The Temple: A Diplomatic Edition of the Bodleian Manuscript (Tanner 307)

Abstract

112Book Reviews George Herbert, The Temple: A Diplomatic Edition of the Bodleian Manuscript (Tanner 307). Edited, with introduction and notes, by Mario A. Di Cesare. Renaissance English Text Society, Seventh Series, volume 17. Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1995. lxxx + 420 pp. $32. by Ted-Larry Pebworth Mario Di Cesare's diplomatic edition of the Bodleian manuscript of The Temple will prove a welcome addition to the library of anyone professionally interested in Herbert's poetry. Indeed, it by rights should take primacy of place among all prior editions of The Temple as the text to quote. Although it does not include extensive critical commentary and explanatory notes, and thus does not fulfill entirely the goals of a modern critical edition, it presents texts that are closer to the author's intention than are those in the editions of Hutchinson, Patrides, Martz, or Tobin, all of which use, the 1633 posthumous edition as their copy-texts. As most Herbert scholars are aware, the collection of poems we know as The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations was completed shortly before the poet's death on 1 March 1633 and published later that same year (Cambridge: Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel). Although a collection of early versions of many of the poems included in "The Church" section of The Temple, with corrections in Herbert's own hand, survives in a manuscript in Dr. Williams's Library, London, the surviving artifact nearest to a holograph of the poet's final version of the whole collection published as The Temple is Tanner ms. 307 in the Bodleian Library, a beautifully presented transcription prepared from the poet's fair copy shortly after his death by scribes at Little Gidding under the direction of Nicholas Ferrar, Herbert's friend and designated literary executor. Until quite recently, the copy-text for all editions of The Temple has been the posthumous first edition, which may have had the Bodleian manuscript as its printer's copy. A detailed comparison of that publication with the Bodleian manuscript shows, however, that — in addition to making verbal blunders — the first edition tampered with the syntax, punctuation, capitalization, and italicization in the poems. And, as Di Cesare persuasively argues in his introduction, the first edition of The Temple also frequently misrepresented the manuscript's telling patterns of indentation and Book Reviews113 placement on the page. Since Herbert was a master of and innovator in metrics, such distortions of his orthographic and visual patterns have obfuscated his achievements in this area of baroque poetics. Although selected readings from the Bodleian manuscript have been incorporated as emendations in modern editions of Herbert's poetry, the only publication of the manuscript as a whole has been the 1984 photographic facsimile prepared by Amy Charles and Di Cesare (Delmar, NY: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints). Unfortunately, that facsimile is very disappointing. The contrast between the inscribed letters and punctuation marks and the background page is in many instances so poor that the text is virtually unreadable. And, oí course, a photographic facsimile does not indicate erasures, and it frequently obscures additions and alterations made by nonscribal hands that are discernible from an examination of the artifact itself. Td counter those deficiencies of the unsatisfactory photographic facsimile and to make the Bodleian manuscript's unique visual, verbal, and orthographic features readily accessible to students of Herbert's poetry, Di Cesare has prepared this diplomatic edition with thorough textual annotations. The reading text is a reader friendly page-for-page typeface facsimile of the Bodleian manuscript, including ruled borders, with the pages numbered as they originally were in the artifact itself. The only editorial intrusion in this section is the addition of line numbers for the individual poems, in decades, placed in square brackets in the left margins. Prefacing the reading text are three introductory chapters: "The Editor to the Reader," a textual introduction, and a critical introduction . In the first of these introductory chapters, Di Cesare discusses the genesis and aim of the edition. He remarks: "More than most writers, Herbert needs distancing, defamiliarizing. Even today he can seem familiar, comfortable, pious old George Herbert, a quaint maker of odd verses in odd forms. It is hard to...