The model for the country house poem is Ben Jonson's To Penshurst, published in 1616, which compliments Robert Sydney, 1st Earl of Leicester, younger brother of Sir Philip Sidney on his Penshurst Place. The poem has many allusions, to Epiphanius, Martial, and Horace, amongst others, and begins with the following lines referencing Horace's Ode 2:18: Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show Of touch or marble, nor canst boast a row Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold; Thou hast no lantern whereof tales are told, Or stair, or courts; but stand’st an ancient pile, And these grudged at, art reverenced the while.
Author
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems. A man of vast reading and a seemingly insatiable appetite for controversy, Jonson had an unparalleled breadth of influence on Jacobean and Caroline playwrights and poets. A house in Dulwich College is named after him. See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben\_Jonson
