A Note on George Herbert and Peter Sterry by N.I. Matar Throughout the Restoration, George Herbert's The Temple exercised a formative influence on writers of widely different political and religious convictions. On the nonconformist side, Herbert's influence extended primarily to the sphere of devotional writings and meditations. The Ternpie was admired not so much for its poetic innovations and ingenuity as for the "good reading" it provided for "the young."1 Peter Sterry is one of the few Restoration nonconformists who responded to both Herbert's devotional as well as poetic contribution. His manuscript remains include a large number of letters written to his son Peter in the 1660s.2 Sterry was then a private chaplain at Richmond, while his son was an apprentice in London. In these letters, Sterry warned Peter against gambling, dicing, drinking, business dishonesty, bad company, and the ways of the "strange woman" — sins against which many of Sterry's Puritan contemporaries were preaching. Sterry also commended to his son sermons, devotional works, fasting, and prayer.3 At one point in these letters, Sterry suggested to his son the reading of "Mr. Herbert" for his moral edification. In particular, Sterry may have had "The Church-porch" in mind, a poem that catalogues advice against the same misdemeanors Peter was committing: drinking (stanza 5); lying (stanza 13); idleness (stanza 14); poor husbandry (stanza 27); and gaming (stanza 23). It also recommended fasting (stanza 66), and sermons and prayers (stanza 69). Sterry viewed Herbert's poetry as a paradigm of Christian holiness, and thus it was not inconsistent for him to associate Herbert's name with Samuel Bolton's, one of the most popular writers of Puritan devotion. Sterry did not distinguish between the complex poetic imagination of The Temple and the long-winded didacticism 75 N.I. Matar of Bolton's best-selling The Foure last Things. Both Bolton's prose and Herbert's verse served the same devotional function: The best advise I can give you is to pray constantly, meditate reade the scriptures, Mr. Bolton, & Mr. Herbert, abstaine from evill Company, & fleshly delights.4 Herbert's and Bolton's writings, in Sterry's opinion, were appropriate companions to the Bible. But Sterry appreciated Herbert also as a poet. Although he wrote very little verse, towards the end of his life Sterry composed an eschatological poem which opened with the following couplet: "Let parching droughts turn pleasant Lands / To wastfull serpent-breeding sands."5 In this last of his compositions, Sterry demonstrated his unshaken faith against life's tribulations. Perhaps most noticeable in it is the use of horticultural imagery. The following lines recall the revival metaphor of the individual/plant in Herbert's verse, and affirm Sterry's enduring hope in Christ's communion: Let Constant Raine fall on my Vine And take away my hope of wine. Let from my tree the green figs all Shaken by windes untimely fall. Let God be God; laden with fruite I laugh and sing, and blesse my Roote. These lines, written when Sterry was feeling the imminence of death, have a distinctly Herbertian character. But by putting Herbert's metaphor into rhyming iambic tetrameter, Sterry unfortunately lost the diversity and wit of such poems as "The Flower" and "Paradise" which perhaps had inspired him. Sterry could not emulate Herbert's poetic versatility; in his two 76 HERBERT AND PETER STERRY major poetic attempts, "The Canticles Paraphastically turned into verse" and "Of Divine Friendship," Sterry monotonously used the heroic couplet. Had he turned to Herbert's The Temple for a purpose other than devotion, he might have acquired a better control over his verse. Sterry was not a craftsman, but a devotional preacher. His forte lay in his prose writings, which, as forali nonconformists, were aimed at holy living rather than artistic excellence. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that Sterry felt no disharmony between his own nonconformist sensibility and Herbert's. Much as Sterry was an opponent of the Anglican institution during the Interregnum, and much as he felt its persecution in the 1660s, he still appreciated the devotional framework of The Temple. Sterry's resilient imagination helped him to respond favorably to Herbert, and to discover...