ABSTRACT
Yet another subtle tribute to the importance of inner fullness is found in Jonson’s “Epistle Answering to One that Asked to be Sealed of the Tribe of Ben” (Und. 47), a vigorous and pivotal statement of his philosophy and aesthetic which, surprisingly, has been discussed only glancingly or in summary fashion.1 The immediate occasion of the epistle was the wounding exclusion of the poet from the elaborate (but ultimately fruitless) preparations to receive the Infanta of Spain as Prince Charles’s bride in the summer of 1623. Barred from this “late Mysterie of reception” (l. 48) superintended by Inigo Jones, that archetypal false friend in the poet’s eyes, Jonson substitutes his own ceremonious reception of a worthy friend and son. The resulting poem is far more than a satire on a passing occasion: it is self-praise of the most spirited and witty kind, a celebration not simply of survival by withdrawal but of self-knowledge which extends beyond mere inventory of one’s contents to a confident sense of copious inner resources to be shared with the proper companions.
