[In the essay below, Pebworth examines several versions of Wotton's “Dazel'd Thus, with Height of Place,” contending that this poem about the fall of a courtier was repeatedly appropriated and applied to various disgraced political figures.]

That the poems of Sir Henry Wotton present intriguing problems of transmission and text there is no doubt.¹ Two of the sixteen poems now attributed with some certainty to him have received significant attention, J. B. Leishman having examined the confused transmission of “You Meaner Beauties of the Night” and C. F. Main having traced the manuscript history of “The Character of a Happy Life.”² These investigations have led us to distrust the copy text previously accepted as definitive, the Reliquiœ Wottonianœ text of 1651, prepared for publication by Wotton's friend, biographer, and fishing companion Isaak Walton. Leishman discovered copies of “You Meaner Beauties” that contain stanzas not present in the Reliquiœ text and pointed out that the Scots soon appropriated the poem, eventually claiming its author to be Lord Darnley and its subject Mary Stuart. Main pointed out the variation in stanza order and the differing lengths of manuscript copies of “The Character,” as well as variants in wording, and amplified Leishman's study of “You Meaner Beauties” by recalling that at least two surviving manuscripts declare that poem's subject to be the Spanish Infanta, whom Prince Charles wooed unsuccessfully in 1623.³ As intriguing as are the textual problems of “You Meaner Beauties” and “The Character,” they are surpassed in complexity and interest by the fate of Wotton's “Dazel'd Thus, with Height of Place.” Not only does this poem exist in versions of differing lengths, and not only is it variously designated as “Upon … Somerset, Then Falling from Favor” and “To the Ld. Bacon Then Faling [sic] from Favour”; but it also survives in at least five totally different Latin translations, none of them to my knowledge ever published; and it appears in one Bodleian Library manuscript as a composition by the first Duke of Buckingham, followed there by an envoi which proclaims it to be, literally, Buckingham's swan song, written shortly before his assassination. Careful examination of textual and contextual problems associated with “Dazel'd Thus, with Height of Place” affirms the textual superiority of the now suspect Reliquiœ Wottonianœ and documents the practice of “appropriation” to which manuscript poems of the earlier seventeenth century were subject.

I

Certainly the best-known version of the poem, the one most often reprinted, is that appearing in Reliquiœ Wottonianœ (1st ed., 1651, p. 522), headed “Upon the sudden Restraint of the Earle of Somerset, then falling from favor” and subscribed “H. W.”:

Dazel'd thus, with height of place,
Whilst our hopes our wits beguile,
No man markes the narrow space
'Twixt a prison, and a smile.
Then, since fortunes favours fade,
You, that in her armes doe sleep,
Learne to swim, and not to wade;
For, the Hearts of Kings are deepe.
But, if Greatness be so blind,
As to trust in towers of Aire,
Let it be with Goodness lin'd,
That at'least, the Fall be faire.
Then though darkned, you shall say,
When Friends faile, and Princes frowne,
Vertue is the roughest way,
But proves at night a Bed of Downe.

The subject of the poem in this text is alleged to be Robert Carr (or Ker), a handsome Scotsman who, in 1606 or 1607 at about the age of twenty, became a favorite of King James I.⁴ His rise to favor and power was rapid. Knighted late in 1607, he was created Viscount Rochester in 1611 and Earl of Somerset in 1613. From about 1609 his secretary and advisor was Sir Thomas Overbury, who gained posthumous fame as the author of a witty collection of characters. Against Overbury's advice, Carr determined to marry Frances Howard, wife of the third Earl of Essex. In a scandalous proceeding, aided by the King, that lady obtained a nullification of her marriage to Essex, charging nonconsummation and hinting that Essex was impotent; and she and Carr were married late in 1613. To remove Overbury from London during the nullity proceedings, King James offered him an ambassadorial position; and when Overbury proudly refused the offer, he was imprisoned. While in the Tower, he was poisoned. Evidence pointed to Frances Carr, now Countess of Somerset, whose hatred of him because of his opposition to her marriage with Carr was well known. In May of 1616, the Earl and Countess of Somerset were tried for complicity in the murder of Overbury, convicted, and sentenced to death. Their executions were never carried out. James pardoned both and, after they had suffered imprisonment in the Tower for six years, released them to live their remaining years in obscurity.

In the same year that saw the first publication of Reliquiœ Wottonianœ, 1651, there appeared in print an English version of Sir Francis Bacon's 1608 Latin treatise In Felicem Memoriam Elizabethœ, Angliœ Reginœ, published along with other works under the title The Felicity of Queen Elizabeth: And Her Times … (London: for George Latham).⁵ Included in that volume (pp.157-58) under the title “To the L^d. Bacon Then Faling [sic] from Favour” and unattributed, but in wording identical to the Reliquiœ text, is Wotton's “Dazel'd Thus, with Height of Place.” Like Somerset's, Bacon's rise to power was spectacular and his fall sudden. After what he considered to be slow advancement under Queen Elizabeth, Bacon rose rapidly under King James, being made Solicitor General in 1607, Attorney General in 1613, Lord Keeper in 1616/17, and Lord Chancellor in 1618. Also in 1618, he was created Baron Verulam, and in 1621 Viscount St. Albans. Shortly after achieving this latter honor, he was impeached by Commons for taking bribes, found guilty, imprisoned, and fined £40,000. Later the fine was remitted, and still later Bacon received a royal pardon; but he had been publicly disgraced, and he was forbidden to live in London.

By far the strangest use to which Wotton's poem was put is that in a manuscript miscellany in the Bodleian Library, Rawl. poet. 166. The volume purports to contain poems by Alphonso Mervall; but a seventeenth-century hand has labeled the outer cover “English versse by J. Cobbes,” and “Mervall” may be a pseudonym affected by Cobbes. The poems are mostly occasional, and their subject matter dates them in the late 1620s. A second hand, identified as that of James Harvey, has annotated the manuscript. On page 83, in the hand of “Alphonso Mervall,” occurs this five-stanza version of “Dazel'd Thus, with Height of Place”:

BY Y^E MOSTE ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE GEORGE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM &C.

Dazeled w(th) y(e) height of place,
whyle o(r) hopes o(r) witts beguyle,
No man notes y(e) narrowe space
'Twixte a prison, & a smyle.
Then since ffortunes Children fade,
yõ y(t) in her armes doe sleepe,
Learne to swimme, & not to wade,
ffor y(e) Heartes of Kings are deepe.
But if greatenes bee so blynde,
as to truste to Tow'res of Ayre,
Lett it bee w(th) Goodnes lyn'd,
y(t) att laste y(e) falle bee fayre.
So, though darckned, it maye saye,
(when ffrindes shrincke, & Princes frowne)
virtue is y(e) hardest waye,
yett att Night A bedde of Downe
All things falle, y(t) stande by Arte,
nought is free from fumes of swaye,
One manne acted ill his parte,
Lette another mende y(e) playe.

L'ENUOYE. PER I. CO:

Thus singes y(t) princely swayne before his Death:
As Swannes, in well tun'd ayres, resigne their breath.(6)

George Villiers, born in 1592, was introduced into Court in 1614 by Somerset's enemies as a possible rival for the King's affections. He was made Cupbearer that year, Gentleman of the Bedchamber in 1615, and Master of the Horse in 1616. Also in 1616, he was made a Knight of the Garter and created Viscount Villiers. In 1618/19, he was created Marquis of Buckingham; in 1619, he was made Lord High Admiral; and in 1623, he was created Duke of Buckingham. Clarendon wrote of him: “Never any man, in any age, nor I believe, in any country or nation, rose, in so short a time, to so much greatness of honour, fame, and fortune, upon no other advantage or recommendation than of the beauty and gracefulness and becomingness of his person.”⁷ Buckingham's vanity, lavishness, and foolhardiness eventually earned him the enmity of Commons. While James lived, Buckingham was somewhat bridled, and thereby protected from his own unwise instincts; but by the time that James died, Buckingham had such control over Charles that, in the words of Samuel Gardiner, for the first three years of the new king's reign, “Buckingham was, to all intents and purposes, king of England.”⁸ Buckingham's extravagances and the disastrous failures of his political and military ventures caused the Commons to impeach him (1 May 1626) and vote a remonstrance (12 June); and the King saved his favorite only by dissolving Parliament (14 June). In 1627, the Duke led an expedition to the Isle of Rhé which ended in disaster. The Parliament of 1628 drew up a new remonstrance against him, and on 23 September of that year Buckingham was assassinated by a discharged lieutenant of foot, John Felton.

II

Wotton's “Dazel'd Thus, with Height of Place” offers little in the way of internal evidence to identify its subject. It is, indeed, not so much a particularized poem on the fall of one individual as it is a warning to future aspirants to kingly favor. But through a consideration of facts external to the poem, one may arrive at a reasonable conclusion regarding the event which caused Wotton to write it.

An ambassador during most of the reign of James I, Sir Henry Wotton had ready access to Court when in London; and his correspondents kept him abreast of Court gossip when he was abroad. Moreover, he had direct dealings with Somerset, Bacon, and Buckingham. His association with Buckingham was particularly close. By 1617 or 1618, the ambassador was already seeking Villiers' favor;⁹ and there is reason to think that Wotton's poem “To a Noble friend in his Sickness” (Reliquiœ, 1651 ed., p.519), written about 1620, was addressed to Buckingham.¹⁰ From Venice in 1621(?), Wotton sent presents to Villiers; in 1622, he acted as Buckingham's agent in the purchase of paintings; and it was to the Duke that Wotton turned to plead for the Provostship of Eton, finally granted him on 19 July 1624.¹¹ When the Duke was impeached by Commons in 1626, Wotton, then at Eton, wrote to the Queen of Bohemia, telling her of the impeachment and defending Buckingham's character: “… I most ingeniously avow unto your Majesty, that among all the favourites which mine eyes have beheld in divers courts and times, I never saw before a strong heart, and eminent condition, so clearly void of all pride and swelling arrogancy, either in his face or in his fashion.”¹² And when, about 1633, Wotton wrote A Parallell betweene Robert late Earle of Essex, and George late Duke of Buckingham (London: no printer or bookseller, 1641) and A Short View of the Life and Death of Geo. Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (London: for William Sheares, 1642),¹³ he praised the Duke: “there was in his natural Constitution a marvelous equality”; he was a “strong, and high-minded” man, an excellent example of “Temperance and Sobriety,” if not always of “Continency” (A Parallell, pp.166, 183). Wotton chided the House of Commons for its fickleness in turning against Buckingham in 1626, defended the Duke's conduct at the Isle of Rhé, and concluded that Felton's true motive in assassinating Buckingham could be determined only by “The Prince of darkness it self” (A Short View, pp.224, 227, 232).

Despite Wotton's close association with Buckingham and despite the fact that the Duke's rapid rise to great power and his sudden fall make him an appropriate exemplum of the uncertainty of fortune and of the folly of trusting to “Tow'res of Ayre,” a number of details in Wotton's poem are inconsistent with Buckingham's situation. The poem's first stanza may imply that its subject was imprisoned (“No man notes the narrowe space / 'Twixte a prison, and a smyle”). Unlike both Somerset and Bacon, however, Buckingham was never jailed. The poem also indicates an inconstancy on the part of the monarch as at least partly responsible for the fall of the favorite (“the Heartes of Kings are deepe” and “when Frindes shrincke, and Princes frowne”). But while James allowed both Somerset and Bacon to be publicly disgraced, Charles did everything in his power to save Buckingham from public censure, even to the point of dissolving Parliament and tampering with its records. And finally, it is unlikely that one who had such respect for Buckingham would use him as an object lesson, at least in the accusatory terms implied by the moralistic fifth stanza (“One manne acted ill his parte, / Lette another mende the playe”).

The question remains why Alphonso Mervall or James Cobbes put Wotton's poem into the mouth of Buckingham. The Duke's death occasioned at least sixty poems, several praising him, a few giving fairly objective assessments of him, and many rejoicing in his death and virtually deifying his assassin.¹⁴ Several of these poems, most of which remain unattributed and virtually unattributable, have strong de casibus overtones; one of them, 300 lines long, is actually modeled closely on the tragedies in A Mirror for Magistrates, being divided into argument, protasis, and catastrophe.¹⁵ Alphonso Mervall himself wrote an 84-line “Memoriall” of the Duke, to which are appended a six-line epitaph and a four-line envoi.¹⁶ The poem is generous toward Buckingham, and it shows its author's acquaintance with the Duke's detractors, suggesting a familiarity with at least some of the versified abuse of Buckingham then in circulation. Moreover, though not itself of a particularly de casibus nature, it assigns fortune a significant role in the affairs of men. It is not unreasonable to conclude that Mervall-Cobbes, coming across a manuscript copy of “Dazel'd Thus, with Height of Place,” connected it with Buckingham because of its rather strong suggestion of a de casibus fall and invented a title and an envoi to tie it to the Duke's death. This appropriation of Wotton's poem is in effect a political statement on the part of Mervall-Cobbes. As the version exists in Rawl. poet. 166, with a framing device and dramatic situation added by Mervall-Cobbes, Buckingham's “swan song” is an admission of guilt, a confession that he “acted ill his parte.”

If the details of Wotton's poem seem inconsistent with Buckingham's experience, they describe well the situations of Somerset and Bacon. Although Wotton seems not to have been particularly close to Francis Bacon, the two men were distantly related, and they corresponded on at least one important occasion. On 20 October 1620, Bacon sent three copies of Novum Organum to Wotton, then in Vienna. Wotton responded soon afterwards, thanking Bacon for the books and praising the work highly.¹⁷ Wotton was in Venice during the spring of 1621 when Bacon was tried and convicted of bribery, but his friends in England certainly must have informed the ambassador at once of so major a scandal as the public disgrace of the Lord Chancellor.¹⁸ It is possible, then, that Wotton could have written the poem as a comment on Bacon's fall. But it is highly unlikely that he did.

Thomas Park, in his 1806 enlargement and continuation of Horace Walpole's Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, Scotland, and Ireland (London: for John Scott), defends Bacon as the subject of “Dazel'd Thus, with Height of Place.” Reprinting the poem from The Felicity of Queen Elizabeth, Park notes: “Sir E. Brydges has observed to me, that the above verses were collected into Reliquiæ Wottonianæ [sic], and bear a denotation of having been addressed to the earl of Somerset. I might add, however, that those denotations are of doubtful authority, and that the first edition of the Reliquiæ gave it no earlier appropriation than Bacon's Felicity, &c. Both books were published in the same year” (ii, 208-09 fn.4). It is true that both books appeared in 1651, but conclusive evidence exists that Reliquiœ Wottonianœ was published before The Felicity of Queen Elizabeth and, most significantly, that the compiler of the latter was familiar with Walton's collection of Wotton's literary remains. In “To the Reader,” prefaced to The Felicity of Queen Elizabeth, Wotton's comments on Bacon's Novum Organum are quoted, and their source is cited as “Page 412. of Wotton's Letters” (sig. A5^r). The Letters referred to can only be the 1651 Reliquiœ, on pages 411 and 412 of which appear, in the letter to Bacon mentioned above, Wotton's praise of Novum Organum. When one adds to this the fact that aside from quite minor variations in spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, the text of “Dazel'd Thus” in Felicity is identical to that in Reliquiœ,¹⁹ one has sufficient evidence to conclude that the anonymous compiler of The Felicity of Queen Elizabeth, seeing the poem's applicability to Bacon's situation and wishing to augment his slender volume, copied the poem from Reliquiœ Wottonianœ, changing the title to suit his purpose and omitting the attribution of its authorship.

The case for Somerset as the subject of Wotton's poem is much more convincing than are the cases for Bacon or Buckingham. Wotton knew the young Scotsman well. In 1612, he wrote to Carr, then Viscount Rochester, asking the favorite to intercede with the King in his suit to have his pension increased. A year later, Wotton seems to have been among the company who witnessed Carr's creation as Earl of Somerset; and Wotton's most trustworthy biographer speculates that Sir Henry, himself temporarily out of favor and between ambassadorial assignments, was “about the Court” when Somerset was arrested for complicity in Overbury's murder on 18 October 1615.²⁰ There is nothing in the poem which would contradict Carr as its subject. The third stanza fits well the circumstances of his disgrace, as it may be interpreted to imply that the favorite lacked “goodness”; and Somerset, in not protecting his sometime secretary Sir Thomas Overbury, who had on most occasions advised him quite well, was certainly open to such a charge. Moreover, as will be demonstrated below, the text in Reliquiœ Wottonianœ, while not authoritative in any absolute sense, is markedly superior to any surviving manuscript texts of the poem, a fact which should lead us to place some trust in the title given it there.

III

Several manuscript copies of “Dazel'd Thus, with Height of Place” survive, none of them holographs. Those in the miscellanies of the British Library and the Bodleian accurately reflect the range of variations to be found in the poem's text. Copies of the sixteen-line version are in British Library MSS. Sloane 1925 (hereafter cited as S5), fols. 30^v, 29^v, headed “Vpon Somersets fall” and subscribed “H. W.”;²¹ and Add. 25707 (cited as A), fol. 185^v, headed “Vpon the sudden restraint of a Fauorite” and subscribed “Hen: Wotten.”; and in Bodleian MSS. Tanner 465 (cited as T), fol. 61^v, headed “On the suddaine restraint of a Favorite” and subscribed “Idem.” (i.e., “S^r H. Wotton”); and Rawl. poet. 147 (cited as Rp7), pp. 97-98, headed, in the copyist's hand, “S^r H. W. (on y^e Duke of Somer.),” to which is added in a later hand “On the suddaine restraint of a Favorite. Impressa.”²² In addition to its appearance in Bodleian MS. Rawl. poet. 166 (cited as Rp6), the 20-line text is to be found in British Library MSS. Lands. 777 (cited as L), fol. 64^v, headed “To a Favorite” and subscribed “S^r Henry Wotton”; Sloane 1446 (cited as S6), fol. 76^r, headed “Of ffauorites” and unattributed; Harl. 1221 (cited as H1), fol. 110^r, untitled and unattributed; and Harl. 6038 (cited as H8), fol. 44^r, untitled and unattributed.²³

The first major textual question concerns the authenticity of the fifth quatrain found in H1, H8, L, Rp6, and S6. In their initial 16 lines, these copies differ from the Reliquiœ text in the following readings:

1 thus, with | with the all
2 Whilst | While all          our hopes our wits | our wits our hopes H1 H8 L S6
3 No man | Few do S6          marks | mark S6 notes Rp6
5 favours | children all
6 You | Yee H1 H8 S6          that | who S6
9 But | Or L
10 in | to Rp6
12 least | length H1 H8 L last Rp6 S6
13 Then | So Rp6 S6          you | it Rp6 he H1 H8 L we S6          shall | may all
14 When | While H1 H8 S6          fail | sink H1 H8 S6 shrink Rp6
15 roughest | hardest all
16 But proves | But L Yet H1 H8 Rp6 S6.

In the fifth stanza, H1, H8, L, and S6 differ from Rp6 (transcribed above in Section I) in these particulars:

17 that | which L
18 is free | remains all          fumes | fume H1 H8 S6.

In their first four quatrains, the longer versions of this poem preserve readings which are inferior to those of the Reliquiœ text. As an opening line, “Dazel'd thus, with height of place” (Rel.) is metrically more satisfying than “Dazel'd with the height of place” (all five longer versions). It is more appropriate that an adverb be accented (“thus”) than a short preposition (“with”); and “Dazel'd thus” is by far the stronger, more evocative, more dramatic beginning. In the second line, the Reliquiœ reading (“Whilst our hopes our wits beguile”) is clearer than the reading common to H1, H8, L, and S6 (“While our wits our hopes beguile”). The sense is that desire can woo one away from rational behavior, and the inversion presented in “our hopes our wits beguile” (subject-object-verb) is certainly clearer and less open to misinterpretation than is the far less common kind of inversion represented by “our wits our hopes beguile” (object-subject-verb). While it is a general rule that the harder reading (“lectio difficilior”) is probably authorial, it would be rash of a poet to use an uncommon inversion if in doing so he clearly risked misunderstanding and the resultant charge of contradicting good sense.²⁴ The occurrence of “sink” in line 14 of H1, H8, and S6 (“fail” in Rel.) might be seen as an allusive link to “swim” and “wade” in line seven; but in the second stanza it is the subject of the poem who must learn to swim, not wade, and having his friends “sink” in the third stanza creates a not very satisfactory metaphor. The reading of “shrink” in Rp6 is more defensible than “sink,” of which it is probably the source; but it is no more compelling than the “fail” of the Reliquiœ text. Of the alliteration in line 14 and elsewhere, I shall have more to say later. The readings of “But” (L) and “Yet” (H1, H8, Rp6, S6) for “But proves” (Rel.) are both trivializations designed to introduce total uniformity in meter, reducing line 16 to the same headless character which marks all the other lines of the poem. Of the problem of meter, I will also have more to say later.

The readings of H1, H8, L, Rp6, and S6 are inferior to, or at best not superior to, the ones in Reliquiœ. Such a judgment might alone be enough to call into question the authenticity of the fifth stanza found in those manuscripts, but there are independent reasons for believing that lines 17-20 are spurious. While noting that this fifth stanza is linked to the fourth by rhyme, the only occasion in the poem where stanzas are so linked, one cannot avoid being struck by the abrupt shift in tone between the gentle, melancholy statements of advice in the first sixteen lines and the heavy pronouncements of lines 17 and 18 (“All things fall that stand by Art, / Nought is free from fumes of sway”); and the all-the-world's-a-stage cliché in lines 19 and 20 (“One man acted ill his part, / Let another mend the play”) seems tacked on as an all too easy afterthought. One may conclude, therefore, that all the manuscripts preserving that fifth stanza are suspect.

Among the manuscript copies of “Dazel'd Thus, with Height of Place” which contain only four quatrains, S5 follows Reliquiœ faithfully, while Rp7 shows the largest number of variants:

1 Dazel'd thus | Thus dazeled
2 Whilst | While
3 marks | heeds
5 favours | children
9 But | Or
13 darkned, you shall | broken, he may
14 fail | sink
15 roughest | hardest
16 But proves | Yet.

The copy in T follows Reliquiœ in lines 2 and 3; preserves the same readings as Rp7 in line 1 (“Thus dazeled with the height of place”); inserts “do” before “fail” in line 14; and merges the extremes of Reliquiœ and Rp7 in lines 13 (“darkned, he may”) and 16 (“But at night”). The copy in A follows Reliquiœ in lines 1, 3, 5, 14, and 15; presents the same wording as Rp7 in lines 9 and 16; and varies from both in lines 11 (“Let them be”) and 13 (“darkned, he shall”).

Two characteristics of the Reliquiœ text of “Dazel'd Thus, with Height of Place” deserve attention. Its iambic tetrameter lines are headless in all instances except that of the final line, and six of its lines (3, 5, 10, 12, 14, and 16) betray someone's strong penchant for alliteration. The version of “Dazel'd Thus” in Rp7 is much less alliterative than that in Reliquiœ, preserving the double sounds in lines 10 and 12 only and reducing the triple alliteration of line 5 to a double one. If we are to trust the Reliquiœ texts of his poems at all, Wotton was fond of alliteration;²⁵ and even Dame Helen Gardner's eclectic text of “You Meaner Beauties,” obviously prepared in response to Leishman's suggestion, contains alliterations as insistent as those in the Reliquiœ text of “Dazel'd Thus.”²⁶ The presence of more alliterative phrases in the Reliquiœ version of “Dazel'd Thus” than in most manuscript copies of the poem may be taken as yet more evidence that the printed text comes closer to being authorial than they.

Metrically, the Reliquiœ text of “Dazel'd Thus” is also superior to those manuscript copies which vary from it. Opening the poem with “Thus dazeled with height of place” (Rp7) is better than beginning it “Dazel'd with the height of place” (H1, H8, L, Rp6, and S6), but both of these variants are inferior to the Reliquiœ reading: “Dazel'd thus, with height of place.” Making three syllables of “dazeled” weakens the word; and even when it is reduced to two syllables by the insertion of “the” before “height” (T), the line is still weaker than it is in Reliquiœ, and there is an awkward lack of flow between lines 1 and 2 not felt in the Reliquiœ version. The final line of the poem is also better in the Reliquiœ and related texts than it is in Rp7 and those manuscript copies related to it. The introduction of an initial unaccented syllable in the ultimate line (Rel.) makes the accent fall on a strong verb (“proves”) rather than on a conjunction (“Yet” in Rp7 and A; “But” in T); and, more importantly, the sudden appearance of an initial unaccented syllable after fifteen headless lines provides an effective metrical sign of finality.

In his classic Textual Criticism, Paul Maas has advised, “Where several conjectures are available we should choose in the first instance that which is best in style and matter.”²⁷ The metrics, the sustained and unified tone, and the progression from brilliant light to darkness in the Reliquiœ Wottonianœ version of “Dazel'd Thus, with Height of Place” mark it as “best in style and matter” among surviving early copies of the poem.

As the distinguished editor J. Max Patrick has observed, “Editors are Knights Errant whose quest is to discover damsels called True Virgin Texts as Intended by Authors.”²⁸ We may never lay eyes on, much less rescue, the True Virgin Text of “Dazel'd Thus, with Height of Place.” Wotton died in 1639, and the poem was not published until 1651. No authorial manuscript has come to light. We do not know the state in which Wotton left his papers; and we have no way of knowing exactly what liberties Izaak Walton took with the text of the poems, if any. Walton's manipulation of biographical fact has recently been called forcibly to our attention,²⁹ and both Leishman and Main would have us believe that his editorial efforts are suspect as well. I make no claim here that the text of “Dazel'd Thus” which Walton forwarded to the printer of Reliquiœ Wottonianœ was authorial; but I do think that it is better and more defensible than the representative manuscript texts in the Bodleian and the British Library, and I find the denotation of Somerset as its subject to be infinitely more reasonable than the supposition that it is about either Bacon or Buckingham.

Such appropriations as those perpetrated by Alphonso Mervall-James Cobbes, by the compiler of The Felicity of Queen Elizabeth, by that patriotic Scotsman who gave “You Meaner Beauties of the Night” to Mary Stuart, and by the unknown copyists who attributed the inspiration of that same poem to the Spanish Infanta were all possible because so much early seventeenth-century poetry with political content or overtone circulated in manuscript for some time before being printed, if printed at all. The first two Stuarts to rule England exercised significant control over the country's presses; but even if they had not, it would have been unwise for anyone to publish poems, signed or not, which might be seen as critical of the ruling monarch or of other powerful individuals. Encouraged by these conditions, the practice of appropriation during the transmission of political poetry may also reflect important attitudes about the nature and uses of poetry and its universality. “Dazel'd Thus, with Height of Place” may have been linked with Bacon and Buckingham not as the result of ignorance or mendacity on the part of copyists and compilers, but as conscious political and critical statements. To apply Wotton's generalizations about the fall of Somerset to the relatively similar eclipses of Bacon and Buckingham is to attest the poem's living meaning and to see Bacon and Buckingham in a specific political and cultural light. At any rate, the practice of appropriation, especially of those poems relatively general in their statements, is widespread in the earlier seventeenth century³⁰ but has not been sufficiently explored. As Norman K. Farmer, Jr. has remarked, we need to learn many aspects of “the networks for the transmission of literature and ideas within relatively homogenous groups” during the period.³¹ Among these aspects is this peculiar practice of appropriation, interestingly illustrated by the bibliographical history of Sir Henry Wotton's “Dazel'd Thus, with Height of Place.”

APPENDIX

Alphonso Mervall-James Cobbes on the Death of Buckingham

[Transcribed from Bodleian MS. Rawl. poet. 166, pp. 57-59, a holograph annotated by James Harvey. Harvey's annotations are reproduced in italics.]

[p. 57]
                                        A memoriall of y(e) Illustrious prince
                                                            George D: of Buck:
                                                                                by A. M. E.
Since Adulation cannot hope for grace,
& vulgar Enuy hath in mee no place;
I come vnknowne, vnsought of thyne & thee,
Greate peere, to celebrate thy memory.
Is it the learned throngue impell's to write?
Or loathing of y(e) popular despight?
Or doe I serue thy liuing freinds, my Name
concealing, & auoyding publique fame?
Neither: but where ennobled virtue falle's,
my loue commande's t'adorne her funeralls.
Thy Intercepted life can bee no lette
to virtue, rysing ()where shee seeme's to sette.          (x)when
Publique ingratitude enshrineth thee:
true virtue gayne's not Popularitye.
where insubstantiall shadowes doe delight
the vulgar Judgement, & rebutted sight.
Ô heady Monster, Brayneles Multitude;
what fury leadest thee still to Intrude
on princes rights: & by thy brute desires
prefyne y(e) lations(32) of those heauenly fyres?
heauen hath instructed them for high designes:
experience read them ()fates abstruser lynes.          (x)fortune's secret
Industry, following rules necessityes,
a thowsand shapes, & sundry wayes supplye's,
by w(ch) they steare vnto this porte alone
y(t) peace, fame, safety may enrich y(e) throane.
hence peace, warre, truces, leagues, affinityes,
Ambassades,(33) & state's other misteryes.
of w(ch) y(e) vulgar ()seldome can Judge true;          (x)never
because th'euents, not councells it doth viewe.
where as y(e) best aduis'd attemptes of all
()fate causeth ofte successelessely to falle.          (x)heaven
what Impudence then to Impute to thee
o(r) publique priuate crosses, publique miserye?
for lette each manne himselfe t'examen bring
hee'l fynd his crimes exceede his suffering.
laye then y(e) blame, where blame is merited.
[p.58]
lett Innocence bee lefte vnblemished,
saye y(t) Plagues, famine, warre, are scourges sent
frõ heauen, for heynous sinne's Juste punishment.
for Achan's sinne shall faultles Israel paye:(34)
& wee all Achans beare no blame awaye?
Could wee haue leisure to obserue thy waye?
to scrue(35) thy Actions, & thy thoughts desplaye?
& where no signe of faulte suspicion founde,
thy Inwarde conscience & thy fayth to sounde?(36)
& are our owne faulte's caste by vs behynde,
y(t) no draught of them resteth in o(r) mynde?
what founde those Zoylists(37) in thee worthy blame
y(t) sought thy life, & to 'pollute 'attaynte thy fame?
what? y(t) thy ample soule's magnificence
they tearmed lauish waste, & vayne expence.
thy valiant breaste, y(t) could not learne to feare,
they thought fonde diuinations so did reare.(38)
thy grace w(th) princes, dearely merited,
they thought by wanton fortune ministred.
thy generous mynde for to ()adorne thy freindes,          (x)advance
they thought respected but thy priuate endes.
thy youth, thy fortune, nay thy life in fyne,
they did impute vnto thee for a crime.
harde happe of menne y(t) are in highest place.
luckles y(e) lotte of such as princes grace.
when first you are affected by y(e) king;
then vulgar enuy stewe's for poysonous sting.
to whome this cause alone doth ofte suffice,
y(t) virtue should aboue their basenes ryse.
shee neuer weigh's y(e) loade of youre affayres:
nor thincke's how slippery are fortune's stayres.
how necessary all your acts: y(e) same
not beeing youre's but onely for y(e) Name.
shee ()will's yõ haue this rule before your eye          (x)bidds
No loue to princes, but fidelitye.
alas too much shee doth frõ menne require:
& what y(e) wyse would only but desire.
shee censure's euer, but ean shee neuer mende's
[p.59]
Nor knowe's shee what would please; but what offend's.
where as y(e) wise, y(t) purer soules retayne,
& knowe what humane Nature may attayne,
doe fynde in thee, greate prince, what to commende,
& what thy fame to Ages shall extende.
thy Errours (such humanity must vse)
they knowe thy youth, or fortune may excuse,
letts letts leaue them then; the wyse their losse to playne
y(e) vulgar soone to wishe thee heere agayne.
                                        his Epitaphe.
          Of kingly fauours, loe, y(e) obiect I,
          & vulgar Enuy heere enshined(39) lye.
          the firste my life w(th) glorious state did crowne:
          the laste my death, vnwilling doth renowne.
          Thus both in life & death vnparalell'd
          a peereles state aparte greate Villers helde.

p^r A. M. A.⁴⁰

                                        L'enuoye.
          These lynes y(e) lawfull Issue of my brayne
          Another fathered for y(e) loue of gayne.
          thus I & many more doe swincke,(41) y(e) whyles
          some Idle are enriched by o(r) spoyles.

A. M.

Notes

1. This paper was presented in a slightly different form at the Bibliography section of the Midwest Modern Language Association annual meeting, Chicago, 7 Nov. 1975. My research for this essay, a part of a larger study on poems relating to the first Duke of Buckingham, was aided by the University of Michigan-Dearborn Grants Committee. I also wish to thank my colleagues Christopher C. Dahl and Claude J. Summers for their helpful advice.

2. “‘You Meaner Beauties of the Night’: A Study in Transmission and Transmogrification,” The Library, 4th ser. 26 (1945), 99-121; “Wotton's ‘The Character of a Happy Life,’” ibid., 5th ser. 10 (1955), 270-74.

3. This last was noticed earlier in John Hannah, ed., Poems by Sir Henry Wotton … (London: Pickering, 1845), pp. 25-26.

4. The exact date of Carr's birth is unknown. The most thorough and readable account of his life and of the scandal that caused his eclipse is Beatrice White, Cast of Ravens: The Strange Case of Sir Thomas Overbury (London: John Murray, 1965).

5. James Spedding seems not to have known this translation; he himself provided the English version appearing in The Works of Francis Bacon (1857-59; rpt. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1869), xi, 422-23, 443-61.

6. The first word of the heading betrays a false start, “D” having been altered to “B.” The first two words of the envoi are underlined, and in the margin Harvey has noted: “soe sang (in another mss [sic]).” I have been unable to locate other copies of this envoi. On the facing page, Harvey has entered three of his own Latin renderings of the poem.

7. History of the Rebellion, ed. W. D. Macray (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), i, 10.

8. DNB, art. “George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham.”

9. In a letter dated about Nov. 1617 among the Dropmore mss. (Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1st Report, pt. ii, p. 53) and in Letter 229 in Logan Pearsall Smith, The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton (1907; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), ii, 130-31.

10. In Bodleian MS. Rawl. poet. 147, p. 101, the poem, attributed to Wotton, appears under the heading “On the Duke of Buckingham sicke of a feaver.”

11. Smith, Life, 1, 200-01; and Letters 346 (ii, 211-12), 373 (ii, 242-44), 381 (ii, 256-58), 414 (ii, 293-97, esp. p. 294), and 430 (ii, 315-17, esp. p. 316).

12. Letter 414, Smith, ii, 295.

13. Both tracts were collected in Reliquiœ Wottonianœ. Subsequent citations are to their appearance in the 4th ed. of that work (London: for B. Tooke and T. Sawbridge, 1685).

14. Several of these poems were printed in Frederick W. Fairholt, ed., Poems and Songs Relating to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; and His Assassination by John Felton, August 23, 1628, Early English Poetry, 29 (London: for the Percy Society, 1850). I have discovered many others in ms miscellanies of the period and am preparing an edition of them, in collaboration with Claude J. Summers, to be published as Poems on the First Duke of Buckingham.

15. “Vpon the Duke,” British Library ms. Sloane 826, fols. 171^r-178^r; Bodleian MS. Malone 23, pp. 145-57; pr. in Fairholt, pp. 36-46.

16. “A memoriall of y^e Illustrious prince George D: of Buck: by A[1phonso] M[ervall] E[squire],” Bodleian MS. Rawl. poet. 166, pp. 57-59, transcribed below in an appendix.

17. Letter 342, Smith, ii, 204-07; and fn. 1, ii, 204.

18. Wotton could also have learned of Bacon's disgrace and sentence rather quickly through reports of dispatches sent to the Doge and the Senate of Venice on 10 April and 14 May 1621 by Girolamo Lando, Venetian Ambassador to the English Court, items 17 and 50, Calendar of State Papers, Venetian (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1911), xvii, 15, 48.

19. Hannah notes, “The copy printed by Park nearly agrees with that in Reliquiœ Wottonianœ” (p. 26, emphasis supplied). In fact, Park's transcription of “While” for “Whilst” in line 2 is faulty, and the two texts of the poem printed in 1651 have exactly the same wording.

20. Smith, Life, i, 144; and Letters 206 (ii, 8-9) and 223 (ii, 33-34).

21. This ms has been bound in such a way that the first eight lines of Wotton's poem are on fol. 30^v and the final eight on 29^v.

22. In the nineteenth century, a ms copy of the four-quatrain text, entered in the hand of “Johs. Rasbrick vic. de Kirkton” on “the flyleaf of an Old Music Book,” was discovered and published by Edward F. Rimbault, N&Q, 1 (1850), 302. Headed “To the Lord Bacon When [sic] Falling from Favour,” it otherwise follows the Felicity reading exactly and was undoubtedly derived from that printing. I have been unable to locate its present whereabouts.

23. The latter two copies are remarkable in that they not only preserve exactly the same readings but also present the same two Latin translations of the poem.

24. As a case in point, the anonymous translator(s) of the poem in H1 and H8, where the English reads “while our wits our hopes beguile,” mistakenly rendered the line as “Et Spes inanes vis facit ingens” and “Spemque deludunt studia haud videtur.”

25. E.g., “The Character of a Happy Life,” ll. 6, 8, 15, 18, 22; “Eternal Mover, Whose Diffused Glory,” ll. 8, 9, 20: “To a Noble Friend in His Sickness,” ll. 3, 6, 15; “Tears at the Grave of Sir Albertus Morton,” ll. 1, 9, 17, 24, 28; etc.

26. The Metaphysical Poets (Harmondsworth and Baltimore: Penguin, 1957), p. 46. Note especially “curious Chanters,” l.6; “pure purpel,” l.12; and the combined consonance and alliteration of “my Mistres shal be seene,” l.16.

27. Trans. Barbara Flower (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), p.12.

28. “Critical Problems in Editing George Herbert's The Temple,” in The Editor as Critic and The Critic as Editor, Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, 13 Nov. 1971 (Los Angeles: Clark Library, 1973), p. 3.

29. See, e.g., David Novarr, The Making of Walton's Lives, Cornell Studies in English, 41 (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1958); R. C. Bald, “Historical Doubts Respecting Walton's Life of Donne,” in Essays in English Literature from the Renaissance to the Victorian Age Presented to A. S. P. Woodhouse, 1964, ed. Millar MacLure and F. W. Watt (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), pp. 69-84; Bald, John Donne: A Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), esp. pp. 11-14; and Patrick, “Critical Problems in Editing George Herbert's The Temple,” esp. pp. 4-7.

30. E.g., Richard Corbett's “On the Birth of Prince Charles” (b. 1630) is headed “On the birth of Prince Henry” (b. 1640) in Bodleian MS. C. C. C. 325; Sir John Harrington's “The Author to Queene Elizabeth in praise of her reading” is entitled “To the Prince” (i.e., Charles) in Bodleian MS. Ash. 47; Wotton's “An Ode to the King, At his Returning from Scotland” was mistakenly included in the 1640 folio of Jonson's Works, where its occasion is denoted as “the Kings Birth-day”; and even Jonson's “Epitaph on Elizabeth, L. H.” is made into a political statement in Bodleian MS. Rawl. D. 1092, where it is headed “An Epitaph on Queene Elizabeth.”

31. “Robert Herrick's Commonplace Book? Some Observations and Questions,” PBSA, 66 (1972), 31. Another of Farmer's essays, “Fulke Greville's Letter to a Cousin in France and the Problem of Authorship in Cases of Formula Writing,” RenQ, 22 (1969), 140-47, though concerned with a prose work and the question of authorship, is also relevant here in that it illustrates the Renaissance practice of adapting existing ms materials to new purposes as the occasion dictated.

32. Prefine the lations; limit the movements.

33. Ambassadorial missions.

34. See Joshua 7:12-26.

35. Screw; examine rigorously.

36. Buckingham was popularly believed to be a secret Roman Catholic.

37. Zoilists; carping critics.

38. Buckingham was rumored to take no thought for his personal safety because he was convinced that he could not be killed. In fact, he had some presentiment of danger but thought he could handle anything short of mob action: “A shirt of mail would be but a silly defence against any popular fury. As for a single man's assault, I take myself to be in no danger. There are no Roman spirits left.” (Quoted by Samuel Gardiner, DNB, art. “George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham.”)

39. Enshrined (?)

40. Per Alphonso Mervall Armiger (i.e., Esquire).

41. Swinch; toil, labor.