Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m8s7h Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-19T13:19:39.270Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Panegyric Decorum in the Reigns of William III and Anne

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Arthur S. Williams
Arthur S. Williams*
Affiliation:
South Carolina State College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The tradition of English verse panegyric began in the reign of James I when the accession of the Stuart line called “for a formal and specific expression of the subject's allegiance and of the values which commend it.” First adapted from Latin models by Samuel Daniel and Ben Jonson, panegyric verse combined praise of the new monarch with conciliatory rhetoric aimed at uniting the king with his subjects. Still regarded as a branch of classical oratory at the beginning of James I's reign, verse panegyric underwent important transformations in succeeding decades. While Abraham Cowley adapted the panegyric themes of national revival and monarchic restraint to his version of the Pindaric ode, Edmund Waller and John Dryden made it a “branch of epic” by depicting the king as an epic hero. Thus enshrined among the neo-classical poetic genres, panegyric verse remained both a potent form of propaganda and an outlet for traditional literary aspirations through the reign of James II.

Following the constitutional upheavals of 1688, however, panegyric began to lose its traditional ceremonial function, and in following years the great Tory satirists made the decadence of panegyric conventions an object of their ridicule. Nevertheless verse panegyric did not immediately lose its credibility as literature or its efficacy as propaganda. Writing poems of public praise and celebration remained one way for the loyalists of a new regime—and for others who longed for restoration of the old—to articulate political sentiments, respond to the obligations of political patronage, and fulfill ambitions to write heroic verse.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , Fall 1981 , pp. 56 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Nevo, Ruth, The Dial of Virtue: A Study of Poems on Affairs of State in the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, 1963), p. 20Google Scholar.

2 For the Renaissance background of panegyric see Hardison, O. B. Jr., The Enduring Monument: A Study of the Idea of Praise in Renaissance Theory and Practice (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1962)Google Scholar. I am especially indebted to James D. Garrison's fine study of seventeenth-century verse panegyric in Dryden and the Tradition of Panegyric (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975)Google Scholar.

3 Dryden, John, “An Account of the Ensuing Poem,” Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays, ed. Watson, George (New York, 1962) I, 101Google Scholar. Cited in Garrison, p. 29.

4 See, for example, Harris, Kathryn Montgomery, “‘Occasions so Few’: Satire as a Strategy of Praise in Swift's Early Odes,” MLQ, 31 (1970), 22–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Garrison, pp. 33-37.

5 The most complete discussion of Whig panegyric remains that of Courthope, W. J., A History of English Poetry (London, 1911), IV, 20–43Google Scholar. Moore, C. A., “Whig Panegyric Verse,” Backgrounds to English Literature, 1700-1760 (Minneapolis, 1953)Google Scholar discusses later Whig poetry but has implications for that of William's and Anne's reigns. Miner, Earl, “Introduction” to Poems on the Reign of William IIIGoogle Scholar, Augustan Reprint Society, No. 166, 1974 approaches Williamite verse from the perspective of typology.

6 See, for example, Isabel Rivers' discussion of Dryden, 's “Threnodia Augustalis” in The Poetry of Conservatism (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 141–145Google Scholar.

7 For discussion see La Drière, James Craig, “Sermoni Propius: A study of the Horatian Theory of the Epistle,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Michigan, 1937) pp. 75, 81–82, 135.Google Scholar

8 Works of the English Poets, ed. Chalmers, Alexander (London, 1810), IX, 339–340Google Scholar. Cited hereafter as “Chalmers.”

9 Stepney's poem alludes directly to the Epistle to Dorset:

Like Samson's riddle is that powerful song,

Sweet as the honey, as the lion strong;

The colours there so artfully are laid,

They fear no lustre, and they want no shade;

But shall of writing a just model give,

While Boyne shall flow, and Willaim's glory live.

10 Addison, Joseph, Miscellaneous Works, ed. Guthkelch, A. C. (London, 1914), I, 39Google Scholar.

11 Ward, Charles E., Life of John Dryden (Chapel Hill, 1961), p. 284Google Scholar.

12 Garrison, pp. 241-252.

13 For biographical details see Eves, Charles Kenneth, Matthew Prior: Poet and Diplomatist, Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature No. 144 (New York, 1939)Google Scholar.

14 See “Ballad,” Matthew Prior: Literary Works, ed. Spears, Monroe and Wright, H. B., 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1971), I, 182Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as “Literary Works.” Subsequent references are by volume and line.

15 For a good general discussion of Marvell and the art of praise see Nevo, , Dial of Virtue, pp. 164–179Google Scholar. A recent and more detailed study is Patterson's, Annabel M.Marvell and the Civic Crown (Princeton, N.J., 1978), pp. 50–110Google Scholar.

16 For discussion, see headnote by Ellis, Frank, Poems on Affairs of State, VII (New Haven, 1975), 174–178Google Scholar.

17 Literary Works, I, 230–232Google Scholar.

18 Literary Works, II, 896Google Scholar.

19 George Diaper's Dryades and Nereides participate in this vein of Tory verse as do portions of Pope's Windsor Forest. For discussion see Rogers, Pat, The Augustan Vision (New York, 1974), p. 112Google Scholar.

20 Literary Works, II, 896Google Scholar.

21 See Atwood, 's “A Modern Inscription on the Duke of Marlborough's Fame,” Poems on Affairs of State, VII, 204Google Scholar.

22 Although ambitious in its own right, William Congreve's A Pindarique Ode Humbly Offer'd to the Queen, also written in observance of the victory at Blenheim, contrasts with Prior's poem. Congreve applauds Montagu's “Epistle to Dorset” for its “well-proportion'd Praise,” and the rhetorical restraint of his ode suggests the influence of Montagu's epistle. See Works of William Congreve, ed. Summers, Montague (Soho, 1923), IV, 86–90Google Scholar.

23 For discussion of the theoretical background see Elioseff, Lee Andrew, The Cultural Milieu of Addison's Literary Criticism (Austin, 1968), pp. 95–120Google Scholar.

24 The Spectator, ed. Smith, G. Gregory (London and New York, 1946), IV, 150Google Scholar. This edition is cited throughout the discussion.

25 Letters of Joseph Addison, ed. Graham, Walter (Oxford, 1941), p. 295Google Scholar.

26 The Spectator, IV, 424Google Scholar.

27 Chalmers Works, XI, 106–108Google Scholar.

28 The “disguised encomium” survived into the reign of George I. According to The Spectator No. 618 by Ambrose Philips, “Subjects of the Most Sublime Nature are often treated in the Epistolary way with Advantage, as in the famous Epistle of Horace to Augustus. The poet surprises us with his Pomp, and seems rather betrayed into his Subject, than to have aimed at it by design: He appears like the visit of a King Incognito, with a mixture of familiarity and Grandeur.” Philips cites as an example Eusden's, Laurence “A Letter to Mr. Addison on the King's Accession to the Throne” (1714). The Spectator, IV, 442–443Google Scholar.