Irus and his Jovial Crew: Representations of Beggars in Vincent Bourne and other Eighteenth-Century Writers of Latin Verse

Abstract

AbstractAlastair Fowler has written, with reference to the time of Milton, of ‘Latin's special role in a bilingual culture’, and this was still true in the early eighteenth century. The education of the elite placed great emphasis on the art of writing Latin verse and modern, as well as ancient, writers of Latin continued to be widely read. Collections of Latin verse, by individual writers such as Vincent Bourne (c. 1694–1747) or by groups such as Westminster schoolboys or bachelors of Christ Church, Oxford, could run into multiple editions, and included poems on a wide range of contemporary topics, as well as reworkings of classical themes. This paper examines a number of eighteenth-century Latin poems dealing with beggars, several of which are here translated for the first time. Particular attention is paid to the way in which the Latin poems recycled well-worn tropes about beggary which were often at variance with the experience of real-life beggars, and to how the specificities of Latin verse might heighten negative representations of beggars in a genre which, as a manifestation of elite culture, appealed to the very class which was politically and legally responsible for controlling them.