Ah, Judy, it comes from Aubrey! Metaphorical pinches of salt being
liberally taken.
As for bearing with the language, I don't have to, I feel more at home
with seventeenth century English than its modern shrinkage. 'romancy
plaines' - love it!
Aubrey was a kind of cross between Defoe and Ford Madox Ford: a
fantasist of reportage. Not that Defoe wasn't a story-teller, but he
knew how to sound as if factual.
Best
Dave
2008/8/26 Judy Prince <[log in to unmask]>:
> Perhaps an Elizabethan publicity stunt, Dave, but here's one of the sources
> in which I read about Sidney's horseback-writing. [Bear with the language;
> it does eventually reveal the then-contemporary hearsay]:
>
> In this tract is ye Earle of Pembroke's noble seat at Wilton; but the
> Arcadia and the Daphne is about Vernditch and Wilton; and these romancy
> plaines and boscages did no doubt conduce to the hightening of Sir Philip
> Sydney's phansie. He lived much in these parts, and his most masterly
> touches of his pastoralls he wrote here upon the spott, where they were
> conceived. 'Twas about these purlieus that the muses were wont to appeare to
> Sir Philip Sydney, and where he wrote down their dictates in his table book,
> though on horseback.*
>
> *I remember some old relations of mine and [other] old men hereabout that
> have seen Sir Philip doe thus.
>
> †[Aubrey held the manor farm of Broad Chalk under a lease from the Earl of
> Pembroke. - J. B.]
> 2008/8/25 David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
>
>> Candice
>>
>> would Sir Pip actually known about Beowulf.? Chaucer, Gower, yes, but
>> that? To me, the whole thing smells of Elizabethan publicity stunt
>>
>> PR began a long time ago.
>>
>>
>> 2008/8/26 MC Ward <[log in to unmask]>:
>> > I wonder if Sydney et al. weren't parodying the Beowulf sequence where
>> the scribe composes on horseback as Hrothgar and Beowulf go in search of
>> Grendel's mother. I say "composes" because that term allows for both
>> unlettered and literate poets. This one is composing in his head as he rides
>> along on his honorific horse, knowing that whatever way the match goes he
>> need only to follow and do some rearranging of the action at the end of the
>> day.
>> >
>> > Candice
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> David Bircumshaw
>> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
>> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
>> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
>> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>>
>
--
David Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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