The knowledge and appreciation of Pindar in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

This thesis is an examination of the knowledge and appreciation of Pindar, especially in England, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a period conveniently bounded at one end by the edition of his works produced by Erasmus Schmid in 1616 and at the other by that of August Boeckh (with Ludolph Dissen), normally taken to mark the beginning of modern Pindaric scholarship. It is divided on a chronological basis into three parts - the early seventeenth century, from the Restoration to the mid-eighteenth century, and the later eighteenth century -, the end of the first part being marked by the appearance of the Pindarique Odes of Abraham Cowley, and the beginning of the third by the translation of Pindar by Gilbert West, and the Odes of Thomas Gray. Within each part an examination of the state of Pindaric scholarship is followed by a discussion of the presentation of him and his importance in the literature and criticism of the time.
The first chapter, 'The seventeenth-century editions', describes the various editions available to a seventeenth century reader, and particularly the two annotated editions produced in the second decade of the century, by Erasmus Schmid at Wittenberg in 1616 and by Johannes Benedictus at Saumur in 1620. The editions are discussed and compared from the points of view of textual criticism, metrical scholarship, and interpretation, with special emphasis being given to the rhetorical analyses of the odes presented by Erasmus Schmid.
The second chapter, 'Cowley's Pindariques and their background first traces the importance of Pindar in English literature and criticism before Cowley's popularisation of the Pindaric ode as an English poetic form, and includes a discussion of Ronsard and the continental tradition, the influence of which was largely responsible for the earliest English references and imitations. The section on Cowley himself includes a discussion of the attitude towards Pindar revealed bjyvhis translations and imitations, and a brief assessment of their immediate influence.
Part II deals with a long period of nearly one hundred years in which the popular idea of Pindar, formed largely upon Horace's ode 'Pindarum quisquis studet aemulari' (Odes iv. 2), and upon Cowley, undergoes little change. After a survey of the state of knowledge of and interest in Pindar in education and scholarship, including a description of some unpublished lectures delivered in Cambridge in 1697, the third chapter, 'The appreciation of Pindar', presents a selection of critical opinions which demonstrates the dominance at the turn of the century of assessments of Pindar handed down from ancient critics, especially from Horace and 'Longinus', and the reaction against these conventional dicta in the works of 'moderns' such as Charles Perrault. The fourth chapter, 'The English Pindaric', deals with the development of the form popularised by Cowley throughout the next eighty years, through its particular association with 'occasional' and religious subject matter to its apparent decline in popularity about 1720, and the sporadic manifestations of interest in it shown later by, for example, Edward Young. The final section in this part lists and discusses the English translations of Pindar after Cowley until 1749.
Part III, dealing with a much shorter period, reflects in its greater length the many ways in which both the Pindaric ideal and the appreciation of Pindar himself were changing. Chapter V, 'The Pindaric Revival: West and Gray', shows how the production of cheaper, easily available editions of the poet and a growing sense of Pindar's place in history - exemplified not only in West's Pindar but alsp in Thomas Gray's manuscript notes on him, hitherto unpublished - conspire to make obsolete the vague and derivative impressions of him which had held sway hitherto and which are to some extent perpetuated in Gray's Pindaric odes. Chapter VI, 'Towards the nineteenth century', traces the emergence in the latter half of the eighteenth century of scholarly methods and interests, especially in matters concerned with metre and interpretation, which coalesce in Boeckh's edition at the beginning of the next century. The second section, on translation discusses the style, intentions, and reception of the many translations of Pindar which appeared during this period, and in the final section it is shown how, whereas Pindar and the Pindaric become firmly associated with such fashionable critical pre-occupation as primitivism and originality, the problem of reconciling his subject matter and the traditional notions of his style becomes increasingly difficult, with Pindar often a subject for parody or burlesque.
There are three appendices - an analysis of Erasmus Schmid's policy in establishing his text of the first Pythian, a note on Milton and Pindar, and a transcription of Thomas Gray's notes on Pindar.