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.