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Irus and his Jovial Crew: Representations of Beggars in Vincent Bourne and other Eighteenth-Century Writers of Latin Verse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2013

JOHN T. GILMORE
JOHN T. GILMORE*
Affiliation:
Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, [email protected]
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Abstract

Alastair Fowler has written, with reference to the time of Milton, of ‘Latin's special role in a bilingual culture’, and this was still true in the early eighteenth century. The education of the elite placed great emphasis on the art of writing Latin verse and modern, as well as ancient, writers of Latin continued to be widely read. Collections of Latin verse, by individual writers such as Vincent Bourne (c. 1694–1747) or by groups such as Westminster schoolboys or bachelors of Christ Church, Oxford, could run into multiple editions, and included poems on a wide range of contemporary topics, as well as reworkings of classical themes. This paper examines a number of eighteenth-century Latin poems dealing with beggars, several of which are here translated for the first time. Particular attention is paid to the way in which the Latin poems recycled well-worn tropes about beggary which were often at variance with the experience of real-life beggars, and to how the specificities of Latin verse might heighten negative representations of beggars in a genre which, as a manifestation of elite culture, appealed to the very class which was politically and legally responsible for controlling them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 24 , Special Issue 1: Poverty and Mobility in England, 1600–1850 , April 2013 , pp. 41 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

Notes

1. Hitchcock, Tim, ‘“All beside the Rail, rang'd Beggars lie”: Trivia and the Public Poverty of Early Eighteenth-Century London’, in Clare Brant and Susan Whyman, E., ed., Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London: John Gay's Trivia (1716) (Oxford, 2007, 2009), pp. 74–89, quotations from pp. 80, 83Google Scholar.

2. In their Introduction, Brant and Whyman use David Cressy's figures to state that ‘By 1700, the national literacy rate was at least 45 per cent for men and 25 per cent for women, though for London women it was nearer 48 per cent’ (p.5), but they also suggest (p. 22, n. 15) that ‘These statistics are low’.

3. Bradner, Leicester, Musae Anglicanae: A History of Anglo-Latin Poetry 1500–1925 (New York, 1940)Google Scholar; Money, D. K., The English Horace: Anthony Alsop and the Tradition of British Latin Verse (Oxford, 1998).Google Scholar As well as her work on Bourne, cited below, Estelle Haan has published studies of the Latin poetry of John Milton, Joseph Addison and Thomas Gray.

4. Fowler, Alastair, ed., John Milton: Paradise Lost, 2nd ed. rev. (Harlow, 2007), p. 17.Google Scholar

5. Money, English Horace, pp. 247–9.

6. See, for example, Gilmore, John T., ‘Aethiopissae: The Classical Tradition, Neo-Latin Verse and Images of Race in George Herbert and Vincent Bourne’, Classical Receptions Journal, 1 (2009), 73–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a selection which includes examples of such themes, with verse translations, see Gilmore, John, ed. and trs., Musæ Anglicanæ Anglicè Redditæ: A Selection of Verse Written in Latin by British Poets of the Eighteenth Century (Coventry, 2007).Google Scholar

7. I owe the phrase about the ‘barrier of words’ to David Hitchcock. The Latin poems discussed in this article are all from collections which were once well known, and my selection makes no claims to comprehensiveness. It is, indeed, very likely that other Latin poems on the same subject could be found elsewhere.

8. The first published version is Brome, Richard, A Joviall Crew: Or, The Merry Beggars (London, 1652).Google Scholar All quotations are from this edition, which is available on EEBO (Early English Books Online). It is unpaginated.

9. Martin Butler, ‘Brome, Richard (c. 1590–1652), playwright’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition, consulted 11th February 2012.

10. Salgādo, Gāmini, ed., Cony-Catchers and Bawdy Baskets: An Anthology of Elizabethan Low Life (Harmondsworth, 1972)Google Scholar, ‘Introduction’, p. 12. For an overview of the legal position, see Beier, A. L., ‘“A New Serfdom”: Labor Laws, Vagrancy Statues, and Labor Discipline in England, 1350–1800’, in Beier, A. L. and Ocobock, Paul, ed., Cast Out: Vagrancy and Homelessness in Global and Historical Perspective (Athens, Ohio, 2008), pp. 35–63.Google Scholar

11. See examples in Salgādo, ed., Cony-Catchers.

12. Butler, ‘Brome.’

13. Anon., The Merry Beggars of Lincolns-Inn-Fields (London, n.d.). Copy in the library of Magdalene College, Cambridge (Pepys 4.252); facsimile and transcription available online at the English Broadside Ballad Archive site at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I am grateful to David Hitchcock for drawing my attention to the ballad literature generally and to this ballad in particular.

14. Anon, The Beggers [sic] Chorus, In the Jovial Crew (Pepys 4.251); Anon., The Beggars Chorus; or, The Jovial Crew (British Library, Roxburghe 3. 676–7; almost identical to the preceding item); Anon., The Jovial Crew, Or, Beggers-Bush [sic] (Glasgow University Library, Euing Ballads 150); Anon., The Jovial Beggars Merry Crew (British Library, Roxburghe, 4.51), all available on the English Broadside Ballad Archive site. Although the website ascribes authorship of the first of these to Brome himself, it is not in the text of the 1652 edition of his play.

15. Lamb, Charles, ‘The Ballad Singers,’ in Lucas, E. V., ed., Poems and Plays by Charles and Mary Lamb (London, 1912), pp. 67–9.Google Scholar Lamb's translations from Bourne were first published in his Album Verses, with a few others (London, 1830).

16. For a modern study of Bourne, see Haan, Estelle, Classical Romantic: Identity in the Latin Poetry of Vincent Bourne (Philadelphia, 2007).Google Scholar For the publishing history of Bourne, see Haan, Classical Romantic, pp. 7–9, and for the translations by Cowper, Lamb and Shelley, see Haan, Classical Romantic, pp. 14–18. The reference to ‘immense popularity’ is on p. 4. The best edition is Mitford, John, ed., Poematia Latine partim reddita partim scripta a Vincentio Bourne . . . (London, 1840)Google Scholar, and all quotations are taken from this. While this and other old editions of Bourne's poems are now easily obtainable as print-on-demand reprints, there is no modern scholarly edition.

17. Lamb, Charles, ‘A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis’, in Lamb, Charles, ed. Lucas, E. V., Elia and the Last Essays of Elia (London, 1912), pp. 130–37Google Scholar, with editor's notes at pp. 392–5. Lucas states that ‘A Complaint’ was first published in the London Magazine, June 1822, and that ‘The origin of this essay was the activity at that time of the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity, founded in 1818’.

18. John Mitford, ed., Poematia, pp. 188–9. For a discussion of the poem as a whole, see Haan, Classical Romantic, pp. 90–94.

19. Lattimore, Richmond, trs., The Odyssey of Homer (New York, 2007 [this translation first published 1967]), pp. 270–73Google Scholar.

20. See Thomas Harman, A Caveat for Common Cursitors (1566), in Salgādo, ed., Cony-Catchers, pp. 79–153.

21. Este, Charles, ed., Carmina Quadragesimalia ab Ædis Christi, Oxon. alumnis composita et ab ejusdem Ædis baccalaureis determinantibus in Schola Naturalis Philosophiæ publice recitata (Oxford, 1723), p. 86.Google Scholar

22. Previously unpublished translation by John T. Gilmore, 2011.

23. Such manuscript attributions can be found in copies in the British Library, shelfmarks 11409.ee.12 and 1507.656; and in Cambridge University Library, shelfmark 7706.d.269. I have a copy of Anthony Parsons, ed., Carmina Quadragesimalia . . . [full title as 1723 collection] (Oxford, 1748) with similar attributions, and a series of contributions in mid-nineteenth-century issues of Notes and Queries testify to continuing interest in these anthologies and supply attributions from copies then in private hands, e.g., W. H. Gunner in Notes and Queries (1856) S2-II (42), 312–3; ‘Oxoniensis’ in Notes and Queries (1856) S2-II (44), 355. See also Wordsworth, Christopher, Social Life at the English Universities in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1874), pp. 308–14.Google Scholar The different sets of attributions show a high level of consistency. Information about the Booth brothers from Foster, Joseph, ed., Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1891).Google Scholar

24. Prior, R., ed., Lusus Westmonasterienses, Sive epigrammatum et Poematum minorum Delectus (Westminster, 1730), pp. 183–4.Google Scholar

25. Previously unpublished translation by John T. Gilmore, 2011.

26. Hay, William, Select Epigrams of Martial (London, 1755), p. 87.Google Scholar The source text is Martial, VII, xxxix.

27. Charles Este, ed., Carmina Quadragesimalia, pp. 80–81.

28. Previously unpublished translation by John T. Gilmore, 2011.

29. Biographical details from Foster, ed., Alumni Oxonienses.

30. Warton, Joseph, et al., The Works of Virgil, In Latin and English, 3rd ed., 4 volumes (London, 1778)Google Scholar, II, 133. Pitt's translation of the Aeneid was first published in 1740.

31. Anon., The Beggars Song, Both in City and Country. Showing the Contentedness of their Lives, the Little Care they take, and how Merrily they Live (Magdalene College, Cambridge: Pepys 4.252); available online at the English Broadside Ballad Archive site.

32. Charles Este, ed., Carmina Quadragesimalia, pp. 89, 90. A footnote on p. 89 specifically identifies Vesey (‘Vesæus’ in Latin) as ‘Lictor olim Academicus’.

33. See James Binns, ‘Sir Henry Newton and the War’; John Gilmore, ‘Schoolboy Patriotism and Gender Stereotypes in the Reign of Queen Anne’; and David Money, ‘The Edge of War: How Some Poets (and Preachers) Reacted to Oudenarde and Lille’, in Money, David, ed., 1708: Oudenarde and Lille (Cambridge, 2008)Google Scholar, pp. 102–5, 106–9, 122–36.

34. Lady Montagu, Mary Wortley, The Turkish Embassy Letters, ed. Jack, Malcolm, intro. Anita Desai (London, 1994, 2004), p. 4Google Scholar.

35. Salamon, Linda Bradley, ‘Vagabond Veterans: The Roguish Company of Martin Guerre and Henry V,’ in Dionne, Craig and Mentz, Steve, eds, Rogues and Early Modern English Culture (Ann Arbor, 2004), pp. 261–93.Google Scholar

36. Pratt, Lynda, ed., Robert Southey: Poetical Works 1793–1810, 5 volumes (London, 2004)Google Scholar, Vol. 5, Selected Shorter Poems, c. 1793–1810, p. 227.

37. ‘Faithless Nelly Gray: A Pathetic Ballad,’ in Thomas Hood, Poems of Thomas Hood, intro. Walter Jerrold (London, 1907), p. 360.

38. Dickie, Simon, ‘Hilarity and Pitilessness in the Mid-Eighteenth Century: English Jestbook Humour’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 37: 1 (Fall 2003), 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lund, Roger, ‘Laughing at Cripples: Ridicule, Deformity and the Argument from Design’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 39: 1 (Fall 2005), 91–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39. Hay, William, Deformity: An Essay (London, 1754)Google Scholar, quotation from p. 4. Translator of the Select Epigrams of Martial (above, n. 26), Hay was a Member of Parliament.

40. Mitford, ed., Poematia, pp. 135, 137.

41. E. V. Lucas, ed., Poems and Plays by Charles and Mary Lamb, p. 67.

42. Haan, Classical Romantic, p. 55.

43. Charles Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas, Elia and the Last Essays of Elia, p. 131.

44. Lamb, Elia, pp. 131, 137.

45. Wordsworth, William, Lyrical Ballads, with other Poems, 2nd ed., 2 volumes (London, 1800)Google Scholar, II, 156.

46. Fürstenberg, Ferdinand von, ‘De Mopso fidissimo cane mortuo’, in Septem Illustrium Virorum Poemata, 2nd. ed. (Amsterdam, 1672), pp. 253–4Google Scholar

47. Quoted in Haan, Classical Romantic, p. 8, n. 40.

48. Haan, Classical Romantic, pp. 9–10.

49. Salgādo, ed., Cony-Catchers, p. 18.