So, because I can’t help myself, I have two version of the Norton Anthology of English Literature. I find them for 50¢ at book sales and can’t resist a backup copy to my backup copy. For some reason I was interested in Thomas Carew, and so I looked him up in the older anthology. Here was the brief bio.

“Bright, talented, and idle, Thomas Carew (pronounced Carey) carefully avoided serious work of all sorts; everything he did, and writing poetry particularly, seemed to be the diversion of his empty hours. Yet he was the first poet (and remains, with Marvell, one of the two poets) to unite the intellectual toughness of metaphysical verse with the polish and elegant lightness cultivated by the followers of Jonson.
As the son of a distinguished lawyer, Carew was himself destined for the law, but the Middle Temple dismissed him for idleness. He tried the diplomatic corps, but was sent home in disgrace for “levity”. He became a hanger-on around the court, and ultimately (his most solemn employment) a gentleman of the bedchamber; his diversions were pretty girls, bowling, and versifying—apparently in that order. Yet when his poems were collected, after his death, they turned out to include some of the wittiest and most elegant verses in the century.
Everything that the Puritans despised in “wit” was epitomized in Carew. He had no high spiritual seriousness at all; he was not, in the solemn sense, “sincere.” Many of his poems were obvious bits of light persiflage, “mere” amusements. He was not only clever, he was by 17th century standards (and even more by those of the 19th century) obscene. Yet somehow this libidinous trifler managed to say more true things in his Elegy on the Death of Doctor Donne than criticism would be able to enunciate in the next three hundred years. And in A Rapture he expressed, naturally and joyously, a side of life that Puritanism would, to the best of its ability, swathe in black crape and hypocrisy for an equivalent length of time.

Now that, by God, is an obituary worth dying for.

I’ve never wanted to read a poet’s works so much in my life. It’s clear that the editor who wrote this little introductory bio had an axe to grind, especially as regards religious prudery. But, at the same time, he also seems nonplussed that an idle ne’er-do-well like Carew—a carouser, womanizer of pretty girls (are there any other kind?), “libidinous trifler” and mere gentleman of the bedchamber—was also a surpassingly fine poet and keen judge of the times. How? How?—the tirelessly toiling Salieris of the world ask, can it be that God’s idle triflers, the ones with “no high spiritual seriousness”, the undeserving hangers on who are sent home in disgrace for “levity” (think Mozart, who was literally kicked in the ass on his way out the door by the arch-bishop of Salzburg) are the ones on whom God bestows such an excess of genius that they can write their poetry as a diversion during their “empty hours”.

In the editor’s appraisal, there’s the hint of that resentment that sends many ambitious but less recognized artists into fits of apoplexy—and that resentment is called “talent”. There really is such a thing as talent and no amount of practice and devotion is going to turn you into a Mozart or a Micheal Jordan (that study has been debunked). Carew may have been dissolute and a chaser of pretty girls, but he also had a tremendous and unearned talent. Meanwhile, the graveyard of poetry is littered with the works of men who diligently wrote their entire lives, who never once chased a skirt, whose high moral, ethical and spiritual seriousness went unquestioned, but whose unimpeachable hours didn’t translate into a shred of talent.

But, apparently, this lovely and gossipy bio just wouldn’t do for the new editors of the Norton Anthology, because when they wrote the new bio, they decided to be far more informative as regards Carew’s output, while studiously removed anything that might hint at Carew’s personality. In short, they made their bio as academically informative and flavorless as they possibly could.

Thomas Carew is perhaps the Cavalier poet with the greatest range and complexity. He gained his BA at Merton College, Oxford, studied law (his father’s profession), held several minor positions in the diplomatic and court bureaucracy, fought for his King in the ill-fated expedition against the Scots (the First Bishop’s War, 1639), and died of syphilis. A brilliant, dissolute young man, he was a favorite with Charles I and Henrietta Maria.
His poems (1640), published posthumously, are witty and often outrageous, but their emphasis on natural sensuality, and the need for union between king and subjects encodes a serious critique of the Neoplatonic artifice of the Caroline court. Carew’s spectacular court masque, Coelum Britannicum, performed at the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall on February 18, 1633, was based on a philosophical dialogue by Giordano Bruno. It combines a dramatization of serious social and political problems in the antimasque with wildly hyperbolic praise of the monarchs in the main masque. As a love poet Carew sometimes plays off Donnean situations and poems; elsewhere, as in “Ask no more where Jove bestowes,” he imitates Jonson’s most purely lyric vein. But his characteristic note is one of frank sexuality and emotional realism. “The Rapture,” probably the most erotic poem of the era, describes the sexual act under the sustained metaphor of a voyage. He also wrote country-house poems that, unlike Jonson’s “To Penhurst,” describe Saxham and Wrest as places of refuge from the mounting dangers outside their gates. Carew’s poems of literary criticism provide astute commentary on contemporary authors. “To Ben Jonson” evaluates Jonson with Jonsonian precision and judiciousness in weighing out praise and blame. His famous “Elegy” on Donne praises Donne’s innovation, avoidance of classical tags, “giant fancy,” and especially his tough masculinity of style, a feature Carew imitates in this poem’s energetic runover couplets, quick changes of rhythms and images, and vigorous “strong lines.”

Admittedly, more informative as regards Carew’s output, but also less interesting or informative as regards Carew himself. There’s a sense of humor in the older bio that has been expunged from the revised Norton. But I don’t know. I suppose there will be readers who prefer the revised Norton, but not me. I don’t read enough modern criticism to say definitively, but I do get the feeling that “scholarly” writing isn’t as free-wheeling as it used to be. Interestingly, when the latest Oxford Shakespeare was released with a separate Authorship Companion, the latter was much commented on and not because of the content, but because of the way it was written. Reasoning that the dry, struffed-shirt academese was off-putting to younger students, the editors decided to introduce generational colloquialisms and anecdotes into the their writing. Just imagine the horror of your grandparents showing up at a frat house in a mini-skirt, Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and lei. This seems to have been the impression the essayists made on horrified students. Shakespeare scholars who had spent a lifetime perfecting academese were now going to shed that industrial-grade affectation with a smattering of hip colloquialisms?

Anyway, while my country descends into full-blown fascism, these are the little tempests that amuse me.