The Clean Contrary Way

I keep attempting little investigations for the blog that turn inconclusive, or simply become too big. This, for instance, I might work on properly and write up:

I came across Luke Shepherd’s broadsheet, ‘Antipus’. This is mid-16^th century, fiercely Protestant stuff, printed in the reign of Edward VI. John ‘Bilious’ Bale apparently approved of Shepherd, that’s how strident he is.

The point of his set of distiches is to attack the doctrine of the real presence: “As verily as bread doth make and bake the baker / So verily these thieves the priests can make their maker.”

To do this, Shepherd launches into a series of statements which are the opposite to the truth (as he believes it to be), leading up to his climactic impossibility. The effect is (at least I thought) interestingly unstable: inventing these impossibilities, Shepherd’s mind strays into fantasy-heresies, in which Adam creates God, Christ persecutes the Jews, the Apostles refuse the gospel. All kinds of Bible passages are mingled together, so intense conviction and indiscriminateness co-mingle.

The opening couplet is a bit odd too: saying, ‘this is not the kind of thing you usually hear’, then ducking into Latin for ‘For the opposites of these things are most true’. Though I suppose that is to keep the joke alive, to allow the poem to inculcate a habit of total rejection into its readers’ minds.

I think that this may be the first of its kind, the polemical broadside poem which teaches by opposites. Well into the 17^th century, ballads were written to the model, and used the refrain of ‘the clean contrary way’: read them, and understand the opposite to be true.

I append Alexander Brome’s ‘The Saints’ Encouragement’, which also circulated in broadsheet form, a poem of rankling hatred for the Roundheads, using this device of inventing words for a completely wrong-headed speaker. John Eliot’s little poem deals with an incident when fiddlers who played and sang the ‘clean contrary way’ music were sentenced to be whipped. He points out how counterproductive this action will be for the Puritan authorities.

I found another, Restoration variant, and a lot of allusions. There must be more out there.

Antipus,

Epigraph:

¶To heare of such thinges ye be not wont
Nam horum contraria verissima sunt

AS verily as Adam created firste his God
So verily he tasted not, the fruite that was forbod

As verily as Abell, dyd kyll hys brother Kayn
So verily the shyppe made Noye this is playne

As verily as Isaac, hys father dyd begette
So verily the Sodomytes remayn vnburned yet

As verily as the Isralites, the Egiptians dyd oppresse
So verily dyd Moyses gyue God the lawe dowbtles

As verily as Sampson was, slayne of the lion rampynge
So verily dyd Goliad distroye Dauid the Kynge

As verily as in Babilon the meates were eate of Bell
So verily the dragon of brasse deuoured Daniell

As verily as Christe dyd crucifye the Jewes
So verily the Aposteles the gospell dyd refuse

As verily as Simon Magus the Apostles dyd confute
So verily the Apostels dyd princes persecute

As verily as the deuyll hath perfecte loue and hope
So verily goddes worde doth constitute the pope

As verily as Ise sicles wythin be hote and holowe
So verily proude prelates oure master Christe do folowe

As verily as bread doeth make and bake the baker
So verily these thefes the prestes can make their maker.

→ If Leighton wyll neades his maker make
That these are true he can not forsake
A Papiste he is and the popes owne knight
That preacheth falshed in stead of ryght
He knowith not howe to pay hys dettes
But wyth catchinge his creditors in the Popes netts
A thefe, a robber, by preachinge sedition
Is better regarded then the kings co~mission.
Amonge Papistes.

Alexander Brome, ‘The Saints Encouragement’, Written in 1643

Fight on brave Souldiers for the cause,
Fear not the Caveleers;
Their threatnings are as senselesse, as
Our Jealousies and fears.
'Tis you must perfect this great work,
And all Malignants slay,
You must being back the King again
The clean contrary way.

Tis for Religion that you fight,
And for the Kingdomes good,
By robbing Churches, plundring men,
And shedding guiltlesse blood.
Down with the Orthodoxal train,
All Loyal Subjects slay;
When these are gone we shall be blest
The clean contrary way.

When Charles we've bankrupt made, like us
Of Crown and power bereft him;
And all his loyal subjects slain,
And none but Rebels left him.
When we've beggar'd all the Land,
And sent our Truncks away,
We'l make him then a glorious Prince;
The clean contrary way.

'Tis to preserve his Majesty,
That we against him fight,
Nor are we ever beaten back,
Because our cause is right,
If any make a scruple on't,
Our Declarations say
Who fight for us, fight for the King,
The clean contrary way.

At Keynton, Branford, Plymmouth, York,
And diverse places more;
What victories we Saints obtain'd,
The like ne're seen before.
How often we Prince Robert kill'd,
And bravely won the day,
The wicked Cavaleers did run
The clean contrary way.

The true Religion we maintain,
The Kingdomes peace, and plenty;
The priviledg of Parliament
Not known to one of twenty:
The antient Fundamental Laws,
And teach men to obey;
Their Lawful Soveraign, and all these,
The clean contrary way.

We subjects Liberties preserve,
By, prisonment and plunder,
And do inrich our selves and state
By keeping the wicked under.
We must preserve Mecannicks now,
To Lecturize and pray;
By them the Gospel is advanc'd,
The clean contrary way.

And though the King be much misled
By that malignant crew;
He'l find us honest, and at last,
Give all of us our due.
For we do wisely plot, and plot
Rebellion to destroy,
He sees we stand for peace and truth,
The clean contrary way.

The publick faith shall save our souls,
And good out-works together,
And ships shall save our lives that stay,
Only for wind weather.
But when our faith and works fall down,
And all our hopes decay,
Our Acts will bear us up to heaven,
The clean contrary way.

John Eliot, ‘The Fidlers that were committed for singing a Song called, The clean contrary way’ (1658).

The Fidlers must be whipt the people say,
Because they sung the clean contrary way;
Which if they be, a Crown I dare to lay,
They then will sing the clean contrary way.
And he that did those merry Knaves betray,
Wise men will praise, the clean contrary way:
For whipping them no envy can allay,
Unlesse it be the clean contrary way.
Then if they went the Peoples tongues to stay,
Doubtless they went the clean contrary way.

It passed for wit in the Eighteeenth Century

“Mr. Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, when his nephew, a Guinea trader, came in. ‘Nephew’ (said Sir Godfrey) ‘you have the honour of seeing the two greatest men in the world.’

‘I don’t know how great you may be (said the Guinea-Man), but I don’t like your looks: I have often bought a man, much better than both of you together, all muscles and bone, for ten guineas.’ ”

I was preparing classes on the following texts

http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhle/001/Slavery.htm

chosen to illustrate some of the ways in which poets and verse writers joined in the campaigning for the abolition of slavery, leading up to the act passed 200 years ago today. I looked up ‘Guinea-Man’ in the OED (‘I sail’d on board a Guinea-man’, says the sailor stricken by conscience in Robert Southey’s ‘The Sailor, who had served in the slave trade’), and found that the dictionary had, among its illustrative quotations, this robust encounter, preserved in Joseph Spence’s Anecdotes.

I imagine that Kneller, was making a joke: with Pope as poetry, and himself as painting, his nephew had indeed happened into rarified company. The ‘Guinea Man’ has of course a rather different scheme of ideas about the worth of men.

The following site does indicate that Kneller had moments of self-conceitedness; the ODNB entry represents him as hard-working and relatively modest.

http://www.twickenham-museum.org.uk/print_detail.asp?ContentID=62

On the sporting side, I undertook this event this morning: ‘The Reading CC Hilly Torture 40’: actually 44.5 miles, with 5,177 feet of climbing woven into its insanely testing route. My fellow club member and RHUL academic, Dr John Wann, is all set to generate interesting statistics. We were all weighed, standing on electronic scales, holding our bicycles, beforehand and afterwards. The idea was (I think) to award some recognition for whoever managed to shed most weight. I confounded this clever scheme by apparently finishing weighing one kilo more than when I started. I toured round slowly (it took me a leisurely 3 hours and 20 minutes, for the climbs are so awful, that my tactic is to arrive at each one as fresh as possible). But my legs just got heavier and heavier, it seems. That’s certainly how they felt.

http://www.sanoodi.com/route/readingcc/torture-40/2007-02-06/00-26-00/

"The onely pretiring time"

After marking a couple of M.A. essays on the songs in Shakespeare’s comedies, I thought I’d get busy and post of few mp3’s transferred from my collection of antique vinyl, and so here they all are on a site I rather hastily put together yesterday:

http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhle/001/Shakespearesongs.htm

I had no idea that Thomas Morley, Shakespeare’s sometime London neighbour (and who set music for the lyrics ‘O Mistress Mine’ and ‘It was a Lover and his Lass’) had lived a life that was quite so far from ‘Hay ding a ding a ding’. I checked the biography by Michael W Foster in the ODNB, and though Foster seems reluctant to make much of it, Morley evidently set off as a Catholic musician, working under the tutelage of the defiantly Catholic William Byrd. The senior composer was secured by the Queen’s approval of his talent (“process to cease by order of the Queen” ran the note on a document reporting his recusancy). Morley had no such protection: he seems to have been suspected and intimidated by both Catholics and Protestants. Finally he was turned, becoming an informer against his erstwhile co-religionists (“I hear since his coming thither he has played the promoter and apprehends Catholics”, wrote the Catholic exile Charles Paget).

One can see that from their training and employment in the Cathedrals, and by their attachment to their art, senior Tudor musicians would include men strongly attached to the Catholic faith, something which might be reinforced by their travels abroad and contact with Italian musicians. But, living a life in the brazen age, Morley made his compromise: "Morley the singing man employs himself in that kind of service … and has brought diverse into danger".

The memorial brass on Thomas Tallis's tomb had paid a kind of tribute to his adaptability:

He serv'd long Tyme in Chapp[ell] with grete prayse,

Fower sovereygnes reignes (a thing not often scene),

I mean King Henry and Prince Edward's Dayes,

Quene Mary, and Elizabeth our Quene.

He maryed was, though Children had he none,

And lyv'd in Love full thre and thirty Yeres …

As he did Lyve, so also did he dy,

In myld and quyet Sort (O! happy Man).

Arriving in a younger generation, Morley seems to have had to prove his usefulness to the new regime before he could enter the protective zone of the Chapel Royal.

Dark with Excessive Bright

I took myself off to a 'Rock, Gem and Mineral' Fair today, my jackdaw eye a-glint (when did I become so acquisitive?), rather hoping to buy a Devonian fish or a eurypterid, but ended up instead with various eye-catching minerals. From the dealer R D Mazda, I bought a cluster of apophyllite, and, more decoratively, a small oval bowl shaped from moss agate.

I expressed my incredulity that none of the many women at the fair had scooped up this necklace in faceted rock crystal - something that Mr Mazda had bought on his last trip back to India in February as (he put it) an 'aberration' from his normal serious mineralogy - and affirmed that, had I a particular lady friend I wanted to give a gift to, I would have bought it on sight. A little later, I went back and bought it nevertheless, some might say, for my one true love...

Trying to do justice to it, I photographed it out in the sun, on a suitable page of Milton: I liked the letters multiplied in the facets. Maybe this is a sign that I am about to turn devout, or sense that I need to start saying my prayers.

http://webmineral.com/data/Apophyllite.shtml

One of my friends has started a blog, under a whimsical pseudonym
http://tupperkneetoss.blogspot.com/
Here he is indulging an undeniably pointed philippic about Global Warming. I didn't bother watching the documentary, but must ask 'Tupper' about his assertion that "One of the talking heads (a founder member of Greenpeace, no less) made the excellent if overdramatic point that to deny climate change was a bit like being a Holocaust denier". Was this really said? Surely not with any seriousness?

I must have another go at making 'Blogger' put URL's in my 'Links' section, though most previous attempts have failed (this makes me embarrassed about fellow bloggers).

The speedy fall of man: Hugh Broughton

I was reading Paradise Lost, when it struck me that Milton is far friendlier to the Book of Tobit than he ought to be as a Protestant (see IV, 167ff and V 221-3), and I supposed that he might have favoured the apocryphal book for the curing of Tobit’s blindness by Tobias (as depicted here by Jan Massys), and the fervent wedding night prayers of Tobias and Sara (understandable in the circumstances they face – will some burnt fish guts manage to keep at bay the spirit that has jealously killed her previous seven husbands prior to consummation?). Milton will also be receptive as an author with a Christian epic to fill out to anything near-biblical in which an angel gets an active role, and develops his Raphael out of the Raphael of the apocryphal book.

I digressed around a couple of fierce Protestant denunciations of a text the Catholics held to be canonical, finding first John Vicars’ wonderfully titled Unholsome henbane between two fragrant roses, or, Reasons and grounds proving the unlawfull and sinfull inserting of the corrupt and most erronious Apocrypha between the two most pure and sacred testaments (1645). Vicars argues that the Book of Tobit contains a blasphemy, in Raphael representing himself as a mediator between man and God (i.e., taking the role reserved for Christ), and ‘Magick, or Inchantment’ in that act of curing Tobit’s blindness: “Now, if these were not plain Spels and unwarrantable wayes of Magick and Inchantment, thus to drive away devils and evil spirits, and to cure diseases, by the help of such a spirit, as Azarias and Raphael, let all truly godly say and determine.” I suppose that if The Book of Tobit had been firmly part of the Protestant Bible, the non-Catholic demonologists and exorcists would have been more inclined to get busy treating devils with cod’s liver smoke.

From Vicars, I went to Hugh Broughton’s Principal positions for groundes of the Holy Bible a short oration of the Bibles translation : positions historique and of the Apocrypha : Tobit particularly handled : Iudith severally handled (1609), which offers more of the same, from a fiercely learned source. This is the Broughton who is mentioned satirically in Jonson’s The Alchemist, where Doll Common poses as a gentlewoman driven mad by studying his writings:

Y'are very right, sir, shee is a most rare schollar;
And is gone mad, with studying Broughtons workes.
If you but name a word, touching the Hebrew,
Shee falls into her fit...

In S. Clark’s The lives of sundry eminent persons in this later age (1683), the existence of a woman who mastered Hebrew from study of Broughton actually gets mentioned: “Yea, some such there were, that being excited and stirred up by his books, applied themselves to the study of the Hebrew tongue and attained to a great measure of skill and knowledge therein. Nay, a woman might be named who did it.”

But Broughton himself, a man whose learning enabled him to humiliate learned opponents in theological controversies, brought me back to Paradise Lost with this assertion (p. 13 of his Principal positions):

“Principal Positions in the holy story: and of the Apocrypha

Great matters should be knowen commonly: some chief I wil briefly touch.

1. When God had made the world, and gave Adam authoritie, he left Adam to be deceived, the day that he was created.”

So, in the view of this scholar, the blessed state didn’t last out the first day. He doesn’t offer any argument for this opinion (which surely has some devastating implications), just regards it as a salient and hard fact. What a strange creation, then! Anyway, I too must have 'gone mad, with studying Broughton's works', for what a strange way to spend a Saturday evening.

Several Ingenious Engines

John Aubrey: what a blogger the world lost through the accident of his being born in the seventeenth century! Interested in everything, addicted to hearsay, fecklessly discontinuous. He’s a writer who is always saying in effect, ‘I know this much, can anyone fill in the rest for me?’, so he’d have loved the Wikipedia.

But he was 17^th century, and until we can time-warp a quantum computer back to him with instructions as to how to get on with it, we have to be content with works like Miscellanies upon the following subjects collected by J. Aubrey, Esq., (1696), which is essentially a proto-blog in print: bits contributed by others, bits he can throw together, and bits that remain no more than bits.

Still here’s one of the interesting pieces of curious information:

“Mr. Winstanly (Surveyor of the King's Works) hath built a handsome House at Littlebury in Cambridgshire near Audely-Inn where are to be seen several Ingenious Machines; one whereof is thus: A Wooden Slipper finely Carved lieth on the Floor of a Chamber about a Yard and an half within the Door, which the Stranger is to take up (it comes up pretty stiff) and up starts a Skeleton.”

I have read about the trick machines out in Renaissance gardens, especially fountains, but I don’t recall coming across such an indoor device to disconcert your guests. The trap is subtle: I assume that the slipper would be painted, a trompe d’oeil. You come across it, and naturally think to move it out of the way: but strangely it won’t budge: then the surprise. I imagine a woman’s shoe being counterfeited, something a touch intimate, even faintly sexy, but instead of anything so agreeable, up pops death.

It was clearly startling enough to give people a (and here’s a quintessential English litotes) funny turn. For Aubrey continues with those who’d had it prey on their minds, so that they revisited the moment in their dreams:

“I. H. Esq had been there: And being at West-Lavington with the Earl of Abbington, dream’d December the 9th, that he was at Mr. Winstanly’s House, and took up the Slipper, and up rose his Mother in Mourning: And anon the Queen appeared in Mourning. He told his Dream the next Morning to my Lord, and his Lordship imparted it to me (then there). Tuesday Dec. 11. in the Evening, came a Messenger Post from London to acquaint Mr. H. that his Mother was dangerously Ill: He went to London the next Day: his Mother lived but about 8 Days longer. On Saturday Dec. 15. the Queen was taken Ill, which turned to the Small-Pox, of which she died Decem. 28 about two a Clock in the Morning.”

That would be Queen Mary II, of ‘William and Mary’ fame, who died in 1694. This was, I think, an early version of the ‘Jack-in-a-box’, a term not certainly recorded when applied to a toy before 1702, but looking at the OED quotations, probably used earlier (there’s a startling application of the phase to the consecrated host in its pyx in Fox’s Book of Martyrs.)

The scholar who might know about such domestic traps for the unwary guest would be Matt Kavaler, the architectural historian, who seems to be interested in such hoaxes. http://www.fineart.utoronto.ca/faculty/kavaler.htm

These are links to a sample of the Renaissance trick fountains,

http://www.hellbrunn.at/hellbrunn/english/start/index.asp

http://pages.zoom.co.uk/cosmicelk/hamptoncourtclock.htm

while my image is from Robert Plot’ s The natural history of Oxford-shire (1677), showing Edward Henry, Earl of Lichfield’s fountain of 1674 at Enston. You can get a sense of how the unwary were lured into the fenced enclosure, and then once they were corralled up, the device could set about soaking them. John Evelyn described the Duke of Richlieu’s Dragon Fountain, a more spectacular version of the same thing.

Henry Winstanley, who owned the house with the tricks and devices built into it, would end up the victim of his own ingenuity, for his reputation for cleverness rose so high that he was be given the task of designing the first lighthouse at the Eddystone rock, and he died there when it was swept away (in 1703). Here’s a useful brief account:

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1888.htm

The ODNB says that after his unlucky demise, the house at Littlebury and something called ‘The Water Theatre’ in Piccadilly carried on being run as places of entertainment. It cost you a shilling to go and be frightened at the Oxfordshire house.

Yes, I was channeling the spirit of Aubrey when I wrote this one.

L’Allegro, Il Penseroso, Il Moderato and Il Mystico

It seems to be that time of the teaching term where every task gets rushed as Easter starts to come into view. I am in the latest EMLS

http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/12-3/12-3toc.htm

writing about some off-colour late 17^th century burlesques of Hero and Leander. I guess I’d hoped EMLS would have a shorter lead time than the print journals, but getting it seems to have taken the most part of a year. My surmise is that the whole world beats the electronic path to the editor’s in-box. What an odd effect on prose numbering paragraphs (rather than pages) has! Obviously it is done to aid citation, for a web page is more of a scroll than a leaf.

Anyway, as a full text is not available on the web unless you sign up with ‘Questia’, this is a transcript of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ serious parody after Milton, ‘Il Mystico’. It isn’t very good, I’m afraid: its diffuseness tends to highlight just how well Milton avoided a flaccid list of high-brow pleasures in the real model, ‘Il Penseroso’.

First, though, this link, though, is to the libretto of ‘Il Moderato’, where Charles Jennens added a Golden Mean to the Perissa and Elissa (as Edmund Spenser would have put it), the too-much and too- little of Milton’s prior poems, mingling the three together for Handel to set.

http://opera.stanford.edu/iu/libretti/allegro.htm

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Il Mystico

Hence sensual gross desires,
Right offspring of your grimy mother Earth!
My Spirit hath a birth
Alien from yours as heaven from Nadir-fires:
You rank and reeking things,
Scoop you from teeming filth some sickly hovel,
And there for ever grovel
'Mid fever'd fumes and slime and cakèd clot:
But foul and cumber not

The shaken plumage of my Spirit's wing

But come, thou balm to aching soul,
Of pointed wing and silver stole,
With heavenly cithern from high choir,
Tresses dipp'd in rainbow fire,
An olive-branch whence richly reek
Earthless dews on ancles sleek;
Be discover'd to my sight
From a haze of sapphire light,
Let incense hang across the room

And sober lustres take the gloom;

Come when night clings to what is hers
Closer because faint morning stirs;
When chill woods wake and think of morn,
But sleep again ere day be born;
When sick men turn, and lights are low,
And death falls gently as the snow;

When wholesome spirits rustle about,
And the tide of ill is out;
When waking hearts can pardon much

And hard men feel a softening touch; When strangely loom all shapes that be, And watches change upon the sea; Silence holds breath upon her throne, And the waked stars are all alone. Come then because then most thinly lies The veil that covers mysteries; And the soul is subtle and flesh weak And pride is nerveless and hearts meek. …. Touch me and purify, and shew Some of the secrets I would know. …. Grant that close-folded peace that clad The seraph brows of Galahad, Who knew the inner spirit that fills Questioning winds around the hills; Who made conjecture nearest far To what the chords of angels are; And to the mystery of those things …. Shewn to Ezekiel’s open’d sight On Chebar’s banks, and why they went Unswerving through the firmament; Whose ken through amber of dark eyes Went forth to compass mysteries; Who knowing all the sins and sores That nest within close-barrèd doors, And that grief masters joy on earth Yet found unstinted place for mirth; Who could forgive without grudge after Gross mind discharging foulèd laughter; To whom the common earth and air Were limn’d about with radiance rare Most like those hues that in the prism Melt as from a heavenly chrism; Who could keep silence, tho’ the smart Yawn’d like long furrow in the heart; …. Or, like a lark to glide aloof Under the cloud-festoonèd roof, That with a turning of the wings Light and darkness from him flings; To drift in air, the circled earth Spreading still its sunnèd girth; To hear the sheep-bells dimly die Till the lifted clouds were nigh; In breezy belts of upper air Melting into aether rare; And when the silent height were won, And all in lone air stood the sun, To sing scarce heard, and singing fill The airy empire at his will; To hear his strain descend less loud On to the ledges of grey cloud; And fainter, finer, trickle far To where the listening uplands are; To pause – then from his gurgling bill Let the warbled sweetness rill, And down the welkin, gushing free, Hark the molten melody; In fits of music till sunset Starting the silver rivulet; Sweetly then and of fine act To quench the fine-drawn cataract; And in the dews beside his nest To cool his plumy throbbing breast. Or, if a sudden silver shower Has drench’d the molten sunset hour, And with weeping cloud is spread All the welkin overhead, Save where the unvexèd west Lies divinely still, at rest, Where liquid heaven sapphire-pale Does into amber splendours fail, And fretted clouds with burnish’d rim, Phoebus’ loosen’d tresses, swim; While the sun streams forth amain On the tumblings of the rain, When his mellow smile he sees Caught on the dank-ytressèd tress, When the rainbow arching high Looks from the zenith round the sky, Lit with exquisite tints seven Caught from angels’ wings in heaven, Double, and higher than his wont, The wrought rim of heaven’s font, - Then may I upwards gaze and see The deepening intensity Of the air-blended diadem, All a sevenfold-single gem, Each hue so rarely wrought that where It melts, new lights arise as fair, Sapphire, jacinth, chrysolite, The rim with ruby fringes dight, Ending in sweet uncertainty ‘Twixt real hue and phantasy Then while the rain-born arc grows higher Westward on his sinking sire; While the upgazing country seems Touch’d from heaven in sweet dreams; While a subtle spirit and rare Breathes in the mysterious air; While sheeny tears and sunlit mirth Mix o’er the not unmovèd earth, - Then would I fling me up to sip Sweetness from the hour, and dip Deeply in the archèd lustres, And look abroad on sunny clusters Of wringing tree-tops, chalky lanes, Wheatfields tumbled with the rains, Streaks of shadow, thistled leas, Whence spring the jewell’d harmonies That meet in mid-air, and be so Melted in the dizzy bow That I may drink that ecstacy Which to pure souls alone may be … It’s Hopkins in 1862, before he became a Jesuit. The interest seems to me to lie in the way that allusion to Ezekiel drops into the poem. Yes, Ezekiel has a very strange vision of cherubims, but after that, is busy recruiting God to destroy sinful Jerusalem. Hopkins’ poem betrays the barely suppressed dislike of the poor which regularly appears in his work. Instead of pursuing the pattern of vengeful and not very mystical reverie of all but the select being struck down, he takes characteristic recourse to nature, and the heaven-proximate floatings-about, above all this filth, of a lark. The picture is Raphael’s ‘The Vision of Ezekiel’ (he’s the tiny figure bottom left in the shaft of light). Raphael clearly gave up trying to work out the cherubim and their multiple wings and very confusing wheels, and just opted to have Ezekiel see something iconographically normal (well, relatively so), which just happens to be God pulling off a complex aerial stunt on the evangelical beasts.

The Universal Empire of Love...

My final set of first year poetry classes for the term will fall one day after the 200^th anniversary of Parliament passing the act abolishing the slave trade. We are set to look at poems about the topic by Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the poems of Phillis Wheatley. I have James G. Basker’s Amazing Grace: an Anthology of Poems about Slavery 1660-1810 (Yale, 2002): surely the most important collection of historical witness ever compiled in the form of a poetry anthology.

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=0300107579

These will be interesting sessions. My son’s recent glancing contact in his school history lessons with the subject of the slave trade does suggest that even in history taught empathetically (‘What was it like being a slave?’) there is still some evasion of the facts about Britain’s ghastly dominance in 18^th century slave trading.

But Basker’s verse-writers are 99% on the side of the angels: women writers, churchmen, transported felons, witnesses to slavery, and, of course, freed slaves variously condemn, or dramatise the iniquities of the trade. The former slave ship captain, John Newton, provides the titular poem, the Olney hymn recovering its dignity and proper meaning in this context (for anyone who remembers its appearance as a best selling single).

But here, I post from Basker, for the convenience of my students, and for its inherent (if repulsive) interest, extracts from James Boswell’s piece of anti-abolition verse polemic, and a couple of Boswell’s own astonishing notes on his performance:

‘No Abolition of Slavery; Or the Universal Empire of Love’

Noodles, who rave for abolition

Of th’Africans improved condition*

At your own cost fine projects try;

Don’t rob – from pure humanity.

Go, Wilberforce, with narrow scull,

Go home, and preach away at Hull,

No longer to the Senate cackle,

In strains which suit the Tabernacle;

I hate your little wittling sneer,

Your pert and self-sufficient leer,

Mischief to Trade sits on thy lip,

Insects will gnaw the noblest ship;

Go, Wilberforce, be gone, for shame,

Thou dwarf, with a big-sounding name.

What frenzies will a rabble seize

In lax luxurious days, like these;

THE PEOPLE’S MAJESTY, forsooth,

Must fix our rights, define our truth;

Weavers become our Lords of Trade,

And every clown throw by his spade,

T’instruct our ministers of state,

And foreign commerce regulate…

… He who to thwart God’s system** tries,

Bids mountains sink, and valley’s rise;

Slavery, subjection, what you will,

Has ever been, and will be still:

Trust me, that in this world of woe

Mankind must different burthens know;

Each bear his own, th’Apostle spoke;

And chiefly they who bear the yoke ….

Lo then, in yonder fragrant isle

Where Nature ever seems to smile,

The cheerful gang! – the negroes see

Perform the task of industry:

Ev’n at their labour hear them sing,

While time flies quick on downy wing;

Finish’d the bus’ness of the day,

No human beings are more gay:

Of food, clothes, cleanly lodging sure,

Each has his property secure;

Their wives and children are protected,

In sickness they are not neglected;

And when old age brings a release,

Their grateful days they end in peace.

But should our Wrongheads have their will,

Should Parliament approve their bill,

Pernicious as th’effect would be,

T’abolish negro slavery,

Such partial freedom would be vain,

Since Love’s strong empire must remain

O ------! Trust thy lover true,

I must and will be slave to you…

* That the Africans are in a state of savage wretchedness, appears from the most authentic accounts. Such being the fact, an abolition of the slave trade would in truth be precluding them from the first step towards progressive civilisation, and consequently of happiness, which it is proved by the most respectable evidence they enjoy in a great degree in our West-India islands, though under well-regulated restraint.

** The state of slavery is acknowledged both in the Old Testament and the New.

I only give one of his personal lampoons on the abolitionists, that on Wilberforce himself. Boswell casts his polemic as a defence of trade, but he really means a general defence of property, of private ownership of all kinds, including ownership of other people. After his blasé account of the pleasures of plantation life, he frivolously segues away into the assertion that slavery cannot ever be abolished while hearts like his are enslaved by love. I suppose he meant to sound charming and witty, and he liked this crass idea enough to build it into his sub-title. The assertion of the perpetuity of ‘love’s strong empire’ lets him try to cloak what the British empire was doing with some relation to benign or even loving sentiments. Strange that contact with Dr Johnson hadn’t lifted Boswell above this: into this episode (1777) in his Life of Johnson, Boswell retrospectively inserts his disagreement, though at the time, the two fell out about British taxation in America, not the slave trade.

“After supper I accompanied him to his apartment, and at my request he dictated to me an argument in favour of the negro [i.e. Joseph Knight] who was then claiming his liberty, in an action in the Court of Session in Scotland. He had always been very zealous against slavery in every form, in which I, with all deference, thought that he discovered ‘a zeal without knowledge.’ Upon one occasion, when in company with some very grave men at Oxford, his toast was, ‘Here’s to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies.’ His violent prejudice against our West Indian and American settlers appeared whenever there was an opportunity. Towards the conclusion of his Taxation no Tyranny, he says, ‘how is it that we hear the loudest YELPS for liberty among the drivers of negroes?’ ”

I have always thought that William Empson’s 1964 essay on Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner’ was New Historicism decades before Greenblatt. Marina Warner summarises:

“William Empson linked the Ancient Mariner to Coleridge's anti-slavery stand in the years he was writing the poem: the extreme, anguished guilt the Mariner feels arises from Coleridge's view of the personal effects of public wrongdoing. The Ancient Mariner, Empson wrote, is "the great ballad of maritime expansion and empire".

(at http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,824036,00.html )

http://www.amazinggracemovie.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807

which links to a text of the 1807 act:

http://www.pdavis.nl/Legis_06.htm

The image is Sir Richard Westmacott's memorial for Fox, in Westminster Abbey, with the (white marble!) African kneeling to the expiring abolitionist.

Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill...

And other useless cycling advice from Shakespeare!

Taking part in the Reading CC 'Reliability Trial' this last Sunday: 50.9 miles, 3,034 feet of climbing. Two hours and forty four minutes, a reasonable time for the course, but I rode with far less courage and commitment (i.e. to hurting myself) than I have done in previous years.

Photograph by Dennis Sackett, of
http://www.cyclingphotos.org.uk/

Muskify thy palace with their reek

I think this may be the only soft furnishing item once belonging to an early modern poet still in existence: the Reverend Edward Taylor’s needlepoint cushion cover, carefully transported with him to the Massachusetts Bay colony from his Leicestershire home. The source is http://www.memorialhall.mass.edu/collection/itempage.jsp?itemid=5986 That Taylor was responsive to such items might be judged from his poem ‘Housewifery’ (‘Make me, O Lord, thy spinning wheel complete … Make me thy loom then, knit therein this twine’), and , always alert to the natural world, he is a rather good poet of insects: spiders attract his attention (‘Upon a spider catching a fly’ - though he cannot shake off the general anti-spider prejudices of the period in that poem: it is a ‘venom elf’ that makes him think of how ‘Hell’s spider’ ensnares ‘Adam’s race’). Rather more sympathetic to the insect involved is: ‘Upon a wasp chilled with cold’ The bear that breathes the northern blast Did numb, torpedo-like, a wasp Whose stiffened limbs encramped, lay bathing In Sol's warm breath and shine, as saving, Which with her legs she chafes and stands Rubbing her legs, shanks, thighs, and hands. Her pretty toes, and fingers' ends Nipped with this breath, she out extends Unto the sun, in great desire To warm her digits at that fire; Doth hold her temples in this state Where pulse doth beat and head doth ache. Doth turn, and stretch her body small, Doth comb her velvet capital. As if her little brain pan were A volume of choice precepts clear; As if her satin jacket hot Contained apothecary's shop Of nature's receipts, that prevails To remedy all her sad ails, As if her velvet helmet high Did turret rationality; She fans her wing up to the wind As if her petticoats were lined, With reason's fleece, and hoises sails And humming flies in thankful gales Unto her dun curled palace hall Her warm thanks offering for all. Lord, clear my misted sight that I May hence view Thy divinity, Some sparks whereof thou up dost hasp Within this little downy wasp In whose small corporation we A school and a schoolmaster see, Where we may learn, and easily find A nimble spirit bravely mind Her work in every limb: and lace It up neat with a vital grace, Acting each part though ne'er so small Here of this fustian animal. Till I enravished climb into The Godhead on this lather do, Where all my pipes inspired upraise An heavenly music furred with praise. Taylor responds to the wasp’s (female) daintiness, to the rationality of its behaviour, and as showing a spark of divinity in its ‘nimble’ work – one assumes that his view would have been that the maker of his prized cushion had shown similar ‘vital grace’. This all reminded me of E. M. Forster’s Passage to India, where a wasp is used as a marker of spiritual inclusiveness: Mrs Moore has this tenuously, Sorley the missionary cannot imagine wasps being admitted to heaven, while the Brahmin Professor Godbole sends both Mrs Moore and the wasp on their way towards spiritual fulfillment (but can’t quite manage to feel the same way about the stone): 1. “Going to hang up her cloak, she found that the tip of the peg was occupied by a small wasp. She had known this wasp or his relatives by day; they were not as English wasps, but had long yellow legs which hung down behind when they flew … ‘Pretty dear,’ said Mrs Moore to the wasp. He did not wake, but her voice floated out, to swell the night’s uneasiness.” (Chapter 3) 2. “And the jackals? Jackals were indeed less to Mr Sorley’s mind, but he admitted that the mercy of God, being infinite, may well embrace all mammals. And the wasps? He became uneasy during the descent to wasps…” (Chapter 4) 3. “He impelled her (i.e. Mrs Moore) by his spiritual force to that place where completeness can be found. Completeness, not reconstruction. His senses grew thinner, he remembered a wasp he had seen he forgot where, perhaps on a stone. He loved the wasp equally, he impelled it likewise, he was imitating God. And the stone where the wasp clung – could he … no, he had been wrong to attempt the stone …” (Chapter 33) More Taylor poems at: http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/3107.html but apparently he also wrote a long poem about some fossil bones which were sent to him, which I am now very keen to see and read, and will need to locate a copy of one of the Yale editions of his manuscripts. My title is from his 'Lord, dub my tongue'.

Rhomboidall decussations

I always meant to do a posting on this piece of 17th century concrete poetry by George Wither: John Broadbent included the second stanza in his Signet Classic Poets of the 17th Century. (Volume two, with its marvellous selection of the minor writers complementing the canonists in volume one.) It appears there as 'from Rhomboidal dirge' - that terrific title was all I could remember, and I just could not find the poem anywhere on LION or EEBO.

I just loved the idea of a 'rhomboidal dirge', and could feel myself ready to discourse about Herbert's 'Church Floor':

Mark you the floore? that square & speckled stone
Which looks so firm and strong,
Is Patience:

And th'other black and grave, wherewith each one
Is checker'd all along,
Humilitie...

and the suitable solemnity of a dirge in rhomboidal stanzas...

Ah, but: it is no such thing - when one finally noses out this potential truffle, it proves a rotten puff-ball; the inspiration was all editorial: Wither, reliably witless, actually deploys his poem-for-the-eye as a lute song trolled off by a lover, completely losing the point, and Broadbent anyway used the best stanza.

So I must mourn my 'rhomboidal dirge' - there was never a poem of that title. And not once did George Wither put two words together so well: that rare grace note came from his editor.

It is a 17th century word, though: one of Sir Thomas Browne's fine pomposities: In the Garden of Cyrus (1658): "Perspective pictures, in their Base, horison, and lines of distances, cannot escape these Rhomboidall decussations"

- the good doctor got two select words together there. The OED has him as first actually to dare use that bit of pure inkhorn (for 'criss-crossways'), and also finds a moment to correct, with majestic patience, another writer's three hundred year old mistake:

'1654 Henry L'Estrange, Charles I (1655) 117 "He yeilded his head to de-cussation, to the striking off" - Erroneous use, app. for DECUSSION, striking off.'

This Browne scrap from the great feast of language must be our sole reward, for the poem does not live up to the excitement of its shape. Something which is probably true of most concrete verse.

O my Newfound-land!

A detail from a sumptuous still life, late 17th century, by Willem Kalf - that wonderful nautilus cup, modelled into a monster with a man fleeing its jaws, a porcelain covered dish with figures modelled in high relief - that ornate spoon goes into a condiment just as exotic, I feel sure. Radiant wine, and an orange: with wonders and wealth like this to be had, no wonder the colonial adventure happened.

But this is the luxury end of the cultural exchange. The little autobiographical poem below captures the formative moment in a life, when the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world gives a little boy an orange, and his blessing, in the street in Totnes:

Of the Great and Famous, ever to be honoured Knight, Sir Francis Drake, and of my little-little self.

The Dragon, that our Seas did raise his Crest,
And brought back heaps of gold unto his nest,
Unto his Foes more terrible then Thunder,
Glory of his age, After-ages wonder,
Excelling all those that excell’d before;
It’s fear’d we shall have none such any more;
Effecting all, he sole did undertake,
Valiant, just, wise, mild, honest, godly Drake.
This man when I was little, I did meet,
As he was walking up Totnes long Street,
He ask’d me whose I was? I answer’d him.
He ask’d me if his good friend were within?
A fair red Orange in his hand he had,
He gave it me, whereof I was right glad,
Takes and kissed me, and prays, God bless my boy:
Which I record with comfort to this day.
Could he on me have breathed with his breath,
His gifts Elias-like, after his death,
Then had I been enabled for to do
Many brave things I have a heart unto.
I have as great desire, as e’re had he
To joy; annoy; friends; foes: but 'twill not be.

The little boy, possibly as young as four, was Robert Hayman. Though he disclaims any achievement on his own part, that stray allusion to Elijah does suggest a lurking sense of a great mission having been handed on to him, and Hayman had become governor of a plantation called Bristol's Hope, near Harbour Grace, in Newfoundland. There, he wrote his Quodlibets, published in 1628, a crowded and generally sterile set of epigrams, on all the usual topics (baldness, cuckolds, marriage, women, wigs, Protestantism, etc) which suddenly spark into interest when he writes about himself. He does some early modern PR for the colony too:

'To all those worthy Women, who have any desire to live in NewfoundLand, specially to the modest & discreet Gentlewoman Mistris Mason, wife to Captaine Mason, who lived there divers years'

Sweet Creatures, did you truly vnderstand
The pleasant life you'd live in Newfound-land,
You would with tears desire to be brought thither:
I wish you, when you go, faire wind, faire weather:
For if you with the passage can dispence,
When you are there, I know you'll ne'er come thence.

Not sure that the final sentiment is entirely well judged for his purpose. He even defends the climate:

'To a worthy Friend, who often objects the coldness of the Winter in Newfound-Land, and may serve for all those that have the like conceit'

You say that you would live in Newfound-land,
Did not this one thing your conceit withstand;
You fear the Winters cold, sharp, piercing air.
They love it best, that have once wintered there.
Winter is there, short, wholesome, constant, clear,
Not thick, unwholesome, shuffling, as 'tis here.

Annie Proulx has terminally prejudiced me against his judgement. Hayman was to die, in 1629, of a 'burning fever', and was buried beside the Oiapoque River, which separates Guiana from Brazil, and which the UK Foreign and Commonwealth safety advice says remains a high risk area for malaria. I wonder if, in that final delerium, he saw Sir Francis Drake appear to him again, with a hallucinatory double of that fatal first orange.



I add my very best wishes to one of my occasional commentators, 'Decidedly Bookish', and wish her a speedy recovery.

The Choice of Valentines

I wonder when that familiar little bi-lobed icon first appeared? This is a detail from a tapestry of around 1410, which I have cropped ('Save changes to Heart?', asked my computer. Oh, yes, save changes to heart).

‘It was the merry month of February’, as Thomas Nashe ineffably began his famous naughty poem … but the thin corpus of Elizabethan-era pornography is so picked-over these days, I will go no further than the title and that funny first line. I’d not thought about ‘choosing’ Valentines before, so I checked out the accessible Valentine’s day poems, and the OED.

The OED has a fine set of citations, which I have abbreviated:

2. A person of the opposite sex chosen, drawn by lot, or otherwise determined, on St. Valentine's day, as a sweetheart, lover, or special friend for the ensuing year.

a1450 MS. Harl. 1735 fol. 48 (Halliw.), Godys blescyng have he and myn, My none gentyl Volontyn, Good Tomas the frere. 1477 Paston Lett. III. 170 Unto my ryght welebelovyd Voluntyn, John Paston, Squyer, be this bill delyvered. 1596 RALEIGH Disc. Guiana 23 After the Queens haue chosen, the rest cast lottes for their Valentines. 1623 in Crt. & Times Jas. I (1848) II. 395 To the great grief of his sweetheart, Mrs. Bray, my ancient valentine. 1667 PEPYS Diary 14 Feb., This morning came up to my wife's bedside..little Will Mercer to be her Valentine... But I am also this year my wife's Valentine. 1712 W. ROGERS Voy. r. World 359 That same Day, in Commemoration of the antient Custom in England of chusing Valentines, I drew up a List of the fair Ladies in Bristol..and sent for my Officers into the Cabbin, where every one drew.

3. A folded paper inscribed with the name of a person to be drawn as a valentine. to draw valentines, to draw lots for this or other reasons.

c1553 Cecil Papers (Hist. MSS. Comm.) I. 134 There is three papers like unto walentynes put in a cap and so they draw. 1725 BOURNE in Brand Pop. Antiq. (1777) 225 It is a Ceremony, never omitted among the Vulgar, to draw Lots, which they Term Valentines, on the Eve before Valentine day.

~ ~ So, on the evening before Valentine’s day, what must have generally been an early modern rigged ballot was run, when (as if by chance) pairings felt to be appropriate or likely to be well received would emerge from the sortilege.

I assume that some of the various 17^th century Valentine poems that have survived would have been found on the paper once unfolded. As you’d expect, Herrick is keen. William Strode’s poem is a kind of follow-up to accompany a gift: his name emerged as her Valentine, he hopes she will accept the gift as a further sign that the outcome of the lottery was in fact satisfactory to her wishes:

Faire Valentine, since once your welcome hand
Did cull mee out wrapt in a paper band,
Vouchsafe the same hand still, to shew thereby
That Fortune did your will no injury:
What though a knife I give, your beauty’s charme
Will keepe the edge from doing any harme:
Wool deads the sternest blade; and will not such
A weake edge turne, meeting a softer touch?

In Thomas Stanley’s ‘Drawn for a Valentine by the L. D.S.’, the poet is less lucky in love than in the ballot. This is a Marvellian poem, apparently celebrating a girl whose youthful beauty already promises large later conquests. She has given him no hope, and forbidden his suit, but the ballot obliges her to accept him as her Valentine, and the poet praises the Goddess Fortuna for not being blind, and says he will prize this piece of fortune just the same as if he had really won the young lady by her consent:

Though 'gainst me Love and Destiny conspire,
Though I must waste in an unpitied fire,
By the same Deity, severe, as fair,
Commanded adoration and despair:
Though I am mark'd for Sacrifice to tell
The growing age what dangerous Glories dwell
In this bright dawn, who when she spreads her raies
Will challenge every heart, and every praise;
Yet she who to all hope forbids my claim
By Fortune's taught indulgence to my Flame.

Great Queen of chance! unjustly we exclude
Thy Power an int'rest in Beatitude:
Who, with mysterious judgement dost dispence
The Bounties of unerring Providence;
Whilst we, to whom the causes are unknown,
Would stile that blindness thine, which is our own,
As kinde in Justice to thy self as me,
Thou hast redeem'd thy Name and Votarie:
Nor will I prize this lesse for being thine,
Nor longer at my Destinie repine,
Counsell and choice are things below thy State,
Fortune relieves the cruelties of Fate.

James Howell’s ‘Upon a Beautiful Valentine’ is just a conventional try at a love poem, setting off to praise her beauties, but he all too soon gets into deep water with his enthusiastic tour of the 17^th century Miss Europes he has ‘seen’, and so roving on to the appalling pox and the yet more appalling use of cosmetics, finally landing back at compliment after his ill-judged cadenza:

Could I charm the Queen of Loves
To lend a Quill of her white Doves,
Or one of Cupids pointed wings,
Dipped in the fair Castalian springs:
Then would I write the All-divine
Perfections of my Valentine.

As mongst all flowers the Rose excels,
As Amber mongst the fragrant'st smells,
As mongst all Minerals the Gold,
As Marble mongst the finest Mold,
As Diamonds mongst Jewels bright,
As Cynthia mongst the lesser lights;
So mong the Northern Beauties shine,
So far excels my Valentine.

In Rome and Naples I did view
Faces of Coelestial hue;
Venetian Dames I have seen many,
(I only saw them, touch'd not any)
Of Spanish Beauties, Dutch and French
I have beheld the Quintessence;
Yet saw I none that could out-shine,
Or Parallel my Valentine.

Th' Italians they are coy and quaint,
But they grossly daub and paint;
The Spanish kind are apt to please,
But sav'ring of the same disease;
Of Dutch and French some few are comely,
The French are light, the Dutch are homely:
Let Tagus, Po, the Loire and Rhine
Then vail unto my Valentine.

Here may be seen pure white and red,
Not by feign'd Art, but Nature wed;
No simpering smiles, no mimic face,
Affected gesture, or forc'd face:
A fair-smooth front, free from least wrinkle,
Her eyes (Oy me) like Stars do twinkle.
Thus all perfections do combine
To beautify my Valentine.

Robert Hayman’s ‘To my perpetuall Valentine, worthy Mistris Mary Tayler, wife to Master John Tayler Merchant of Bristoll’ does seem to indicate that, as in the Pepys quotation from the OED, these ‘Valentines’ could be entirely honorific. You’d think that a poet commending another man’s wife as ‘discreet’, and mentioning her childlessness, her husband as better than any number of babies, and talking of ‘babes begot by good’ he and she could have together was up to something, but I’ve read the whole lot of his ‘Quodlibets’, and Hayman is just being clumsy (you can rely on him for that), rather than archly insinuating:

My sweet discreet perpetuall Valentine,
In your faire brest vertue hath built a Shrine,
Bedecking it with flowres, amongst the rest,
Mild bearing your not-bearing is not least.
You know the worthy husband that you haue,
Is worth more children then some fondlings craue;
Besides the blessed babes begot by good,
More comforts bring then some of flesh and blood.
Kind Valentine, still let our comfort be,
Children there are ynow for you and me.

Phineas Fletcher, by dint of referring to his wife as ‘Maystress’ (sic) concocts a gallant anagram in his ‘To my onely chosen Valentine and wife’:

Maystress Elisabeth Vincent

Is my brests chaste Valentine (anagram)

Think not (fair love) that Chance my hand directed
To make my choice my chance; blinde Chance & hands
Could never see what most my minde affected;
But heav'n (that ever with chaste true love stands)
Lent eyes to see what most my heart respected:
Then do not thou resist what heav'n commands;
But yeeld thee his, who must be ever thine:
My heart thy altar is, my breast thy shrine;
Thy name for ever is, My brests chaste Valentine.

But enough early modern soppy poems: there's Valentine’s day reduced to an owlish footnote for you. 'Save changes to heart'.

He died with his hand on his Shakespeare

His what?

Reading for a seminar, and for the first time in years, all the shouty poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and find myself enjoying most the ‘Sundry Fragments and Images’, as they are so much less overpowering (and I concede that I’m a ‘Sundry Fragments’ type of reader).

Then, among the unfinished stuff, I came across a sonnet octave Hopkins wrote about Shakespeare:

In the lodges of the perishable souls
He has his portion. God, who stretch'd apart
Doomsday and death - whose dateless thought must chart
All times at once and span the distant goals,
Sees what his place is; but for us the rolls
Are shut against the canvassing of art.
Something we guess or know; some spirits start
Upwards at once and win their aureoles –

And at this point our poet’s pen faltered to a halt, as if riven by doubt– would Shakespeare in fact have made it to heaven? In Hopkins, heaven is a dismayingly exclusive sort of joint, and GMH did not have the benefit of Gary Taylor arguing Shakespeare’s Catholicism (which would have laid the troubling question to rest).

This reminded me of Boswell affecting to be bothered by the thought that (leaving aside the gloriously resurrected body of the bard himself) Shakespeare’s works might not be available in the here-beyond:

' BOSWELL. 'The hope that we shall see our departed friends again must support the mind.' JOHNSON. 'Why yes, Sir.' BOSWELL. 'There is a strange unwillingness to part with life, independent of serious fears as to futurity. A reverend friend of ours (naming him) tells me, that he feels an uneasiness at the thoughts of leaving his house, his study, his books.' JOHNSON. 'This is foolish in *****. A man need not be uneasy on these grounds; for, as he will retain his consciousness, he may say with the philosopher, Omnia mea mecum porto.' BOSWELL. 'True, Sir: we may carry our books in our heads; but still there is something painful in the thought of leaving for ever what has given us pleasure. I remember, many years ago, when my imagination was warm, and I happened to be in a melancholy mood, it distressed me to think of going into a state of being in which Shakspeare's poetry did not exist. A lady whom I then much admired, a very amiable woman, humoured my fancy, and relieved me by saying, "The first thing you will meet in the other world, will be an elegant copy of Shakspeare's works presented to you."' Dr. Johnson smiled benignantly at this, and did not appear to disapprove of the notion.

I assume that Dr Johnson is amused at Boswell’s affectation, and with the omission in the refined exchange Boswell so guilelessly reports of any thought that Old William himself might be all present and correct beyond the gates of pearl, his anecdotes 'more amusing than Pipit’s experience could provide'.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, managed (it was reported) to pass away with a copy of Shakespeare in his hand. I found an elegy on Tennyson by Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley, which starts like this, and gets as early as its second stanza to the exciting thought of Alfred and William hob-nobbing, bardically-bonded, among the blessed:

The moonlight lay with glory on his face

About whose bed in grief the nation bowed,

And darkly flew the wild October cloud:

Sobbed the pale morn, and came with faltering pace

As if it feared to lift a dead man's shroud;

And all the streams made lamentation loud.

But such majestic calm was in his look

As seemed to say, 'Why weeping o'er me bend,

Or bid me longer here on earth attend

Whose home is Heaven?' His hand held Shakespeare's book---

Shakespeare, so soon to greet him as a friend!

And so he went companioned, to the end.

“He died with his hand on his Shakespeare, and the moon shining full into the window, and over him”, Queen Victoria noted approvingly, but Christopher Ricks also cites Samuel Butler being waspish about this story: “his friends should have taken it out of the bed when they saw the end was near. It was not necessary to emphasize the fact that the ruling passion for posing was strong with him in death.”

I found at
http://www.alsopreview.com/octavo/fall2004/bielby.htm

a poet called Nicholas Bielby’s effort to complete the unfinished Shakespeare in heaven poem by Hopkins, which he does in another octave, which sounds some of Hopkins’ major chords:

Some plough the earth, their feet of lardy flesh,

In love with earthly waywardness. Dare we

Not know what Incarnation means, not see

Love that breaks every bound? Soiled soil, afresh,

Leaps up in Christ. And those that live the thresh

Of blood and word in creativity,

Pity pied humankind and let it free,

Share Christ at each cross in that singing mesh.

He has fought shy of imagining the beatific bard – which would at least have been fun - and retreats into a generality which seems to suggest that poets are Christ-like, pitying and freeing ordinary humankind even despite their awful lardy feet, and suffering such an agony, the poor dears, in the act of composition.