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.