding Soveraigntie
Stands subject to thy Pen . . .(169–174)
In each clause of this contract with the people, power ("Scepter," "Crowne," "Soveraigntie") is limited ("tie," "binds," "Stands subject to") by the word ("thy word," "What thy religious hand hath there set down," "thy Pen"). Because Daniel's panegyric incorporates specific allusions to the king's "word," the poem itself functions as a check on royal power.
Daniel concretely illustrates the theme of limitation by appropriating similes and images from the Latin tradition. The restrained exercise of political power is, in fact, summarized in a river simile lifted with little alteration from Claudian's Panegyricus Dictus Manlio Theodoro Consuli . Claudian had written:
lene fluit Nilus, sed cunctis amnibus extat
utilior nullo confessus murmure vires;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
torrentes inmane fremant lassisque minentur
pontibus et volvant spumoso vertice silvas:
pax maiora decet; peragit tranquilla potestas,
quod violenta nequit, mandataque fortius urget
imperiosa quies .[12]
[12] Claudian, Panegyricus Dictus Manlio Theodoro Consuli, lines 232–233, 237–241, Platnauer, I, 345–356.
Gently flows the Nile, yet it is more beneficent than all rivers for all that no sound reveals its power. . . . Let torrents roar horribly, threaten weary bridges, and sweep down forests in their foaming whirl; 'tis repose befits the greater; quiet authority accomplishes what violence cannot, and that mandate compels more which comes from a commanding calm.
In Daniel's English the concept of tranquilla potestas is literally translated as "calme power."
Thus mightie rivers quietly doe glide,
And doe not by their rage their powers professe,
But by their mightie workings, when in pride
Small Torrents roar more lowd, and work much lesse:
Peace, greatnesse best becomes: calme power doth guide
With a farre more imperious statelinesse,
Then all the swords of violence can doe,
And easier gaines those ends she tends unto .(240–256)
The "greatnesse" of the king, expressed through peace rather than violence, depends on cooperation from the other audience of the poem, the people. "The pedestall whereon thy greatnesse stands, / Is built of all our hearts, and all our hands" (583–584). These final lines echo More's sentiments in the closing of his panegyric to Henry.
Anglia thure feras, sacrumque potentius omni
Thure, bonas mentes innocuasque marnus .(185–186)
England, I hope you will bring incense and an offering even more effective, good hearts and innocent hands.
The restriction on the king's power over the people, coupled with the people's promise of obedience to the king, completes the pattern of mutual responsibility which Claudian had called alterna fides .
Daniel and Jonson, by adopting the conventions of Lat-
in panegyric, provide a traditional basis for the development of the genre in English. But during the early Stuart period this development proceeds within a rather narrow compass. Beginning in 1617, it became customary for Scottish poets to celebrate the return of the Stuart kings to Scotland and for English poets to answer with panegyrics on the king's return from the north. Primarily (but not exclusively) an exercise for university poets, whole volumes of panegyrics came out of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh in 1617, 1655, and 1641, bearing such titles as Rex Redux and Solis Britannici Perigaeum . The minor poets represented in these volumes establish the most characteristic occasion for English panegyric, the return of the king, and thus anticipate the great outpouring of panegyrical poetry in 1660, when (according to George Granville) "Our King return'd, and banisht Peace restor'd, / The Muse ran Mad to see her exil'd Lord."[13]
The most influential of these early "return poems" is William Drummond's Forth Feasting, written in 1617 to celebrate James I's visit to his native Scotland. The poem, which reads like an anthology of panegyrical topics, is entirely traditional.
That Murder, Rapine, Lust, are fled to Hell,
And in their Roomes with us the Graces dwell,
That Honour more than Riches Men respect,
That Worthinesse than Gold doth more effect,
That Pietie, unmasked showes her face,
That Innocencie keepes with Power her Place,
[13] George Granville, An Essay upon Unnatural flights in Poetry, lines 75–76, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. E. Spingarn, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1908), III, 294. Written in 1701, Granville's implied indictment of panegyric suggests the emerging eighteenth-century view of the genre.
That long-exil'd Astrea leaves the Heaven,
And turneth right her Sword, her Weights holds even,
That the Saturnian World is come againe,
Are wish'd Effects of Thy most happie Raigne .[14]
The first lines of this typical excerpt invoke a commonplace of Latin panegyric, the exile of the vices. Claudian, for classical example, had developed this topos in the Panegyricus De Tertio Consulatu Honorii Augusti.
luget Avarities Stygiis innexa catenis
cumaue suo demens expellitur Ambitus auro.
non dominantur opes nec corrumpentia sensus
dona valent: emitur sola virtute potestas .[15]
Avarice is left to weep in Stygian chains, mad Ambition and his gold banished afar. Wealth does not hold sway; sense-corrupting gifts are of no avail; virtue alone can purchase power.
Clearly, however, Drummond's immediate source is the English panegyric of his friend Ben Jonson, who specifically exiles "Murder, Rapine, Lust "lest they "infect the Crowne."[16] Drummond's ensuing conjunction of "Pietie" and "Power," his allusion to the return of Astraea, and his celebration of the renewed Saturnian age, all reflect a thorough acquaintance with the tradition of the genre.
Elsewhere in the poem, moreover, Drummond expresses the ceremonial theme of restoration by allusion to the vegetation myth, referring specifically to the story of Proserpina, and crediting national regeneration to the
[14] William Drummond, Forth Feasting. A Panegyricke to the Kings most excellent Majesty, lines 255–264, The Poetical Works of William Drummond of Hawthornden, ed. L. E. Kastner, 2 vols. (Manchester, 1913), I, 149.
[15] Claudian, III Cons, 185–188.
[16] Jonson, A Panegyre, 12, 17.
return of the king. "Let Mother Earth now deckt with Flowres bee seene, / And sweet-breath'd Zephyres curie the Medowes greene" (33–34). Drummond is equally conventional, if less detailed, in adopting the theme of limitation. His couplet, "If Brutus knew the Blisse Thy Rule doth give, / Even Brutus joye would under Thee to live" (297–298), is a rather clumsy translation of Claudian's "nunc Brutus amaret / vivere sub regno"[17] [Now would Brutus love to live under a king]. Thus celebrated and restrained, James emerges as the optimus princeps, who commands not by force, but by "Example." "[By] Example more than anie Law, / This People fierce Thou didst to Goodnesse draw" (181–182).
The influence of Drummond's copiously traditional poem is readily apparent in the university anthologies published in 1655. Armed with Drummond's topics, students at Edinburgh greeted Charles I in familiar strains. David Primrose, who begins by simply plagiarizing the Forth feasting, later acknowledges his debt to Drummond: "Feast fertile Forth, feast as thou didst before, / Whiles Heavens-blest James was seen upon our shore."[18] William Douglas shows slightly more imagination by changing the locale of the celebration. Instead of the Forth Feasting, Douglas gives us Grampius Gratulation To his high and mightie Monarch King Charles . Both of these poems, however, reveal the passage of time since 1617; both emphasize Scottish concerns and take a hard line with respect to any changes Charles may have been
[17] Claudian, Manlio Theodora, 163–164.
[18] David Primrose, Scotland's Welcome to Her dread Soveraigne K. Charles, lines 25–26, E IS O DI AEdinensium in Caroli Regis, Musarum Tutani, ingressu in Scotiam (Edinburgh, 1633).
contemplating. With respect to religion, for example: "For by thy zeale Gods true religion stands / Unchang'd within my well reformed lands."[19] With respect to law as well: "Myne ancient lawes in full integritie, / By thyne indulgence are preserv'd to mee."[20] The tone of these passages recalls lines Daniel had delivered to Charles's father in 1603.
We shall continue and remains all one,
In Law, in Justice, and in Magistrate;
Thou wilt not alter the foundation
Thy Ancestors have laid of this Estate,
Nor grieve thy Land with innovation . . .(253–237)
Conceived as welcome addresses to a returning king, the Scottish panegyrics of 1633, like Daniel's English panegyric of thirty years earlier, carefully establish the conditional terms of welcome. The theme of limitation thus complements the more obvious theme of restoration.
When the king arrived once again in England, Oxford poets answered their Scottish rivals in equally conventional verse. Jasper Maine's version of the processional topos typifies the verse in this collection: "Then all the heapes of people you did meete, / Making the high-way as you past, a streete; / Whilst every sexe and age to you pressed, / And left their Townes, for that time wildernesse."[21] The one poem in this volume that rises above the others is by William Cartwright, who celebrates the power, or "Presence," of the king, limited by the traditional ideal of piety.
[19] Primrose, Scotland's Welcome, 183–184.
[20] Primrose, Scotland's Welcome, 195–196.
[21] Jasper Maine, Upon the Kings return from Scotland, lines 11–14, Solis Britannici Perigaeum Sive Itinerantis Caroli Auspicatissima Periodus (Oxford, 1633).
Your pious Reign secur'd your Throne, your Life
Was guard unto your Scepter: no rude strife,
No violence there disturb'd the Pompe, unlesse
Their eager Love, and Loyalty did presse
To see and know, whiles lawful Majesty
Spread forth its Presence, and its Piety .[22]
The "Love" and "Loyalty" of the people combined with the "Presence" and "Piety" of the king create once again the pattern of mutual responsibility, thus extending the English tradition of verse panegyric established a generation earlier by Daniel and Jonson.
Transformation
Charles I made another trip to Scotland in 1641. On his return to England he was celebrated in new volumes of student verse, and among those contributing to the Cambridge anthology was the young Abraham Cowley. Written more than ten years before his first imitation of Pindar, Cowley's return poem of 1641 is a brief, conventional panegyric. The poet seizes the occasion ("our joyful Holiday" ) to celebrate this optimus princeps (the "best of Kings") for restoring the blessings of peace.[23] Two decades later, now a mature and famous poet, Cowley revived these themes in his poem on the return of Charles II. But this later poem is cast in the form of a Pindaric ode. By this transformation of the genre Cowley
[22] William Cartwright,To the King, lines 27–32, Solis Britannici Perigaeum .
[23] Abraham Cowley,On his Majesties Return out of Scotland, lines 16 , 61, The English Writings of Abraham Cowley, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge, 1905), pp. 22–24. Unless specified otherwise, all citations from Cowley's poems are repeated from this edition.
exercised a significant influence over Dryden and other poets of the later Stuart period, including (after 1688) Jonathan Swift.
To appreciate the importance of Cowley in the tradition of panegyric, we need to consider as a preliminary the place of Pindar himself. Although Pindar is often called a "panegyrical" poet, his odes differ in significant ways from the panegyrics written on the Roman model of Pliny.[24] First, Pindar celebrates an individual, whereas Pliny and his followers celebrate an institution. Second, Pindar has no apparent theory of history, in contrast to the Latin panegyrists, whose persistent ceremonial theme is restoration. Third, Pindar pays almost no attention to the public at large, whereas the Latin panegyrist speaks both to and for that public.[25] Because Pindar's occasional lyrics were inspired or commissioned to celebrate real human achievement, victory in the festival games, the poet glorifies this individual by comparing him with mythic heroes. Personal glory thus stands out against the background of history, providing the hero with a kind of immortality, but it does not change history. Pindar's odes do not proclaim the renewal of the golden age, nor do they attempt to ensure political stability, either through instruction of the monarch or through propaganda aimed at the people.
In effect, the function of praise changes as we move
[24] Modern criticism of panegyric, what little exists, has generally failed to make this kind of distinction. See Warren L. Chernaik. The Poetry of Limitation: A Study of Edmund Waller (New Haven and London, 1968), p. 117.
[25] For Pindar's audience, see C. M. Bowra, Pindar (Oxford, 1964), pp. 100–101.
from the Greek ode to the Latin oration. The purpose of Pindar's praise is to immortalize a man, whereas the purpose of Pliny's praise is to bridge the gap between the nature of the man and the demands of the institution. Thus, Pindar's odes celebrate personal glory and power, limited only by the jealousy of the gods, whereas Pliny's panegyric celebrates the glory and power of a monarch, limited by his obligations to the people. This functional difference is reflected in the choice of laudatory analogies. The highest honor bestowed by Pindar is a comparison with Hercules. In the tradition of Roman panegyric, on the other hand, the ideal figures are not Herculean heroes but great rulers, above all Trajan and Augustus. By reviving Pindar and attempting to reconcile the Greek ode and the Roman oration, Cowley aims at a reconciliation of heroic and monarchical ideals.
Between his welcome to Charles I in 1641 and his welcome to Charles II in 1660, Cowley wrote Pindaric odes on a range of subjects and occasions. Some of these odes, although far removed from Pindar, anticipate Cowley's panegyric on the Restoration. Brutus, for example, and The 34. Chapter of the Prophet Isaiah, both seem to reflect contemporary events.[26] If not precise political allegories, these odes at least touch on themes that are relevant to the condition of interregnum England. Even more relevant is Cowley's other Pindaric paraphrase of the Bible, The Plagues of Egypt, Based on several chapters of Exodus, this poem describes the liberation of the
[26] For a discussion of the possible political significance of Cowley's Pindarics, see Arthur A. Nethercot, Abraham Cowley,The Muse's Hannibal (London, 1931), p. 155ff.
Hebrew people from Egyptian captivity with Moses as hero. And yet the moral of the poem is suggestively derived from Genesis .
Is this thy Brav'ery Man, is this thy Pride?
Rebel to God, and Slave to all beside!
Captiv'ed by everything! and onely Free
To fly from thine own Libertie!
All Creatures the Creator said Were Thine;
No Creature but might since, say, Man is Mine!
In black Egyptian Slavery we lie ;
And sweat and toil in the vile Drudgerie
Of Tyrant Sin . . .[27]
The incessant language of politics, "Rebel," "Slave,""Libertie,""Tyrant," creates at least suspicion that Cowley had more than the Bible in mind when he thus developed rebellion as a metaphor to define the nature of the plague. In another of the interregnum odes, To Dr. Scarborough, Cowley reverses tenor and vehicle, making plague a metaphor for rebellion. "How long, alas! has our mad Nation been / Of Epidemick War the Tragick Scene . . ."[28] These odes provide the immediate literary background for the Ode Upon His Majesties Restoration and Return,
Here Cowley picks up where he had left off at the end of The Plagues of Egypt, placing the Stuart exiles in the role of the chosen people. "How through a rough Red sea they had been led, / By Wonders guarded, and by Wonders fed."[29] Ignoring the fine points of the Biblical story, Cowley extends the parallel until Charles is conducted
[27] Cowley, The Plagues of Egypt, 1–9.
[28] Cowley, To Dr. Scarborough, 1–2.
[29] Cowley, Ode Upon His Majesties Restoration and Return, 158–159.
into the "promis'd Land " (169). Cast in the role of national redeemer, Charles himself can be compared with Cowley's Dr. Scarborough, a remarkably successful physician: "thy Patients seem to be / Restor'ed not to Health onely, but Virginitie "[30] In the Restoration ode Charles provides the same health care for the plagued body of the state. He restores the nation to "Innocence ."
Thou mad'st of that fair Month thy choice,
In which Heaven, Air, and Sea, and Earth,
And all that's in them all does smile, and does rejoyce.
'Twas a right Season , and the very Ground
Ought with a face of Paradise to be found,
Then when we were to entertain
Felicity and Innocence again . (29–35)
Cowley here unites the historical rhythm of panegyric, expressed in the traditional imagery of the seasons, with Biblical myth, thus transforming restoration into redemption. Recent events assume for Cowley the pattern of the fortunate fall.
The role of Satan in this scheme of history belongs to Oliver Cromwell, who is described as "that great Serpent " (67). A military leader become monarch (of sorts), Cromwell is here seen as the characteristic villain of panegyric, the usurper who would upset the natural order of the state, like Maximus or Alaric. As the monarch is traditionally the sun, Cowley adapts a series of contrasting astronomical metaphors for the usurper; the "Imposter Cromwell " (209) is an "Ignis Fatuus " (207) and a comet, while "that Falling-star his Son " (210) provides an obvious link between the astronomical and mythological imagery of the poem. The dark night of the interregnum
[30] Cowley, To Dr. Scarborough, 47–48.
is relieved only by false lights which fade out with the royal dawn. The poem's seasonal imagery is thus complemented by an imaginative adaptation of the conventional diurnal metaphor of panegyric.
But Cowley goes one step beyond convention and blesses the immediate past—the winter, the night, the rebellion—for it is only by such contrast that the present joy of Restoration can be significant.[31] "We welcome both, and with improved delight / Bless the preceding Winter and the Night " (229–230). The fall is fortunate because it brings redemption. In this Christian context, the Restoration of Charles II becomes the resurrection of Charles I.
He who had seen him in his Clowd so bright :
He who had seen the double Pair
Of Brothers heavenly good, and Sisters heavenly fair,
Might have perceiv'd (me thinks ) with ease,
(But wicked men see only what they please )
That God had no intent t'extinguish quite
The pious King's eclipsed Right. (145–151)
Conversely, the suffering of Charles I has been shared by his son.
As a choise Medal for Heaven's Treasury
God did stamp first upon one side of Thee
The Image of his suffering Humanity:
On th' other side, turn'd now to sight, does shine
The glorious Image of his Power Divine. (270–274)
The ideal king, who combines the piety of Charles I with the power of Charles II, thus embodies the two aspects of
[31] Robert Hinman has not only recognized the pattern of felix culpa in the ode, he has also suggested comparisons with Paradise Lost . Robert Hinman, Abraham Cowley's World of Order (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 217–226.
Christian divinity, humility and authority. In this poem the traditional optimus princeps is transformed into the divine redeemer.
Transformation of the king into a Christian hero does not, however, represent a major innovation. Not only does Cowley preserve the traditional terms, power and piety, he also adopts the traditional imagery of the sun and the seasons. As we have already seen in connection with Erasmus and Walter Haddon, the possibilities of panegyric as redemptive ritual were simply waiting to be rigorously exploited. William Drummond, for example, had recognized this possibility in his celebration of James I: "O Vertues Patterne, Glorie of our Times, / Sent of past Dayes to expiate the Crimes . . ."[32] Cowley's emphasis on the Christian heroism of the king, although given greater prominence here by the context of the fortunate fall, is nothing very new.
The potential for a far more radical transformation of the genre lies in Cowley's attempt to make Charles into a classical hero. Given the Pindaric form of the poem we might expect Cowley to compare Charles with Hercules. Cowley was surely aware of the important place of Hercules in Pindar's lyrics, as he had translated the first Nemean and second Olympic odes, both of which include celebration of this hero. Indeed, in Cowley's version of Nemean 1, four of the poem's nine stanzas are devoted to celebration of Hercules, and Cowley makes a special point of comparing his subject, Chromius, with this model of heroism. As he observes in his notes to the poem: "Pindar, according to his manner, leaves the Reader to find as he can, the connexion between Chromius and the story of
[32] Drummond, Forth Feasting, 285–286.
Hercules, which it seem'd to me necessary to make a little more perspicuous."[33] Cowley not only perceived, but also reinforced the heroic analogy. But in his original Pindaric Ode Upon His Majesties Restoration and Return, Cowley—significantly—does not compare Charles with Hercules. Instead we find:
So when the wisest Poets seek
In all their liveliest colours to set forth
A Picture of Heroick worth,
(The Pious Trojan, or the Prudent Greek)
They chuse some comely Prince of heavenly Birth . . .
(275–279)
Prudence, one of the cardinal virtues that the subject of a demonstrative oration should possess, and piety, the essential virtue in panegyric, are here recommended by allusion to classical epic. The goal of this prudent and pious hero is, moreover, restoration.
He does long troubles and long wars sustain,
E're he his fatal Birth-right gain .
With no less time or labour can
Destiny build up such a Man,
Who's with sufficient virtue fill'd
His ruin'd Country to rebuild. (292–297)
The achievement of Odysseus and Aeneas, in Cowley's interpretation, is the acquisition, not of power, but of the virtues necessary for the proper exercise of power. What the hero attains is only his right by birth; what he has learned through suffering is how to perform the duty that accompanies that right. In effect, the normative fig-
[33] Cowley, note to stanza 6 of The First Nemean Ode of Pindar, Waller, p. 177.
ures drawn from classical epic function as substitutes for the conventional allusions to historical kings and emperors. Human heroism is subordinated to the traditional ideals of panegyric.
Cowley's adaptation of Pindaric to panegyric thus appears to be formal without finally being functional. Only the surface of the poem is changed; underneath Cowley's apparent debt to Pindar, the tradition of Latin panegyric survives essentially unchanged. But this conclusion needs to be qualified in one significant respect. If Cowley implicitly admits that the heroic figure of Hercules is inappropriate to panegyric, he does not make the same admission with respect to Pindar's antiheroes. In contrast to the "pious Trojan " and the "Prudent Greek, " Cowley points to the Titans: "(No proud Gigantick son of Earth, I Who strives t' usurp the god's forbidden seat )" (280–281). The story of the Titans, as we have seen in Claudian's poem on Honorius's sixth consulship, is for the panegyrist a conventional emblem of impiety and rebellion. But the Titans are also the type of all Pindar's anti-heroes, those who by arrogance or pride offend the gods. Cowley's parenthetical allusion suggests, for example, Pindar's description of Bellerephon in the seventh Isthmian ode. "But, if any man lifteth up his eyes to things afar, he is too short to attain the brass-paved floor of heaven; for the winged Pegasus threw Bellerephon his rider, who would fain have gone to the homes of heaven and the goodly company of Zeus."[34] Here, then, is a very real point of similarity between Pindaric and pane-
[34] Pindar, Isthmian 7, lines 45–48, trans. Sir John Sandys, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass., and London), p. 495.
gyric. Pindar's vivid portrayals of impiety can be adapted to serve one of the traditional functions of panegyric, propaganda on behalf of the established order.
Toward the end of his Restoration ode, Cowley includes a tribute to General Monck.
Thou worthiest Person of the Brittish Story,
(Though 'tis not small the Brittish glory)
Did I not know my humble Verse must be
But ill-proportion'd to the Heighth of Thee,
Thou, and the World should see
How much my Muse, the Foe of Flattery,
Do's make true Praise her Labour and Design;
An Iliad or an Aeneid should be Thine. (412–419)
Expanding the antiflattery topos, Cowley proposes Monck as the subject of an English epic. The measure of "true Praise " here becomes the epic poem, specifically the Iliad and the Aeneid . In effect, Cowley defines a direction in panegyrical poetry already taken by his contemporary, Edmund Waller.
Waller was obviously conversant with the traditional themes and topics of panegyric, which are given felicitous if unremarkable expression in his own poem on the Restoration. The familiar ceremonial pattern of prius . . . nunc . . . , so appropriate to both the genre and the occasion, is here presented in the traditional vocabulary of panegyric. "Faith, law, and piety, (that banished train!) / Justice and truth, with you return again."[35]
[35] Edmund Waller, To The King, Upon His Majesty's Happy Return, lines 109–110, The Poems of Edmund Waller, ed. George Thorn-Drury (New York, 1968), p. 167. Unless specified otherwise all citations from Waller's poems will be repeated from this edition, originally published under the same title in two volumes in 1905.
The instructional theme of limitation is also conventionally developed.
While to yourself severe, to others kind,
With power unbounded, and a will confined,
Of this vast empire you possess the care,
The softer part falls to the people's share.
Safety, and equal government, are things
Which subjects make as happy as their kings . (103–108)
Although it should be noticed in passing that Waller does not attempt to restrict the "power" of the monarchy, but only the "will" of the individual king, he does reaffirm the king's obligation to his people. The rest of the poem is equally traditional.
In other poems on other occasions, however, Waller effects a major transformation of the genre by combining three innovations: (1) emphasis on action instead of ceremony, (2) celebration of the king as hero rather than as monarch, and (3) insistence on facts even at the expense of ideals. In his poem to Roscommon, Waller sums up this artistic purpose as "Praise of great acts."
The Muses' friend, unto himself severe,
With silent pity looks on all that err;
But where a brave, a public action shines,
That he rewards with his immortal lines.
Whether it be in council or in fight,
His country's honour is his chief delight;
Praise of great acts he scatters as a seed,
Which may the like in coming ages breed .[36]
[36] Waller, Upon The Earl Of Roscommon's Translation Of Horace, 29–36. This passage is cited and discussed in similar terms by Chernaik, pp. 133–134. My own discussion of Waller's panegyrics has benefited significantly from chapter 3 of Professor Chernaik's book and from his earlier article, "Waller's Panegyric to My Lord Protector and the Poetry of Praise", SEL, IV (1964), 109–124.
Measured against the tradition of panegyric, this concept of praise reveals a relaxation of the courtly and occasional determinants of the genre, and no commitment at all to its oratorical mode. Measured against the epic theory of emulation, on the other hand, this concept of praise differs in but one significant respect: the hero of the poem is a contemporary. By abandoning ceremony in favor of action, by celebrating modern heroism, Waller forges a strong new link between public poetry and actual fact.
In order to celebrate the events of his own time, Waller recreates them in the light provided by Homer, Vergil, and Tasso. This aspect of Waller's public poetry was noticed toward the end of the seventeenth century by Thomas Rymer. In the context of a brief discussion of To The King On His Navy, Rymer cites the last couplet of the poem ("To thee, his chosen, more indulgent, he / Dares trust such power with so much piety") and then comments: "Here is both Homer and Virgil ; the fortis Achilles, and the pius Aeneas, in the person he Compliments . . ." [ 37] Although Rymer's suggestion is not quite complete, it is true to the spirit of Waller's public poetry. This particular couplet is expanded in Waller's poem Of The Queen .
None might the mother of Achilles be,
But the fair pearl and glory of the sea;
The man to whom great Maro gives such fame,
[37] Thomas Rymer, A Short View of Tragedy, in The Critical Works of Thomas Rymer, ed. Curt A. Zimansky (New Haven, 1956), p. 127. Rymer's comment is cited by Elijah Fenton, ed., The Works of Edmund Waller, Esq . (London, 1729), p. x, by Chernaik, pp. 146–147, and by Nevo, p. 24.
From the high bed of heavenly Venus came;
And our next Charles, whom all the stars design
Like wonders to accomplish, springs from thine .[38]
Here, indirectly, the prince unites in himself Achilles and Aeneas. Waller is known to have been fond of Chapman's Homer, and he frequently alludes to the heroes of the Iliad in his public poems. In the early poem on the king's response to Buckingham's death, for example, Charles plays Achilles to Buckingham's Patroclus.[39] But the more important influence on Waller is Vergil. Allusions to the Aeneid, scattered throughout his poetry, are as likely to be encountered in addresses to court ladies as in poems to their husbands.
Who from our flaming Troy, with a bold hand,
Snatched her fair charge, the Princess, like a brand?
A brand! preserved to warm some prince's heart,
And make whole kingdoms take her brother's part.
So Venus, from prevailing Greeks, did shroud
The hope of Rome, and save him in a cloud .[40]
In these lines from To My Lady Morton, for example, the English civil war becomes the Trojan war, as Waller sees the facts of seventeenth-century English history in the mirror of the Aeneid .
Vergil's importance to Waller is perhaps equaled by that of Tasso. Since Waller's day it has become a critical commonplace to discuss his poetry by reference to Fairfax's translation of the Gerusalemme Liberata . Samuel
[38] Waller, Of The Queen, 65–70.
[39] Waller, Of His Majesty's Receiving The News Of The Duke Of Buckingham's Death, 9–16.
[40] Waller, To My Lady Morton, On New Year's Day, 1650, 17–22.
Johnson even devotes the last several pages of his Life of Waller to an extract from Fairfax, in order that by "knowing the state in which Waller found our poetry, the reader may judge how much he improved it."[41] But this influence extends beyond prosody and conditioned Waller's concept of heroism as well. The great heroic combat for Waller is driving the Turks from Europe. He alludes to this heroic mission repeatedly in his poems. In To The Queen Mother Of France, Upon Her Landing, for example:
Would those commanders of mankind obey
Their honoured parent, all pretences lay
Down at your royal feet, compose their jars,
And on the growing Turk discharge these wars,
The Christian knights that sacred tomb should wrest
From Pagan hands, and triumph o'er the East:
Our England's Prince, and Gallia's Dauphin, might
Like young Rinaldo and Tancredo fight;
In single combat by their swords again
The proud Argantes and fierce Soldan slain;
Again might we their valiant deeds recite,
And with your Tuscan Muse exalt the fight .[42]
Here Waller enlarges on Tasso's own plea voiced in the first book of the poem and translated by Fairfax: "You must from realms and seas the Turks forth drive, / As Godfrey chased them from Judah's land."[43] Waller, then,
[41] Samuel Johnson, Life of Waller, in Lives of the English Poets, ed. G. B. Hill, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1905), I, 296. For a modern discussion of Waller and Fairfax, see Alexander Ward Allison, Toward an Augustan Poetic: Edmund Waller's "Reform of English Poetry" (Lexington. Ky., 1962), especially pp. 35–42.
[42] Waller, To The Queen-Mother Of France, Upon Her Landing, 19–30.
[43] Torquato Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered, book 1, stanza 5,trans. Edward Fairfax, Centaur Classics Edition (Carbondale, Ill., 1962), p. 4.
would be the English Tasso, although in another poem he defers to his friend Thomas Higgons.
If, listening to your charms, we could our jars
Compose, and on the Turk discharge these wars,
Our British arms the sacred tomb might wrest
From Pagan hands, and triumph o'er the East,
And then you might our own high deeds recite
And with great Tasso celebrate the fight .[44]
Military victory over the Turks is the ideal "action" for Waller's heroic praise.[45] Waller's transformation of panegyric thus begins with his re-creation of the optimus princeps on the model of the epic hero.
The traditional panegyrist, although he may occasionally allude to the classical epics, limits the monarch in a way that specifically denies him the usual means of heroism, the sword. According to Daniel, for instance, the monarch's power is based on "example and respect," which means that he can rule the state "without a sword."[46] Drummond of Hawthornden is even more emphatic on this point.
Let Others boast of Blood and Spoyles of Foes,
Fierce Rapines, Murders, IIiads of Woes,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Thou a true Victor art, sent from above
What Others straine by Force to gaine by Love . . .
(229–230, 239–240)
[44] Waller, To His Worthy Friend, Sir Thos. Higgons, Upon The Translation Of "The Venetian Triumph," 17–22.
[45] The term "heroic praise" I have borrowed from the title of Chernaik's third chapter.
[46] Daniel, A Panegyrike Congratulatorie, 225–226.
Drummond here excludes conquest and military heroism from the province of panegyric, and specifically excludes the epic heroism of the Iliad . Even in Cowley's Restoration panegyric, with its several allusions to epic, the king is not a military hero.
The King and Truth have greatest strength,
When they their sacred force unite,
And twine into one Right,
No frantick Common-wealths or Tyrannies,
No Cheats, and Perjuries, and Lies,
No Nets of humane Policies;
No stores of Arms or Gold (though you could joyn
Those of Peru to the great London Mine)
No Towns, no Fleets by Sea, or Troops by Land,
No deeply entrencht Islands can withstand,
Or any small resistance bring
Against the naked Truth, and the unarmed King. (191–202)
The king's power has nothing to do with the sword; because his power is "sacred," he can go "unarmed."
On the other hand, the villains of panegyric—from Alaric and Maximus to Cromwell—actively use physical force. Cowley identifies this source of power with Satan.
Vain men! who thought the Divine Power to find
In the fierce Thunder and the violent Wind:
God came not till the storm was past,
In the still voice of Peace he came at last .
The cruel business of Destruction,
May by the Claws of the great Fiend be done .
Here, here we see th' Almighty's hand indeed
Both by the Beauty of the Work, we see't, and by the Speed.
(137–144)
The rigorous distinction between the two sources of power, between the divine monarch and the infernal
usurper, between love and force, between peace and war, is fundamental to the genre. It is, in fact, the traditional basis for the panegyrist's definition of political stability. To quote Drummond once again:
They many feare who are of many fear'd,
And Kingdomes got by Wrongs by Wrongs are tear'd,
Such Thrones as Blood doth raise Blood throweth downe,
No Guard so sure as Love unto a Crowns .[47]
Traditional panegyric is a ceremonial confirmation of an institution that exists rightfully, lawfully, and by divine will; it is not an instrument for the validation of personal power seized by force, no matter how heroic. To praise the monarch for personal heroism is potentially to subvert the monarchy as an institution. At least, to celebrate the monarch as hero is to place individual over institution, "cause" over "laws" (to use Dryden's terms), and this is exactly what the panegyrist seeks to prevent. In short, to celebrate the monarch as military hero would be to invite the possibility of celebrating a military hero as monarch. And this brings us back to Edmund Waller, who confronted precisely this situation in his panegyric to Cromwell.
About thirty years before Cromwell's rise to power, Waller had begun his career by praising Charles I. Although his first poem, titled Of The Danger His Majesty (Being Prince) Escaped In The Road At Saint Andrews, is not very successful, it does illustrate Waller's characteris-
[47] Drummond, Forth Feasting, 243–246. Compare Erasmus, Panegyricus, in Opera Omnia, ed. J. LeClerc, 10 vols. (Hildesheim, 1962), IV, 524: "Ne id quidem referam, tametsi memorabile, quod cum plerisque necesse sit, imperium sibi multa caede ac sanguine asserere, ferro tueri, periculo ac scelere propagare . . ."
tic approach to panegyric. The occasion for this poem, the return of the monarch, offered a perfect opportunity for the young poet to show his skill by embellishing the conventional topics.[48] But instead of concentrating on the significance of this restoration or extracting the educational value of the foreign journey, Waller celebrates the action of crossing the seas. As the poet describes this voyage, Charles emerges as a hero braver than Aeneas.
Great Maro could no greater tempest feign,
When the loud winds usurping on the main
For angry Juno, laboured to destroy
The hated relics of confounded Troy;
His bold Aeneas, on like billows tossed
In a tall ship, and all his country lost,
Dissolves with fear . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . our hero, set
In a small shallop, Fortune in his debt,
So near a hope of crowns and sceptres, more
Than ever Priam, when he flourished, wore;
His loins yet full of ungot princes, all
His glory in the bud, lets nothing fall
That argues fear . . .[49]
Although the narrative has Charles at the center, the action is given over entirely to the waves and winds. Charles himself neither acts nor suffers. The poem is ineffective as narrative because Charles is not free, is not human. It is ineffective as ceremony, on the other hand, because of its epic pretensions.
[48] It is true that the events described in the poem occurred before Charles became king, but this is not sufficient to account for the unconventional nature of Waller's celebration.
[49] Waller, Of The Danger His Majesty (Being Prince) Escaped In The Road At Saint Andrews, 85–91, 93–99.
The problems of the poem are compounded by another aspect of Waller's approach: romance. The poet asks us to believe that his hero, although fearless in the face of the storm, is worried about communicating his love to his future wife. This romantic theme is prepared for by the interpolated story of Edward IV, Warwick, and the Lady Bona, sung by Arion as a preface to the main action of the poem. In Arion's song we find the conflict between love and honor. Affairs of state are balanced against affairs of love, with a decided tilt toward the latter. In the process, the monarch becomes not the "best of kings" but the "best of English hearts."
Of the Fourth Edward was his noble song,
Fierce, goodly, valiant, beautiful, and young;
He rent the crown from vanquished Henry's head,
Raised the White Rose, and trampled on the Red;
Till love, triumphing o'er the victor's pride,
Brought Mars and Warwick to the conquered side ;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ah! spare your swords, where beauty is to blame;
Love gave the affront, and must repair the same;
When France shall boast of her, whose conquering eyes
Have made the best of English hearts their prize;
Have power to alter the decrees of Fate,
And change again the counsels of our state .(13–18,25–30)
The Wars of the Roses thus serve a quite different function here from that seen in Daniel's panegyric of two decades earlier. In fact, the last lines cited here evoke precisely that situation feared by More, Daniel, and especially Jonson: public good sacrificed to private desire. But this traditional consideration does not disturb Waller, who makes Arion's theme his own.
Throughout Waller's political poetry we find an emphasis on women and romance that is entirely alien to the tradition of panegyric. In the panegyrics of Claudian, Erasmus, More, and Daniel, praise of the queen-consort is dynastic and public. The two virtues consistently attributed to female royalty in these poems are the obvious ones of chastity and fecundity. Because the queen is perceived as a national asset, she has no private or romantic dimension. In More's poem, for example, the marriage of Henry and Katherine functions as an emblem of the larger marriage between king and people. The queen, as chaste mother of future monarchs, will ensure the continuity of the harmonious relationship between the crown and the public. In Waller's political poetry, however, there is a persistent romantic theme derived ultimately from Aeneid IV . The conflict between romantic love and public duty (or piety) is most explicitly defined in To The Queen .
The royal youth pursuing the report
Of beauty, found it in the Gallic court;
There public care with private passion fought
A doubtful combat in his noble thought . . .[50]
A few lines later Buckingham appears as Achates, thus making Charles once again Aeneas. This "doubtful combat," so characteristic of Vergilian epic, is nevertheless new to panegyric.
Waller's desire to idealize contemporary events as episodes of heroic romance is complemented by a desire to reach beyond the traditional goal of national reconciliation to the goal of conquest. Waller's imperialism,
[50] Waller, To The Queen, Occasioned Upon Sight Of Her Majesty's Picture, 43–46.
readily apparent in such poems as Of A War With Spain, And A Fight At Sea and Instructions To A Painter, is ideally expressed in a series of three poems written toward the very end of the poet's life. All three poems were written in response to Christian victories over the Turks in Central Europe during the 1680's, and in all three Waller links contemporary history with the epic ideal derived from Tasso. In each poem, moreover, the current English king, Charles II in Of The Invasion And Defeat Of The Turks, In The Year 1683, and James II in A Presage Of The Ruin Of The Turkish Empire and To His Majesty . . . Occasioned By The Taking Of Buda, 1686, is given credit for the international Christian unity that has made defeat of the Turks possible and is cast as the leader who will finally drive them from Europe.
What angel shall descend to reconcile
The Christian states, and end their guilty toil?
A prince more fit from heaven we cannot ask
Than Britain's king, for such a glorious task . . .[51]
Charles here assumes the role of Godfrey in Tasso's Christian epic, a role that Waller readily transfers to James after 1685.
A prince more fit for such a glorious task,
Than England's king, from Heaven we cannot ask;
He, great and good! proportioned to the work,
Their ill-drawn swords shall turn against the Turk .[52]
In these three poems, Waller creates an ideal of conquest based on Tasso that has little recognizable connection
[51] Waller, Of The Invasion And Defeat Of The Turks, In The Year 1683, 45–48.
[52] Waller, A Presage Of The Ruin Of The Turkish Empire, 9–12.
with the traditional themes and topics of English panegyric. In his attempt to attach current events to an epic ideal, Waller abandons the purpose of traditional panegyric: to persuade a dual audience, the prince and the people, to act in a way that will produce political stability. Waller, the most factual of English panegyrists, is also the most impractical.
Although neither the poem on the king's escape nor these poems on the Turks can be considered successful, on other occasions Waller was a very effective panegyrical poet. The perfect occasion for "heroic panegyric" came with the rise of Oliver Cromwell. Whereas in the early poem on Charles I and in the later poems on Charles II and James II Waller is trying to make a hero out of a king, in A Panegyric To My Lord Protector he is trying to make a king out of a hero. It was a task perfectly suited to Waller's conception of the genre.
The rhetorical strategy of Waller's poem is succinctly revealed in a couplet that occurs about one-third the way through the poem. "Here the Third Edward, and the Black Prince, too, / France-conquering Henry flourished, and now you . . ."[53] The significance of this comparison emerges very clearly when we place Waller's lines next to a passage from Drummond's Forth Feasting .
Of Henries, Edwards, famous for their Fights,
Their Neighbour Conquests, Orders new of Knights,
Shall by this Princes Name be past as farre
As Meteors are by the Idalian Starre .(315–318)
[53] Waller, A Panegyric To My Lord Protector, Of The Present Greatness, And Joint Interest Of His Highness, And This Nation, 68–69.
The point of Drummond's comparison is that the pacific James surpasses those kings whose fame rests on "their Fights." Drummond's poem thus represents the conventional attitude of panegyric, the celebration of peace. Waller, on the other hand, attempts to reconcile conquest and rule, heroic and monarchical ideals. The comparisons with Henry V, Edward III, and the Black Prince (who incidentally was to be one of the proposed subjects of Dryden's unwritten epic), are perfect vehicles for this reconciliation. There are two elements in the comparison, heroism and kingship; Waller's rhetoric asks us to grant the second because we have already conceded the first.
Cromwell's military heroism is emphasized by the subsequent comparison with Alexander the Great, whom Erasmus (in his prose Panegyricus) had roundly condemned for inflicting war, tumult, and terror on the world.[54] Waller also denigrates Alexander, but from a radically different point of view. Waller belittles Alexander's conquests by comparing them with Cromwell's. Whereas the Macedonian had defeated the "unwarlike" Persians and Medes, Cromwell conquered the Scots.
A race unconquered, by their clime made bold,
The Caledonians, armed with want and cold,
Have, by a fate indulgent to your fame,
Been from all ages kept for you to tame .(81–84)
In writing these lines, Waller departs from another longstanding tradition. Daniel, Drummond, Cowley, and numerous collegiate poets had proclaimed the peaceful union of Scotland and England. Perhaps Daniel is the
[54] Erasmus, Panegyricus, LeClerc, IV, 521F.
most typical: "What heretofore could never yet be wrought / By all the swords of pow'r, by bloud, by fire, / By ruine and distruction; here is brought / To passe with peace, with love, with joy, desire" (17–21). Waller's divergence from this tradition is characteristic of his state poetry. On the one hand, he simply follows the facts. Cromwell did win victories over the Scots. On the other, he celebrates these facts by analogy with the heroic past. A more conventional panegyrist would have glossed over such heroics, minimized them, left them out altogether in preference for the theme of peace, or—more likely—not written the poem at all. Cowley, for example, had emphatically declared in his juvenile panegyric to Charles I: "The gain of Civil Wars will not allow / Bay to the Conquerors Brow."[55] But for Waller this is Cromwell's claim to military glory, and the poet regrets only that his hero cannot be honored in epic. "Had you, some ages past, this race of glory / Run, with amazement we should read your story; / But living virtue, all achievements past, / Meets envy still, to grapple with at last" (145–148). Waller thus acknowledges the critical dictum, set down in English by Davenant, that living heroes are unsuitable for epic poems because they inspire envy. As Waller cannot write an epic about Cromwell, he writes a panegyric instead.
The purpose of the poem is to transform the heroic Cromwell into an ideal king. This purpose is announced in the opening lines, where Cromwell is introduced as both augustus and amabilis : "While with a strong and yet a gentle hand, / You bridle faction, and our hearts command" (1–2). The immediate source of this couplet,
[55] Cowley, On his Majesties Return out of Scotland, 25–26.
moreover, is Jonson's catechism of James I. "He knew, that those, who would, with love, command, / Must with a tender (yet a steadfast) hand / Sustaine the reynes . . ."[56] By allusion to the didactic theme of a highly traditional panegyric, Waller declares his intention of dressing Cromwell in royal robes. The first step toward fulfillment of this intention is to establish Cromwell's credentials as peacemaker.
Your never-failing sword made war to cease;
And now you heal us with the arts of peace;
Our minds with bounty and with awe engage,
Invite affection, and restrain our rage .(109–112)
Peace finally supersedes war in the poem and Cromwell performs the crucial, and traditionally monarchical, function of guaranteeing order. But the ruler himself must exercise restraint and be merciful to the conquered.
Less pleasure take brave minds in battles won,
Than in restoring such as are undone;
Tigers have courage, and the rugged bear,
But man alone can, whom he conauers, spare .(113–116)
Here, not only do we have the theme of limitation, but also the theme of restoration, which Waller develops quite conventionally. "Your drooping country, torn with civil hate, / Restored by you, is made a glorious state" (13–14). In this context Cromwell becomes not Alexander, but Augustus.
As the vexed world, to find repose, at last
Itself into Augustus' arms did cast;
So England now does, with like toil oppressed,
Her weary head upon your bosom rest . (169–172)
[56] Jonson, A Panegyre, 121–123.
Cromwell the hero thus emerges as Cromwell the ideal monarch.
The source of Cromwell's power, moreover, is divine.
When fate, or error, had our age misled,
And o'er these nations such confusion spread,
The only cure, which could from Heaven come down,
Was so much power and clemency in one! (121–124)
The phrase "power and clemency" appears as "power and piety" in the quarto text of the poem, which is the text used in Elijah Fenton's edition and the text Johnson had in mind when he wrote: "It is not possible to read, without some contempt and indignation, poems of the same author, ascribing the highest degree of power and piety to Charles the First, then transferring the same power and piety to Oliver Cromwell; now inviting Oliver to take the Crown, and then congratulating Charles the Second on his recovered right."[57] But it is evident that Johnson has missed Waller's point, which is not to praise an individual man, but rather to create the image of a perfect ruler. Waller's ideal is simply consistent. By transferring the "power and piety" of Charles I to Oliver Cromwell, Waller places Cromwell within a tradition that includes earlier kings and emperors as well. Thomas More, we can recall, had written to Henry VIII in the same terms.
At quamvis erat ante pius, mores tamen illi
Imperium dignos attulit imperio .[58]
But howsoever dutiful he was before, his crown has brought our prince a character which deserves to rule.
[57] Johnson, Life of Waller, Hill, I, 270–271.
[58] More, Carmen Gratulatorium, 85–86.
Claudian had likewise addressed Honorius.
tantaque se rudibus pietas ostendit in annis,
sic aetas animo cessit, quererentur ut omnes
imperium tibi sero datum .[59]
And so did thy virtue show in earliest years, so did thy soul out-range thy youth that all complained that to thee empire was granted late.
In each of these poems, evidence of duty (pietas) qualifies the ruler for power (imperium) . Waller thus carefully brings his hero into line with a persistent ideal of monarchy.
But Waller does more than just adopt the conventions of panegyric. He also shows how epic allusions can serve the functions of panegyric.
Above the waves as Neptune showed his face,
To chide the winds, and save the Trojan race,
So has your Highness, raised above the rest,
Storms of ambition, tossing us, repressed .(9–12)
The first couplet of this citation is transposed from Fairfax's Tasso: "Above the waves as Neptune lift his eyes / To chide the winds, that Trojan ships oppress'd . . ."[60] Waller's allusion through Tasso to the Aeneid is then shaped into a simile illustrating one of the duties of the monarch: to restrain the ambitious. This duty, as it is presented in traditional panegyric, is complemented by another obligation: to relieve the oppressed. Drummond, for example, specifically links these two duties in his panegyric to James: "To know the Weight, the Atlas of a
[59] Claudian, III Cons., 85–87.
[60] Tasso, Book III, stanza 52. The allusion has been recognized by Thorn-Drury, p. 324.
Crowne, / To spare the Humble, Prowdlings pester down" (163–164). Walter Haddon expresses essentially the same idea, although he pointedly refers to rebellion rather than mere ambition.
Fulminet in vitiis, et corda rebellia frangat,
Supplicibus parcat, quos meliora movent .[61]
May she strike like thunder and lightning in the midst of vices and crush rebellious hearts. May she spare suppliants whom better things motivate.
Here, however, panegyric and epic are in fact congruent, as precisely this same conjunction of duties is found in Aeneid VI, where Anchises speaks to Aeneas. "Remember thou, 0 Roman, to rule the nations with thy sway—these shall be thine arts—to crown Peace with Law, to spare the humbled, and to tame in war the proud."[62] Waller, then, is following both Vergil and the tradition of panegyric when he completes his statement of the monarch's duties: "Hitherto the oppressed shall henceforth resort, / Justice to crave, and succour, at your court" (29–30). As in the case of Cowley's union of panegyric and Pindaric, so in Waller's fusion of panegyric and epic, we must finally recognize the generic similarity. Vergil's definition of piety can be adapted to serve as instruction to the monarch.
Waller's panegyric to Cromwell is a skillful merging of the two genres, designed to effect a reconciliation between Cromwell as hero and Cromwell as monarch. This
[61] Walter Haddon, In auspicatissimum, 33–34, The Poetry of Walter Haddon, ed. Charles J. Lees (The Hague, 1967), p. 170.
[62] Vergil, Aeneid, book 6, lines 851–853, Virgil, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1969), I, 567.
reconciliation is especially evident in the poem's conclusion.
Then let the Muses, with such notes as these,
Instruct us what belongs unto our peace;
Your battles they hereafter shall indite,
And draw the image of our Mars in fight;
Tell of towns stormed, of armies overrun,
And mighty kingdoms by your conduct won;
How, while you thundered, clouds of dust did choke
Contending troops, and seas lay hid in smoke .
Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse,
And every conqueror creates a muse.
Here, in low strains, your milder deeds we sing;
But there, my lord; we'll bays and olive bring
To crown your head; while you in triumph ride
O'er vanquished nations, and the sea beside;
While all your neighbor-princes unto you,
Like Joseph's sheaves, pay reverence, and bow .(173–188)
Clearly we have in this poem two different incarnations of the man, the conqueror and the king. Line 183 ("Here, in low strains, your milder deeds we sing") stands out by contrast to the acknowledgment of heroic exploits around it, and also expresses Waller's own idea of the poem's purpose. And yet, there is an implied regret that he had been so restrained, that he could not celebrate Cromwell in true epic fashion. In the final lines of the poem it is, strictly speaking, the crown of the victor, the bays and (appropriately) the olive, not the golden crown of kingship, that Cromwell wears. Nevertheless, the striking and unusual enjambment across the last stanza division emphasizes the act of coronation itself. Because, moreover, heroic and monarchical ideals, epic and panegyrical allu-
sions, are so carefully intertwined in the poem, it is difficult to dissociate the crown of bays from the crown of gold. Perhaps we should not even try, for Waller's next important poem, Of A War With Spain, And A Fight At Sea, confirms the reconciliation of heroic and monarchical in the figure of Cromwell.
His conquering head has no more room for bays;
Then let it be as the glad nation prays;
Let the rich ore forthwith be melted down,
And the state fixed by making him a crown;
With ermine clad, and purple, let him hold
A royal sceptre, made of Spanish gold .[63]
In the poems of Waller, as in those of Cowley, traditional panegyric is ennobled. The conventional themes and topics of the genre emerge in a more elevated and, on occasion, a more pretentious style. When panegyric was anglicized from the Latin at the turn of the century, it had no status as a poetic genre; it does not appear, for example, in the lists of poetic "kinds" that are so common in Renaissance literary criticism. Panegyric, still considered a kind of oratory, appears instead among the categories listed in the rhetoric books. Cowley and Waller lift the genre out of the rhetoric books and give it an important place in neoclassical poetics by assimilating it to the Pindaric ode and the epic. By thus linking panegyric with two very respectable genres, they not only popularize panegyric, they also demonstrate very real points of similarity between panegyric and these major literary traditions. Cowley's contrast between the monarch and the Titans, although a conventional topic of panegyric, is given renewed vitality and authority by the
[63] Waller, Of A War With Spain, And A Fight At Sea, 105–110.
suggestion of Pindar. Likewise Waller's conjunction of "power and piety," also a convention of the genre, is given broader significance by specific allusion to Vergil. By disciplining Pindaric and epic to the purposes of panegyric, Cowley and Waller redirect and reinvigorate the tradition established in England by poets like Thomas More and Ben Jonson.
Challenge
The essential, defining characteristic of traditional panegyric, even as transformed by Cowley and Waller, is the reconciliation of actual and ideal. The demonstrative theme of restoration creates a vision of an ideal world, a golden age, whereas the deliberative theme of limitation concerns the actual world of political realities, including even the iron-age possibility of assassination. The panegyrist's problem is to bridge the gap between these two worlds without acknowledging that such a gap exists. To achieve this the orator or poet expresses power through ceremony and simultaneously adapts ceremony to express the limits of power. This union of ceremonial and political purpose is at once the greatest weakness and greatest strength of the genre: greatest weakness because the ideal is not actual, greatest strength because men, at least in the seventeenth century, persistently hoped that someday it would be. Both the weakness and strength of the genre are illuminated by Andrew Marvell's poems to Cromwell.
The difficulty of reconciling the two worlds of panegyric is, however, evident long before the 1650's. In Claudian's panegyrics to Honorius, the latent dualism of the
genre is personified by the pairs of figures celebrated. The emperor Honorius is always praised in tandem with a military hero, either Theodosius or Stilicho. In the first of the Honorius panegyrics, for example, the restoration of order is achieved by the combined efforts of Theodosius and Honorius.
Pugnastis uteraue:
tu fatis genitorque manu . . .[64]
Both fought for us—thou with thy happy influence, thy father with his strong right arm.
Honorius rules by divine influence, Theodosius by virtue of military force. By linking son and father, Claudian effectively unites ceremony and power. But Claudian does not always achieve this union so easily or successfully. In his final panegyric to Honorius, the effort of reconciliation even leads him to the brink of absurdity.
nunc quoque praesidium Latio non deesset Olympi,
deficeret si nostra manus; sed providus aether
noluit humano titulos auferre labori,
ne tibi iam, princeps, soceri sudore paratam,
quam meruit virtus, ambirent fulmina laurum .[65]
Today, also, assuredly Heaven's favour would not be wanting to Latium should our own hand fail, but a beneficent providence has shown itself unwilling to rob human endeavor of its honor or to let the lightning win the well merited crown of laurel which the efforts of thy father-in-law Stilicho, have secured for thy brows.
Here the divine influence is portrayed as a back-up army, prepared to intervene on behalf of Rome should the human power of Stilicho fail. This semiludicrous union of
[64] Claudian, III Cons., 88–89.
[65] Claudian, VI Cons., 351–355.
divine and human on a contingency basis reveals the inherent difficulty of reconciling the ceremonial and political directions of the poem.
The obvious source of unity in panegyric is the figure of the monarch himself, who traditionally has both a ceremonial and a political role in the state. Even in Claudian, where the two roles are divided between Honorius and Stilicho, there is an effort made to bind the two figures together. In the above passage, for example, Claudian emphasizes the familial tie between Honorius and Stilicho and concludes by observing that the victories of the general are laurel for the emperor. In the Renaissance, ceremony and power, ideal and actual, divine and human, are commonly united in a single figure. Erasmus praises Philip as a vegetation deity and yet implicitly criticizes him as a man for abandoning his subjects. More urges Henry to adopt specific new policies, but also praises him by comparison with the sun. Both Erasmus and More, however, seek less to unite actual and ideal than to avoid inadvertently suggesting discrepancies between them. Thus, Erasmus emphasizes ceremony and minimizes the problems of power, while More concentrates on current political issues at the expense of celebration. Walter Haddon, although he follows the example of his neo-Latin predecessors, combines the two dimensions of panegyric without apparent hesitation. In his poem to Elizabeth, the two worlds of panegyric are perfectly merged: actual is ideal, reality is ritual, Elizabeth is Astraea. Here the bridge between actual and ideal is the balanced and controlled development of conventional metaphors, which serve to unite the current ruler with the optimus princeps .
English panegyrists of the early Stuart monarchy at-
tempt to preserve this sense of union between ceremony and power by anglicizing the topics and metaphors of Latin panegyric. The natural, mythological, and historical metaphors of the Renaissance humanists reappear in the English panegyrics of Daniel, Jonson, and their followers, who use them to unite the twin themes of restoration and limitation. It is precisely this characteristic union that Marvell challenges in An Horatian Ode upon Cromwel's Return from Ireland .[66] By isolating ceremony and power, he denies the essential premise of traditional panegyric. Whereas Claudian had strenuously tried to unite Honorius and Stilicho, the emperor and the general, Marvell sharply contrasts the ceremonial Charles and the military Cromwell. Whereas Walter Haddon had revealed a world in which power is derived from God, Marvell shows us a world where power is derived from men. Although the poem expresses a deep sense of loss in the disjunction of ritual and reality, Marvell concludes with a very cleareyed view of Cromwell's governance.
But thou the Wars and Fortunes Son
March indefatigably on;
And for the last effect
Still keep the Sword erect:
Besides the force it has to fright
The Spirits of the shady Night,
The same Arts that did gain
A Pow'r must it maintain .[67]
[66] Although this poem has been a battleground of modern criticism and has been studied in a variety of contexts, it remains a difficult poem to interpret satisfactorily. I do not pretend here to anything like a complete reading of the poem, but I do wish to show where the poem stands in relationship to the tradition of panegyric.
[67] Andrew Marvell, An Horatian Ode upon Cromwel's Returnfrom Ireland, lines 113–120, The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ed. H. M. Margoliouth, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1967), I, 90. All citations from Marvell's poems are taken from this edition.
In this new order, power is attended and expressed not by ceremony but by the sword.
The conventional metaphors, designed to unite power and ceremony, are here developed to express the gulf between them. In traditional panegyric, for example, it is not uncommon to find the monarch as player. In Claudian's panegyric on Honorius's fourth consulship, the emperor participates in ceremonial war games.
Cum vectaris equo simulacraque Martia ludis,
quis mollis sinuare fugas, quis tenders contum
acrior out subitos melior flexisse recursus?[68]
When mounted on thy horse thou playst the mimicry of war, who is quicker smoothly to wheel in flight, who to hurl the spear, or more skillful to sweep around in swift return?
After the Restoration we find the same kind of kingplayer in Waller's poem On St. James's Park .
Here, a well-polished Mall gives us the joy
To see our Prince his matchless force employ:
His manly posture, and his graceful mien,
Vigour and youth, in all his motions seen;
His shape so lovely, and his limbs so strong,
Confirm our hopes we shall obey him long.
No sooner has he touched the flying ball,
But 'tis already more than half the Mall;
And such a fury from his arm has got,
As from a smoking culverin 'twere shot .[69]
[68] Claudian, IV Cons., 539–541.
[69] Waller, On St. James's Park, As Lately Improved By His Majesty, 57–66.
In both Claudian and Waller the player image functions as a ceremonial, metaphoric expression of monarchical power. It provides a way of celebrating the king's authority without making his rule dependent on force. Marvell's version of the player-king analogy, in contrast, expresses the weakness of the king.
That thence the Royal Actor born
The Tragick Scaffold might adorn :
While round the armed Bands
Did clap their bloody hands .(53–56)
Although Marvell's analogy has the additional associations of the tragic stage, it strikingly defines the poem's thematic divorce of power from ceremony. Charles exists only in the ceremonial world of the play, where his is the role of king. Power resides in the real world represented by the audience of "armed Bands." Finally, we perceive that Marvell's metaphor is not a metaphor at all, but a fact. Charles is literally an actor; he has all the trappings of kingship; what he does not have is power.
A decade later the panegyrical poets who celebrate the Restoration of Charles II attempt to reunite the two separate worlds of An Horatian Ode . Even before the Restoration, however, Marvell himself acknowledges the enduring strength of traditional panegyric in The First Anniversary Of the Government under O. C . That strength lies in the continuing desire to believe that power is, must be, consistent with some ideal order that can be expressed through ceremony. The First Anniversary is evidence that the inherent weakness of panegyric, relentlessly demonstrated in An Horatian Ode, is also its greatest strength.
In reuniting ceremony and power, Marvell adopts many of the images and allusions conventional to panegyric. He also introduces comparisons which, if not commonplaces of panegyric, nevertheless have a royalist heritage.[70] The best example of such a simile is the comparison of Cromwell with Amphion. Waller had developed the same simile with reference to Charles I in Upon His Majesty's Repairing Of Paul's .
He, like Amphion, makes those quarries leap
Into fair figures from a confused heap;
For in his art of regiment is found
A power like that of harmony in sound .[71]
Waller's lines anticipate the opening of Marvell's simile.
So when Amphion did the Lute command,
Which the God gave him, with his gentle hand,
The rougher Stones, unto his Measures hew'd,
Dans'd up in order from the Quarreys rude;
This took a Lower, that an Higher place,
As he the Treble alter'd, or the Base:
No Note he struck, but a new Story lay'd,
And the great Work ascended while he play'd .[72]
Clearly, Waller and Marvell share not only a common political and poetical vocabulary, but also a common ideal of harmony and order.[73]
[70] For a discussion of the royalist imagery, see Harold E. Toliver, Marvell's Ironic Vision (New Haven and London, 1965), pp. 193–202.
[71] Waller, Upon His Majesty's Repairing Of Paul's, 11–15. For a valuable discussion of this poem, see Brendan O Hehir, Expans'd Hieroglyphicks: A Study of Sir John Denham's Coopers Hill With a Critical Edition of the Poem (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969), Appendix B.
[72] Marvell, The First Anniversary Of the Government under O. C., 49–55.
[73] After 1688, when the political poetry of the period wascollected in several volumes under the title Poems on Affairs of State, Marvell's poem was sometimes attributed to Waller. See, for example, Poems on Affairs of State, 4 vols. (London, 1716), IV, x.
At this point of maximum similarity, however, there remains a significant difference. Waller's Amphion is rebuilding an old structure. "The King built all, but Charles the western end" (54). The man Charles extends the work of earlier kings, as Waller carefully unites individual and institutional. Indeed, any idea of a new edifice is specifically rejected in the poem. "Ambition rather would affect the fame / Of some new structure, to have borne her name" (27–28). It is, on the other hand, precisely a "new structure" that Marvell's Amphion does build, and this structure is not a kingdom, but a commonwealth. "The Commonwealth then first together came, / And each one enter'd in the willing Frame" (75–76). Whereas Waller praises the work of Charles in light of a long tradition, Marvell celebrates the achievement of Cromwell in contrast to that same tradition. In short, Waller celebrates an institution; Marvell celebrates a man. If Marvell returns to the vocabulary and imagery of panegyric, he does not return to the institution of monarchy.[74]
In the first forty-eight lines of The First Anniversary, which lead to the Amphion simile, Marvell develops a contrast between the man Cromwell and the institution of monarchy. In this passage Marvell applies the tradi-
[74] Although I have found John Wallace's discussion of the poem stimulating and helpful, I cannot agree with his conclusions. See John Wallace, Destiny His Choice: The Loyalism of Andrew Marvell (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 106–144.
tional image of the sun to Cromwell, but at the same time denies the application of this image to kings. "Cromwell alone" (7) is sunlike, whereas "heavy Monarchs" (15) are compared to the lethargic and malignant Saturn, on account of (what Marvell later calls) their "Regal Sloth" (122).
Their earthy Projects under ground they lay,
More slow and brittle then the China clay:
Well may they strive to leave them to their Son,
For one Thing never was by one King don, (19–22)
The last couplet of this citation tells us how to read the earlier reference to "heavy Monarchs." As the succession of the crown from father to son is the basis of royal authority, the whole passage must refer to monarchy as an institution. "Heavy" describes that institution; it does not discriminate among its various representatives. In effect, Marvell separates Cromwell from earlier kings, thus rejecting the example of Waller's Panegyric .
Instead of institutional restoration, The First Anniversary celebrates the personal restoration of Cromwell by allusion to the coaching accident. Cromwell, "returning yet alive / Does with himself all that is good revive" (323–324). The effect of this episode is to identify the nation's immediate future with this individual man, who is not a king and yet is more than a king. "For to be Cromwell was a greater thing / Then ought below, or yet above a King" (225–226). But Marvell does not ask the people to accept Cromwell as a ruler sui generis.[75]
[75] The basis of Cromwell's authority as defined by Marvell has been a topic of debate in recent years. See Joseph A. Mazzeo,"Cromwell as Davidic King," Reason and the Imagination: Studies in the History of Ideas, 1600–1800 ed. Joseph A. Mazzeo (New York and London, 1962), pp. 29–55; Steven N. Zwicker, Dryden's Political Poetry: The Typology of King and Nation (Providence, 1972), pp. 53–55; John Wallace, "Andrew Marvell and Cromwell's Kingship: The First Anniversary,'" ELH, XXX, no. 3 (September 1963), 209–232.
Though not a king, Cromwell is like the optimus princeps as that figure is defined in traditional panegyric.
Hence oft I think, if in some happy Hour
High Grace should meet in one with highest Pow'r,
And then a seasonable People still
Should bend to his, as he to Heavens will,
What we might hope, what wonderful Effect
From such a wish'd Conjuncture might reflect.
Sure, the mysterious Work, where none withstand,
Would forthwith finish under such a Hand:
Fore-shortned Time its useless Course would stay,
And soon precipitate the latest Day.
But a thick Cloud about that Morning lyes,
And intercepts the Beams of Mortal eyes,
That 'tis the most which we determine can,
If these the Times, then this must be the Man . (131–144)
The union of power and grace, of human and divine, of actual and ideal, although hypothetical, represents a return to the tradition of panegyric. This reconciliation, moreover, suggests the panegyrical theme of limited sovereignty. Specifically, it recalls the "glory and grace" that Daniel had found in James I and the "power and piety" that Waller had discovered in Charles I and later in Cromwell himself.[76]
[76] See Daniel, A Panegyrike Congratulatorie, 81, and Waller, To The King On His Navy, 32, and A Panegyric To My Lord Protector, 124.
In subsequent passages Marvell defines Cromwell's limited power in even more obvious ways.
'Tis not a Freedome, that where All command;
Nor Tyranny, where One does them withstand:
But who of both the Bounders knows to lay
Him as their Father must the State obey.
Thou, and thine House, like Noah's Eight did rest,
Left by the Wars Flood on the Mountains crest:
And the large Vale lay subject to thy Will,
Which thou but as an Husbandman wouldst Till:
And only didst for others plant the Vine
Of Liberty, .not drunken with its Wine . (279–288)
The agricultural imagery, the Biblical allusion, the patriarchal idea, are all commonplaces that will be seen again in Dryden. What these images combine to express is the "Bounders" of power. But it is important to recognize that these boundaries are set by Cromwell himself. Everything in the poem finally hinges on the nature of this man; his legitimacy is derived from his actual conduct. In effect, Marvell argues: in his first year of "highest Pow'r" Cromwell has demonstrated that he is in fact what "heavy Monarchs" had only claimed to be, the optimus princeps . The contrast between the man Cromwell and the institution of monarchy is achieved by transferring to Cromwell the traditional ideals of monarchy without the crown. It is in this sense that he is both more and less than a king.
He seems a King by long Succession born,
And yet the same to be a King does scorn.
Abroad a King he seems, and something more,
At Home a Subject on the eaual Floor . (387–390)
This fine distinction, preserved throughout The First Anniversary, places the poem just outside the tradition of panegyric. At the same time, however, The First Anniversary reveals the essential durability of the tradition and anticipates the reunion of ceremony and power celebrated by the panegyrists of the Restoration.