TY - JOUR
AU - Power, Henry
AB - Abstract The irregular ebb and flow of John Gay's finances led him to identify, awkwardly, with those forced to earn a living by peddling goods. Trivia, or: The Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716) puts to good use his years of penury and pedestrianism. It is a didactic poem, modelled on works by Virgil and Horace, in which the reader is given advice on how to negotiate the increasingly crowded streets of the city. This essay shows how Gay, through extensive and witty reworking of his classical models, explores the growth of commerce, and the place of the poet within this commercial world. I There are two unmistakable features of early eighteenth-century English literature. One is a widespread preoccupation with Greek and Roman models. The period saw a concerted effort to translate or reinterpret the greatest works of the classical canon for the benefit of an English readership. Critics are increasingly wary of describing the age as an ‘Augustan’ one, but there can be no doubting the pervasive influence of ancient literature.1 At the same time, writers were acutely aware of the impact that market forces might be having on their work. Again, it is wise to be cautious in hailing the birth of a ‘consumer society’ at the start of the eighteenth century – but it is beyond doubt that many writers felt its pangs. Several recent studies have stressed the centrality of financial considerations to the early eighteenth-century imagination.2 These two accounts of the literature of the period – as neoclassical and as market-driven – are not mutually exclusive. Often, they are closely intertwined. Many of the period's great translation projects were also successful money-making schemes; this is most outstandingly true of Dryden's Works of Virgil (1697) and of Pope's Iliad (1715–20) and Odyssey (1725–6).3 And some of the most exciting works of the period are concerned precisely with the tension between marmoreal, classical art and the concerns of the marketplace. Pope's Dunciad (1728–43), in all its versions, ‘dramatizes conflict between prestigious forms – the classical epic – and the forms produced for the populace and the market-place’.4 Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) is explicitly an attempt to avoid such a conflict; the narrator offers a version of ancient epic designed to suit the palates of paying customers. John Gay's Trivia, or: The Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716) is concerned with the place of classical art in the literary marketplace.5 It is a didactic poem, in which the reader is given advice on how to negotiate the increasingly crowded streets of the city. Gay presents London as, above all, a commercial centre. Almost everyone we encounter in Trivia has something to sell – including the poet himself, who draws attention to his role in this vast marketplace. In doing so, Gay draws extensively on classical literature. The poem owes an obvious debt to the satires of Horace, Persius, and Juvenal, to Homeric and Virgilian epic, and – most prominently – to didactic literature.6 Virgil's Georgics has long been acknowledged as Gay's major model.7 Horace's Ars Poetica, on the other hand, has received little or no attention in this respect.8 Each of them provides a crucial model for Gay's exploration of the poet's place in the world. The Georgics is concerned with man's place in the environment; by shifting Virgil's didactic precepts from the ancient Italian countryside to eighteenth-century London, Gay points up the rampant commercialism of everyday life. The Ars Poetica is a guide to poetic practice, renowned in particular for its self-reflexiveness; it is a poem about writing poems. Gay establishes an equivalence between the art of poetry and the art of walking the streets. The poet's role, he suggests, has much in common with that of others who walk the streets ‘in quest of gain’ – not only pedestrians, but street-criers and prostitutes. This preoccupation with the poet's financial situation is typical of Gay's output. He is, his most recent biographer has written, ‘the poet of money; it is the theme his works return to again and again’.9 Four years after Trivia was published, in his Epistle to the Right Honourable Paul Methuen, Esq., Gay was to lament the lack of an Augustan system of patronage:Gay has apparently rejected a corrupt system of patronage, which rewards only those poets who toe a party line, and opted instead to publish by subscription – a development away from, if not a clean break with, the old patron–client system. The only work of Gay's published by subscription up to this point was Trivia itself (though the Epistle to Methuen was to appear in his Poems on Several Occasions, published by subscription in 1720). The conditions in which Trivia was published are thus implicitly contrasted with those in which its major models were composed; the poets most regularly associated with Maecenas were Virgil and Horace. And although Gay has to some extent freed himself from the need for patronage, he still laments the passing of an enlightened system which allowed poets to operate independent of financial considerations.11 Why flourish'd verse in great Augustus' reign? He and Mecænas lov'd the Muse's strain. But now that wight in poverty must mourn Who was (O cruel stars!) a Poet born. Yet there are ways for authors to be great; Write ranc'rous libels to reform the State: Or if you chuse more sure and ready ways, Spatter a Minister with fulsome praise   ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·   Yet let me not of grievances complain, Who (though the meanest of the Muse's train) Can boast subscriptions to my humble lays, And mingle profit with my little praise. (15–46)10 Gay's preoccupation with money is unsurprising given his own fluctuating finances. On arriving in London from Devon, he became a draper's apprentice – a humiliating biographical detail Pope was keen to suppress after his friend's death. But unlike Pope, who stressed the ease and financial independence that writing poetry had brought him, Gay struggled to make money from his verse, and lived constantly on the margins of dependency (once even entering domestic service) and poverty. Trivia made him a small amount of money. He then made over £1,000 from the publication of his Poems on Several Occasions in June 1720, which he immediately invested in South Sea stock; consequently it had all but disappeared by the end of August. It was only the phenomenal success of The Beggar's Opera in 1728 which finally put him on a sound footing financially. Johnson's Life of Gay paints a portrait of a man beset by money worries, to the extent that it affected his health. Writing of the South Sea Bubble, Johnson tells us that ‘Gay sunk under the calamity so low that his life became in danger.’12 The ebb and flow of Gay's finances brought him an unwelcome understanding of those whose livelihood depended on small-scale commercial transactions. He had often – despite his protestations in the Epistle to Methuen – engaged in petty political hack-work, regularly performing what David Nokes describes as ‘acts of literary prostitution’.13 He had often sold publishers the copyright to his works for insignificant sums (the £43 Lintott gave him for Trivia dwarfed all previous payments). In Trivia, he identifies his poetic self with the fruit-sellers and prostitutes also walking the streets of London. The emphasis on prostitution, hinted at in the work's subtitle, is especially prominent. As a recent historian of prostitution in eighteenth-century Britain puts it, prostitution ‘served as a lightning rod for contestation over commodification itself’, and it is an image which Gay embraces.14 After the poem's success, he wrote to Thomas Parnell that ‘what I got by walking the streets, I am now spending in riding in coaches’.15 Johnson suggests that the subject matter of Trivia ‘is of that kind which Gay was by nature qualified to adorn’.16 This can hardly refer simply to urban pedestrianism, a topic on which several writers – including Johnson himself – were equally entitled to write. The central theme of the poem is one which Gay was peculiarly well qualified to address: commerce, and the place of the poet within the commercial world. This essay considers in turn the poem's relationship with the Ars Poetica (transformed by Gay into an Art of Walking the Streets), and with the Georgics (whose natural environment has been supplanted by the thriving urban economy which provides the backdrop to the poem). It goes on to look at the poem's status as a commodity within that economy. Finally, the question of Trivia's afterlife is considered. Gay attempts to predict the poem's survival with reference both to the works of Virgil and Horace, and to the literary marketplace in which he operates. II The Earl of Roscommon remarked sternly, in the preface to his 1680 translation of the Ars Poetica, that ‘Horace must be read seriously or not at all’.17 Roscommon's Art of Poetry remained the standard English version for much of the following century, but his advice went unheeded. The Ars Poetica was, the works of Homer and Virgil excepted, the most regularly parodied classical text of the early eighteenth century. The period 1700 to 1740 saw the publication of (among others) The Art of Cookery, The Art of Beau-ing, Harlequin-Horace, or: The Art of Modern Poetry, and The Art of Preaching.18 All are explicitly written in imitation of the Ars Poetica. With varying degrees of ingenuity, the authors of these poems match Horace's poetic precepts to precepts from another discipline. They assume a widespread familiarity with Horace's poem, and are confident that readers will recognise the significance of their peculiar adaptations. At the time Trivia was published, a good deal of straightforwardly didactic material was available. The year 1716 also saw the publication of practical guides to – or ‘arts of’ – painting, gardening, surveying, midwifery, and fire-lighting, among others.19Trivia initially seems to pitch itself to the same audience as these works, and is kitted out with an extensive index. But Gay's index proves an uncertain tool by which to access or understand the contents of his poem. The presence of entries such as ‘Saturday, by what Observations to know it’, ‘Street, how to cross it’, and ‘Cheese not lov'd by the Author’ suggest that its didactic value is slight. The index, along with the poem's footnotes and marginal paragraph headings, draw attention to its physicality: this is not just a text, but a material (and consequently consumable) object – the importance of which will become clear shortly. It also, by clumsily asserting the poem's specious claims to practical usefulness, hints at a kinship with a purer, classical form of didactic literature. The poem is distinguished from the mass of didactic treatises and vade mecums which really did aim to instruct their readers. It belongs more comfortably with the many versions of the Ars Poetica published during the period: poems whose practical usefulness is subordinated to their moral or satirical agenda. The strangest of these works is perhaps William King's The Art of Cookery.20 King's poem could never be mistaken for a practical guide to cookery. It is a version of Horace's poem with culinary precepts substituted for literary ones at every possible opportunity. Part of the poem's point is that this is not technically difficult (though King shows a perverse ingenuity for finding points of contact). As literature becomes just another consumable product, a shared vocabulary is emerging, which works equally for poetry and food. Thus Horace's famous opening, in which he stresses the importance of obeying the rules of generic decorum, can remain a meditation on what goes with what:Beyond the joke that in the topsy-turvy world of early eighteenth-century England cookery now warrants its own style manual, King's poem makes a significant point about its own generic status. Horace's poem is inescapably self-reflexive; a poem about how to write a poem. This is most famously the case in the passage warning poets against taking on themes they are incapable of handling:The bathetic monosyllable at the end of the second hexameter perfectly illustrates the collapse into silliness against which Horace is counselling. King, similarly, in stressing the crossover between gastronomic and literary terms, reminds the reader that his poem is also a consumable product. Hence Mac'rel seem delightful to the Eyes, Tho' dress'd with incoherent Gooseberries. Crabs, Salmon, Lobsters are with Fennel spread, Who never touch'd that Herb till they were dead; Yet no Man lards salt Pork with Orange Peel, Or garnishes his Lamb with Spitchcockt Eel.21 quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu? parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. (Ars Poetica, 138–9) In what will all this Ostentation end? The laboring mountain scarce brings forth a mouse.22 The best example of this comes when King adapts Horace's lines on the constant flux of language, turning them into a reflection on the new ingredients currently available to English cooks:Eager to stress his closeness to the Latin (which is printed opposite his poem), King offers a straightforward translation of verses 60–62, albeit one which deliberately over-stresses the organic nature of the metaphor. But he has already established a firm parallel between his subject matter and Horace's. In Horace's account, old-fashioned Romans would not have understood many of the words used by modern authors. Similarly, King's ‘Lord of old’ would have baulked at the outlandish dishes currently favoured by the English aristocracy. King's list of imported words for imported products – ‘Mangoes, Potargo, Champignons, Cavare’ – reinforces the parallel between food and literature.25 The self-reflexiveness of King's Horatian model is important here; if the Ars Poetica is poem about poems, then King's bizarre hybrid work (wonderfully reflected in some of the outlandish haute cuisine he describes) is unavoidably a thing to be consumed.         si forte necesse est indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum, fingere cinctutis non exaudita Cethegis continget, dabiturque licentia sumpta pudenter: et noua fictaque nuper habebunt uerba fidem si Graceo fonte cadent, parce detorta. quid autem Caecilio Plautoque dabit Romanus ademptum Vergilio Varioque? ego cur, adquirere pauca si possum, inuideor, cum lingua Catonis et Enni sermonem patrium ditauerit et noua rerum nomina protulerit? licuit semperque licebit signatum praesente nota producere nomen. ut siluae foliis pronos mutantur in annos, prima cadunt; ita uerborum uetus interit aetas, et iuuenem ritu florent modo nata uigentque. (Ars Poetica, 48–62) But (if you write of things Abstruse or New) Some of your own Inventing may be us'd, So it be seldom and discretly done) But he that hopes to have new Words allow'd, Must so derive them from the Grecian Spring, As they may seem to flow without constraint; Can an Impartial reader discommend In Varus, or in Virgil what he likes? In Plautus or Caecilius? Why should I Be envy'd for the little I invent, When Enius and Cato's Copious Stile Have so enrich'd, and so adorn'd our Tongue? Men ever had, and ever will have leave, To coin new words well suited to the age: Words are like Leaves, some wither every year, And every year a younger Race succeeds.23 Fresh Dainties are by Britain's Traffick known, And now by constant Use familiar grown; What Lord of old wou'd bid his Cook prepare, Mangoes, Potargo, Champignons, Cavare? Or wou'd our thrum-cap'd Ancestors find fault For want of Sugar-Tongs, or Spoons for Salt. New things produce new Words, and thus Monteth Has by one Vessel sav'd his Name from Death. The Seasons change us all; by Autumn's Frost The shady Leaves of Trees and Fruit are lost. But then the Spring breaks forth with fresh Supplies, And from the teeming Earth new Buds arise.24 In much the same way, Gay establishes an equivalence between walking the streets and the business of literary composition. This is clear from the outset:Trivia is invoked as both guide and muse, as Gay anticipates the meandering nature of his poem. Critics have frequently observed that Gay's declaration of originality – his intention of investigating the ‘long perplexing Lanes untrod before’ – is indebted to that of Virgil. But far from ‘draw[ing] attention to the Walker's deluded sense of his own self-importance and sagacity’, the adaptation highlights the fact that this metaphor for originality is already well trodden.26 The locus classicus – and Virgil's source – comes in another didactic poem, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura:There is nothing unusual then – and not necessarily anything comic – about asserting one's originality in borrowed terms. Yet there is something new in Gay's handling of it. He is being innovative – forging new ground – in writing didactic poetry about something so well known and literally well trodden as the streets of London. In advertising his originality, he amplifies this paradox by using a well-trodden metaphor of untroddenness. And this is neatly captured by Gay's derivative but entirely accurate summary of his aim: ‘To tread in Paths to ancient Bards unknown’ (I. 19). As poets often do when reworking topoi, he announces both similarity to, and distance from, his models. But, in any case, there is a clear association between the act of walking the streets of London, and the act of composing a poem about it.   Thou, Trivia, Goddess, aid my Song, Thro' spacious Streets conduct thy Bard along; By thee transported, I securely stray Where winding Alleys lead the doubtful Way, The silent Court, and op'ning Square explore, And long perplexing Lanes untrod before.   ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·   My youthful Bosom burns with Thirst of Fame, From the great Theme to build a glorious Name, To tread in Paths to ancient Bards unknown, And bind my Temples with a Civic Crown (I. 5–22)                 sed acri percussit thyrso laudis spes magna meum cor et simul incussit suauem mi in pectus amorem Musarum, quo nunc instinctus mente uigenti auia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante trita solo. (I. 922–7) ‘But pow'rful Hope of Praise still spurs me on: I'm eager; and ‘tis Time that I were gone. I feel, I rising, feel Poetick Heats, And now inspir'd trace o'er the MUSES Seats Untrodden yet.' (trans. Creech, I. 929–33)27 From this point of view, it should be stressed that Gay uses the terms walker and author more or less interchangeably. This is one instance where the index is helpful. There we find the author walking the streets of London: ‘Friend, the Author walks with one, II, 276’. The walker composes verse; when we chase up the reference ‘Funeral, The Walkers contemplation on one, III, 225’, we are treated to a self-conscious piece of poetic apostrophe, in the ecce viator mode: ‘Contemplate, Mortal, on thy fleeting Years; | See, with black Train the Funeral Pomp appears!’ Copley and Haywood are typical in asserting that ‘it is the author, not the walker who speaks in the poem’.28 This is a false distinction, and one born out of a disregard for the poem's generic affiliations. Gay is both participant in and preceptor of ‘The Art of Walking the Streets of London’, as we would expect in a self-reflexive Horatian Ars. If walking the streets serves as a metaphor for literary composition, it is a curious one. In 1716 the phrase had a resonance which could not be missed. A street-walker, in the eighteenth century, meant a prostitute, and walking the streets, though it had an innocent application, was a potentially dubious activity. The phrase is used during the court room scene which takes place early in Henry Fielding's Amelia (1751). The second Criminal was a poor Woman, who was taken up by the Watch as a Street-Walker. It was alledged against her that she was found walking the Streets after twelve o'clock, and the Watchman declared he believed her to be a common strumpet. [ … ] The Justice then called her several scurrilous Names; and declaring she was guilty within the Statute of Street-Walking, ordered her to Bridewell for a Month.29This woman is not, in fact, a prostitute at all but a maidservant who has been found in the wrong place at the wrong time. We may recoil at the crude sentencing of the aptly named Justice Thrasher, but there is a certain logic to his argument: the woman has been found walking the streets, and she is therefore a street-walker. As we have seen, Gay's financial situation fluctuated constantly, and he periodically had to abase himself for money. In 1712 he became ‘secretary’ to the Duchess of Monmouth, which was not a burdensome position, but which did require him to wear her blue and silver livery. He was, in other words, marked out as a servant. Pope tried to console him when he was forced to accept this post, writing that Gay's new employer would at least be more congenial than the ‘Nine other Ladies’ – that is, the Muses – to whom he also acted as secretary: He who is forc'd to live wholly upon those Ladies favours, is indeed in as precarious a condition as any He who does what Chaucer says for Sustenance; but they are very agreeable Companions, like other Ladies, when a Man only passes a Night or so with the at his leisure, and away.30As David Nokes points out, ‘what Chaucer says’ in the final couplet of the Cook's Tale is ‘And swived for hir sustenance’.31 Pope's message seems to be that, even if Gay feels compromised by his new arrangement, it is surely preferable (though not hugely so) to a life given over entirely to writing. To earn money by one's pen was akin to prostitution. The letter is remarkably similar in tone to one the young Pope received from William Wycherley shortly after the publication of his Pastorals: ‘I approve of your making Tonson your Muse's Introductor into the World, or Master of the Ceremonies, who has been so long a Pimp, or Gentleman-Usher to the Muses.’32 It is telling that the one account of prostitution in Trivia concerns a young man from Devon. Shortly after arriving in London, he is lured by a street-walker, who empties his wallet and gives him syphilis:The episode testifies to the pitfalls that accompany moving to the city, like the Devonian, ‘for thirst of Gain’ (III. 285). The prostitute's technique for securing her prey is described in terms remarkably similar to those used in Gay's proem:If we are to take the poem at face value, there is – one might argue – nothing surprising in this parallel; Gay investigates these winding alleys in order to warn his readers about the dangers that lurk in them (the paragraph under discussion is labelled How to know a Whore). It is hard to forget, though, that Gay is walking the streets in hope of financial gain.33 Ah hapless Swain, unus'd to Pains and Ills! Canst thou forgo Roast-Beef for nauseous Pills? How wilt thou lift to Heav'n thy Eyes and Hands, When the long Scroll the Surgeon's Fees demands! Or else (ye Gods avert that worst Disgrace) Thy ruin'd Nose falls level with thy Face, Then shall thy Wife thy loathsome Kiss disdain, And wholesome Neighbours from thy Mug refrain. (III. 299–306) By thee transported, I securely stray Where winding Alleys lead the doubtful Way. (I. 7–8) She leads the willing Victim to his Doom, Through winding Alleys to her Cobweb doom. (III. 291–2) Walking the streets does not simply mean ‘prostitution’, of course. And when it is applied to prostitution it has a specific value. It refers to women who advertise their services openly, as opposed to prostitutes working in a brothel. This was an important distinction in the early eighteenth century. Bernard de Mandeville argues, in his provocatively entitled A Modest Defence of Public Stews: or, an Essay upon Whoring (1724), that only the establishment of state-licensed brothels will eliminate the presence on the streets of ‘Women, who have shaken off all Pretence to Modesty; and for such a Sum of Money, more or less, profess themselves always in a Readiness to be enjoy'd’.34 What Mandeville objects to, and what Gay invokes in the subtitle to his poem, is the unedifying spectacle of women advertising themselves on the streets of London, the symptom of a wider commercialisation of all aspects of life.35 III Gay's poem engages not only with the Georgics, but especially with Dryden's 1697 translation – the best-known English version in the first decades of the eighteenth century. There are several set-piece adaptations of famous Virgilian passages, as well as less striking verbal echoes, many of which have been catalogued by Gay's most recent editors.36 The debt is plain from the opening lines:Gay follows both Virgil and Dryden in offering a neatly compressed summary of his subject matter before announcing his intention to sing of it. He follows Dryden in particular in contracting canere incipiam (‘I shall start to sing’) to ‘I sing’, and the second couplets of the two poems share a rhyme. quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram uertere, Maecenas, ulmisque adiungere uites conueniat, quae cura boum, qui cultus habendo sit pecori, apibus quanta experienta parcis, hinc canere incipiam. (Virgil, Georgics, 1. 1–5) What makes a plenteous Harvest, when to turn The fruitful Soil, and when to sowe the Corn; The Care of Sheep, of Oxen, and of Kine; And how to raise on Elms the teeming Vine: The Birth and Genius of the frugal Bee, I sing, Mæcenas, and I sing to thee. (trans. Dryden, I. 1–6)37 Through Winter Streets to steer your Course aright, How to walk clean by Day, and safe by Night, How jostling Crouds with Prudence, to decline, When to assert the Wall, and when resign, I sing. (Gay, Trivia, I. 1–5) The Georgics, famously, are of little value as a practical guide to husbandry. Seneca's verdict, that they were written to delight readers rather than to instruct farmers, has been accepted by most subsequent critics – even if delight seems the wrong word for so bleak and haunting a poem.38 First published in the immediate aftermath of a period of bloody civil war at Rome, the poem has been consistently subjected to political and philosophical interpretations stressing its engagement with the experience of civil war, and with the human condition more generally. This critical tradition has occasionally degenerated over the past forty years into a rather reductive debate about whether or not Virgil actually liked Octavian. But there has always been, in any case, a readiness to read the Georgics as a poem which teaches, even if the precepts it offers are not to be taken literally.39 In the Georgics, the poet's relationship with his environment is a close one. The poem is predicated on the notion that there are events in the natural world, largely dictated by the position of the stars and progress of the seasons, which serve as prompts to human activity. A good example comes halfway through the first book. Virgil is describing the best times of the year for sowing particular crops, and this leads him to reflect on the importance of seasonal change:The antiquity of the precepts is emphasised by the self-conscious use of an archaic main verb: possumus, rather than possimus. Nature determines human activity, as she has done for generations. The zodiacal signs, deriving their authority from the twelve deities invoked at the start of the poem, lend weight to his pronouncements (Georgics, I. 5–42). Consequently, the word signum – a sign, or by metonymy a star (which is how Dryden translates it in the passage above) – appears regularly in Virgil's poem. The husbandman must be continually on the lookout for signs; from plants, from animals, from the weather, and principally from the stars. hinc tempestates dubio praediscere caelo possumus, hinc messisque diem tempusque serendi, et quando infidum remis impellere marmor conueniat, quando armatas deducere classis, aut tempestiuam siluis euertere pinum. nec frustra signorum obitus speculamur et ortus temporibusque parem diuersis quattuor annum. (Georgics, I. 252–8) From hence uncertain Seasons we may know; And when to reap the Grain, and when to sow; Or when to fell the Furzes; when ‘tis meet To spread the flying Canvass for the Fleet. Observe what Stars arise or disappear; And the four Quarters of the rolling Year. (trans. Dryden, I. 344–9) The same is true of Gay's Trivia, with some important qualifications. The poem is paragraphed, and each paragraph given a summary at its head, further maintaining the illusion of didactic usefulness. Close to the poem's start, three successive paragraphs are concerned with signs. The first deals with Signs of cold Weather, and begins ‘The changing Weather certain Signs reveal’ (Trivia I. 133) – there is a pun here on certain, as meaning both ‘specific’ and ‘reliable’. There is also a reference to a favourite formulation of Virgil's:The second paragraph is concerned with Signs of fair Weather, and suggests that readers take their cue from the fashionable ladies of London:The change of season, then, is indicated by human behaviour, a direct inversion of the situation in the Georgics. We know it is summer, because the ladies are wearing summer clothing, and Gay's pointedly artificial vocabulary – the women adorning the Mall with dyes, and painting the sunny morn – is significant. Usually, it is the sun that paints objects with colour (as at Paradise Lost, V. 185–7: ‘Ye mists and exhalations that now rise | From hill or steamy lake, dusky and grey, | Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold’); here, there is a marked detachment from the elements.40 atque haec ut certis possemus discere signis, aestusque pluuiasque et agentis frigora uentos, ipse pater statuit quid menstrua luna moneret, (Georgics, I. 351–3) And that by certain Signs we may presage Of Heats and Rains, and Wind's impetuous Rage, The Sov'reign of the Heav'ns has set on High The Moon, to mark the Changes of the Sky. (trans. Dryden, I. 483–6) Nor do less certain Signs the Town advise, Of milder Weather, and serener Skies. The Ladies gayly dress'd, the Mall adorn With various Dyes, and paint the sunny Morn (I. 143–6) Gay acknowledges in the advertisement preceding the poem that he ‘owe[s] several Hints of it to Dr. Swift.’ Swift's ‘Description of a City Shower’ (1710), which makes up the bulk of Tatler no. 238, is an obvious point of comparison for this passage. That poem opens with similar advice:Swift's poem offers a distinctly unpleasant view of London; it opens with a cat intermitting her frolics, and ends with a wave of dead cats streaming down the flooded street. It is explicitly a ‘town georgic’ and, as in Trivia, there is an implied contrast between the bucolic or georgic form, and the unlovely world being described. But Swift doesn't go so far as to alter the basic georgic trope of showing instinctive animal behaviour prompting human activity. In the world of Gay's Trivia, the sense of detachment from nature becomes still more pronounced in the next paragraph, on Signs of rainy Weather, which begins,The pun on Signs is clear. The celestial bodies which govern Virgil's poem have been replaced by the boards hanging outside shops and taverns. The world of the poem is a mercantile one; we see tradesmen looking at advertising paraphernalia in order to safeguard their own business. It is significant that the first tradesman to respond is the bookseller, stripping the rails of learning. Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r: While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.41 But when the swinging Signs your Ears offend With creaking Noise, then rainy Floods impend; Soon shall the Kennels swell with rapid Streams, And rush in muddy Torrents to the Thames. The Bookseller, whose Shop's an open Square, Foresees the Tempest, and with early Care Of Learning strips the Rails. (I. 157–63) In the idiom of the period, and especially in Scriblerian literature, to associate literature with the paraphernalia of advertising was to cast serious doubts on its moral or aesthetic value. We can see this elsewhere in Gay's work. Towards the end of a poem recounting a journey from London to Exeter, the Epistle to Burlington, some verses on a sign outside a tavern provoke reflections on the state of contemporary poetry:The inscrutable final couplet, as Gay points out in a footnote, is taken from Prince Arthur, by Richard Blackmore, a poet now chiefly remembered (if at all) for being one of Pope's Dunces.43 Blackmore's epic long-windedness is inversely proportionate to his talent, and Gay captures this by representing each step down the hierarchy of genres as a step down in scale. We move from the vast flights of stichic epic to the closed couplets of elegy; from elegy to two-line epigram; and finally to the confines of a gold-lettered tavern sign. The couplet comes from a passage of grandiloquent prophecy and refers to William III. Gay presumably imagines it outside a pub called the King William, or the King's Head.44 A tavern sign was a marker of the base, the commercial, and the everyday. In Trivia, this association is important; Gay shrinks the world of the Georgics by replacing the celestial bodies with advertisements, and the movements of the natural world with those of a circumscribed financial community. When (O blest sight!) a friendly sign we Spy'd, Our Spurs are slacken'd from the Horses side; For sure a civil Host the House commands, Upon whose Sign this courteous Motto stands. This is the ancient Hand, and eke the Pen; Here is for Horses Hay, and Meat for Men. How Rhyme would flourish, did each Son of Fame Know his own Genius, and direct his Flame! Then he, that could not Epic Flights rehearse, Might sweetly mourn in Elegiac Verse. But were his Muse for Elegy unfit, Perhaps a Distich might not strain his wit. If Epigram offend, his harmless Lines Might in gold Letters swing on Ale-house signs.   ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·   Then Maurus in his proper Sphere might shine, And these proud numbers grace great William's sign: This is the Man, this the Nassovian, whom I nam'd the brave Deliverer to come. (121–44)42 IV A prominent feature of ancient didactic poetry is aetiology, the relation of a myth or historical episode to explain the origin of a particular institution or activity. The most famous example in the Georgics is the story of the bugonia. We learn how Aristaeus, punished by the gods for his involvement in the death of Eurydice, loses his swarm of bees. Aristaeus consults the primordial sea-god Proteus, who tells him to slaughter four cows, and to leave their putrefying corpses in a wooden building. From their remains, miraculously, emerges a new swarm of bees. This agricultural technique was not, needless to say, actually practised by the Romans – though they did vaguely attribute it to their ancestors, and to exotic tribes. But aetiology performs an important role within didactic poetry. It helps transform potentially arid technical instruction both by providing a narrative framework, and – crucially – by elevating its subject matter. The involvement of the gods in the story of Aristaeus, not to mention the mysterious ritual outlined by Proteus, hints at a deeper cosmological or philosophical significance to the poem – though readers have been divided as to its precise nature. There are two prominent instances of aetiological myth in Trivia. Early on we are told how the patten got its name from a girl called Patty, for whom it was invented by her lover, the fire-god Vulcan (I. 223–82). Later, there is an extended account of the origins of the shoe-shine boy. This, again, is presented as the result of a deity falling in love with a human. This time it is not Vulcan but Cloacina, the goddess of the sewers, who follows the example set by Jupiter:To cut a long story short, Cloacina disguises herself as a ‘Cinder-Wench’, and she and this ‘Scavenger’ disappear down a dark alley together. Nine months later, the fruit of their passion appears. In order to enable her son to support himself, Cloacina assembles a shoe-cleaning kit from her fellow gods and goddesses – a brush from Diana, whale oil from Neptune, a tripod from Apollo – and presents it to him. Then she disappears (like Proteus in the fourth book of the Georgics) by diving away, though she dives not into the Aegean, but into Fleet-ditch, the open sewer which ran through London:What is interesting about these two aetiological episodes is that, whereas didactic poets traditionally seek to address the more mysterious aspects of their subject matter by reference to myth, Gay purports to explain aspects of London street life which are, in fact, readily explicable, both being features of a thriving market economy. Pattens are a product for sale; and they are increasingly important in the increasingly dirty city. The shoe-shiner, too, is responding to a basic demand; he is, tellingly, the first Londoner we encounter at the start of the poem (‘When the Black Youth at chosen Stands rejoice, | And clean your Shoes resounds from ev'ry Voice’, I. 23–4), and like the vast majority of the characters in Trivia, he is offering a service in exchange for cash. Both a shoeshine and a pair of pattens cost money, and they are a means of removing, or escaping, the accumulated dirt of urban life. Then Cloacina (Goddess of the Tide Whose sable Streams beneath the City glide) Indulg'd the modish Flame; the Town she rov'd, A mortal Scavenger she saw, she lov'd; The muddy Spots that dry'd upon his Face, Like Female Patches, heighten'd ev'ry Grace. (II. 115–20) The Goddess plunges swift beneath the Flood, And dashes all around her Show'rs of Mud: The Youth strait chose his Post; the Labour ply'd Where branching Streets from Charing-cross divide; His treble Voice resounds along the Meuse, And White-hall echoes – Clean your Honour's Shoes. (II. 211–16) This is made explicit; the service offered by the shoe-shiner is part of London's commercial cycle:And this accumulated dirt is an inevitable by-product of the market economy which then allows it to be removed or escaped. And indeed, Trivia is full of tips on how to avoid getting one's clothes soiled.45 If you're wearing a black coat, don't go near a baker (II. 30). Street-sweepers should be restrained, unless you want to get dirty calves (II. 91–4). If your overcoat is pale, mind you don't bump into a butcher (II. 42–4). At the same time, there is frequent reference to the products of their labour:There is an obvious connection between the hazards one encounters on the streets, and the possibilities London offers. And Gay, too, is offering a consumable product, the market for which has been created by the same expanding urban economy which supports patten-makers and shoe-shiners. The facade of usefulness, sustained by the index and by repeated turn to identifiably didactic tropes, is a constant reminder that Gay is filling a gap in the market. If we take the didacticism at face value, Trivia is just another tool for keeping dirt-free in the city. ‘The Voice of Industry is always near’ – this might refer equally to the shoe-shiner and to Gay himself. What though the gath'ring Mire thy Feet besmear, The Voice of Industry is always near. (II. 99–100) Shall the large Mutton smoak upon your Boards? Such, Newgate's copious Market best affords; Woulds't thou with mighty Beef augment thy Meal? Seek Leaden-hall; Saint James's sends thee Veal. Thames-street gives Cheeses; Covent-garden Fruits; Moor-fields old Books; and Monmouth-street old Suits. Hence may'st thou well supply the Wants of Life, Support thy Family, and cloath thy Wife. (II. 543–50) In Trivia, poets – or figures resembling poets – are repeatedly shown engaging in financial transactions. Again, Gay's relationship with his major classical source is revealing. The Georgics contains, in its final book, the single most celebrated and imitated account of poetic creation in the Western canon: the story of Orpheus. This poignant account ends with the poet's decapitation at the hands of the jealous Thracian women, as they celebrate the Bacchic rites. His severed head then floats down the river Hebrus, still singing Eurydice's name:Gay incorporates this episode into his poem, setting it at the time of a great frost. The Thames has frozen over and tradesmen have set up their stalls on the river – the ultimate triumph of commerce over nature. In a digression acting as a counterpart to Virgil's interpolated narrative, Gay tells the story of a young apple-seller named Doll:It is important not to overlook the purely comic aspects of this passage – a very successful piece of mock-heroic. The ‘Pip-Pip-Pip’ reproducing Virgil's triple Eurydicen is especially effective. There is also a flagrantly programmatic aspect to it, though, and it must be significant that Gay offers so ‘straight’ a version of his source text immediately after his parody of it; we are invited to draw a direct comparison. Orpheus, the archetypal poet (whom many readers have seen as a portrait of Virgil himself), is turned into an apple-seller, explicitly singing ‘in quest of Gain’. The song which persuaded the gods to release Eurydice from the underworld becomes a street cry, for that most prosaic of products, the pippin. This cry is a sound all Londoners would have recognised. Several of the figures included in Marcellus Laroon's illustrated Cryes of the Citye of London, Drawne after the Life, first published in 1687 and frequently reprinted, are for fruit.46 Apples are also one of the items for which Swift wrote his own cries:Swift was fascinated by street cries. He rails against them in the Journal to Stella: ‘here is a restless dog crying Cabbages and Savoys plagues me every morning about this time, he is now at it, I wish his largest Cabbage was sticking in his Throat’.48 He wrote at least six of them himself: some conventional, others (like that quoted above) hinting at the bleak reality of dependence on hawking fruit in the street. He also discusses them at length in his 1732 pamphlet City Cries, Instrumental and Vocal, a brilliant study in Whiggish anti-Jacobite paranoia in which even things as everyday as street cries and pub signs are interpreted as rallying calls to the exiled Stuarts. It is tempting to conclude that one of the ‘hints’ Gay has taken from Swift is the prominence he gives to street cries; they are frequently referred to in Trivia, and form a crucial part of the poet's advice. These advertisements are the Londoner's only clue as to the time of year:    spretae Ciconum quo munere matres inter sacra deum nocturnique orgia Bacchi discerptum latos iuvenem sparsere per agros. tum quoque marmorea caput a cervice reuulsum gurgite cum medio portans Oeagrius Hebrus uolueret, Eurydicen uox ipsa et frigida lingua a miseram Eurydicen! anima fugiente uocabat: Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripae. (Georgics, IV. 519–26) The Thracian Matrons, who the Youth accus'd Of Love disdain'd, and Marriage Rites refus'd: With Furies, and Nocturnal Orgies fir'd, At length, against his sacred Life conspir'd. Whom ev'n the salvage Beasts had spar'd, they kill'd, And strew'd his mangled Limbs about the Field. Then when his Head, from his fair Shoulders torn, Wash'd by the Waters, was on Hebrus born; Ev'n then his trembling Tongue invok'd his Bride; With his last Voice, Eurydice, he cry'd, Eurydice, the Rocks and River-banks reply'd. (trans. Dryden, IV. 754–64) Doll every day had walk'd these treach'rous Roads; Her Neck grew warpt beneath autumnal Loads Of various Fruit; she now a Basket bore, That Head, alas! shall Basket bear no more. Each Booth she frequent past, in quest of Gain, And Boys with pleasure heard her shrilling Strain. Ah Doll! all Mortals must resign their Breath, And Industry it self submit to Death! The cracking Crystal yields, she sinks, she dyes, Her Head, chopt off, from her lost Shoulders flies: Pippins she cry'd, but Death her Voice confounds, And Pip-Pip-Pip along the Ice resounds. So when the Thracian Furies Orpheus tore, And left his bleeding Trunk deform'd with Gore, His sever'd Head floats down the silver Tide, His yet warm Tongue for his lost Consort cry'd; Eurydice, with quiv'ring Voice, he mourn'd, And Heber's Banks Eurydice return'd. (II. 381–98) Come buy my fine Wares, Plumbs, Apples and Pears, A hundred a Penny, In Conscience too many, Come, will you have any; My children are seven, I wish them in Heaven, My Husband's a Sot, With his Pipe and his Pot, Not a Farthing will gain 'em And I must mantain ‘em.47 Successive Crys the Seasons Change declare, And mark the Monthly Progress of the Year. Hark how the Streets with treble Voices ring, To sell the bounteous Product of the Spring. (II. 425–32) The city has become an isolated world in itself, which nature can no longer reach, and whose inhabitants can mark the progress of the seasons through economic markers alone. (What Gay would recommend they do in the twenty-first century, when all things are available at all times, we can only guess.) This anxiety at detachment from the elements is a standard feature of anti-luxury, or anti-urban, discourse. What is interesting about the deployment of street criers in Trivia is the obvious relation they bear to Gay himself, as they walk the streets singing in hope of remuneration. Gay emphasises the point by showing bays for sale:Bays are the time-honoured emblem of poetic prowess. Pope was later to debase the word by bestowing it as a title upon the hapless Cibber in the final version of the Dunciad. Like much else in the Dunciad, that debasement is adumbrated here, as the laurel wreath becomes just another object for sale. Bays are bawl'd – the choice of so aggressive a verb in relation to poetic performance is significant – ‘through all the Town’. It is hard not to see the criers as versions of the poet, walking the streets for money. When Rosemary, and Bays, the Poet's Crown, Are bawl'd, in frequent Cries, through all the Town, Then judge the Festival of Christmas near. (II. 437–9) In short, a lot of singing in exchange for money takes place in London. Nor is the transaction always to the buyer's benefit. Gay tells us to beware ballad-singers:The noise made by the ballad-singer is described in identical terms to that made by the modern-day Orpheus, Doll: a ‘shrilling Strain’. And like her he is in ‘quest of Gain’, in league with the pickpockets who linger on street corners. Let not the Ballad-Singer's shrilling Strain Amid the Swarm thy list'ning Ear detain: Guard well thy Pocket; for these Syrens stand, To aid the Labours of the diving Hand; Confed'rate in the Cheat, they draw the Throng, And Cambrick Handkerchiefs reward the Song. (III. 77–82) Lest we should fail to pick up on these various hints concerning the commercialisation of letters, Gay's poem is shown to be on sale within its own text. The bookstall at which it is sold gets a more prominent description than just about any other commercial enterprise in the poem:There is a strong sense that books are the same as any other consumable product. The philosopher Francis Bacon and Aristotle, who came from Stagyra in Greece, are transformed into bacon and sage. This was a frequently encountered combination in eighteenth-century cookery; sage is, for example, the main seasoning agent in Hannah Glasse's recipe for ‘A Disguis'd Leg of Veal and Bacon’.49 What is more, passers-by can ‘spoil’ – as in despoil rather than ruin – ‘Learning's Flow'rs’. What Gay means by this is that they can read the Greek and Latin epigraphs on the title pages of unbound books as they pass by. Even this is presented as an act of petty theft, like taking a single apple from a greengrocer's stall when nobody is looking.50 Volumes, on shelter'd Stalls, expanded lye, And various Science lures the learned Eye; The bending Shelves with pond'rous Scholiasts groan, And deep Divines to modern Shops unknown: Here, like the Bee, that on industrious Wing, Collects the various Odours of the Spring, Walkers, at leisure, Learnings Flow'rs may spoil, Nor watch the Wasting of the Midnight Oil, May Morals snatch from Plutarch's tatter'd Page, A mildew'd Bacon, or Stagyra's Sage.   ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·   O, Lintott, let my Labours obvious lie, Rang'd on thy Stall, for ev'ry curious Eye; So shall the Poor these Precepts gratis know, And to my Verse their future Safeties owe. (II. 551–79) Gay tries to exclude himself from this atmosphere of commercialism, asking his publisher, Bernard Lintott, to spread out the pages of Trivia so that the poor can read it for nothing. Lintott, having paid £43 for the copyright, was hardly likely to agree to this. And it is of course a fantastically improbable idea, that one might read a poem of some 1,500 lines while wandering past a stall. Gay similarly disavows any financial motive at the close of the proem to Trivia:These lines are revisited in the lines from the Epistle to Methuen quoted above, where – though he is apparently still referring to Trivia – his meaning is reversed:Gay's occasional claims to eschew all thoughts of profiting by his verse are frequently exposed within Trivia itself. In the Epistle to Methuen, they are explicitly contradicted. Whether he likes it or not, Gay is an active participant in this giant marketplace. But more, my Country's Love demands the Lays, My Country's be the Profit, mine the Praise. (I. 21–2) Yet let me not of grievances complain, Who (though the meanest of the Muse's train) Can boast subscriptions to my humble lays, And mingle profit with my little praise. V Gay not only draws the reader's attention to London's unbridled commercialism but shows himself at the centre of it. His wishful thinking about the free distribution of his poem is most tellingly exposed at the end of the poem, where he reveals his hopes for its Nachleben:This, again, is a reworking of a well-known classical topos. At the close of literary works, authors have often paused to consider their chances of survival. The distinction Gay draws between his ‘mould'ring Frame’ and his ‘eternal Part’ is entirely conventional. Ovid closes his Metamorphoses with a similar coda predicting his own bodily demise, but which also predicts that he and his poem will live on, for as long as the Latin language survives.The dichotomy between body and text is in this case sharpened by the fact that immediately after Ovid wrote these lines he fell out of political favour and was relegated to an outpost of the empire where only the Getic language was spoken. Physically removed from the Latin-speaking world, he leaves behind him – even before his death – a spokesman capable of continuing his engagement with Roman culture. Indeed, this becomes a theme of the first exile poem, Tristia, 1. 1, in which a book is sent to Rome, shabbily dressed, to act as Ovid's proxy. And now compleat my gen'rous Labours lye, Finish'd and ripe for Immortality. Death shall entomb in Dust this mould'ring Frame But never reach th'eternal Part, my Fame. When W* and G**, mighty Names, are dead; Or but at Chelsea under Custards read; When Criticks crazy Bandboxes repair, And Tragedies, turned Rockets, bounce in Air; High raised on Fleetstreet Posts, consign'd to Fame, This Work shall shine, and Walkers bless my name. (III. 407–16) parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis astra ferar, nomenque erit indelibile nostrum. quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, ore legar populi, perque omnia saecula fama, siquid habent ueri uatum praesagia, uiuam. (XV. 875–6) My nobler Part, my Fame, shall reach the Skies, And to late Times with blooming Honours rise: Whate'er th'unbounded Roman Power obeys, All Climes and Nations shall record my Praise: If ‘tis allow'd to Poets to divine, One half of round Eternity is mine. (trans. Welsted)51 Most poets find that their prospects are bound up with those of their language, culture, or nation. Horace's two famous reflections on his literary achievement come in the first ode of the first book and the final ode of the third – and thus act effectively as bookends, since the fourth book was composed and disseminated separately. The central section of the final ode (which begins ‘exegi monumentum aere perennius’) reads as follows:Horace's survival within his text depends on, or at least is associated with, the survival of specifically Roman cultural practices – as indeed the reach of Ovid's better part is identified with Roman imperium, both military and linguistic. Swift, in his Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue (1712), refers to Horace's Ars Poetica in order to demonstrate the relative stability of Latin, compared to English (although Greek was the truly stable language Swift thought we should take as our model): What Horace says of Words going off, and perishing like Leaves, and new ones coming in their Place, is a Misfortune he laments, rather than a Thing he approves: But I cannot see why this should be absolutely necessary, or if it were, what have become of his Monumentum ære perennius.53The implication is that Horace's words would not have survived had they been written in English. Attempting something monumental in such a fickle language is like ‘employing an excellent Statuary to work upon mouldring Stone’ (p. 18). non omnis moriar multaque pars mei uitabit Libitinam; usque ego postera crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium scandet cum tacita uirgine pontifex. (Carmina, III. 30. 6–9) Nor shall the funeral Pyre consume My Fame; that nobler Part shall bloom, With youth unfading shall improve, While to th'immortal Fane of Jove The Vestal Maids, in silent State Ascending, on the Pontiffe wait. (trans. Francis)52 Horace's existence beyond death is dependent not only on the survival of his language, but also on of the approval of his patron, Maecenas: ‘if you number me among the lyric poets,’ he says, ‘I will strike the stars with my uplifted head’ (‘quodsi me lyricis vatibus inseres, | sublimi feriam sidera vertice’, Carmina, I. 35–6). Gay's apotheosis, though, depends not on the approval of patrons (he is acutely aware, as we have seen, that he lacks a Maecenas), nor on the success of the British army, but on his poem's continued performance in the marketplace. This is what will prevent its being used merely to wrap custards or mend bandboxes. And the reward for this performance is that, like Horace, he will be elevated to the level of the stars – or at least to their equivalent in the world of the poem. When other poems are forgotten, Trivia will ‘shine’, star-like, ‘high rais'd on Fleetstreet Posts’. In other words, Lintott, or one of his successors, will continue to advertise it. Fleet Street is a significant location, both the centre of the printing industry and the site of the famous debtors' prison.54 Here the title page will perform the same function (and at the same level) as the signs which do the job of the stars in the contracted universe of Gay's poem. The strange phrase he uses of the elevation – ‘consign’d to Fame' – seems designed to jog the reader's memory. The poem, classical in form, needs to prove its worth as a consumable object, and in walking the streets Gay acts as both poet and seller. This connection, as we have seen, was made by Gay himself (‘what I got by walking the streets, I am now spending in riding in coaches’). And it is one which irresistibly suggests itself when we consider the details of his life. One might argue that Gay's biography should be pushed to one side as we read his poetry – that is certainly what Pope would want. But it seems significant that someone who struggled financially on the margins of professional authorship, and who wrote at a time when literary culture was both rooted in classical values and immersed in commercial ones, should have produced a work like Trivia: classical in form, and acting as its own advertisement. Both of Gay's major models are important here. The Georgic backdrop to Trivia allows readers to appreciate London's growing detachment from the natural world. And the poem's status as a self-reflexive Horatian Ars asks us to consider the role of the poet in this detached and mercantile centre. For all the classical erudition on display, Gay never separates himself from the street-walkers and fruit-sellers who populate his poem. 1 On the difficulties associated with English Augustanism, see Howard Weinbrot, Britannia's Issue: The Rise of British Literature from Dryden to Ossian (Cambridge 1993) pp. 19–24 and passim. Weinbrot is keen to stress the increasing ‘domestic focus’ of British literature, but his account nonetheless indicates the importance of classical models. 2 Particularly useful are Colin Nicholson, Writing and the Rise of Finance: Capital Satires of the Early Eighteenth Century (Cambridge 1994); Brean S. Hammond, Professional Imaginative Writing in England, 1670–1740: ‘Hackney for Bread’ (Oxford 1997). The trailblazer in this area was Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (London 1957), which influentially suggested a link between the rise of capitalism and the emergence of formal realism in prose fiction. 3 On Pope's interest in trade, and the ways in which it might have affected the form of his translations, see the contentious but suggestive account by Paul Davis, Translation and the Poet's Life: The Ethics of Translating in English Culture, 1646–1726 (Oxford 2008) pp. 237–90. 4 Hammond, ‘Hackney for Bread’, p. 291. 5 A collection of essays has recently been published on Trivia, but these essays tend to ransack the poem for historical detail, rather than engaging with or paying attention to Gay's poetry, or to his poetic persona. Clare Brant and Susan E. Whyman (eds.), Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London: John Gay's Trivia (1716) (Oxford 2007). Other discussions of the poem include Martin C. Battestin, ‘Menalcas’ Song: The Meaning of Art and Artifice in Gay's Poetry', Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 65 (1966) pp. 662–79; Diane W. Ames, ‘Gay's Trivia and the Art of Allusion’, Studies in Philology, 75 (1978) pp. 199–222; Stephen Copley and Ian Haywood, ‘Luxury, Refuse and Poetry: John Gay's Trivia’, in Peter Lewis and Nigel Wood (eds.), John Gay and the Scriblerians (London 1988) pp. 62–82; Pat Rogers, ‘Why Trivia? Myth, Etymology, and Topography’, Arion, 12 (2005) pp. 19–31. 6 Gay's classical allusions are catalogued extensively (though not exhaustively) by his most recent editors. John Gay: Poetry and Prose, ed. Vinton A. Dearing and Charles E. Beckwith, 2 vols. (Oxford 1974) i. 134–81. All quotations from Trivia are taken from this edition. 7 See Arthur Sherbo, ‘Virgil, Dryden, Gay, and Matters Trivial’, PMLA, 60 (1970), pp. 1063–71. 8 The Ars Poetica is not mentioned in any of the essays collected in Brant and Whyman (eds.), Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London. 9 David Nokes, John Gay: A Profession of Friendship (Oxford 1995) pp. 97–8. For all details of Gay's biography I am much indebted to this excellent book. 10 Gay: Poetry and Prose, i. 215–7. 11 On the Epistle to Methuen, see further Hammond, ‘Hackney for Bread’, pp. 261–3. 12 Lives of the Poets, ed. Roger Lonsdale, 4 vols. (Oxford 2006) iii. 97. Johnson's Life of Gay is discussed in Dustin Griffin, Literary Patronage in England, 1650–1800 (Cambridge 1996) pp. 239–43. 13 Nokes, A Profession of Friendship, p. 299. 14 Laura J. Rosenthal, Infamous Commerce: Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture (Ithaca, NY 2006) p. 20. 15 Gay to Parnell, 26 Mar. 1716: The Letters of John Gay, ed. C. F. Burgess (Oxford 1966) p. 29, cited in Nokes, A Profession of Friendship, p. 200. It is Pope who speculates that Gay made £150 from Trivia; Pope to Caryll, 1716: The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn, 5 vols. (Oxford 1956) i. 327. 16 Lives of the Poets, iii. 101. 17 Horace's Art of Poetry. Made English by the Right Honourable the Earl of Roscommon (London 1680) A2r. Italics reversed. 18 William King, The Art of Cookery. In Imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry. With some Letters to Dr. Lister, and Others (London 1708); ‘Martinus Gulliverianus’, The Art of Beau-ing. In Imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry. Address'd to a Certain Lord (London 1730); Harlequin-Horace, or: The Art of Modern Poetry (London 1731); The Art of Preaching: in imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry (London 1738). 19 Charles-Alphonse Dufresnoy, The Art of Painting. With Remarks: Translated into English, with an Original Preface, Containing a Parallel between Painting and Poetry: by Mr. Dryden (London 1716); Edward Laurence, The Young Surveyor's Guide: or, A New Introduction to the Whole Art of Surveying (London 1716); Hendrik van Deventer, The Art of Midwifery Improv'd. Fully laying down whatever instructions are required to make a compleat midwife (London 1716); Nicolas Gauger, The Mechanism of Fire made in Chimneys: or, the Art of Improving the Effects and Diminishing the Expences Thereof (London 1716). 20 For an engaging analysis of King's poem, see John Fuller, ‘Carving Trifles: William King's Imitation of Horace’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 62 (1976) pp. 267–91. 21 King, Art of Cookery, p. 55. 22 Roscommon, Horace's Art of Poetry, p. 11. 23 Ibid., pp. 5–6. 24 King, Art of Cookery, pp. 61–3. 25 Terttu Nevalainen, ‘Early Modern English Lexis and Semantics’, in Roger Lass (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language, vol. iii: 1476–1776 (Cambridge 1993) pp. 332–458: 370, notes that food and cooking attracted a high number of French loanwords in the eighteenth century. Words entering the language between 1700 and 1749 include casserole, croquette, ragout, hors d'oeuvre, and liqueur. As King himself puts it (vv. 71–2), ‘New things produce new words, and thus Monteth ∣ Has by one Vessel sav'd his name from death.’ A Monteith – the word is first attested in 1683 – is a basin with notches at the rim in which upturned wine glasses could cool. It was apparently invented by a ‘Monsieur Monteigh’. See OED s.v. ‘Monteith’. 26 Darryl P. Domingo, ‘Scnblerus Takes a London Walk: or, The Pedanbic perambulations of Gay's Trivia’, University of Toronto Quarterly, 74 (2005), 943–56: 949. 27 T. Lucretius Carus, Of the Nature of Things, in Six Books, Translated into English Verse; by Tho. Creech, 2 vols. (London 1715) ii. 72–3. 28 Copley and Haywood, ‘Luxury, Refuse and Poetry’, p. 77. Rogers, ‘Why Trivia?’, p. 24, does not address the issue directly, but recognises that the opening address ‘identifies the daring moves of the innovative author with the bold peregrinations of the walker’. 29 Henry Fielding, Amelia, ed. Martin Battestin (Oxford 1983) I/ii, p. 22. 30 Pope to Gay, 24 Dec. 1712: Pope, Correspondence, i. 268–9. 31 Nokes, A Profession of Friendship, pp. 97–8. 32 Wycherley to Pope, 13 May 1708: Pope, Correspondence, i. 49–50. 33 Pat Rogers, ‘Why Trivia?’, p. 27, notes that Gay's prostitutes are shown gathering at a three-way junction, at the point where Drury Lane meets the Strand: ‘Plainly this belongs to the world of the threefold goddess in her role as Hecate, lurking in the dark alleys at night.’ 34 A Modest Defence of Publick Stews: or, An Essay upon Whoring, as it is now Practis'd in these Kingdoms. Written by a Layman (London 1724) p. 8. 35 See Rosenthal, Infamous Commerce, esp. pp. 1–16, 42–69. 36 See also Sherbo, ‘Virgil, Dryden, Gay, and Matters Trivial’. 37 The Works of John Dryden, vols. v–vi: The Works of Virgil in English, ed. William Frost and Vinton A. Dearing (Los Angeles 1987) pp. 137–266. 38 Seneca, Ep. Mor. 86. 15: ‘non agricolas docere uoluit, sed legentes delectare’. 39 The literature on this topic is vast, but see, for example, Christine G. Perkell, The Poet's Truth: A Study of the Poet in Virgil's Georgics (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1989); Monica Gale, Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius, and the Didactic Tradition (Cambridge 2001); Llewelyn Morgan, Patterns of Redemption in Virgil's Georgics (Cambridge 1999). 40 Paradise Lost, ed. Alistair Fowler (London 1968; rev. 1997). 41 The Poems of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold Williams, 2nd edn., 3 vols. (Oxford 1958) i. 236–9, vv. 1–4. 42 Gay: Poetry and Prose, i. 203–7. 43 Prince Arthur V. 823–4. See further Norman Ault, ‘Pope and “England's Arch-Poet”’, Review of English Studies, 19 (1943) pp. 376–85. The couplet is itself a sycophantic recasting of Aeneid, 6. 791–2, where Anchises points out the future Augustus to Aeneas: ‘hic uir, hic est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis, | Augustus Caesar’. Gay casts it anew, and in doing so points to Blackmore's clumsiness. 44 It held similar connotations for Fielding. In May 1740, writing in the Champion, he recorded the proceedings of an imaginary trial, at which the Poet Laureate Colley Cibber is arraigned on a charge of murdering the English language. The clinching piece of evidence comes from Cibber's servant, who describes his behaviour on a journey: ‘And so my lord, we came to an Inn, and I observed the prisoner reading something that was written on the window, and crying out, That will do, an excellent Thing for my Book, stap my Vitals!’ Fielding was later to transform the conceit by prefacing Tom Jones with a Bill of Fare – not disdaining ‘to borrow Wit or Wisdom from any many who is capable of lending us either’. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, ed. Martin C. Battestin and Fredson Bowers (Oxford 1974) I/i, p. 32. 45 See Copley and Haywood, ‘Luxury, Refuse and Poetry’, passim. 46 Laroon also features a prostitute and a celebrated procuress, Madam Creswell – a further indication of the widespread association between prostitution and walking the streets. See Sean Shesgreen (ed.), The Criers and Hawkers of London: Engravings and Drawings by Marcellus Laroon (Stanford 1990) pp. 176–9. 47 The Poems of Jonathan Swift, iii. 951–2. 48 Journal to Stella, ed. Harold Williams, 2 vols. (Oxford 1948) i. 581, 13 Dec. 1712. 49 The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy. By a Lady (London 1747) p. 53. 50 This is another conceit developed by Fielding. In The Author's Farce (1730), he shows a publisher, Bookweight, talking business with Index, a writer: ‘BOOKWEIGHT. What's here? – For adapting the Motto of Risum teneatis Amici to a dozen Pamphlets – at Six Pence per each – six shillings. For Omnia vincit amor & nos cedamus Amori – Six Pence. For Difficilie est Satyram non scribere – Six Pence. Hum, hum, hum – ah – a Sum Total, for Thirty Six Latin Mottos, Eighteen Shillings; ditto English Seven, One Shilling and Nine Pence; ditto Greek Four, One Shilling – Why, Friend, are your Latin Mottos dearer than your Greek?’ Plays, vol. i: 1728–1731, ed. Thomas Lockwood (Oxford 2004) pp. 185–296: 248 (II. v). 51 Ovid's Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books, Translated by the most Eminent Hands (London 1717) p. 548. Gay was one of the contributors to this volume, assembled by Samuel Garth. 52 Philip Francis, The Odes, Epodes, and Carmen Seculare of Horace. In Latin and English. With Critical Notes Collected from his Best Latin and French Commentators, 2 vols. (London 1743) ii. 149–51. 53 The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, vol. iv: A Proposal for Correcting the English Tongue, Polite Conversation, Etc., ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford 1957) pp. 3–21: 16. 54 See Pat Rogers, Grub Street: Studies in a Subculture (London 1972) pp. 152–5. © The Author, 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Cambridge Quarterly. All rights reserved. For permissions please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
TI - Virgil, Horace, and Gay's Art of Walking the Streets
JF - The Cambridge Quarterly
DO - 10.1093/camqtly/bfp016
DA - 2009-12-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/virgil-horace-and-gay-s-art-of-walking-the-streets-h5EWvGkIsE
SP - 338
EP - 367
VL - 38
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -