Classical philology - 1916 Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S EPIGRAMS AND FOREST By William Dinsmorb Brigos No systematic attempt has ever been made to catalogue the sources of the Epi... more »grams and the Forest. There are a few incidental remarks on the subject in Gifford's notes; the very useful observations in Amos, Martial and the Moderns, 1858, relate only to that poet, and even they are not exhaustive. The following pages, which do not pretend to complete the list of Jonson's borrowings, will be found, I hope, of some value. The passages taken from the poems of Jonson are given from the Folio of 1616. I. Epigrams Dedication.—In his dedication, Jonson, after some remarks addressed to the earl, protests that in composing his epigrams his intentions were perfectly innocent. So Martial, in the preface to Book I: "Spero me secutum in libellis meis tale temperamentum, ut de illis queri non possit quisquis de se bene senserit, cum salva infima- rum quoque personarum reverentia ludant." Jonson then protests against the misinterpretation of his satire; Martial says: "absit a iocorum nostrorum simplicitate malignus interpres." At the end Jonson adapts to his own point of view Martial's passage concerning Cato: "Non intret Cato theatrum meum, aut si intraverit, spectet. Videor mini meo iure facturus, si epistolam versibus clusero: Nosses iocosae dulce cum sacrum Florae Festosque lusus et licentiam vulgi, Cur in theatrum, Cato severe, venisti ? An ideo tantum veneras, ut exires ? " Had Gifford observed that Jonson's use of the word "theatre" was taken from Martial, he would have been still more severe upon Oldys for talking of the dramatist as "master of a playhouse." When Jonson says that many persons confess "so much loue to their diseases, as they would rather make a partie for them, then be Ph...« less