The common reader, p.27
The Common Reader, page 27
If this is so, if to read a book as it should be read calls for the rarest qualities of imagination, insight, and judgment, and you may perhaps conclude that literature is a very complex art and that it is unlikely that we shall be able, even after a lifetime of reading, to make any valuable contribution to its criticism. We must remain readers; we shall not put on the further glory that belongs to those rare beings who are also critics. But still we have our responsibilities as readers and even our importance. The standards we raise and the judgments we pass steal into the air and become part of the atmosphere which writers breathe as they work. An influence is created which tells upon them even if it never finds its way into print. And that influence, if it were well instructed, vigorous and individual and sincere, might be of great value now when criticism is necessarily in abeyance; when books pass in review like the procession of animals in a shooting gallery, and the critic has only one second in which to load and aim and shoot and may well be pardoned if he mistakes rabbits for tigers, eagles for barndoor fowls, or misses altogether and wastes his shot upon some peaceful cow grazing in a further field. If behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people reading for the love of reading, slowly and unprofessionally, and judging with great sympathy and yet with great severity, might this not improve the quality of his work? And if by our means books were to become stronger, richer, and more varied, that would be an end worth reaching.
Yet who reads to bring about an end, however desirable? Are there not some pursuits that we practise because they are good in themselves, and some pleasures that are final? And is not this among them? I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards – their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble – the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, ‘Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.’
NOTES
The notes supplied here follow the model used in annotating the essays in The Common Reader, First Series, as published in 1984. That is to say, they are not exhaustive. Their primary object, having established the provenance of each essay, is to identify Virginia Woolf’s quotations, by which are meant explicitly excerpted passages rather than allusions in paraphrase. Where the latter have, however, been felt to be sensibly extricable from the fabric of the text, and to warrant explication, this has been provided.
A similar degree of flexibility applies to the provision of general biographical and bibliographical information; this has been given wherever it has seemed essential and or particularly helpful. ‘Yet who reads to bring about an end, however desirable?’, Virginia Woolf asks at the close of this book, somewhat challengingly from the point of view of the annotator in lost pursuit of such phrases as Cowper’s appropriately barren ‘thistly sorrow’ (see notes). It is hoped that the small number of untraced allusions will be excused.
The overall work of annotation has been largely made possible, in practical terms, by the existence of B. J. Kirkpatrick’s A Bibliography of Virginia Woolf (3rd edn, Clarendon Press, 1980), Brenda Silver’s Virginia Woolf’s Reading Notebooks (Princeton University Press, 1983), and Elizabeth Steele’s study, Virginia Woolf Literary Sources and Allusions (Garland, 1983), works of fundamental value and interest to students of Virginia Woolf’s writings.
Abbreviations: CR: The Common Reader; DNB: Dictionary of National Biography; N & A: Nation & Athenaeum; NYHT: New York Herald Tribune; T LS: The Times Literary Supplement; VW: Virginia Woolf.
‘THE STRANGE ELIZABETHANS’
This essay was written specifically as a ‘prelude’ (IV VW Diary, p. so) to CR 2. VW’s reading included The Works of Gabriel Harvey, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (3 vols., The Huth Library, 1884, 1885); Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey, ed. E.J. L. Scott (Camden Society, 1884); Gabriel Harvey’s Marginalia, ed. G.C. Moore Smith (Shakespeare Head Press, 1913); The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, ed. Logan Pearsall Smith (2 vols., Clarendon Press, 1907); and studies of Sir Philip Sidney by William Percy Addleshaw (Methuen, 1909) and Mona Wilson (Duckworth, 1931).
1 Lady Mary Dudley Sidney (d. 1586), wife of Sir Henry, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, solicited the Lord Chamberlain (Lord Sussex) – without success – through the intermediary of her husband’s secretary Edward Molyneux (fl. 1587), to whom she wrote on the matter in October 1578 (see Sir Philip Sidney by Mona Wilson, p. 79).
2 Sir Henry Wotton (1568–1639), diplomatist and poet.
3 Harvey wrote a series of Latin elegies, Smithus, vel Musarum Lachrymae on the death of his patron, the statesman and scholar at Cambridge Sir Thomas Smith (1513–77), a native of Saffron Walden and to some unascertained degree a relation of the Harvey family.
4 See ‘The Story of Mercy Harvey, Sister of Gabriel Harvey – Love-Suit With a Nobleman 1574–75’, Grosart, vol. 3, p. 77 (also in Letter-Book …). The nobleman was Philip, Earl of Surrey, later Earl of Arundel.
5 Ibid., p. 80
6 Ibid., pp. 87–8
7 Ibid., p. 88
8 Ibid., pp. 92 and 93
9 Ibid., pp. 94–5
10 Ibid., p. 95
11 Ibid., p. 96
12 for Harvey’s letter to Lady Smith, from Pembroke Hall, 29 March, year unknown, see Letter-Book, p. 171: ‘… thus much I dare assuredly promise, that you shall have a diligent, and trusty, and tractable maiden of her, besides such service as she is able to do in sowing, and the like qualities requisite in a maid.’ VW has concluded that the sister concerned was Mercy; in fact, Harvey had two sisters and the letter names neither.
13 See Grosart, vol. 3, p. 81
14 The final sentence occurs in a different letter from that of the foregoing passage, see op. cit., p. 83
15 From ‘The Maides Farewell’, op. cit., p. 85
16 Ibid., p. 85
17 See Grosart, vol. 2, p. 95; this is also quoted in Gabriel Harvey’s Marginalia, p. 66
18 See Letter-Book, Harvey to Spenser, p. 66
19 ‘Pierce’s Supererogation, or a New Prayse of the Old Asse’, 1593, in Grosart, vol. 2, p. 288
20 Dr Andrew Perne (1519?-1589), Dean of Ely, and sometime Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, is the subject of an extended attack by Harvey in ‘Pierce’s Supererogation’.
21 See Letter-Book, Harvey to Spenser, p. 82; the passage begins: ‘Your last week’s letter, or rather bill of complaint …’
22 See ‘Four Letters and Certaine Sonnets: Especially touching Robert Greene, and other parties, by him abused’, 1592, in Grosart, vol. I, pp. 170 and 171.
23 Thomas Nash’s description of Harvey is quoted by G. C. Moore Smith in his introduction to Gabriel Harvey’s Marginalia, p. 69; for the original source see vol. 3, p. 88, of R. B. McKerrow’s five-volume edition (1904 – ) of Nash’s works.
24 See Marginalia, pp. 19–20
25 Ibid., p. 19
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 See Spenser’s sonnet ‘To the right worshipful my singular good Friend, M. Gabriel Harvey, Doctor of the Lawes’, dated Dublin, 18 July 1586. (Harvey was also represented as Hobbinol in Spenser’s ‘The Shepheardes Calendar’.)
29 This is now Add. Ms. 32, 494 in the British Library; see Gabriel Harvey’s Marginalia.
30 Marginalia, p. 90, line 18
31 Ibid., p. 90 lines 20–1
32 Ibid., p. 92, lines 29–31
33 Ibid., p. 92, lines 4–11
34 Cf. ‘Avoyde all writing, but necessary: wch consummith unreasonable much tyme, before you are aware: you have alreddy plaguid yourselfe this way:’; Ibid., p. 89, lines 25–7
35 Ibid., p. 99, lines 1–3
36 Ibid., p. 177, line 8
37 Ibid., p. 196, lines 5–8
38 Dr Henry Harvey (d. 1585), Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, 1559–84/5.
39 Marginalia, p. 90, line 6: ‘he never fayled to breath his hownde …’
40 Ibid., p. 142, line 33
41 Ibid., p. 155, lines 19–20
42 Ibid., p. 155, line 28: ‘No such confutation of Anger, rage, chiding, carving, brawling, rayling, threatening, scoffing, mocking or such like: as witty, & pleasant Ironyes.’
43 Ibid., p. 88, lines 3–5
44 Ibid., p. 105, line 7
45 Ibid., p. 147: ‘Vita, militia: uel Togata, uel Armata,’ against which is set in the margin ‘Life is warfare.’
46 Ibid., p. 95, lines 16–17
47 Ibid., p. 95, line 22
48 Thomas Stukeley (?1525–78), adventurer; and Sir Francis Drake.
49 Marginalia, p. 198, lines 33–4
50 Ibid., p. 101, lines 11–12
51 Ibid., p. 151, line 25
52 Ibid., p. 146, lines 20–3: ‘This whole booke, written & printed, of continual & perpetual use; and therefore continually, and perpetually to be meditated, practised, and incorporated into my boddy, and soule.’
53 Ibid., p. 151, lines 4–5
54 Nash, quoted in – Marginalia, p. 69 (McKerrow, vol. 3, p. 88).
‘DONNE AFTER THREE CENTURIES’
This essay was first published in CR 2. VW began it in September 1931, at Rodmell, where she noted in her diary: ‘Here am I writing about Donne, & we have “gone off the Gold Standard” this morning. Maynard and Kahan [sic] like people in the war. We sat talking economics and politics … Yes; & what could I do better …’ (IV VW Diary, p. 45). Apart from the poems of Donne in the editions of E. K. Chambers (2 vols., Muses’ Library, 1896) and Sir Herbert Grierson (2 vols., Clarendon Press, 1912), VW’s reading included ‘Sir Edmund Gosse’s Lift and Letters of John Donne (2 vols., Heinemann, 1899); Lady Anne Clifford … Her life, Letters and Work by George C. Williamson (Titus Wilson, 1922); and The Diary of Lady Anne Clifford, with an introduction by V. Sackville-West (Heinemann, 1923). The quotations from the poems are here illustrated where necessary from the edition of A. J. Smith (Penguin, 1971).
1 ‘Love’s Deitie’, first line.
2 ‘The Broken Heart’, opening lines.
3 ‘A Lecture upon the Shadow’, opening lines.
4 ‘The Relic’, line 6
5 Satire I, ‘Away thou fondling motley humourist’, line 5: ‘Here are God’s conduits, grave divines; and here/Nature’s secretary, the Philosopher;’
6 Ibid., lines 7–8
7 Ibid., lines 9–10: ‘Here gathering chroniclers, and by them/ Stand Giddy fantastic poets of each land.’
8 The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, 1593, by Sir Philip Sidney; The Paradyse of Daynry Devises, 1576, an anthology compiled by Richard Edwards; Euphues: the Anatomy of Wit, 1578, and Euphues and his England, 1580, a two-part prose romance by John Lyly.
9 Satire 4, ‘Well; I may now receive, and die; my sin’, line 93: ‘He to another key his style doth dress,/ And asks “What news?” I tell him of new plays.’
10 Ibid., lines 30–3
11 Ibid., lines 73–80
12 Elegy 8, ‘the Comparison’, lines 33–4
13 See Dekker’s The Wonderfull Yeare (1603); pp. 16–17 in the Bodley Head edition, 1924.
14 ‘The Indifferent’, line 20:
‘Venus heard me sigh this song,
And by love’s sweetest part, variety, she swore,
She heard not this till now.’
15 Elegy 3; ‘Change’, last lines; they should read: ‘…; change is the nursery/ Of music, joy, life and eternity.’
16 Elegy 17, ‘Variety’, line 38
17 Ibid., lines 45–6
18 Elegy I, ‘Jealousy’, line 22
19 See ‘The Undertaking’, line 20:
‘If, as I have, you also do
Virtue attired in woman see,
And dare love that, and say so too,
And forget the He and She;’
20 Elegy 12, ‘His parting from her’, lines 69–72
21 ‘Song’, ‘Sweetest love, I do not go’, lines 39–40; they should read: ‘They who one another keep/ Alive, ne’er parted be.’
22 ‘The Canonization’, lines 25–7
23 ‘The Ecstasy’, lines 19–20
24 Ibid., lines 29–32
25 Ibid., lines 45–50
26 Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford (d. 1627); Lady Elizabeth Stanley, Countess of Huntingdon, to both of whom Donne addressed poems; and Mrs Magdalen Herbert (d. 1627), mother of the poet George Herbert, and original recipient of Donne’s Divine Poems and Holy Sonnets.
27 Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke (d. 1621), whose translation of the Psalms, in part collaboration with her brother Sir Philip Sidney, Donne commemorated in verse.
28 Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery (1590–1676); see Life, Letters and Work, p. 28. Scholars tend to think that Lady Anne was denied Latin and Greek and not necessarily the modern languages.
29 Samuel Daniel (1562–1619) acted somewhat reluctantly as Lady Anne’s tutor; his sonnets, Delia ( 1592), and epic Civil Warres (1609), were dedicated to her mother.
30 See Diary …, November 1616, p. 41: ‘Upon the 9th I sat at my work and heard Rivers and Marsh read Montaigne’s “Essays” which book they have read almost this fortnight.’
31 See Lift, Letters and Work, p. 197
32 ‘To the Countess of Huntingdon’, line 44:
‘So you, as woman, one doth comprehend,
And in the veil of kindred others see;
To some ye are revealed, as in a friend,
And as a virtuous prince far off, to me.’
33 ‘To the Countess of Bedford’ (‘Madam,/ Reason is our soul’s left hand,’), line 33:
‘Since you are then God’s masterpiece, and so
His factor for our loves;’
34 Elizabeth Drury died in 1610, aetat 14; she is commemorated in Donne’s meditative poems ‘The Anniversaries’ (‘An Anatomy of the World’, 1611, and ‘Of the Progress of the Soul’, 1612).
35 ‘To Mr R.W.’ (‘Kindly I envy the song’s perfection’), lines 7–8:
In it is cherishing fire which dries in me
Grief which did drown me: and half quenched by it
Are satiric fires which urged me to have writ
In scorn of all: for now I admire. thee.’
36 ‘To Mr B.B.’ (‘Is not thy sacred hunger of science’), lines 19–20
37 ‘An Anatomy of the World’, lines 283–94
38 ‘Of the Progress of the Soul’, lines I 89–200
39 Divine Meditations, Sonnet 5 (‘I am a little world made cunningly’), line 11
40 Divine Meditations, Sonnet 17, first four lines:
‘Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt
To nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
And her soul early into heaven ravished,
Wholly on heavenly things my mind is set.’
41 Divine Meditations, Sonnet 5, first two lines:
‘I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements, and an angelic sprite,’
42 Divine Meditations, Sonnet 19, first four lines.
43 Satire 3 (‘Kind pity chokes my spleen’), lines 77–9:
‘To adore, or scorn an image, or protest
May all be bad; doubt wisely, in strange way
To stand inquiring right, is not to stray;
To sleep, or run wrong is.’
44 Divine Meditations, Sonnet 19, lines 12–13:
‘So my devout fits come and go away
Like a fantastic ague: save that here
Those are my best days, when I shake with fear.’
45 See note 19 above.
46 ‘The Damp’, lines 1–3:
‘When I am dead, and doctors know not why,
And my friends’ curiosity
Will have me cut up to survey each part,’
‘THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE’S ARCADIA’
This essay on the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney was first published in CR 2. VW used the tenth edition, printed by William Du-Gard in 1655, a version of the augmented text of 1593 Her references here are to the edition by Maurice Evans (Penguin, 1977).
