George Herbert and the Epigrammatic Tradition

Abstract

In his dedication to the Earl of Pembroke, Ben Jonson refers to his "Epigrammes" as "the ripest of my studies." The reference ¡s a startling, if not also perplexing one since epigrams hardly seem to us worthy of being considered the fruit of serious labor. Just as startling and perplexing is Jonson's collection of epigrams itself, for in it appear poems many modern readers tend to view as extremely fine instances of lyric expression, not really epigrams at all. The difficulty, then, is twofold: why does Jonson include what appear to us to be remarkably graceful lyric poems in a collection of poems he calls Epigrammes and why does he refer to this collection as the ripest of my studies. Suggestions for answers to these and other questions concerning lyric poetry of the early seventeenth century may be found, surprisingly enough, in the poetry of George Herbert, a poet known more for his lyric than for his epigrammatic achievements. Yet in addition to the English lyrics we admire so much in The Temple, he wrote a substantial number of Latin poems (126 ¡n all), and most of these poems, wth the exception of the collection honoring his mother, are epigrams or epigrammatic in nature. Many are only slight accomplishments in themselves, but taken as a whole they tell us a great deal about Herbert's development as a poet as well as about the kind of artistic success he achieved in his English verse. On a larger scale, they suggest an affinity between epigrammatic and lyric poetry in the seventeenth century which most of us have tended to ignore in responding appreciatively to this poetry. That Jonson wrote epigrams and considered these poems to be the ripest of his studies is reason enough to pause and consider the epigrammatic tradition. Throughout Epigrammes, as the reader is well aware, Jonson ranges in adapting epigrammatic form to suit his own poetic purposes, from being satiric in one poem, to being overtly witty, pointed, or maximatic in another, and even at times to affecting an emotional quality that strikes us as being primarily lyric in nature.