What does it mean to say that a literary culture was bilingual? That literature is being read and, at least to some extent, written in two distinct languages, with their own literary conventions and associations; but also that the wider literary conversation — the shared intimacies of drafts and recommendations, the tenor of correspondence in literary circles — draws on both backgrounds. This was the case in early modern England with Latin and the local vernacular, English, as it was across much of Europe at that time. Classicists might think of the role of Greek literature in first-century Rome, and the telling Roman self-consciousness about trying to do “Greek” things in Latin. Others might think of, for instance, the role of French in Tolstoy or of the many interacting languages of literary production (including English) in India today.
I am particularly fascinated by the link between bilingual literary cultures of this kind and literary creativity. Today, I thought I’d do something a bit different and look at a single, typical, even rather ‘everyday’ artefact of such literary bilingualism: in this case, a single brief letter. This is a good example of the sort of thing that doesn’t have much, or any, literary merit in its own right, but sheds a great deal of light on the literary culture from which it emerges.
There have been a lot of good editions of poets’ correspondence recently, including the letters of Seamus Heaney and Basil Bunting. But here is Thomas Goad (1576-1638), a senior clergyman by then over 60, writing to his friend Henry Wickham, archdeacon of York, in April 1633. As far as I’m aware — do say if you know any different — this particular letter, like so many of thousands of others from the period, has never been transcribed, translated, or even mentioned in scholarship.
The letter moves between languages — from English into Latin, with a single word of Greek — and it also moves from prose into verse and then back into prose. In the transcription where there are interpolated bits of Latin and Greek, I’ve transcribed them in italics [with a translation following], but to save space, when it moves entirely into Latin, I’ve just translated in italics. (Follow the footnote if you want to see the Latin transcription.)
To the r. W.ll Dr Wickham Arch. Dec. [archdeacon] of York. my good friend.
Salutem. [Greetings]
Hen. [Henry] Molle1 delitiae Musarum [the delight of the Muses] is now with me at Hadley (ita me paucos dies beat [may he so bless me for several days]) his presence revives my memory of another Henry [i.e. of Henry Wickham, the addressee]; & when he tells me of his frequent writings northward, I tell him I will find a piece of Paper which shall creep into the bosom of his Messenger, & so get convoy non modo in manum sed & mansuetum pectus Henrici nostri [not only into the hand but even into the gentle breast of our Henry].
No shepherd is more beloved in the Northern realm than him [Henry],
Nor indeed where the sun shines nearer [i.e. farther south]. Whose
Golden pipe produces songs that move the soulAnd catch the ears of Shepherds and of Pan alike —Pan who bears the sceptre. Now Pan is mindedTo visit those farthest plains, stiff in the icy weather.Without a shepherd the journey there would be icy. [But]
The beauty of his voice, and the sweet grace of his noble form,Refined charm, and the sign of a noble heart —
Gentle encouragement, how great a share of future glory!But [here it breaks off] . . . rather εὐθυρρήμων [‘plain-speaking’, ‘let me speak plainly’]
Go on, continue, do the best you can [ ], sweetest Wickham, and may good omens and Christ himself come to your aid.
So wishes that man who is yours always,
Tho: Goad
Resident at Hadleigh2
Apr. 9 16333
There are quite a few difficulties here, especially in the verse section: this appears to be a genuinely impromptu composition and truly part of the letter, not a fragment of poetry Goad had already composed and inserted here as a tribute or to show off. He is unselfconscious enough to leave it unfinished and apparently unrevised. The first six lines are quite coherent but after that the syntax begins to break down. There’s no verb in the final three lines and several words are hard to make sense of: this section is more of an accumulation of suggestive descriptions than a coherent sentence, and I’ve tried to capture something of this feeling of dashed-off sincerity in the translation.4 Material like this is extremely hard to translate and it’s certainly not particularly artistically successful, but it’s hugely revealing: what moves Goad to switch first into Latin, and then into Latin verse, even if he doesn’t have the time to polish it into a real poem?
The poem isn’t finished and that’s probably what the enigmatic and itself incomplete phrase ‘Sed de[si] . . . .’, ‘But [here it breaks off]’ beneath it is alluding to. Andrew Marvell’s Latin poem ‘Hortus’, for instance, is marked Desunt multa (‘A lot missing’) to indicate that the text we have is incomplete, and you see this sort of tag quite often in manuscript material.5 The partial word might also be a part of the verb desino meaning to stop or leave off — indicating that Goad here gives up trying to put what he means into verse and lapses back into prose to complete his mitius alloquium, his words of encouragement.
There are three things that really strike me about this particular note. The first is its emotional urgency and intimacy, and the impression we have that the move into Latin marks the more urgent and more personal content, not the reverse. As Goad imagines his letter getting closer and closer to Wickham, he shifts increasingly into Latin — the bosom of the Messenger who will convey it is named in English, but Wickham’s own manum et mansuetum pectus (hand and gentle breast) is in Latin. This might seem a surprising dynamic, but it’s also a common one in educated male writers of this period: over and over again you find the most personal verse in Latin, not English. This is true, for instance, of writers as different as Herbert, Milton and Hobbes, as well as countless forgotten authors like Goad whose work survives only in archives.
The second is that we sense here some sort of context which it is hard to fill in. I don’t know enough about the specific situation in York in 1633, or Wickham’s likely role in it to be sure of what is being alluded to here, but the urgency of Goad’s final encouragement to Wickham to persist in his endeavours, and his insistence that Christ is with him in his work, suggest some kind of implicit “despite . . .” The pastoral trappings of the poem obviously also allude to Wickham’s role within the church, and we sense, I think, that Goad is trying to express his sympathy and support for Wickham in potentially difficult circumstances.6 Is there perhaps a broader political implication too? Goad emphasises that Pan, the traditional god of the shepherds, who particularly admires Wickham’s song, is sceptriger, ‘bearing a sceptre’. I think this must refer to the king, Charles I. Goad says that Pan is planning to visit the north, for all its cold, and that it would the journey would be chilly indeed without a shepherd. This is probably referring to the King’s journey to Edinburgh in 1633 to be crowned — he did in fact visit York on his way back — and perhaps suggests that Wickham’s churchmanship was more welcome to the king than that of his colleagues.
Thirdly, this somewhat incoherent little note becomes very resonant if we think in terms of wider literary history. This is exactly the literary milieu of Milton’s pastoral elegy Lycidas, written on the death of Edward King in 1637, and of Milton’s related (though much more personal) Latin poem, Epitaphium Damonis, written on the death of his best friend Charles Diodati in 1639.7 Milton was at Cambridge until the early 1630s, around the time of this letter, and in fact one of the manuscript collections in which we find another of Thomas Goad’s Latin poems also contains a poem by Edward King:
For we were nurs'd upon the self-same hill,Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill;Together both, ere the high lawns appear'dUnder the opening eyelids of the morn,We drove afield, and both together heardWhat time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night,Oft till the star that rose at ev'ning brightToward heav'n's descent had slop'd his westering wheel.Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,Temper'd to th'oaten flute;Rough Satyrs danc'd, and Fauns with clov'n heel,From the glad sound would not be absent long;And old Damætas lov'd to hear our song.Milton, Lycidas, 23-36
Lycidas, too, famously uses these pastoral motifs to comment on churchmanship as well as friendship and poetry. (Edward King had been due to enter the church, just as Goad and Wickham did, following several years at Cambridge.) In Milton’s poem, corrupt or incompetent clergymen make poor poets as well as pastors: ‘their lean and flashy songs / Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw’.
The pastoral mode of Lycidas can seem artificial: but here in Goad’s letter we catch sight of how natural this particular set of conventions were to men of Milton’s background and historical moment, and how they might be used both in the most private kind of correspondence and to engage obliquely with contemporary events. Goad’s letter and its half-finished scrap of verse offer a vivid glimpse of how Anglo-Latin literary conventions of this type, with their roots in profoundly familiar Latin poetry from Virgil to Mantuan, was a living tradition in the mid-seventeenth century, as one man, reminded of his friend and the difficulties he faces, takes a moment to send him a note of support and encouragement: mitius alloquium.
Henry Molle (b.c.1597) was a poet, musician and fellow of King’s College Cambridge until his death in 1658. Some of his choral music remains in print.
Goad was a fellow of King’s until 1611, when he entered the church. He held multiple appointments including, from 1618, rector of Hadleigh in Suffolk, and he lived full-time in Hadleigh from 1627 until his death.
For Latinists, the transcription of the Latin from the start of the poem onwards is: Quo nemo in Boreis Pastor dilectior oris, / Sec [probably = sed] nec ubi propiore nitet sol lumine. Cujus / Aurea flexanimes emittens fistula cantus / Pastorumque Gregum & Panis detinet aures, / Sceptigeri Panis. jam Pan invisere Campos / Cogitat Extremos Jove frigidiore rigentes. / Absque isthoc frigeret iter Pastore. Canorum / Vocis, & ingenuae gravi suavis gratia formae / Vrbanus decor & generosi pectoris index / Mitius alloquium pompae pars quanta futurae! Sed de[s]. . . etiam εὐθυρρήμων Perge, progredire, aggredire optima [ ] tua, suavissime Wickame, bonis avibus, imo auspice Christo. Ita optat ille idem semper tuus Tho: Goad Hadleicola
For Latinists: what is canorum agreeing with? or gravi? EDITED TO ADD: Mark Thakkar in the comments surely correctly suggests that canorum is functioning as a noun here. I hesitated to suggest this, but he gives a great parallel from Cicero and I am completely persuaded. Thank you Mark!
Some scholars have argued that this tag is a mistake and that Hortus is complete. I think they are wrong and that there is indeed quite a lot missing. I have discussed Marvell’s poem and its dating in most detail in this article which can also be downloaded from my academia page here. I have considered Marvell’s Anglo-Latin bilingualism more broadly in this chapter.
For the church historians: Goad was a fairly rigid kind of Calvinist earlier in his career, but his position seems to have softened later on. The Arminian William Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, which may be relevant here; the Archbishop of York in this year was still John Williams, whose tolerance of Puritanism put him out of favour in the 1630s: indeed, he was suspended and imprisoned between 1636 and 1640. I have not been able to find any information about Wickham’s particular churchmanship or theology, however. Be in touch if you know! EDITED TO ADD: A generous and very well-informed reader has written to say that Ronald Merchant’s The Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese of York 1560-1642 (1960) is probably a good bet for the relevant context here. Thank you Nicholas!
Lovely piece for the Milton fan, thank you
A really fascinating read, especially as I’m currently living in a bilingual region of Spain and noting with interest as people move in and out of languages. Thank you.