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“The Vanytyes of Sir Arthur Gorges Youthe”: (Egerton MS. 3165. A preliminary report)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The “lost poems” of Sir Arthur Gorges (c. 1557-1625) have been found. They are the “sweet layes of love” that Spenser praised in Colin Clout (384-391). When Colin calls upon Alcyon (Gorges) to abandon songs of mourning for his dead Daphne, he urges him to pursue the brave conceit of his sweet Eglantine of Meriflure. This Eglantine poem is in the new-found manuscript, but it is still incomplete: it is headed “Pastoral unfynyshed,” and an “etc.” is written where it breaks off after the sixth stanza. Even at Colin's bidding, the widowed Alcyon never finished his shepherd's song to Eglantine (“shee woonnes in plesaunte Meryfleur”). She is the Daphne whom he later lost, as other poems in this manuscript prove, where Daphne and the eglantine are significantly associated; thus she is the Douglas Howard who is the subject of Spenser's elegy Daphnaida.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1946
References
1 See my article on Gorges, PMLA, xliii (1928), 645 ff.
2 I find no trace of any such connection in the exhaustive history of the Gorges family through eleven centuries, written by the late Raymond Gorges, and published by his wife (The Story of a Family …, priv. pr., Boston, 1944). Mr. Gorges might have given the clue; but his sudden death ended my opportunities, often fruitfully and gratefully used, for consultation about the Gorges family. Fortunately his long labors had practically reached completion, and Mrs. Gorges has seen through the press this beautiful and invaluable volume.
3 Dr. Bell read “Kayll”; in Mr. Milne's transcript it looks more like “Raytt.” Determination of such matters obviously depends on examination of the actual manuscript, in England. The name at present holds no clue for me. Since the second Sir Arthur, and his mother, Lady Elizabeth Gorges, were alive, in Chelsea, long after 1631, as were other members of the family—one whose group feeling was apparently strong—it is not easy to guess why there should be an owner outside the family at that early date. “Raytt” tempts one to a connection with Ralegh, in view of Gorges' close connection with Ralegh, his cousin, in matters personal, public, and literary (PMLA, xliii, 655 ff.): cf. spellings Raylie, Ralle, Rale, etc. (Stebbing, Sir W. Ralegh, 30 f.); but only one John Ralegh, too early for this date, is known to me (Stebbing, op. cit., 2).
R.S., compiler of the Phoenix Nest (1593), may have handled some of the pages (see below, but the manuscript was demonstrably in Gorges' own hands in years well after 1600.
4 See Phoenix Nest, ed. Rollins, 1931, xvi f. This edition is henceforth referred to as PN.
5 Turberville, Heroycall Epistles; and Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (the epigram is in Chalmers, British Poets, 1810, ii, 630). Turberville's rendering of the epigram is close (probably following Cornarius' Latin version; see J. E. Hankins, Life and Works of George Turberville, 1940, 74 f.). Gorges' translation is free, and worked into a dream narrative in poulter's couplets, each written as four short lines.
Gorges and Turberville thus have both translated two poems, not a popular pair with translators, in so far as I can tell; this is of some interest in view of the possible connections of Gorges and Turberville in Dorsetshire, see Hankins, op. cit., 24 f., it might be noted that Turberville dedicated his Epistles to Viscount Bindon, Douglas Howard's grandfather.