The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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From The Georgics of Hesiod, translated by George Chapman (1618), ‘To My Worthy and Honoured Friend’

[From The Georgics of Hesiod, 1618]

   To My Worthy and Honoured Friend
  Master George Chapman, on His
Translation of Hesiod’s Works and Days

Whose work could this be, Chapman, to refine

 Old Hesiod’s ore, and give it us, but thine,

Who hadst  before wrought in rich Homer’s mine?


What treasure hast thou brought us! And what store

Still, still dost thou arrive with at our shore, 5

To make thy honour and our wealth the more!


If all the vulgar tongues that speak this day

Were asked of thy  discoveries, they must say

To the Greek coast thine only knew the way.


Such passage hast thou found, such returns made, 10

As now, of all men, it is called thy  trade,

And who  make thither else  rob or invade.

Italic in Chapman
To My Worthy and Honoured Friend First printed in Chapman, Georgics, sig. A4v, immediately after a dedicatory poem by Michael Drayton. The poem was probably written after 14 May 1618, when the volume was entered in the Stationers’ Register. [Editor: Colin Burrow]
Master George Chapman Playwright and translator of Homer (c. 1559–1634).
Master] Chapman (Mr)
2 Old Hesiod’s Hesiod was an eighth-century-bc author of the Theogony and Works and Days, and was generally believed to have composed after Homer. As Chapman puts it ‘He lived in the later time of Homer’ (Chapman, Georgicks, sig. A3v).
3 before Chapman’s Homer appeared in instalments in 1598, 1608, 1611, and c. 1614.
8–9 discoveries . . . way Jonson (himself the author of Discoveries) is thinking of his own motto tamquam explorator, ‘like a scout or explorer’.
11 trade Possibly a pun on ‘chapman’ (R. S. Peterson, 1981, 14).
12 make] Chapman; might MS emendation in a seventeenth-century hand in the copy in the John Rylands Library
12 rob or invade Echoed by Dryden (a careful reader of this poem) in his description of Jonson: ‘he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him’ (Dryden, Essays, 1.82).