The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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Elegy on Thomas Nashe, ‘Ad Carissimam Memoriam Thomae Nashi’ (1601)

[Elegy on Thomas Nashe]

      Ad Carissimam Memoriam Thomae Nashi Amici Dilectissimi Beniamin Jonsonus hoc Elegidium Consecravit  

Mortals, that  yet respire with plenteous breath,

View here a trophy of that tyrant Death,

And let the  object strike your melting eyes

Blind as the night, when you but read  ‘ Here lies

Conquered by destiny and turned to earth 5

The man whose  want hath caused a general dearth

Of wit throughout this land; none left behind

To equal him in his ingenious kind.’

I urge not this as being his  parasite;

 Who loved him least will do him greater  right. 10

No well-deserving muse but will impart

Her flowers to crown his industry and art.

When any wronged him living, they did feel

His spirit  quick as  powder, sharp as steel;

But to  his friends  his faculties were fair, 15

Pleasant, and mild as the most temperate air.

O pardon me, dear friend, if  fear control

The zealous purpose of my wounded soul,

Fear to be  censured glorious in thy praise

(A  maim soon taken in these  humorous days, 20

Where every  dudgeon judgement stabs at  wit);

Yet, for thy love, this truth I’ll not omit,

Which most may make thy merits to appear

And  joy thy glad surviving friends to hear:

Thou died’st a Christian, faithful, penitent, 25

Inspired with happy thoughts and confident.

This, though thy latest grace, was not the least,

Which still shall live when all else are deceased.

Farewell, great spirit; my pen, attired in black,

Shall, whilst I am, still weep and mourn thy lack. 30

  Fucis non nervis careo

[Elegy on Thomas Nashe] From Berkeley Castle muniments General Series Miscellaneous Papers 31/10, a small manuscript bifolium; first printed in K. Duncan-Jones (1995), and also in K. Duncan-Jones (1996). (The call number is as above, not 31/r as reported by Duncan-Jones.) The date of the satirist Thomas Nashe’s death is not precisely known, but it occurred in 1600–1 (possibly Jan.–Feb. 1601). His works had been banned in June 1599, after his heated pamphlet war with Gabriel Harvey, which may explain why Jonson never printed this poem. Jonson collaborated with Nashe over The Isle of Dogs in 1597. The MS is in the hand of Henry Stanford (c. 1552–1616), a keen collector of courtly verse; see S. W. May (1988). Duncan-Jones suggests that Stanford sent the epitaph to Elizabeth Carey (1576–1635), to whom Nashe dedicated The Terrors of the Night (1594), and who had probably been one of Stanford’s pupils. She was married to Thomas Berkeley. The MS also includes a Latin elegy and three English elegies, the last of which is subscribed ‘Humphrey King’, to whom (‘Little Numps’) Nashe dedicated Lenten Stuff in 1599. It is likely that the other Latin and English poems in the MS are also by King. There can be no doubt about the attribution of this poem to Jonson: it is confirmed by the fact that the poem is signed with the same Latin tag as the almost exactly contemporary MS of the ‘Epode’ (JnB 146, National Library of Wales MS 5390d, fol. 502 rev.). He seems to have used it as a signature for a brief period between c. 1599 and 1601.
Elegy The poem is referred to as hoc elegidium in its title, which means ‘a little elegy’. Duncan-Jones entitles it an ‘Epitaph’. In fact it fuses the language of epitaph (a poem written for inscription on a tomb) in line 4 (‘Here lies’) with the more expansive meditation on death appropriate to an elegy; this is probably why it is called an elegidium rather than an elegium or an epitaphium. This combination of genres is entirely typical of Jonson.
Ad Carissimam . . . Consecravit ‘Ben Jonson consecrated this elegy to the dearest memory of Thomas Nashe, his most beloved friend.’
Jonsonus] JnB 0.5 (Jons.)
1 yet respire still breathe.
3 object The sense ‘thing proposed to the view’ is characteristic of Jonson at this period. See ‘Palmer’, 3 (1.229).
4–8 ‘Here . . . kind.’] this edn; Here . . . kynd JnB 0.5
4 Here lies For a similar inclusion of the funerary topos ‘Here lies’ within an elegy, see ‘Jane Ogle’, 1 (5.713).
6 want lack.
9 parasite flatterer. Cf. Epigr. 65.14.
10 i.e. ‘Even those who were least fond of him would praise him more warmly than the bare epitaph quoted above.’
10 right.] this edn; right JnB 0.5
14 quick Plays on ‘lively’, ‘alive’, and ‘rapid’. Nashe’s satirical attacks on Gabriel Harvey were sharp, funny, and destructive.
14 powder gunpowder.
15 his friends] this edn; her freindes JnB 0.5
15 his friends The MS’s ‘her’ is a scribal error, unless the antecedent of ‘her’ is ‘his spirit’.
17 fear Alludes to the suppression of Nashe’s works in June 1599.
19 censured glorious criticized as boastful, vainglorious (OED, Glorious †1). ‘Glorious’ is invariably pejorative in Jonson’s verse (cf. Epigr. 28.1, 97.6; Forest 12.43; Und. 47.66, 77.26), unless it is used in religious contexts (as in Und. 1.1.1, 29; 1.2.24).
20 maim grave wound.
20 humorous moody, peevish (OED, 3†b); with an allusion to Jonson’s own humour plays.
21 dudgeon judgement dull and resentful mind. The noun dudgeon means the handle of a dagger, so these wits are blunt and clumsy in comparison to the rapier- and gunpowder-quickness of Nashe’s wit. ‘Dudgeon’ was a favourite word of Nashe’s, and Jonson used it as a term for dullness in the quarto of Poet., 1.2.206n., which rebukes those whose ‘dudgeon censures stab at poesy’ (K. Duncan-Jones, 1996, 12–14). He revised the word to ‘desp’rate’ in the folio Poet., perhaps because Dekker’s parody of him as Horace in Satiromastix (1602), sig. C2, 1.2.134–6, had boasted ‘I am too well-ranked, Asinius, to be stabbed with his [Captain Tucca’s] dudgeon wit.’ It was clearly a signature word of Jonson in the very early seventeenth century.
21 wit);] this edn; witte JnB 0.5
24 joy cause to rejoice.
Fucis . . . careo ‘I lack artificial embellishments of style, but not sinews.’ The motto has no known source, but may echo Horace, Satires, 1.2.83, and 2.1.2 (in which Horace is accused of being sine nervis), and Ars Poetica, 26–7. Nervi (sinews) ‘became a key word in the Senecan–Ciceronian controversy. Ciceronian rhetoric, as well as a loose, florid style, lacked nervi’ (Trimpi, 1962a, 105). On Jonson’s use of the motto elsewhere, see headnote.