:The Elizabethan Courtier Poets: The Poems and Their Contexts

Abstract

John K. Hale, Milton's Cambridge Latin: Performing in the Genres 1625-1632, Tempe, Arizona, Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, 2005, pp. 305, hb. $32 / £24, ISBN: 978-0-86698-332-7John K. Hale, of the University of Otago, New Zealand, is a distinguished Miltonist, many of whose publications have focused on Milton as a Latin (and indeed, multilingual) author: see in particular Milton's Languages (Cambridge, CUP, 1997), and John Milton: Latin Writings: a Selection (in 'Bibliotheca Latinitatis Novae', Assen, Van Gorcum, 1998). Here, Hale focuses more closely on some of Milton's Latin works which tend to receive less critical attention - not unreasonably, the cynic may think, as they are by no means Milton's best work: were they not by an author famous for other reasons, it is doubtful that anyone would pay them great attention. Even with this concentration on part of his Latin, the level of focus varies, and Hale's discussions of some texts are rather too brief to be very satisfactory. The first part of the book examines Milton's university exercises, those disputations and verses that formed part of his education at Cambridge, and were thought worthy of preservation and later publication; the second part looks at non-compulsory writings, both when Milton chose to volunteer them (for funerals, 1626), and when he chose not to (Milton's absence from several anthologies he could have joined); the third and fourth parts focus on his playful college vacation exercise (or 'salting'), known as Prolusion 6, and the English verses 'At a Vacation Exercise' ('Hail native language . . .') which followed on from it. Hale refers to his printing of these texts in part four as an 'editio princeps': they are all available elsewhere, although some readers may find it convenient to have them presented in Hale's arrangement.There is a lot to be said for the genre of 'act verses', short poems written to accompany formal university disputations; they tended to offer a witty sideways approach to a serious philosophical question, whether to enhance the audience's understanding or to distract it from the duller moments. A delicious thought arises: can we not learn something from the seventeenth century? Can we not suggest a rule that no academic conference paper should henceforth be permitted, without some fresh verses to amuse the audience while they doze through the theory? (Any genre of English verse, as well as more learned tongues, should of course be welcomed.) All hail to the conferenceorganiser brave enough to demand it, and to the brave participants who comply - they might find their seventeenth-century predecessors had a point. Milton's two philosophical poems are not the normal length for printed act verses, but Hale sensibly suggests (p. 36) that they are a development of that genre. Hale offers a comparison with MS act verses by Alexander Bolde (in the library of St John's College, Cambridge: I did not see a precise reference, and there is no list of MSS in the rather perfunctory bibliography).In his extended discussion of Milton's iambic verses 'De Idea Platonica', Hale comes up with the odd idea that this choice of metre is particularly unusual ('unique', p. 58). My own feeling is that iambics are much more frequent in earlier than later British Latin; they are never the most popular choice, but there's nothing odd about them either. …