Lewkenor’s poetry · Coryat’s Crudities · 1611
Old Wormy Age: Lewkenor, Coryat and the Wits of Prince Henry’s Court
The care and toil was his, thine are the gains,
Crack then the nut, and take the kernel for thy pains.
Lewes Lewkenor, verse prefixed to Coryat’s Crudities (1611).
The Master of the Ceremonies joins the poets: a traveller’s book, a courtly roast and a goose-quill raised against the wonders of antiquity.
Lewes Lewkenor’s contribution to Coryat’s Crudities: Hastily Gobled up in Five Moneths Travells is a panegyric with its tongue firmly in its cheek. Thomas Coryat of Odcombe had travelled through France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. On his return, he turned his observations into a substantial book and became the subject of a collective exercise in extravagant praise.
The book was dedicated to Henry, Prince of Wales. Its preliminary verses brought together poets, courtiers and men of learning, including John Donne, Ben Jonson, John Harington, Inigo Jones and Lewkenor. They did not stint on ribbing Coryat’s self-importance. His journey could be celebrated as a modern epic, while his clothes, appetite, adventures and personal cleanliness supplied the jokes.
Lewes takes his start from the classical world of Apuleius, Midas and Io. He affords Coryat the honour of having laid these old stories to rest with his endeavours. Tom’s travel book has surpassed them all—as Apollo’s music surpassed Pan’s squeaking reeds. The praise grows so large that it becomes impossible to take at face value.
The complete poem
The verse is introduced in the 1611 book by “Incipit Ludovicus Lewknor” and ends with the corresponding “Explicit”. Spelling and punctuation are modernised below.
Old wormy age that in thy musty writs
Of former fools records the present wits,
Tell us no more the tale of Apuleius’ ass,
Nor Midas’ ears, nor Io eating grass.
This work of Tom’s so far them all exceeds,
As Phoebus’ fiddle did Pan’s squeaking reeds.
He writes not of a gnat, nor frog, nor woodcock’s bill,
Of steeples, towns, and towers, entreats his goose’s quill.
Among the rest he of a wondrous tub doth tell,
The wine whereof more poets made than Tempe’s well.
In Odcomb’d Tom’s regard the Cyclops’ herds were thin,
Our Tom quick cattle fed whole legions on his skin.
So did poor bare philosophers in former times,
And so do poets now that make the lousy rhymes.
Five months with this in childbirth lay Tom’s labouring Muse,
In all which time he seldom changed his shirt or shoes.
The care and toil was his, thine are the gains,
Crack then the nut, and take the kernel for thy pains.
Lewes Lewkenor, Coryat’s Crudities (London: William Stansby, 1611), preliminary “Panegyricke Verses”. Read the original printed pages.
“Old wormy age”
The opening addresses antiquity itself. Old age has preserved its records in musty writings, but a new traveller now demands attention. Lewkenor turns the usual appeal to classical authority upside down: stop telling us about those ancient marvels, he says, and read Tom instead.
The compliment is immediately mischievous. “Former fools” are set against “present wits”, while the supposedly superseded stories are among the most famous transformations in classical literature. The modern book is promoted through the very learning it pretends to displace.
Apuleius’ ass, Midas’ ears and Io eating grass
Apuleius’ Golden Ass tells of a traveller whose pursuit of magical knowledge turns him into an ass. The animal transformation belongs to the same imaginative world as Bottom’s metamorphosis in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The traveller seeks marvels and becomes one himself.
Midas and Io bring Ovid into the company. Midas receives an ass’s ears after judging Pan’s music superior to Apollo’s. Io is transformed into a cow. Lewkenor compresses these elaborate stories into a brisk comic inventory: ass, ears, grass.
The next couplet continues the musical contest. “Phoebus’ fiddle” domesticates Apollo’s instrument, while “Pan’s squeaking reeds” reduce his rival to an inferior performer. Tom’s superiority is announced in the language of a contest whose foolish judge has just been mentioned.
Apuleius, Ovid and the literature of marvels were familiar territory for the translator of The Spanish Mandeville of Miracles. Here the material is handled with the speed and assurance of a courtly joke.
The goose’s quill and the wondrous tub
Coryat’s subject is the visible world: steeples, towns and towers. Lewkenor contrasts these with the small creatures of literary invention. Yet the grandeur of the journey is deflated by the instrument used to describe it. The great traveller writes with a goose’s quill.
Then comes the “wondrous tub”: the enormous wine cask at Heidelberg described in Coryat’s travels. Its wine has made more poets than the sacred waters of classical inspiration. The drinker’s fluency takes the place of the poet’s divine gift.
The movement is characteristic of the whole poem. A claim to greatness is made and then pulled down to earth. The joke depends upon the reader hearing both levels at once: Coryat’s observations are worth reading, and his grandeur is worth puncturing.
“Whole legions on his skin”
The Cyclops’ herds lead to Tom’s own “quick cattle”—living creatures carried on his body. His flocks are lice. Ancient pastoral abundance becomes a traveller’s infestation.
Lewkenor extends the joke to poor philosophers and poets. “Lousy rhymes” can now be heard in two senses, joining the quality of the verse to the creatures occupying the writer. The literary company is drawn into the same bodily comedy as the man it praises.
The poem ends the inventory with the five-month pregnancy of Tom’s labouring Muse. His book is delivered after a journey during which he has scarcely changed his shirt or shoes. Classical inspiration, childbirth and dirty linen arrive in the same couplet.
Prince Henry and the company of wits
The mock commendations belong to the culture of Prince Henry’s court: literary performance, learned allusion and competitive wit. Coryat becomes the occasion on which each contributor can display his own invention.
Lewkenor’s poem appears immediately after John Harington’s. Harington had already contributed verses to Lewkenor’s Commonwealth and Government of Venice. The two men now appear together as contributors to another writer’s book. The circle visible in Lewkenor’s own preliminaries extends into the company assembled around Coryat.
This is Lewkenor in a different register from the formal dispatch or the description of a republic. He can make a poem out of an ass, a fiddle, a goose-quill, a wine barrel and a crop of lice. The court officer who manages dignified receptions is also at home in irreverent literary company.
“The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise”
The closing couplet affords Coryat credit for the labour, then hands the reward to his reader. The care and toil belong to Tom; the gains are ours. Crack the shell of the book and take the kernel.
Placed beside the close of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 38, the division of work and benefit is striking:
If my slight Muse do please these curious days,
The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 38.
Both couplets turn on the relationship between the writer’s labour and another person’s gain. Lewkenor gives the reader a nut to crack; the sonnet gives the recipient the praise produced by the poet’s effort.
In All’s Well That Ends Well, Lafeu uses the nut in the opposite sense when he dismisses Parolles:
There can be no kernel in this light nut; the soul of this man is his clothes.
Lafeu, All’s Well That Ends Well, II.v.
Parolles offers a fine exterior without substance. Coryat’s book, for all the jokes about its author, offers a kernel worth extracting. Lewkenor’s final instruction leaves the reader with something to do.
The traveller and the listener
Lewkenor’s Venetian introduction had already distinguished useful travel from its empty display. He describes his pleasure in listening to an experienced traveller:
Especially if they come from the mouth of a wise and well speaking traveller, to whose tongue I could willingly endure to have mine ears inclined, while he distilleth into them the sweet liquors that he hath industriously extracted out of the painful fruits of his foreign travel.
Lewkenor, The Commonwealth and Government of Venice (1599), address to the reader; spelling modernised.
The distinction runs through the Coryat poem. The traveller may invite laughter, but his labour has yielded observations the reader can use. The pleasure lies in taking both together: the account of foreign places and the character of the man who went to see them.
From “Sweet Lewes” to “Old Wormy Age”
In 1594 Robert Dallington had urged Lewkenor to leave the wars and remain with the Muses. His friends were waiting for more:
And rest not here, but still run on, we longing are for more.
Great are thy gifts, yet give us still, thou lessenest not thy store.
Robert Dallington, commendatory verse to Lewkenor’s The Resolved Gentleman (1594); spelling modernised.
“Old Wormy Age” gives us Lewkenor returning the compliment to another writer. He had received praise for arms, languages and style; now he takes his own place among the poets writing for Coryat. The friends, books and entertainments belong to one continuing literary life.
Sources
Thomas Coryat, Coryat’s Crudities (London: William Stansby, 1611), preliminary “Panegyricke Verses”: Lewkenor’s complete poem and the adjacent contribution by John Harington. Boston Public Library copy.
Lewes Lewkenor, The Commonwealth and Government of Venice (1599), address to the reader and Harington’s commendatory poem; The Resolved Gentleman (1594), Dallington’s commendation.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 38; All’s Well That Ends Well, II.v; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, III.i. Apuleius, Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass; Ovid, Metamorphoses, Books I and XI.
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