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LII The Genesis of John Oldham's Satyrs Upon the Jesuits
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Cursory critics of John Oldham have quite correctly noted that his Satyrs Upon the Jesuits are distinguished from the rougher popular satire of the early Restoration by their more pretentious literary quality, the generalized nature of the satire, and the greater concentration and force of the invective. But beyond noting Oldham's acknowledged indebtedness to Persius, Horace, Ben Jonson, and Buchanan's Franciscanus, such critics have been generally somewhat vague on the subject of his literary patterns. Currently accepted views seem to be divided between two theories, stressing the classical or the neo-classical elements in his work: (1) According to one view, advanced by Mr. C.W. Previté-Orton, the lurid, violent tone of the poems is derived directly from Juvenal. (2) According to the analysis of Mr. A. F. B. Clark, the direct inspiration of the Satyrs was Boileau's Le Lutrin, which Oldham was engaged in translating at the time he began their composition. It is obvious from a survey of critical comments on Oldham that no English influence has been given much consideration, and that Oldham's almost complete separation from the popular English school of political satire has been generally taken for granted.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1943
References
page 958 note 1 Political Satire in English Poetry (Cambridge, 1910), and “Political and Ecclesiastical Satire,” Cambridge History of English Literature, viii, 97.
page 958 note 2 Boileau and the French Classical Critics in England (Paris, 1925), pp. 439–441.
page 959 note 3 Bodleian MS. Rawl. Poet. 123, which has figured in several discussions of Oldham and of Dryden's MacFlecknoe (see H. F. Brooks, “When Did Dryden Write MacFlecknoe?” Review of English Studies, January, 1935) is now available to American scholars in photostatic form. I have donated my photostatic copy to the Library of Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, which will lend it for the purpose of micro-filming.
page 959 note 4 In a brief experimental passage in his notebook, Bodleian MS. Rawl. Poet. 123, p. 94. This passage was intended for his Letter to a Friend, written in 1678, which was itself an actual answer to a poetic epistle from his friend John Spencer. Spencer's epistle, in which he criticized satire and satirists, also appears in the manuscript notebook. The Letter to a Friend as published, however, omits all reference to satire.
page 959 note 5 The dates are as given in Oldham's handwriting in the Bodleian manuscript.
page 959 note 6 H. F. Brooks, A Bibliography of John Oldham, the Restoration Satirist (Oxford, 1936), Introduction.
page 960 note 7 In Oldham's notebook, the Dithyrambic, which was published as a generalized attack on drunken courtiers, is headed thus in Oldham's handwriting: A Dithyrambic on Drinking: Supposed to be Spoken by Rochester at the Guinny Club. Also the manuscript copy of the Satyr against Vertue, which is headed merely Pindarique, is starred to refer to a note on the blank opposite page, in Oldham's handwriting: “Suppos'd to be spoken by a Court Hector at Breaking of the Dial in Privy-Garden.” (Bodleian MS. Rawl. Poet. 123, p. 3.) The reference is to a notorious escapade of Rochester and his cronies. (See Collected Works of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ed. John Hayward (London, 1926), p. xxv.) Furthermore, in British Museum Additional MS. 14147, although the transcript of A Satyr against Vertue omits the mention of the sun-dial escapade, the name “Lord Rochr” has been written at the end and then scored out. (See Brooks, A Bibliography of John Oldham, #11.)
page 960 note 8 The form of Marvell's Last Instructions to a Painter, in The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ed. H. M. Margoliouth (Oxford, 1927), i, 141–165. Oldham's notebook contains copies of fragments of two predecessors of Marvell's poem in this form, the first and second of a group of four poems all called Directions to a Painter and appearing in Poems on Affairs of Stale (London, 1716). In this paper I shall refer to these four poems as Directions I, II, III, and IV. A fragment of Directions II (from 1. 388 to the end) appears in the notebook, Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet. 123, on p. 105. The envoy of Directions I follows immediately that of Directions II.
page 960 note 9 Mr. Harold Brooks of Merton College, Oxford, has already pointed out the scope of Oldham's reading. (See Brooks, “When Did Dryden Write MacFlecknoe?” Review of English Studies, January, 1935, p. 74.) But for the most part the evidence of the manuscript is ample.
page 961 note 10 Oldham would take seriously Horace's advice on the question of a main design. See Oldham, Horace His Art of Poetry, ll. 57–60, and Upon the Works of Ben Johnson, ll. 9–13, both in The Works of Mr. John Oldham, Together with his Remains (London, 1692).
page 961 note 11 Oldham, Spencer's Ghost, ll. 175–190.
page 961 note 12 Oldham might interpret the passage on the satyr-interlude as applying to satire. See his own paraphrase in Horace His Art of Poetry, ll. 363–386.
page 961 note 13 Bodleian MS. Rawl. Poet. 123, p. 255.
page 962 note 14 On another page in the notebook Oldham scribbled another version of this line under the heading “Upon the Plot”:
I had thought Hell had done its best
The page continues with a portion of Oldham's translation of Le Lutrin. Bodleian MS. Rawl. Poet. 123, p. 71.
page 962 note 15 Ibid., pp. 263–264.
page 963 note 16 See note 8.
page 963 note 17 See note 8.
page 963 note 18 Bodleian MS. Rawl. Poet. 123, p. 289.
page 964 note 19 The “Character,” or extended character sketch, sometimes multiplied to a small gallery of independent portraits, was an integral part of the “Artist” form.
page 964 note 20 Oldham may have been attempting an envoy in the traditional “Artist” form when he wrote the following line at the bottom of a Latin exercise:
Dear Soveraign! much our Care but Heaven's more.
Above this line there is the phrase:“When nought but Treason wakes.” (Bodleian MS. Rawl. Poet. 123, p. 269.)
page 964 note 21 Oldham's use of Messalina for a character sketch suggests that he was imitating Marvell. There are no well defined “Characters” in Directions I, and Marvell's “Character” of Lady Castlemaine suggests Juvenal's portrait of Messalina.
page 964 note 22 “Political and Ecclesiastical Satire,” Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. viii, p. 99.
page 965 note 23 The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ed. Margoliouth, i, 184. Margoliouth dates the poem “1675 or possibly later.”
page 965 note 24 Bodleian MS. Rawl. Poet. 123.
page 965 note 25 I take this date to mean January, 1678/9.
page 967 note 26 These lines appear in the doggerel poem:
That rouge Faux that did intend to blow up
The Parliament with another sad plot
In the experimental version of the Vision satire, Oldham included these lines:
A Faux was plac'd at entrance of the Cell,
And shew'd in looks, he durst even blow up Hell.
The endless and ludicrous repetition of the words “Blow up” in his crude source poem had had its effect.
page 968 note 27 See Brooks, A Bibliography of John Oldham, Indroduction.
page 968 note 28 In “The Originality of Absalom and Achitophel,” Modern Language Notes, April, 1931, Mr. Richard F. Jones shows that the Biblical parallel was a commonplace in the seventeenth century, particularly in prose pamphlets and sermons. I have noted many examples of it in the verse satire of the Restoration, but all of them are brief and incidental.
page 968 note 29 Satyr II, ll. 105–113 and 151–156.
page 968 note 30 The order of appearance in the manuscript is no great help, since most of the sheets in what I have called a “notebook” were really loose sheets apparently put together rather haphazardly. Some of them are letters and some are the exercises of school boys. Oldham did much of his scribbling on the margins of these sheets in an order completely at random.
page 969 note 31 I have adopted this term to designate a group of satires, mostly Republican in tone, that are dominated by a night setting, a ghostly visitor, and various allegorical and visionary characteristics, either singly or combined. They are reminiscent of the Senecan ghost, but generally forsake the theme of revenge, substituting that of warning, as in The Mirror for Magistrates. That Restoration satirists had not forgotten the Mirror is indicated by the occasional appearance of the looking-glass motif in satire (as in “A Looking Glass for all True Protestants,” 1678, printed in Pepys Ballads (Cambridge, 1929–32), iii, 27, and “A Looking Glass for Traitors,” 1678, in Roxburghe Ballads, ed. J. B. Ebsworth, (London, 1871–99), iv, 129. It is also indicated by the frequent use of Jane Shore as a parallel for various mistresses of Charles ii. “Shores wife, Edward the fowerthes concubine” is one of the apparitions in the Mirror (The Mirror for Magistrates, ed. L. B. Campbell (Cambridge, 1938)).
For the use of Jane Shore in Restoration satire, see “A Dialogue between the Dutchess of Cleve—and the Dutchess of Portsmouth, at their Meeting in Paris, With the Ghost of Jane Shore,” 1679, in Poems on Affairs of State, 1716, Vol. iv.
Some satires in the ghostly school, aside from those already mentioned, are Cleveland's Loyall Scot; Badge's Vision from a Monument, Dec, 1675, (in Poems on Affairs of State, 1716, p. 102); Marvel's Ghost (idem, p. 160). Later examples, those that definitely followed Oldham's Satyrs. Upon the Jesuits in date of composition, are Oceana and Britannia (idem, p. 117); Stafford's Ghost (idem, p. 48); Rochester's Ghost (in British Museum MSS. Harley 6913, p. 421); Sir Thomas Armstrong's Ghost (in Poems on Affairs of State, 1716, p. 135); and many others.
page 970 note 32 “The first Satyr he drew by Sylla's Ghost in the great Johnson, which may be perceived by some strokes and touches therein, however short they come of the Original.” Satyrs Upon the Jesuits, “Advertisement.”
page 970 note 33 Brooks, A Bibliography of John Oldham, Introduction, p. 8.