A Question about John Pomfret

 

Pomfret’s “The Choyce” is appended.  Numbers in brackets refer to endnotes, those in parentheses to lines of the poem.  I have here been somewhat casual with the proprieties expected in quasi-scholarly writing.  See note following the essay.  

 

     The novice world traveler is likely at first to make it a point to stop by those sites already over-familiar from a thousand pictures: the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, but later trips may turn to neighborhoods and parklands that attract fewer visitors.  The reader has a parallel experience.  One can only once read for the first time the Iliad or Quixote or Rabelais or Hamlet, and the experience is wondrous and staggering, yet, having encountered such grand prospects, one wishes at times to wander in less-frequented purlieus of literature where the pleasures may be less potent but offer instead a certain piquant novelty.

     A bookish flâneur, I sought just such a mental excursion by reviewing a few passages in what is surely one of the finest works of general applied criticism, Dr. Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets.  While his theory may be creaky, Johnson’s taste is generally on the mark, and, more than many old critics, he provides evidence for his reactions.  I determined to simply select at random a poet of whom I was wholly ignorant and have a look to see what Johnson saw in him (all fifty-two if Johnson’s choices are men).

    One of the poets whose names meant nothing to me, but whom Johnson considered important, drew my attention.  Johnson’s account of John Pomfret runs less than a page but includes a startling claim: “Perhaps no composition in our language has been oftener perused than Pomfret's Choice.”  Pronouncing a well-formulated dictum (as was his habit) that expresses skepticism of the poet’s worth, Johnson then declares “He pleases many; and he who pleases many must have some species of merit.”  Even the word “peruse,” the reader realizes, had been chosen to suggest a more casual engagement the reader requires from “great” literature. 

     Johnson’s observation about Pomfret’s popularity is substantiated by the fact that his works went through sixteen editions during the eighteenth century.  In a magisterial tone, Johnson accounts for the poet’s popularity by the patronizing comment that he “has been always the favourite of that class of readers, who, without vanity or criticism, seek only their own amusement.” 

     Johnson was not alone in feeling that the poet enjoyed more prestige than sophisticated readers would think he deserved.  In 1753 Theophilus Cibber noted those who held Pomfret’s work “in very great esteem” were specifically the “common” readers, “people of inferior life” who appreciate the fact that “there is little force of thinking in his writings” as that makes the poems “level to the capacities of those who admire them.” [1]  The ambiguity of Pomfret’s standing is evident in Southey’s question in 1807: "Why is Pomfret the most popular of the English poets? The fact is certain, and the solution would be useful.” [2]  Leigh Hunt’s “The Choice” (1823) imitates Pomfret, but Hunt opens by calling his model “trivial” and his poem “A pretty kind of -- sort of -- kind of thing.”

    The poem that “sort of” inspired Hunt was Pomfret’s most popular composition, “The Choyce,” a piece in  heroic couplets outlining an idealized life plan in retirement from London in  a country estate.   The poem had an impeccable pedigree, with influence from Horace, as well as sharing its theme with other respected poems such as Cowley’s “The Wish.”

    The sentiments Pomfret expressed in the poem were far from original; they emphasized moderation and temperance in all things, “not little, nor too great” (6), the old ideal of nothing in excess, μηδὲν ἄγαν as the oracle once put it.  [3]  the writer wishes only for what is “Useful, Necessary, Plain,” (10) which to him must include “a Clear and Competent Estate,/ That I might live Genteelly, but not Great.”  Eschewing “The needless Pomp of gawdy Furniture” he will feed on “healthful, not luxurious Dishes” .  Pomfret spends fourteen lines assuring his reader that he would  not drink too much (53-64).  Rather, he would enjoy books of “the Noblest Authors,” both ancient and modern, dispense charity so that “the Sons of Poverty” might not “Repine” “Too much at Fortune.”  He describes his chosen friends at length, using balanced  periods to reaffirm that they, too, follow “the middle way,” as they are, for instance, “Merry, but not Light” (82), “Close in Dispute, but not tenacious”(88), “Not Quarrelsom, but Stout enough to Fight” (93).  The reader feels something of the sensation of riding a see-saw.

     In an even longer passage (98-139), Pomfret describes his ideal female company, some “Modest-Fair” from whom he may obtain “Fresh Vital Heat” [3].  She, too, is the soul of temperance.

 

No Fear, but only to be proud, or base:

Quick to advise by an Emergence prest,

To give good Counsel, or to take the best.

I'd have th' Expressions of her Thoughts be such,

She might not seem Reserv'd, nor talk too much;

That shows a want of Judgment, and of Sense:

More than enough, is but Impertinence.        (114-120)          

 

In spite of her exemplary character, he would see her only “seldom” and “with Moderation,” “For highest Cordials all their Virtue lose,/ By a too frequent, and too bold an use” (137).

     With his strong allegiance to social norms, he is, of course, patriotic and willing to serve.

 

T' oblige my Country, or to serve my King,

Whene'er they call'd, I'd readily afford,

My Tongue, my Pen, my Counsel, or my Sword. (143-145)

 

     He anticipates preparation for death and the aid of “Some kind Relation” (157) to take over his affairs “While I did for a better State prepare” (159).  His life plan is so emphatically mainstream that he feels confident that, given the choice, “All Men wou'd wish to live and dye like me” (167).  Far from the Romantic idea of representing himself as a distinct and idiosyncratic genius, he is guided by the neo-Classical ideal familiar from  Pope’s Essay on Criticism: “What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.” 

    While writers who retread familiar ground may expect, at least at first, a greater readership than those that strike out in new directions, it remains difficult to imagine a writer who so definitively fulfills every reader expectation, who affirms every received idea so perfectly as to become a veritable prince of mediocrity, yet this is Johnson’s explanation of Pomfret’s popularity.  By  definition the bulk of the writing of any age is fundamentally “ordinary,” yet some authors, it seems, please their readers by paradoxically excelling at ordinariness.  For over a hundred years Pomfret was praised and admired for his perfect rendition of the average, the expectable, reassuring readers of their perspicuity and good taste by endorsing their idées reçues.  While his secret for besting dozens of other predictable writers may remain elusive, once he had become popular, his position would naturally reinforce itself.  Just as some of today’s bourgeoises might show they are au courant having attended the most popular Broadway shows, in Pomfret’s day and for a good while after, they could do so by demonstrating familiarity with his work. 

     Some authors’ popularity is more easily explicable: Amy Lowell, Vachel Lindsay, Allen Ginsberg, and Dylan Thomas were public characters who sometimes behaved extravagantly.  In a time when fewer people read poetry, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and Leonard Cohen won fame by casting their poetry in the genre of popular music.  Perhaps the closest parallel to Pomfret’s celebrity may be found in writers like Edgar Guest, Joyce Kilmer, Ted Kooser, and Billy Collins [4] who have proven comforting and highly digestible to large numbers of readers.  Each of them, like Pomfret, satisfies readers by affirming the correctness of their preconceptions in easy and competent verse.

 

 

1.  Theophilus Cibber, “The Life of the Revd. Mr. John Pomfret,” in The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland vol. III.

2.  Robert Southey, Specimens of Later English Poets, I, 91.

3.  This passage of the poem proved controversial.  Johnson says that, just as Pomfret was about to assume an ecclesiastical “living,” a “malicious” informant delayed his departure, alleging that “The Choyce” suggested a mistress was preferable to a wife.  Remaining in the city to answer the charge, Pomfret (who was himself married) contracted smallpox and died. 

4.  A dramatic example is the synthetic Rumi composed using other English versions by Coleman Barks which proved immensely popular in the 1990s, offering contemporary Americans a Sufism in which they felt instantly at home..  

 

 

An apologia

     The modest liberties of tone I have here allowed myself may seem out of place in a commentary with any scholarly pretensions.  Academic essays are usually written in a rigid form, sometimes betraying an anxious effort to appear learned, sometimes to sound scientific.  Inspired once by a lecture from William Arrowsmith about a French T. S. Eliot poem which he cast as a dialogue among recognizable faculty types, published then as “Eros in Terre Haute: T. S. Eliot’s ‘Lune de Miel’”,  I once proposed a session of conference papers which had in common deviation from the standard thesis-proof format.  None were submitted. 

     I consider this piece pure recreation, though the reader might object that everything I write could be so described.  Opening with a reflection on tourism, I stroll off into a text of Dr. Johnson, finding my way then into Pomfret with divigations toward Horace, Cowley, and others.  To me the exercise constitutes a sort bracing mental dérive, to use the Situationist term.

 

 

 

The Choyce

 

If Heav'n the grateful Liberty wou'd give,
That I might chuse my Method how to live:
And all those Hours propitious Fate shou'd lend,
In blissful Ease and Satisfaction spend.
Near some fair Town I'd have a private Seat,
Built Uniform, not little, nor too great:
Better, if on a rising Ground it stood,
Fields on this side, on that a Neighb'ring Wood.
It shou'd within no other Things contain,
But what are Useful, Necessary, Plain:                            10
Methinks, 'tis Nauseous, and I'd ne'er endure
The needless Pomp of gawdy Furniture:
A little Garden, grateful to the Eye,
And a cool Rivulet run Murmuring by:
On whose delicious Banks a stately Row
Of shady Lymes, or Sycamores, shou'd grow.
At th' end of which a silent Study plac'd,
Shou'd with the Noblest Authors there be grac'd.
Horace and Virgil, in whose mighty Lines,
Immortal Wit, and solid Learning Shines.                           20
Sharp Iuvenal, and am'rous Ovid too,
Who all the turns of Loves soft Passion knew:
He, that with Judgment reads his Charming Lines,
In which strong Art, with stronger Nature joyns,
Must grant, his Fancy do's the best Excel:
His Thoughts so tender, and exprest so well;
With all those Moderns, Men of steady Sense,
Esteem'd for Learning, and for Eloquence:
In some of These, as Fancy shou'd advise,
I'd always take my Morning Exercise.                                   30
For sure, no Minutes bring us more Content,
Than those in pleasing useful Studies spent.
I'd have a Clear and Competent Estate,
That I might live Genteelly, but not Great.
As much as I cou'd moderately spend,
A little more sometimes t'oblige a Friend.
Nor shou'd the Sons of Poverty Repine
Too much at Fortune, they shou'd taste of Mine;
And all that Objects of true Pity were,
Shou'd be reliev'd with what my Wants cou'd spare;        40
For what our Maker has too largely giv'n,
Shou'd be return'd in gratitude to Heav'n.
A frugal Plenty shou'd my Table spread,
With healthful, not luxurious Dishes, fed:
Enough to satisfy, and something more
To feed the Stranger, and the Neighb'ring Poor.
Strong Meat indulges Vice, and pampering Food
Creates Diseases, and inflames the Blood.
But what's sufficient to make Nature Strong,
And the bright Lamp of Life continue long,                          50
I'd freely take, and as I did possess
The bounteous Author of my Plenty bless.
I'd have a little Cellar, Cool, and Neat,
With Humming Ale, and Virgin Wine Repleat.
Wine whets the Wit, improves its Native Force,
And gives a pleasant Flavour to Discourse;
By making all our Spirits Debonair,
Throws off the Lees, the Sedement of Care.
But as the greatest Blessing Heaven lends
May be debauch'd, and serve ignoble Ends;                       60
So, but too oft, the Grapes refreshing Juice,
Does many mischievous Effects produce.
My House, shou'd no such rude Disorders know,
As from high Drinking consequently flow.
Nor wou'd I use what was so kindly giv'n,
To the dishonour of Indulgent Heav'n.
If any Neighbour came he shou'd be free,
Us'd with respect, and not Uneasy be,
In my Retreat, or to himself, or me.
What Freedom, Prudence, and Right Reason give,       70
All Men, may with Impunity receive:
But the least swerving from their Rules too much;
For what's forbidden Us, 'tis Death to touch.
That Life might be more comfortable yet,
And all my Joys refin'd, sincere and great,
I'd chuse two Friends, whose Company wou'd be
A great Advance to my Felicity.
Well born, of Humours suited to my own;
Discreet, and Men as well as Books have known.
Brave, Gen'rous, Witty, and exactly free                         80
From loose Behaviour, or Formality.
Airy, and Prudent, Merry, but not Light,
Quick in discerning, and in Judging Right;
Secret they shou'd be, faithful to their Trust,
In Reasoning Cool, Strong, Temperate and Just.
Obliging, Open, without huffing, Brave;
Brisk in gay Talking, and in sober Grave.
Close in Dispute, but not tenacious, try'd
By solid Reason, and let that decide;
Not prone to Lust, Revenge, or envious Hate;              90
Nor busy Medlers with Intrigues of State.
Strangers to Slander, and sworn Foes to spight,
Not Quarrelsom, but Stout enough to Fight:
Loyal and Pious, Friends to Caesar true
As dying Martyrs to their Maker too.
In their Society I cou'd not miss,
A permanent, sincere, substantial Bliss.
Wou'd bounteous Heav'n once more indulge, I'd chuse
(For, who wou'd so much Satisfaction lose,
As Witty Nymphs in Conversation give)                      100
Near some obliging Modest-Fair to live;
For there's that sweetness in a Female Mind,
Which in a Man's we cannot find;
That by a secret, but a pow'rful Art,
Winds up the Spring of Life, and do's impart
Fresh Vital Heat to the transported Heart.
I'd have her Reason, and her Passions sway,
Easy in Company, in private Gay.
Coy to a Fop, to the Deserving free,
Still constant to her self, and just to me.                   110
A Soul she shou'd have for great Actions fit,
Prudence, and Wisdom to direct her Wit.
Courage to look bold danger in the Face,
No Fear, but only to be proud, or base:
Quick to advise by an Emergence prest,
To give good Counsel, or to take the best.
I'd have th' Expressions of her Thoughts be such,
She might not seem Reserv'd, nor talk too much;
That shows a want of Judgment, and of Sense:
More than enough, is but Impertinence.                   120
Her Conduct Regular, her Mirth refin'd,
Civil to Strangers, to her Neighbours kind.
Averse to Vanity, Revenge, and Pride,
In all the Methods of Deceit untry'd:
So faithful to her Friend, and good to all,
No Censure might upon her Actions fall.
Then wou'd ev'n Envy be compell'd to say,
She goes the least of Womankind astray.
To this fair Creature I'd sometimes retire,
Her Conversation wou'd new Joys inspire,               130
Give Life an Edge so keen, no surly Care
Wou'd venture to assault my Soul, or dare
Near my Retreat to hide one secret Snare.
But so Divine, so Noble a Repast,
I'd seldom, and with Moderation taste.
For highest Cordials all their Virtue lose,
By a too frequent, and too bold an use;
And what would cheer the Spirits in distress,
Ruins our Health when taken to Excess.
I'd be concern'd in no litigious Jarr,                          140
Belov'd by all, not vainly popular:
Whate'er Assistance I had power to bring
T' oblige my Country, or to serve my King,
Whene'er they call'd, I'd readily afford,
My Tongue, my Pen, my Counsel, or my Sword.
Law Suits I'd shun with as much Studious Care,
As I wou'd Dens, where hungry Lyons are;
And rather put up Injuries, than be
A Plague to him, who'd be a Plague to me.
I value Quiet, at a Price too great,                           150
To give for my Revenge so dear a Rate:
For what do we by all our Bustle gain,
But counterfeit Delight for real Pain.
If Heav'n a date of many years wou'd give,
Thus I'd in Pleasure, Ease, and Plenty live.
And as I near approach'd the Verge of Life,
Some kind Relation (for I'd have no Wife)
Shou'd take upon him all my Worldly Care,
While I did for a better State prepare.
Then I'd not be with any trouble vext,                  160
Nor have the Evening of my Days perplext.
But by a silent, and a peaceful Death,
Without a Sigh, Resign my Aged Breath:
And when committed to the Dust, I'd have
Few Tears, but Friendly, dropt into my Grave.
Then wou'd my Exit so propitious be,
All Men wou'd wish to live and dye like me.