Robert Herrick and Nineteenth-Century Periodical Publication: The Gentleman's Magazine and The National: A Library for the People

Robert Herrick and Nineteenth-Century Periodical Publication: The Gentleman's Magazine and The National: ? Libraryfor the People by Crys Armbrust With a few notable exceptions, scholars who study canon formation tend to ignore the role of periodical texts. Most often, critical evaluations of an author and an author's work are formulated primarily through an examination of edition printings and, less frequently, anthologizations. Where periodicals are used, it is usually for their direct critical commentary (the "Critical Heritage"), rather than for their role in the dissemination of printed texts. Such neglect is unfortunate because periodical printings and reprintings can sometimes form an important link in the construction of a canonical "author" both initially and by subsequent generations of editors and readers. Periodical printings pose their own set of problems, spanning the physical, social and intellectual contexts involved in the presentation (or re-presentation) process;1 among these problems, we may distinguish the following: locating the material text; interpreting the significance of its physical format and of its juxtaposition with other periodical items; discovering the intended or probable readership of the journal; and reconstructing the literary and intellectual attitudes this readership would bring to the text. The following essay is an inquiry into the nineteenth-century reputation of the seventeenth-century poet Robert Herrick, focusing primarily on two very different periodical printings. One, from the Gentleman's Magazine, shows Herrick being represented in terms of antiquarian, or gentry class concerns. The other, from the Chartist publication, The National: A Library for the People, shows Herrick being reused as a romantic lyricist, and raises interesting issues about the uses of emotion in the political flux of the 1830s. I. John Nichols, Herrick and the Biographical Recovery Unlike the seventeenth-century Metaphysical poet, George Herbert, Robert Herrick had no Izaak Walton to enliven his image for later readers. Walton's Life of Herbert (1670) had been 114Crys Armbrust instrumental in keeping Herbert known through the eighteenth century at a time when Metaphysical poetry had long since been considered unfashionable, and his "golden-mouthed biographer's praise" also informed the early nineteenth-century rediscovery of Herbert's poetic works, especially among the antiquarian and religious readerships.2 For Herrick, however, no such biographical work, contemporary or otherwise, existed until John Nichols (17451826 ), the printer and antiquary, became interested in Herrick's poetry and became the driving force behind the initial phase in Herrick's nineteenth-century recovery. Although Nichols was known as a publisher of antiquaries, it was in his role as editor of the Gentleman's Magazine (1792-1826) that he laid the groundwork for a renewed interest in Herrick and his poetry among nineteenth-century readers.3 Thus far, too little critical attention has been given to this earliest evidence of Herrick's nineteenth-century recovery.4 To some extent, the cause for this neglect is the eighteenth-century literary convention of anonymity espoused by Nichols in the Gentleman's Magazine, a monthly forum of inquiry and response. However, the magazine's wide circulation amongthe general middle- and upper-class readership (recorded, in 1797, as 4,550) and its recognized influence in the shaping of nineteenth-century literary tastes suggest the importance of the magazine, and stress further the need to understand the editorial and ideological forces working upon many of the earlier authors who were reintroduced to the reading public in the magazine. The late eighteenth-century version of the seventeenth-century poetic canon was fairly limited, consisting essentially of Milton, Jonson, and Cowley, and, to a lesser extent, Waller and Denham. During the early decades of the nineteenth-century, however, this canon became greatly expanded as a result of a renewed interest in the poetry of lesser-known seventeenth-century figures. In part, this growing appreciation among the readership for antiquarian poetry was a response to the efforts of such editors as Nichols who used their publishing connections to influence (and even to control) the reception of such authors as Herrick. Some recent evidence sheds new light on the Herrick items published in the Gentleman's Magazine and calls for a revaluation of the material and the individuals) who produced it. Herrick's re-integration into the canon began in...