Neglected Witnesses to George Herbert's Musæ Responsoriæ, and a Previously Unpublished Poem, "Wren cum Chirothecis"

Abstract

This article considers three manuscript witnesses to the Musæ Responsoriæ, George Herbert's answer to Andrew Melville's polemical poem Anti-Tami-Cami-Categoria. None of these, two of them complete copies, was known to Herbert's first modern editor, F. E. Hutchinson, nor are they mentioned in any of the several subsequent editions of Herbert's Latin verse, all of which follow Hutchinson's sole source, the 1662 Ecclesiastes Solomonis of James Duport. In addition to providing descriptions of their contents and provenance, we survey the substantive variants and accidentals pertaining to the two complete copies and argue why one in particular will supplant Duport as copy-text for the new edition of Herbert's works currently in progress for Oxford University Press. Our essay also presents a hitherto unknown Latin epigram that appears in the other complete copy and considers evidence for attributing the poem to the author of The Temple.