[In the following essay, Spencer discusses the two editions of Tate's Poems and his translations of Latin classics, which the critic says show that Tate was not particularly creative or original but had considerable talent for collaboration. The critic then examines Tate's mock-heroic poem, A Poem upon Tea, and offers a brief assessment of the author's place in English literary history.]

SHORT POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS OF OVID AND JUVENAL

Of the sixty-nine pieces in the first edition of Tate's Poems (1677), about half belong to the tradition of melancholy verse that reaches back to the early years of the seventeenth century and forward to the period of Tate's laureateship around 1700, a time whose “widespread fondness for melancholy subjects in literature” and for funeral elegies has been emphasized by Amy Reed and by J. W. Draper.¹ The publication of Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy in an eighth edition the year before Tate's poems appeared testifies to the continuing interest in the subject. However, the most respectable and most talented writer of this kind of verse during the 1670's was Tate's friend Flatman, who wrote of death so often that, when he composed an elegy on his brother, he could begin with the thought that he had nothing on the subject left to say.² Tate commented on Flatman's common theme in his first published poem from the point of view of the admiring apprentice:

          Strange Magick of thy Wit and Stile,
Which to their Griefs Mankind can reconcile!
While thy Philander's tuneful Voice we hear,
          Condoling our disastrous State,
          Toucht with a sense of our hard Fate,
          We sigh perhaps, or drop a Tear;
But he the mournful Song so sweetly sings,
That more of Pleasure than Regret it brings, …(3)

In another poem, “Ode. To my Ingenious Friend, Mr. Flatman,” Tate emphasized his apprenticeship as Icarus to Flatman's Daedalus.⁴

Especially interesting are the melancholy poems which seem to look forward to the eighteenth century or beyond. Tate's “Mid-Night Thought,” for example, seems to anticipate Edward Young's Night Thoughts (1742), two-thirds of a century later:

Now that the twinkling Stars essay
A faint Resemblance of the Day,
Shewn fairer now for being set
In Night (like Diamonds in Jett)
Let me (repos'd within this Grove)
The solemn Season once improve.
Restless, Alass! from Sun to Sun,
A Round of Business I have run:
Whilst others slept, projecting lay,
My Night as thoughtful as my Day;
How long since I did meditate
Of Life, of Death, and future State?
Approaching Fate his Pace will keep,
Let Mortals watch, or let them sleep.
What Sound is that?—a Passing Bell!
Then to Eternity farewell! …(5)

And in “Disappointed” Tate seems to anticipate the mood of Matthew Arnold:

From Clime to Clime with restless Toyl we Roam,
But sadly still our old Griefs we retain,
And with us bear beyond the spacious Main
The same unquiet selves we brought from Home.(6)

Tate's melancholy is not the “divinest Melancholy” that Milton hails in “Il Penseroso,” but rather the Burtonian disease which, in “Melancholy,” Tate calls the “Malignant Humour, Poyson to my Blood,” from which he wants to escape.⁷ Usually, his melancholy poems have a strong moral emphasis. “On a Diseased Old Man, Who Wept at thought of leaving the World,” for example, and “Disswasion of an Aged Friend from leaving His Retirement” argue—one harshly, the other gently—the worthlessness of mundane concerns.

The longest poem in the 1677 volume, “The Vision. Written in a dangerous Fit of Sickness,” is of this kind. Dreaming that he enters “Death's sad Courts,” the poet comes to a cave filled with tablets hung on threads, each giving the story of a life. He finds one with his name on it and learns that he is about to die. When Death enters with his dart, scepter, skull, bloody attendants, and assistant diseases, the Dreamer pleads for his life on the grounds that, though he has been sinful, he should be allowed time to repent. His plea is denied, but, as the Demons are about to seize him, his Guardian Angel disperses them. Observing that the Dreamer is indeed close to death, the Angel gives him a vision of his own body, which the Dreamer addresses with disgust and loathing. Momentarily, he is given a vision of Heaven, and then he awakens to life—which seems to be Hell.⁸

The moral emphasis appears also in his “On the Present Corrupted State of Poetry” in the 1677 volume:

Write thy own Elegy Apostate Art,
Thou Angel once of Light;
But, since thy Fall, a Friend of Night,
Mankind endeav'ring to pervert.

The poet contrasts the noble religious origins of poetry, the support it has received from wise and potent kings, its dignity in more virtuous ages when it was used “t'embalm some Worthy Name,” and its freedom from mercenary concerns in the past with its present tendency to encourage “The Vanity and Vices of the Age; / Flatt'ring in Courts, and Rev'lling on the Stage.”⁹ He laments the poverty that befalls “Th'Unfortunate Man, whom any Muse befriends.”

I OTHER MODELS

The 1677 Poems was a typical first effort in that it contained many experiments and imitations of various recent or contemporary writers. One of these was Milton, who had died only three years earlier. As Raymond D. Havens has pointed out, Tate's poem “On Snow fall'n in Autumn, and Dissolv'd by the Sun” is an imitation of two stanzas of Milton's Nativity Ode.¹⁰Lycidas, from which Tate also borrowed in A Pastoral Dialogue (1691), is echoed at the end of “Melancholy,” in which Tate answers his own questionings of the “Book of Fate” as follows:

Who seeks for Happiness with nicest Care
Must watch its Seasons, and frequent its Haunt.
          Delight is a rich tender Plant
That Springs not in all Soils, and all the Year:(11)

Phoebus had replied similarly to the poet's question in Lycidas (11. 78-80): “Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, / Nor in the glistering foil / Set off to th'world, …”

Later, Tate expressed his admiration for Milton's style and occasionally even imitated it. Although he seems never to have published a poem in blank verse, he referred in 1688 to the “Majestic Plainness” of Milton's style, “just” but “Subservient to the Thought.”¹² In his epigram “On the Spectator,” published at the end of an essay by Addison in The Spectator for September 19, 1712 (No. 488), Tate imitates Milton's manner:

When first the Tatler to a Mute was turn'd,
Great Britain for her Censor's Silence mourn'd.
Robb'd of his sprightly Beams she wept the Night,
Till the Spectator rose, and blaz'd as bright.
So the first Man the Sun's first Setting view'd,
And sigh'd, 'till circling Day his Joys renew'd;
Yet doubtful how that second Sun to name,
Whether a bright Successor, or the same.
So we: but now from this Suspence are freed,
Since all agree, who both with Judgment read,
'Tis the same sun, and does himself succeed.

The Miltonic effect of the four-line metaphor describing the “first Man” is conveyed principally by the phrase “circling Day” and by the omissions of both subjects and verbs in lines 7 and 8 and of the verb in line 9. It seems surprising that Tate did not imitate Milton more than he did, for he seems to have regarded his predecessor as England's greatest poet; and, as the son of a Puritan minister, as a man with some scholarly attainments and an interest in education, and as a supporter of the poet's important role in encouraging moral reform, Tate must have found much of Milton's thought and attitude congenial. In part, the explanation of Tate's independence of Miltonic influence probably lies in the very different kinds of poems the two men were called upon to write.

About one-third of the poems in Tate's 1677 collection are love lyrics. Most are short and are set in a pastoral background in which shepherds—usually anonymous but sometimes named Strephon, Thirsis, Alexis, or Damon—discourse with or about shepherdesses, Laura, Sylvia, Larissa, Fanarett, Olinda, or Julia. Love is generally painful for Tate's shepherds. In “The Escape,” in fact, the lady fisherman hooks her lover; but, in her eagerness to land her catch, she lets him escape with a permanently painful jaw. One of Tate's more successful “love poems” is “Laura's Walk,” in which the lady is blended with the flowers in a manner reminiscent of Robert Herrick:

I.

The Sun far sunk in his Descent,
          Laid now his Tyrant Rays aside,
When Laura to the Garden went,
          To triumph over Natures Pride.

II.

The Rose-Buds blusht with deeper Dye,
          Envying Lillies paler grew;
The Violets droopt with Fear to spie
          On Laura's Veins a richer Blew.

III.

She stoopt and gather'd as she went,
          But whilst she slaughter'd sweetly Smil'd;
As Angells tho' for Ruine sent,
          Appear with Looks serene and mild.

IV.

But now grown weary with her Toyl,
          A Garland for her Brow she frames:
Thus with proud Trophies made o'th' spoil,
Her Conquest o'er the Spring proclaims.(13)

Of the more intellectual variety of love lyric, Tate attempted a few examples; but his development of the subject was usually slight. In “The Tear,” the rich drop on Julia's face will die whether or not it falls to earth; but it can be preserved in a vial and will even be frozen—converted to a diamond—if it is put close to Julia's heart. But this last thought leads to the reflection that there is hope, for the very existence of the tear shows that the frost of Julia's heart is breaking. In “The Politicians,” the title is witty; for the poem begins with the idea that, like politicians, lovers find that quarrels make the heart grow fonder; but Tate fails to develop the deeper possibilities of the metaphor. In “The Wish,” Abraham Cowley had asked for his mistress, few friends, and many books; more modestly in “The Choice,” Tate longs only for “a rurall Seat” and

          A private, but an active Life.
Conscience bold, and punctual to his Charge;
          My Stock of Health, or Patience large.
Some Books I'd have, and some Acquaintance too,
          But very good, and very few.(14)

One of the most individual poems in the 1677 volume is “Sliding on Skates in a hard Frost,” in which Tate maintains a suitably mock-heroic attitude toward his rather unconventional subject:

How well these frozen Floods now represent
Those Chrystal Waters of the Firmament!
Tho' Hurricanes shou'd rage, they cou'd not now
So much as curl the solid Water's Brow;
Proud Fleets whose stubborn Cables scarce withstood
The Fury of the late tempestuous Flood,
In watry Ligaments are restrain'd,
More fast than when in binding Ooze detain'd.
But tho their Service does at present fail,
Our selves without the aid of Tide or Gale,
On Keels of polisht Steel securely sail:
From ev'ry Creek to ev'ry Point we rove,
And in our lawless Passage swifter move
Than Fish beneath us, or than Fowl above.(15)

Other distinctive poems in the collection include “The Hurricane,” a dramatic monologue describing a shipwreck, and “The Beldam's Song,” which is the spell of a witch as she stirs her pot. In these two poems Tate may well have been imitating the two “operatic” versions of Shakespeare that were highly popular during the 1670's, The Tempest and Macbeth.¹⁶

II THE SECOND EDITION (1684)

Most of the poems underwent considerable revision for the second edition, published in 1684.¹⁷ Some of the changes seem to be mere tampering, but most are improvements, smoothing out awkward wording in the earlier version or making the meter more regular. The last five lines of the first stanza of “The Installment,” for example, had been extremely rough in meter and diction. The whole stanza originally read as follows:

Long have I Languisht in the Fire
          Of an unquenchable Desire;
And will it not suffice thee Love,
          That I thy patient Martyr am,
Unless thy Worship I promove,
          And proselyte others to thy Flame?
If as a Laick-Lover ought I act,
          What canst thou more from me expect,
Who am not gifted for a Teacher in the Sect?

In 1684 the last five lines were altered to read:

Unless thy Worship I improve,
          Converting others to thy Flame?
If I the Practise not neglect,
          Thou canst no more from Me expect:
Not gifted for a Teacher in the Sect.(18)

The thirty-three poems added in 1684 are a miscellaneous collection: a few are political or occasional; some are complimentary verses to Dryden and other friends on the publication of various works; some are songs, prologues, or epilogues for the plays Tate had written between 1677 and 1684; and more than a third are translations of Roman poets. One distinctive poem is “The Battle of the B[aw]ds in the Theatre Royal, December the 3d 1680,” which begins:

Give ore ye Tilters of the Pit, give ore,
Frighten the Boxes and your selves no more:
Two Amazons of Scandalous renown,
Have with dire Combat made this Field their own.

The method is that of the amused mock-heroic, not unlike the battle that concludes Pope's Rape of the Lock; Tate continued:

Strong Sarcenet Scarf with Hood of Gause more slight,
Promiscuously lay scatter'd in the fight:
Necklace and Pendants perish't in the fray,
And rev'rend Point that did the Art display,
Of Ages past had now its fatal Day.(19)

Bellona finally stops the fight, “And Drury-lane all loyal Wh———es resound.”

In form, the additions in 1684 are more conservative than the poems of 1677. Almost half those in the earlier volume are in couplets, about equally divided between tetrameter and pentameter. Five poems, including “Advice to a Friend” quoted above, are in couplets with alternating pentameter and tetrameter lines. Elaborate repeated stanzas appear in some of the love poems with the more extravagant conceits, such as “The Usurpers” and “The Tear.” Several poems are in quatrain stanzas, and several are in stanzas made up of unequal lines after the manner of Cowley's and Flatman's odes, although in only one of these poems—the “Ode. To my Ingenious Friend, Mr. Flatman”—does Tate use the word in the title. The ode was regarded as a noble form, and Tate's restraint may be the result of the same excessive modesty that later in 1677 led him to change the names in his first play. Of the poems added in 1684, twenty-six are in pentameter couplets, three in tetrameter couplets, two in quatrains, and two in irregular stanzas.

Many of the verses in the first edition show a poet in his early twenties feeling his way and experimenting with models from the recent past. But they demonstrate a sense of poetic form and often a felicity and smoothness of expression. It is not surprising that Dryden took an interest in the young poet, collaborating with him in translations and offering him The Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel. The second edition of the Poems shows more confidence; a preference for the pentameter couplet, in which Tate was to write almost all the rest of his nondramatic verse; and an inclination toward translation.

III TRANSLATIONS OF OVID AND JUVENAL

In 1680 Tate joined with Dryden and Flatman, as well as Thomas Rymer, Elkanah Settle, Thomas Otway, Samuel Butler, and at least ten other poets in a translation of Ovid's Epistles. Although Dryden wrote the Preface (“Ovid and the Art of Translation”), translated two Epistles himself, and collaborated with the Earl of Mulgrave on a third, the project was probably that of the publisher, Jacob Tonson.²⁰ Tate translated “Leander to Hero,” “Hero's Reply to Leander,” and “Medea to Jason,” of which the best is certainly the third—as Tate recognized, for he printed it but not the other two in the second edition of his Poems.

Ovid, a favorite in Restoration times, was admired especially for his “polite” and civilized style—“tenderly passionate and courtly,” according to Dryden.²¹ As the editors of the California edition point out, Dryden attempted to reproduce this style partly by omitting synaloephas (cutting off the vowel at the end of a word when the next begins with a vowel, as “th' are”); by omitting triplets; and, in “Dido to Aeneas,” by composing individual couplets that are not only end-stopped but are complete units, ending with a period or its equivalent and not built in clusters of several together. Ovid's verse, Dryden would remark in 1685, has “little variety of numbers and sound”; it “is always as it were upon the Hand-gallop, and his Verse runs upon Carpet ground.”²² Dryden ended about 72 percent of the couplets in “Dido to Aeneas” with final punctuation, as opposed to about 41 percent in “Canace to Marcareus” and 47 percent in “Helen to Paris.”²³ Tate used final punctuation at the end of over 80 percent of the couplets in “Hero to Leander,” almost 90 percent in “Leander's Answer to Hero,” and about 70 percent in “Medea to Jason.” A comparison with Tate's longer couplet poems written nearest to 1680 shows that he, too, was deliberately trying to imitate Ovid's style: in “The Vision, Written in a Dangerous Fit of Sickness” (1677), only 50 percent of the couplets end with final punctuation, and final punctuation is so employed in just under 50 percent in The Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel (1682).²⁴

Tate and Dryden shared an enthusiasm for Ovid. In Dryden's Dedication of Examen Poeticum (1693), he declared that he thought his best translations were those of Ovid; his total has been estimated at more than seven thousand lines.²⁵ Tate, too, had high praise for Ovid and his adaptability: in 1697, he observed that “Some of our greatest Judges of Poetry have declared their Sentiments of this Author, That he is the fittest amongst the Classick Poets to be Translated into English. Indeed, he is so Natural a Writer, that he cannot fail of being agreeable in any Language he shall be made to speak.”²⁶ About two hundred lines of Book VII of the Metamorphoses had appeared in Tate's 1684 Poems; and Tate was apparently working on a translation of more of this work as early as 1692, when Dryden wrote of “spoyl[ing] Tate's undertakings” in a letter to Tonson.²⁷ The first five books of the Metamorphoses were published under Tate's editorship in 1697 (Tate himself contributing part of Book IV) with the assurance that the remaining books were “preparing for the Press, and will be Published with all convenient Speed.”²⁸ Although the other books were apparently never issued, Tate's remark shows that more of the translating may have been done.

In 1708 Tate collaborated with Aaron Hill in The Celebrated Speeches of Ajax (translated by Tate) and Ulysses (by Hill) from Book XIII of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Dryden himself had translated these speeches for his Fables (1700), and the sense of rivalry between the poets, suggested by Dryden's earlier letter to Tonson, appears again in the Dedication by Tate and Hill in which they express their confidence that a “Genuine Translation” will be useful. They refer to the criticism advanced against Dryden, “the Great Master of the Muses,” that he mistook Ovid's manner; and, although they do not say that they subscribe to this view, they insist that at least they are not guilty of a similar error. In the following year, Tate published his translation of Ovid's Remedy of Love, along with an English version by others, including Dryden, of The Art of Love. Although Tate published fewer lines of Ovid in English than Dryden, he nevertheless had an important role in the age's translation of the Roman poet.

In 1692, Tate contributed to Dryden's translation of the Satires of Juvenal and Persius, which Gilbert Highet in 1954 called “still the best verse translation of Juvenal in English.”²⁹ It is from Tate's version of Satire XV that Samuel Richardson's Clarissa quoted with praise.³⁰ Dryden wrote the Dedication to Dorset, the “Discourse Concerning Satire,” and translated all six of Persius's and five of Juvenal's fifteen satires. He made the other assignments and, apparently, supervised the work, his collaborators being his sons, Charles and John, and Bowles, Stepney, Hervey, Congreve, Power, and Creech, each of whom did one satire, and Tate, who did Satires II and XV.³¹

Satire II begins as an attack on hypocrisy, but it soon becomes an attack upon homosexuality. From the Argument, it appears that Tate intended to gloss over some of its cruder passages: “The Poet, in this Satyr, inveighs against the Hypocrisie of the Philosophers, and Priests of his Time: the Effeminacy of Military Officers, and Magistrates. Which Corruption of Manners in General, and more Particularly of Unnatural Vices, he imputes to the Atheistical Principle that then prevail'd.” Actually, however, Tate translated frankly lines that the translator in the Loeb edition, for example, thought were better left as ellipses. The high percentage of closed couplets is well suited to vigorous, forceful expression of Juvenal's wrath. The fidelity of Tate's translation of Juvenal can be judged from the relatively decorous opening lines of Satire II. The literal Loeb translation is as follows:

I would fain flee to Sarmatia and the frozen Sea when People who ape the Curii and live like Bacchanals dare talk about morals. In the first place, they are unlearned persons, though you may find their houses crammed with plaster casts of Chrysippus; for their greatest hero is the man who has bought a likeness of Aristotle or Pittacus, or bids his shelves preserve an original portrait of Cleanthes. Men's faces are not to be trusted; does not every street abound in gloomy-visaged debauchees? And do you rebuke foul practices, when you are yourself the most notorious delving-ground among Socratic reprobates?³²

Tate translated the passage thus:

I'm sick of Rome, and wish myself convey'd
Where freezing Seas obstruct the Merchants Trade,
When Hypocrites read Lectures, and a Sot,
Because into a Gown and Pulpit got,
Tho surfeit-gorg'd, and reeking from the Stews,
Nothing but Abstinence for's Theam will chuse.
The Rakehells too pretend to Learning—Why?
Chrysippus Statue decks their Library.
Who makes his Closet finest is most Read:
The Dolt that with an Aristotle's Head,
Carv'd to the Life, has once adorn'd his Shelf,
Streight sets up for a Stagyrite himself.
Precise their Look, but to the Brothel come,
You'll know the Price of Philosophick Bum.(33)

The one hundred and seventy lines of Latin become two hundred and forty-five in Tate's version.

Of the three sorts of translation that Dryden distinguished in his Preface to Ovid's Epistles, metaphrase (word-for-word translation), paraphrase (“translation with latitude, where the author is kept in view by the translator, so as never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense”), and imitation (which often departs from both words and sense),³⁴ Tate generally paraphrased, though he occasionally imitated. An example of imitation is a couplet near the end of Satire II (11.217-18) for which there is no justification in Juvenal and which directs the Satire as a whole against atheism (as Tate had indicated in the Argument): “To what dire Cause can we assign these Crimes, / But to that reigning Atheism of the Times?” Juvenal does not mention atheism. Similarly, in Satire XV, “against the Superstition and Cruelty of the Egyptians,” Tate indulged in a six-line parenthesis, criticizing English borrowing of false rhetoric from the French. Just a few years later such departures from the text in his translation of the Psalms provided his enemies with an opportunity to attack him.

In November, 1693, about a year after the translation of Juvenal had appeared, Tate published his own satire in The Gentleman's Journal.³⁵ Although the Juvenalian attitude was not really congenial to him, the poem succeeds fairly well as a mild imitation of it. The satire is addressed to Richard Baldwin, the publisher of Motteux and Sir Thomas Urquhart's translation of Rabelais, whom Tate familiarly calls “Dick.” The poet first asserts the futility of satire, for even Rabelais, Cervantes, and Quevedo together have not reformed society. Lawyers and doctors still prey upon their clients, and clergymen profit, too:

Has Biggottry to make a Man turn Sot,
Or Priest-craft how to menage Fools forgot?
Or is not, when a Pastor shifts his Place,
A fatter Benefice the Call of Grace?
Have you ne'er seen a Drone possess at ease
What would provide for Ten Industrious Bees?

Tate continues with the “Plodding Citt” who becomes rich while “his graceless Son Turns Wit and Beau, drinks, whores, and is undone.” Refinement of manners and speech has brought no improvement, and “Science is made Cant, and Nonsense Mystery.” “Half the Gallamaufry of Mankind” consists of “Pimps, Pandars, Stallions, Buffons, Parasites, / Setters, Suborners, Sharpers, Pillory-Knights, / Cheats, Cullies, Bravoes, Cowards, Hypocrites. …” The poem turns finally to the vanity of human desires, and then lightly back to Rabelais: “Yet—As by witty Rabelais 'tis Exprest, / Life's Idle Droll's an entertaining Jest.”

Translation and imitation seem to have been congenial occupations for Tate. His mind was not especially creative either of new ideas or of really fresh means for developing them; and he did better when the central idea and the main lines of development were suggested or laid out for him. Evidently, Dryden recognized his ability; for, when Dryden worked with a collaborator, he often chose to work with Tate.

.....

A POEM UPON TEA

It is sometimes said that Tate's best poem is Panacea: A Poem upon Tea: In Two Canto's, first published in 1700 and republished as A Poem upon Tea in 1702.³⁶ It appeared the year after Dr. Garth's successful mock-heroic poem The Dispensary, and it heralded a spate of early eighteenth-century mock-heroic poems on beverages, including John Philips's Cerealia (1706) in praise of ale and John Gay's Wine (1708).³⁷ Tate's friend Motteux wrote another Poem upon Tea (1712).³⁸ Although Panacea is mock-heroic, the burlesque element is much lighter in Tate's poem than it is in the Miltonic burlesques of Philips and Gay.

I THE CELEBRATION OF TEA

Tea had come to England near the middle of the seventeenth century. At first it was drunk only by the very wealthy, but in 1657 Thomas Garway began underselling the market at his coffeehouse, and tea soon became popular. It was supposed to have many virtues, twenty of which are listed in a manuscript in the British Museum dated 1686 and allegedly translated from the Chinese by Thomas Povey, M. P. The twenty virtues include some that are physical (tea “Prevents the Dropsie” and “Clenseth and Purifieth adult humours and a hot Liver”) and some that are mental or ethical (it “Sharpens the Will and Quickens the Understanding” and encourages “the use of due benevolence”).³⁹ In the Preface that Tate added to the second edition of his poem, he observed: “I must honestly acknowledge, 'tis to This (despicable) Tea-Leaf that I owe Recovery out of a Weakly Constitution from the very Cradle: and make no Doubt of the like Benefit to Others (in most Infirmities) with right Knowledge of this Panacea, and different Preparation and Use of it's Infusion, for the purpose of Pleasure Only, or for Health.”

The speaker of Tate's poem is the shepherd Palaemon, who leaves the Avon to visit “Foreign Climates”:

Most strict Survey in every Realm he made
Of Men and Manners, Policy and Trade;
But none he found, his gentle Soul to please,
Like the Refin'd and Civiliz'd Chinese.(40)

On returning home, he introduces his fellow shepherds to tea and then tells his astonished listeners the story of its origin. China had enjoyed a Golden Age until the time of Emperor Ki, who had ruined the country to support his own luxury. He was eventually overthrown, but the diseases that had come with him would not leave. Finally, the new emperor went with his court to consult with Confucius, and growing in front of Confucius's cave they discovered three kinds of tea—Soumblo, Imperial tea, and Bohea—given to Chinamen in compensation for their “Publick Grief.” The first canto closes with an announcement of the subject of the second:

Next, how their [China's] Poets sing (in bolder Verse)
The Virtues of this Plant—I shall rehearse
How happily their Art they have Express'd,
With useful Truth in pleasing Fable drest;
That sickly Mortals, by the Tempting Lure
Of Fiction, may be drawn to certain Cure.(41)

In Canto II Palaemon sings the virtues of the plant in terms of a competition among the Goddesses before Jupiter and the “Gods in Council” to see who should be the “Patroness and Guardian” of tea. Speaking first, Juno demands the right to sponsor the “Queen of Plants”; she urges Jove to assert the rights of royalty. Minerva retorts that “Merit” should not give way to “Majesty” and claims the privilege of sponsoring tea for herself in the name of Athens, Isis, and Cam; for tea is especially the reward of scholars, who have surrendered the “Life of Pleasures” to devote themselves to study. It is also the reward of poets:

From this Pirene, this Castalian Spring,
Exclude the Muses, And what Muse will sing?
And when no Poet will vouchsafe to write
What hardy Hero will vouchsafe to fight[?]
'Tis Tea sustains, Tea only can inspire
The Poet's Flame, that feeds the Hero's Fire.(42)

Venus appeals in the name of Beauty, which, she urges, inspires both soldier and poet; and she points to the tea-drinking British ladies to show the close connection between tea and beauty. Cinthia promptly claims the British ladies (and therefore tea) as her own, for they are particularly famed for their virtue. She is followed by Thetis, who pleads the sea's support of Albion and the tea trade, and then by Salus, the Goddess of Health. Somnus awakens long enough to praise tea as the inspiration of man's happy dreams: “Thus Human Life in cruel Fate's despight, / May have its Sorrows checquered with delight.” When the deities quarrel, Jove finally finds the solution in accepting all the goddesses as patronesses of the plant and giving it the name of “Goddess” or “Thea.”

At the end of Canto II is “The Tea-Table,” a brief poem celebrating tea over strong drink:

To Bacchus when our Griefs repair for Ease,
The Remedy proves worse than the Disease:
Where Reason we must lose to keep the Round,
And drinking Others Healths, our Own confound:
Whilst Tea, our Sorrows safely to beguile,
Sobriety and Mirth does reconcile:
For to this Nectar we the Blessing owe,
To grow more Wise, as we more chearful grow.
Whilst Fancy does her brightest Beams dispense,
And decent Wit diverts without Offence.
Then in Discourse of Nature's mystick Pow'rs
And Noblest Themes, we pass the well-spent Hours.
Whilst all around the Virtues Sacred Band,
And list'ning Graces pleas'd Attendants stand.
Thus our Tea-conversation we employ,
Where With Delight, Instruction we enjoy;
Quaffing, without the wast of Time or Wealth,
The Sov'reign Drink of Pleasure and of Health.

The practical purpose of the poem was supported in the second edition with a handbook for tea drinkers, containing sections headed “An Account of the Nature and Virtues of Tea: With Directions in the Use of It for Health. Collected from Treatises of Learned and Skilful Physicians upon That Subject,” “Directions in the Use of Tea,” “The several Kinds of Tea,” “Observations for Making of Tea,” and “For Preserving the Tea-Leaf.”

Except for an extravagant dedication to Charles Montague, A Poem upon Tea was written without the usual pressures: there was no king or other dignitary to celebrate in heroic verse, no high standard of elegance to strive for, no laureate duty, no musician to satisfy, and no responsibility to sacred text. Tate was able to relax and enjoy himself, and the result is an entertaining poem written with the amused awareness of the relatively trivial nature of his subject that had appeared in such early poems as “Sliding upon Skates.”

II FINAL ESTIMATE

In his frequent lack of confidence and vigor, Tate differed from his leading contemporaries, Dryden, Defoe, Swift, and Pope; but in many other respects he was very much of his age. At the same time, his broad literary sympathies linked him with both earlier and later periods, though it is a mistake to think that he belonged more to the other eras than to his own. He combined a Puritan heritage with a modestly successful literary life at the courts of the later Stuarts, William and Mary, and Anne; and his works have affinities with many types of verse and drama from Spenser and Shakespeare to Cibber and Young. As Polonius might say, he wrote verse that is melancholy, moral, panegyrical, satiric, and mock-heroic; and his nine plays and adaptations include at least one in each of the categories of heroic tragedy, sentimental tragedy, history, tragicomedy, realistic comedy, and farce.

Tate also made important contributions to the reestablishment of Shakespeare in the theater, to the early growth of English opera, to the early development of the English hymn, and to the translation of the classics in a style suited to the eighteenth century. He wrote a large number of works, many of which succeeded in their own day, and several of which outlasted the age for which they were written. He was suitably the poet laureate of his time; and, although poverty and failing health seem to have limited his activity after 1702, he carried out what he felt to be the duties of his office with dignity and with responsibility.

Notes

1. Amy Reed, The Background of Gray's Elegy [New York: Columbia University Press, 1924], p. 27; Draper, The Funeral Elegy and the Rise of English Romanticism (New York, 1929).

2. “On the Death of my Dear Brother Mr. Richard Flatman,” Poems and Songs, 4th ed. (London, 1686), p. 193.

3. Poems, 2nd ed. (London: B. Tooke, 1684), pp. 11-12.

4. Ibid., pp. 64-65.

5. Ibid., pp. 101-2. The resemblance to Young (and the resemblance to Arnold in the next example) are pointed out by Scott-Thomas, “The Life and Works of Nahum Tate,” [doctoral dissertation, Johns Hopkins, 1932] I, 325, 327.

6. Poems, 2nd ed., p. 76.

7. Ibid., p. 81. In the list of errata (sig. A7v), the misprint “Honour” is corrected to “Humour.”

8. Ibid., pp. 56-64.

9. This poem is quoted from the first edition of Poems (London: B. Tooke, 1677), pp. 14-15. It was heavily revised in the second edition, although the only revision of significance in the lines quoted was the unfortunate substitution of “(alas too prone.) contriving” for “endeav'ring” in the fourth line. Scott-Thomas, “The Life and Works of Nahum Tate,” I, 9, says that Dryden admired this poem, but he gives no evidence for his statement.

10. The Influence of Milton on English Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1922), p. 566, and note, where he quotes Tate's poem in full. Tate's use of the phrase “Wood-wild Notes” in “To the Athenian Society” (cf. Milton's “L'Allegro,” 1. 134, “wood-notes wild”) seems to have been first noticed by George Sherburn in “The Early Popularity of Milton's Minor Poems,” Modern Philology, XVII (1919), 522.

11. Poems, 2nd ed., p. 83.

12. Complimentary verses by Tate accompanying Francis Fane's The Sacrifice (London, 1686).

13. Poems, 2nd ed., pp. 31-32.

14. Ibid., p. 105.

15. Ibid., p. 69.

16. Scott-Thomas, “The Life and Works of Nahum Tate,” I, 330, points out the resemblance of “The Hurricane” to The Tempest.

17. Ibid., I, 332-36; II, 205-33, includes many examples of Tate's revisions for the second edition.

18. Poems (1677), p. 27; Poems, 2nd ed., p. 28.

19. Poems, 2nd ed., pp. 153-54.

20. Works of John Dryden, ed. Edward IV. Hooker (Berkeley, 1956), I, 324; Ward, Life of John Dryden (Chapel Hill, 1761), p. 143.

21. Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker (Oxford, 1926), I, 236.

22. Ibid., p. 255.

23. Works of John Dryden, ed. Hooker, I, 326-28.

24. The text of the Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel that I have used is the one in the second edition of Noyes's Poetical Works of Dryden.

25. Essays, ed. Ker, II, 9. The estimate was made by David Nichol Smith, John Dryden (Cambridge, England, 1950), p. 68.

26. Ovid's Metamorphosis. Translated by Several Hands, Vol. I (London, 1697), sig. A6.

27. Letters of John Dryden, ed. Charles E. Ward (Durham, N.C., 1942), pp. 50, 162. See also Hugh Macdonald, John Dryden: A Bibliography of Early Editions and Drydeniana (Oxford, 1939), p. 67, note.

28. Ovid's Metamorphosis, I (1697), sig. A7.

29. Juvenal the Satirist (Oxford, 1954), p. 214.

30. Clarissa (Oxford, 1930), IV, 339.

31. Ward, Life of John Dryden, p. 364.

32. Juvenal and Persius, tr. G. G. Ramsay, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), pp. 17-19.

33. The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis. Translated into English Verse. By Mr. Dryden and Several Other Eminent Hands (London, 1693), p. 19.

34. Essays, ed. Ker, I, 237.

35. The Gentleman's Journal (November, 1693), pp. 380-82.

36. Those who have preferred it to the rest of Tate's work include Edmund K. Broadus, The Laureateship: A Study of the Office of Poet Laureate in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921), p. 101, and W. Forbes Gray, The Poets Laureate of England (New York, 1915), p. 108, who calls it his “masterpiece.”

37. See Richmond P. Bond, English Burlesque Poetry 1700-1750 (Cambridge, Mass, 1932), esp. pp. 108-9, 163-64, 238-39.

38. Motteux's poem was dedicated to the Spectator, and was acknowledged by Steele on December 3, 1712 (No. 552); it was reprinted in The Bee, Part III (London, 1715), pp. 38-46.

39. William H. Ukers, All About Tea (New York, 1935), I, 39-40.

40. A Poem upon Tea, 2nd ed. (London, 1702), p. 2.

41. Ibid., p. 16.

42. Ibid., pp. 21-22.