The Envy Theme in Prologues and Epilogues  

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"The Envy Theme in Prologues and Epilogues" (1917) is an essay by Frederick Tupper published in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Oct., 1917), pp. 551-572.

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THE ENVY THEME IN PROLOGUES AND EPILOGUES "A preface may be short," writes Thackeray in one of his later essays, "but it must, I think, be the author's own composi tion." As the preface is the domain of the author's full heart, it is here that he is most appealingly human. And for the very reason that he is speaking not as an artist but as a man to other men, he uses, in his foreword and in his afterword, too, those con ventions long since stamped as current coin, and like English gold, good everywhere. Fear of envy and love of fame, defiance to detractors and dependence upon a patron's protection, con tempt for the unlettered multitude and regard for the gentle, kindly reader, a labored eschewing of idleness and a prayerful Godspeed to the "little book,"?these are among the stock motives of a hundred prologues and epilogues. A detailed discussion of the first of these deep-rooted traditions will involve casual consideration of all the rest and will seem valueless only to those who proclaim the writer least himself, when most like his fellows of the craft. Several months after announcing1 my intent of coping with the "Envy" preface, I was delighted to mark my friend, Pro fessor W. D. Briggs's comment, characteristically accurate and acute, upon the place of envy in older literature.2 But it was no part of this careful observer's purpose to reflect the lurid lights constantly cast by the dread of envy upon Elizabethan foreword and afterword, else the present article would have been forestalled by a better. In my cursory survey of the theme, "exhaustive ness," so often the twin of exhaustion, is nowhere contemplated; and typical examples selected here and there may be many times multiplied by nibblers of the first and last leaves of folios. Every where in the middle centuries of our literature, livid Envy sits behind the writer as tenaciously as black Care behind the horse man, threatening with gnawing tooth Chapman, Spenser, Jonson, the King James translators, as ominously as the meanest scribbler that ever dared print. Nor shall our story be only of the days of the printed page, for literary aspirants at the court of Henry II in the tweffth century and of Richard II in the fourteenth confess 1 The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, January, 1916. 2 "Source Material for Jonson's Plays," Modern Language Notes, June, 1916. This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 552 Tupper the same dread and frame their fear in the same trite phrasing as the seekers of the favor of Elizabeth. Twelfth and thirteenth centuries furnish copious illustrations of the writer's shrinking?not the less real because formally couched?from ever-imminent envy. Saxon homilist, French singer of lais, Latin essayist, satirist and historian meet on the common ground of fear of the envious critic. Orm, most personal when most conventional, laments, in his dedication to "Brother Walter," the scornful judgment of that foul flock who, through pride and envy,3 blame the thing that they should praise and thus condemn his work as useless and idle. Marie de France mourns, in the opening lines of Guigemar, the constant presence of those who slander the good through envy: Nei voil mie pour ceo laissier Si jangleur u losengier Le me vuelent a mal turner, Ceo est lur dreiz de mesparler. The "Epilogus" of Walter Map's De Nugis Curialiumf which, despite its present place in the body of the work, was doubtless designed to close the volume, provides summary mention of the book's unworthy readers:?"Oderunt enim antequam audierint, vilipendent antequam appendant, invident priusquam videant. " And Map includes in the prologue to the fifth division of his book (p. 203) a saying with a traditional flavor, "sic raritatem poetarum faciunt gemine lingue obtrectatorum. " So useful is the prologue to the Historia Anglorum in which Matthew of Paris takes occa sion to reply to " detractoribus invidis et nostrum laborem inanem reputantibus, "5 that it does repeated duty.6 Nor is such an attitude confined to Englishmen and Anglo-Frenchmen, for the Preface of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus holds in equal dread " obtrectationis livorem. " Early satirists are not less jealous of the bubble, reputation. John of Hauteville, in the prologue 3 "Gainst good deserts both pride and envy swell," says one P. B. over three centuries later than Orm to such as heretofore have found fault with George Gascoigne's Poesies. 4 See the Montague James edition (1914), p. 142. 5 Compare the Ormulum dedication, supra. 6 Matthew's editor in the Rolls Series compares the Prologue to Chroni cles (Migne, Patrolog?a Latina, CLX, col. 421) and the Prologue of the Norman abbot, Robert de Monte, to his Additions to Sigebert of Gemblours (Pertz, Mon. Hist. Germ., VI, 480). This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Envy Theme in Prologues and Epilogues 553 to his Architrenius,7 prays that his book, the mean and unpolished product of his fancy, may live safe from the fatally poisonous bite of envy.8 The widely known Anticlaudianus of Alanus de Insulis9 is ushered in by a prose preface breathing in its first sen tence the hope that the flame of envy may not blast and that the breath of detraction may not lay low this poor and humble work of his and is concluded in much the same strain:? Ne livor in ilium Saeviat aut morsus detractio figat in ill o Si tarnen ad presens fundit sua murmura livor Et famam delere cupit laudesque poetae Supplantare novas, saltern post fata silebit By the way, it is in the De Planctu Naturae10 of the same author that "Envy, destroying the minds of men through the rusty bite of constant detraction," is decorated with a store of stock similes and epithets dear to the Middle Ages and ample enough to justify every author's fear of its power. The dread of envy has other than medieval warrant. For this convention, so frequent in prologue and epilogue, writers of the Angevin period can plead the authoritative precedent of antiquity. No one is more explicit upon this point than Giraldus Cambrensis. In the first preface to The Itinerary through Wales11 he supports the assertion that "letters, through envy, profit nothing in this world, but like a testament acquire an immortal value from the seal of death" not only by the patristic example of St. Jerome,12 7 Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century, Rolls Series, I, 392. 8 The Horatian commonplace of Envy's poisonous bite {Odes, IV, III, 16; Epistles, I, xiv, 38) has as wide a vogue in the prefaces of this age as in those of many other periods. One Reginald, in the foreword to the twelfth-century Vita S. Oswaldi {Works of Simeon of Durham, Rolls Series, 1882, I, 327, App. Ill) declares that the 'rivalry of him who may attack this work with livid tooth is the poisonous viper which did not spare from its bite the hand of St. Paul.' 9 Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets, II, 268-426. 10 Id., II, 496-498. 11 Opera Giraldi Cambrensis, Rolls Series, VI, 5. 12 That Jerome (see the Prefatio in Librum Job) was long used by pre face-writers as a stock example of spiritual triumph over envy is attested by the verses of John Scotus to Charles the Bald introducing his translation of the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite (compare Wright, Biog. Brit. Lit., I, 421), 'How can his work escape the fierce tooth, when even Jerome had felt its bite?' and by the sixteenth century Myroure of Oure Ladye, {E. E. T. S., Ex tra Ser. XIX, p. 8), "St. Hierome sayth how he was compellyd at eche boke to answere to the backbytinge of them that depraved his laboure." This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 554 Tupper but by two weighty classical epilogues, the one closing the first book of Ovid's Amores,? Pascitur in vivis livor, post fata quiescit; Cum suis ex m?rito quemque tuetur honor. the second concluding the T heb ais of Statius, Denique si quis adhuc praetendit nubila livor Occidet, et meriti post me referen tur honores. Both of these favorites of medieval penmen give further sanction to the fear of envy. Not to mention the elaborate description of Envy chewing the flesh of vipers in the Metamorphoses (II, 76), Ovid rejoices at the end of the fourth book of the Tristia (IV, x, 125-126) that his work escapes the bite of the unjust tooth of "livor," which detracts from the precious things; he ends the fourth epistle of the third book, Ex Ponto, with a reference to "livor iners vitium. . . . Utque latens ima vipera serpit humo" and brings this series of epistles to an end with a letter, "Ad Invidum" (IV, xvi). Likewise Statius, in the preface to the fourth book of the Silvae, denounces the envious detractor of his work and quite in the fashion of the English days of patronage bids Marcellus defend his book. Giraldus quotes again the Thebais ending at the beginning of his Topography of Ireland and cites as if from Seneca the comment of Apollinaris Sidonius {Epis tie III, line 14) upon the satisfaction with which the malicious attention of the envious reader ("lividi lectoris") dwells upon a faulty passage. This same envious reader and detractor finds frequent place in the Epigrams of Martial, of which more anon. Phaedrus, too, furnishes apt illustration of the Envy epilogue at the close of the second book of his Fables; but it is needless to multiply classical examples.13 The large use of this motif in the prologues and epilogues of antiquity needs no further demonstra tion.14 13 For a long list of classical and scriptural quotations illustrating the sin of Envy, the reference hunter may turn to Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. I, sect. II, mem. 3, sub. 4. 14 Before Giraldus Cambrensis goes out of the story, it may be remarked that he is one of the first Englishmen to introduce into a preface the "avoidance of idleness" motif discussed, in far later phases, by Carleton Brown, Modern Philology, IX, 1 f. and by the writer, Modem Language Notes, January, 1915. Gerald twice finds it serviceable; first as the central theme of the second preface to the Itinerary through Wales, and again in the characteristically medieval shrinking from Sloth as the parent of Vice, in the first preface to the Description* of Wales. Among the works written "to eschue idleness" are Stephen Hawes' This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Envy Theme in Prologues and Epilogues 555 The dread of detraction is as strong among the writers of the fourteenth century as among those of the twelfth. The author of the Speculum Laicorum (MS. Add. 11284),15 which is attributed by Bale to Hoveden, announces an his introduction that he has suppressed, for fear of exciting envy, both his own name and that of his " quondam conscolaris et conf rater modernus. " The maker of The Testament of Love, Thomas Usk, whose name is only veiled, not withdrawn, recognizes in the conclusion of his "leude pamflet" that "envy is ever redy, al innocentes to shende; wherefore I wolde that good speche envy evermore hinder." In Gower the tradition finds varied embodiment. His little Latin prelude to the Confessio pleads torpor and dulness of sense as excuses for the triviality of his theme and prays that his work may escape "that bone-lacking thing which breaks bones" (the proverbial p?riphrase for "tongue") and may be safe from the evil interpreter. The first version of the prefatory lines of his Confessio prologue couples with his very qualified fear of envy the prayer to Heaven's king to shield him from the malicious and jangling tongues of which the world is full. And the Latin "Explicit" of the work contains the quintessence of a thousand dedications past and future:? Explicit iste liber, qui transeat, obsecro liber Ut sine livore vigeat lectoris in ore. Qui sedet in scannis celi det ut ista Johannis Perpetuis annis ; tet pagina grata Biitannis. Derbeie Comiti recolunt quern laude periti, Vade liber purus, sub eo requiesce futurus. The threefold hope that the book may thrive unenvied, that it may win immortality, and that it may rest securely under the shelter of its patron is conventional in all its parts. And the "vade liber" is more frequent still, as we shall soon see. Chaucer, less formal than his friend, gives new turns to the familiar motif. In the prologue to his Astrolabe, he declares to little Lewis, "I am but a lewd compila tour of the labour of olde Pastime of Pleasure, Caxton's Mir our of the World, The Complaynt of Scotland (E. E. T. Soc, Extra Series, vol. xvii), in whose preface the sloth and envy chemes. are skilfully interwoven, and Barnabe Rich's Honestie of This Age (1614), dedicated to Sir. T. Middleton, Lord Mayor. 16 Ward, Romances in the British Museum, III, 371 f. 18 In this connection it is interesting to mark that Boccaccio follows closely classical tradition in his elaborate discussion of Envy at the beginning of the Fourth Day of the Decameron:?"Dearest ladies, as well b}' words of wise mea This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 556 Tupper astrologiens and have but translated in myn English only for thy doctrine; and with this swerd shal I sleen envye." In the Invo cation to The House of Fame the poet wishes good dreams and other blessings to the kindly reader and horrible visions and their harmful fulfillment to the scornful and envious critic : And sende hem al that may hem plese, That take hit wel and scorne hit noght, Ne hit misdeme in her thoght Through malicious entencioun. And who-so, through presumpcioun, Or hate or scorne, or through envye, Despite, or lape, or vilanye, Misdeme hit, preye I Iesus god That (dreme he barefoot, dreme he shod), That every harm that any man Hath had sith that the world began, Befalle him thereof, or he sterve, And graunte be mote hit ful deserve, etc.16a Of equal interest is the use of the convention in the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women. As soon as the poet's works are brought into question, criticism is as ever attributed to envy (B 350 f.) : This man to you may falsly been accused, Ther as by right him oghte been excused. For in your court is many a losengeour, And many a queynte totelere accusour, That tabouren in your eres many a soun, Right after hir imaginacioun, To have your daliance, and for envye; These been the causes, and I shall not lye. Envye is lavender of the court alway; For she ne parteth, neither night De day, Out of the hous of Cesar; thus seith Dante; Who-so that goth, algate she wol nat wante. heard as by things many a time both seen and read of myself, I had conceived that the boisterous and burning blast of envy was apt to smite none but lofty towers or the highest summits of the trees. . . . Yet for all this have I not availed to escape being cruelly shaken, nay, well nigh uprooted, of the afore said wind and all torn of the fangs of envy; wherefore I can very manifestly understand that to be true which the wise use to say, to wit, that misery alone in things present is without envy." Boccaccio's figure is, of course, suggested by a famous passage in the tenth ode of Horace's second book, "Saepius ventis agitatur ingens pinus, etc.," which also inspired the "Defiance of Envy" that prefaces Bishop Joseph Hall's Satires over two centuries later. Boccac cio's prose and Hall's verse, placed side by side, furnish an instructive parallel. lflaProfessor Kittredge {Chaucer and his Poetry, p. 77), with his wonted acumen, recognizes that this outburst is "a pure convention," and suggests that This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Envy Theme in Prologues and Epilogues 557 The student of formulae finds it profitable to compare "losengeour " and "queynte totelere accusour" with Marie's mention, in the same context (supra), of "jangleur u losengier." And through the phrase of Dante speaks the spirit of many "Envy" prefaces. Moreover, it seems to me likely that in his picture of detractors "that tabouren in your eres many a soun" Chaucer was thinking of Ovid's bitter account of his envious maligners in the Tristia (III, xi.)17 In any case, the classical commonplace which ushers in the Tristia, and which stands Martial so often in stead in his Epi grams, "Parve liber, vade," appears at the close of the Troilus (V, 1786 f.), in combination with an amiable modification of the "Envy" motif. Go, litel book, go, litel myn trag?die, But litel book, no making thou nenvye, But subgit be to alle poesye. For a century and more, " Go, little book, " which we have already noted in John de Hauteville and in Gower, dominates the close of the poems, religious and secular, of the Chaucerian school. In many instances in Professor Skeat's supplementary volume, the motif is blended with the time-honored apology for rudeness of style: the "Verba Translatoris" of Sir Richard Ros' version of La Belle Dame sans Merci (p. 325), "Go litel book . . . this rude translacioun ... ful destitute of eloquence, of metre and of coloures"; The Envoy to Alison (p. 358), "O lewde book, with thy foole rudeness"; The Flower and the Leaf (p. 379), "O litel book, 'Chaucer got the idea from the Anticlaudianus [supra], which he had just been reading." In the light of the wide vogue of the formula, one hesitates to as sign any definite source. 17 Between Ovid's appeal to the outraged Augustus in the Second Book of the Tristia and Chaucer's arraignment by the angry God of Love there are parallels suggesting a possible indebtedness on the part of the later poet to the author of "myn owne book." Both writers are accused on the score of their love-poems, the Roman for writing too kindly, the Englishman, too harsh ly of love. And several pleas in behalf of the two poets are identical. First, that one who is both ruler and god (as either Cupid or Augustus) must be "gracious and merciable":?"A god ne sholde nat be thusagreved {Legend, 345-393) "; " Utere more Dei nomen habentis idem " {Tristia, II, 40). Secondly, that certain works of each poet are full of encomia of the indignant deity:? "Yet hath he made lewed folk delyte To serve you in preysing of your name." {Legend, 415); This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 558 Tupper thou art so unconning . . . Thy rude langage ful boistoisly unfold"; A Goodly Balade (p. 407), "Forth, complaynt! forth, lacking eloquence, Forth, litel lettre, of endyting lame." Such is the form dear to Lydgate. Interestingly conventional is the envoy to An Epistle to Sibille:?18 Go, lytel pistel and recomande me Unto my ladye which cleped is Cybille, Pray hir to have routhe and eke pitee Of the dulness of this my rude style. The little book, bill or treatise, barren of eloquence,19 goes forth in all humility,20 quaking for fear.21 The epilogue to Lydgate's portentous Troy Book22 is thus paraphrased by its editor: "Little book, get the favor of your king and patiently submit to cor rections; as you're not eloquent, take blame humbly, and ask complainers to amend your faults. " Sir David Lyndsay professes, at the conclusion of The Complaynt of the Papyngo, unwillingness to have his "quaire" seen beside any other book of poetry, "be cause thou bene but rethorik sa rude." And the anonymous, author of Colyn BlowboVs Testament,2* equally conventional in his modesty, marvels that his "Htelle quayer" dares show its face in the presence of men of honesty on account of its rudeness24 and {<Invenies vestri preconia nominis illic. " (Tristia, II, 65). Significant also is the likeness between Chaucer's reference, (doubtless to Gower's tale) in. the Man of Law's Introduction (B. 77), "Thilke wikke ensample of Canacee That lovede her owne brother sinfully. " and Ovid's inclusion of this among evil stories that another had told (Tristia II, 384), "Nobilis est Canace fratris amore sui. " All this may be just such coincidence as that between Chaucer, "forgotten in solitary wilderness," ask ing the mediation of his friend, Scogan, "at the stream's head of grace," and Ovid pleading from his wretched exile at Tomos, the modern Constanza, for the intercession of friends at court. 18 Lydgate7s Minor Poems, E. E. T. Soc, Extra Ser., CVII, 14. 19 Stans. Puer ad Mensam, Hazlitt's Remains, IV, 28. 20 Cristes Passioun, Minor Poems, p. 221. 21 To St. Thomas, Id., p. 143. 22 E. E. T. Soc, Extra Ser. XCVII, CIII, CVI, p. 816. 23 Hazlitt's Remains, I, 109, 24 The apology of Chaucer's Franklin for his "rude speche" and ignorance: of the "colours of rethorick" (F. 716 f.) is a formula; but it is no less charac teristic than the "eschewing of idleness" convention on the lips on the SecondL Nun. This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Envy Theme in Prologues and Epilogues 559 lack of fair language. Hoccleve's Envoy to The Regement of Princes attests his liking for the formula.25 At the end of the fifteenth century " Go, little book, " and the apology for rudeness of style are closely combined with the envy tradition, as three notable examples show. Alexander Barclay, "excusynge the rudeness of his translaci?n," The Ship of Fools, thus addresses his volume:? Go, boke; abasshe the thy rudenesse to present To me avanced to worship and honour But when I remember the common behavour Of men, I thynke thou ought to quake for fere Of tunges envyous whose venym may the dere. The last stanza of Caxton's Book of Curtesye2? warns the "lytil quair" to submit under corrections of benevolence and to come not where Envy is, Envye is ful of toward reprehens, And how to hurte lyeth ever in a way te, Kepe your quay er that it be not ther bay te And John Skelton strikes exactly the same note in "Lenvoy Royall" of Speke Parrott:? Go, proper Parotte, my papagay, That lordes and ladies thy pamflett may behold With notable clerkes; supply to them, I pray Your rudeness to pardon and also that they wolde Vouchsafe to d?fende you agayne the brawlinge scolde Called Detraxion encankryd with envye, Whose tong is attayntyd with slaundrys oblique. The trembling humility with which Lydgate and other Chau cerians greeted criticism and corrections is not very rife in the seff-confident sixteenth century. A contempt for the critic, which is usually both arrogant and angry, is born of a deep rooted belief, widely current during the Renascence and pleading classical precedent, that any imputation of error arises not so much from the weakness of the work as from its envy-producing greatness. The vain-glorious Elizabethans everywhere chant 26 England has no monopoly of "Vade liber" in the Middle Ages. My colleague, Professor M. B. Ogle, draws my attention to Dante's use of the motif in the twelfth section of the Vita Nuova and to its frequent appearance in other early Italian love poems (Poetae del Buono Secuto, I, 99, 183, 239, 262; II, 25, 257, 293, 305, 314) and in Proven?al (Mahn, Die Werke der Trou badouren, I, 27, 329, 349). 28 E. E. T. Soc, Extra Ser, III. This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 560 Tupper their triumph over Envy. The "nee Jovis ira" of Ovid's splendid vaunt, so often in their mouths, is rendered by them "not envies fume."27 And Spenser proclaims near the end of his Ruines of Time:? Wise wordes taught in numbers for to runne Not age nor envie shall them ever wast. The proud declaration in the Epilogue or "Vade Liber" to The Shepheardes Calender that it " steele in strength and time in durance shall outweare" and "shall continewe till the world's dissolution" is supported in the "Embleme" by citations from the Horatian and Ovidian vaunts of immortality:?"Therefore let not be envied, that this poet in his Epilogue sayth he hath made a Calen der that shall endure as long as time, etc." Sir John Davies thus entwines the name of "Elisa" with his own proud fame in the acrostic that closes his Hymns of Astraea:?28 Envy, go weep ! My muse and I Laugh thee to scorn. Thy feeble eye Is dazzled with the glory Shining in this gay poesy And little golden story. Dekker vaunts his immortal achievements in the introduction to Knights1 Conjuring-}9 "Envie (in these civil warres) may hit me, but not hurt me; calumny may wound my name, but not kill my labors . . . Non norunt haec monumenta mori."30 And Browne defies Envy in the "Lines to the Reader" that prelude Britannia's Pastorals (1613) If such a basilisk dart down his eye (Empoisoned with the dregs ot utmost hate) To kill the first blooms of my poesy, It is his worst and makes me fortunate Kind wits I vail to, but to fools precise, I am as confident, as they are nice. The attitude of the Tudor author to Envy is adequately revealed by a paraphrase of the presentation to Detraction with which John Marston prefaces his Scourge of Villainy (1598). He 27 See Rowland's "Dedicatory Epistle" to Topsell's History of Four footed Beasts (1658). 28 Arber's English Garner, V, 576. 29 Percy Society, vol. V. 30 Martial's lofty phrase is fitted to the works of Dekker and of far greater men and dramatists, Shakspere, Jonson, Chapman, Beaumont and Fletcher by Webster in the notable preface to The White Devil. This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Envy Theme in Prologues and Epilogues 561 exposes the issue of his brain to that foul canker of fair virtuous action, Envy's abhorred child, Detraction,31 scorning with high spirit her spite, however she may snarl, rail, bark and bite, for the genius which guides his intellectual powers holds in all vile repute Detraction, and his soul is a metaphysical essence that scorns the rage of critics. His mind disdains the dungy, muddy scum of abject thoughts and Envy's raging hate. Such a cankered yerdict of malignant tongues shall ne'er provoke him to deem himself the worse, Spite of despite and rancour's villainy, I am myself, so is my poesy. All this is as characteristic of the time as of the man.32 Marston's enemy, Joseph Hall, preludes his satires, Virgidemiarum (1597), with a poetical "Defiance of Envy," which we have already con sidered; and a third satirist of this last decade of the sixteenth century, Thomas Lodge, is as we shall see, equally resentful of criticism, deeming it all detraction. Envy everywhere waits upon desert, if we are to believe the prologues and epilogues of the time. It haunts even the King James Translators of the Bible. "Envie strikes the most spitefully at the fairest," declare these learned men in their second Preface. Arrogant the writer of Tudor times may be, but he is rarely so self-sufficient as the author of The Scourge of Villainy, Marston : "To his most esteemed and best beloved Self dat dedicatque." Against the tooth of Envy, there is one potent protection, the patron. And it matters not whether the book is grave or gay. That earnest volume, Vicary's Anatomy of the Body of Manzz is thus dedicated to the Governors of St. Bartholomew's Hospital:? "To you as patrons of this booke, to d?fende agaynst the ravening jawes of envious backbyters, which never cease by all unlawful meanes to blemishe and deface the workes of learned, expert and well disposed persons." Ralph Robinson thus offers his translation of More's Utopia (1551) to William Cecil:?"For the better avoiding of envious and malicious tongues, I ... am the bolder humbly to offer and dedicate unto your good mastership this my simple work: partly that under the safe conduct of your protection it may the better be defended from the obloquy of them 31 See Skelton (supra), and note the close relationship between Envy and Detraction everywhere in our older literature (JEG Ph., January, 1916.)? 32 See also Marston's Fourth Satire for a vivid arraigment of Envy. 33 E. E. T. Soc, Extra Ser. LUI. This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 562 Tupper which can say well by nothing that pleaseth not their fond and corrupt judgments, though it be else both fruitful and godly." In the preface to the translation of Amadis of Gaul, Anthony Munday beseeches Philip Herbert " to defend it from the venomous tongue of foule mouthde detraction." And a far greater than Robinson or Munday, Edmund Spenser, thus places The Shep heards Calender under the care of Philip Sidney: And if that Envie barke at thee, As sure it will, for succor flee Under the shadow of his wing34 Likewise Spenser prays Lord Buckhurst in a prefatory sonnet to The Faerie Queene : But evermore vouchsafe it to maintaine Against vile Zoilus' backbitings vaine And in yet another sonnet he asks Lord Oxford to receive with his favor, The unripe fruit of an unready wit, Which, by thy countenance, doth crave to be Defended from foule Envie's poisonous bit. Sylvester dedicates his Second Week to the Earl of Devonshire, happy in the thought?if we may transprose him?that 'his Muse has found a Mome-free passage under the safe-conduct of the nobleman's patronage, through carping censures of this curious age.' Barnabe Barnes assures himself in his sonnet to South ampton35 that 'his worthless leaves, sprung from a rude and unmanured land, may withstand, graced with his patron's counte" nance, hundred-eyed Envy's rude encounterment. ' And the Translators of the Bible (1611) offer it to King James, "Humbly craving of your most sacred majesty that, since things of this quality have ever been subject to the censures of ill meaning and discontented persons, it may receive approbation and patronage from so learned and judicious a prince as your highness is, whose 34 With Spenser's "verses to his book" compare the use of the convention by P. T. G. in his dedication (1595) of Blanchardyne and Eglantyn, Part II (E. E. T. Soc, Extra Ser., LVIII) to William Peetre:?"Thus more then half assured that this my poore booke shall finde shelture to flie under the shadow of your wing, in whose good grace (if once it be armed) I feare not what back biting Momus or his currish mates can imagine against it. " And note Thomas Lodge's dedication of A Margarite of America (1596) to Lady Russell:?"So hope. I (Madame) on the wing of your sacred name to be borne to the temple of Eternitie, where, though Envie barke at me, the Muses shall cherish, love and happie me. " 35 See Lee's Life of Shakespeare, revised edition, p. 644. This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Envy Theme in Prologues and Epilogues 563 allowance and acceptance of our labours shall more honor and encourage us than all the calumniations of other men shall dis may us." These are a few of many appeals for the patron's defense in the struggle against Envy.36 A yet more ardent champion of the Tudor or Jacobean writer in his malignly hampered contest for fame is the admiring friend, ever lavish of praise. King James, in his Treatise of Poetry (1584) recognizes as one of the chief uses of the sonnet " the compendious praising of books. " And such eulogistic verse aims many of its shafts at the envy or detraction, which is the bitterest foe of its favorites. Walter Raleigh says very fitly in his lines upon Gas coigne's Steele Glas:? Envious braines do nought or light esteme Such stately steppes as they cannot attaine, For who so reapes renowne above the rest With heapes of hate shall surely be opprest. If we may believe the laudatory R. R., that worthy work, Joshua Silvester's Translation of Du Bartas, is threatened by 'Envy's viperous seed, which is ever hateful and hated, proud and ignorant, pale, swollen as a toad.' "Ignoto" extols the workmanship of The Faerie Queene to attest his judgment and to free his mind from "Envie's tuch that never gives to any man his right." In the friendly verse which prefaces Heywood's Apology for Actors37 Hopton bids 'detracting tongues cease and unkind critics their envy and distraction quite disclaim. ' Shelton warns the scholarly Verstegan, author of A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities (1605) that 'envious, abortive snips of skill will bite his ingenious labors and carp the travels of his learned quill,' and the eulogist adds, 'they will imitate, where they do envy.' Thomas Gainsford declares that Sir Thomas Overbury's fame shall survive 'in spite of envy or the proudest hate'; and W. B. of the Inner Temple proclaims that 'such is the lustre of the 36 In such dependence upon the patron there is nothing distinctively modern or English. Statius, as we have already seen, bids Marcellus defend his Silvae against the envious detractor. Ovid in exile beseeches his friend at Rome {Tristia, III, xiv) to protect his literary offspring. And Angelo Ingegneri recommends, exactly in the Elizabethan manner, Tasso's La Geru salemme Conquistata to the protection of the Cardinal di San Giorgio:?"Sotto a tanto autorevole patrocinio potra star pienamenta secura di superar l'in vidia ed ogni altro maligno intoppo. " Our small subject, patronage as a rampart against envy, receives no attention from D. Nichol Smith in his valu able chapter on "Authors and Patrons" {Shakespeare's England, 1916, Chap, xxii.). 37 Shakespeare Society, 1841, p. 7. This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 564 Tupper poisoned author that venomed spite, with her black soul, dares not behold his light. ' At least four of the verse panegyrics upon Captain John Smith's Description of New England (1616) .38 make large use of the Envy motif: Sir John Davies damning Envy as 'a sprite that ever haunts beasts misnamed men'; I. Codrington bidding, in stereotyped phrase, the author scorn ' the spite of Envy which doth no man's merits right'; N. Smith commanding 'damned Detraction to stand not in our way as Envy itseh will not gain say the truth'; and R. Gunnel grieving that 'foul Detraction would pervert honor and Envy ever wait upon desert.' The dramatists, too, feel the venomed tooth. Daniel Lakyn asserts of Massinger's Renegado that 'men may throw this work in the face of Envy '

and Singleton of the same author's Emperor of the

East that the playwright may well 'contemn the poor detraction' of unworthy readers. The friends of Ben Jonson dress their homage in the garb of the convention. "This work despairful Envy must even praise," says Marston of Sejanus. "Thou canst scorn censurers that die ere they be thoroughly born," proclaims Nat Field of Catiline-, "Thy fate hath thought it best that thy foes should envy," is J. F's tribute to Volpone. We are now on our way to understanding what Ben Jonson him self meant, when he thus began his lines to Shakespeare's memory: To draw no envy (Shakspere) on thy name Am I thus ample to thy book and fame.39 The indiscriminate support of generous patron and the lavish tri bute of kindly eulogist combined unhappily to prevent that chasten ing of the spirit which deference to criticism inevitably produces. Censure always arouses in the haughty minds of Tudor England dem onstrative protest and defiance.40 Even in the early years of the six teenth century Bishop Gawain Douglas prefaces his third Aeneid 88 Arber's English Scholar's Library. 39 "For writing better I must envy thee," declares Jonson to Beaumont in conscious or unconscious accord with a formula that is deliciousiy burlesqued by Cervantes in ?he prefatory sonnets of Don Quixote. Don Belianis of Greece chants to the hero, "yet, great Quixote, do I still envy thee;" and Gandaline, Amadis of Gaul's squire, pays lavish tribute to Sancho Panza in the line, "Thine ass I jointly envy and thy name." 40 Humility still lingered on the Continent, if we may regard as represen tative of his time and place Baldessar Castiglione's introductory epistle to The Courtier (Hoby's Translation, 1576): "If the book shall generally please, I will count him good and think that he ought to live; but, if ho shall displease, I will count him naught and believe that the memory of him shall soon perish. " How different this from Ben Jonson's arrogant outcry, "By God, 'tis good, and if you like't, you may!" This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Envy Theme in Prologues and Epilogues 565 with this challenge to his critics:?"Wald God, I had thar erys to pull... In cays thai bark, I compt it never a my te. " And this episcopal laying-on of hands is far outdone by the threats of the laity. Thomas Lodge issues this breezy warning to the Gentle men Readers of his Rosalynde:?"If Momus or anie squint-eied asse that hath mightie eares to conceive with Midas, and yet Httle reason to judge; if hee come aboord our barke to find fault with the tackling, when he knows not the shrowdes, He downe into the hold, and fetch out a rustie pollax, that sawe no sunne this seaven yeare, and either well be bast him, or heave the cocks combe over boord to feede cods. But courteous Gentlemen that favour most, backbite none and pardon what is overslipt, let such come and welcome, He into the stewards roome and fetch them a kan of our best beveradge. "41 And Brathwaite, in his Strappado or the Devil (1615), assumes the same swashbuckling vein, swear ing loudly ' to play archpirate with the reader (if he play recreant by being the depraver of the well-intended line) and to tie him like a galley-slave to the mast of his mala-speranza and ferry him over into Tartary.' Detraction and detractors receive as many harsh names as they give. The author of The Complaynt of Scotland (1549)42 runs afoul of "ignorant detrakkers," who might think him idle in that he uses his pen instead of practising some mechanic craft. In the preface of the translation of John Caius, English Dogs (1576),43 Abraham Fleming hails as 'currish the eloquence of such as shall snarl and snatch at the English abridgement and tear the translator, being absent, with the teeth of spiteful envy.' John Lyly asserts in his "Epistle to the Gentleman Readers" (1580) that "divers there are, not that they mislike the matter but that they hate the man, that will not stick to teare Euphues, because they do envie Lillie. " The writer 41 Lodge is always haunted by the fear of detraction. He speaks thus to the reader of his Devil Conjured (1596) : "I leave the whole to your judgements which, if they be not depraved with envie, will be bettered in knowledge, and if not carried away with opinion will receive much profit. " And again in his Prosopopeia or Tear es of Marie (1596) he admonishes his critic "to beware of detraction, for it either sheweth meere ignorance or mightie envie, for the detractor, first of all, sheweth himselfe to be void of charitie and next of all extinquisheth charitie in others." His Fig for Momus (1595) we shall discuss later. 42 E. E. T. Soc, Extra Ser. XIII, p. 9. 43 English Garner, III, 230. This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 566 Tupper of England's Eliza in the 1610 edition of The Mirror of Magis trates is ' not ignorant that he will be bitten by those mongrel English that bark at the majesty of that most noble princess . . . the fame of her royalties shall abate the shadows of their envy. ' " Pro cul hine turba invidiosa!" cries George Peele at the end of his Order of The Garter. "There is a certain envious windsucker," complains George Chapman in the preface to his Homer, "that hovers up and down, laboriously engrossing all the air with his luxurious ambition and buzzing into every ear my detraction, affirming I turn Homer out of the Latin only, etc., that sets all his associates and the whole rabble of my maligners on their wings with him to bear about my impair and poison my reputation ... In the meantime I intreat my impartial and judicial reader that all things to the quick he will not pare but humanly and nobly pardon defects and, if he find anything perfect, receive it unen vied. " William Browne assures the reader of Britannia's Pastorals (1613) that 'the want of ever-living songs, with which our isle was once bravely stored,44 is due to the chasing away of the Muses by the malignant tongues of those by whom detraction is adored. ' According to Wither's prelude to his Fidelia (1615),45 'the times' condition is full of envy, and suspicion, so that the wariest in thought, word and action, shall be most injured by foul-mouthed Detraction.' Bishop Hall pens, under the shadow of Envy, not only his famous "defiance," already cited, but the prologue to the first book of his Satires :? Envy waits on my back, Truth on my side; Envy will be my page and Truth my guide; Envy the margent hold, and Truth the line; Truth doth approve, but Envy doth repine. And Ben Jonson gives even larger space to that most ubiquitous of Elizabethan sins: in the embodiment of the vice in the person of Macilente in Every Man out of his Humor?6 in the stigmatizing of envy and detraction at the close of The Poetaster; and in the scoring of base-minded critics in the "Address to the Readers" 44 Strange comment in the heyday of English poesy! But it would be an easy and pleasant task to show that each age regards its own time as barren and points sadly backwards to an imaginary golden past. 45 English Garner, VI, 188. 46 Of the incarnation of Envy in Jonson's Macilente, Professor W. D. Briggs has written adequately in his MLN. article of June, 1916. This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Envy Theme in Prologues and Epilogues 567 that prefaces Sejanus. In The Poetaster Caesar thus winds up the scene (Act V, sc. 1):? Envy will dwell, where there is want of merit, Though the deserving man should crack his spirit Detraction is but baseness' varlet And apes are apes, though clothed in scarlet. And then follows a reminiscence of Martial, "Rumpatur, quis qu?s rumpitur invidia. " Jonson, speaking in his own person in the Sejanus address ridicules the critics as "common torturers that bring all wit to the rack; whose noses are ever like swine, spoiling and rooting up the Muses' gardens; and their whole bodies like moles, as blindly working under earth, to cast any, the least, hills upon virtue." The angry resentment of the Elizabethans in the face of criticism finds an outlet in the large use of the classical personi fication of the spirit of censure as Momus47 or as Zoilus48 and less frequently as Aristarchus. These malignant personages seem to enter English prefaces early in Elizabeth's reign. The first appearance of Momus, recorded in The Oxford Dictionary is in 1563, J. Hall's comment upon T. Gale's Enchiridion, "Maugre now the malice great of Momus and his sect, etc., " but this "scorn ful god" is drawn at full length in the speech of "the book to the 47 Momus appears in Hesiod's Theogony as the child of Night, and in Plato's Republic (487A) as a proverbial personification of carping criticism. But English writers were chiefly indebted to Lucian's Assembly of the Gods, where Momus, confessing himself "to be free of tongue and loath to pass in silence any wrong"?accuses all the gods in turn of various crimes. Calli machus, in his well-known lines against Apollonius the grammarian, introduces Momus as full of envy. Swift's vivid presentation of Momus as the patron of the censoring Moderns in The Battle of the Books will be generally remembered. According to Swift in A Tale of a Tub, section III, "Every true critic is a hero born, descending in a direct line from a celestial stem by Momus and Hybris, who begat Zoilus, who begat Tigellius, who begat Etcaetera the elder." 48 Zoilus, the asperser of Homer, seems to owe his vogue at the time of the Renascence to the influence both of Martial's Epigrams, where the name is frequently applied to the envious critic ("Ad invidum Zoilum"), and to a note worthy passage in Ovid's Remedia Amoris, 365-366:? "Ingenium magni detrectat Livor Homeri: Quisqu?s es, ex illo, Zoile, nomen habes. " Cervantes laughs in his "preface to the loving reader" of Don Quixote,at the habit of authors of beginning with Aristotle and ending with Xenophon or Zeuxis or Zoilus?the one a painter, the other a slanderous critic. Zoilus came into English literature in the twelfth-century Epigrams of Henry of This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 568 Tupper reader" that precedes the Palingenius^ of Barnabe Googe in 1560:? Who sekes to shun the shattring sails of mighty Momus mast, Must not attempt the sugred seas where muses ancour cast. For Momus there doth ryde at flote, with scorne full tongues yfraght: With cancred cracks of wrathfull words he keeps the passage strayght. That none without disdaine may passe where muses navie lies, But straight on them with ireful mode the scorn ful God he flies. And in Alexander Nevyll's verse-introduction to Googe's Eglogs (1563),50 critics are dubbed somewhat despitefully:?"crab snouted beasts, raging fiends of Hell, whose vile, malicious, hate ful minds swell with boiling rancor?like Momus' monstrous brood of a jealous brain, defaming with curious cankered, carping mouths most famous deed, and defacing those whose great labors deserve an immortal name?crabfaced. cankered, carlish chuffs within whose hateful breasts malice bides, rancor broils and endless envy rests, etc." This vilification seems a composite of many hotblooded prefaces. " No virtuous dede or zelous worke can want due praise of the honest, " declares Paynter in his preliminary remarks to The Palace of Pleasure (1566-1567), "though faulting fooles and youthly heades ful ofte do chaunt the faultles checke that Momus mouth did once finde out in Venus' slipper." "Momus and his currish mates," whom we have already met in P. T. G's preface to Blanchardyne, confront us at the close of Philip Stubbes' "epistle," dedicating his Anatomy of Abuses (1585) to the Earl of Arundel. His lordship is earnestly besought to "persist the just defender thereof against the swinish crew of railing Zoilus and flouting Momus with their complies of bragging Thrasoes and barking Phormions, to whom it is easier to deprave all things than to amend anything themselves." Nor is this all. After half-a Huntingdon (Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century, Rolls Ser., II, 171), a far-away imitator of Martial, but plays no part in prefaces until the reign of Elizabeth. Recall Zoilo-Thersites in Faust, Part II, Act 1. 49 See Googe, Eglogs, Epytaphes and Sonettes, Arber Reprint, p. 6. 60 Id., pp. 20-22. This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Envy Theme in Prologues and Epilogues 569 dozen lines to the "candid reader" ("candido lectori"),51 in which, in the manner of the old convention, Stubbes admits the rudeness and weakness of his work, he addresses himself in somewhat lurid Latinity to Zoilus, who "rages against all men, like a mad dog, biting some of them with his tooth of Theon,62 and harassing those who have done him no harm, shaking his poisonous viperous tongue against them all"?and much more in the same lively manner. Somewhat later, in "the dialogue between the author and his book," Stubbes disposes of his critics with the Puritan's faith in a too partial providence:? Though Momus rage and Zoilus carp, I fear them not at all:? The Lord, my God, in whom I trust, Shall cause them soon to fall. "As for any Aristarchus, Momus or Zoilus," cries Wilson in his address to the "friendly" and "courteous" reader of The Passion ate Century (1582), "if they pinch me more than is reasonable, thou courteous reader, which art of a better disposition, shall rebuke them in my behalf." Moreover, in his "Vade, libelle!" Watson angrily introduces "Aristarchus mordaci ore." Yet larger heed to Momus is paid by Thomas Lodge, who entitles his collection of satires and epistles (1595), A Fig for Momus,hz "not in contempt of the learned, for I honor them, not in disdaine of the wel minded, because they cherish science; but in despight of the detractor, who having no learning to judge want eth no libertie to reprove: who worthily deserving the name of Momus shall rather at my handes have a figge to cloake him then hee and his lewd tongue shall have a frumpe to check me. Sheepe are soonest worried by curdogs because they are mild: but he that nips him soundly that bites him cowardly, purchaseth his owne peace and escapes much perill. " Lodge addresses the first of his ""Candidus lector" and "lector amicus" are classical commonplaces (Ovid, Tristia, I, xi, 35; IV, x, 132; and III, i, 2), like the"lividus lector" of Apollinaris Sidonius {supra) and the "gravis lector" of Martial (XI, 20). "Gentle," "friendly," "courteous," "impartial," "judicious" and "judicial" readers abound in English prefaces. Le Sage, in Gil Blas,p&vts the way, by his "evil-minded reader" for the "wicked reader" of eighteenth-century fiction, and for Fielding's genial vocative, "my good reptile" {Tom Jones, Bk. X, Ch. 1). 62 An Horatian reminiscence, Epistles, I, 18, 82. Fitzstephen turns it to account in the introduction to his twelfth-century Life of Becket. 63 Compare the title of one of the Marlprelate pamphlets, A Bayte for Momus by Rev. T. Bland, entered in Stationers' Register, June 7, 1589. This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 570 Tupper epistles, Ad Momum.u "Tace at malevolum os male strepentis Zoili," comments "E. L." of Oxford in his lines upon Silvester's version of Du Bartas. "But sith we live in such a time," remarks Sir John Harington in the preface to his translation of Orlando Furioso (1591),55 "in which nothing can escape the envious tooth and backbiting tongue of any impure mouth and wherein everie blind corner hath a squint-eyed Zoilus that can look aright upon no man's doings, etc. " We have met Spenser seeking, in a dedicatory sonnet, Buckhurst's protection against "vile Zoilus backbitings vaine" and Barnabe Barnes asking the aid of Southampton against "back-wounding Zoilus his band." And Robert Burton thus assails "the critical reader" in the Latin lines, "Democritus Junior ad Librum suum," prefixed to The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621):? Si criticus lector, tumidus censorque molestus, Zoilus et Momus, si rabiosa cohors; Ringe, freme et noli turn pandere, turba malignis Si occurrat sannis invidiosa suis. Perhaps the best testimony to the vogue of the convention is found in the apparent girding of that free-lance Thomas Nash at its stock character in his Have with you to Saffron Waiden:66 "Thomas Deloney, the balleting silkweaver, hath rime enough for all miracles and wit to make a Garland of Good Will more than the premisses with an Epistle of Momus and Zoylus. " The "Envy" convention, so popular in Tudor and Jacobean prologues and epilogues, perseveres?yet with far less frequency? after the passing of James. Interestingly varied is Milton's use of the motif. In the swelling style of the Elizabethans he "congratulates himself and thanks the Author of all good for having placed him in a station which may be an object of envy to others rather than of regret to himself"?this and much more to the same tune in the Preface to The Second Defense of the People of England. In one of his Italian sonnets, Giovane, piano, he pic tures his heart "self-wrapt round in adamant, as safe from envy and from outrage rude, from hopes and fears that vulgar minds abuse. " And in traditional fashion he combines the envy theme 64 See J. P. Collier's discussion of A Fig for Momus in The Poetical Decam eron, 1820,1, 175. 55 G. Gregory Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays, II, 195. M McKerrow, Works of Thomas Nash, III, 84. This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Envy Theme in Prologues and Epilogues 571 with an adaptation of the "Vade liber" in his Latin ode to John Rouse, which Cowper has so pleasingly rendered:? Ye then, my works, no longer vain And worthless deemed by me, Whate'er this sterile genius has produced Expect at last, the rage of Envy spent, An unmolested, happy home. The detraction against which Milton protested in a memorable sonnet, his eleventh, threatened far lesser men among his con temporaries. At Lilly's Christian Astrology (1647) William Roe forbids "Envy's square or apposite aspect to shew a frowning look," and "W. W." welcomes the book as his "choice compan ion," though "black-mouthed Envy bark" and "carp at what's well done." And an admirer of William Davenant in 1658 breathes the stereotyped prayer:? Let not loud Envy's sulphurous blasts cast forth Venomed aspersions on thy noble worth! Though Momus and Zoilus gradually disappear from prefaces, they still live on as synonyms of the carping critic; and Envy still pleads classical precedent. Dryden alludes in the dedication of Examen Poeticum (1693) to "the ill-nature of those fellows who were then called Zoili and Momi and now take upon themselves the venerable name of censors. But neither Zoilus nor he who endeavored to defame Virgil were ever adopted into the name of critics by the ancients." Envy's scorn and vilification of con temporary poets is attested, declares Dryden, by the Horatian Unes (Epistles, II, i, 88):? Ingeniis non ille favet plauditque sepultis, Nostra sed impugnat, nos nostraque lividus odit.67 Pope tells us in The Essay on Criticism, 11, 181 f., that "green with bays each ancient altar stands . . . secure from flames, from Envy's fiercer rage"?to which Warburton appends, "the fiercer rage of Zoilus58 and Maevius and their followers against Wit"?and later in the same poem (11, 464 f.) Pope himself intro duces the stock personification:? Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head, Zoilus again would start up from the dead. Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue; But, like a shadow, proves the substance true. 87 Walter Map, who knew his Horace well, harps upon the same string in the Prologue to the Fifth Division of De Nugis Curialium, p. 203. 68 Swift's large mention of Momus and Zoilus in his two early satires has been cited. Compare, too, Parnell's Preface to the Life of Zoilus (1717). This content downloaded from 193.104.110.112 on Sun, 25 May 2014 01:03:03 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 572 Tupper Zoilus and his crew all "start up from the dead" not only at the lifting of great Homer's head, but at the up-bobbing of a very Httle eighteenth-century person, the dictionary-maker, N. Bailey. In the uncouth preface to his amazing version of Ovid's Tristia(1728), Bailey frames in the well-worn formula his unwarranted fear of envy : ?"thoughI may not expect to be so happy as to escape the cen sure of every invidious Momus and snarling Zoilus, yet the well meaningness of the design will, I hope, atone for anything may probably have escaped my notice, etc. " Any such eighteenth-century use of "Envy" formulas must be viewed as a sporadic revival of an outworn tradition. It is true that imputations of critical "hatred, mafice and all unchari tableness" are written large across the prefaces of the suspicious and choleric Smollett; but these charges are temperamental rather than traditional, and, moreover, are not dressed in the conventional guise. It is also true that in so late a preface as the "Introduc tion" to The Tales of my Landlord, criticism is discounted on the old, familiar ground that "Envy always dogs Merit at the heels;" but Scott, writing in the person of the pompous " Jedidiah Cleish botham, " employs here and elsewhere (for instance in " the recom mendations of my labors") antiquated formafities of phrase. English bards and Scotch reviewers may wrangle when the nine teenth century is well under way. But the man of letters is no longer so self-centered, so blind to his own limitations, as invaria bly to impute depreciation of his work to the jaundice of the critic. Moreover the tracker of error is now a reputable, often an illus trious, member of an established order, and can no longer be scorn fully ruled out of court by stereotyped abuse leveled at base-minded detraction. Unable to persist, under modern conditions of author ship and criticism, the stock accusation of "Envy" disappears from prologues and epilogues, in which it once played so constant and conspicuous a part. Frederick Tupper. University of Vermont.