The Text of Coleridge's "Essays on the Principles of Genial Criticism"

Abstract

heavily on both Ferrar's and Oley's accounts of Herbert when he writes his own The Life of Mr. George Herbert in 1670. In his account of Herbert shortly before death, Walton ascribes to Herbert the statement that both he and his book of poems are less than the least of Gods mercies, thus rather amazingly almost duplicating what Donne supposedly uttered before death. This posie of Herbert's was much quoted through the whole of the seventeenth century by Herbert's readers and admirers. In fact, Herbert's motto was even mistaken for and given the status of a biblical passage by certain writers.' Several scholars continue to discover and reveal facets of Walton's techniques in writing biography.6 Walton typically uses a writer's prose and poetry to create an incident or statement in that same writer's biography. As John Butt says, Walton relied to a considerable extent upon the evidence afforded by what his subjects wrote. He draws upon their letters, and even their account books; he quotes from prose prefaces, and he paraphrases poems.7 What seems unique, however, in Walton's account of Donne's death is that he is not drawing from a writer's own work to fabricate biographical words and actions; rather, he is employing the work of another writer to fabricate a statement by his subject. This may be an isolated instance in Walton's work, but, on the other hand, it could suggest yet another of Walton's biographical techniques. A reexamination by scholars of Walton's biographies to detect the recurrence of this technique might be justified and could explain some hitherto unrecognized sources. While the possibility exists that Donne, before his death in 1631, may indeed have formulated or quoted Herbert's motto before the publication of Herbert's work in 1633, probability and logic suggest otherwise. The more likely explanation of its insertion in the second edition of The Life of John Donne is that, by 1658, Walton was obsessed by Herbert's poetry and especially had Herbert's motto enforced in his consciousness by Ferrar's and Oley's emphasis of it. Adding such Herbertian humility to Donne's own preparation for death provided an easy way for Walton to further his canonization of Donne.