The Lords of Limit: Essays on Literature and Ideas

by Geoffrey Hill

Geoffrey Hill, one of England’s premier poets, analyzes the nature of poetry and language in this collection of nine essays. It is rare for the poet and the scholar to meet on equal terms within one mind. In The Lords of Limit, the poet with his scrupulous precision, intricately allusive use of immense resources of learning, and witty conciseness, continues to illuminate his own nature even as the scholar is illuminating his subjects. In this erudite collection Hill ranges across the history of poetry and criticism from Shakespeare to the present, look at Robert Southwell, Jonathan Swift, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ben Johnson, John Crowe Ransom, and T. H. Green. Ethical and politician issues are interwoven with questions of literature in this highly original assessment of poets and poetry. Sir Geoffrey William Hill, FRSL (1932 – 2016) was an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be among the most distinguished poets of his generation and was called the "greatest living poet in the English language." From 2010 to 2015 he held the position of Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. Presented with the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in 2009 for his Collected Critical Writings and the publication of Broken Hierarchies (Poems 1952–2012), Hill is recognized as one of the principal contributors to poetry in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published November 15, 1984

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Sir Geoffrey William Hill was an English poet and professor emeritus of English literature and religion.

Reviews

[Harrison Glaze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dense, ambitious essays spanning pretty much the whole of English poetry from Robert Southwell to John Crowe Ransom (to say nothing of a lot of philosophy and theology of which I regrettably know far less). In the prose as in the poetry, Hill eludes as often as he alludes, which is often—in due keeping with his unsparing commitment to “the Coleridgean ‘drama of reason.’” But he is beguilingly brilliant, in his insight and his fierce integrity, and given some effort he teaches you. We shall not see his like again.

[Vel Veeter]

This is a complex and challenging set of essays by the British poet Geoffrey Hill first published in the early 1970s. He is most notably a poet, but he worked for many years as a scholar, critic, and teacher. These essays read to me like someone without a PhD, and what I mean by that is that the questions raised, the evidence presented, and the ideas explored feel like they are fueled by an earnest and joyful curiosity of the exploration of ideas, rather than settling questions. Hill often notes that his theses in these essays aren’t always explainable. The essays also do what great literary essays do, for me at least: make me want to read the things they talk about. So from these, I ended up reading some Philip Sydney, Jonathan Swift poetry (more about that), about medieval leading to Renaissance forms of state torture, and other topics that are fascinating. He’s interested in some of the weirdos of poetry and literature like John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester and the like.

Anyway, here’s one of the Swift poems — I don’t think I can teach it, but it did make me laugh:

A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed – BY JONATHAN SWIFT
Corinna, pride of Drury-Lane
For whom no shepherd sighs in vain;
Never did Covent Garden boast
So bright a battered, strolling toast;
No drunken rake to pick her up,
No cellar where on tick to sup;
Returning at the midnight hour;
Four stories climbing to her bow’r;
Then, seated on a three-legged chair,
Takes off her artificial hair:
Now, picking out a crystal eye,
She wipes it clean, and lays it by.
Her eye-brows from a mouse’s hide,
Stuck on with art on either side,
Pulls off with care, and first displays ’em,
Then in a play-book smoothly lays ’em.
Now dexterously her plumpers draws,
That serve to fill her hollow jaws.
Untwists a wire; and from her gums
A set of teeth completely comes.
Pulls out the rags contrived to prop
Her flabby dugs and down they drop.
Proceeding on, the lovely goddess
Unlaces next her steel-ribbed bodice;
Which by the operator’s skill,
Press down the lumps, the hollows fill,
Up goes her hand, and off she slips
The bolsters that supply her hips.
With gentlest touch, she next explores
Her shankers, issues, running sores,
Effects of many a sad disaster;
And then to each applies a plaister.
But must, before she goes to bed,
Rub off the dawbs of white and red;
And smooth the furrows in her front
With greasy paper stuck upon’t.
She takes a bolus ere she sleeps;
And then between two blankets creeps.
With pains of love tormented lies;
Or if she chance to close her eyes,
Of Bridewell and the Compter dreams,
And feels the lash, and faintly screams;
Or, by a faithless bully drawn,
At some hedge-tavern lies in pawn;
Or to Jamaica seems transported,
Alone, and by no planter courted;
Or, near Fleet-Ditch’s oozy brinks,
Surrounded with a hundred stinks,
Belated, seems on watch to lie,
And snap some cully passing by;
Or, struck with fear, her fancy runs
On watchmen, constables and duns,
From whom she meets with frequent rubs;
But, never from religious clubs;
Whose favor she is sure to find,
Because she pays ’em all in kind.
Corinna wakes. A dreadful sight!
Behold the ruins of the night!
A wicked rat her plaster stole,
Half eat, and dragged it to his hole.
The crystal eye, alas, was missed;
And puss had on her plumpers pissed.
A pigeon picked her issue-peas;
And Shock her tresses filled with fleas.
The nymph, tho’ in this mangled plight,
Must ev’ry morn her limbs unite.
But how shall I describe her arts
To recollect the scattered parts?
Or shew the anguish, toil, and pain,
Of gath’ring up herself again?
The bashful muse will never bear
In such a scene to interfere.
Corinna in the morning dizened,
Who sees, will spew; who smells, be poison’d.

[Janina]

This book is incredibly dense and erudite.

In 9 essays, Geoffrey Hill who is himself a great English poet, analyzes the nature of poetry and language of other poets, like Shakespeare, Robert Southwell, Jonathan Swift, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ben Jonson, John Crowe Ransom and T.H. Green.

This reading implicates to have a good knowledge of these poets or read their poems as and when they are cited and criticized.

All who feel love for English language should read “The Lords of Limit”.