Jonson

Spenser may approach rigorism; Jonson subscribes to it. Even if we did not have Selden's assurance that Jonson was well read in the Church fathers and possessed many of their works, Jonson's references to The Sicke mannes Salue indicate an acquaintance with this important source of Renaissance rigorism. His epigram ‘Of Death’ implies its major position: ‘He that feares death, or mournes it, in the just, / Shewes of the resurrection little trust’ (VIII 37). Most significantly, over a period of 30 years Jonson wrote about twenty funeral poems which contain very little mourning. The poems that do mourn exhibit great restraint, never exceed the feeling of loss allowed by such strict fathers as Tertullian and Cyprian, and struggle to overcome even this. The restraint is not merely a matter of genre, for it characterizes all the poems, the two long elegies and the ode on Cary and Morison as well as the epigrams. In fact the elegies, to which Puttenham assigned lamentation, are more severe than some of the epigrams. In addition to avoiding or tempering expressions of grief Jonson exhorts himself and others not to mourn and chides those who do; his poetry continues the tradition of angry consolation which was examined in chapter 1.