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Henry Parrot's Stolen Feathers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Franklin B. Williams Jr.
Franklin B. Williams Jr.*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

The publication of fourteen epigrams by Sir John Harington in Henry Parrot's Springes for Woodcocks (1613) is gaining recognition as a leading case in the study of Elizabethan literary ethics. Doubtless encouraged by the opportunity to pun on Parrot's name, two contemporaries, John Davies of Hereford and Richard Brathwaite, attacked him for this minor outrage. Their blunt charge that Parrot “stole” epigrams contrasts with the usual mild accusation of “borrowing,” and indicates an increasing appreciation of literary rights. Considerable importance is attached to the case in Professor Harold Ogden White's recent study of literary ethics, but he does not examine the underlying facts, and he only briefly cites the documents.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , December 1937 , pp. 1019 - 1030
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1937

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References

1 Plagiarism and Imitation during the English Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935), pp. 184–187.

2 The Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1930). This article cites Harington's epigrams by Professor McClure's serial numbers.

3 Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica (London, 1815), p. 267.

4 Collectanea Anglo-Poetica (Chetham Society), part ix (1879), 126.

5 J. W. Hebel and H. H. Hudson, Poetry of the English Renaissance (New York: Crofts, 1929), p. 996.

6 “Samuel Pick's Borrowings,” RES, vii (1931), 204.

7 “Notes on Elizabethan and Jacobean Epigrams,” Faculty Papers of Union College, ii (1931). 66–69.

8 Hereafter cited as: The Mousetrap, Springes for Woodcocks, and The Mastiff.

9 To his edition of John Earle's Microcosmography (1811), Dr. Bliss appended a bibliography of character-books. Cures for the Itch appeared as item “viii” (p. 276). Careless bibliographers grafted the “viii” to the title.

10 “The Epigrams of Henry Peacham and Henry Parrot,” MLR, xxix (1934), 129–136.

11 The Mousetrap, epigram 73; reprinted in Epigrams, 72; Springes for Woodcocks, ii. 136; Cures for the Itch, sig. B3; and also in Wits Recreations (1640), no. 301. The present article cites epigrams in Parrot's first three books by their numbers; the unnumbered epigrams in the last two books are indicated by the page signature.

12 In a few instances Parrot prints two versions of an epigram in the same volume. Thus Springes ii. 166 proves to be i.108 with the omission of its final couplet.

13 This 1595 edition was inadvertently omitted from the Short-Title Catalogue. The Director of the Hamburg Staats- und Universitäts-Bibliothek kindly informs me that the unique copy remains in that collection.

14 Springes publishes only the first half of this epigram.

15 British Museum MS. Additional 12049, pp. 157–158.

16 In some copies of Richard Brathwaite's Remains after Death (1618), sig. L3v. There two additional lines are inserted, and the subject is identified as “Owen a Butler of Oxford.” The later Malone MS. 19 in the Bodleian localizes Owen at Christ-Church. Parrot's version is reprinted in Wits Recreations (1640), epitaph 86.

17 Springes i. 161–165. In Dr. A. B. Grosart's reprint of The Dr. Farmer Chetham MS. (Chetham Society, lxxxix-xc, 1873), they appear at i, 102, 100, 84 (initialed J. H.), 101, and 102.

18 Doctor Merrie-man (1609), sig. Clv. Compare Harington's epigram 107.

19 Similarly Springes epigrams i.95 and i.105 draw on Skialetheia, epigrams 3 and 56.

20 The only unquestionable thefts in the original core of the volume are the Skialetheia adaptations.

21 E.g., the epigrams Per Ignotum appended to Epigrammes Serued out in 52 seuerall Dishes (n.d.), by I. C., Gent.

22 Mousetrap, 74; Epigrams, 145; Springes, ii. 137. The parallel was noted by Professor Hudson, p. 996.

23 First (Field) edition (1596)., sig. Kl.—The adaptation by Parrot is of course legitimate. The Chetham manuscript contains four anonymous epigrams against Mathon, who is to be identified with either Sir John Davies or Parrot, for the third epigram begins:

Mathon doth all his Epigrammes compare

to suites which those in Birchin lane doe make.

Parrot's candidacy is favored by the fact that in the manuscript the Mathon epigrams are mixed with those taken from Springes for Woodcocks.

24 Springes, i.157 (Harvard copy). The British Museum copy shows a variant: “If these (quoth Potus) proue….”

25 Sig. I3v, epigram 6 (Huntington copy). The copy accredited to the Library of Congress in the Short-Title Catalogue is not traceable. Taylor's friend Sa[muel] Jones doubtless alludes to Parrot's attack in his commendatory verses before The Nipping or Snipping. Jones reassures Taylor: “Thy Epigrams; and Anagrams of late / Are Philomels sweet notes, let Parrats prate.”

26 Sig. K3v, epigram 31. The phrases were common parrot-talk, corresponding to “Polly wants a cracker.” But does the second line indicate that Parrot was actually in prison? Hudibras knew what parrots meant “When they cry Rope, and Walk Knave, walk” (ed. A. R. Waller [Cambridge, 1905], p. 17).

27 It is not safe to identify the poetical writing-master with Davus, who could not endure to be called a knave but did not mind the epithets “honest Rogue or lew” (Springes, ii.66); nor with Valentinus, who wrote many hands but lacked a shirt (i.66).

28 Springes, i.107. The other allusions are to Samuel Rowlands, Humors Ordinarie ([1603], etc.); William Barksted, Hiren: Or The faire Greeke (1611); and Angel Day, The English Secretorie (1586, etc.). Day's handbook on letter-writing, which seems out of place here, may have been introduced for the rime or because Davies was a writing-master.

29 Springes, i.9, 76, 155, 167. At least three of these were reprinted in later miscellanies.

30 The Scourge of Folly, epigram 48. The word-play is found elsewhere, as in John Lyly's Midas, i.i. 81–83.

31 Davies himself was not wholly innocent of plagiarism. Thus his epigram 351 in Wits Bedlam is merely a condensation of an amusing jingle in Tottel's Miscellany (ed. H. E. Rollins, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1928–29, i, 150).

32 Thus Michael Drayton writes (Works, ed. J. W. Hebel, iii, 306): “Then to a Harper binde your Sonne,/Since most of them are blind.”

33 I.e., the “English Lad” epigram (Springes, ii.195).

34 An epigram in his A New Spring (1619), sig. E2, is a flagrant adaptation of Harington's epigram 277; and the first line of the first poem in Times Curtaine Drawne, “Carecharming sleepe, thou sonne of sable Night,” is strangely like a sonnet by Samuel Daniel.

35 Times Curtaine Drawne, sigs. L8–8v. The second part of the volume, in which the verses occur, has a separate title-page, and is frequently described as a separate book, Panedone: Or Health from Helicon.