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Thomas D'Urfey, the Pope-Philips Quarrel, and The Shepherd's Week

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William D. Ellis Jr.
William D. Ellis Jr.*
Affiliation:
Saint Peter's College, Jersey City 6, N. J.
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Extract

The Pope-Philips controversy, and particularly the place in it of Gay's Shepherd's Week (1714), has been studied from many points of view by George Sherburn, William H. Irving, Hoyt Trowbridge, and J. E. Congleton. Sherburn has, in his felicitous manner, guided us through the convolutions of conflicting personalities and animosities both political and literary which effected the quarrel. Irving has suggested that the connection of The Shepherd's Week with the quarrel existed only in Pope's fertile imagination, since Gay's poem primarily burlesqued Virgil, not Philips; and Trowbridge, in answer to Irving, has demonstrated that Gay was quite aware of Philips' Pastorals in writing his own. Finally, Congleton has discussed the whole controversy against a background of neoclassical and rationalistic French and English critical theory of pastoral poetry. None has indicated, however, that Thomas D'Urfey's reputation for the writing of songs and ballads influenced both the quarrel and The Shepherd's Week.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 74 , Issue 3 , June 1959, pp. 203 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1959

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References

1 The Early Career of Alexander Pope (Oxford, 1934), pp. 117–121.

2 John Gay: Favorite of the Wits (Durham, North Carolina, 1940), pp. 82–84; “Pope, Gay, and The Shepherd's Week,” MLQ, v (1944), 79–88.

3 Theories of Pastoral Poetry in England 1684–1798 (Gainesville, Fla., 1952), pp. 79–85.

4 The Songs of Thomas D'Urfey, Harvard Stud, in Eng., IX (Cambridge, 1933), pp. 6–44.

5 For the dating and description of these poems, see Charles K. Eves, Matthew Prior: Poet and Diplomatist (New York, 1939), pp. 27–29.

6 A New Collection of Poems Relating to State Affairs (1705), p. 149. London as place of publication will be omitted.

7 Poems on Affairs of State… Vol. II (1703), p. 138. For additional comments on D'Urfey, see Prior's Dialogues of the Dead and other Works in Prose and Verse, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge, Eng., 1907), pp. 287, 300.

8 Letter to Caryll, 23 June 1713, The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn (Oxford, 1956), I, 180.

9 The Occasional Verse of Richard Steele (Oxford, 1952), p. 115.

10 Miscellaneous Poems, By Several Hands, Published by D. Lewis (1726), p. 6.

11 See my “Peasant in English Verse, 1660–1750,” unpub. diss. (Harvard, 1956), pp. 398–400, and Keith Stewart, “The Ballad and the Genres in the Eighteenth Century,” ELH, xxiv (1957), 120–137.

12 Wit and Mirth, 3rd ed. (1712), ii, A2v

13 A Complete List of all the English Dramatic Poets (1747), quoted in Robert Stanley Forsythe, “A Study of the Plays of Thomas D'Urfey,” Western Reserve Univ. Bull. (Literary Sec), xix (May 1916), 151.

14 Cyrus L. Day and Eleanore B. Murrie, English Song-Books 1651–1702: A Bibliography with a First-Line Index of Songs, Bibliog. Soc. (1940 [for 1937]), Items 1212,1772,1891, 2223, 2499, 2742, 2950, 3478, 3622, 3735, 3872.

15 See Raymond D. Havens, “William Somervile's Earliest Poem,” MLN, xli (1926), 85.

16 Correspondence, ed. Sherburn, i, 81.

17 A Miscellaneous Collection of Poems, Songs and Epigrams. By several Hands. Publish'd by T. M. Gent. (Dublin, 1721), i, 188.

18 Songs of Thomas D'Urfey, p. 29.

19 The Annual Miscellany: For the Year 1694, 2nd ed. (1708), p. 12.

20 See Edna L. Steeves, ed. The Art of Sinking in Poetry: Martinus Scriblerus' by Alexander Pope (New York, 1952), pp. li, 143–144.

21 Songs of Thomas D'Urfey, p. 29.

22 A Tale of a Tub, ed. A. C. Guthkelch and D. Nichol Smith (Oxford, 1920), pp. 36–37.

23 Ibid., pp. 207–208.

24 Correspondence, ed. Sherburn, i, 70–71.

25 The Poems of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold Williams (Oxford, 1937), i, 184. See Day and Murrie, English Song-Books, Item 1855, for D'Urfey's “Jenny and MoUy and Dolly.”

26 Quoted in Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus, ed. Charles Kerby-Miller (New Haven, 1950), p. 363.

27 Ibid., pp. 62, 362.

28 Sherburn, Early Career, p. 121.

29 Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper, ed. Alexander Chalmers (1810), ix, 362–363.

30 Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, ed. H. W. Boynton (Boston and New York, 1903), p. 120.

31 The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D.D., ed. F. Ellington Ball (1910–14), iii, 22.

32 Poems, ed. Williams, iii, 1008–10.

33 Ed. Steeves, pp. 27–28; ed. James Sutherland, Twickenham ed., v, 2nd ed. (London and New Haven, 1953), pp. 72, 161.

34 Poems, ed. Williams, iii, 1049.

35 Miscellanea. In Two Volumes (1727), i, 134–137.

36 “English Song-Books, 1651–1702, and their Publishers,” Library, xvi (1935–36), 394.

37 Correspondence, ed. Sherburn, i, 101.

38 Early Career, p. 117.

39 See J. E. Butt, “Notes for a Bibliography of Thomas Tickell,” Bodleian Quarterly Record, v (1928), 302. But also see Congleton, Theories of Pastoral Poetry, p. 324, n. 46, who says that he has never seen adequate proof of Tickell's authorship and adds that Johnson attributed the papers to Steele. Perhaps the question needs to be investigated further; for we might add that in the Taller, No. 143,9 March 1709/10, which has long been attributed to Steele, we find: “At all which places, there are accommodations of spreading beeches, beds of flowers, turf seats, and purling streams, for happy swains; and thunderstruck oaks, and left-handed ravens, to foretell misfortunes to those that please to be wretched; with all other necessaries for pensive passions.” In two of the Guardian papers, supposedly by Tickell, we find very similar phrasing. In No. 23 is the following: “Hence we find the works of Virgil and Theocritus sprinkled with left-handed ravens, blasted oaks, witchcrafts, evil eyes, and the like.” And in No. 30: “In looking over some English pastorals a few days ago, I perused at least fifty lean flocks, and reckoned up a hundred left-handed ravens, besides blasted oaks, withering meadows, and weeping deities.” Since the similarities could be accounted for in numerous ways, they prove little, if anything; but they perhaps do raise a question about the authorship of the papers.

40 Theories of Pastoral Poetry, pp. 87–89.

41 Quoted in ibid., p. 200.

42 See Wit and Mirth, 4th ed. (1714), i, 75–77.

43 Sherburn, Early Career, p. 120. See Daniel A. Fineman, “The Motivation of Pope's Guardian 40,” MLN, LXVII (1952), 24–28.

44 “The Airs and Tunes of John Gay's Beggar's Opera,” Anglia, xun (1919), 152–190, and “The Airs and Tunes of John Gay's Polly,” Anglia, LX (1936), 403–22.

45 The number was obtained by comparing the information in Swaen's articles with the first-line index in Day and Murrie, English Song-Books.

46 Poetical Works of John Gay, ed. G. C. Faber, Oxford Standard Authors (1926), p. 338—hereafter cited as Works. 47 Wit and Mirth, 4th ed. (1714), i, 75.

48 Even in “Monday” (1. 79, n.) Gay punned on the word of which D'Urfey had made a “pretty jest” in “Roger's Delight.” See Gay, Works, p. 34, and n. 42, above.

49 Choice Ayres and Songs… The Third Book (1681), p. 9.

50 Westminster-Drollery, 1st ed. (1671), p. 63. The relations between this song and Lodge's original are discussed in Courtney C. Smith, “The Seventeenth-Century Drolleries,” unpub. diss. (Harvard, 1943), pp. 150–152.

51 Comes Amoris… The Second Book (1688), sig. E2V. See also The Roxburghe Ballads, ed. William Chappell and Joseph W. Ebsworth (London and Hertford, 1871–99), vu, 233–237.

52 See “The Shepherd's Ingenuity; Or, The Praise of the Green-Gown,” The Roxburghe Ballads, viii, 689–690; “A Song,” Wit and Mirth, 4th ed. (1714), i, 252–253; “A Scotch Song,” Wit and Mirth, 3rd ed. (1712), ii, 210–211; and “A Song out of the Guardian,” Wit and Mirth (1714), v, 270–271.

53 See Day and Murrie, English Song-Books, Item 2627. This book deals with Wit and Mirth.

54 Ibid., Item 1872, and Swaen, Anglia, xliii (1919), 164165. See also the Guardian, Nos. 29 and 67, for a contemporary view of D'Urfey's connection with Wit and Mirth.

55 The Roxburghe Ballads, ii, 268–274.

56 See Day and Murrie, English Song-Books, Items 3019 and 1167.

57 See ibid., Item 2917, for a song (to the tune of “Lillibur-lero”) in which a Welshman and Sawney Scot are discussed by D'Urfey.

58 See ibid., Items 1700, 2600, and 3833.

59 See ibid., Item 3820, and Swaen, Anglia, LX (1936), 415–416.

60 Spectator, Nos. 70, 74, and 85. For the ridicule with which Addison's remarks met, see Edmund K. Broadus, “Addison's Influence on the Development of Interest in Folk-Poetry in the Eighteenth Century,” MP, viii (1910–11), 129–132. John Robert Moore, “Gay's Burlesque of Sir Richard Black-more's Poetry,” JEGP, L (1951), 83–89, argues that “Saturday” is a burlesque of Creation and of the song of Mopas in Prince Arthur.

61 For Rowe's possible authorship of the poem, see Arthur E. Case, A Bibliography of English Poetical Miscellanies 1521–1750, Bibliog. Soc. (Oxford, 1935 [for 1929]), p. 207. If Rowe did write the poem, he might have known what Gay's intention was. In either case, the poem supports my contention about D'Urfey.

62 See Broadus, pp. 125–126.