The Temple. Sacred Poems And Private Ejaculations. By Mr. George Herbert, late Oratour of the Universitie of Cambridge. The second Edition. Psal. 29. In his Temple doth every man speak of his honour

by Herbert, George

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Cambridge: Printed by T[homas]. Buck, and R[oger]. Daniel, printers to the Universitie, 1633. Duodecimo, 5.6 x 3.2 inches. Second edition, printed in the same year as the first edition. The type was reset throughout and some ornaments were changed. ¦4, A-H12, I2. The text of the Temple includes the pattern poems, ÒThe Altar,Ó and ÒEaster Wings.Ó This copy is in good condition. It is bound in full blind tooled brown calfskin, from the nineteenth century. It is bound in full nineteenth century russet Morocco. The spine and the boards are tooled in bline, the title and authorÕs name are tooled in gold on the front and back boards. The edges of the text block are stained red and the end papers are marbled. This binding is in good shape.. ÒWe may partly distinguish two poets in Herbert. There is, first, the parish priest of early seventeenth-century England who revered his Church as a chaste mother neither ÔpaintedÕ nor Ôundrest;Õ who deplored the worm of schism eating away the English rose and (to the disturbance of the Cambridge licenser in 1633) saw Religion standing Òon tip-toe in our land, Readie to passe to the American strand;Ó who celebrated with loving particularity and complete security of belief the meaning of GodÕs temple and worship. It is this poet who can be fully appreciated, in ColeridgeÕs works, only by Ôan affectionate and dutiful child of the Church;Õ and it is to HerbertÕs writings and life that we owe much of our picture of the order, strength, and beauty of seventeenth-century Anglicanism at its best. But church-bells are heard beyond the stars, and the Anglican parish priest meres with the larger poet, with the very human saint who gives fresh and moving utterance to the aspirations and failures of the spiritual life. This is the Herbert we know through ÔAaron,Õ ÔDiscipline,Õ ÔThe Collar,Õ ÔThe Pulley,Õ and many other poems in which he strives to subdue the willful or kindle the apathetic self. His principal themes are those Ôtwo vast, spacious things ... Sinne and Love.Õ There is nothing soft in the poet who seeks to engrave divine love in steel; and a catalogue of gratuitous, untempered, and short-lived sweets leads up to the magnificent contrast of the disciplined soul that Ônever gives.ÕÒAs the Anglican merges with the greater poet, so the ÔquaintÕ writer merges with the metaphysical. Herbert had his share of the ageÕs passion for anagrams and the like, which Addison was to condemn as Ôfalse Wit.Õ But the poet who could shape a poem in the physical likeness of ÔThe AltarÕ or ÔEaster WingsÕ had, even more than most of his fellows, a functional sense of meter and rhythm. The technical experimentalist and master was, we remember, a skilled and devoted musician. The movement of his verse, taut or relaxed, can suggest all his fluctuating moods, from self-will or weakness to joyful surrender and assured strength. He moves from this world to the world of the spirit ÔAs from one room tÕanother, or dwells simultaneously in both, and it is in keeping with that habit of mind, and with metaphysical origins in general, that many of his poems should be allegorical anecdotes, transfigured emblems. Apart from some of his fine dramatic openings, Herbert does not attempt the high pitch of DonneÕs ÔDivine Poems.Õ His great effects are all the greater for rising out of a homely, colloquial quietness of tone; and peace brings quiet endingsÑ ÔSo I did sit and eat;Õ ÔAnd I replyÕd, My Lord.Õ Though the friend and admirer of Donne (and of Bacon), Herbert did not cultivate scholastic or scientific imagery; mature and everyday life, the Bible and the liturgy were his chief sources. The highest truth, as he said more than once, must be plainly dressed. In spite of his classical learning and his Latin and Greek verse, he avoided the common surface classicism of the time. Of the elements of a deeper classicism, if we care to use that name, he had muscular density, precision, deceptive simplicity, and a dynamic sense of form. At times his structure may be a winding stair, but it is all built of seasoned timber.Ó (D. Bush, English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century, page 137-138) 

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