Harington's next published work grew out of a convivial gathering at Wardour Castle in Wiltshire, home of the fanatical horse-lover Sir Matthew Arundell; the company included Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton, and his sister Mary. The conversation turned to matters of sanitary technology, and the idea of keeping a permanent cistern of water above a privy, with a primitive flushing mechanism, was conceived. Harington outlined the design (with illustrations supplied by his servant, the emblematist Thomas Combe) in his New Discourse of a Stale Subject, called the Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596). 'Ajax' played on 'a jakes', meaning 'a privy', a device here transformed in the manner of Ovid's Ajax. The punning title gives some idea of the work that follows, a complex blend of scatological comedy, moral reflection, and social satire. Although Harington wrote the New Discourse under the pseudonym Misacmos ('hater of filth'), he dropped many clues to his identity throughout, so that he became known as Sir Ajax Harington. On the basis of his first two publications, critics have speculated about his relevance to the Jacques and Orlando of his contemporary Shakespeare's As You Like It. As a result of the New Discourse's satire, Harington was threatened with Star Chamber suits; for a derogatory remark about the earl of Leicester, 'the great Beare that caried eight dogges on him when Monsieur [the duke of Alencon] was here' (New Discourse, 171), he languished for some time in royal disfavour. Harington avowed to Elizabeth Russell that his aim in writing the pamphlet was to 'give some occasion to have me thought of and talked of' (Letters, 66), and in this he was undoubtedly successful. The work enjoyed considerable if short-lived popularity, going through four editions in 1596 and attracting an anonymous response in an animadversion entitled Ulysses upon Ajax. Although the New Discourse was merely an octavo pamphlet, there is evidence that Harington tried to use it to further his career. In the final section of the book (the 'Apologie') he created a complex fictional vehicle which allowed him to flatter potential patrons and to promote the toleration of conformist recusants such as his friend Ralph Sheldon and his uncle Thomas Markham. And Harington's water-closet itself became a gift in the patronage economy; he installed one at the royal palace of Richmond and sent another to Robert Cecil for use at Theobalds.
Maybe too much detail.
Sir John Harington is today recalled also for his epigrams, of which he accumulated over four hundred, and of which he prepared several editions and distributed them to those whose favor he sought. One refers to a proverbial description:
"as fierce as a Cotswold lion," meaning a sheep.
Writers differ on his purpose in using the phrase "Cotswold Lion". Some think it a mere joke, while others believe it a "grotesque metaphor" for the magnates who took land away from those who had shared it jointly for centuries.
And Harington wrote these lines-
....
Because I sport about King Henry's marriage:
Thinkst [you] this will prove a matter worth the carriage.
But let it alone ...., it is no booting,
While Princes live who speakes or writes or teaches
Against their faults, may pay for speach & wryting,
But being dead, dead men they say leaue byting,
Their eyes are seal'd, their arms have little reaches
Children they are and fooles that are affeared to pull
And 'play with a dead Lions bearde'
Harington seems not to have succeeded in his attempts to find patronage in a Tudor and Stuart world. Perhaps this was because, as our lion quotations reveal, he did not share the high regard in which the regal dimension of the lion was then mostly held.
The ODNB article ends with this touching note:
Harington justified his references to friends and kinsfolk in the notes to his Orlando by recalling that Plutarch had criticized Homer for leaving no account of himself; his translation, 'a worke that may perhaps last longer then a better thing' (Letters, 15), would not be thus blamed. In the event, it is the unashamedly personal element in Harington's writings which has made them last.
Harington seems not to have succeeded in his attempts to find patronage in a Tudor and Stuart world. Perhaps this was because, as our lion quotations reveal, he did not share the high regard in which the regal dimension of the lion was then mostly held.
The ODNB article ends with this touching note:
Harington justified his references to friends and kinsfolk in the notes to his Orlando by recalling that Plutarch had criticized Homer for leaving no account of himself; his translation, 'a worke that may perhaps last longer then a better thing' (Letters, 15), would not be thus blamed. In the event, it is the unashamedly personal element in Harington's writings which has made them last.
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