Hollow Praise: Raising an Empty Monument from Oxford’s Ruin



In 1605 Francis Bacon published his “Advancement of Learning”, and it is from his discussion of the three ‘distempers’ of learning that I take much of the matter of the following posting in an effort to establish that at the heart of the
authorship problem lies the ‘age old’ dichotomy of style and substance, or words and matter/things (verba and res):


THERE be therefore chiefly three vanities in studies, whereby learning hath been most traduced. For those things we do esteem vain, which are either false or frivolous, those which either have no truth or no use: and those persons we esteem vain, which
are either credulous or curious; and curiosity is either in matter or words: so that in reason as well as in experience, there fall out to be these three distempers (as I may term them) of learning; the first, fantastical learning; the second,
contentious learning; and the last, delicate learning; vain imaginations, vain altercations, and vain affectations; and with the last I will begin. (Bacon)

The key word in this passage that I would like to highlight and develop in terms of the authorship dispute is the word ‘VANITY’. In particular the purported ‘vanity’ of the Earl of Oxford in both his person and his rhetorical practices, and how
disparagement of the Earl corresponds to the ‘vain’ monument of hollow praise that Jonson constructs at the front of the First Folio as an empty figuration of the ‘vain’ author ‘Shake-speare’...

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Idolatrous Italianate Ciceronians - Crows and Apes of Cicero:

Gabriel Harvey, Rhetor
On Art.


Can anyone be an artist without art? Or have you ever seen a bird flying without wings, or a horse running without feet? Or if you have seen such things, which no one else has ever seen, come, tell me please, do you hope to become a goldsmith, or a
painter, or a sculptor, or a musician, or an architect, or a weaver, or any sort of artist at all without a teacher? But how much easier are all these things, than that you develop into a supreme and perfect orator without the art of public speaking.
There is need of a teacher, and indeed even an excellent teacher, who might point out the springs with his finger, as it were, and carefully pass on to you the art of speaking colorfully, brilliantly, copiously. But what sort of art shall we choose? Not
an art entangled in countless difficulties, or packed with meaningless arguments; not one sullied by useless [31] precepts, or disfigured by strange and foreign ones; not an art polluted by any filth, or fashioned to accord with our own will and judgment;
not a single art joined and sewn together from many, like a quilt from many rags and skins (way too many rhetoricians have given this sort of art to us, if indeed one may call art that which conforms to no artistic principles). We want rather an art
that is concise, precise, appropriate, lucid, accessible; one that is decorated and illuminated by precise definitions, accurate divisions, and striking illustrations, as if by flashing gems and stars; one that emerges, and in a way bursts into flower,
from the speech of the most eloquent men and the best orators. Why so? Not only because brevity is pleasant, and clarity delightful, but also so that eloquence might be learned in a shorter time, and with less labor and richer results, and so that it
might stand more firmly grounded, secured by deeper roots. For thus said the gifted poet in his Ars Poetica: "Whatever instruction you give, let it be brief." Why? [32] He gives two reasons: "So that receptive minds might swiftly grasp your words and
accurately retain them." And indeed, as the same poet elegantly adds: "Everything superfluous spills from a mind that's full."

(snip)
But those annual whistles and shouts I hear indicate that almost all, or at least the greater part of my auditors are newcomers, who do not understand what they should do or whom they should imitate, but who nonetheless are captivated by the splendor of
rhetoric, and seek to be orators. Therefore I will now, if I am able, reveal those things and place them all in their view, in such a way that they might seem to see them with their eyes, and almost hold them in their hands. In the meantime I pray you,
most eloquent and refined gentlemen, either withdraw, if you like, or with the kindness that you've shown so far hear me as I recite some precepts so common as to be almost elementary. And from those whose tongues and ears Cicero alone inhabits, I beg
forgiveness, if by chance I let drop in my haste a word that is un-Ciceronian. We cannot all be Longeuils and Cortesis: [9] some of us don't want to be. As for those who study more Latin authors, but only the best and choicest, and who to accompany
Cicero, the foremost of all, add Caesar, Varro, Sallust, Livy, Seneca, Terence too, and Plautus and Vergil and Horace, I am sure they will be sympathetic to me. For reading as I do many works by many authors, sometimes even the poets, as Crassus bids in
Cicero, I cannot guarantee that in so impromptu an oration I will not use a word not found in a Ciceronian phrase book.


But those little CROWS and APES of CICERO were long ago driven from the stage by the hissing and laughter of the learned, as they so well deserved, and at last have almost vanished; and I now hope to find not only eager and attentive auditors, but
friendly spectators as well, not the sort who scrupulously weigh every individual detail on the scales of their own refined tastes, but who interpret everything in a fair and good-natured way. I too in fact wanted, if I was able--but perhaps I was not--
to speak in as Ciceronian a style as the Ciceronianest of them all. [10] Forgive me, illustrious Ciceronians, if I ought not use that word in the superlative.

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Greene's Groatsworth:

With thee I ioyne yong Iuuenall, that byting Satyrist, that lastlie with mee together writ a Comedie. Sweete boy, might I aduise thee, be aduisde, and get not many enemies by bitter wordes: inueigh against VAINE men, for thou canst do it, no man better,
no man so wel: thou hast a libertie to reprooue all, and none more; for one being spoken to, all are offended, none being blamed no man is iniured. Stop shallow water still running, it will rage, or tread on a worme and it will turne: then blame not
Schollers vexed with sharpe lines, if they reproue thy too much libertie of reproofe.


And thou no lesse deseruing than the other two, in some things rarer, in nothing inferiour; driuen (as my selfe) to extreme shifts, a little haue I to say to thee: and were it not an idolatrous oth, I would sweare by sweet S. George, thou art vnworthy
better hap, sith thou dependest on so meane a stay. Base minded men all three of you, if by my miserie ye be not warned: for vnto none of you (like me) sought those burres to cleaue: those Puppets (I meane) that speake from our mouths, those Anticks
garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they al haue beene beholding: is it not like that you, to whome they all haue beene beholding, shall (were yee in that case that I am now) bee both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them not:
for there is an vpstart CROW, BEAUTIFIED with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to BOMBAST out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Iohannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit
the onely Shake-scene in a countrey. O that I might intreate your rare wits to be imploied in more profitable courses: & let those APES imitate your past excellence, and neuer more acquaint them with your admired inuentions. I know the best husband of
you all will neuer proue an Usurer, and the kindest of them all will neuer seeke you a kind nurse: yet whilest you may, seeke you better Maisters; for it is pittie men of such rare wits, should be subiect to the pleasure of such rude groomes.

In this I might insert two more, that both haue writ against these buckram Gentlemen: but let their owne works serue to witnesse against their owne wickednesse, if they perseuere to mainteine any more such peasants. For other new-commers, I leaue them to
the mercie of these PAINTED MONSTERS, who (I doubt not) will driue the best minded to despise them: for the rest, it skils not though they make a ieast at them.

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Sidney , Defense

...But let this be a sufficient, though short note, that we misse the right use of the material point of Poesie. Now for the outside of it, which is words, or (as I may tearme it) Diction, it is even well worse: so is it that HONY-FLOWING Matrone
Eloquence, apparrelled, or rather disguised, in a Courtisanlike PAINTED AFFECTATION. One time with so farre fet(ched) words, that many seeme monsters, but must seeme Straungers to anie poore Englishman: an other time with coursing of a letter, as if they
were bound to follow the method of a Dictionary: an other time with figures and flowers, extreemely winter-starved. But I would this fault were onely peculiar to Versefiers, and had not as large possession among Prose- Printers: and which is to be
mervailed among many Schollers, & which is to be pitied among some Preachers. Truly I could wish, if at I might be so bold to wish, in a thing beyond the reach of my capacity, the diligent Imitators of TULLY and DEMOSTHENES (note - Tully/Cicero);
Demosthenes, most worthie to be imitated, did not so much keepe Nizolian paper bookes, of their figures and phrase, as by attentive translation, as it were, devoure them whole, and make them wholly theirs. For now they cast SUGAR and SPICE uppon everie
dish that is served to the table: like those Indians, not content to weare eare-rings at the fit and naturall place of the eares, but they will thrust Jewels through their nose and lippes, because they will be sure to be fine.

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Sidney Sonnet II

Let DAINTY wits crie on the Sisters nine,
That, BRAVELY MASKT, their fancies may be told;
Or, Pindars APES , flaunt they in PHRASES FINE,
Enam'ling with pied flowers their thoughts of gold;
Or else let them in statlier glorie shine,
Ennobling new-found tropes with problemes old;
Or with strange similes enrich each line,
Of herbes or beasts which Inde or Affrick hold.
For me, in sooth, no Muse but one I know,
Phrases and problems from my reach do grow;
And strange things cost too deare for my poor sprites.
How then? euen thus: in Stellaes face I reed
What Loue and Beautie be; then all my deed
But copying is, what in her Nature writes.

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Erasmus, “Apes of Cicero,” and Conceptual Blending
Kenneth Gouwens
(snip)

...the portrayals of apes even in the Adages of 1508 [note – Erasmus] could have done little positive for the animals’ image. In explaining the proverb “An ape is an ape, though clad in gold,” Erasmus retells Lucian’s story about an Egyptian
king who taught some monkeys to dance, MASKED AND ATTIRED IN SCARLET. Initially compelling, the performance fell apart when a spectator scattered nuts before the apes, who ceased dancing and fought over them. (...) Another adage, “Hercules and an ape,�
� highlights a more insidious aspect of simian nature, the capacity to hoodwink: whereas “Hercules excels in strength,” the “ape’s power lies in sneaky tricks.” But if monkeys are ridiculous and tricky in and of themselves, in the 1508 edition
they more often serve the purpose of holding the mirror up to human folly. Thus the proverb “A donkey among apes” is taken to describe how someone dull-witted falls in among “satirical and insolent people” who mock their hapless victim with
impunity. More seriously, as one sees in the adage “An ape in purple,” the deception may consist in a veneer of cultured elegance that camouflages, albeit incompletely, a foulness beneath. The phrase can be applied, says Erasmus, to those “whose
true nature, though they may be wearing very fine clothes, is obvious from their expression and character,” as well as “to those who have some inappropriate dignity thrust upon them, or when something nasty in itself is unsuitably decked out with
ornament from some unconnected or external source.
.....Already in 1508, Erasmus occasionally likens apes to pseudo-intellectuals. Thus the adage “No [aged] monkey was ever caught in a trap” is “often applied to clever and slippery talkers who cannot be caught out.” Similarly, “a painted monkey,
” which refers directly to an ugly old woman made up like a prostitute, can also illustrate and idea: for example, “if someone dresses up an immoral argument with rhetorical trappings so that it seems honest.” The two remaining images from 1508
point to the simian as unable even to approach the boundary that separates it from the human. Erasmus glosses “the prettiest ape is hideous” as referring to “things which are intrinsically defective, and by no means to be compared with even the
lowest specimens of the class of things that possess any merit...” And “The tragical ape” appears to be practically a simulacrum of the human: “Ape, like manikin, is the word for what is scarcely a man and more like a pale copy of one...”
.....In subsequent expansions, Erasmus adds further shading to some of these adages, directing their thrust at scholars of the type lampooned in the _Ciceronianus_. Whereas in 1508 the gloss of “An ape in purple” ended with the observations “What
could be more ridiculous?” the 1515 edition continues: “And yet this is a thing we quite often see in a household where they keep monkeys as pets: they dress them up with plenty of finery to look as much like human beings as possible, sometimes even
in purple, so as to deceive people who do not look carefully or have seen nothing like it before...” Erasmus now ends the gloss by turning around the comparison: “How many apes of this kind one can see in princes’ courts, whom you will find, if you
strip them of their purple, their collars and their jewels, to be no better than any cobbler!” Importantly, in this addendum Erasmus refers to apelike courtiers with the rare masculine form (simios), which he would use consistently when ridiculing “
apes of Cicero” in the Ciceronianus.

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Poetaster, Jonson

Caesar. We have, indeed, you worthiest friends of Caesar.
It is the bane and torment of our ears,
To hear the discords of those jangling rhymers,
That with their bad and scandalous practices
Bring all true arts and learning in contempt.
But let not your high thoughts descend so low
As these despised objects; LET THEM FALL,
With their flat grovelling souls: be you yourselves;
And as with our best favours you stand crown'd,
So let your mutual loves be still renown'd.
Envy will dwell where there is want of merit,
Though the deserving man should crack his spirit.
Blush, folly, blush; here's none that fears
The wagging of an ass's ears,
Although a WOLFISH CASE he wears.
Detraction is but baseness' varlet;
And APES are APES, though clothed in SCARLET. [Exeunt].

Rumpatur, quisquis rumpitur invidi! [MARTIAL – LET ENVIOUS POETS BURST] *****************************

On Poet Ape – only Shakespearean sonnet in Jonson’s 1616 Epigrams


Poor POET-APE, that would be thought our chief,
⁠Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit,
From brokage is become so bold a thief,
⁠As we, the robbed, leave rage, and pity it.
At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,
⁠Buy the reversion of old plays; now grown
To a little wealth, and credit in the scene,
⁠He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own.
And, told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes
⁠The sluggish gaping auditor devours;
He marks not whose 'twas first: and after-times
⁠May judge it to be his, as well as ours.
Fool, as if half eyes will not know a fleece
⁠From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece!

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Amorphus/Oxford:


English Authorship and the Early Modern Sublime – Patrick Cheney


In Cynthia’s Revels [or The Fountain of Self-Love], near the beginning of his career (first printed 1600), Jonson uses the word twice, both surrounding the figure of Amorphus, described by Mercury in Act 2, scene 3 as ‘a traveller, one so made out of
the mixture and shreds of forms that himself is truly deformed’ (66-7). In other words, Amorphus is a figure of transport, and his composition, made up of ‘forms’ that are ‘deformed’, takes us into what we have previously described as Kantian
territory. Amorphus is that sublime figure of form that has none (curiously akin to Marlowe’s Helen of Troy), accommodated to the Jonsonian public sphere, where Amorphus’ ‘adaptability and social versatility is a form of shapelessness which links
the literal metamorphoses of Echo, Narcissus, and Acteaon, and the cultural ones of Asotus and others’ in the action of the play. (Rassmussen and Steggle).
In using the word ‘sublimated’, Amorphus stands before the Fountain of Self-Love, having just conversed with Narcissus’o ne-time beloved, the beautiful nymph Echo – who has just abandoned Amorphus – when Jonson’s figure of formless form steps
forth to take the plunge: ‘Liberal and divine fount, suffer my profane hand to take of they bounties’. Intoxicated by ‘most ambrosiac water’, he broods why the beguiling feminine potency of the well should accept him but Echo turn her heel:


Knowing myself an essence so sublimated and refined by travel, of so studied and well-exercised a gesture, so alone in fashion, able to make the face of any statesman living, and to speak the mere extraction of language…; to conclude, in all so happy
as even admiration herself does seem to fasten her kisses upon me; certes I do neither see, nor feel, nor taste, nor savour the least steam or fume of a reason that should invite this foolish fastidious nymph so peevishly to abandon me. (1.3.24-35;
emphasis added)


Amorphus speaks the alchemical language of sublimity but adapts it to his personal identity – his ability to transport himself into a heightened state of ‘language’ that attracts the erotic ‘admiration’ of others – in an appropriately comical
language of hyperbolic elevation.
Specifically, Amorphus engages in narcissism by vaunting his self-knowledge: ‘travel’ refines and ‘sublimate[s]’ his ‘essence’ into a quintessence of gold, and such sublimity underwrites his social and political theatre, during which he can �
�make the face of any statesman living’,  as Jeremy Face will do to London citizens in the Alchemist. Sublime transport here is not transcendent but political and social, the Protean self enlivened, capable of adapting to exigency, endlessly. Self-
consciously, Jonson makes comically sublime theatre out of a comically sublime theatrical character. We might even see here an impressive staging of the kind of comical hyperbole discussed by Longinus in On Sublimity, which is one form that the sublime
can take: ‘acts and emotion which approach ecstasy provide a justification for, and an antidote to, any linguistic audacity. This is why comic hyperboles, for all their incredulity, are convincing because we laugh at them so much…Laughter is emotion
in amusement’.
(snip)
Jonson’s linking of sublimity with a character named ‘Amorphus’ merits pause, because this agile figure looks like a photographic negative of Jonson himself. Without question, the author-figure in Cynthia’s Revels is Criticus (called Crites in
the Folio edition), ‘the poet-scholar’ of “Judgement’ who ‘represents Jonson’s literary, philosophical, and ethical ideals’ (Bednarz, Shakespeare & The Poets’ War 159-60), and who becomes the play’s arch-enemy to Amorphus and the motley
crew of corrupt courtiers, Hedon, Anaides, ad Asotus. According to James Bednarz, Amorphus is a figure who represents ‘Deformity’ and the ‘lack of true conviction’, and who becomes enamoured of a nymph who happens to be named Phantaste or ‘
fantasy’ (159-600. In these terms, the project of the play is to ‘replac[e]…the rhetoric of “nature’ and “instinct” staged in Marston’s Jack Drum with the sterner interdictions of “art” and “judgement” in a larger “allegory of
self-knowlledge’ (160). According to Bednarz, Marston had rejected Jonson’s rational, judgemental poetics in favour of one based on imaginative instinct, which Jonson then shows to be purged of cultural authority.
Nonetheless, as Rasmussen and Steggle write, Amorphus ‘prefigures Jonson’s later tricksters’ in being ‘at the centre of the play’s action due to his energy and inventiveness, both verbal and physical’. Rasmussen and Steggle go so far as to
see Amorphus as akin to Jonson himself: ‘biographically Jonson is more like Amorphus than Criticus’, citing Jonson’s ‘experiences in foreign travel’ and his ‘natural charisma and drive’. Even ‘Amorphus’s weaknesses (lack of money and
tendency to exaggerate) are close to those of Jonson;. Wisely, Rasmussen and Steggle caution against ‘claim[ing] that Amorphus “is” Jonson, or even to over-allegorize the tension between Amorphus and his nemesis Criticus’ (eds. 1:435); but they
do help us see that the figure of Amorphus qualifies as a *sublime counter-Jonsonian author-figure*. (pp. 220-1)

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Jonson, _Cynthia's Revels_.   

AMORPHUS. And there's her minion, Crites: why his advice more than 
Amorphus? Have I not invention afore him? Learning to better 
that INVENTION above him? and INFANTED with PLEASANT TRAVEL -- 

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Southern, Pandora (1584) 

SUMMARY: Ode to Oxford in John Southern’s Pandora, The Music of the Beauty of his Mistress Diana. The title page gives the publication date as 20 June 1584. The language of the ode was criticized by George Puttenham in Book III, Chapter 22 of his Art
of English Poesy, published in 1589. Puttenham also accused Southern of plagiarism, saying: ‘Another of reasonable good facility in translation, finding certain of the hymns of Pindarus and of Anacreon’s odes and other lyrics among the Greeks very
well translated by Ronsard, the French poet, & applied to the honour of a great prince in France, comes our minion and translates the same out of French into English, and applieth them to the honour of a great nobleman in England (wherein I commend his
reverent mind and duty), but doth so impudently rob the French poet both of his praise and also of his French terms that I cannot so much pity him as be angry with him for his injurious dealing’. 

To the right honourable the Earl of Oxenford etc. 

(snip) 

Epode 

No, no, the high singer is he 
Alone that in the end must be 
Made proud with a garland like this, 
And not every riming novice 
That writes with small wit and much pain, 
And the (God’s know) idiot in vain, 
For it’s not the way to Parnasse, 
Nor it will neither come to pass 
If it be not in some wise fiction 
And of an ingenious INVENTION, 
And INFANTED with PLEASANT TRAVAIL, 
For it alone must win the laurel, 
And only the poet WELL BORN 
Must be he that goes to Parnassus, 
And not these companies of asses 
That have brought verse almost to scorn. 

************************************* 


Puttenham, Arte of English Poesie (1589) 

CHAP. XXII. 

Some vices in speaches and {w}riting are alwayes intollerable, some others now and then borne {w}ithall by licence of approued authors and custome. (snip) 

Another of your intollerable vices is that which the Greekes call Soraismus, & we may call the [mingle mangle] as when we make our speach or writinges of sundry languages vsing some Italian word, or French, or Spanish, or Dutch, or Scottish, not for the
nonce or for any purpose (which were in part excusable) but ignorantly and affectedly as one that said vsing this French word Roy, to make ryme with another verse, thus. 

O mightie Lord or ioue, dame Venus onely ioy, 

Whose Princely power exceedes ech other heauenly roy. 

The verse is good but the terme peeuishly affected Another of reasonable good facilitie in translation finding certaine of the hymnes of Pyndarus and of Anacreons odes, and other Lirickes among the Greekes very well translated by Rounsard the French Poet,
 
& 
applied to the honour of a great Prince in France, comes our minion and translates the same out of French into English, and applieth them to the honour of a GREAT NOBLE MAN in ENGLAND (wherein I commend his reuerent minde and duetie) but doth so
impudently robbe the French Poet both of his prayse and also of his French termes, that I cannot so much pitie him as be angry with him for his iniurious dealing (our sayd maker not being ashamed to vse these French wordes freddon, egar, superbous,
filanding, celest, calabrois, thebanois and a number of others, for English wordes, which haue no maner of conformitie with our language either by custome or deriuation which may make them tollerable. And in the end (which is worst of all) makes his
vaunt that neuer English finger but his hath toucht Pindars string which was neuerthelesse word by word as Rounsard had said before by like braggery. These be his verses. 

And of an ingenious INVENTION, INFANTED WITH PLEASANT TRAVAILE. 

¶3.22.7 Whereas the French word is enfante as much to say borne as a child, in another verse he saith. 

I {w}ill freddon in thine honour. 


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1601 Quarto - Cynthia's Revels Or The Fountain of Selfe Love, Jonson 

Act IV, Sc. V 

Amorphus 

And there’s her Minion Criticus; why his advise more then Amorphus? Have I not Invention, afore him? Learning, to better that Invention, above him? And Travaile. 

************************************* 

1616 Folio, Jonson 

Act IV, Sc V 

Amorphus 

And there’s her minion Crites! Why his advice more then Amorphus? Have not I invention, afore him? Learning, to better that invention, above him? And infanted, with pleasant travaile ---- 

************************************* 

1640 Folio, 'Works' Jonson 

Amorphus 

And there’s her minion Crites! Why his advice more then Amorphus? Have not I invention afore him? Learning, to better that invention, above him? And infanted, with pleasant travaile ---- 

************************************ 

ULYSSES-POLITROPUS-AMORPHUS - Cynthia's Revels 


Politropus/Polytropus 

Polytropos means much-turned or much-traveled, much-wandering. It is the defining quality of Odysseus, used in the first line of the Odyssey and at 10.330. As used by Hippias with respect to Odysseus (365b) it includes being false or lying and carries
the connotations of wily and shifty. Antisthenes, a follower of Socrates who wrote Socratic dialogues, also argued against the claim that Homer meant to blame Odysseus by calling him polytropos; Antisthenes claims that it is praise for being "good at
dealing with men...being wise, he knows how to associate with men in many ways." See Charles H. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp.121-24. 

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Oxford and the Fountain of Self-Love:

Mario DiGangi, Male Deformities’: NARCISSUS and the Reformation of Courtly Manners in Cynthia’s Revels in Ovid and the Renaissance Body

...Narcissus himself [...] never even appears during the course of the play. however, the corrupting Fountain of Self-love, the emblematic source of narcissism introduced at the very beginning of the play, seems to be a permanent fixture at Cynthia's
court, for no mention is made of its ultimate destruction or purification. for Jonson's audience, the survival of the symbolically cominant fountain of Self-love might well have presaged that narcissistic manners would continue to deform the individual
bodies of courtiers as well as the collective body of the court. With the benefit of historical hindsight, we can regard the Fountain's endurance as a sign of the ideological conflict over elite male comportment that would continue to be waged, in early
modern England, as the legacy of Narcissus.
(snip)
 By the time Jonson wrote Cynthia's Revels, the Narcissus myth had developed an extended, complex, cultural legacy. Traditional medieval and Renaissance moral commentaries on Ovid generally explained Narcissus's error as the 'folly of loving an IMAGE.'
Arthur Golding's influential 1567 translation of The Metamorposes, for instance, moralizes the myth as a 'mirror' of VANITY and pride: 'Narcissus is of scornfulnesse and pryde a myrror cleere,/ Where beawties fading VANITIE most playnly may appeere.'

************************************
Alciato's Book of Emblems

Emblem 69

Self-love

Because your figure pleased you too much, Narcissus, it was changed into a flower, a plant of known senselessness. Self-love is the withering and destruction of natural power which brings and has brought ruin to many learned men, who having thrown away
the method of the ancients seek new doctrines and pass on nothing but their own fantasies.

***********************************

The Arrogance and Insolence of Oxford – Hubert Languet to Sidney:

Publique Ill Example:  Oxford appears UNNAMED as Sidney's proud and intemperate ADVERSARY in Greville’s _A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney_(originally published as _Life of Sidney_)


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