Doomed to Sincerity

Letters

Vol. 21 No. 19 · 30 September 1999

From Sean Haldane

Good to see the verb 'frig', which is becoming neglected in the general emancipation of the other f-word, used to effect by Germaine Greer (LRB, 16 September): 'Most scholars are still loth to give up their frigged-out version of Rochester.'

Being cognate with 'prick', 'frig' suggests – very nicely in Germaine Greer's sentence – both masturbation and any other form of footling exercise. When I lived in the backwoods in Canada I heard an elderly lady remark to her pastor: 'I've just frigged and frigged at my knitting all day.'

Sean Haldane
Balsall Common<br />West Midlands

Vol. 21 No. 20 · 14 October 1999

From Harold Love

The one thing I am able to say with certainty about Germaine Greer's dyspeptic dithyramb (LRB, 16 September) is that, despite claims to the contrary, it is not a review of my Oxford edition of Rochester. Of two lyrics whose opening lines are quoted, 'Absent from thee I languish still' and 'An age in her embraces passed', we are told in authoritative tones by Greer that 'no manuscripts are known.' Whoops! My texts of these two poems are both from a manuscript source, with another manuscript cited in support. So whose edition is she reviewing? Perhaps the same one that told her that 'it is usually assumed that Jacob Tonson, himself a poet, compiled Poems 1691,' whereas I give the credit to a much more usual suspect, Thomas Rymer, or perhaps the edition containing the amazing claim that '17th-century prologues were seldom if ever written by the authors of play-texts.' In Greer's imagined edition 'no attempt is made to collate the 1691 printing of Valentinian with the manuscript sources and the version printed in 1685, and, what is more, no explanation is given' for this decision, 'if indeed there was one', whereas in mine it is explained that the 1691 variants have not been listed because the 1691 edition was discovered (through collation naturally: there is no other way) to be wholly derived from 1685.

The edition reviewed by Greer also appears to lack the landmark essay by John Burrows included in the Oxford edition, in which the techniques of computational stylistics are brought to bear on the Rochester dubia. No conscientious reviewer could have failed to comment on this important methodological innovation.

Greer complains that 'the setting out of the textual notes, no bigger than grains of sand silting across page after page, discourages even the specialist trying to get her bearings.' The textual notes of the edition (there are also 153 pages of explanatory notes) are set in an elegant eight-point Caslon. Those who find this too small are at liberty to enlarge on a photocopier or scan and reformat. Moreover, the lists of variants for most of the poems are preceded by textual essays or notes outlining the structure and problems of the particular tradition. Specialist and non-specialist readers are both well served in this respect; but it has never been the case that an understanding of complex stemmatological relationships can be acquired without patience and effort.

Why go on? Once it is established that my edition has become mixed up with somebody else's, there are still important things to be learned from Greer's reflections on Rochester's life and the biographical heritage. And I am grateful, after deciding on quite other grounds that the British Library manuscript of 'Lucina's Rape' was prepared under Rochester's supervision, to discover from her that some of its corrections may be in the hand of his mother.

Anyone concerned about the nature and extent of Meredith Sherlock's contribution to my edition has only to contact her personally at her easily discoverable e-mail address at Monash University to obtain her own unmediated views on the matter.

Harold Love
Monash University, Melbourne

From John Murphy

Germaine Greer is right to doubt that Rochester's 'Sab: Lost' was a piece for the theatre, although the title is not mysterious. 'Sab:' refers to Sabinus, a Rochester pseudonym. Sabinus was the supposed author of three replies to Ovid's letters in Heroides. Like the letters of Sabinus, a number of Rochester's poems answer a woman's complaint.

John Murphy
Medford, Massachusetts

Vol. 21 No. 23 · 25 November 1999

From Harold Love

If John Murphy (Letters, 14 October) seriously believes that 'Sab:' in the title of Rochester's 'Sab: Lost' stands for a male called Sabinus, can he explain why the person whose loss is described is called 'she' and 'the first of women'?

Harold Love
Monash University<br />Melbourne