Reading Machiavelli; Writing Cromwell

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 35, 1 January 2002, Page 9

Timothy Raylor

Reading Machiavelli; Writing Cromwell

Edmund Waller s copy of ‘The prince’ and its draft verses towards ‘A panegyrick to my Lord Protector’

One of the many items that entered the Alexander Turnbull Library with the purchase of the C. W. Stuart collection in 1974 was a volume (Stuart 239-241) containing a Latin edition of Machiavelli’s The prince. Kathleen Coleridge noticed it in her 1980 catalogue of the Library’s Milton collection, where it appears under the entry for Vindiciae contra tyrannos (no. 437), often attributed to Hubert Languet, which is bound with the Machiavelli text.' Coleridge made only the briefest mention of the most important feature of the volume, the presence of‘manuscript verses on the end flyleaf, possibly by Edmund Waller, whose name appears on the front flyleaf. Her note was enough to attract the notice of Peter Beal, who drew attention to the verses in his Index of English literary manuscripts, accurately describing them as ‘Unpublished. Autograph draft verses, untitled, comprising sixteen lines in all, with deletions and repetitions’." These draft verses afford us a rare glimpse into the workshop of a major earlymodern author. What lends them an even stronger claim to our attention is that they turn out, upon examination, to be early efforts toward Waller’s single most important poem, his controversial Panegyrick to the Lord Protector, Cromwell, of 1655. Nor does the interest of the Stuart volume end here: Waller read his copy of The prince with great care, marking up passages of particular resonance to England’s constitutional crises of the mid-1650s.Stuart 239-241 is therefore an artefact of signal importance to the

history of reading as well as to the history of authorship. The two fields, moreover, intersect here because Waller’s reading of Machiavelli evidently helped to shape his understanding of Cromwell and thereby influenced his Panegyrick . ’

This paper has two aims. The first is to examine the poet’s markings on his copy of The prince in order to understand the kind of advice Waller sought from Machiavelli at this critical moment in English constitutional history. The second is to analyse the draft verses, determining their date of composition and attempting to glean from them a clear understanding of the origins of A panegyrick to my Lord Protector in particular and fresh information about Waller’s habits of composition in general.

Waller’s copy of The prince is an edition of the Latin translation {Princeps) by Sylvestre Tellio first published in 1560. It was published by Petrus Perna of Basel in 1580. 4 Its full title is:

Nicolai Machiavelli Princeps. Ex Sylvestri Telii Fulginatis traductione diligenter emendata. Adiecta sunt eiusdem argumenti, aliorum quorundam contra Machiavellum scripta de potestate & officio principum, & contra tyrannos.

In this edition, the text of Princeps (pp.l-195) is followed (pp. 196-264) by texts of the orations of Maecenas for and Agrippa against monarchy from book lii of Cassius Dio’s Roman history. 5 The separately paginated supplement (not present in all exemplars) has its own title page dated 1580, and was probably issued by the same press. It contains the notorious Vindiciae contra tyrannos (pp. 1-205) and the De iure magistratuum of Theodore de Beze (pp.[2o6]-303). 6 It was a common format. 7

In addition to making marginal marks in the text of The prince , Waller wrote on both front and rear flyleaves. On the recto of the front flyleaf he signed his name seven times—experimenting with the form of his signature before halting, apparently satisfied, with an elaborately knotted initial ‘E’. Turning the volume over, he scribbled some words and phrases at the top (in reality, the foot) of the page, ‘ingenuity / ingenuiti’, followed by what looks like an attempt to recall —or perhaps to draft—some Latin verses on Julius Caesar: ‘quilibet arte potest / quantus erat / lulius / Habeo careo euro’. On the verso of the second back flyleaf he disingenuously inscribed the pious self-admonition ‘his vt resistam / non vt vtar’ (‘in order to resist them, not in order to use them ’) —a phrase perhaps designed to cover both of the texts here printed, and which reflects a rather old-fashioned view, common in the late Tudor and early Stuart period, of Machiavelli as ‘Machevil’. 8 At the foot of this flyleaf he has pencilled an abbreviated signature (‘Ed wa’) and the date ‘1654’.

If the 1832 sale catalogue of the library at Hall Barn, Waller’s family seat, is a reliable guide, the poet was an avid collector of editions of Machiavelli, owning two

Latin and one Italian editions of The prince (1578, 1599; 1584), a Latin edition of the Discourses (1588), and a collected works of 1550. 9 We do not know when Waller acquired the Stuart volume—although his scribbling of the date ‘1654’ might mark a date of acquisition, it seems more likely to mark the date of the handwritten entries. How he came by the book is also a mystery. A provenance inscription at the foot of the front flyleaf recto —not in Waller’s hand —indicates that the volume was purchased from the library of Grunrad (‘ex Grunradiana Biblio= / theca emt[us].’). I take this to be the German Calvinist theologian Otto Griinrade or Grtinrodt (1545-1613). 10 Griinrade died at Heidelberg on 14/24 April 1613, just as the English embassy set off to escort Princess Elizabeth, now Electress Palatine, to her new home there. This provides numerous possible avenues by which the book might have reached Waller. First, Elizabeth was escorted by that indefatigable collector, Lord Arundel and his energetic assistants in acquisition, Inigo Jones and William Petty. Arundel and his entourage returned to England after an extensive tour of Italy laden with books, antiquities, paintings, and other curiosities. 11 Waller got to know him many years later when, in 1646, they were both living in exile in Padua. 12

Other lines of communication for printed materials between Heidelberg and London were opened by the English marriage in 1613: during the summer, pamphlets detailing the wedding festivities published at Heidelberg were dispatched to England. 13 Perhaps the most promising, though indirect, link between Waller in the 1650 s and

the Heidelberg of the 161 Os is provided by the de Caus brothers, the French engineers who undertook projects in hydraulics and garden design for the nobility and royalty of Europe. The older brother, Salomon, who had spent time at the court of Prince Henry, was based in Heidelberg from 1614-20, where he remodelled the Palatine gardens. I do not know if his younger brother, Isaac, accompanied him at this time, but in the middle 1630 s he landscaped the gardens at Wilton House for the Earl of Pembroke. 14 And here is a connection with Waller. In 1654, when the poet scribbled his name and the year on the second back flyleaf of Griinrade’s book and began to draft his verses on the front flyleaf, he was in close contact with a resident of Wilton, Christopher Wase, tutor to the young earl. Waller contributed commendatory verses to Wase’s 1654 translation of Gratius Faliscus’s Cynegeticon , and in the early 1650 s Wase evidently spent time with Waller at Beaconsfield. 15 Here, then, is another possible line of transmission for Griinrade’s copy of Machiavelli.

The marginal markings in ink and pencil used throughout The prince and its supplementary material tally with those characteristically employed by Waller in other volumes, namely *, x, +, and I, being employed, in ascending order, for passages of increasing length. 16 Waller does not usually underscore; such underscorings as appear in the volume are exclusively in its second part, the Vindiciae contra tyrannos, and seem to have been made by another hand, possibly that of Griinrade. 17

Waller’s annotations are limited to the marginal marking of portions of text which struck him as particularly worthy of note. They appear to have been made in four separate sittings: marks covering pages 2 to 37 (chapters ii-vi) are made in pencil; those from page 62 to page 74 (chapters viii-x) in ink; those from page 129 to page 182 (chapters xix-xxv) in pencil once again; and those to the extract from Cassius Dio, pages 218 and 223, once more in ink. We cannot be certain when they were made, but the date scribbled on the second back flyleaf, ‘1654’, pertains to the draft verses and seems a likely date also for the reading of The prince embodied in the poet’s markings.

The pious disavowal of Machiavelli on the first flyleaf of his copy of the 1580 edition is amply contradicted by the care and attention with which Waller read The prince. Waller’s markings show him to have been peculiarly intrigued by advice on the means whereby a non-hereditary ruler who has gained power on the basis of popular or military support should consolidate his rule by means of domestic strategies and foreign conquests. Such a focus suggests that Waller read The prince for lessons to apply to the political situation in England during the middle 16505: the years of Cromwell’s quest to consolidate and legitimate his ‘forced pow’r’. The contradiction between the pious disavowal and the careful annotation suggests that a work he may at first have regarded as a monstrous curiosity came to appear to him,

in the constitutional crisis of the 16505, as a source of valuable maxims for government by the sword. At his first sitting, Waller read chapters i-vi. His first marking is of the assertion in chapter n (‘Hereditary principalities’) that a hereditary ruler should always rest secure in his hold on power ‘unless some unusual force should remove him’—a maxim that no doubt prompted reflections upon the hapless Charles I. 18 Close attention to the text begins, however, with chapter in, in which Machiavelli demonstrates how the new ruler might guarantee his grip on power. Waller marks the passage noting the mistaken human tendency to assume that any change of ruler will improve one’s condition in life, and that noting the impossibility of the prince retaining the friendship of those who assisted him in seizing power (p. 4; p. 7). On a similar note, he marks the maxim that concludes the chapter: ‘avthorem alienee potently seipsvm perdere’ (p.2l)—‘anyone who enables another to become powerful, brings about his own ruin’ (p. 14).

In his marking up of Machiavelli’s third chapter, Waller is especially concerned with maxims for territorial expansion, presumably in search of solutions to the problem of how to govern the newly conquered Scotland—a reading of Machiavelli paralleled by that of Marchamont Nedham in Mercurius politicus 19 and James Harrington in The common-wealth of Oceana , on which he was working at this time. 20 Waller marks several passages concerned with the right way of dealing with that most difficult of territories to retain, the one which (like Scotland) has its own language, customs, and institutions. He notes the warning that if one is not to caress

a people one must crush them, to avoid the possibility of revenge (p. 10; p. 9), and also the comment that the best way to hold a conquered territory is to go and live there (p. 7; p.B). But he is more impressed by Machiavelli’s recommendation of the alternative policy, that of colonial rule, marking up the observation that it is a system which offends few of the native inhabitants (p. 9; p. 9), as well as by the Florentine’s ringing endorsement of Roman colonialism (p. 12; p. 10). Finally, in considering Machiavelli’s discussion in the following chapter of why some conquered territories may be held without too much difficulty, Waller is attracted to his division of principalities into those, like the Ottoman empire, governed by a single ruler assisted by his dependents, and those, like France, in which the monarch is circumscribed by an independently powerful nobility (pp. 22-3; p. 15). One assumes that he was thinking of Scotland in the latter category, for the need to break the power of the Scottish nobility was a point which much exercised English thinking about Scotland at the time: indeed, Harrington was also to insist upon it in Oceana. 2 ' The general problem of the nobility, moreover, is a matter to which both Machiavelli and Waller return in chapter ix.

It is hardly surprising that a reader of Machiavelli in Cromwellian England should be particularly intrigued by chapter vi, which considers ‘New principalities acquired by one’s own arms and ability’. Here Waller marks the assertion ‘Qui horum exemplo virtutis ductu ad imperii procurationem evehuntur, labore rerum potiuntur quidem, at partum summa facilitate possident’ (p.33)—‘Those who, like them, become rulers through their own abilities, experience difficulty in attaining power, but once that is achieved, they keep it easily’ (p. 20). He notes also the dangers and uncertainties attendant upon constitutional change (p. 34; p. 20), and highlights the claim that the successful ruler of this sort should be able to impose his will through force, and not be entirely reliant upon his abilities of persuasion, on account of the fickleness of the people (p. 35; p. 21). Of particular resonance for Waller is Machiavelli’s concluding exemplum, that of Hiero, a strikingly Cromwellian figure, who rose from private citizenship through the army to be elected king of Syracuse. Waller marks the comments on Hiero, which observe that he was a man of whom it was written: ‘nihil ad regnandum illi defuisse praster regnum asserant’ (‘the only thing he lacked to be a ruler was a kingdom’), that he had disbanded and reformed the army, had abandoned old alliances and formed fresh ones, and that it was, therefore, ‘very difficult for him to attain power, but not to keep it’ (‘Sic ut adeptio, magno: possessia, nullo ei steterit labore’) (p. 37; p. 22).

At his second sitting, Waller read through chapters viii-ix —in which Machiavelli considers those who have gained principalities either through wicked means or by favour of their fellow citizens —and chapter x, which considered the relative strength of a regime. Waller is especially interested in the Italian’s enumeration of the various difficulties which attend the non-hereditary ruler in his quest to consolidate power. In chapter vm, which examines the uses of wickedness, Waller notices the advice that

he who is obliged to commit atrocities should do so rapidly, at a single swoop, after the manner of Agathocles the Sicilian who slaughtered the senate of Syracuse on one morning. The point here being that this gave less cause for resentment than had such an act been undertaken piecemeal over a long period; acts of generosity should, by contrast, be doled out sparingly (pp. 62-3; p. 33). It is surely significant to his understanding of Cromwell, however, that Waller is more interested in chapter ix, in which Machiavelli turns to those who have gained power through public favour. He emphasises the distinction between those who have risen through the support of the nobility from those who have done so through the people, and registers Machiavelli’s comment that the latter are more strongly placed than the former. The people can only desert a leader they have chosen and need therefore only to be kept well disposed; the nobility, by contrast, may not only abandon a ruler they have set up, they may also decide to move against him, and Waller marks Machiavelli’s insistence on the need to keep close watch on such as do not commit themselves to one’s rule (pp. 64-8; pp. 34-6). He notes also his insistence on the difficulties posed by public officials to the ruler who would turn a civil principality into an absolute regime (p. 70; p.37)—an indication of the direction in which Waller’s attitude to Cromwell was moving.

The chapters that attracted Waller’s attention in his penultimate sitting (xix-xxv) are primarily concerned with the appropriate means for the consolidation of power, through the management of factional interest and the manufacture of public image. Chapter xix assesses ‘How contempt and hatred should be avoided’. Here Waller emphasises the ruler’s need for good troops and reliable allies to counter external threats (p. 129 [‘229’]; p. 64) and his need to keep the populace contented in order to defuse the plotting of those who might imagine that his death would please the people (p. 130; p. 64). Waller’s interest is drawn above all by Machiavelli’s account of the problems endured by the Roman emperors, who had not only to deal with ambitious nobles and insolent people, but also with the army (p. 136; p.67)—a problem peculiar also to Cromwellian England. In addition to highlighting Machiavelli’s statement of the problem. Waller marks also the passage in which Machiavelli notes that most emperors tried to satisfy the soldiers, without worrying about the people, and that in which he justifies such a strategy by noting that a ruler is obliged to satisfy the most powerful interest group (p. 137; p. 67). Waller concludes his commentary on this chapter by highlighting the dicta ‘that good deeds as well as bad may incur hatred’ and that ‘a ruler who wishes to maintain his power is often forced to act immorally’ (p. 139; p. 68). Machiavelli gives an example of such behaviour in chapter xxi, citing Ferdinand of Aragon and Castile, who diverted his barons by conducting rapacious military campaigns under the guise of religion (p. 161; p. 77). Waller’s singling out of this passage is of interest in the context of the Cromwellian move towards imperial expansion, of which he was to be so keen a propagandist, in A panegyrick as in his later Cromwellian poems.

Waller’s interest in chapter xxi, which concerns ‘How a ruler should act in order to gain a reputation’, runs still deeper: he highlights several maxims concerning the need for the cultivation of an appropriate public image, such as the insistence that a prince must contrive all his actions to gain the esteem of a man of greatness and distinction: ‘in omni vitae suae ratione, famam existimationemque de se magni & excellentis viri excitet’ (p. 162; p. 77). He also notes several specific recommendations, including the suggestion that at certain times of year the people be diverted with games and spectacles, and his suggestion that the ruler perform acts that demonstrate his humanity and magnificence (p. 167; p. 79). And on the question of successful governorship, Waller draws from chapter xxiii (‘How flatterers should be shunned’) several lessons for the taking of counsel, noting the insistence that a ruler should seek to hear the truth from his advisers without appearing to be willing to listen to absolutely anybody (pp. 171-2; p. 81).

Waller is, finally, sufficiently impressed with the Italian’s diagnosis of the role of fate or fortune in human affairs in chapter xxv to highlight the passage in which Machiavelli asserts that ‘we are successful when our ways are suited to the times and circumstances’ (p. 85) —‘Ilium etiam felicem existimo, cuius in administrando consilia, temporum conditioni respondent’ (p. 181) —a passage which perhaps hovers behind Marvell’s assertion in The first anniversary of the Government under His Highness the Lord Protector : ‘lf these the times, then this must be the man’ (line 144). For, Machiavelli continues:

in the things that lead to the end that everyone aims at, that is, glory and riches, men proceed in different ways: one man cautiously, another impetuously; one man forcefully, another cunningly; one man patiently, another impatiently, and each of these different ways of acting can be effective, (pp.Bs-6)

Constat enim homines in ijs rebus, quibus ad finem deducuntur (quern finem ob oculos propositum habent, nempe gloriam & opes) non vna ratione deliberare. Nonnulli circumspecte quodam modo, alij impetu, complures vi, arte multi, sunt qui patienti animo, effraenato quam plurimi, & vnusquisque his modis inter se repugnantibus eo peruenire potest. Alterum praeterea e duobus alteris videmus vtrumque contrarijs studijs aequi felices fieri. 22 (p. 182)

Some sense of what Waller felt his own times called for may be gleaned from his highlighting in chapter xxi of the warning that the prince had better be a good judge of danger because there is no such thing as a safe policy (p. 166; p. 79), and also from his treatment of the work which follows Machiavelli’s in this edition.

Immediately following The prince are the orations supposed to have been delivered by Maecenas and Agrippa on being asked by Octavian whether he should

assume the crown, texts from Cassius Dio’s Roman history. In light of the eventual role played by A panegyrick in the campaign of Spring 1655 to press the crown upon the Protector, it is fascinating to find Waller marking up Maecenas’s advocacy of Octavian becoming king, or sole ruler under some other title, as the route to social and political order. 23 The passages he highlights are of great interest in the context of the English constitutional debates of the mid-16505. Waller focuses on Maecenas ’ s point that, by taking the throne, Octavian would be placing public affairs in the hands of those best able to manage them, so that the wisest would give council; those with military knowledge would give orders; and those with brawn and in need of money would fight. This rational, natural order, which prefers men of ‘virtu’, is contrasted (in another passage marked by Waller) with democracy, which enslaves the best element to the worst, thereby destroying both (p. 218; Dio, lii. 14). 24 Waller concludes his markings by highlighting Maecenas’s injunction that Octavian should not worry about giving the impression that he had deliberately sought the office of king: ‘etiamsi quis hoc de te suspicaretur, huiusmodi desiderium a natura humana alienum non est: honestaque sunt pro huiusmodi re pericula’ (p.223)—‘for even if men do suspect this, the ambition is not inconsistent with human nature and the risk involved is a noble one’ (Dio, lii. 18). Such passages bring us face to face with the Cromwell of the ‘Horatian Ode’ and the Second defence , restless for glory and fittest for command. 23 And it was from just such materials that Waller would fashion his own image of Cromwell in A panegyrick.

In recording his quest for topics and arguments to justify the necessitous tactics of the Protectorate, Edmund Waller’s copy of The prince testifies to the explanatory value of Machiavelli’s political philosophy for those who sought to convert rule by power into government by authority. It also shows the strong appeal of The prince to a reader of monarchical rather than republican leanings. That Waller’s reading involved radically different goals and assumptions from those we tend to associate with the Machiavellianism of the age shows that Florentine ideas were not the exclusive property of the classical republicans, and emphasises the extent to which the period was, in a sense even more complex than we have yet fathomed, a ‘Machiavellian moment’.

Waller’s draft verses are inscribed along the verticals on both recto and verso of the back flyleaf, working from joint to fore-edge on the recto and from fore-edge to joint on the verso. They comprise seven essays towards five or six different couplets (depending on whether one treats lines 1-2 and 11 -12 as variants of the same couplet or not) and, finally, a single phrase. In my transcription, deletions are placed in square brackets, conjectural readings in pointed brackets, and editorial queries and comments in italic within pointed brackets.

[back flyleaf recto, written along the vertical; Figure 3:] fower riuers Eden did adorne & guard but what are riuers to the sea compar’d Alcides so his conquer’d Lion grac’d [w ch batter’d w ,h his Club in Heau’n he placd] The feirce numaean, w ch in heau'n he plac’d 5

when we began to make our neibours feel<e? edge of leaf> our valour thay still bruisd our heele still this serpent bruis’d our heele [back flyleaf verso, written along the vertical; Figure 4:] when we tur<n>ed 26 head to make our neibours feile our valour still this serpent bruisd o r heele 10

Though (though their rise from Paradise thay boast w th other riuers in the sea are lost

Now may the English w th thayr canvas wings Fly through the world & visitt Eastern Kings

To calm wars rage & giue the ocean peace 15 more bownty is then to make tempests ceace

not a diuiding but a healing word

The overall order of composition is clear insofar as the verso commences with a fresh version of the third and final couplet of the recto, but the sequence within each side of the leaf is not immediately apparent. An examination of the layout, script, nib, and ink will allow us to reconstruct it.

Work began one third of the way down the recto (leaving sufficient space to prevent the knuckles from banging against the text block at the joint) with the couplet beginning ‘Alcides so’ (lines 3-5). This is amply spaced and neatly written with a sharpened, well-inked nib. Work continued below a large space (left to avoid some earlier markings on the leaf) with lines 6-8, the couplet beginning ‘when we began’. This is written in a much more rapid, careless hand with a nib that is similarly pointed but which is scarcely adequately inked. It may therefore have been written shortly after lines 3-5. The last addition to this leaf was the couplet crammed up against the

joint, lines 1-2. This is written less hurriedly than lines 6-8 but no more neatly: the shaky hand in which it is inscribed being a consequence of cramping by the text block. There is no notable difference in inking or nib width that would indicate inscription at a later date.

The lines on the verso appear to have been inscribed in the order in which they now stand; but differences in hand, ink, nib, and layout divide the text into different sections, suggesting composition at several times. The opening couplet (lines 9-10) forms one section, being generously spaced and relatively neatly (if hurriedly) written. This is then marked off with a line running the length of the leaf. Another section begins at line 12 and runs through to line 14; it comprises two couplets each marked off with short line. The spacing here is more cramped, the nib blunter and poorly inked, and the hand increasingly careless. Finally, lines 15-17 comprise a final block of text, exhibiting a freshly dipped but unsharpened nib, a hand even more careless and a spacing even more cramped (as the joint is approached) than those of the preceding lines. Material evidence does not determine whether these sections were written at widely different times or in several essays during a single sitting. Internal evidence suggests the former.

It does not require much historical imagination to determine the application of and therefore the immediate historical occasions of these verses. Lines 15-16 are concerned with a recent peace: a peace which concluded a successful war which had been fought on the ocean. From lines 6 and 9 it appears that this war had been waged with a neighbouring power, and from lines 13-14 it seems that, in consequence of its successful resolution, English ships were able to travel freely around the globe, in particular to the orient. There are few possible applications for such assertions.

Although one might number several neighbour states with whom England had conflicts during the 17th century, with few were such conflicts played out at sea, and with none save the United Provinces did the resolution of the dispute result in increased access to the orient and its rich trade. The question of which Anglo-Dutch war Waller is writing about is not hard to settle, there being only one that could conceivably be presented by a panegyrist of his tact and sophistication as a resounding victory. That Waller is writing on the conclusion of the first war of 165254 is supported by the pencilled date ‘ 1654’ on the second back flyleaf verso, and it is confirmed by two incidental details. First, by the allusion, implicit in the antithesis between the four rivers which protected Eden and the seas which protect England (lines 1-2) to the final cause of that dispute and to its successful resolution. Dutch refusal to recognise English sovereignty over the coastal waters known as the Four Seas (or the British Seas) led to the first skirmishes of the war, and one of the few undoubted triumphs of the Treaty of Westminster was Dutch acknowledgement of English sovereignty therein. 27 English sovereignty over the Four Seas was a topic of great concern to Waller, who took a keen interest in matters concerning trade and

shipping, as witnessed by his early poem ‘To the King, on his navy’. He also acquired Of the dominion, or, ownership of the sea —Marchamont Nedham’s translation of John Selden’s Mare clausum , the definitive statement of the English case for ownership —printed in 1652 ‘by the appointment of the Council of State’ after the outbreak of hostilities. 28

The second detail that confirms the First Anglo-Dutch War as the occasion of the poem is provided by the final phrase in the draft verses: ‘not a diuiding but a healing word’, which echoes the governing antithesis of Cromwell’s opening speech to his first Protectoral Parliament on 4 September 1654, in which the terms ‘divisions’ and ‘healing’ were uttered repeatedly (Abbott, hi, 435,438,441). These allusions appear therefore to give us a number of termini for the composition of the verses. Lines 13lb must have been composed some time around and most likely after the Treaty of Westminster in April—early May 1654, and line 17 must have followed Cromwell’s speech on 4 September. The material evidence suggests that lines 15-16 and 17 form a single unit and may all have been written after 4 September. Although we cannot discount the possibility that all of these verses were composed at a single sitting, during a retrospective review of Cromwell’s achievements after his opening of the Protectoral Parliament, it is perhaps questionable whether Waller would, by September, be quite so concerned as he is here with the events of April and May.

It seems clear, therefore, that these verses represent a series of essays towards a panegyric on the Protector, begun perhaps after the treaty with the Dutch and taken up again after the opening of the first Protectoral Parliament; but begun, in any case, long before the publication of Waller’s first poetic address to Cromwell, A panegyrick to my Lord Protector in late May 1655. 29 They therefore disprove George Thorn Drury’s claim that Waller’s panegyric (or a version of it) was in circulation as early as 1653, and they afford an insight into the origins and early stages of a poem that is at once Waller’s finest achievement and one of the most celebrated and controversial of 17th-century poems (WP n, 196). Together with the draft worksheet for Of a war with Spain, and a fight at sea , now in the Folger Shakespeare Library, they offer valuable evidence about the compositional techniques of a major 17th-century poet. 30

The verses look as though they were intended for some sort of gratulatory ode or panegyric on Cromwell, along the lines, perhaps, of those in the collections issued by both universities to celebrate the peace with Holland in the early summer of 1654. Oliva pads , the Cambridge volume, is an unadventurous and homogeneous gathering of odes, epigrams, and gratulatory songs; Musarum oxoniensium [elaiophoria], by contrast, is generically, stylistically and linguistically diverse and uneven. The two collections agree in celebrating England’s drubbing of ‘the BelgickLion’. 31 But they are not entirely certain what to do about Cromwell, who is occasionally dressed in

Caesarean or Augustan garb and sometimes presented, in terms reminiscent of Marvell’s ‘Horatian Ode’, as an elemental, providential force. Both collections concur in emphasising the material and political benefits expected to attend the peace achieved between two nations unnaturally at war and now joined in bonds of love. The Oxford collection is not a confident volume; its contributors seem uncertain how to frame and pitch their poems, which swerve wildly from dignified Virgilian hexameters to manic Clevelandism. Waller’s draft verses look very much at home in the context of these two collections.

As in traditional panegryics, the movement of Waller’s draft is from war to peace, from division to unity; its emphasis is on coming prosperity. The last line, with its allusion to Cromwell’s parliamentary speech, suggests a desire to incorporate fresh political evidence into that framework; but the approach, with its emphasis on peace and unity, remains unchanged. Waller begins with an allusion to Hercules’ graciousness in victory (lines 3-5); he then considers Britain’s providential island status (lines 1-2, 6-12) and notes her expanding trade with the orient (lines 13-14), before celebrating the agent of peace at sea (lines 15-16) and of healing at home (line 17). As ever, the importance of trade and of English maritime power as its prerequisite is never far from the centre of Waller’s consciousness. 32

Waller began work on the recto (on what is now line 3) with an allusion to Hercules’ stellification of the slaughtered Nemean lion, by which it became the constellation, Leo:

Alcides so his conquer’d Lion grac’d [w ch batter’d w th his Club in Heau’n he placd] The feirce numaean, w ch in heau’n he plac’d

Unhappy with the way in which his emphasis on the brutishness of the combat compromises his attempt to celebrate Hercules’s graciousness in victory, Waller’s second attempt at the second line replaces the allusion to the manner of the defeat with a dignified epithet for the lion. The earlier version would have been quite at home in a propaganda piece—and Waller reuses a version of it in his poem on the Second Anglo-Dutch War 33 —but it drags against the intended movement of the couplet, which is intended to gesture towards the graciousness on Cromwell’s or England’s part towards a defeated foe.

It seems safe to identify that foe as the United Provinces; the Dutch, as we have noted, were consistently portrayed in English propaganda by means of ‘the Belgick Lion’, and Cromwell had occasionally been figured in such contexts as Hercules. 34 The analogy is presumably supposed to emphasise the political implications of the Treaty of Westminster (5 April 1654), billed as involving ‘nearer Alliance, Union and Confederation than heretofore’ between the two rivals (Abbott, hi, 897). Although the language of union here was merely a weak trace of the revolutionary

plan for complete political amalgamation which had been mooted by English republicans during the negotiations, celebrants of the peace regularly played it up.

In the following couplet Waller slides from reflecting upon the defeat of foreign foes to dangers posed by threats closer to home. The ‘neibours’ of the first line are probably still the Dutch; but the introduction in the second line of an allusion to the curse in Genesis 3.15 (‘I will put enmitie betweene thee and the woman, and betweene thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heele’) suggests an internal threat —a snake within the garden:

when we began to make our neibours feel<e edge ofleaf> our valour thay still bruisd our heele still this serpent bruis’d our heele

Having introduced the curse his thoughts turn naturally to its object; his second attempt at the line brings the serpent into focus as a concrete vehicle for enmity and seems to distinguish the neighbours without from the serpent within. The obvious application here is that the neighbours represent the Dutch (with whom a treaty was settled in the spring of 1654) and the serpent the Scots, who were, in the summer of 1654, once again in revolt. 35 But it is also possible that in the first version of the couplet —prior to the introduction of the serpent —the neighbours represented the Scots, and were the antecedent of the second line’s ‘thay’, and that the introduction of the serpent allowed for the separation of neighbours from serpent. We might then infer that Waller was uncertain whether to handle Scotland as a foreign or an internal threat, and that he moved from the former in the first version of the couplet to the latter in the second. A similar uncertainty would emerge in the finished poem, the quarto text of which refers to Britain as ‘this nation’, the folio as ‘these nations’ (line 122; WP ii, 15).

The idea of the serpent involved thoughts of Eden, and these Waller explored in the next couplet, which invokes Genesis 2.10-14, figuring Britain as an island paradise surrounded by defensive seas:

fower riuers Eden did adorne & guard but what are riuers to the sea compar’d

The association of England and Eden was one of Waller’s favourite motifs and was very much in keeping with government rhetoric of the day. A declaration on 19 September 1654 of a fast day counted among reasons for the fast, the recent union of the three nations, and the assertion that ‘God hath been pleased to make choice of these Islands wherein to manyfest many great and glorious things ’, having ‘ separated us from other nations’. 36

Turning over the leaf, Waller made another stab at the previous couplet, replacing the vague ‘began’ with the more precise ‘tur<n>ed head’ (connoting the act of

turning boldly to face an enemy; OED v. VI. 57), before returning to his competitive comparison between the rivers of Eden and the seas of Britain:

Though (though their rise from Paradise thay boast w th other riuers in the sea are lost

This unfinished couplet (one of its two ‘though’s is a metrical filler) appears to answer the question raised in line 2 (‘what are riuers to the sea compar’d’?). If the two couplets are to be taken together they perhaps represent an early discovery of the potential of the four-line stanzas Waller was to deploy in the finished Panegyrick, and which were represented by the printer of the quarto edition.

In the ensuing couplet Waller widens his focus and looks forward, from the seas surrounding Britain to English activity in the oceans of the world, particularly in the orient:

Now may the English w th thayr canvas wings Fly through the world & visitt Eastern kings

This sounds elegant enough but it is undermined by a weak verb, ‘visitt’, which fails to suggest any necessary purpose to England’s oriental voyaging. The reason for Waller’s reluctance to specify is not hard to find: to posit a purpose (the need to import silks and spices) risks undermining the Edenic topos, according to which England ought to be self-sufficient. Here is a problem to be solved.

Throughout the draft verses, Waller follows his habitual technique of falling back on favourite phrases from earlier poems: ‘canvas wings’, for example, had appeared in the opening line of ‘To the King, on his navy’ (line 15; WP i, 15), having been lifted from one of Waller’s most beloved sources, Edward Fairfax’s translation of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (xv. 32). 37 More recently it had been purloined by William Godolphin of Christ Church in his contribution to Musarum oxoniensium [elaiophoria]: ‘Farre now our Shipps their Canvas Wings shall stretch / And the worlds Wealth to richer England fetch’ (p.9B)—a couplet Waller here reappropriates and recasts. (Godolphin, incidentally, would later put his youthful imitation of Waller to use by deconstructing the senior poet’s elegy on Cromwell. 38 ) lam not aware of an earlier source for ‘Eastern kings’, but Waller would later use it in Instructions to a painter (line 303; WP n, 59).

Waller also follows the practice of self-quotation in the ensuing couplet, which seeks a language to celebrate the cause of the expansion of maritime activity in the pax Cromwelliana. Here Waller reverts to one of his earliest English poems, ‘Of the danger his Majesty (being Prince) escaped in the road at St. Andrews’, co-opting a couplet there applied to Prince Charles’s stoic demeanour during a storm at sea:

Next to the power of making tempests cease, Was in that storm to have so calm a peace, (lines 83-4; WP i, 4)

Waller retains some of the intellectual and verbal framework of his source (most notably the rhyme and the key terms, cease, peace, calm and tempests ) but gives it a fresh application, to one who in fact does have the power to make tempests cease—and, indeed, to do more:

To calm wars rage & giue the ocean peace more bownty is then to make tempests ceace

The final line in the draft (‘not a diuiding but a healing word’) makes recourse not to any earlier verses of the poet’s, but to the Protector’s speech of 4 September, building a neat antithesis from its emphatic repetitions of the key terms ‘divisions’ and ‘healing’.

Upon setting the draft verses alongside the published version or versions of A panegyrick the first thing one notices is that none of these lines found their way into the finished text, although many of the same topics are there treated. Such traces as survive in the finished text are fundamentally transformed.

Some changes represent merely the triumph of good sense. Thus, the matter of Dutch incorporation into the heaven of the British imperium —a rare instance of tactless overreaching on Waller’s part —is moderated to square with the treaty’s emphasis on the ‘sincere friendship’ between the two nations: ‘Holland, to gain your friendship is content/To be our outguard on the continent’ (lines 101-2; WP n, 14). 39 However, the notion of Cromwell’s gracious bearing towards a defeated foe is not altogether abandoned; it is taken over and applied to the Scots, annihilated as a military force at Worcester, yet generously offered the option (compulsory though it may have been) of full union with England, as opposed to subjection as a conquered nation. 40 To accomplish this, Waller exchanges classical for Biblical allusion, replacing the Herculean context with the paradox of felix culpa : ‘Preferred by conquest, happily o’erthrown, / Falling they rise, to be with us made one’ (lines 914; WP ii, 13-14). Although Alcides and the lion are banished, one can detect the skeleton of the draft version of this couplet (‘. . . grac’d / . . . plac’d’) beneath the flesh of the finished poem, which insists that the Scots ‘must extol your [i.e. Cromwell’s] grace / Which in our senate has allowed them place’ (lines 91-2; WP ii, 1 3). This is an apt shift, which lends general support to the portrayal of the union as an act of extraordinary generosity. 41 And which, more precisely, through the rhyme word ‘grace’, reinforces the key term of the ‘Ordinance of Pardon and Grace’ toward Scotland announced on 5 April and passed by the Council of State on 12 April 1654. 42

Other changes seem to represent shifts of emphasis in response to changed political imperatives. The draft’s emphasis on the fresh oriental trading opportunities

open to England is here expanded into a celebration of British sovereignty over the Four Seas and, by implication, the oceans of the world:

The sea’s our own; and now all nations greet, With bending sails, each vessel of our fleet; Your power extends as far as winds can blow,

Or swelling sails upon the globe may go. (lines 17-20; WP n, 10)

Waller evidently has in mind the Treaty of Westminster, which required that ships of the United Provinces ‘meeting with any of the ships of war of this Commonwealth in the British Seas shall strike their flag and lower their top-sail’ (Abbott, hi, 900), but also the more general point, insisted upon in Of the dominion, or, ownership of the sea (11. xxvi), that all nations were obliged to do so. But there is a deliberate vagueness in the first couplet about what sea is at issue here, and a certain looseness in the relationship of the second couplet to the first (by means of which the second may either be a direct consequence of the first or merely the poet’s apostrophic extrapolation from it) allows Waller to imply the extension of English sovereignty from the British Seas to the oceans of the world. Given the imperialist thrust of the final sixteen lines, with their vision of Cromwell riding in triumph ‘O’er vanquished nations, and the sea beside’ (line 186; WP ii, 17), one wonders whether this is not an attempt to broaden the scope of British maritime sovereignty to puff Cromwell’s newly launched ‘Western Design’, planned immediately after the conclusion of the Dutch treaty in the summer of 1654 and launched at the year’s end. 43

The renewed East India trade is not forgotten; it is now woven, along with the celebration of England’s fortunate geographical location, with its implicit suggestion of providential favour, into a fully realised argument, providing the framework for much of the first half of the poem:

Our little world, the image of the great, Like that, amidst the boundless ocean set, Of her own growth has all that Nature craves; And all that’s rare, as tribute from the waves.

As Egypt does not on the clouds rely, But to her Nile owes more than to the sky; So what our earth, and what our heaven, denies, Our ever constant friend, the sea, supplies.

The taste of hot Arabia’s spice we know, Free from the scorching sun that makes it grow; Without the worm, in Persian silks we shine; And, without planting, drink of every vine, (lines 49-60; WP n, 12)

The celebration of the fortunate situation of the British Isles is here liberated from the explicit comparison with Eden, and the implication that the Isles fail to supply the necessaries of nature is addressed and surmounted by means of a distinction between foreign rarities and domestic essentials.

Finally, the last couplet and concluding line of the draft are deftly combined into a single stanza:

Your never-failing sword made war to cease; And now you heal us with the arts of peace; Our minds with bounty and with awe engage,

Invite affection, and restrain our rage, (lines 109-12; WP n, 14)

The maritime imagery carried over into the draft version from its source is here abandoned (or exported to another context), leaving the poet free to develop the celebration of Cromwell on a clear canvas. 44 Several key terms are retained: war, bounty, rage, heal, and, once again, the rhyme words —here cease and peace', to which are added: sword and minds, awe and affection, and the politically freighted engage, its importance being underscored by its placement at both clause and line end, and as a rhyme with rage. This represents a blending together of lines and ideas that are, in the draft, mere fragments.

What we have on the final flyleaf of Edmund Waller’s copy of The prince is a series of first thoughts: short essays towards the definition of a topic or, more accurately, a series of topics which Waller wishes to relate to one another. He focuses on three main spheres of activity: military, economic, and political, and he seeks ways of presenting them by means of classical and Christian perspectives. The verses reveal a coherent attitude and approach, and perhaps also a firm decision to operate within the genre of panegyric, but they show no attempt to develop a narrative or construct an argument. Rather, a series of couplets are essayed and, on occasion, tinkered with, as blocks (some independent, some linked by association) that might later be incorporated into some overarching structure. That Waller’s first thoughts take the form of finished couplets reveals much about his poetic mentality and confirms the justice of Wikelund’s characterisation (on the basis of his analysis of the Folger manuscript) of Waller’s poetic practice as mosaic: the building up of passages ‘by accretion, selection and rejection, and final fusion’. 45

Although Wikelund’s claim is just, the mosaic builder must also have had in mind some pattern to guide the placement of his pieces. The genre of the piece might already have been decided, but its underlying ideology had yet to be defined. As I shall show elsewhere, the finished Panegyrick would be patterned after the political and historical theories of Machiavelli, as they are developed in both The prince and

the Discourses , 46 Waller does not appear to have hit upon this principle in these early couplets. Nevertheless, several of the topics and arguments he picked out of The prince find their way into the finished poem. The poet insists, for instance, on the need for Cromwell to use force to control an unruly populace, and he celebrates Cromwell’s mastery of those special interests, like the nobility and the army, which, Machiavelli argued, could do so much to undermine a ruler (lines 1-2, 157-68). He seeks to implement Machiavelli’s injunction that the prince should seek a reputation for greatness and magnanimity by celebrating Cromwell’s personal nobility and greatness of spirit and emphasising his natural inclination for governorship (lines 117-40). Indeed, his rhetorical strategy in the poem may be compared to the saying Machiavelli recounts concerning Hiero, implying, as it does, that ‘the only thing he lacked to be a ruler was a kingdom’ (p. 37; p. 22). 47 We may therefore regard Waller’s reading of The prince at this time as an important step toward the discovery of that principle. As such, the Turnbull Library volume that records both Waller’s reading of The prince and his early gestures toward A panegyrick to my Lord Protector has a peculiar claim on our attention, preserving, as it does, the moment and the space in which Waller’s reading of Machiavelli began to merge into his writing of Cromwell.

Turnbull Library Record 35 (2002), 9-32

References It would have been impossible to write this article without the assistance of Robert Petre and Jill Goodwin of the Alexander Turnbull Library, who provided digital images of Waller’s verses and full descriptions of the locations and nature of his annotations in Stuart 239-241.1 am also indebted to the support of the Dean and President of Carleton College and that of my colleagues in the English Department for allowing me to take leave in order to write it. I am grateful once again for the guidance of Professor Michael P. Parker and that of Mr John Safford. For their support of my work on Waller I thank Paul Hammond, David Norbrook, and Lois Potter. 1 K. A. Coleridge, A descriptive catalogue of the Milton collection in the Alexander Turnbull Library , Wellington, New Zealand (Wellington: Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 498-9. 2 Peter Beal, comp., Index of English literary manuscripts'. Volume II: 1625-1700, part 2: LeeWycherley (London: Mansell, 1993), pp. 563, 618 (*WaE 783). 3 A full treatment of the issue is forthcoming in my ‘Waller’s Machiavellian Cromwell’. 4 Niccolo Machiavelli, Princeps\ no. 145 in Sergio Bertelli and Piero Innocenti, Bibliografia machiavelliana (Verona: Valdonega, 1979). In this article specific references to the texts in Stuart 239-241 use the titles of that volume; elsewhere, for consistency and ease of reference, wellestablished English titles have been used regardless of the language of the original text or translation. The form of names and attribution of authorship (sometimes uncertain) follow the authorities established by the Library of Congress. The physical details presented here are not a full bibliographic description of Stuart 239-241 but are intended to provide sufficient information to support the discussion which follows.

5 The Cassius Dio texts have a brief caption title (p. 196): ‘Agrippae et Mecoenatis orationum argumentum, Caelio S. C. autore’. The English translation referred to subsequently as ‘Dio’ is Dio’s Roman history, ed. and trans. by Ernest Cary, 9 vols (London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam, 1917), vi, 119. 6 The title-page refers only to Vindiciae contra tyrannos: [...]; the de Beze text includes (p. [2o6] a full-page section title: ‘De iure magistratuum in subditos [. . For a modern translation of Vindiciae see Vindiciae contra tyrannos, or, Concerning the legitimate power of a prince over the people, and of the people over the prince, ed. and trans. by George Garnett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p.lxxxiv; Coleridge, A descriptive catalogue, no. 437, pp. 498-9. I have examined copies in the libraries of the University of Basel, which lacks the supplement, and Harvard University, which contains it. 7 Vindiciae, ed. Garnett, pp.lxxxiv-lxxxvi. 8 See Felix Raab, The English face ofMachiavelli: A changing interpretation 1500-1700 (London: RKP; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), pp. 59-61. 9 These items form lots 246,457,460, and 477 in the catalogue of 17 September 1832, reproduced in Sale catalogues of libraries of eminent persons : Volume 1: Poets and men of letters, ed. by A. N. L. Munby (London: Mansell and Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1971), pp. 3-44 (pp.2l, 32, 37). The list does not include the 1580 edition, but small format works are frequently gathered together in miscellaneous lots. 10 Neue deutsche Biographie. 11 David Howarth, Lord Arundel and his circle (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 35-49, 127-52; Graham Parry, The Golden Age restor’d: The culture of the Stuart court, 1603-42 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981), pp. 106-35. 12 Ella Theodora Riske, ‘Waller in exile’, Times literary supplement, 13 October 1932, p. 734; Edward Chaney, The grand tour and the great rebellion: Richard Lassels and ‘The voyage of Italy’ in the seventeenth century, Biblioteca del Viaggio in Italia, 19 (Geneva: Slatkine, 1985), pp. 54, 308. 13 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Reports on the manuscripts of the Marquis of Downshire, iv (1940), p. 158; cited by David Norbrook, ‘The masque of truth’, The seventeenth century, 1 (1986), 81-110 (p. 105 note 2). 14 Dictionnaire de biographie franqaise\ Roy Strong, The Renaissance garden in England (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979), pp. 73-113, 138-65 (pp. 147-64). 15 See, for example, the copy of the letter from Waller, in the company of Wase, to Henry Some, dated from Beaconsfield, 5 June 1652, in the Some’s notebook: Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Add. b. 5, fols. 25r-6r. 16 See, for example, Waller’s copy of Homer’s Opera (Geneva, 1606): Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, PA4OIB .A2 1606, and his copy of Ovid’s De ponto (Paris, 1611): British Library 11355 ff 15. 17 There are ink underscorings on pp.4o, 44, 47, 50, 51, 56, 60, 61, 64, 211, 212, 213, 290, 292. 18 Machiavelli, Princeps (Stuart 239-241) p.2; The prince, ed. and trans. by Quentin Skinner and Russell Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 6. All English translations from The prince are taken from this edition. The Latin translation exhibits some differences in phrasing and occasionally ordering of material from the Italian, which is the basis of the English translation. I do not feel that these affect the passages quoted seriously enough to warrant a fresh translation. Further references to these editions are given parenthetically in the text, first to the Latin text of Stuart 239-241, then to the English edition. In quoting from the Latin edition, abbreviations for nasal consonants are silently expanded. 19 Mercuriuspoliticus, 90 (19-26 February 1652), pp. 1425-9; Blair Worden, ‘Marchamont Nedham and the beginnings of English Republicanism’, in Republicanism, liberty, and commercial

society, 1649-1776, ed. by David Wootton (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 45-81 (pp. 73-4). 20 The political works of James Harrington, ed. by J. G. A. Pocock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 167, 331-3. 21 Political works, p. 72. 22 Waller’s mark does not extend to the final sentence of this passage, which I include for the sake of clarity. 23 David Norbrook, Writing the English republic: Poetry, rhetoric and politics, 1627-1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 307; Samuel Rawson Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate 1649-1656, 4 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1903), hi, 304. 24 The English translation is from Dio’s Roman history, ed. and trans. by Ernest Cary, 9 vols (London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam, 1917), vi, 119. 25 Andrew Marvell, ‘Horatian Ode’, lines 9-10, 80; Milton, A second defence of the English people, in Complete prose works of John Milton, ed. by Don M. Wolfe et al., 8 vols (New Haven and London: 1953-82), iv, 671-2. 26 The word is not entirely clear. Peter Beal, Index, *WaE 783; p. 618, reads it ‘?ired’; but both the form and the context suggest ‘turned’, with ‘n’ being omitted through haste. The phrase denotes turning to face an enemy ( OED v. V 1.57)..57). Waller had earlier employed it in ‘To a Friend, of the different success of their loves’, line 24; The poems of Edmund Waller, ed. by George Thorn Drury, 2 vols. (London: Bullen; New York: Scribner’s, 1901), i, 102. Subsequent references to this edition in the text are cited as ‘WP T and ’WP ii’. 27 Wilbur Cortez Abbott, The writings and speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., and Oxford: Harvard University Press, 1937-47), in, 243 (subsequently referred to in the text as ‘Abbott’). Steven C. A. Pincus, Protestantism and patriotism: Ideologies and the making of English foreign policy, 1650-1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp.B4-5, 171. 28 Waller’s copy was item 6539 in Thomas Thorp’s catalogue 352 (1923) and is now in the Folger Shakespeare Library, shelfmark 52432.1 thank Professor Henry Woudhuysen for bringing the catalogue entry to my attention, and Professor David Armitage for referring to the volume in The ideological origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p.l 17 note 40. 29 The volume was entered in the Stationers’ Register to Thomas Newcombe (along with Andrew Marvell’s already published First anniversary) on 29 May: A transcript of the registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers from 1640-1708 ad, ed. by G. E. Briscoe Eyre and C. R. Rivington, 3 vols (London: privately printed, 1913-14), i, 484. George Thomason dated his copy of the rival quarto edition at 31 May; British Library, E.841(2). 30 Ably discussed by Philip R. Wikelund, ‘Edmund Waller’s fitt of versifying: Deductions from a holograph fragment, Folger MS. X.d.309’, Philological Quarterly, 49 (1970), 68-91. 31 Musarum oxoniensium [elaiophoria], pp.ll, 23, 60; Oliva pads, sigs. |3r, A 4, B4r, Dlv, F3r; see also the discussion of the Oxford volume by Gerald M. Mac Lean, Time’s witness: Historical representation in English poetry, 1603-1660 (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), pp. 236-9. 32 On this point, see Warren L. Chernaik, The poetry of limitation: A study of Edmund Waller (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968), pp.lß, 39. 33 The allusion reappears in Waller’s address to Charles II at the end of Instructions to a painter. ‘His club Alcides, Phoebus has his bow, / Jove has his thunder, and your navy you' (lines 315lb; WP ii, 59). 34 See also the Latin poem ‘Anglia victrix’, printed by Marchamont Nedham, alongside his English translation, in Mercurius politicus, 144 (17-24 March 1653), pp. 2296-7. Nedham claimed that

the poem arrived ‘by the last weak’s [sic] post from beyond-sea’ (p. 2295), but Norbrook offers good reasons for thinking that Nedham may have written it himself: Writing the English republic, p. 294.1 might add that its language is suspiciously similar to that of a letter, supposedly sent from Leiden, which Nedham had printed in the previous issue of Mercuriuspoliticus, 143 (3-10 March 1653), p. 2283. The English version is reproduced in facsimile in Nigel Smith, Literature and revolution in England , 1640-1660 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 282. For Cromwell as Hercules, see Oliva pads, sig. Dlv. 35 Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth, hi, 102-10. 36 See, for example, ‘On St. James’s Park’, lines 5-8 (WP ii, 40) and, for discussion, Chernaik, Poetry of limitation, pp. 151, 161-2; Mercurius politicus, 223 (14-24 September 1654), p. 3778. 37 It also appears in that portion of The passion of Dido traditionally assigned to Sidney Godolphin (line 293); The poems of Sidney Godolphin, ed. by William Dighton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931), p. 43. On the phrase, see Chernaik, Poetry of limitation, p. 149 note 53. For other examples of this practice see Wikelund, ‘Edmund Waller’s fitt’, p. 78 note 15. 38 On Godolphin’s ‘answer or construction’ to Waller’s poem, see Beal, Index, pp. 567, 611-12. 39 In line with other contemporary propaganda: see ‘Joyfull newes for England’ [1654], reprinted in Cavalier and Puritan: Ballads and broadsides illustrating the period of the great rebellion, 1640-1660, ed. by Hyder E. Rollins (New York: New York University Press, 1923), pp. 341-7. 40 The union was announced at several times and in several contexts during the middle 16505. The Instrument of Government of 16 December 1653 gave the Scots 30 seats in Parliament. A Bill of Union was then read in the Council of State on 20 January 1654; C. Sanford Terry, The Cromwellian union: Papers relating to the negotiations for the incorporating union between England and Scotland 1651-1652, Scottish History Society Publications, 40 (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1902), pp.xlviii-xlix; F. D. Dow, Cromwellian Scotland 1651-1660 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1979), p. 51. 41 As Edmund Ludlow put it: ‘How great a condescension it was in the Parliament of England to permit a people they had conquered to have a part in the legislative power’; Terry, Cromwellian union, p.xv. 42 Mercurius politicus, 202 (20-27 April 1654), p. 3442; Terry, Cromwellian union, p.xlix. The ordinance was proclaimed in Edinburgh on 5 May, a day after the proclamation there of the union, as part of General Monk’s campaign to quell a fresh military rising there; Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth, m, 103-4. 43 The connection was made explicitly by Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth, iv, 193. 44 The maritime aspect of the draft passage is exported to a discussion of the nation’s political troubles, wherein the mythological potential of one who can make tempests cease is developed as an exemplum for a Hobbesian analysis of a distempered body politic; see lines 5-12; WP n, 10. 45 Wikelund ‘Edmund Waller’s fitt’, p. 82. 46 See my ‘Waller’s Machiavellian Cromwell’, forthcoming. 47 On this aspect of the poem’s rhetorical strategy, see James D. Garrison, Dryden and the tradition of panegyric (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1975), p. 121.