Substance and Style: An Introduction to The Temple

Jonathan F.S. Post Substance and Style: An Introduction to The Temple Poetry is a revelation in words by means of the words. — Wallace Stevens1 George Herbert might well have been an exemplary Caroline court poet: "I know the wayes of Pleasure, the sweet strains, / The hillings and the relishes of it."2 But he became instead England's greatest devotional lyricist, and he did so in fine Caroline style — with the publication of a single, though substantial, collection of verse that appeared in print only because of the help of others. Indeed, style is very much at the heart of The Temple: style as it includes issues of dress, the proper mode and language of wooing, the shape of individual poems, the role of the self, even the way one might respond to courtly games and some of the symbols and devices most in fashion by courtier poets, like posies, roses, and emblems — but style, too, as it is constantly, consciously, and at times cunningly played off against substance as identified ultimately with Christ or God's word. The authoritative nature of this shift from secular to sacred is the subject of the printer's note to the reader that appeared with the first edition of The Temple in 1633 and which is usually attributed to Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding: Being nobly born, and as eminently endued with gifts of the minde, and having by industrie and happy education perfected them to that great height of excellencie, whereof his fellowship of Trinitie Colledge in Cambridge, and his Orator-ship in the 2 Jonathan F.S. Post Universitie, together with that knowledge which the Kings Court had taken of him, could make relation farre above ordinarie. Quitting both his deserts and all the opportunities that he had for worldly preferment, he betook himself to the Sanctuarie and Temple of God, choosing rather to serve at Gods Altar, then to seek the honour of Stateemployments , (p. 3) Others had proclaimed the priority of Sion Hill over Helicon: the Jesuit Martyr, Robert Southwell, most explicitly in his prefatory note to his frequently reprinted St. Peter's Complaint in 1595 (thereafter 1597, 1599, 1602, 1608, 1615, 1634); and Sidney, to whom Herbert was related through Sidney's sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, had defended the subject and practice of poetry in general because of its biblical roots, most evident in the Psalms, the Song of Songs, Jet), Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs. Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke had also translated the psalter, copies of which circulated widely in manuscript in Jacobean court circles and was commended by Donne and probably read by Herbert. (It was eventually published in 1823.) But not until the publication of The Temple had any poet in England written so persuasively and decisively of the devotional experience. Ah my deare angrie Lord, Since thou dost love, yet strike; Cast down, yet help afford; Sure I will do the like. I will complain, yet praise; I will bewail, approve: And all my sowre-sweet dayes I will lament, and love. The size of "Bitter-sweet" might remind us of Herrick; so too perhaps its subject matter. (Herrick frequently writes of being sad or discontent.) But the compressed anguish and the compulsion to particularize belong to a different register altogether, as if Herbert were wringing the sentimental out of Herrick in order to identify both the sweet and the sour as separate though related experiences that stem directly from the utterly special conditions of address. "His An Introduction to The Temple3 measure was eminent," wrote Henry Vaughan, the most original of Herbert's many disciples, in the 1655 preface to his own collection of "sacred poems and private ejaculations" entitled Silex Scintillans and modelled to a great extent on Herbert's collection. "Herbert speaks to God like one that really believeth a God, and whose business in the world is most with God," noted Richard Baxter nearly fifty years after the publication of The Temple. "Heart-work and Heaven work make up his Books."3 "My God must have my best, ev'n all I had" is how Herbert phrased the ultimate nature of his commitment in "The Forerunners" (I. 18...