The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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From Coryate’s Crambe (1611), ‘Certain Verses’

[From Coryate’s Crambe, 1611 ]

    Certain Verses Written Upon Coryate’s Crudities, Which
Should Have Been Printed with the Other Panegyric Lines,
but Then Were Upon Some Occasions Omitted, and
Now Communicated to the World.
 Incipit Ben Jonson
To the London Reader, on the Odcombian writer, Polytopian
Thomas the Traveller.

Whoever he be would write a story  at

The height, let him learn of  Master Tom Coryate;

Who, because his matter in all should be  meet

To his strength, hath measured it out with his  feet.

And that, say  philosophers, is the best model. 5

Yet who could have hit on’t but the wise  noddle

Of our Odcombian, that literate  elf,

 To line out no stride, but   paced by himself?

 And allow you for each particular mile,

By the scale of his book, a yard of his style? 10

Which unto all ages for his will be known,

Since he treads in no other man’s  steps but his own.

And that you may see he most luckily meant

To write it with the  self-same spirit he went,

He says to the world  ‘Let any man mend it’; 15

In five months he went it, in five months he penned it.

 But who will believe this that chanceth to look

The map of his journey, and sees in his book

France, Savoy, Italy, and  Helvetia,

The Low Countries, Germany, and  Rhetia 20

There named to be travelled? For this our Tom saith:

  Pize on’t, you have his historical faith.

Each leaf of his journal and line doth unlock,

 The truth of his heart there, and tells what a-clock

He went out at each place, and at what he came in, 25

How long he did stay, at what sign he did inn.

Besides he tried ship, cart, wagon, and chair,

Horse, foot, and all but flying in the air:

 And therefore, however the travelling nation

Or builders of story have oft imputation 30

Of lying, he fears so much the reproof

Of his foot, or his pen, his brain, or his hoof,

That he dares to inform you, but somewhat meticulous,

How scabbèd, how raggèd, and how  pediculous

He was in his  travel, how like to be beaten, 35

 For grapes he had gathered, before they were eaten.

How fain for his  venery he was to cry ‘ Tergum, O!’

 And lay in straw with the horses at Bergamo;

 How well, and how often his shoes too were mended,

That sacred to Odcombe are now there suspended, 40

I mean that one pair, wherewith he so hobbled

From Venice to Flushing, were not they well cobbled?

Yes. And thanks God in his ’pistle or his book

How many learnèd men he have drawn with his hook

Of Latin and Greek, to his friendship. And  seven 45

He there doth protest he saw of the eleven.

Nay, more in his wardrobe, if you will laugh at a

Jest, he says.  Item: one suit of black  taffeta,

Except a doublet, and bought of the Jews:

So that not them, his scabs, lice, or the stews, 50

Or anything else that another should hide,

Doth he once dissemble, but tells he did ride

In a cart ’twixt  Montreuil and Abbeville.

And being at Flushing enforcèd to feel

 Some want, they say, in a sort he did crave, 55

I writ  he only his tail there did wave,

Which he not denies. Now, being so free,

Poor Tom, have we cause to suspect just thee?

No: as I first said, who would write a story at

The height, let him learn of Master Tom Coryate. 60

  Explicit Ben Jonson

Certain Verses Written Upon Coryate’s Crudities

First printed in Coryate’s Crambe, or his Colewort Twice Sodden (1611a). The volume contained dedicatory verses presumably submitted too late to appear in Crudities, by Jonson, Laurence Whitaker, Christopher Brooke, Anthony Washborne, William Rich, and others. These are followed by Coryate’s petition to Henry, Prince of Wales for his assistance in procuring a licence to print Crudities, a group of dedicatory epistles and speeches which had accompanied gifts of copies of the Crudities to members of the royal family, and his account of the Church Ales at Yeovil and Odcombe in 1606. It contains a splenetic afterword attacking the publication of the pirated Odcombian Banquet (Crambe, sigs. H1-H3). ‘Crambe’ derives from the Latin for ‘cabbage’, and ‘colewort twice sodden’ means ‘doubly-boiled cabbage’, proverbially akin to ‘stale news’ (Tilley, C511). Jonson had a penchant for comparing repetitious works to re-cooked cabbage: a marginal note to his personal copy of Martial (1619) complains that either 1.94 or 1.95 is crambe usque ad nauseam repet ‘cold cabbage heated up ad nauseam’; see McPherson (1974), 69 and Jonson’s Library, Electronic Edition.
Incipit Begins.
1–2 at . . . height in the most sublimely extreme way.
2 , 60 Master] Crambe (Mr.)
3 meet suited, proportioned to.
4 feet Coryate’s European journey was chiefly undertaken on foot. Cf. Horace, Epistles, 1.7.98: metiri se quemque suo modulo ac pede verum est, ‘It’s right that each should measure himself by his own rule and measure [literally “foot”].’
5 philosophers Probably the peripatetics, so called because they delivered their teaching while walking around.
6 noddle head (implying stupidity).
7 elf little man (often used patronizingly).
8 To . . . himself To measure [‘line’] out no pace unless he had trodden it himself.
8 paced The unmodernized ‘pas’d’ also suggests ‘passed’.
8 paced] Crambe (pas’d)
9–10 i.e. He writes a yard of prose for every mile he travelled.
12 steps footsteps. Literary followers or imitators were and are often said to ‘follow in the footsteps’ of their predecessors.
14 self-same spirit For Coryate this means ‘energetically’, for Jonson it may anticipate the eighteenth-century sense of ‘pedestrian’: plodding?
15 ‘Let . . . it’] this edn; Let . . . it Crambe
17–21 On pp. 654–5 of Crudities Coryate adds up the total distance he travelled (1975 miles) and the number of cities he visited (forty-five).
19 Helvetia Switzerland.
20 Rhetia East Switzerland.
22 Pize Pox (a variant form, the origin of which is unexplained).
22 Pize] Crambe (Pies)
24–5 The dedications purporting to be by Coryate are addressed (e.g.) ‘To the Queen in the Privy Garden at Greenwich, the fifth day of April, being Friday, about five of the clock in the afternoon’ (Coryate, Crambe, 1611a, sig. B2).
29–31 Travellers were proverbially said to be liars (Tilley, T476).
34 pediculous louse-ridden. See Crudities ('Distichs'), 23–4n.
35 travel] Crambe (trauaile)
36 See Crudities ('Distichs'), 21–2n.
37 venery lechery.
37 Tergum, O ‘Oh, my back’. Coryate was pelted with eggs by Venetian courtesans. See Crudities ('Distichs'), 15–16.
38 Restates the episode related in Crudities ('Distichs'), 29–30.
39 On Coryate’s shoes, see Crudities ('Distichs'), 23–4n.
45–6 seven . . . eleven In his ‘Preface to the Reader’ in Crudities Coryate mentions twelve learned men ‘most of whom it was my good hap not only to see in my travels, but also to my unspeakable solace to enjoy very copious and fruitful discourse with them’ (sig. b3). These were Isaac Casaubon (met on p. 31), Paulo Emilio Musto (p. 127), Rudolphus Hospinianus, Caspar Waserus (p. 378 [sig. fF2v, mispaginated]), Henry Bullinger, Amandus Polanus (p. 432), Joannes Jacobus Gryneus (p. 432), Jan Gruter (p. 477), David Pareus, Dionysus Gothofredus, Joannes Piscator, and Bonaventura Vulcanius. It appears Coryate in fact met only six out of twelve; part of Jonson’s joke may be that bad rhymes lead to errors.
48 Item Used to introduce a list or a bill.
48 taffeta fine silk (which Coryate admires in Venice in Crudities, p. 259, although he does not record himself buying any such clothes).
53 Montreuil] Crambe (Montrell)
55 Coryate records his debt of gratitude to Sir William Browne, deputy governor of Flushing (Crudities, p. 653) at the very end of his journey. It is likely that Jonson heard or inferred that Coryate was hard up at this stage of his trip.
56 he . . . wave he fawned like a dog. Cf. Persius, 4.15.
61 Explicit Ends.