Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert by John Drury (review)

While one may quibble with details, this book nevertheless remains an advance in the study of the Harrowing of Hell, manuscript studies, the Exeter Book, Old English literature, and Anglo-Saxon religious culture. Since Rambaran-Olm places this understudied short Old English poem in the spotlight, it is hoped that her literary analysis, edition, and translation help to make the poem more appealing to scholars and beginning readers of Old English alike. Brandon W. Hawk Rhode Island College Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert. By John Drury. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. ISBN 13:978-0-226-13444-4. Pp. xix + 396. $35.00. Music at Midnight is a major critical achievement, meticulously researched and brimming with judicious insights into the life and work of one of England’s greatest poets. John Drury, chaplain and fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, proves that it is possible to produce excellent historical research and lively literary criticism mercifully free of academic jargon. Drury writes, ‘‘the whole purpose of this book is to make Herbert familiar to the modern reader’’ (xviii). He may have achieved his goal. The Wall Street Journal named Music at Midnight one of the ten best non- fiction books of 2014. Drury takes seriously the autobiographical implications of Herbert’s poems as he brings ‘‘together life and poetry, history and literary criticism as closely as possible’’ (xvi). While this approach opens Drury to the charge that he has confused the author with his art, Drury mounts a convincing case that ‘‘Herbert’s poems obviously and confessedly arise from his life-experiences’’ (xvii). Herbert himself declared that his poems are autobiographical: ‘‘a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that passed betwixt God and my soul’’ (xvii). Again and again, Drury proves to be an astute, critical reader of the textual evidence. If his presentation of Herbert is an artful construct, it is a plausible one. After providing a concise introduction to ‘‘Herbert’s World,’’ the succeeding nine chapters survey the important stages of Herbert’s life. Two additional chapters concern Herbert’s ‘‘afterlife’’ (i.e., his heirs, imitators, and major interpreters). The last two chapters provide memorable readings of selected masterpieces ‘‘which demand attention by their sheer beauty—a beauty which is bound up with their truthfulness, marked by accuracy and candour’’ (327). Drury intends Music at Midnight to be a work for us and our times. He finds in Herbert’s collection of poems the account of a man experiencing ‘‘sorrow and happiness, regret, sensual pleasure, hope and resignation,’’ expressed with such ‘‘truthfulness and imaginative craft,’’ with such ‘‘accuracy and sympathy’’ that readers can identify with the person behind the words (17). Drury invites readers to appreciate the esthetics and the intellectual power of Herbert, but to go Book Reviews 165 further—to respond in a ‘‘heart-deep’’ way as well. Though the author never speci fically names the New Atheists, he clearly has in mind the atheist, the secularist, as well as the believer. He appeals to ‘‘the modern reader, of whatever persuasion concerning religion’’ (15). At times the book adopts a reader-response critical approach, inviting the reader to join Herbert’s intellectual-spiritual quest to make sense of life’s struggles. ‘‘The reader has to participate,’’ Drury explains, ‘‘if only as readers, in the poet’s struggle’’ (177). Herbert’s project, and Drury’s by extension, is to construct a theodicy of sorts. Music at Midnight describes well the central problem facing Herbert: God was not only the maker and lord of space and all its contents. He was also the lord of time, setting it on its course, ordaining and governing everything that happened . The resulting riddle was formidable and all too familiar. God is just and good. Why, then, is so much that happens bad and unjust? (12) This ancient riddle, ‘‘the only problem,’’ as novelist Murial Spark called it (12), confronts Herbert endlessly: the great and crucial problem in Herbert’s life and verse [is]: who, or what, is he up against all the time? The obvious answer is ‘‘God.’’ But that simply restates the problem, for who or what is ‘‘God’’? Herbert’s Bible, the book...