The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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From Alice Sutcliffe, Meditations of Man’s Morality (1634), ‘To Mistress Alice Sutcliffe, on Her Divine Meditations’

[From Meditations of Man’s Mortality, 1634]

   To Mistress Alice Sutcliffe, on Her Divine Meditations

When I had read your holy Meditations,

And in them viewed th’ uncertainty of life,

The  motives and true spurs to all good nations,

The  peace of conscience, and the godly’s strife,

The  danger of delaying to repent, 5

And  the deceit of pleasures by consent,

The comfort of weak Christians, with their warning

From  fearful back-slides, and the debt  we’re in,

 To follow goodness by our own discerning,

Our great reward, th’eternal crown to win: 10

I said,  ‘Who’d supped so deep of this sweet  chalice,

Must  Celia be, the  anagram of Alice.’

To Mistress Alice Sutcliffe First printed in Alice Sutcliffe’s Meditations of Man’s Mortality, the first edition of which (now lost) was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 30 Jan. 1633. It is not known if Jonson’s poem first appeared in that year. Its lines are split at the caesura in order to fit into the narrow columns of the duodecimo volume. The prefatory matter contains acrostics on the names of Philip, Earl of Pembroke (for Jonson’s connection with him, see Epigr. 104n.), poems by George Wither, Peter Heywood, Francis Lenton, and Thomas May, the recipient of ‘May’ (6.159–60). See Hughey (1934). Alice Sutcliffe (née Woodhouse) of Mayroid, Yorkshire, was the wife of John Sutcliffe, Esquire of the Body to James I by 1624 and Groom of the Privy Chamber to Charles I. Jonson appears to have read at least the list of headings in the book’s table of contents, which he closely follows in lines 2–10. [Editor: Colin Burrow]
Italic in Sutcliffe
2 uncertainty of life Chapter 1 of Sutcliffe’s treatise is called ‘wherein the uncertainty of Mans life is expressed’, Sutcliffe, Meditations, 1.
3 motives . . . spurs Chapter 2 is headed ‘Motives and Inducements to true Godliness’, 35. ‘Nations’ is Jonson’s elaboration.
4 peace of conscience Chapter 3 is headed ‘Of the Peace of a good Conscience’, 57.
5 danger of delaying Chapter 4 is headed ‘Of the deferring of Repentance, how dangerous it is, and of the deceivableness of worldly pleasures’, 74.
6 the deceit . . . consent i.e. agreeing to something apparently pleasurable that can lead to vice.
8 fearful back-slides Chapter 5 is headed ‘Comforts for the weak Christian; and to beware of back-sliding’, 101.
8 we’re] Sutcliffe (1634) (we’are)
9–10 Chapter 6 is headed ‘That man ought to be won to follow godliness, in respect of the Eternal Happiness’, 114.
11–12 ‘Who’d . . . Alice.’] this edn; who’had . . . Alice Sutcliffe (1634)
11 chalice Used of the cup in which the eucharistic wine is administered.
12 Celia i.e. ‘Heavenly’.
12 anagram Jonson’s hostility to anagrams (see Und. 43.35 and note) is tempered by the fact that the earlier dedicatory pieces take the form of acrostics on the names of the dedicatees of the volume.