Sir John Harington and the Book as Gift. (Reviews).

Jason Scott-Warren, Sir John Harington and the Book as Gift

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. x + 273 pp. $72. ISBN: 0-19-924445-6.

Sir John Harington was a prolific author in verse and prose who distributed copies of his works to a wide range of readers. He prepared gift books in several formats, from printed copies of his translation of Ariosto's Orlando furioso (1591) and his Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596), to manuscripts of his epigrams dedicated to King James VI (1602) and Prince Henry (1605), to hybrid volumes such as the printed Orlando he sent to his wife and mother-in-law with a selection from the epigrams appended to it in manuscript. Most of these volumes included the author's personal annotations, comments, and corrections, and we are fortunate that enough copies of Harington's gifts have survived to warrant a book-length study of how and why he distributed them so widely. As Scott-Warren argues, these gifts were seldom gratuitous. Harington used them for a variety of purposes: to generate and modulate his public image, to advertise his eligibility for office, and to advocate public policy. In a few instances, however, the books pursued no obvious agenda or they actually sabotaged Harington's self-promotion.

In chapter one, for example, Scott-Warren analyzes seven gift copies of the Orlando Harington sent to recipients who were poised, socially and politically, to further his career ambitions. Accordingly, Scott-Warren argues, the author's modifications of the work, particularly in his introductory biography of Ariosto, make of his Orlando an elaborate plea for approval and patronage. An eighth copy of the work, however, that he presented to the Earl of Tyrone's sons in 1599, lacked any obvious potential for self-advancement. In dealing with the Metamorphosis Scott-Warren attempts to "heal the rift" between the topical satire that has puzzled generations of commentators on the book and its "timeless pleasures" (59), granted that its overt purpose is to introduce the first flush toilet. Again, Harington intended the book to reveal his wit, learning, and thus eligibility for office. Yet much of its satire and defiance of social norms undercuts its potential for securing patronage. Scott-Warren demonstrates as well the work's larger didactic purpose as a plea for toleration of recusants who are nevertheless loyal citizens. The theme resurfaces in Harington's Tract on the Succession to the Crown. Harington gave the unique manuscript copy of this work to Bishop Tobie Matthew, who annotated it carefully. In addition to its arguments for the toleration of conforming Catholics, the Tract urges Matthew to adopt another concept he opposed, the title of James VI to the crown of England.

Harington inscribed two gift books on December 19, 1600, one a manuscript of his own and others' writing compiled for Lucy, Countess of Bedford. Scott-Warren reconstructs this volume from a later, fragmentary copy preserved among the Petyt manuscripts in the Inner Temple Library.

The second gift he dispatched on this date is the hybrid Orlando with appended epigrams that he dedicated to his wife and her mother, Jane Rogers. Scott-Warren argues that Sir John chose epigrams for this volume that flaunt his power over his wife. Overall, the poems impress on Jane Rogers her daughter's devotion to (and dependence on) her husband. Scott-Warren then analyzes Harington's struggle with his brother-in-law over the Rogers inheritance, concluding that his gift was designed to influence Jane's will. Obligingly, his mother-in-law died scarcely a year after she received the book. Scott-Warren then interprets the political epigrams included in this book as commentary on potentially dangerous issues such as succession to the throne and Harington's condemnation of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.

To judge from the surviving evidence, Harington's Jacobean gift-giving career is dominated by the three books he sent to Prince Henry. The first of these, Sir John's translation of the Aeneid, book 6, was delivered in 1604 and aptly characterizes Harington as well-qualified to be employed as tutor to the heir to the throne. The manuscript of the complete epigrams presented to Henry on June 19, 1605 essentially duplicated the collection Sir John had sent to Scotland as a New Year's gift for James in 1602. In 1608, the Prince received a volume hybrid in both format and authorship. To Bishop Godwin's Catalogue of the Bishops (1st edition, 1601), Harington appended his own "Supplie or Addicion" in manuscript. He apparently intended both the epigrams and the "Supplie" as general displays of his talent whereas his "Short Relacion" (edited as A Short View of the State of Ireland) amounts to "a job application sent in 1605 to Robert Cecil and Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire" (223). The tract can hardly be read oth erwise, yet Harington is here asking to be ordained Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, a rather brazen ambition for this unordained layman.

A full understanding of Harington's purposes in the distribution of his writings depends on both careful readings of the texts and a thorough survey of the cultural context in which they were deployed. Albeit an analysis in chapter seven of the Nugae antiquae, a collection of Harington family papers published in the eighteenth century, could be more directly related to the book's purpose, Scott-Warren's coverage of relevant supporting documents is enlightening overall. He shows, for example, how Harington's letter to Lady Elizabeth Russell was intended to justify his publication of the Metamorphosis to her brother-in-law, Lord Burghley. The summary of probate and Star Chamber documents in chapter four brings to life Harington's struggle with his Rogers in-laws after the death of Jane Rogers. For Harington's epigram "Of king Dauid,' dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, ScottWarren posits a source in Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man (1528). He locates in Harleian MS. 4888 twelve leaves originally bound into the composite Inner Temple MS. that includes the gift to the Countess of Bedford. He explores in some detail Harington's farewell to his Muse, composed in Latin verse shortly after Elizabeth's death in April 1603, yet followed by years of literary activity as Sir John used poetry to vie for patronage under the Stuarts. In fact, Scott-Warren's account presents Harington as a tireless author who wrote and disseminated his works steadily from 1591 until his death in December 1612. The analysis of Harington, who is invariably pigeonholed among the Elizabethans, as an active author during the early Stuart period is one of the most original and illuminating aspects of this soundly researched book.