GEORGE HERBERT is conventionally ranked among the minor poets. The classification has no great value, and instead of serving a useful purpose may only hinder the recognition of poetic greatness. In this edition of Herbert's poems, Professor Palmer has freed himself from the trammels of relative and conventional estimates. He has done for a minor poet, if such he must be called, what has hitherto only been done for the great masters of song. He has subjected him to a study, encyclopædic in its range, a study minute, thorough, and seemingly exhaustive. He has done a work never attempted before, and it is so final in its results that henceforth every student of Herbert must reckon with it. So long as Herbert is read, or studied, will Mr. Palmer be associated with his name, as the commentator who rescued him from the neglect or ignorance which obscured his meaning and purpose. It is no slight task which Mr. Palmer has accomplished. In the absence of creative work which is the characteristic of our time, he has lifted the veil from the poet of another age, and has revealed to us his beauty and his power. Herbert now lives again, better understood than he was even by his contemporaries, and he speaks to the modern world, bringing to it a message needed and longed for. He can hardly again be classed among minor poets. He is not to be judged by the amount of his poetic work alone but by its quality, by the purpose which inspired him, and by his influence on those who followed him. In the light in which Mr. Palmer has disclosed him he is great and to be ranked among the few to whom the world is most indebted.

Herbert has always had his admirers, - a small number it is true, who have

seen that he possessed some subtle charm for the religious imagination beyond any other. Such was Mr. Emerson, who in his address on Books (1872) said of him: "He was a person of singular elevation of mind, and I think every young man and every young woman who wishes inspiration from books, should find for their Sunday reading and their Monday reading the little volume of George Herbert's poems. I speak of it, because it is a little the best religious English book that I recall. I don't know any one who has spoken so sweetly to the religious sentiment in us as George Herbert." The late Senator Hoar was a devotee of Herbert, one of those who was looking forward to the appearance of this new study of his life and works. Over the fireplace in his library at his home in Worcester were inscribed these lines from Herbert,

Man is no starre, but a quick coal

Of mortall fire;

Who blows it not, nor doth controll
A faint desire,

Lets his own ashes choke his soul.

There is deep significance in the ups and downs of Herbert's popularity, or in the names of those who have admired him. In his own age he was recognized for his high merit by his friend Lord Bacon, by Walton and Bunyan; by other poets, Donne, Vaughan, and Crashaw. King Charles I found solace in reading him; Baxter thought he spoke of God as one who knew Him. But in the eighteenth century he was neglected; with the exception of Addison, Cowper stands alone in praising him, "finding delight in reading him all day long." In the last century there came a renewed interest. "During the last quarter of the century," says Mr. Palmer, " a new edition of Herbert has appeared almost every other

year." But he also adds, “In this period of Herbert's popularity he is more bought than read. Half a dozen of his poems are famous; but the remainder, many of them equally fitted for household words, nobody looks at. They lie hidden beneath ancestral encumbrances which editors have not had the courage to clear away. . . . The arrangement of the book preserves its original chaos. No attempt has ever been made to set the poems in intelligible order. The many religious, artistic, and personal problems which they involve remain unexamined. .. Present means of access to him are in short elementary."

It has been Mr. Palmer's object to remedy these defects, and to enable the many to find in Herbert what has hitherto been accessible only to the few. It was to have been expected from the author that his research would go as deep as the inmost spring of the poet's life. There is here also a rich combination of author and subject, for Mr. Palmer has put himself into the work. Everywhere is visible the hand of the accomplished translator of the Odyssey and of the Antigone, the subtle and profound critic, the incessant student and observer of the ways of man in the world. No man, poet or other, could have been more fortunate than Herbert has been in meeting with such a mind whose gifts have been concentrated in one supreme effort to know and to make known. In the preface, Mr. Palmer has told us, better than any one reviewing his work can do, exactly what he proposed to himself to accomplish. It is a preface which will strike the reader with its unwonted tone of personal disclosure. It tells what otherwise we should not have known, why he should have bestowed all his powers, this marvelous labor, these prodigious pains, these years of toil, in elucidating the life and poetry of George Herbert. "There are few to whom this book will seem worth while. It embodies long labor spent on a minor poet, and will probably never be read entire by any one. But that is a reason for

its existence. Lavishness is its aim. The book is a box of spikenard, poured in inappeasable love over one who has attended my life. . . . He has rendered me profoundly grateful for what he has shown me of himself, the struggling soul, the high-bred gentleman, the sagacious observer, the master of language, the persistent artist. I could not die in peace, if I did not raise a costly monument to his memory."

Professor Palmer's study of Herbert is so comprehensive in its range, so rich and varied, exhaustive and yet suggestive, there is so much which compels attention as new and striking where mere allusion or reference would be of no avail, that it baffles the reviewer who would fain do justice to the subject. His work must be described in his own words as "encyclopædic in its character." He has furnished a "critical dictionary" by which the meaning of the poet may be ascertained, through the text, the facts of the author's life, and the literary criticism of his age. The comment of other students of Herbert is included. His own critical comment includes explanations of words and phrases, the tracing of connections of thought, references to similar passages whether in Herbert or his contemporaries. The cross references attached to every poem, costing an immense amount of labor, serve to illustrate Herbert's curious tenacity of thought or phrase, making him comment on himself, and “out of his own mouth to explain his peculiar locutions." In addition to this fullness of comment, there are chronological tables, lists of textual variations, indexes of titles of the poems, arranged in the traditional order or according to the new classification, as well as an index of first lines to be found in no other edition. These indexes are repeated in each of the two volumes containing the poems. There are numerous illustrations, among them the homes of Herbert and of his ancestors, of the churches with which his name is associated, gathered by the author "in pilgrimages to every spot where Herbert's

feet have stood." The most important of these is the new portrait of the poet which forms the frontispiece of the first volume, and Mr. Palmer justly felicitates himself and his readers in securing a representation of Herbert's features, exhibiting him with "a fullness, complexity and likelihood such as no written criticism can give." The new portrait condemns as inadequate and misleading the work of earlier engravers. It is a face, to use Mr. Palmer's words, "marked by high breeding, scholarship, devoutness, disappointment, humor, fastidiousness, pathos, and pride." the face of one who has "moved in courtly circles, and convinces us that he was once alive."

The greater part of Mr. Palmer's first volume is given up to elaborate dissertations on the life of Herbert, on the man in his personality and character, on the type of religious poetry which he represents, on his style and technique as a poet, and lastly on the text and order of the poems. Special prefaces are also furnished to each of the twelve groups into which the poems are divided. Too much can hardly be said in praise of these essays and prefaces. They are terse and direct, marked by fervor and grace of diction, full of concentrated interest, illuminative and inspiring. Their effect is to beget enthusiasm in the reader, till he marvels at the author's skill and success, as he moves on triumphantly to a great conclusion.

One would like to dwell on each of these dissertations, but they are too condensed, too full of information to be reproduced even in barest outline. One point may at least be alluded to, the analysis of the causes of Herbert's obscurity, which is treated in masterly fashion. Mr. Palmer admits that Herbert is difficult to read beyond any other English poet, nor does "nearness of acquaintance remove the intricacy; it is perpetual." There are moments of lucidity which merely make the prevailing darkness deeper. "What can have made a writer, whose diction is on the whole sound and

who is ever alert, artistic and highly rational, so difficult to read?" In his answer to the question Mr. Palmer may be briefly summarized. The difficulty is owing to the private character of his verse, circulated among his friends but never receiving public criticism. He was analyzing his inner life, apart from the consciousness of a possible judgment by the reading world. Fullness of record was his aim rather than the impression to be made; and he neglected the art of soliciting other minds. For these intimate disclosures we pay heavily, forced as we are to seek connections of thought, explain transitions and allusions, and, above all, catch the mood, or all is blind. Even the titles of the poems are in some cases so many enigmas, not to be solved without patience and imagination. Herbert's object was not so much to gain a hearing as to reveal the workings of a soul. His poetry is a record or "picture of spiritual conflicts that have passed between my soul and God." The intricacy of his verse is in some measure inherent in his theme. In this connection and elsewhere Mr. Palmer protests against the epithet "holy," when applied to Herbert, as most misleading. He always remained to himself, whatever he may have seemed to others,

"A wonder tortur'd in the space

Betwixt this world and that of grace."

And further, the age of Herbert was characterized by a mental exuberance in which he shared, an age of intellectual audacity, full of enigmas, given to exploiting new doctrines. This intellectualism invaded the church, showing itself in theological refinements; to take a good example, in the complexity of the Westminster Confession, when compared with the briefer, simpler doctrinal statements of the sixteenth century. It was an age which enjoyed difficulties and the accomplishment of feats, such as condensing thought, and putting as much meaning as possible into a given compass. Herbert studied compactness till he became a master in the art of forcing words to

carry a little more than their wonted meaning. Herbert was reacting, also, against the smooth, honeyed mellifluousness of the versifiers in the preceding age. He employed at times rugged words, jolting phrases. The impression in reading some of his poems may be compared with riding in a vehicle without springs over a road paved with cobble stones. He shared in another peculiarity of his time, the use of what are called "conceits;" whose essence, as Mr. Palmer defines it, lies in tracing resemblances. · Sometimes they are far-fetched and remote, "false conceits:" or they may be noble conceits, as when "a mind aglow with meditative feeling finds its moods reflected from every object that meets its sight or remembrance." Herbert indulges occasionally in conceits of the baser sort, and they repel the reader; but so did every poet from Shakespeare to Dryden. Herbert is saved from any excess by his artistic sense.

There are reasons enough, then, why Herbert should be a difficult poet to read. His conceits are distasteful, and everywhere he calls for intellectual effort on the part of the reader, for study and sympathetic attention; but the reward is great, - the disclosure of a rich, pathetic, and individual personality. He was a pioneer in the development of the short poem, and whatever his defects, "he chose wise means for reaching his special ends. He is the first of our lyric poets who can fairly be called a conscious artist; the first who systematically tries to shape each of his short poems by a predetermined plan, and that too a plan involved in the nature of his subject. . . . He was in possession of a new method and one of enormous impor

tance."

was of " a stature inclining toward tallness," and that "he was lean to an extremity." Others have mentioned the "elegance of his person," and how his looks and behavior begot "an awful reverence for his person.' He possessed great refinement of the senses, a feature of his character which Mr. Palmer has illustrated amply from his verse. He was most particular in the matter of dress, and given to enlarging on the proprieties. His eye was alert in noting the traits of natural objects, but he had none of the mystic's brooding over nature. Music was his passion. This exquisite physical organization was an essential part of his equipment for poetry. On his moral side, the two temptations he most dreaded were idleness and lust. Woman stands to him for temptation and disturbance. There is strenuosity of temperament with comparative ineffectiveness of result, especially in the earlier part of his life. He was a lover of retiredness," says Walton, which does not mean that he was exactly unsocial, for he had many warm friendships with able men. Pride was in him, and fastidiousness, and a dignity which would not bend to the ways of others. A certain pessimistic vein appears in his poetry at times, the tendency of the religious artist to "blacken earthly conditions for the glory of the divine;" but in spite of his quivering sense of sin Herbert is an optimist. His mind was capacious and disciplined. He may be called a man of wide learning, in divinity and in other lines as well; he was a linguist, familiar with Greek and Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish; he was full of intellectual curiosity, not indifferent to astronomy and alchemy. But he was independent and self-sufficing; he rarely quotes; what he knows he has incorporated as his own. His friendship with Lord Bacon, and with Lord Herbert of Cherbury does not imply any taste or capacity for abstract philosophy. does not lack fundamental ideas, but he is not a philosopher, and does not concern himself with questioning basic ideas,

He

or inquiring into the fundamental principles of things. He is the interpreter of the deeper meaning of things. Primarily and always, he is the artist, contriving forms of beauty, accepting the world as he finds it, and out of its material ready made, constructing a beautiful intellectual home.

Turning from the man to his life and career in the world, it must be said that the Herbert whom Mr. Palmer protrays differs widely from the portrait given by Walton, or rather from the total impression which Walton leaves. What has chiefly impressed Mr. Palmer is the fact that the greater part of Herbert's life was spent in the world, in courtly circles, in the society of the fashionable and the great; that he was ambitious for distinction and for posts of honor in the State; that he turned to the Church in his later years, when disappointment and failure, the loss of patrons and of the favor of the court, loss also of health, made his secular ambition impossible. Walton on the other hand passes lightly over these many years, in order to dwell on the short period not quite three years during which Herbert served as rector of Bemerton Church. In painting the "Saint of Bemerton," in giving no heed to the thirty-six "vacillating years" spent in the service of the world, Walton has succeeded in imparting such a romantic color to Herbert that it has taken a firm hold on the popular imagination, and in Mr. Palmer's judgment "constitutes at present the most serious obstacle to the poet's cool assessment."

The ancestry of Herbert is closely related to his personality. He belonged to one of the oldest and stateliest of English families, which included in its extent three earldoms, Pembroke, Carnarvon, and Powis. The Montgomery branch of the family from which Herbert sprang was of a military spirit, a race of courageous men, quarreling easily, sensitive in matters of honor, rough in dealing out justice, but trained as gentlemen, and educated according to their capacity.

The religious tendency in Herbert came from his mother, also descended from a noted family. Her piety may be seen, not only in George Herbert, but in his older brother, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, although in him it takes the form of protest against traditional Orthodoxy, and he is known as the forerunner of the Deistic movement. The mother of the poet possessed beauty in high degree, together with social charm; she had intellect, passion, artistic and literary tastes. Her influence upon George Herbert was one of the most powerful factors in his development. A deep contradiction may have run in Herbert's blood as the result of such an ancestry, reminding us of Augustine with a heathen father and a Christian mother, the man of the world and the religious idealist struggling in him for the supremacy.

George Herbert was born in 1593, the fifth son among ten children. From his infancy he was destined by his mother for the church, and with this purpose in view he went to Cambridge, where he took his bachelor's degree in 1612, pursuing the study of divinity in preparation for his sacred calling. But instead of proceeding at once to take orders, he continued to reside at Cambridge. He took his M. A. degree in 1616, when he was also appointed Major Fellow, an appointment soon followed by that of Prælector in Rhetoric. In 1619 he gained the post of Public Orator at Cambridge, a position he coveted, and regarded as a peculiar honor. There seems to have been at this point in his life an effort to defend his attitude, as not inconsistent with a religious vocation. His friend Sir Francis Nethersole objected that the position of Orator of the University "being civil may divert me too much from Divinity, at which, not without cause, he thinks I aim. But I have wrote him back that this dignity hath no such earthiness in it, but it may very well be joined with heaven; or if it had to others, yet to me it should not, for aught I yet know."

Herbert held the Public Oratorship