Just When Did "British bards begin t'lmmortalize"?

Just WhenzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Did “British bards begin t’lmmortalize”?* TREVOR ROSSNMLKJIHGFEDCBA I begin with an image, the now familiar image of a young author working in the humbling presence of his canonical fathers. The author is Christopher Smart, as he is depicted in the frontispiece to his periodical The Universal Visiter.1 Smart is seated at a writing desk, at work on the next issue of his paper. He is gazing up at a row of five busts, raised on a mantel and surrounded by an oversized laurel wreath. The busts bear representations of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Waller, and Dryden. Each bust has a verse legend inscribed on its base. These verses are reprinted below the frontispiece: To CHAUCER! who the English Tongue design’d: To SPENCER! who improv’d it, and refin’d: To Muse—fir’d SHAKESPEAR! who increas’d its Praise, Rich in bold Compounds, & strong-painted Phrase, To WALLER! Sweet’ner of its manly Sound: To DRYDEN! who its full Perfection found. Behind the busts are bookshelves containing a number of folios, including the works of Gower, “Hubert,” Sidney and eighteen other English authors. Above these bookshelves is a Latin inscription which tells us this is Apollo’s Temple of the English. In addition to this engrav­ ing, a miniature of “A. Cowley” is reproduced on the title page, which also bears the following epigraph: 383 384 / r o s s Sounding with Moral Virtue was his Speech, And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach. CHAUCER We may choose to read this image of the young ephebe writing under the influence of his great English masters as somehow typical of the eighteenth century. It is, after all, during this century when collected editions and handsomely-printed folios of the works of esteemed national poets begin to appear in large quantities in England. During the middle decades of the century, as well, there develops a minor vogue for busts and portraits of well-known English authors.2 In many of these portraits, the subject is shown wearing a laurel wreath; Kneller and Richardson both drew a proudly laureated Pope. Above all, it is during the eighteenth century that the English people first seem to think highly of their own literature, so highly that young poets like Smart begin to experience “anxiety” under the burden of a newly-discovered English literary tradition. Yet the reality is a little more complicated than this reading of the frontispiece suggests. Folio editions and frontispiece engravings of English poets had been produced since the sixteenth century. Portraits of eminent national authors had been commissioned for private collections since at least the Caroline age. And English poets had been shown wear­ ing laurels in frontispieces ever since a laureated Skelton appeared in a woodcut before a collection of his works printed in the early 1540s? As for the anxiety of influence, Smart’s burden is somewhat more immedi­ ate than the pressure of tradition on the individual talent: Johnson reports that Smart’s contract for fedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA The Universal Visiter “was for ninetynine years,” during which period Smart was bound to write nothing else.4 I wish to contest the claim that the English began to make and cele­ brate a canon of their literature only sometime in the eighteenth century. This claim was put forward a few years ago by Howard Weinbrot, in an essay on Thomas Gray. Weinbrot in fact devoted nearly half of his essay to providing evidence for what he called the eighteenth century’s “increased affection for national letters.” After presenting his evidence, Weinbrot declared that “the information in the first part of this essay of course is intended to be suggestive rather than exhaustive; it is prolego­ mena to a longer study of the rise of British and the decline of classical literature and values during the Restoration and the eighteenth century. This should appear sometime before the second coming.”5 Second com­ ing or no, I have been working on such a study, in the possibly vain hope Just WhenzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Did “British bards ..." / 385 of meeting Pope’s challenge to “Fix the year precise / When British bards begin t’lmmortalize” (Epistle to Augustus, 11. 53-54). I...