The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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  • From Coryate’s Crudities (1611), ‘The Character of the Famous Odcombian’

From Coryate’s Crudities (1611), ‘The Character of the Famous Odcombian’

    The Character of the famous Odcombian, or rather Polytopian,

Thomas the Coryate, Traveller and Gentleman Author of

these Quinquemestrial Crudities, done by a charitable friend

that thinks it necessary, by this time, you should understand the Maker, as well as the Work

  He is an  engine wholly consisting of extremes; a head, fingers, and toes. For 5

what his industrious toes have trod, his ready fingers have written, his subtle

head dictating. He was set a-going for Venice the fourteenth of May, anno 1608,

and returned home ( of himself) the third of October following, being wound

up for five months, or thereabouts:  his  peises two for one. Since, by virtue of

those weights, he hath been conveniently able to visit town and country, fairs and 10

 markets, to all places and all societies a spectacle grateful, above that of  Nineveh,

or the city of Norwich; and he is now become the better  motion, by having this his

book his  interpreter, which yet hath  expressed his purse more than him, as we

the rest of his  commenders have done, so unmercifully charging the press with

his praise. But to that gale he sets up all sails. He will bear paper  (which is cloth) 15

enough. He hath ever since the first design of printing hereof been  a deliciis to the

court, but served there in his own clothes and at his own costs, where he hath

not been  costive of acquaintance to any, from the  Palatine to the plebeian; which

 popularity of his — it is thought by some of his Odcombians — may hurt him. But

he, free from all other symptoms of aspiring, will easily  outcarry that, it being a 20

 motley and no perfect ambition — the rather because when he should have been

taken up for the place (though he hastily  prevented it with a tender of himself) he

 conditioned to have no office  of charge or  nearness cast upon him, as the  remora of

his future travel, for to that he is irrecoverably addicted. The word ‘travel’ affects

him in a  wain-ox or pack-horse. A  carrier will carry him from any company that 25

hath not been abroad, because he is a species of a traveller. But a  Dutch post doth

ravish him. The mere  superscription of a letter from Zurich  sets him up like a top;

Basle or Heidelberg makes him spin. And at seeing the word Frankfurt or Venice,

though but on the  title of a book, he is ready to  break doublet, crack elbows, and

overflow the room with his murmur. He  is a mad Greek, no less than a merry, and 30

will  buy his eggs,∗ his  puddings, his gingerbread, yea, cobble his shoes in the  Attic

dialect, and would make it a matter of conscience to speak other, were he trusted

alone in a room with an  andiron of state. The greatest  politic that advances into

 Paul’s he will quit, to go talk with the  Grecian that begs there, such is his humility,

and doth grieve inwardly he was not born that country man for that  purpose.∗ 35

You shall perceive a vein or thread of Greek run through his whole discourse,

and another of  Latin, but that is the coarser. He is a great and bold carpenter of

words, or — to express him in one like his own — a  Logodaedale; which  voice when he

hears, ’tis doubtful whether he will more love at the first, or envy after that it was

not his own. All his phrase is the same with his manners and haviour, such as, if 40

they were studied, to make mourners merry; but the body of his discourse able

to break  impostumes, remove  the stone, open the passage from the bladder, and

undo the very  knots of the gout, to cure even where physic hath turned her back,

and nature hung down her head for shame, being not only the antidote to resist

sadness, but the preservative to keep you in mirth a  life and a day. A man might 45

undo the  college that would practise with only him. And there is no man but to

enjoy his company would neglect anything but business. It is thought he lives

more by letting  out of air∗ than drawing in, and feared his belly  will exhibit a bill

in Chancery against his mouth for talking away his meals. He is always  Tongue

Major of the company, and if ever the  perpetual motion be to be hoped for, it 50

is from thence. He will ask ‘How you do?’ ‘Where you have been?’ ‘How is it?’

If you have travelled? How you like his book?, with ‘What news?’ and be guilty

of a thousand such courteous impertinences in an hour, rather than  want the

humanity of vexing you. To conclude this ample traveller in some bounds, you

shall best know him by this: he is frequent at all sorts of free tables, where though 55

he might sit as a guest, he will rather be  served in as a dish, and is loath to have

anything of himself kept cold against the next day. To give the  non ultra of him in

a word, he is so  substantive an author as will stand by himself without the need

of his book to be joined with him.

Here endeth the Character, attended with a  Characterism Acrostic. 60

The Character
The Character is on sigs. b1-b3v of Coryate’s Crudities (on which see headnote to previous poem). It is almost certainly Jonson’s work, since its endnote links it to the following poem, which is signed by him. It also displays Jonson’s interest in the Theophrastan character (on which see Smeed, 1985, 201–11, qualified by McCabe, 1989, who shows that Theophrastus was widely available in Casaubon’s edition) as well as in the puppet shows of Nineveh (11–12), to which Jonson alludes in EMO, Ind. 164.
5 Polytopian ‘Everywhere-man’.
5 Quinquemestrial Five months’ travel (May to Oct.) was followed by five months’ writing.
5 engine The conceit of the ‘Character’ is that Coryate is a clever piece of clockwork.
8 of himself on his own, by his own devices.
9 his peises . . . one The weights (peises) of his clockwork engine were used as the surety and investment for his travels. For travellers who even more ambitiously set out ‘five for one’, see EMO, 2.3.276–9.
9 peises] Crudities (paises)
11 markets] Crudities (Mercats)
11–12 Nineveh . . . Norwich The fate of Nineveh (the capital of the Assyrian empire, a Biblical type of pride, which was destroyed in 612 bc) was represented in puppet shows, which sometimes followed, and burlesqued, stage plays. See EMO, Ind. 162–3 and Bart. Fair, 5.1.6–9. Norwich is presumably paired with Nineveh for bathos, but there is probably an allusion to the spectacle of Will Kemp, who danced his way to Norwich in 1599 and who recorded his journey in his Nine Days’ Wonder (1600). Kemp’s publicity stunt was a precedent for Coryate’s, and Jonson’s acrostic verses on Coryate may owe something to the acrostics with which the citizens of Norwich greeted Kemp (Kemp, Nine Days’ Wonder, sig. C4-C4v).
12 motion puppet.
13 interpreter Used of books which explained technical terms (OED, 1†c); also used of the spokesman for puppets at Cynthia (Q), 4.2.26 and Bart. Fair, 3.4.111.
13 expressed (1) expressed the character of; (2) forced the money out of. Coryate apparently printed the volume at his own expense. This passage suggests that the authors of the mass of commendatory material sought to ruin him by their voluminousness.
14 commenders The authors of the eighty-nine commendatory verses.
15 which is cloth i.e. The pages of his book will serve him as sails.
16 a deliciis The Latin phrase in deliciis means ‘a pet, favourite’; the change in the usual preposition (‘out of favour’?) may be either a joke or a mistake.
18 costive of acquaintance reluctant to make friends.
18 Palatine nobility; there might be an allusion to Frederick V, Elector Palatine (who was to marry James’s daughter Elizabeth in 1612).
19 popularity attempt to win popular favour (OED, †3a).
20 outcarry accomplish. (First cited example OED.)
21 motley foolish.
22 prevented anticipated.
23 conditioned made it a condition.
23 of charge of responsibility.
23 nearness family duties.
23 remora ‘The sucking-fish (Echeneis remora), believed by the ancients to have the power of staying the course of any ship to which it attached itself’ (OED).
25 wain-ox ox that pulls a cart.
25 carrier messenger, delivery boy.
26 Dutch post messenger from Holland.
27 superscription address.
27 sets him up winds him up (OED, Set v. 154 m(d)), with a play on ‘makes vain or proud’ (OED, 154 k).
29 title title-page (OED, 3a). Since both Frankfurt and Venice were centres of the book trade Coryate must have been permanently in a whirl.
29 break doublet bust out of his shirt.
30 He is a mad . . . merry He is mad keen on Greek. A ‘merry Greek’ was a person of loose sexual morals (as at Troilus, 1.2.119). Coryate boasts that he ‘scoured up some of my old Greek’ to talk with the Greek Bishop of Venice (Coryate, Crudities, 230).
31 buy his eggs Jonson’s note: ‘I mean when he travelled. A thing that I know he scorned to do since he came home.’ To ‘take eggs for money’ was a proverbial expression for ‘to be put off with something worthless’ (Tilley, E90).
31 puddings sausages.
31–2 Attic dialect The Athenian dialect of Greek.
33 andiron fire-dog (i.e. even in an empty room he would spout Greek).
33 politic political know-all.
34 Paul’s The precincts of St Paul’s Cathedral, location of many printing presses and favoured haunt for fashionable men-about-town.
34 Grecian . . . there Greeks were thought of as beggars: T[homas] M[iddleton], The Black Book (1604), sig. C1: ‘Why? For shame, a bawd and poor? Why then let usurers go a-begging, or like an old Greek stand in Paul’s with a porringer.’
35 purpose Jonson’s note: ‘Not to beg, but to talk Greek the better with the natural Grecians’.
37 Latin Coryate often resorted to Latin when he could not otherwise make himself understood on his travels, and was fond of Latinate coinages. OED cites him as the first user of thirty-four Latinate words, including ‘acuminate’, ‘bardocucullus’, ‘contiguous’, ‘exolete’, ‘gentilitial’, ‘pedestrial’, ‘refollicate’, ‘series’, and ‘voluminous’.
38 Logodaedale Greek coinage for a wordsmith.
38 voice word (i.e. ‘Logodaedale’).
42 impostumes abscesses.
42 the stone gallstones.
43 knots Cf. Epigr. 31.1 and Horace’s nodosa cheragra, ‘knotty gout’, Epist., 1.1.31.
45 life . . . day Cf. the legal term ‘a twelvemonth and a day’ in EMI (F), 3.7.21.
46 college College of Surgeons.
48 out of air Jonson’s note: ‘I mean in the fore parts, not the hinder’; i.e. he is flatulent with words not farts.
48–9 will exhibit . . . Chancery i.e. will sue him.
49–50 Tongue Major noisy as a drum-major.
50 perpetual motion A perpetual motion machine (actually a kind of air thermometer) designed by Cornelis Drebbel (1572–1633) and displayed at Eltham palace to James I in Dec. 1607 was one of the wonders of early Jacobean England. It is mentioned in Henry Peacham’s dedicatory verses for Coryate’s Crudities (sig. k4v) as well as in Epicene, 5.3.47–8.
53 want lack.
56 served in as a dish Perhaps alludes to the anecdote of Coryate being delivered in a trunk to a court entertainment (Nichols, Progresses (James), 2.400 and Henry Goodere’s commendatory verse to Coryate, Crudities, sig. c6: ‘Who thinks him light, ask them who had the task / To bear him in a trunk unto the masque’).
57 non ultra the final summing up.
58 substantive Playing on ‘of persons: independent’ (OED, 1) and the early modern word for a ‘noun’, which can stand on its own.
60 Characterism Characterisation. (Predates the first citation in OED by three years.)