The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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  • From Nicholas Breton, Melancholic Humours (1600), ‘In Authorem’

From Nicholas Breton, Melancholic Humours (1600), ‘In Authorem’

[From Nicholas Breton, Melancholic Humours, 1600]

In Authorem

Thou that wouldst find the   habit of true  passion,

And see a mind attired in perfect  strains,

 Not wearing    moods, as gallants do a fashion,

In these  pied times, only to show their  brains,

Look here on Breton’s work, the  master-print, 5

Where such perfections to the life do rise.

If they seem  wry to such as look  asquint,

The fault’s not in the object, but their eyes.

For, as one coming with a lateral view

Unto a cunning piece wrought  pèrspective 10

 Wants faculty to make a  censure true,

So with this author’s readers will it thrive:

Which being eyed  directly, I divine,

His  proof their praise will meet, as in this line.

In Authorem First printed in Nicholas Breton’s Melancholic Humours (1600), entered in the Stationers’ Register on 22 Aug. 1600. The copious writer of satires Nicholas Breton (1554/5–1626), several of whose lyrics appear in England’s Helicon (1600), is dismissively referred to in Und. 43.73. On Jonson’s rare use of the sonnet form, see Epigr. 56 headnote. On this poem, see Riddell (1988a) and Fish (1984).
1 habit (1) dress; (2) custom.
1 passion A favourite word of Breton’s, which figures in the titles of the fourth and fifth poems in his collection; the tenth is entitled ‘An extreame Passion’.
2 strains (1) threads (OED, n.3 1); (2) turns of expression (OED, n.2 14).
3–4 These lines seek to avert the most obvious (and just) criticism to level at Breton’s poems: that they exploit the fashion for melancholy which followed the publication of Dowland’s First book of Airs (1597).
3 moods The original spelling ‘moodes’ may suggest a pun on ‘modes’, fashions.
Italic in Breton.
3 moods] Breton (moodes)
4 pied variegated and hence variable; continuing metaphors of clothing via OED, Pied ppl. a. a: ‘wearing a parti-coloured dress’.
4 brains intellect (i.e. they think their fine dress shows a fine mind; Jonson implies that the display is all they have in their heads).
5 master-print original from which a book, picture, or fabric is taken. ‘In print’ can be used of trim fashionable dress; see EMO, 2.3.183.
7 wry awry.
7 asquint from an oblique angle. For envy’s indirect gaze, see Und. 73.2n. and Donaldson (2001a), 1–2, who suggests Jonson may be thinking of court masques, in which the perspectives of the sets only appeared true to a viewer who sat in the centre of the audience.
10 pèrspective (stressed on the first syllable). There may be an allusion to anamorphic images, which presented different images to different angles of view. Holbein’s ‘The Ambassadors’ is the most celebrated example, in which a skull is stretched across the canvas in such a way as to be only visible from an oblique viewpoint. Or ‘perspective’ may be an error for ‘prospective’. Cf. Cynthia (Q), Praeludium, 118.
11 Wants faculty Lacks the capacity.
11 censure judgement.
13 directly (1) straight on; (2) immediately (when you turn over this page).
14 proof Continues the puns on printing.