Bridging the Continental divide: neo-Latin and its cultural role in Jacobean Scotland, as seen in the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum (1637)

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A lament upon the death of Raphael Thory, a doctor, and a most outstanding poet, who died in London of the plague

1Has the vicious power of the pestilent evil carried you off, Thory, our bright chief, to the dark shades? Could the indiscriminate plague not vent its rage against the profane commoners without such a heap of malevolence, and against the great Fathers a without a bellyful of illness? Why are you the greatest casualty of the disaster? Why was such a thing allowed to happen to you? You, the greatest of the poets! You, the captain of the society of doctors! Indeed it has caused greater harm with your death than by a thousand deaths of powerful people, than if it had emptied the entire city of its listless citizens with the creeping effusion of its poison. The loss of the unrefined mob is not great: without their labour ferns rise up, and unseeded weeds are generated across the fields. Yet if a narcissus has been plucked up from its deepest root, if a rose has been frozen by the frost, or a violet, or soft marjoram, they will scarcely grow again even after much care.

17What now will the earth produce for us? What will its care bequeath to us after Thory? Nature can enrich with its own essence; it can create a Genius b through this essence - and its heroic virtue surpasses nature's scanty powers; rarely does it have a successor. Each age provides learned men, but every age does not provide men like Thory. For this to happen, all the stars must align to bring forth through their conjoined powers one man, whether an outstanding doctor, or a divinely-inspired poet. But Thory had been so blessed that he was skilled in both fields: he was able to extend life with his Paeonian skill, and to extend his fame with his Aonian skill. c

28It is a rare honour given to few to prolong the threads of life - even to the unwelcome fates (if it is right to say so). And it is a very great honour, when healing cannot prevent Fate cutting short life, to supplement the cloth of fleeing life with the eternal thread of fame, and to convey that which is its greatest part, the reason for living, into an everlasting text, which neither the blemishes of bruising envy, nor the bites of bitter old age can wear out.

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36Through this Thory himself, powerful in verse, was able to stand out from the rest: if he allowed anything mortal to descend to the shades before its time, it was the doing of fate: not a sluggish defect in his art, nor his expertise's error. For none of nature's secrets were concealed from him: he knew all the powers of herbs by name, debates of all types, and the laws of nature; even those things chemical heat concocted for medicinal employment - indeed even those things that the stars effect through their influence on mortal bodies, as described by the troops of heaven-watchers.

46You spirits, o you spirits, whom he tore from the clutches of the menacing monster when Erinys d was roaming far and wide, and scattering beastly poison through every city, I call you as witnesses; since you remember and can recall what great service he did you, how bravely he stood ready amid the sick, and how often he cheated Death and the grave!

52The aged man of Cos e himself commanded the gratitude of Athens, which had been afflicted by the oppressive plague and deadly winds, no more (for his services here he wore a weighty crown of radiant gold) than Thory did from the citizens called after the name of Ludd. f Yet still this cheap race, although discharged from such peril, resist repaying him with a statue for his gift of having prolonged their life! Indeed if the ancient world had produced such a man, neither one statue would have been enough, nor any honour customarily given to a deceased mortal; indeed Thory would have had altars smoking with incense, and temples abounding in his busts!

63But in accordance with our age's defects, let neither the living nor those snatched by death have their just rewards! Let virtue lie dejected without a champion! However, our age will not be thought completely ungrateful, dear Thory, for this dishonour does not stain everyone. We, who worshipped together with you, the Aonian initiates, g we will dedicate to you eternal rewards for your labours, and altars that will endure, not built with mortal effort, but by the skill of the Divinity, with which your heart was full, while in grand style you used to sing playfully of the great one run through in his heart by an infamous sword, h or our Daphnis torn from us by a cruel death, i   [p63]or the wonders of a pleasant puff. j

75I myself, the least of our great flock, shall dedicate a song at your altar, and the passer-by will perhaps read the dedication thus: 'It is not necessary that you groups of passers-by seek out the mountains in order to obtain Phoebus' divine breath through priestly visions; divine Thory is worshipped here - he who had brought together all of Phoebus and Phoebus' son k in his entire heart; may you only decorate this altar with violets and roses, and appease the pious spirits of the dead. After you have performed these rites, you will depart a blessed doctor, and a poet exhaling the words of Apollo.'