Editor's Notes

Editor's Notes The opening chapter of Robert B. Shaw's introductory study The Call of God: The Theme of Vocation in the Poetry of Donne and Herbert (Cambridge, Mass.: Cowley Publications, 1981; xiii + 123 pp.; index of names; $5.00 paperback) gives a highly compressed but extremely useful survey of early Christian, medieval, Reformation, and humanist conceptions of man's call to salvation and earthly labor, and this provides the background for the readings of various works by Donne and Herbert that complete the volume. Very early, though, one of the ironies of Shaw's approach becomes apparent. While he aims to offer "a fresh and focused view of the religious poetry of John Donne and George Herbert" (p. ix), the author relies insistently on a critical commonplace that is all too easy to overstate: the contrast between Donne's "restlessness" and Herbert's "assurance" (p. 26). Shaw clinches this point at the end of his first chapter with a fine comparison of "Death be not proud" and "Death," but he altogether begs the question of the extent to which Donne and Herbert are fully characterized by these poems. (Why not, for example, compare Donne's sonnet to "Church-monuments" or "Mortification"?) Throughout, The Call of God does indeed give a "focused view" — and perhaps this is all we should ask of a short book — but at the expense of acknowledging the range and variety of both poets. The picture of Herbert is perhaps a bit more flattened out than that of Donne. In Shaw's hands, particularly via a careful selection of poems held up for discussion, Herbert appears to be a kind of muscular Anglican, fully committed to and untroubled by any serious difficulties in doing God's work on earth. Shaw turns first to "Coloss. 3.3," a poem that is finally gaining the critical attention it deserves, and notes "the careful balance with which both senses of vocation are expounded" (p. 74): "daily labour" and "eternali Treasure." earth and heaven, stand in harmony. Though he notes briefly that such harmony does not always characterize Herbert's poems, it seems to me that Shaw overstates his case and minimizes the strains involved in finding and accepting one's vocation and 51 EDITORS NOTES aiming and shooting at God. "Nature and grace," he concludes, "enjoy an utter coinherence by virtue of the Incarnation" (p. 81). Surely we should not underestimate the importance and calming effect of sacramental theology on Herbert, but even a confident belief in the power of Christ does not banish all difficulties and doubts, and we miss a crucial part of The Temple if we are not sensitive to Herbert's repeated statements about the problems of "dealing with thy mighty passion" and the sometimes overwhelming sense of the incompatibility of the earthly and heavenly worlds — a tension that is present perhaps even in the final lines of "Coloss. 3.3." "The Elixir," as might be expected, also proves to be a key text for Shaw, praising the ennobling power of work "for thy sake," but here too there are tensions that deserve at least a quick mention. Shaw is certainly right to describe "The Elixir" as "the poem of Herbert's which most fully develops his view of the grace inhering in all callings, of work becoming sacrament" (p. 82), but there is a subtle and important drama behind this poem's tale of how "Human actions approach perfection" (p. 83). "Perfection," as Shaw notes, is the original title of "The Elixir" in the Williams manuscript; what Shaw does not point out, however, is that in the original conclusion man is shown to be cut off from "high perfections," and the poem ends with a humbling reminder that even work done "for thy sake" may not be efficacious. I am not suggesting that a work such as Shaw's, clearly meant to be a general introduction, should get deeply involved with the textual history of Herbert's poems. My point is simply that Shaw might have acknowledged more fully, here and elsewhere, that while the confident reception of God's call may be the end it is certainly not the entirety of Herbert...