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Robert Herrick's God: visual aesthetics in Noble Numbers
- Parergon
- Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Inc.)
- Volume 12, Number 1, July 1994
- pp. 39-56
- 10.1353/pgn.1994.0043
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Robert Herrick's God: visual aesthetics in Noble Numbers Robert Herrick's Noble Numbers is a text that has always struggled to attract as much critical attention as its more famous counterpart, Hesperides. However, the new bistoricisms now reigning in the study of early-modem Englishtextshave benefitted Noble Numbers, with such critics as Claude J. Summers, Leah S. Marcus, and David W . Landrum offering subtle and theoretically informed analyses of tbe political andreligiousinvolvement and agenda of the collection.1 The contemporary critical focus on the cultural formation of which anytextis a part has dislodged and/or reworked to some degree the older, though sensitive and valuable, studies of the style, tone, and techniques of Noble Numbers, by such scholars as Miriam K. Starkman, Roger B. Rollin, and Robert Denting.2 Yet, despite the current and illuminating trend of viewing Noble Numbers as a religio-political text, tbe collection still repays close study of its style, technique and art. I have argued elsewhere that Herrick's representation of the human figure in Hesperides relies very much on the presence of the style-element of grace (or grazia)? His poetic equivalent of Nicholas HUliard's life-giving 'graces'—the capturing in paint of the apparendy artless movements of the sitter's eyes and hands, discussed in HiUiard's Treatise Concerning the Arte 1 Claude J. Summers, 'Herrick's Political Counterplots', Studies in English Literature 25 (1985), 165-82; Leah Sinanoglou Marcus, 'Herrick's Noble Numbers and the Politics of Playfulness', English Literary Renaissance 7 (1977), 108-26, and The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes, Chicago and London, 1986, pp.140-68; David W . Landrum, "To Seek God": Enthusiasm and the Anglican Response in Robert Herrick's Noble Numbers', Studies in Philology 89 (1992), 244-55, and 'Robert Herrick on Predestination', English Language Notes 30.3 (1993), 24-30. 2 Miriam K. Starkman, 'Noble Numbers and the Poetry of Devotion', in Reason and the Imagination: Studies in the History of Ideas 1600-1800, ed. J. A. Mazzeo, N e w York, 1962; Roger B. Rollin, Robert Herrick, N e w York, 1966, pp. 134-64; and Robert Deming, Ceremony and Art: Robert Herrick's Poetry, The Hague, 1974, pp. 66-79. 3 L. E. Semler, 'Robert Herrick and the English Mannerist Aesthetic', forthcoming in Studies in English Literature (Winter, 1995). P A R E R G O N ns 12.1 (July 1994) 40 L. E. Semler of Limning4 —often infuses a convincing genuineness and illusion of life into the highly rarefied artefact. Noble Numbers m a y be regarded as a continuation and completion of this aesthetic project. In place of graceful patrons described via heavenly hyperboles, Herrick substitutes the greatest of patrons, G o d himself, and a truly heavenly topic, the reconciliation of humanity to God through his grace in Christ. Theological grace infuses and perfects artistic grazia. Noble Numbers fulfils the aesthetic grace of Hesperides as the N e w Testament fulfils the saving grace of the Old. Herrick's pastoral task as parish priest to reconcile his parishoners to God through Christ is effected by way of an aesthetic that generates a relational and visual perception of G o d the Father. Only when perceived through the Tens' of Christ does Herrick's elegant yet angry G o d appear graceful to the sinner. The movement of Noble Numbers is towards aesthetic and theological reconciliation in Christ. Humankind and God are reconciled at exactly the same point as aesthetic and saving grace are unified. The collection begins with an intrinsically mannerist opening and proceeds, via an increasingly visual manner, to arrive atfinalresolution in the graceful death of Christ5 In the multifaceted variety of Hesperides6 Herrick seeks to please the widest possible range of individual patron-readers, at times explicitly calling 4 For A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning see Nicholas Hilliard's Art of Limning, ed. Arthur F. Kinney and Linda Bradley Salamon, Boston, M A , 1983, henceforth Arte, with page number. 5 M y understanding of Mannerism relies on John Shearman, Mannerism, Harmondsworth, 1967. The terms 'early Mannerism', 'early Maniera', and 'high Maniera' derive from S. J...