‘Knights of the Same Order’: A Reference in Sidney’s Defence of Poesy Explained

Abstract

Toward the end of the Defence of Poesy (composed c.1579–1581, published 1595), Sidney makes a reference that has never been satisfactorily explained. Writing in the digressio—the penultimate part of the oration, in which he laments the sorry state of poetry in contemporary England—Sidney complains that bad poets are so rushing to print and flooding the market that better ones are loth to do the same lest they be accounted ‘knights of the same order’. ¹ The context of the passage is the social disparity between the outstanding poets of other times and places—who included ‘kings, emperors, senators, great captains’ (108.29–30)—and the ‘base men with servile wits’ (109.11) of the present moment: ‘bastard poets’ (109.17) who bring the Muses into disrepute. Robert Maslen, the editor who has the most to say about this passage, describes the sentence in question as ‘difficult’ (225) and the final phrase with which we are concerned as ‘puzzling’ (226). Jan van Dorsten is the only modern editor to connect Sidney’s ‘knights’ with a section in the Ars poetica, where Horace similarly satirises the bad poet, accusing him of writing poetry even though he doesn’t know how to simply because ‘he is free, even free-born, nay, is rated at the fortune of a knight [eques]’. ² Although other modern editors do not refer to this particular line, they all agree that Sidney had this part of the Ars in mind, for in the following sentence he includes himself among this ‘company of the paper-blurrers’ (109.25) and accuses both them and himself of ‘taking upon us to be poets in despite of Pallas’ (109.26–7): a clear reference to the sentence in which, having scorned the poetaster ‘knight’, Horace immediately goes on to contrast the better sense and judgement of his esteemed addressee: ‘But you will say nothing and do nothing against Minerva’s will [Tu nihil invita dices faciesve Minerva]; such is your judgement, such your good sense’. ³