University of Virginia Library

II

The circumstances in which the puff flourished can be illuminated by more detailed study. During the first half of the STC period, 1478-1559, the books with commendatory verses are about evenly divided into three groups: literature (including serious prose treatises), religious works, and school textbooks. Thus the lasting association of the universities and schools with commendatory verses appears from the very outset. During this earlier period verses, like dedications, are in the main confined to books of serious pretensions, whether in Latin or the vernacular. Ephemera and light literature are not equipped with what is still regarded as scholarly apparatus.

During the second half of the STC period, 1560-1640, the most striking feature of the statistics of literary patronage and commendatory verses is the increasing preponderance of literary works. Not only did the volume of "literature" increase, but, depending on one's bias, one may say that popular literature won cultural status or that dedication and puff apparatus sank to the level that might now be termed mass media. A rough count suggests that during these eighty-one years verse puffs appear in 428 books classifiable as literary in a narrower sense, in addition to 55 English plays of the Stuart period and 261 prose works of literary flavor (history, etc.). Pedagogical books continue steady with a total of 103, while books of religion and devotion number 298, including, after 1600, occasional pamphlets or tomes of sermons (verses never became standard in sermons). This leaves a classification of 238 miscellaneous works, for in the seventeenth century the commendatory vogue extended irregularly into almost every type of publication, such as technical handbooks or even almanacks

(music books had been invaded in Elizabeth's reign).[9] Lighter literature, such as English verse and fiction, began to be provided with dedications about 1570, and puffing followed in sequence. In the Jacobean years the vogue extended to frivolous publications like the pamphlets of Taylor the Water Poet. Meanwhile the plays of the professional dramatists received tardy literary recognition. Apart from a few closet dramas, the first English play with verses was Jonson's learned effort, Sejanus, 1605. This and subsequent plays like Volpone set a precedent for dramatists and booksellers; by the 1630's the practice was common in the quartos of James Shirley and his fellows.

As one would expect of humanists, the earliest commendatory verses are in Latin; this language is dominant into the 1520's and remains common in learned publications all through the STC period. English first appears in 1494 (3175). As recreation from teaching "Cambridge and King Edward Greek," Sir John Cheke contributed the first Greek poem in 1545 (22250). French follows closely in 1549 (3045), Dutch in 1568 (18601), Italian in 1569 (3053), Hebrew and Welsh together in 1577 (6364), and Spanish most timely in 1588 (24579, a work in Spanish). All of these languages except Hebrew are used in Coryate's Crudities, 1611, along with macaronic verses and poems in "Utopian" and parody Irish!

The memorable suggestion of the Rev. Walter Ong, S.J., that in Renaissance England grammar school Latin was essentially a puberty rite may be given the corollary that at school and university the cultivation of complimentary verses in the learned tongue was part of the liturgy of that rite. The numerous pamphlets of Latin verses published at the universities on memorial or congratulatory occasions from the death of Sidney to the royal blessed event of 1640 suggest that able students as well as dons were pressured to produce polished effusions, and one suspects that at times the task was a study assignment with publication of the best as an incentive. Commendatory verses for textbooks and other publications of schoolmasters and university men are a parallel manifestation. They appear from the outset in schoolbooks by Horman, Whittinton, Linacre, and, of course, Lily. They thrive in the reign of Elizabeth I, as in the Oxford works of John Case (4756, etc., one with no less than 26 praisers) and the schoolmaster John Stockwood's Disputatiunculae (23278, 27 poems). Two books by William Gager and William Thorne contain more than half of the

commendatory output for 1592, outweighing ten other works in their volume of flattery. The practice continues in Stuart times, as in Kynaston's Latin version of Chaucer's Troilus at Oxford and James Duport's Greek version of Job at Cambridge (commended by fifteen and twenty men respectively.)[10]

Habitual writers of commendatory verses were, as one might suspect, mainly literary professionals. With the curious exceptions of Sidney and Shakespeare, all the chief poets (including Spenser and Milton) wrote puffs. Jonson led the way with 30 contributions, followed by Thomas Newton with 25, John Davies of Hereford with 18, Drayton with 15. From ten to a dozen were contributed by John Adamson, John Cooke, Thomas Heywood, Hugh Holland, Lawrence Humphrey, Andrew Melville, Patrick Sands, George Wither, and—if my identification of initials is reliable—Christopher Goodfellow.[11] Fully 55 other men wrote verses for from five to nine books. The practice of printing his own verse puffs in his collected works was initiated by Newton and continued by Jonson, Shirley, and others. University men who wrote verses would embrace, of course, not merely recognized scholars (including many of the clergy), but likewise alumni who mingled in fashionable society and cultivated the acquaintance of poets. The fact that Welsh writers affect puffs may be due less to a racial trait than to the proportion of academic books in their output— an observation that may apply also in some degree to the Scots. Few other generalizations can be made about puff writers except that the practice seems to have been beneath the dignity of members of the peerage (apart, of course, from their effusions while at school or university).

Besides men of letters, puff writers include forgotten people and many who either do not sign names or mask themselves under initials and pseudonyms. Of the hundreds of initials, the great majority cannot be identified with assurance. Besides genuine pseudonyms—whatever that means—various fictitious names are attached to facetious poems by authors or their friends. Such mystifications are at times plausible enough to allay suspicion. The type is admirably illustrated in a 1523 work by St. Thomas More (18089), where certainty could be reached only after discovery at the University of Durham Library of a unique

pre-publication state in which alternate fictitious names were used.[12] Unsigned verses are for the most part genuinely anonymous, but a minority—from internal evidence of varying cogency—can be assigned to the writer of signed poems that precede or follow. After excluding such chain sequences, together with poems apparently supplied by author, editor, or bookseller, I find that just under 400 anonymous pieces remain to pique our curiosity—about eight per cent. of the total output.

The fashionable accumulation of puffs in the successive editions of Sir Thomas Overbury's Wife is a convenient locus classicus for studying the genre, though the verses appended to The Faerie Queene may be more familiar. If asked for a type example of the better commendatory poem in its palmy days, I would intuitively cite Joseph Taylor's tribute to Massinger before The Roman Actor, 1629. The mystification apparatus to George Gascoigne's Posies, 1575, is notorious. Other writers who exerted themselves to adorn their books with numerous puffs include—in various kinds of books—Richard Stanyhurst, Joshua Sylvester, Davies of Hereford, John Taylor, Captain John Smith, William Hawkins, Lewis Roberts, and James Yorke.

While usually falling within the span of from fourteen to thirty lines, commendatory verses range in length from the couplet to pieces that in themselves rival verse pamphlets. An extreme instance of brevity is the collection of 23 Latin and Greek distichs before a Cambridge edition of Hippocrates (13519). A prominent contender for the second of the two "gifts of song"—prolixity—is the seven-page effusion provided for William Cartwright's Works by one I. B. Collections of puffs are sometimes dignified with their own half-title (3220, 24756). Scholars seldom pause to realize that some commendatory poems achieved enormous circulation. The most printed poet of the Elizabethan age was not Shakespeare or even Thomas Tusser; probably he was the anonymous author (perhaps Thomas Gresshope) who penned, for the Geneva Bible, the familiar lines, "Here is the spring where waters flowe" (2123). He was reprinted more often than the puffers of Lily's Grammar.

In Stuart times, it is clear from scattered evidence, the task of soliciting puffs was frequently, if not customarily, assumed by the publisher or stationer, often loosely termed the "printer." In 1624

W. B. complains that "The Printers haste" allows him only one hour to write his tribute (17632). As a schoolboy in 1635, Joseph Harrington says that "The Printer writes, our Masters Booke will sell: / And I must write our Master writeth well" (12141). The publisher Humphrey Moseley was undeniably responsible for assembling the tributes for the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio and for Cartwright's Works (both admittedly posthumous). In my Index of Dedications I was unaware of evidence that publishers ever paid for puffs. This remains true for the STC period except for an ambiguous remark in 1609: "I mistrust a gorgeous Frontispice, / Of mercenary penns" (3202). For the Commonwealth, however, contrary evidence is now available. Puffing Cartwright's Works in 1651, R. Hill writes: And Prof. Alexander Sackton draws my attention to James Shirley's assurance to Richard Brome in 1652 that A Joviall Crew will succeed on its merits, One is reminded of Swift's jibe that Dryden's classic prefaces were "meerly writ at first for filling / To raise the Volume's Price a Shilling."

Presumably many authors continued to collect their own puffs (as seems to have been the general custom in earlier years), or managed the job vicariously through a cooperative friend. The former was the case with what was perhaps an amateur rather than a commercial venture, Sir John Stradling's Beati Pacifici, 1623. From internal evidence, Stradling circulated his book among friends before publication with requests for their censures. The replies—at least all that were printed—were enthusiastic and in verse. It is not clear whether Stradling used advance copies in print or the manuscript, but circulation of a manuscript seems to have been fairly common. Thus unpublished manuscripts are extant with sets of commendatory verses, and versifiers quite often refer to the text or to their fellow commenders in terms showing access to the manuscript. For instance, in Romulus and Tarquin (17220), Aurelian Townsend's poem alludes to the three poets who precede him. As Michael Strachan points out, the publisher

of Coryate's Crudities circulated the engraved frontispiece among the Mermaid wits, for their poems show familiarity with it.[13] After assembling puffs, authors sometimes were moved to pen a verse acknowledgement, either a collective thank-you (11544, 14008, 23779, 24631) or, more rarely, individual bows (17997, 24096).

A fraction of commendatory poems—quite apart from jokes and mystifications—may have been faked or ghost-written, but at this distance proof is hard to come by. The striking regularity of some groups of puffs arouses suspicion. But even if daring to impeach the matching verses by nonentities before Robert Tofte's Alba, would one venture to question the sonnets by known friends before Chapman's poems (4985)? The phenomenon could easily occur as a manuscript circulated. The prevalence of initials, pseudonyms, and unsigned pieces may arouse doubts but cannot provide conviction. References to faking are excessively rare, the best being William Cartwright's exculpation of John Fletcher before the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio:

Thomas Jordan has been suspected of providing false verses in the hope they would be considered Jonson's (14788).[14] The notion of ghost-writing is particularly repulsive to index-compilers! Happily few explorations have been made along these lines. The most interesting is George B. Parks's argument that George Peele composed certain verses signed by men not usually thought of as poets, such as Drake, Hawkins, etc. (19523).[15]

The run-of-the-mill versifier feels impelled to deny that he is motivated by the cacoëthes scribendi. Others, perhaps, but not he! It is only human to seek publicity by puffing another's book. As Owen Feltham cleverly expresses it before Thomas Randolph's Poems:

Few have the courage of Peter Heylyn to confess themselves among those "desertlesse men . . . made knowne / By naming lines far better than their owne."[16] Rather, these displays of ineptitude are a response to the stern voice of duty, the need—as Edward Greenfield expresses it (11159)—"to acquit a debt, / Due to right Poets, not the counterfeit." A sense of long-standing personal obligation prompts the average puffer, rather than ambition "under covert of thy sheetes to lurke" (778). Jonson apologizes to Drayton for not having praised his earlier books (7190), while Thomas Jordan disingenuously denies puffing in hope of a reciprocal puff (20770). Alas for human frailty! The evidence is clear that hundreds of versifiers were prompted by vanity—if not the simple thrill of seeing one's name in print, then at least the chance to exhibit one's wit. His Oxford M. A. apparently inspired William Parre to have his puff printed at the end of a book (18496) so as not "to praise thee to thy face." Punning is frequent, as in Henry Upcher's verses before Robert Greene's Menaphon. One's sympathy goes to John Jackson, who concedes himself a jackass in order to achieve his pun: "the world may say, / What is this Iackson that commends the play?" (22454). But scorn not the pun: through its means one commender confirms the authorship of the book he praises (17805).

Like dedications, commendatory verses develop a stock of commonplaces and allusions that are repeated ad nauseam. These respect both the object of praise and the altruistic motivation and unworthiness of the puffer. Naturally the author's genius is glorified and, if his age allows, it is customary to voice amazement at his youth and precocity. If the book has a propaganda aim, the thesis is promoted. It is in order to console a dramatist if the rabble failed to recognize the merits of his play on the stage (11068, 14782, 18346). That commendatory poems are superfluous and cannot affect the merit of a book was a satirical commonplace, expressed in epigram by Sir John Harington and Henry Parrott; indeed, says Samuel Rowlands, "verses (in laudem authoris) are farre worse then a Horse-coursers commendation of a Smythfield Iade" (21400). In what may be a sour-grapes statement, Wye Saltonstall has the ill grace to spurn praises (18945); he will stand on his own merits. On the other hand, Richard Robinson admits that "I haue been showne / Bookes that sell well, yet not for what's their owne, / But for Commendators before them knowne" (18673). But the compiler of a trifling spelling book boasts absurdly that he has "shut out all verses in laudem Authoris, and tedious Dedicatories,

which now a daies will cost the buyer as much as the Booke it selfe."[17] The very futility of the puff is actually the puffer's favorite gambit: a thousand voices stammer that good wine needs no bush! "Its owne worth / Without a borrowed prayse, shall set it forth" (11163). If "some pieces . . . have stood / In neede of witnesses," certainly to the merit of this book "Friends cannot adde, nor envie make it lesse" (22454). Rather, this tribute, like "a mole on Venus face," is the sole blemish in the book (17636).