Strong Manly Verse and Womanish Tenderness: Aphra Behn's Poetics in Praise

Before English literary criticism emerged as a distinct field in the eighteenth century, poetry was theorized in sometimes unexpected places. Among them, the prefatory matter to printed translations of scientific poetry is of particular interest to our project. Several key works of (neo-)Latin and continental scientific poetry were translated into English over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the paratextual matter to these publications, we can observe shifts in the poetics of scientific poetry, and alignments of scientific poetry with changing forms and modes of writing.

As translators justified their work to patrons and readers, and associates offered their praise, they appealed to what they perceived as the virtues of 'good' scientific poetry. Encountering scientific poetry in print, early modern English readers received instructions on how to conceive its nature, how to read it, and what to expect from it in terms of instruction, pleasure, and form. As a site of criticism, this paratextual matter is of particular interest because it suffers less from the divide between practice and theory that is often observed in works of poetics proper. The paratexts comment, not on abstract ideals, but on specific texts, pointing out what is perceived as their virtues and addressing what should not – but might well – be perceived as faults by contemporary readers.

Central issues in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English poetics concerned the question of the sources and objects of poetry (inspiration, imagination, and imitation), as well as its effect on audiences and the appropriateness and efficacy of certain forms. One frequently discussed issue concerns poetry’s pragmatic effect: in the context of translation, particularly the advantage to be gained from making works in foreign languages available to an extended readership in the vernacular.

The appeal to the Horatian commonplace of ‘delectare et prodesse’, profit and pleasure, receives a remarkable spin in the prefatory matter to the second, 1683 edition of Thomas Creech’s translation of Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, perhaps the seventeenth century’s single most influential classical scientific poem. This translation ran through three editions in five months, and it includes a commendatory poem by Aphra Behn in which she places emphasis not on national distinctions but on how women and men respond to the poem differently.

Twenty-five years earlier, Lucy Hutchinson’s venture to translate the same work had been mocked by Sir Aston Cokayne in print: addressing her rival male translator, Alexander Brome, Cokayne opined that Lucretius ‘strikes too boldly home sometimes, / In geniall things, t’appear in womens rhimes’, concluding that ‘The task is masculine’. In what looks like a direct response to Cokayne, Behn styles her feminine mind incapable of ‘Strong Manly Verse’, playfully casting it as formed ‘of feebler Seeds’ and ‘softer Love’ by Lucretian atoms. She opts instead for a ‘newer way’ of writing marked by ‘Gentle Numbers’ and ‘Womanish Tenderness’ in marked contrast to the ‘vast Flights of Verse’ she appreciates in Creech. There is some irony in making such a statement in a Pindaric ode, a form associated (since at least Abraham Cowley) with unrestrained flights of fancy and lofty, sublime language. The well-known playwright and poet Behn, specifically invited to contribute a poem to the edition, shows off her skill while ostensibly renouncing it: the poem in praise of Creech thus becomes a performance of Behn’s own poetic authority, and more generally, a defence of women’s writing, and of writing for women.

Poetry, for Behn, is a medium for knowledge, which in turn is a means of liberation. Recalling the Renaissance commonplace that poets were the first scientists and teachers of mankind, Behn finds a parallel in the way women are led from ignorance to knowledge thanks to Creech’s translation. Before, through their ignorance of classical poetry, women were stuck in the present’s ‘Fulsome Gingle [jingle]’ and kept from the mysteries of learning. Inevitably, the translation ‘instruct[s] and charm[s] the Sense’, but Behn’s use of imagery to specify how it meets the Horatian standard is complex: while instruction is achieved through the plain style that was the Royal Society’s declared aim (‘The mystick Terms of rough Philosophy / Thou dost so plain and easily Express’), pleasure is derived from the ‘soft and Gay […] Dress’ of poetical flourishes, soaring to ‘heights of Fancy, heights of Eloquence’. Again, the verbal and metaphorical parallels with Cokayne are striking: he had claimed that Brome ‘general Learning perfectly can plain [i.e., explain]’, and that he would give Lucretius ‘such a robe of English as will live’. The sartorial image of the stately robe is countered with casual, possibly theatrical clothing, representing a very different view of the nature and purpose of poetry. Likewise, where Cokayne had praised Brome in the staid, solid terms of architecture (‘erect / This Pyramid of our best Dialect [i.e., English]’), she commends the free play of reason in Creech’s verse, ranging ‘Wanton and undisturb’d as Summers Breeze / That gliding murmurs o’re the Trees’. In her praise of Creech, she expresses eagerness for his original poetry, ‘Unfetter’d, Unconfin’d by any other Muse’. Poetic liberty and agency is cast as a natural virtue, ‘When thy unbounded Verse in their own streams shall flow’.

Behn subsequently apostrophizes Wadham College, founded in the early seventeenth century and soon a hotbed of scientific interest and home to the ‘Philosophical Club’ that became the nucleus of the Royal Society. Her celebration of Wadham as the Muses’ pastoral ‘soft retreat’ and alma mater not only to ‘Daphnis’/Creech, but also to ‘such wonderous Poets’ as ‘Thirsis’ (i.e., Thomas Sprat, official historian of the Royal Society and biographer of Abraham Cowley) and ‘Strephon’ (i.e., the earl of Rochester, most notorious of libertine poets and translator of passages from De Natura Rerum) seems counter-intuitive, but it stresses the intimate connection between scientific knowledge and poetry. Again, it seems ironic in the context of a materialist and atheist poem, that she should liken the force of reason communicated through the notoriously atheistic poem to the force of faith, which also ‘Peirces, Conquers, and Compells’. Through the paradoxes, unreconciled contrasts, and ironies of this poem, Behn playfully seeks to have her cake and eat it, too: women are ignorant, but she is clever; women’s poetry is plain and modest, but hers is sublime and self-assured; Creech’s translation is plain, but also fanciful; it allows the mind to be free but also compels it.

Texts

Here is the poem by Sir Aston Cokayne, published in his collected works, A Chain of Golden Poems (London, 1658):

To my ingenuous Friend Mr. Alexander Brome on his Essay to translate Lucretius.

I know a Lady that hath been about
The same designe, but she must needes give out:
Your Poet strikes too boldly home sometimes,
In geniall things, t'appear in womens rhimes,
The task is masculine, and he that can
Translate Lucretius, is an able man,
And such are you; whose rich poetick vein,
And general Learning perfectly can plain,
And smooth your Authors roughnesses, and give
Him such a robe of English as will live,
Out-wear, and all such works exceed, and prove
This Nations wonder, and this nations Love.
Therefore proceed, (my friend) and soon erect
This Pyramid of our best Dialect.

And this is Behn's commendatory poem, commissioned for the second edition of Thomas Creech's translation of De Natura Rerum (1683):

To the unknown Daphnis on his Excellent Translation of Lucretius!

THou Great Young Man permit among the Croud
Of those that sing thy mighty Praises Loud,
My humbler Muse to bring her Tribute too;
Inspir’d by Thy vast Flights of Verse
Methinks I should some wondrous thing Reherse
Worthy Divine Lucretius, and Diviner You!
But I of feebler Seeds design’d,
While the slow moveing Atoms strove
With careless Heed to form my Mind,
Compos’d it all of softer Love:
In Gentle Numbers all my Songs are drest;
And when I would Thy Glories Sing,
What in Strong Manly Verse should be exprest
Turns all to Womanish Tenderness within;
Whilst that which Admiration does Inspire.
In other Souls, kindles in Mine a Fire.

Let them Admire thee on – whilst I this newer way
Pay thee yet more than They,
For more I owe, since thou hast taught Me more
Than all the Mighty Bards that went before.
Others long since have pauld the vast Delight,
In Duller Greek and Latin satisfi’d the Appetite:
But I unlearn’d in Schools disdain that Mine
Should treated be at any feast but Thine.

Till now I curst my Sex and Education,
And more the scanted Customs of the Nation,
Permitting not the Female Sex to tread
The Mighty Paths of Learned Heroes Dead:
The Godlike Virgil and great Homers Muse
Like Divine Mysteries are conceal’d from us;
We are forbid all grateful Theams,
No ravishing Thoughts approach our Ear;
The Fulsome Gingle of the Times
Is all we are allow’d to Understand, or Hear.

But as of old when Men unthinking lay,
Ere Gods were worshipt, or e’re Laws were fram’d
The wiser Bard that taught ’em first t’ obey,
Was next to what he taught Ador’d and Fam’d;
Gentler they grew, their Words and Manners chang’d:
And Salvage now no more the Woods they rang’d;
So Thou by this Translation dost advance
Our Knowlenge from the State of Ignorance;
And Equallst Vs to Man! O how shall We
Enough Adore, or Sacrifice enough to Thee!

The mystick Terms of rough Philosophy
Thou dost so plain and easily Express,
Yet Deck’st ’em in so soft and Gay a Dress,
So Intelligent to each Capacity,
That they at once instruct and charm the Sense
With heights of Fancy, heights of Eloquence;
And Reason over all unfetter’d Plays,
Wanton and undisturb’d as Summers Breeze
That gliding murmurs o’re the Trees,
And no hard Notion meets, or stops its ways;
It Peirces, Conquers, and Compells
As strong as Faiths resistless Oracles,
Faith the Religious Souls content,
Faith the secure Retreat of Routed Argument.

Hail Sacred Wadham! whom the Muses Grace,
And from the rest of all the Reverend Pile
Of Noble Palaces, design'd thy Space
Where they in soft retreat might dwell.
They Blest thy Fabrick, and they said—do Thou
Our Darling Sons contain;
We Thee our Sacred Nursery ordain,
They said, and Blest, and it was so.
And if of old the Fanes of Sylvian Gods
Were worship't as Divine Abodes;
If Courts are held as sacred Things,
For being the Awful Seats of Kings:
What Veneration should be paid
To thee that hast such wonderous Poets made?
To Gods for fear Devotion was design'd,
And safely made us bow to Majesty:
Poets by Nature Aw, and Charm the Mind,
Are born, not made or by Religion, or Necessity.

The Learned Thirsis did to thee belong,
Who Athens Plague has so divinely sung;
Thirsis to wit, a sacred Friendship true
Paid mighty Cowleys memory its due.
Thirsis, who while a greater Plague did reign
Than that which Athens did depopulate
Scattering Rebellious Fury or’e the Plain,
That Threatned ruine to the Church and State,
Unmov’d He stood and fear’d no Threats of Fate;
That Loyal Champion for the Church and Crown
Still did his Sovereigns Cause espouse,
And was above the Thanks of the mad Senate-House.

Strephon the Great, whom last you sent abroad,
Who Writ, and Lov'd, and Lookt like any God.
For whom the Muses mourn, the Love sick Maids
Are languishing in Melancholy shades,
The Cupids flag their Wings, their Bows untye,
And useless Quivers hang neglected by;
And scatter’d Arrows all around them ly:
By murmuring Brooks the Careless Deitys are lay’d,
Weeping their Rifled Power now noble Strephon’s Dead.

Ah Sacred Wadham couldst thou never own
But this Delight of all Mankind and thine,
For Ages past of Dulness this alone
This charming Hero would atone,
And make Thee glorious to succeeding time.
But thou like Natures self disdainst to be
Stinted to singularity.

As fast as she, thou dost Produce,
And over all the sacred Mistery dost infuse
No sooner was fam’d Strephons Glory set,
Strephon the soft, the Lovely, Gay and Great,
But Daphnis rises like the Morning Star
That guides the wandring Traveller from afar
Daphnis, whom every Grace, and Muse inspires
Scarce Strephons Ravishing Poetick Fires
So kindly warm, or so Divinely Cheer.

Advance Young Daphnis as thou hast begun,
So let thy mighty Race be run;
Thou in thy large Poetick Chace
Beginst where others end the Race.
If now thy grateful numbers are so strong,
If they so Early can such Graces show
Like Beauty, so surprizing, whilst so Young:
What Daphnis, will thy riper Iudgment do;
When thy unbounded Verse in their own streams shall flow?
What Wonders will they not produce,
When they [i.e., thy] immortal fancy’s loose.
Unfetter’d, Unconfin’d by any other Muse?
Advance Young Daphnis then, and mayst thou prove
Still happy in thy Poetry and Love.

May all the Groves, with Daphnis songs be Blest,
Whilst every Bark, is with thy Disticks drest:
May timorous Maids, learn how to Love from thence,
And the Glad Shepherd Arts of Eloquence:
And when to solitudes thou wouldst retreat,
May their tun’d Pipes, thy welcome celebrate;
Whilst all the Nymphs strow Garlands at thy Feet.
May all the purling streams, that murmuring pass
The shady Groves, and Banks of Flowers,
The low reposing Beds of Grass,
Contribute to thy softest Hours.
Mayst thou thy muse and mistress there Caress,
And may one heighten t’others happiness;
And whilst thou thus Divinely dost converse,
We are content to know, and to admire thee in thy Verse.

Strong Manly Verse and Womanish Tenderness: Aphra Behn's Poetics in Praise

Further reading

Texts

Prof. Florian Klaeger