Out of Sight Out of Mind, adage, Ovid, Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets, Turbervile

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contentious poems as foils for his own answers, ³³⁵ and by exploring alternative variations upon Googe’s Aristotelian themes. One example is his ‘An Aunswere to his Ladie, that willed him that Absense should not Breede Forgetfulnesse’ which adapts the adage of “Out of Sight Out of Mind” used by Googe in his poem of the same name. ³³⁶ Turbervile’s miscellany might be regarded as being contiguous with Googe’s, and the closeness of their relationship is further reflected by the poets’ shared interest in the works of Aristotle and Ovid and by the similarity between the titles of their miscellanies (Turbervile’s miscellany is entitled Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets). ³³⁷ While there are also significant differences between the miscellanies, such as Turbervile’s inclusion of a sequence of quasi-pastoral amorous dialogues between Tymetes and Pyndara interspersed throughout his miscellany, for which there exists no equivalent in Googe’s collection, there remain enough correspondences between them for their relationship to be striking.

Googe’s ‘Of Money’ – this time a verse upon the subject of friendship – is another provocative verse to which Turbervile responds in his ‘To Maister Googes Fansie that Begins “Giue monie mee take friendship who so list”’ (p.115). In this instance Googe affects a deliberately misanthropic standpoint by engaging in an argument that is the

³³⁵ For instance, ‘The Epicures Counsell, Eate, Drinke, and Plaie’ and ‘The Aunswere to the Vile and Canckred Councell of the Outragious Epicure’, Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonnets, pp.68-9.

³³⁶ ‘Oculi augent dolorem. Out of Sight, Out of Mind’, Kennedy ed. (1989), p.97 and Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets, pp.107-9.

In the Ethics it is stated that,

Distance does not break off […] friendship absolutely, but only the activity of it. But if the absence is lasting, it seems actually to make men forget their friendship; hence the saying ‘Out of sight, out of mind’.

Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross, rev. J. L. Ackrill and J. O. Urmson (Oxford and NY: OUP, 1998), VIII. 5. Subsequent references for this text are given in parentheses following quotations.

³³⁷ Erskine Hankins (1940), pp.73-4.

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