The Herbert Allusion Book: Allusions to George Herbert in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

58BOOK REVIEWS Robert H. Ray, ed., The Herbert Allusion Book: Allusions to George Herbert in the Seventeenth Century. Studies in Philology, LXXXIII, No. 4 (Fall, 1986) [Textsand Studies 1986] ix + 182 pp. $5. by Richerd Todd In e recent issue of the George Herbert Journal (9, No. 2 [Spring 1986]), Robert H. Ray introduced Herbert scholars to what has now appeared as an ottrective end scrupulous onevolume compilation. In his GHJ article Roy showed how the number of seventeenth-century ellusions to George Herbert increases rapidly from 1 633 until well into the Commonwealth period. Such allusions were indubitably stimulated during the 1 650s by Barnabas Oley's anonymous preface (reprinted, with attribution, in uncompromisingly Royalist terms in 1671) to the first edition of Herbert's Remains (1652). After a slight dip in the immediate post-Restoration yeers, the poce quickens egein following the publicetion of Walton's Life in 1 670, so that even for the 1690s, e decode in which only one edition — the eleventh — of The Temple appeared (1695), Roy hes uneorthed practically as meny ellusions to Herbert os ore to be found four decodes eerlier. His efforts testify to the extraordinary popularity (by twentieth-century standards) of "The Churchporch ," a work thet was still able to provide Samuel Johnson with the vast majority of his Herbert citetions in the Dictionary of the English Language (1755). In a descriptive bibliography included in The Herbert Allusion Book, Ray is candid about whet he owes to scholarship whose scope ranges from that of Sebastian Köppl's Die Rezeption George Herberts im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Heidelberg, 1978), and Helen Wilcox's 1984 Oxford D.Phil, thesis, " 'Something Understood': The Reputation and Influence of George Herbert to 1715," down to brief mentions in Notes and Queries. Together with the bibliography, the entries indicate thet Roy has not only fully and honorably acknowledged the scholarly assistance he has received, but has been able to list 138 "new" seventeenth-century all usions to Herbert that had not been noted as such in print by previous scholars prior to 1984. This is no mean feat. BOOK REVIEWS59 As a compilation, The Herbert Allusion Book has perhaps most in common with a work that appeared once Ray had decided to call a halt and present his findings, however provisional he may still judge them (even though the book's title has something of an air of finality about it). The lete CA. Patrides' volume in Routledge's Critical Heritage series appeored during Roy's chosen cut-off year of 1 983 (a choice of year that also prevents Rey from doing full justice to those of his entries thot predete the entire revised Pollerd end Redgrave STC, the second ond final part of which eppeered in 1986). Of course, Petrides lists just 74 entries down to 1936, of which only the first 34 (of on evaluative rather than principally imitative or allusive sort) teke us to the end of the seventeenth century. In morked contrast Roy's compilotion, on his own count, consists of elmost 20 times this number of ellusions between 1615ond 1700. An ellusion is defined forthis purpose oso"mention [of] thewriterby neme, or . . . thenemeofone of his compositions or quotation of] a line from his works." The stock is drawn from 175 individual writers; and 157 books and 86 manuscripts (243 items in all) hove been cited. Among deliberate (although nevertheless to be regretted) omissions ore the various kinds of allusions recorded in New England during the second half of the seventeenth century. Ray's use of his chosen working definition of the term "ellusion" may possibly give some readers cause for concern. His compilation endorses and mokes more accessible than ever before an initial pattern of poetic response to Herbert's achievement that, in the hands of a Christopher Horvey or e Ralph Knevet in the 1640s end 1650s, is frankly imitative when contrasted with the more sophisticated essimilotion of The Temple by Henry Voughen (Silex Scintillans, 1650, 1655). But one hes nonetheless the uneesy feeling thot the chosen epplicotion of "ellusion" is of ß norrownessond circumscription that frustrates ettempts to eccount for the more obliquelyexpressed receptions of Herbert thet undoubtedly...