Gunpowder

NEXT week it’s 414 years since the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Verses celebrating it began early and still have a place in culture, both low and high. First low, then high.

Remember, remember

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, Gunpowder treason and plot:

I see no reason why gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot.

After that refrain, varying doggerel verses may be included. One goes:

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, ’twas his intent To blow up the King and the Parliament Three score barrels of powder below

Poor old England to overthrow:

By God’s providence he was catch’d

With a dark lantern and burning match; Holler boys, holler boys, let the bells ring Holler boys, holler boys, God save the King!

John Donne

Not great verse, nor even good, though it sure does rhyme. There was no Poet Laureate to do these things properly, in the days of James I. John Donne did not provide metaphysical fireworks. However, in 1622, as Dean of St Paul’s, he did deliver the Gunpowder Day Sermon. Its task was to defend royal policy, by emphasising that the plot had targeted James the most, though his family and counsellors and MPs would have suffered the same blast. Donne spoke moderately, as required: James’ Directions for

Preachers had limited ‘‘bitter invectives and indecent railing speeches against the persons of Papists and Puritans’’.

Virtual reenvisioning

An attempt has been made to reconstruct the sound of the sermon (all two hours of it) — the

acoustics, the thousands listening outside Old St Paul’s, the background noises (pigeons flapping, horses passing by on the cobbles. Google .

Epics and epigrams

Under James’ successor, the day still elicited verse. Early in Charles I’s reign, the undergraduate Milton joined in the loyal chorus of bilingual Cambridge — as Latin as it was English. Latin verses are a minority taste now, but Latin was the universities’ chief medium of teaching, and for speeches and verses Latin was its public face. Milton effused with poems short and long. Epigrams deplored gunpowder and defamed its inventor. The epic, his longest Latin poem, mythologises the events of 1605. It’s a terrific poem, foreshadowing Paradise

Lost of 40 years later.

In Quintum Novembris

Satan, overflying Europe, is grieved to see England so prospering under James. Satan flies on to Rome, disguises as a friar, and pours the idea of the plot into the Pope’s ear. The plot is implemented, then foiled by means of Fama, personified rumour. God ensures this, flying higher than Satan. Now every year the people rejoice, with bonfires at crossroads. /Compita laeta focis genialibus omnia fumant;/ Turba choros iuvenilis agit: quintoque Novembris/ Nulla dies toto occurrit celebratior anno/. ‘‘There is merrymaking at every crossroads and smoke rises from the festive bonfires:/ the young people dance in crowds; in all the year there is no day celebrated more than the fifth of November.’’ The metre is the long swinging hexameter line, of such epics of deliverance as Virgil’s. Satan’s spaceflight and the dreamtemptation pack an even bigger punch in

Paradise Lost.

Celebrating

The unsubtle allegory ends on that note of public whoopee. The joy infuses both languages. It’s a note not heard again till 1660, and then only briefly, at the restoration of James’ grandson, Charles II. That troubled earlymodern century.

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