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Thomas Watson's Adaptation of an Epigram by Martial
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
The lively Neo-Latin epigram appended to Thomas Watson's Amyntas merits more than passing mention as ‘an interesting set of verses'. It offers an illuminating case of Elizabethan literary criticism in action and one that involves a highly provocative problem in identification.
The poem is an imitation of an epigram of Martial. The Roman poet had satirized, in his usual uninhibited fashion, a certain meddlesome moralist who was too busy decrying the vices of other men to put his own house in order. Adapting Martial's format adroitly to his purposes, Watson makes it the vehicle for a sharp attack on a contemporary literary critic who has exasperated him by carping continually at his writings:
In invidum quendam, sub Oli nomine, quern taxat Martialis.
Epigramma.
Antigonen Sophoclis malè vertimus? Ole quid ad te,
Quid faciat versu nostra Thalia suo?
Peccavi patriis in rithmis? Ole quid ad te?
Non tua, quae scripsit, sed mea pluma fuit.
Vulnus amatori sanavimus? Ole quid ad te?
Est illo solus carmine laesus Amor.
Non dignè psalmos transcripsimus? Ole quid ad te?
Non tua proptereà, sed mea fama perit.
Phyllida tarn ploro iuvenillius? Ole quid ad te?
Non tua, quam ploro, sed mea Phyllis erat.
Noster hiat versus, vel claudicat? Ole quid ad te?
Forsan at exemplis linea nulla caret.
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1960
References
1 Bradner, Leicester, Musae Anglkanae (New York, 1940), p 46 Google Scholar, n. 11. The lines are transcribed here, through the courtesy of Mr. A. G. Cumbers of the British Museum, from the last two pages of the only known copy of Amyntas Thornae Watsoni (London, 1585).
2 Marcus Valerius Martialis, Epigrammata, VII, X﹛Pedicatur Eros,jellat Linus : Ole, quid adte . . .), ed. Walter C. A. Ker, 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library (London, 1919), 1, 426-429.
3 Works, ed. R. B. McKerrow (London, 1904-10), in, 127 ﹛Have With You to Saffron Walden, 1596). The incident can reasonably be dated near the beginning of Nashe's career as a writer in London, i.e., 1588-89. Watson was apparently quoting, with a variation, the hexameters Nashe had earlier (1, 300) attributed to Dr. William Butler of Cambridge.
4 On this episode, see G. C. Moore Smith, Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia (Stratfordupon- Avon, 1913), pp. 27-34, and RES, XXIII (1947), 298-304.
5 Watson, Poems, ed. Edward Arber (London, 1870, pp. 25, 29). Incidentally, Watson's other early patron, Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, to whom he dedicated Antigone, was also anathema to Harvey; and not only because he was a leader with Oxford in the pro-Catholic political opposition to Harvey's patron, the Earl of Leicester: he was also the lord who had attempted to seduce the scholar's sister (for this episode, retold by Virginia Woolf in her Second Common Reader, pp. 5-9, see Harvey's Letter-book, ed. E.J. L. Scott [Camden Society Publications, Series II, No. 33, London, 1884], pp. 143-158, and Notes and Queries, II th Series, in [1911], 261-263).
6 See, e.g., the personification of him as Envy in Henry Chettle's Kind-Hartes Dreame,ed. G. B.Harrison (London, 1923), p . 35.
7 The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, ed. J. C. Smith and E. De Selincourt (London, 1912), pp. 630,640.
8 Foure Letters and Certaine Sonnets, ed. G. B. Harrison (London, 1922), p. 36.
9 Ibid., pp. 101-102; on Harvey's unpublished satires, see also MLN, LXII(1947), 20-23.
10 The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, pp. 639-640; cf. pp. 625,630-631.
11 Cf., e.g., Foure Letters, p . 80.
12 Spenser, p . 640; Foure Letters, p. 67.
13 Spenser, p. 637.
14 Foure Letters, pp. 67-68; cf. Harvey, Works, ed. A. B. Grosart (London, 1884), 1, 265; II, 95.
15 Nashe, Works, m, 80; Pedantius, ed. G. C. Moore Smith, in Materialen zur Kundc des dltercn Englischen Dramas, Band 8 (Louvain, 1905), pp. xxxi-l; Marginalia, p.40
16 Bradner, Musae Anglicanae, pp. 46-47.
17 Works, II, 83; Marginalia, pp. 233,166,279.
18 See William Ringler, ‘Spenser and Thomas Watson', MLN, LXIX (1954), 484-487; in fact, it was Harvey's listing of Watson as one of those who knew his worth (Works, II, 83) that caused Nashe to recall the poet's sally ‘one night at supper at the Nags head in Cheape’ several years before.