The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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  • From John Beaumont, Bosworth Field (1629), ‘On the Honoured Poems of his Honoured Friend, Sir John Beaumont, Baronet’

From John Beaumont, Bosworth Field (1629), ‘On the Honoured Poems of his Honoured Friend, Sir John Beaumont, Baronet’

[From Bosworth Field, 1629 ]

 On the Honoured Poems of His Honoured
Friend, Sir John Beaumont, Baronet

  This book will live; it hath a genius: this

Above his reader or his praiser is.

Hence, then, profane: here needs no words’ expense

In bulwarks,  rav’lins, ramparts, for defence

Such as the creeping common  pioneers use 5

When they do sweat to  fortify a muse.

Though I confess a Beaumont’s book to be

The bound, and frontier of our poetry;

And doth deserve all  muniments of praise,

That art or  engine on the strength can raise. 10

Yet who dares offer a  redoubt to rear?

To cut a dike? Or stick a stake up here,

Before this work? Where envy hath not cast

A trench against it, nor a batt’ry placed?

Stay till  she make her vain  approaches. Then 15

If, maimèd, she  come off, ’tis not  of men,

This fort of so impregnable access,

But higher power, as spite could not make less,

 Nor flattery! But secured by the author’s name,

Defies what’s  cross to piety or good fame. 20

And like a hallowed temple, free from taint

Of  ethnicism, make his muse a saint.

On the Poems of Sir John Beaumont First printed in Sir John Beaumont’s Bosworth Field (entered in the Stationers’ Register 2 June 1629), posthumously dedicated to Charles I by Beaumont’s son. Sir John Beaumont (1583–1627) was the brother of Francis Beaumont, the dramatist, and a member of a recusant family. He was indicted for recusancy in 1606 and retired to his estate at Grace Dieu in Leicestershire. He was certainly associated with Jonson by Aug. 1621, when he participated in the celebrations surrounding Gypsies. For biography, see Beaumont, The Shorter Poems (1974), 3–26. The volume also contained elegies by Thomas Nevill, Sir Thomas Hawkins, Sir John Beaumont Jr, Francis Beaumont, George Fortescue, Michael Drayton, Philip King, and ‘Ia. Cl.’ The military imagery derives from the title of the volume, which relates the climactic battle of the Wars of the Roses. Jonson completely ignores the 170 pages of classical translations, divine poems, elegies, panegyrics on Buckingham, Charles I and others which follow the title poem; this, combined with the fact that his commendatory poem is not in his preferred final position in the preliminaries to the volume, suggests that he may not have read the whole book before writing his piece on it. [Editor: Colin Burrow]
1–22 ] Italic in Beaumont
1 Cf. Martial, 6.61.10: victurus genium debet habere liber, ‘A book which will live must have genius.’
4 rav’lins ‘In fortification, an outwork consisting of two faces which form a salient angle, constructed beyond the main ditch and in front of the curtain’ (OED).
5 pioneers Soldiers who prepare fortifications, etc. in advance of the main army.
6 fortify a muse protect (by dedicatory epistles) a weak volume of poetry.
9 muniments Anything that could be considered a means of defence (punning on OED, 1: ‘documents’).
10 engine (1) ingenuity; (2) military machine.
11 redoubt ‘A species of out-work or field-work, usually of a square or polygonal shape, and with little or no means of flanking defence’ (OED, 1b).
15 she Envy.
15 approaches military advances.
16 come off leave the field of combat (OED, 65 f).
16 of men made by mere mortals.
19 Both ‘flattery’ and ‘the author’s’ are elided to enable the line to scan.
20 cross contrary (OED, 3).
22 ethnicism heathenism. These final lines may obliquely refer to Beaumont’s Catholicism.