Edward and George Herbert in the European Republic of Letters 9781526164087

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Edward and George Herbert in the European Republic of Letters

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Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies promotes interdisciplinary work on the period c.1603–1815, covering all aspects of the literature, culture and history of the British Isles, colonial North America and the early United States, other British colonies and their global connections. The series welcomes academic monographs, as well as collective volumes of essays that combine theoretical and methodological approaches from more than one discipline to further our understanding of the period. It is supported by the Société d’études Anglo-Américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. General editors Ladan Niayesh, Université de Paris and Will Slauter, Sorbonne Université Founding editor Anne Dunan-Page Advisory board Bernadette Andrea, Daniel Carey, Rachel Herrman, Hannah Spahn, Claire Preston and Peter Thompson To buy or to find out more about the books currently available in this series, please go to: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/series/ seventeenth-eighteenth-century-studies/ http://1718.fr/

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Edward and George Herbert in the European Republic of Letters Edited by Greg Miller Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2022

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While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in ­individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 6409 4 hardback First published 2022 The publisher has no responsibility for the ­persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cover image: View of the Château de Chantilly and its gardens, c. 1680. Chantilly Musée Condé. Cover design: riverdesignbooks.com

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Contents

Dedication Notes on contributors Introduction: Contentious communion – Greg Miller and ­Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise

page vii viii

1

Part I  Thinking beyond borders: War and peace 1 The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: Experiences of the tragic and historiographical genres in Edward Herbert and George Herbert – Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise35 2 The Thirty Years’ War and George Herbert’s communion, an answer to violence – Greg Miller 60 3 “Being” James I: Herbert of Cherbury’s vexed diplomacy – Nancy Zaice 80 4 Ceremony and self: Belligerent civility in Edward Herbert’s Autobiography – Michael Schoenfeldt 101 Part II  Reconsidering conformity, community, and universality 5 “Gerson, a Spirituall Man”: Herbert and the University of Paris’s reformist chancellor – Christopher Hodgkins119 6 Conformity and consent in Herbert of Cherbury – Anita Sherman 140 7 “Devout humanism” and its problems: George Herbert and François de Sales – Richard Strier 175

Contents

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8 George Herbert’s The Country Parson and John Calvin’s pastoral advice – Kristine A. Wolberg and Lynnette St. George 9 Edward Herbert’s The Amazon and De Veritate – Cristina Malcolmson

206 218

Part III  The voices of transnational communities: From conversation to song 10 Edward Herbert within the fellowship of gentlemen plain speakers – Sean H. McDowell 241 11 “The little World the Great shall blaze”: Edward Herbert, Thomas Carew, Giambattista Marino, and the poetics of embassy – Eleanor Hardy 260 12 George Herbert and three French Protestant poets (Chandieu, Grévin, Sponde) – Guillaume Coatalen296 13 Becoming “a Citizen of the world”: Edward Herbert and continental music-making – Simon Jackson 318 14 “Sweet Singers of our Israel”: French psalmody, the Sidneys, and George Herbert – Helen Wilcox 333 Bibliography Index

367 400

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Dedication

For Cristina Malcolmson and Chauncey Wood

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Contributors

Guillaume Coatalen is maître de conférences in Early Modern English literature at the University of Cergy-Pontoise (France) with research focusing on manuscripts. His latest publication is  Two Elizabethan Treatises on Rhetoric: Richard Rainold’s Foundacion of Rhetoricke  (1563)  and William Medley’s Brief Notes in Manuscript (1575) (Brill, 2018). He is currently working on Queen Elizabeth I’s French correspondence and on a book that looks at how poetry and poets are represented on the early modern English stage. Eleanor Hardy received her PhD from New College, Oxford and is currently employed at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her work focuses on the poetry of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury. She explores the themes of manhood, homosociality, and imitation, and seeks to restore Edward Herbert’s understudied poetry to its rightful place in literary history. Christopher Hodgkins is Professor of Renaissance Literature at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Author or editor of eight books, he directs the international George Herbert Society. With Robert Whalen, he co-edits The Digital Temple of George Herbert (University of Virginia Press, 2013) and George Herbert: Complete Works. He also has published on biblical literature, Shakespeare, Drake, Pocahontas, Donne, Jonson, Milton, and Vaughan, and addressed audiences across North America and at the universities of Cambridge, London, Edinburgh, Aarhus, and Paris; at Salisbury and Canterbury Cathedrals; and at the Vatican.

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Simon Jackson is Director of Music at Peterhouse, and Director of Studies in English at Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge. A former Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Warwick, his research explores the relationship between poetry and music in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His doctoral thesis won the inaugural George Herbert Society Chauncey Wood Dissertation Award, and his first book, George Herbert and Early Modern Musical Culture, is soon to be published by Cambridge University Press. The late Cristina Malcolmson was Professor Emerita of English at Bates College. She published an edition of The Amazon, by Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, with Matteo Pangallo and Eugene Hill, in the Malone Society Collections series, XVII (Manchester University Press, 2016). She wrote an entry on Magdalen Herbert for Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, requested for their new series, “Early Modern Women’s Lives,” forthcoming. She is the author of Heart-Work: George Herbert and the Protestant Ethic (Stanford University Press, 1999) and George Herbert: A Literary Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Sean H. McDowell, Associate Professor of English and Director of the University Honors Program at Seattle University, is the author of numerous essays on Donne, Shakespeare, and their contemporaries and on modern Irish and American poets. The executive director of the John Donne Society, he is also a past president of the Andrew Marvell Society and of the South-Central Renaissance conference, and the editor of the John Donne Journal. His poems have appeared in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Greece, and Australia. His latest book is Metaphysical Shadows: The Persistence of Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, and Marvell in Contemporary Poetry (Lexington Books, 2022). Greg Miller is Professor Emeritus of English at Millsaps College. The University of Chicago Press published three of his collections of poetry. Miller’s scholarly work includes three collaborative books on the Latin and Greek poetry and prose of George Herbert (George  Herbert Journal Monograph Series 2020, 2017, 2012)

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and George Herbert’s “Holy Patterns” (Continuum, 2007). Miller worked as an editor at the Sheep Meadow Press following retirement from his position as Janice B. Trimble Chair of English at Millsaps College. Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise is a Member of the Institut Universitaire de France and Professor of Early Modern British Literature and Cultural Studies at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. She has published articles on the poetry of Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Southwell, Philip Sidney, and Mary Sidney, as well as on Shakespeare’s and Webster’s plays. She is the author of a monograph on George Herbert, Le Verbe fait image (Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2010) and has coedited several collected volumes on the interplay between the history of material culture and literature in early modern Europe. She wrote the introduction to the volume of Shakespeare’s poetry in the Pléiade series (Œuvres complètes. Volume 8, Sonnets: et autres poèmes, Gallimard, 2021). Lynnette St. George received her MA in French with an e­ mphasis in pedagogy from l’École française de Middlebury College in Burlington, Vermont, USA. Lynnette is a nationally recognized speaker and presenter in the domain of second language acquisition pedagogy. She has adapted two readers from Spanish into French that are used in high school curriculums nationwide:  Houdini and  Brandon Brown à la Conquête de Québec. Currently, as the department chair of the World Language program at Valor Christian High School, she delights in empowering  emerging linguists to use their second language skills and cultural awareness to create friendships and to collaborate with other students from around the globe.  Michael Schoenfeldt is the John Knott Professor of English Literature at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Prayer and Power: George Herbert and Renaissance Courtship (University of Chicago Press, 1991), Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England: Physiology and Inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton (Cambridge University Press, 1999), and The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare’s Poetry (2010); and editor of the



Notes on contributors xi

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Blackwell Companion to Shakespeare’s Sonnets (2006), and John Donne in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Anita Sherman is a Professor in the Department of Literature at American University in Washington, DC. She received her BA from Harvard University in History and Literature, her MA from Oxford University in Philosophy and Theology, and her PhD in English Literature from the University of Maryland. She has published essays in edited collections and in journals including Criticism, Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies, SEL, Shakespeare Quarterly, Sin Nombre, and TSLL, as well as Skepticism and Memory in Shakespeare and Donne (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and Skepticism in Early Modern English Literature: The Problems and Pleasures of Doubt (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Richard Strier is Frank L. Sulzberger Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. A few of his major publications are Love Known: Theology and Experience in George Herbert’s Poetry (University of Chicago Press, 1983; paperback, 1986), Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts (University of California Press, 1995; paperback, 1997), and Unrepentant Renaissance from Petrarch to Shakespeare to Milton (University of Chicago Press, 2011). Helen Wilcox is Professor Emerita of English Literature at Bangor University. She has edited the English Poems of George Herbert for Cambridge University Press (2007) and has published broadly on early modern devotional writing, women’s writing, and Shakespeare. She is co-editor of Her Own Life (Routledge, 1989), a pioneering work in the field of early modern women’s autobiographic writings, as well as Women and Literature in Britain, 1500–1700 (Cambridge University Press, 1996). More recently she coedited The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern English Literature and Religion (Oxford University Press, 2017). Kristine A. Wolberg received her PhD from the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA). She has taught writing and literature for Notre Dame, Western Kentucky University, Houghton College, and

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Colorado Christian University. Currently she enjoys teaching young scholars at Valor Christian High School in south Denver, USA. She is the author of articles published in The John Donne Journal, The George Herbert Journal, and Christianity and Literature, and a book-length study, “All Possible Art”: George Herbert’s  The Country Parson (Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008). She is also the author of a youth novel, Beyond the Hedge. Nancy Zaice is Professor of English at Francis Marion University, receiving her PhD from the University of South Carolina in British Renaissance Literature with a minor in Early American Literature. Prior to entering academe, she worked in recruitment, management, and training for the American Red Cross Blood Services. Her research interests include English philosophical thought as reflected in early modern British literature, particularly that of Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury. She teaches literature and composition classes and particularly enjoys working with first-year students as they navigate the vicissitudes of college life.

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Greg Miller and Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise

The two Anglo-Welsh aristocrats we consider in this collection, George Herbert (1593–1633) and Edward Herbert (1583–1648), serve as examples of a Republic of Letters well before the Siècle des Lumières: before and during the Thirty Years’ War. The study of these two brothers brings into question standard historical assumptions. The metaphor of a “Republic of Letters,” associated with the philosophes and European Enlightenment, is generally understood to describe the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, the ­cataclysmic Wars of Religion and Thirty Years’ War giving birth to a new European rationalism, the early flowering of Erasmian humanism serving as a distant precursor.1 Decades after the deaths of the Herbert brothers, at the end of the seventeenth century, Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), the French Huguenot exiled to Rotterdam during the reign of Louis XIV, entitled his journal the Nouvelle République des Lettres, imagining his “Republic” as an empire where truth and reason alone might hold sway over obscurantism. In such a respublica literaria, the educated and enlightened European elites would communicate with one another in person, by manuscript, and in print, exploring ideas across frontiers of language, region, creed, religious polity, and state, constructing together a broader truth toward which each worked in what they hoped would be a common free space of the mind. Scholars such as Jürgen Habermas and Reinhart Kaselleck have drawn attention to even earlier articulations of such a “public sphere.”2 The first use of the term respublica literaria has been attributed to Francesco Barbaro, in his letter to Poggio Bracciolini on July 6, 1417.3 Both  Barbaro and Bracciolini were humanists who sought out, located, read, and discussed l­ong-lost

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manuscripts of the ancients. Among those found by Bracciolini was the sole surviving manuscript of Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, a key text for European advocates of free thought.4 Interestingly, Edward Herbert’s library included a copy of the neo-Lucretian philosopher Giulio Cesare Vanini’s De admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium (On the Wonderous Mysteries of Nature, the Queen and Goddess of Mortal Beings) (Paris, 1616)5 – one clear indication (amid many others) that Edward – and his brother George – were among early conceptualizers of Bayle’s “Republic,” building on its earliest beginnings, participating in international, multilingual exchanges that initiated a robustly cosmopolitan public sphere. Hubert Bost argues that Pierre Bayle experienced his Calvinist faith, which on the surface might seem to be in conflict with his critical attitude toward religion, as consistent with the promotion of an enlightened, even “libertine,” philosophy; we should be more open to more nuanced and complex understandings of not only Edward Herbert, but also the poet-pastor George Herbert, in the history of a European Republic of Letters.6 Despite the different paths each of the two Anglo-Welsh brothers ultimately followed, their particular Protestant formative milieu moved them, as it would Pierre Bayle later, “à explorer les ressorts de l’âme humaine, à découvrir la puissance des passions et des préjugés, à rendre compte du poids de l’éducation dans l’élaboration des croyances” (“to explore the deepest motivations of the human soul, to uncover the force of our passions and prejudices, to realize the importance of our upbringings for the formulation of our beliefs”).7 Edward Herbert’s gift of a large number of his books in Latin to the Jesus College library gives us an indication of the extent of his reading,8 and his sustained interest in these two strains of thought. Edward’s library included not only Vanini’s9 highly controversial text, but also Del universe et mondi (Venice, 1584) by Giordano Bruno – another philosopher who was publicly tortured and executed by the Inquisition – along with works by important French and Dutch Reformers. The Herbert brothers’ immediate predecessors included the so-called Philippists, a cosmopolitan circle of scholars associated with Martin Luther’s close ally Philip Melanchthon which included Hubert Languet, Philippe de Mornay, and the Herbert brothers’

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Introduction: Contentious communion 3

kinsman Philip Sidney.10 The latter’s translation (which was largely completed by his sister Mary Sidney) of the Psalms in metrical form, itself influenced by continental models and philological debates on biblical translation, contributed to George Herbert’s poetry and scope.11 The Philippians believed that humanistic studies advance the cause of truth (including their ecumenical vision of faith) and that natural law necessitates both resistance to tyranny and the cultivation of peace and tolerance. Among Edward’s books in Latin, one finds Vindiciae pro religionis libertate (Freiburg, 1636), published under the pseudonym of Stephanus Junius Brutus and thought to be a collaboration between Hubert Languet and Philippe de Mornay, as was Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1580), also in Edward’s collection. One also finds eight books by Hugo Grotius, who helped conceptualize the Decretum pro pace ecclesiarum (1614), by which the Dutch state enforced only two orthodoxies: the existence of God and Divine Providence. Edward’s assertion of five notions common to all religions include the first, but not the second,12 but is similarly fundamentalist in the Erasmian sense: stripped down to the core. Grotius, who like Edward was a f­ requent guest of the Duc de Montmorency, drew from Mornay’s De la verité de la religion chrétienne, translated into Latin at the urging of Languet: De Veritate Christianae (1581). Philip Sidney began a translation in English that was finished by Arthur Golding (1589). Common to all these men was the conviction that good books can move hearts, minds, and societies to virtue. One important difference, however, with Bayle’s and the ­eighteenth century’s later respublica literaria is that the Herbert brothers belonged to an era that predates the rise of modern European notions of nationhood and patriotism that began to coalesce after the Treaty of Westphalia.13 Clearly delineated ­nation-states had not yet come into being. At one end of their lives stood the European “Wars of Religion” – which spurred the political development of “reason of state” (so named after the Jesuit Giovanni Botero’s Ragion di Stato, 1589) on both sides of the Channel.14 In his recent study of the late seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century debate on the historiography of the earlier “Wars of Religion,” Christian Mühling suggests that the  very notion of “Wars of Religion” is a revisionist one, consciously

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developed under Louis XIV to strengthen the emerging nation-state and legitimate centralized control and religious repression, rewriting, as it were, what had previously been experienced as a series of interrelated, local or civil confessional wars throughout European territories.15 Renaming any such conflict as “Wars of Religion” was geared at discrediting denominational diversity, depicting disagreement as a form of irreligion rather than an attempt to find spaces of commonality. At the other end of the Herbert brothers’ lives were the tensions leading up to the British, Irish, and Scottish civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century (which only Edward of the two lived long enough to experience first hand). These, in turn, circled back to debates on tyranny which had previously emerged during the French confessional, civil wars (notably among the Philippists and Huguenot monarchomachs) posing the question of the public sphere in the new political terms of a “republican” commonwealth. Living and writing between these two major religious and political crises, Edward and George Herbert can be said to embody a transitional moment in the shaping of the very understanding of the ideal of a respublica literaria. In the Herberts’ world, bloodlines – along with religious, social, and political allegiances – often took precedence over “national” identities. Their envisaged Republic overlapped with aristocratic values of gentility, honor, and decorum, as well as ideals of friendship, conversation, and disinterestedness. And despite traumatic, violent divisions in western Christendom, they nevertheless inherited a long Christian tradition of universality. Each in his own way, as we shall see, conceived of their respublica as militating against a violent and exclusive catholicity; theirs was a communion in which contention (in the sense of disputation) served to develop more dynamic forms of comprehensiveness.16 Paradoxically to our own postmodern eyes, this hoped-for universal communion was in fact more farreaching than the later Republic of Letters could ever be. The essays in the present volume argue collectively that in the Herbert brothers’ lives and works, a cosmopolitanism born of warfare and strife imagined a radical communion and openness where truth need not observe the usual frontiers. Their openness surpassed in some ways that of the European Enlightenment, which attempted to neutralize and contain all that was deemed “obscure” or “barbarous.”

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Great emphasis has been laid in recent years on the study of networks and communities during the early modern period as a more congenial way of enquiring into the history of social and religious collective identities that were not limited, contained, or defined primarily by national borders. Much of this scholarship has built on the notion of practical ontology developed in the mid-1990s by such anthropologists and socio-constructivists as Bruno Latour and Andrew Pickering;17 the result is a revitalization of the study of transnational intellectual and cultural phenomena.18 We  now have a more interdisciplinary and dynamic approach to the understanding of Europe and its multiple and dynamic confluences and exchanges. Together with the history of print, the study of networks has helped to show the importance of specific individuals (within coteries, and socio-religious and economic groups), as well as the agency of the textual objects they produced, in the emergence of new ideas, including those of toleration, the “new philosophy” (what we call science), (natural) religion, and community that were of such great interest to the two Herbert brothers under study. Yet, while such approaches have helped to rehabilitate the agency of understudied religious groups and other minorities, they also run the risk of reproducing at a critical level some of the forms of more narrow communitarianism that the Herbert brothers sought to eschew and even transcend both in their ideas and their behavior. Edward and George Herbert in the European Republic of Letters explores a variety of texts and media, including devotional poetry, love poetry, musical practices and compositions, autobiography, letters, council literature, orations, philosophical works, and nascent religious anthropology. All served as tools and are equally worthy of study. They were agents of the circulation and construction of transregionally inspired and collective responses to human conflict and violence. The notion of “cultural transfer,” first elaborated by Michel Espagne and Michael Werner in the 1980s and 1990s, is central today to transnational, transregional, global, and entangled or interrelated approaches to history, including early modern history, even though some historians have been wary of applying it to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries because the period antedates the very existence of modern ­nationhood.19 The two Herbert brothers were agents of such “transfer,” and their

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works were shaped by their shared hopes for peace and their responses to religious strife in the aftermath of the European confessional wars. As we hope to show, the Herberts went beyond the t­ ransregional cultural transfers and networks of their own time, beyond the respublica literaria whose foundations they helped extend in the wake of the early humanists, to imagine communions among individuals from multiple communities, a communion not only of letters but of people. The notion of “communion,” we argue, thus provides us with a useful complement, or an alternative, even, to the study of “networks.” It articulates the idea of a human community in the Herberts’ own historic terms and helps to suggest that the quest for forms of togetherness, mutual understanding, and converging did not imply a strict sharing of identical values or beliefs. Edward and George’s respective understandings of “communion” were not univocal. The two brothers differed from one another in their ­understanding of what could be held in common, though each experienced real mutuality and union as beginning in struggle within himself as well as with others. The Herbert brothers’ visions of communion originated within a famously choleric Anglo-Welsh family. Lady Magdalen Danvers, the head of the Herbert clan after the death of her husband, cultivated a physical and intellectual communion that served as a model for her family and guests; one might argue that she was a precursor of the women who hosted salons in the late ­seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Like her sons who followed her example, she was an agent of cultural transmission. Her Kitchin Booke records meals gathering large numbers of guests, including the Roman Catholic composer William Byrd and the composer and probable spy John Bull, her sons experiencing the dinner table as a place of sharp discourse, comity, and pleasure.20 Witty language was the maternal weapon and the means to her conquests. The young John Danvers is reported to have married the widow Magdalen Herbert “for love of her wit.”21 John Drury describes her household as a “salon of witty conversation.”22 George represents his mother’s speech in Memoriae Matris Sacrum, Poem 2, as “fettering,” “shackling,” and “binding in nets” those whom she addressed (l. 31).23 Yet in his commemorative sermon,

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Donne speaks of Magdalen’s family the Newports as a source from which she “sucked that love of hospitality … which dwelt in her, to her end.”24 George Herbert’s poem “The Familie” stages a godly house  – simultaneously the poet’s psychomachia, an imagined household, and his figural church – as a place of tremendous conflict; nevertheless, he concludes, “the house and the familie are thine.” None is imagined as “expelled”; rather, the Great Lord arrives home through the governance of harmonizing virtues, though in human time he comes “not to make a constant stay.” The struggle among discordant ­elements of the community, as well as the individual human psyche, allows for the glimpsed and longedfor eternal presence in a necessarily fleeting moment of time. George’s emphasis was on the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, the shared communion of Christ’s body and blood, which he saw as the necessary and sufficient answer to violence. In George Herbert’s d ­ ialogue with nonconforming Protestants and Roman Catholics alike, from Andrew Melville, the Scottish Presbyterian Reformer (1545–1622) to Pope Urban VIII, he refused the terms of exclusion among fellow Christians, insisting resolutely and consistently on a contentious and nevertheless redeeming love, through what he experienced in the Eucharist as liberating atonement. In  “The Church Militant” and elsewhere, he imagined the Christian Church as transcending any state, transregional, linguistic, temporal, or creedal body. His viewpoint was irenic: he sought peaceful Christian forbearance. Nor was his communion primarily literary, an imagined Republic of Letters. His pastoral manual, The Country Parson, for example, gives guidelines for interactions between clergy and laymen of different rank, wealth, and status, as evidenced by Kristine A. Wolberg and Lynnette St. George’s reading of the work in Chapter 8 of the present volume. In discussing The Country Parson and “The Church Porch” in contrast with François de Sales, Richard Strier, in Chapter 7, takes issue with the attempts of Martz, Summers, Malcolmson, and others to reconcile George Herbert’s experience of the spiritual and worldly realms, arguing that differences in doctrine have effects on people’s social and inner lives. In his lifetime, Edward was often received by his readers as sharing his younger brother’s agenda of irenicism. However, Edward’s

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“communion” – though it was, like George’s, ­contentious – did not refer to the Christian sacrament but rather to commonalities with others, to mutuality, and included non-Christians. Edward focused on consensus and consent. His attempt to construct what he argued were universal truths at the core of very different religious practices and beliefs divorced each from its claim to exclusive authority; divine revelation, by implication, did not restrict itself to any one time, place, or institution. Both brothers engaged, as we shall see, in forceful ambiguities intended to transform the impulses of warfare in its many forms into a contentiousness that could be peaceful and productive. Following different paths toward a shared goal, they responded to the beginnings of the Thirty Years’ War and to the threat and ultimately the reality of increasing violence in Britain itself. Mark Greengrass has argued that religious (or confessional) wars, the Thirty Years’ War in particular, and shared calamities led to the ­collapse of the idea of a shared, orderly “Christendom” and the acceptance of a more fluid, calamitous “Europe.”25 Soen et al. note that early modern governments described their borders, or “­frontiers” (“frontières”), as defined by battles and combat.26 As such, during the lives of the Herbert brothers, Britain’s borders were both internal and external. George’s Latin poems describe Britain as naturally defended by its status as an island: “Naufragij causa est alijs mare, roboris Anglo, / Et quae corrumpit moenia, murus aqua est” (“The sea leads others to shipwreck, an Englishman to strength. / And water that dashes walls to pieces is Britain’s wall”) (Lucus, Poem  6, “On the British Peace,” ll. 5–6). He also warns Scotland of the dangers of war, ending apocalyptically. Christ’s blood alone will be sufficient to save Scotland from war and fire; if they did not control their anger through communion, “Ante diem vestro mundus ab igne ruat” (“Before the appointed day, the world by your fire would perish”) (Musae Responsoriae, Poem 35, “To Scotland. An Exhortation to Peace,” l. 12). Edward’s history of the reign of Henry VIII, and his actions during the Civil War, indicate a parallel striving for peace through consensus and professed impartiality.27 This collection is the first to advance in a sustained manner the study of the works and thought of two brothers whose critical

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afterlives have hitherto been treated as either reductively oppositional or resolutely separate. The two followed different professional, social, psychological, and personal trajectories, yet they continued to entertain throughout their lives an intellectual conversation, shared several correspondents and interlocutors who had a part in shaping their views, and were members of a broad European fellowship seeking communion in peace. For the first time, we situate them firmly within their shared religious and cultural context. The comparison makes clear the importance of multifarious rather than exclusive or narrow studies of context. The brothers stood at different junction points of intertwined and overlapping networks of people and ideas, and only through close attention to these can we hope to understand their theological, historical, and poetic works. And they are examples of a broader contentious communion. Each saw strife as predicated on engagement with others that did not merely reinscribe but instead reimagined conceptual and relational frontiers. Edward Herbert, Lord Cherbury, is often described, some argue anachronistically, as the father of English Deism.28 He was deeply immersed in international, European philosophical conversations, after having himself participated in the confessional wars on the Continent. Two other Herbert brothers, Richard and William, died as young men during those wars. Despite Edward’s multiple intellectual exchanges and correspondences with important humanists and thinkers such as Casaubon, Grotius, Gassendi, and Descartes, leading him to publish his most important philosophical and anthropological works on the Continent rather than in England, he is undervalued today as a philosopher. A complex reception history has sometimes obscured the relationship between his ontological thought and his central question of religious toleration29 – Anita Sherman’s chapter rehabilitates the consistency of Edward’s vision. In the literary field, critics tend to emphasize in his poetry what they see as the superficial blend of chivalry and cosmopolitanism also at work in his autobiography, turning him into the very opposite of his brother, the saintly and quintessentially English “country parson.”30 Our study offers reappraisals not just of Edward Herbert the philosopher, but also of the poet, historian, ambassador, and political actor.

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The poet and pastor George Herbert is chiefly remembered for his deeply felt devotional poems (The Temple, 1633), many of which have been set to church music so frequently that they have become part and parcel of English hymnody. They stand as one of the hallmarks of the sound of worship within the Church of England, though they were and still are appreciated by Protestants of various stripes. The assumed simplicity of his poetry distinguishes him – so it is believed – from other “metaphysical” poets and the supposed mannerism and vanity of his brother. Since the 1970s, there has been a significant move away from the hagiographic approach to George Herbert still present in the collective British imagination and initially encouraged by Izaac Walton’s Life (1670), which sought to celebrate the Restoration Church of England. Such seminal works as Barbara Kiefer Lewalski’s Protestant Poetics (1979), Richard Strier’s Love Known: Theology and Experience in George Herbert’s Poetry (1983), and Cristina Malcolmson’s ­Heart-Work: George Herbert and the Protestant Ethic (1999) have led to a much more thorough inquiry into the ways his poetry illuminates and enacts his theology. This collection situates that theology within transregional ­conversations and beyond; it has much to add to a critical tradition that has tended to define George Herbert’s theological stance in national terms. Christopher Hodgkins’s Authority, Church, and Society in George Herbert: Return to the Middle Way (1993), for example, seeks to clarify Herbert’s relation to the Elizabethan settlement and Calvinism in the years of the Stuart crisis in religious authority leading up to the Civil Wars. There have been notable exceptions to such predominantly national contextualizing of George Herbert’s theology, among which is Elizabeth Clarke’s Theory and Theology in George Herbert’s Poetry: “Divinitie, and Poesie, Met” (1997). Clarke draws upon Savonarola, François de Sales, and Juan de Valdés to shed light on Herbert’s understanding of divine inspiration, but she does so with an eye to further revising assumptions about Herbert’s potentially royalist and High Church sympathies.31 As Gene Edward Veith, Jr. noted, George Herbert criticism has continually replayed the “Wars of Religion,” but primarily those that were acted out within the boundaries of the British Isles.32 While taking into account some continental a­ ntecedents and theological sources, the consensus has been that George Herbert

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was concerned chiefly with the fate of his own national church and that, in order to appraise his doctrinal and local specificities, debates about Reformations and Counter-Reformations on the Continent are best avoided. However, as George’s Latin poetry and orations teach us, the poet was politically aware of European and global religious issues. And George and Edward moved in overlapping circles. George engaged in a spirited poetic dialogue with Pope Urban VIII, for example, at one point flattering him as a poet and praising poetry’s persuasiveness in comparison with religious polemics: “Quod Bellarminus nequijt, fortasse poetae / Suauiter efficient, absque rigore Scholae” (“What Bellarmine could not do, poets perhaps / Will more pleasantly effect, lacking polemic’s rigor”) (Lucus, 28, ll. 3–4). It is quite possible that Edward’s connections facilitated that poetic dialogue, speculation supported by the fact that Edward also corresponded with Urban VIII.33 Urban’s Poemata (Rome, 1635) is one of two books of verse (the other, in Italian, by Giovanni Battista Marino, also in residence for extended periods at the French court) to appear among Edward’s gifts to Jesus College.34 Before he was elected to the papacy, Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini) had served as papal legate to the court of Henri IV. George’s brothers’ travels on the Continent, especially those of Henry and Edward, made him particularly receptive to the importance of history, the devastating human consequences of religious strife and violence.35 Though he was an ordained priest living in relative obscurity for the last three years of his life, George Herbert’s family ties, his training, his experiences as a Member of Parliament and Cambridge University Orator, and his deep learning gave him a political awareness and sense of connectedness that was not far removed from his apparently more worldly and cosmopolitan brother’s.36 Edward’s quest for the foundational principles of a philosophy that might bestow a sense of being a citizen of the world, a part of one common human family, would not have been alien to George. As is made apparent in this collection, this sense of belonging could only be derived from an investment in “­forrainn wisdom,” in which both brothers engaged: “To take all that is given; whether wealth, / Or Love or language; nothing comes amiss” (“The Church-Porch,” ll. 355–7). 37

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Such an investment in “outlandish” or “forrainn” wisdom responds to the brothers’ historical moment; belonging for them was not parochial or provincial. Both brothers read “promiscuously,” to use John Milton’s later formulation in the Areopagitica (1644), in several languages, and both wrote for an international audience. George and Edward wrote Greek and Latin verse, the languages of educated elites throughout Europe, as well as English. George admonished his younger brother Henry (bap. 1594–d. 1673), sent to Paris as a courier around 1615,38 to bring back to England “all good [he] saw in Frenchmen whether it be in knowledge, or in fashion, or in words.” He would thus prove, and even “play,” “a good marchant” “by transporting French commodities to [his] own country.”39 George, in other words, was asking Henry to become what would be termed, in the idiom of ­twenty-first-century historiography, an agent of “cultural transfer,” or a “passeur culturel.”40 He himself was dedicated to “play[ing] a marchant” by gathering and “Englishing,” along with Henry, a collection of Outlandish Proverbs, published in 1640 as a supplement to Witts Recreations.41 Perhaps more crucially yet for our purpose, George was committed to furthering new modes of knowledge that might rely upon universally shared experience rather than dogmatic authorities: he helped Francis Bacon reach a broad European audience through serving as a translator of the expanded Advancement of Learning into Latin.42 Though he never completed the task, Edward, for his part, endeavored to translate Descartes’s Discours de la méthode into English,43 despite disagreements on a number of notions, such as natural instinct and universal consent.44 Edward’s understanding may, in fact, have been drawn from Mornay’s earlier humanistic definition of knowledge as derived from ius naturae (natural law) manifest in the ius gentium (consent of humankind). Either way, the Herbert brothers clearly partook of a contentious communion that was both inward and of the world; intimate struggle and strife with oneself and others to embody the good were for them common signs of a vitally lived truth. There are indications of real and substantive conversation and disagreement between brothers with significantly different approaches and assumptions, who nevertheless shared common concerns for the broadly human and the global. Serious exchange between

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the Herbert brothers is made evident in Edward’s d ­ edication on December 15, 1622 of an early manuscript of his most radically unorthodox work, De Veritate: prout distinguitur a revelatione, a verisimili, a possibili, et a falso (On Truth, as it is Distinguished from Revelation, the Probable, the Possible, and the False), to his younger brother George.45 Edward asks George, and Edward’s secretary William Boswell, to excise anything at odds with “the true catholick religion.” In his autobiography, Edward argues that his brother George’s English works fall “far short” of his Latin, suggesting possible knowledge of more of George’s work than the little that appeared in print during either’s lifetime.46 Critics including Cristina Malcolmson and Jeffrey Powers-Beck have argued compellingly that several of the brothers’ poems are in dialogue with one another.47 A signaled readerly relationship between Edward and George Herbert, brothers of such widely different theologies and temperaments, serves as a familial microcosm of a greater European discursive project. Edward Herbert’s reference to the “catholick” in his dedication to George is distinctive, implying a cosmopolitan openness to a universally accessible truth that goes beyond any one state-sanctioned or regional church or polity.48 Edward’s contemporary the French Minim friar and “disseminator”49 of scientific knowledge Marin Mersenne (1588–1648) translated De Veritate into French, the translation published in print for a coterie of readers that included René Descartes. Edward’s donation to the Jesus College Library includes two works by Mersenne, most notably here a compendious study of sound and harmony throughout the world.50 Mersenne’s systematic translation of Edward’s Latin Ecclesia vera catholica into the French Eglise Catholique blunts Edward’s sharply implied meaning of a “Church truly universal.”51 Perhaps Mersenne intended to present Edward’s idea more acceptably within a Roman Catholic context. Perhaps he could read no other possible meaning. Edward’s text, however, implied a Church transcending any given institution, a belief that supported his ability to enter into conversation with correspondents of such various political and religious allegiances. As John Drury notes, in 1617 Edward wrote to Sir Robert Harley (bap. 1579–1656), known for his later support of the Roundheads and Calvinism, asserting that “God’s Church,” as he put it, is “all mankind.”52 Edward’s quest

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and hopes were not for an overreaching ecclesiastical structure that might set the premises for a restored respublica Christiana – whose loss George Herbert bewails in his poem “Church-rents and schismes.”53 It was a Church or communion of the mind that would emerge from the acknowledgment by lay individuals of a veritates catholicae norma, a shared, “catholic” rule of Truth, rather than a “Church” as usually understood. Such a truth was not a given, but one that had to be attained through an often-conflicted process of recognition, reconstruction, consent, and conformation.54 Though few Protestants would have countenanced the idea of such a broad ecclesiology, they would nevertheless have found this concept of the “unseen church” congenial. English Calvinists like Harley, or like Fulke Greville, for example, contrasted the “seen church” with God’s invisible elect: “That sensual, insatiable vast womb, / Of thy seen Church, Thy unseen Church disgraceth” (Sonnet CX, ll. 15–16). But Edward makes use of this Calvinist concept of the “unseen” church as part of an anti-Calvinist “ecclesiology”; the term does not quite apply, however, since his analysis of the discovery of truth includes non-Christians, both pagans and other monotheists. He compares, for example, the fasting of Ramadan with Christian Lent and at times uses pagan terms for the godhead of Zeus to describe the Numen, or divinity. The epistemology of De Veritate posits a divine light in all people, available through inner discernment and interpersonal, transcultural, and transtemporal communion: “doctrina notiorum communium sive Ecclesia vere catholica” (“the general inquiry or the Church that is truly universal”).55 The adjective communium here is a cognate for the noun communio, or communion. Edward’s radical openness, clothed in language that could be understood as “orthodox” in both Catholic and Protestant circles, was in itself contentious; it imagined a broader group of individuals engaged in dangerous disputes and dialogue in the name of an institutionally and culturally obscured general truth.56 Their communion contentiously ignored the accepted frontiers, whether spatial or conceptual. The brothers’ public personae were both inflected by rank and status. Both are recorded to have had proud aristocratic temperaments bent on achieving social mastery, enticed by what the younger George called the “brave” (the splendid, grand, or

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Introduction: Contentious communion 15

courageous).57 The younger brother at times appears to achieve submission to the divine, and the poems and prose map out this conflict in detail. Edward was much less interested in George’s concept of self-mastery. He nevertheless details and scrutinizes the violent self-indulgences of King Henry VIII. A key concept for him in writing history, as for his friend Francis Bacon in conducting experiments or making assertions about the nature of knowing, was the cultivation of a genteel and honorable disinterestedness, an ongoing openness not motivated by profit. For example, George refers to Francis Bacon as “Aequitatis signifier” (“Standard bearer of impartiality”).58 This collection suggests that there might be peaceful ends to an aristocratic search for honor, so often a source of violence. These essays explore the brothers’ engagement with Europe writ large and the larger world, arguing cumulatively that both imagined a communion where internal, interpersonal, and inter-state conflict might articulate itself and be transformed without physical violence. George imagined individual and collective struggle as a key component of communion, at the conclusion of “The Banquet” enjoining himself to “love the strife.” Like the members of the Little Gidding Community who in their dialogues praised Holy Roman Emperors and the traditional enemies of international Protestantism for their humility,59 Edward, in his The life and raigne of King Henry the Eighth, defied received British narratives about the beginnings of the Reformation. Edward imagined communion in his Henry the Eighth and De Veritate as taking place through common assent among disputants. At the return of Prince Charles from Spain, George argues before those assembled at Cambridge University and those who would later read in print: “Let governments of the world lean mutually upon one another like slanting beams. Otherwise, the great house of the world might fall to rack and ruin.”60 The chapters that follow “lean mutually upon one another like slanting beams,” displaying the many facets of Edward and George’s contentions and concords in their quest for a vision to sustain “the great house of the world.” The first section of the book, “Thinking beyond borders,” addresses war and peace. Taking as her starting point the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, which stood throughout Europe as the epitome of viciousness ­committed

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in God’s name, Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise demonstrates how the involvement of members of the Herbert–Sidney coterie in the confessional wars affected the forms in which Edward and George chose to write. The chapter makes a case for thinking of Edward Herbert’s historical and anthropological later writings, as well as George Herbert’s polemic epyllion “The Church Militant,” as alternate literary responses to a deep sense of tragic time linked to the loss of a primitive (and illusory) respublica Christiana, also manifest in such continental works such as Les Tragiques by Agrippa d’Aubigné (1552–1630), which circulated in England among Huguenot refugees, and which would have naturally been of interest to French and English admirers of the great Protestant poet Du Bartas (1544–90).61 In the second chapter, “The Thirty Years’ War and George Herbert’s communion, an answer to violence,” Greg Miller examines George’s transregional political thought as revealed in some of his understudied Latin works: his poetic dialogue in Latin verse with Pope Urban VIII, his early Latin poems celebrating the marriage of Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine to Princess Elizabeth Stuart, his Latin oration at the return of Prince Charles and Lord Buckingham from Spain, and his concluding Communion poems in Lucus. The chapter extends its analysis to exchanges between Buckingham and the French free-thinking poet Théophile de Viau, who found refuge in the Montmorency household in Chantilly, where Edward had sojourned some fifteen years earlier, some five miles from Merlou, where Edward was frequently in residence during Viau’s imprisonment and trial; both George and Edward participated in poetic and political networks that extended beyond Britain in the hope of promoting peace and toleration. Nancy Zaice’s contribution, “‘Being’ James I,” closely examines Edward Herbert’s ambassadorships in France (1619–21, 1622–4), revising the common appraisal of the ambassador’s supposed overreach and failure that one finds in most critical and historical literature on the subject. Zaice assembles evidence that Edward provided King James I with useful, valid, and accurate information on important matters such as European ambassadors’ visits and their implications, French views on the conflict in the Palatinate, reports of Spanish and French troop movements, ultramontane Catholic influence at the French court, and the status of Protestants

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Introduction: Contentious communion 17

in France. True to his concept of truth, Cherbury insisted on the unity of the general and the personal good; as a defender of the right to individual conscience, he pursued both. In the following chapter, Michael Schoenfeldt analyzes Edward’s charting of his early years in France (1608–9) in his autobiography, a text often dismissed as both lacking self-awareness and risibly self-important. Comparing Edward’s “belligerent” modes of “civility” in the Autobiography with George’s struggles for spiritual submission in The Temple helps explain how seeking peace in the political realm also implied deep personal engagement and conflicting notions of the “self.” Working for universal peace implied forms of battle within oneself and, at times, with one’s local communities. The second section of the book, “Reconsidering c­onformity, community, and universality,” reassesses assumptions about ­ Edward’s central notion of ontological “consent” and “­conformity,” as well as George Herbert’s religious “conformity” and adherence to what he saw as an ecclesiastical “middle way,” considering their political engagements. Chris Hodgkins’s analysis here complements in a more broadly European sense his own earlier study of George Herbert’s via media.62 Hodgkins focuses on George’s possible indebtedness to Jean Charlier de Gerson (1363–1429), a late medieval French Catholic theologian and Chancellor of the University of Paris, in his promotion of a spiritual life that might cross creedal, temporal, and national lines. If George endorsed “conformity,” Hodgkins suggests, it was first and foremost to a life guided by spiritual principles that could be universally shared. Anita Sherman’s “Conformity and consent in Herbert of Cherbury” examines Edward’s reassessment of conformity and consent in the aftermath of the historical research he undertook to write his Expedition to the Isle of Rhé and The life and raigne of King Henry the Eighth. Edward’s notion of an ontological conformity between those things that are perceived and their inmost reality provoked criticism, if not perplexity, in his own time (as now). Nevertheless, Sherman reveals how this idea functioned as a cornerstone to Edward Herbert’s thought, allowing him to build a general philosophy of consent, with aesthetic, metaphysical, rhetorical, empirical, and scientific meanings intended to enable peoples around the globe to live in a shared human community. We find common ground between

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Edward’s definition of basic principles shared by all religions and his brother George’s hopes for a universal middle way. The second section of this volume explores, with particular attention to continental models, George’s understanding of the ­ spiritual life and pastoral care. Richard Strier questions the comparison commonly made between the spiritual lives of George Herbert and St. François de Sales. Strier acknowledges that both sought to assuage or calm inner turmoil through forms of pleasure and sweetness, including the Eucharist, but he also makes clear the comparison’s serious limitations; the two writers experienced affliction differently and addressed different audiences. Unlike François de Sales, George does not address the worldly and educated alone; his emphasis is less on the sweetness of devotion than on promoting piety and inner transformation. Though Herbert’s communion is less “cheerful” than that of de Sales, and less “world-affirmative,” it nevertheless extends to include the simpler in spirit. The importance of the inner life in building up communities is the focus of the chapter by Kristine A. Wolberg and Lynnette St. George, devoted to George’s book of pastoral guidance, The Country Parson. Many studies have noted the manual’s emphasis on the outer, religious man, seeming to turn “holiness” into a set of “external marks, or signs.” Comparing Herbert’s inspiration and focus in The Country Parson with that of John Calvin’s Commentaries on the Pastoral Epistles demonstrates how it is only by linking George Herbert’s writing to continental thought and theology that we can fully understand his pastoral prospects for a broadly comprehensive Church that sustains at a local level the needs of all its members (regardless of their place in the social hierarchy). The fifth and final chapter in this second section takes discussions of love and community in a different direction, exploring the importance of intimate and natural human affections. Cristina Malcolmson discusses a work only recently discovered, Edward Herbert’s unfinished play The Amazon, written during his terms as English ambassador to France. The play, along with Edward’s contemporaneous De  Veritate, seems to stem from an entirely opposite stance than that of George’s Country Parson. Edward argues against the Christian dogma of his time and in favor of divorce, arguably participating in the brothers’ common quest for a universal love, perhaps influenced by

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Lucretius. This chapter analyzes the final “Song” in The Amazon as linking human affection with the most universal “natural instinct” of De  Veritate, a spiritual power that, for Edward, legitimizes divorce (on the grounds that too often marriage is antithetical to love), moves both animals and humans, and provides the basis for credible knowledge. Truth, universality, and cosmopolitism are ­ always on the horizon for both Edward and George, with different trajectories and implications. The third and last section of the book, “The voices of ­transnational communities: From conversation to song,” goes on to show how the transregional communities George and Edward promoted are actuated and embodied in their correspondence, poetry, and music. Sean McDowell argues that Edward Herbert belonged to a community of “plain speakers” who valued a conversational style in their correspondence and poetry; such directness is the vehicle for what a social community is meant to do and the philosophical ideals it is to sustain. More specifically, McDowell argues that many members of Edward Herbert’s English and French coterie (who in some cases also interacted with George) found in the rhetorical writings of the Flemish humanist Justus Lipsius welcome permission to depart from an overly wrought discourse in favor of a more gallant honesty. Their models, which included Lipsius’s published correspondence, featured conversations with Grotius, Casaubon, and Sidney. Like Sidney, Lipsius was shaped by his experience living in the tolerant, cosmopolitan Viennese court of Emperor Maximillian II, and his dialogue De Constantia develops the Stoic virtue of constancy as a chief source of individual strength and social comity during prolonged periods of warfare and civil strife. Conversation, in both brothers’ understanding, extends beyond the strict sphere of learned, humanist exchanges in promotion of a more inclusive ethos of humanitas, which included kindness and generosity.63 Eleanor Hardy’s chapter also places Edward’s poetry within its continental contexts, focusing on his interactions with the followers of John Donne, including Thomas Carew and Aurelian Townsend, who accompanied Edward Herbert in his ambassadorship. These poets were dedicated to the circulation of European poetics in England and shared some of the same continental models. Carew had been associated with English ambassadorships

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to Venice and the Netherlands before his time in Paris. In his later highly successful 1634 masque at the court of King Charles I, Coelum Britannicum, Carew would ridicule the French prose stylist Guez de Balzac in ways that parallel Théophile de Viau’s enraged epistolary denunciation of his former friend.64 But Marino in particular, she suggests, was central in developing a shared kind of poetic “wit” that found its expression in images and metaphors of reproduction, the basis of a particularly fecund transregional literary culture. Edward’s poetics, moreover, had philosophical implications; the focus on linguistic reproduction reflects his understanding of his diplomatic function. Guillaume Coatalen focuses in turn on overlooked European parallels to, and influences on, George Herbert’s devotional verse. Herbert’s was probably shaped by French Protestant antecedents including Chandieu, Grévin, and Sponde. Chandieu’s poems, for example, were available in print and manuscript, and were set to music by Claude Le Jeune and Pascal de L’Estocart; elegantly written and bound manuscript books of Chandieu’s popular Octonaires were in circulation, including copies by Esther Inglis, a calligrapher and artist whose parents were Huguenot refugees in Scotland and England. Inglis presented copies of her volumes to Queen Elizabeth and later to Prince Henry, as well as to Susan de Vere, Lady Herbert, wife of Philip Herbert, earl of Montgomery, and to Lady Mary and Sir Philip Sidney’s brother, Baron Robert Sidney, Viscount Lisle, among others.65 The final two chapters take on the question of musical practices. Simon Jackson looks closely at Edward’s manuscript lute book within the context of his music books bequeathed to the library of Jesus College, Oxford, showing its distinctly international nature and suggesting therefore its agency in promoting and performing a wide and polylingual community through music. Similarly, in the final chapter of the book, Helen Wilcox focuses on European (and especially French and Swiss) forms of psalm-singing and their influence on the Sidney–Herbert coterie, demonstrating how George Herbert’s lyrics cannot be reduced to a hallmark of the sound of worship within the Church of England: George’s poetry harmoniously weaves in the rhythms and notes of a transnational, if not celestial, consort of the “Sweet Singers” of a potentially universal “Israel.”

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While this volume focuses on the complex interactions between two brothers’ works and thought, placing their own contentiousness within the context of broader community building, this comparative study may, we hope, serve as a basis for future explorations of the dynamics of cosmopolitan idealism and practice within the larger European Republic of Letters, but also of particular families and clans that, faced with strife, were dedicated to laying the foundations for ways of coming together that would extend beyond the confines of their own intimate circles. One might consider, for example, the families of Jacques Auguste de Thou, negotiator of the Edict of Nantes with whom King James I corresponded, or of the cosmopolitan, free-thinking Théophile de Viau, who corresponded with the Duke of Buckingham and praised him in French verse. The  historian Jacques Auguste de Thou’s grandfather and father had been presidents of the Parlement de Paris, and his uncle, Nicolas de Thou, Bishop of Chartres;66 his son was executed by Richelieu and Louis XIV. Like Edward Herbert, de Thou possessed a famously extensive library. The second volume of de Thou’s Historiarum sui temporis, focusing on the Wars of Religion (or confessional wars), including the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, was placed on the Vatican’s list of prohibited books in 1609. Théophile de Viau’s family offers an example in a more provincial and less established aristocratic family. Théophile’s Protestant father may have worked as a lawyer for the Parlement de Bordeaux before his exile for religious reasons to a family domain described at length in his Lettre à son frère (ll. 172–280) and Theophilus in Carcere, and is described as having written poetry in the Gascon dialect. Théophile’s Latin letters to his elder brother testify to intimate confessional disagreements and deep affection. These are but two possible familial ­parallels, among many, that made possible transregional, European, and global transformation. This volume argues that the Herbert brothers were not mere agents of transregional networks, coteries, and groups; they bore distinctive visions of encompassing community or communion. In George’s case, it took the form of an imagined contentious Eucharistic communion, and in Edward’s, of a communion built on free and disinterested disputation and consent. Both writers place individual experience, both lived and represented in language, at

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the core of the matter. They experienced truth as created and shared in dynamic contentiousness. Truth’s native country (Patria, or heaven, in George’s second Latin poem in Lucus) is not predicated on violent frontiers and in fact is most likely to present itself in the absence of any such military struggle. The more proper metaphor would be of Magdalen Danvers’ dinner table, full of the demands and pleasures of vigorous disputation shared over a good meal at leisure and afterwards continued into a changed wider world.

Notes   1 See, for example, Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); Peter Miller, Peiresc’s Europe: Virtue and Learning in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2001); Anne Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1650–1750 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1995); and Laurence Brockliss, Calvet’s Web: Enlightenment and the Republic of Letters in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Stanford University offers an interactive search engine to explore networks in this “republic”: http://republicofletters. stanford.edu/ (accessed September 24, 2021).   2 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1989). Reinhard Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts,  trans. Todd Presner, Kerstin Behnke, and Jobst Welge; foreword by Hayden White (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002). Françoise Waquet and Hans Bots explore the development of the European Republic of Letters in the early seventeenth century in  La République des lettres (Paris, Berlin, Brussels: De Boeck, 1997).  3 Erudition and the Republic of Letters, first published in 2016 and edited by Mordechai Feingold, dedicates itself to the respublica literaria more broadly understood than in the sense we use here.   4 Discussions of Lucretius’s effect on the early modern era are numerous, including Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011). A useful introduction to the ongoing conversation about this ancient writer’s influence can be

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found in D. Norbrook, S. Harrison, and P. Hardie (eds), Lucretius and the Early Modern, Classical Presences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).   5 We are grateful to the late Cristina Malcolmson, a contributor to this collection and ardent supporter of the project, for noting this entry in the catalog of Jesus College Fellows’ Library (email to Greg Miller, November 7, 2018). The bequest bookplate reads, “Hunc librum olim suum collegio Jesu lebauit Eduardus Herbert Baro de Cherbury A. D. MDCXLVIII” (“This book was given to his alma mater Jesus College by Edward Herbert, Baron of Cherbury 1648”). See Malcolmson’s chapter in this collection. Vanini was publicly executed for heresy in Toulouse on February 7, 1619. His tongue was cut out before he was strangled and then burned.   6 See his collection of essays, Pierre Bayle, historien, critique et moraliste, Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Religieuses 129 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006) and his more recent monograph, Bayle, calviniste libertin (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2021).   7 Our translation. This is how Hubert Bost sketches Bayle’s intellectual portrait in his introduction to Pierre Bayle, p. 5.   8 C. J. Fordyce and T. M. Knox, “The Library of Jesus College, Oxford, With an appendix on the books bequeathed thereto by Lord Herbert of Cherbury,” Proceedings and Papers of the Oxford Bibliographic Society, 5.2 (1937), 49–115.   9 Giulio Cesare Vanini was a friend of French Poet Théophile de Viau (1590–1626). On connections with Théophile de Viau, see the introduction below (pp. 16, 21) and Chapter 2 by Miller. 10 Exploring the writers’ contexts and common purposes during and after the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris and their later brief residence in the cosmopolitan, tolerant capital of Emperor Maximilian II in Vienna, Robert E. Stillman’s study of this circle is invaluable. The Philippians shared an anti-confessional faith dependent on learnedness, moderation, and peaceableness. Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism (Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008; London and New York: Routledge, 2016). 11 See Chapter 14 by Helen Wilcox, this volume. See also Richard Todd, “Humanist Prosodic Theory, Dutch Synods, and the Poetics of the Sidney-Pembroke Psalter,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 52.2 (1989), 273–93; Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise, “Mary Sidney et les Psaumes: de la traduction au chant virtuose d’une femme poète,” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme français, 158 (2012), 385–403.

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12 On Edward Herbert’s five notions, see Chapter 6 by Anita Sherman, this volume. 13 See Paul Hazard’s seminal work, La Crise de la conscience européenne (Paris: Boivin et Cie, 1935), which identifies the period from 1680 to 1715 as that of a crucial re-evaluation of European institutions and modes of knowledge, but which also prompted prosecution of free inquiry. 14 One might consider the Elizabethan Acts of Supremacy and Treason in England, or Catherine de Medici wavering at the time of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris. See Marie-Madeleine Fragonard, “L’établissement de la raison d’état et la Saint-Barthélemy,” in Les Cahiers du Centre de Recherches Historiques, 20 (1998). DOI: 10.4000/ccrh.2535, and Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise in Chapter 1, this volume. 15 Christian Mühling, Le Débat sur la guerre de religion (1679–1714). Mémoire confessionnelle et politique internationale à l’époque de Louis XIV (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2021). 16 Michael Strevens’s The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science (New York: Liveright, 2020) argues that the scientific revolution that began in the mid-seventeenth century welcomed argument, opinion, and vehement disputation and that such a community allowed for the creation of knowledge. The motto of the English Royal Society is “Nullius in verba” (“Take nothing on authority”). 17 See, for example, Latour’s Reassembling the Social – An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) and Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987). 18 For a review of scholarship about larger Atlantic exchanges and empire, see Ladan Niayesh and Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, “Whither the Empire in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries? Taking Stock of a Vibrant Field in English and American Studies,”  XVII–XVIII, 74 (2017). DOI:10.4000/1718.860. 19 On the first definition of the notion of cultural transfer by Espagne and Werner, see their article “La construction d’une référence culturelle Allemande en France: Genèse et Histoire (1750–1914),” Annales. Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 4 (1987), 969–92; Espagne, “La Notion de Transfert Culturel,” Revue Sciences/Lettres, 1 (2013), DOI: 10.4000/rsl.219. On its application to the early modern period see Violet Soen, Bram De Ridder, Alexander Soetaert, Werner Thomas, Johan Verberckmoes, and Sophie Verreyken, “How to

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Do Transregional History: A Concept, Method and Tool for Early Modern Border Research,” Journal of Early Modern History, 21 (2017), 343–64, particularly 349. Soen et al. discuss the limitations of “transnational” as a concept in the early modern period, in part because the modern nation-state is a nineteenth-century construction, in favor of the “transregional.” See also Violet Soen, Alexander Soetaert, Johan Verberckmoes, and Wim François (eds), Transregional Reformations Crossing Borders in Early Modern Europe, Refo500 Academic Studies (R5AS) 61 (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019); and on the culture of news and transregional networks, see Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham (eds), News Networks in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2016). 20 The Kitchin Booke, to this day in possession of the Earl of Powis at Powis Castle, was a book of household accounts recorded by Magdalen Herbert’s steward, John Gorse. See Amy M. Charles’s description in “Mrs. Herbert’s Kitchin Booke,” English Literary Renaissance, 4.1 (1974), 164–73, and Charles, A Life of George Herbert (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1978), pp. 36–47. 21 Oliver Lawson Dick (ed.), Aubrey’s Brief Lives (London: Secker & Warburg, 1949), p. 173. Danvers was twenty years younger than his wife. 22 John Drury, Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), pp. 38–43. 23 Memoriae Matris Sacrum: To the memory of my Mother, A Consecrated Gift, Catherine Freis, Richard Freis, and Greg Miller (trans. and ed.) (Fairfield, CT: George Herbert Monograph Series, 2013). 24 John Donne, “A Sermon of the Commemoration of Lady Danvers, Late Wife of Sr. John Danvers” (New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 2006), p. 138. 25 Mark Greengrass, Christendom Destroyed: Europe 1517–1648 (New York: Penguin, 2014), pp. 29–31. 26 Soen et al., “How to do Transregional History,” p. 352. 27 In “The epistle dedicatory” to his Life & Raigne of King Henry the Eighth (London, 1649), Herbert claims to “set down the truth impartially.” On his own conception, “clear precepts and boundaries” he sets “for his role as royal historian,” see Christine Jackson, “‘It is unpossible to draw his Picture well who hath severall countenances’: Lord Herbert of Cherbury and The Life and Reign of King Henry VIII,” in T. Betteridge and T. S. Freeman (eds), Henry VIII and History (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 135–49, here p. 139. 28 R. D. Bedford, in The defence of Truth: Herbert of Cherbury and the

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Seventeenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979), notes that, insofar as they assert “fundamental moral and religious truths” not dependent on revelation, the Calvinist poet Fulke Greville in The Nature of Truth (1640), and the church father Tertullian could also be read as “deists” (p. 226). Edward was initially received, Bedford argues, as an irenicist, advocating peaceable forbearance among Christians. Richard W. Serjeantson refutes the common description of Edward as deist by examining his original readerships and reception in the light of subsequent rereadings in the decades after the several publications of De Veritate: prout distinguitur a revelatione, a verisimili, a possibili, et a falso in France and England and the posthumous publication of De religione gentilium (1663). “Herbert of Cherbury before Deism: The Early Reception of De Veritate,” The Seventeenth Century, 16:2 (2001), 217–38. The argument developed below is that Edward’s language and argument, though certainly concerned with peaceful Christian tolerance, had still wider implications. See the chapters by Cristina Malcolmson (Chapter 9) and Anita Sherman (Chapter  6) in this collection. 29 Sarah Hutton writes that Edward Herbert’s “posthumous reputation as a deist has obscured his profound commitment to religious eirenicism ….” British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 109–13. Bedford makes a similar attempt to explain Herbert’s reception history in his chapter “Toleration” in The defence of Truth, pp. 211–38. 30 Jeffrey Powers-Beck attributes differences between the younger George, who “wrote a poetry of the suffering son Christ and his Church, and the elder brother Edward, who wrote a poetry of the free soul liberated from filial obligations to church and priest.” Writing the Flesh: The Herbert Family Dialogue (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1998), p. 27. Powers-Beck attributes this difference to the brothers’ respective birth orders. Brent M. David develops a psychological explanation for the differences he sees between Edward and George in his chapter “Comparison of the Beliefs and Values of Two Brothers,” in N. Bakić-Mirić and D. E. Gaipov (eds), Current Trends and Issues in Higher Education: An International Dialogue (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2015), pp. 173–86. 31 On this point, see Clarke’s article “George Herbert and Cambridge Scholars,” George Herbert Journal, 27.1–2 (2003/4), 43–52. 32 See Veith’s discussion of religious wars in “The Religious Wars in George Herbert Criticism: Reinterpreting Seventeenth-Century Anglicanism,” George Herbert Journal, 11.2 (1988), 19–35.

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33 In fact, Bedford notes that a letter from the French theologian and ­scientist Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) to Elias Diodate (1576–1661), who was to become a close friend and supporter of Galileo (dated August 29, 1631), reported that Pope Urban VIII spoke quite highly of George’s brother Edward’s De Veritate (The defence of Truth, p. 218 and p. 232, note 25). For a discussion of the importance of Gassendi’s thought on early modern philosophy and sciences, see Antonia LoLordo’s Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Gassendi is reputed to have been engaged with the ideas of the libertins érudits, the “learned free-thinkers.” 34 Dicerie sacrè, divise in tre cioè, pittura, musica et cielo (Venice, 1628). 35 See Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise’s discussion of tragic time in Chapter 1 of this volume. Also, Greg Miller discusses Herbert’s representations of the horrors of war, both generally and with specific references to events and actors on the Continent, in Chapter 2. 36 George was spared, we can assume, the duties into which Henry and Edward were thrust, such as the investigation of the alleged theft in 1619 of the late Queen Anne of Denmark’s jewels by her favorite, Pierre Hugon. Henry and two of Edward’s men were charged with recovering the chest in which the jewels were kept; they produced an inventory. See Nigel Bawcutt, “Evidence and Conjecture in Literary Scholarship: The Case of Sir John Astley Reconsidered,” English Literary Renaissance, 22.3 (1992), 333–46. See pp. 343–4 here. For a more detailed discussion, see Mario Rossi, La vita, le opere, i tempi di Edoardo Herbert di Cherbury (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1947), vol. 2, pp. 53–7. 37 All quotations of George Herbert’s Outlandish Proverbs and The Country Parson are from F. E. Hutchinson’s edition, The Works of George Herbert (1945; corr. rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959). 38 See Charles, A Life, pp. 77–8, 83–4. Little is known about Henry Herbert’s first travels and official duties in France. 39 Works, p. 366. 40 Espagne, “La Notion de Transfert Culturel.” 41 See Hutchinson’s commentary on this publication, in Works, pp. 571–3. MS 5301 E, now at the National Library of Wales, offers a list dated August 6, 1637 of the first seventy-two proverbs of the published collection (with two exceptions) in Henry’s hand. Henry’s collection bears the title: “Outlandish Prouerbs selected out of seuerall Languages & entered here the vi. August 1637. At Ribsford. H. H.” The majority of collected proverbs come from the French and the Spanish. ­Anne-Marie

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Miller-Blaise examines Henry’s role in “George Herbert’s French Connections: Of Books and Brothers,” George Herbert Journal, 37.1 & 2 (2013/14), 48–68. 42 In British Philosophy, Sarah Hutton discusses the thought of Sir Francis Bacon and Edward Herbert, pp. 92–113. 43 He translated the 4th section, as well as half of the 5th section of Descartes’s groundbreaking essay. See Jacqueline Lagrée, “‘Le Salut du laïc’, Edward Herbert de Cherbury: étude et traduction du ‘De religione laïci’” (Paris: Philologie et Mercure, M. Vrin, 1989), p. 36. 44 On Descarte’s critique of Edward Herbert’s De Veritate, see Lagrée, Edward Herbert de Cherbury, pp. 36–8 and the chapter by Sherman in the present volume. Descartes disagreed with the notion that universal consent could furnish a reliable indicator of truth, arguing that universal consent could be universal consent in error. He condemned, in other words, Cherbury’s anthropological optimism. 45 See note 28 above. The work was first published in Latin in Paris (1624) and subsequently in London (1633) and translated into French in 1639. John Locke, among others, found Edward’s book important, but it was not translated into English until 1937. Drury makes note of the dual dedication of the earliest and incomplete manuscript to his secretary Boswell and brother George in Music at Midnight, p. 103. 46 The Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 2nd rev. edn, ed. Sidney Lee (London: George Routledge and Sons Ltd, 1889, revd. 1906), p. 11. 47 Powers-Beck, “Comparing Fruits: Edward Herbert, Sonship, Sacrifice and Time,” in Writing the Flesh, pp. 119–64. Malcolmson, “George Herbert and Coterie Verse”, in Heart-Work, pp. 46–125. Mary Ellen Rickey’s essay “Rhymecraft in Edward and George Herbert” remains one of the more compelling discussions of George’s dialogue with, imitation of, and even competition with his older brother’s poetry. The Journal of English and German Philology, 57: 3 (July 1958), 502–11. 48 The 1633 edition published in London by Augustinum Matthaeum includes the imprimatur of William Haywood, Bishop of London (31 December 1633), the final editorial note referring, by contrast, to its submission to Ecclesiae Catholicae Orthodoxae (“The Universal Orthodox Church”) (p. 244). The third French edition, translated by Mersenne (1639), is dedicated “Au Lecteur d’un jugement entier & candide” (“To such a Reader as has an uncompromising and honest judgment,” translation ours). A 1635 English edition is dedicated to “readers of upright and unimpaired judgment.” Once again, we encounter an ideal that aligns with the Baconian notion of disinterestedness.

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49 The term, an apt variant for the notion of “cultural transmitter,” is borrowed from Philippe Hamou’s useful biographical note, “Marin Mersenne,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://stanford.library.sydney. edu.au/archives/sum2018/entries/mersenne/ (accessed February 3, 2022): “thanks to his sprawling correspondence, which extended his network across the whole of learned Europe, to his role as translator, editor, disseminator of scientific information, and to his ability to generate research and discoveries by creating ‘fine questions’ […] addressed to the foremost scholars of the time.” Hamou reminds us that Merenne was also referred to, in the nineteenth century, as “The Secretary of Learned Europe.” 50 Harmonicorum libri in quibus agitur de sonorum natura, causis & effectibus: de consonantiis, dissonantiis, rationibus, generibus, modis, cantibus, compositione, orbisque totius harmonicis instrumentis (Paris: Guillaume Baudry, 1635). 51 Jacqueline Lagrée, “Mersenne Traducteur d’Herbert de Cherbury,” Les Études philosophiques: Études sur Marin Mersenne (1994), 31. 52 Drury, Music at Midnight, p. 102. 53 “Why doth my Mother [i.e. the Church] blush? is she the rose, / And shows it so? Indeed Christs precious bloud / Gave you a colour once […] / But when debates and fretting jealousies / Did worm and work within you more and more, / Your colour faded, and calamities / Turned your ruddie into pale and bleak: / Your health and beautie began to break. // Then did your sev’rall parts unloose and start: / Which when your neighbours saw, like a north-winde, / They rushed in, and cast them in the dirt / Where Pagans tread. O Mother deare and kinde, / Where shall I get me eyes enough to weep / As many eyes as starres? since it is night, / And much of Asia and of Europe fast asleep, / And ev’n all Africk […]” (ll. 11–13, 16–28). Though Herbert’s complaint first appears to lament a more local “rent” or “schism,” that of the Scottish Presbyterians referred to as the “north-winde,” the later part of the poem inserts the local within a global Christian geography. See Miller-Blaise’s discussion in this collection of history in The Church Militant, pp. 45–52. 54 Lagrée, Edward Herbert de Cherbury, p. 44. 55 De veritate, prout distinguitur a revelatione, a verisimili, a possibili, et a falso hoc opus condidit Edoardus Baro Herbert de Cherbury ...; et lectori cuiuis, integri & illibati iudicii dicavit (London, 1633). 56 Edward’s library tellingly includes Menasseh Ben Israel’s Conciliator (Amsterdam, 1633), an attempt to reconcile contradictory passages in

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the Hebrew Bible. Israel convinced Cromwell to allow the return of Jews to England. 57 For a discussion of this topic, see Tom Macfaul, “George Herbert’s Bravery,” Essays in Criticism, 65.4 (2015), 383–400. See also Chapter 7 by Richard Strier, this volume. 58 Herbert, George Herbert’s Latin Verse, ed. and trans. Catherine Freis, Richard Freis, and Greg Miller (Fairfield, CT: George Herbert Journal Special Studies and Monographs, 2017), p. 188, l. 9. 59 Greg Miller, “The Winding Sheet: Little Gidding, George Herbert, and the Rewards of Holiness,” in George Herbert’s “Holy Patterns”: Reforming Individuals in Community (New York: Continuum, 2007), pp. 57–76. 60 George Herbert’s Latin Prose, ed. and trans. Catherine Freis and Greg Miller (Fairfield, CT: George Herbert Journal Monograph Series, 2020), p. 23. 61 On the importance Du Bartas in the British Isles, see Peter Auger, Du Bartas’ Legacy in England and Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 62 See Authority, Church, and Society in George Herbert: Return to the Middle Way (Columbia, MO: The University of Missouri Press, 1993). In his speculative conclusion, Hodgkins examined the fate of George Herbert’s younger contemporary and fellow moderate Thomas Fuller. During the English Revolution, both warring parties found much to admire and yet nevertheless despised him for his irresoluteness, arguably George’s brother Edward’s fate. 63 On the early modern extended definition of conversation as habitus, see John Gillies,  “The Conversational Turn in Shakespeare,”  Études Épistémè, 33 (2018). DOI: 10.4000/episteme.2336. 64 Carew describes Balzac as a “mere counterfeit” when placed in the company of “Peter Aretine” and “Frank Rabelais,” as a “fellow who, to add to his stature thinks it a greater grace to dance on his tiptoes like a dog in a doublet, than to walk like other men on the soles of their feet.” Like Théophile de Viau, Carew mocks Balzac’s valetudinarianism (his constant discussion of the hellish pain of sciatica, in particular), his overfamiliarity with royalty and those of greater rank, and his stylistic affectedness. E. E. Duncan Jones, “Carew and Guez de Balzac,” The Modern Language Review, 46.3–4 (1951), 439–40. Théophile de Viau, imprisoned in the Conciergerie, was accused by his former friend of immorality and irreligion. The “Lettre de Théophile contre Balzac, à Eudoxe,” Théophile’s letter in response to his former friend’s betrayal, is one of the great examples of epistolary rage. It was published in

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1629 in Les Œuvres de Théophile, edited by Jean de la Mare (Rouen). The several parallels suggest Carew knew Viau’s account. 65 Georgianna Ziegler, “More than Feminine Boldness: The Gift Books of Esther Inglis,” in Mary E. Burke, Jane Donawerth, Linda L. Dove, and Karen Nelson (eds), Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), pp. 19–37. See also pp. 24–6. 66 Henry Harisse, Le Président de Thou et ses descendants, leur célèbre bibliothèque, leurs armoires et la traduction française de J. A. Thuani Historiarum sui temporis (Paris: Librairie H. Leclerc, 1905).

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Part I

Thinking beyond borders: War and peace

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1 The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: Experiences of the tragic and historiographical genres in Edward Herbert and George Herbert Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise Four days after the royal wedding of the Catholic Princess Margaret of Valois to the Huguenot King Henri of Navarre on August 18, 1572, which had drawn hopeful Protestants from across France and Europe to Paris, the city became the stage of a bloody tragedy. The  Huguenot poet Aggripa d’Aubigné would later describe it as “the tragedy / That erases all else” (“la tragedie / Qui efface le reste”).1 The execution of the French Reformed leader, Admiral Coligny, and the massacre of several thousands of Protestants on August 24, 1572, sparked civil violence anew throughout France and marked the beginning of the fourth in a series of eight “wars of religion,”2 which took place between 1562 and the Edict of Nantes (1598). If the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre came to epitomize the horrors of religious strife on the European scene, it was not just because of the unexpected outburst of violence in a time of supposed truce. Nor was it due only to the unprecedented scope of the killing: the paroxysmal event constituted a political “scandal,” in the etymological sense of both a deep “offense” and a “trap.” Though historians themselves recognize that it is impossible to reconstruct the exact set of steps leading up to the massacre, what is certain is that Protestants felt they had been set up, that the French monarchy’s efforts to put in place a politics of civil tolerance  – guaranteed notably through the marriage of Charles IX’s sister with Navarre – were mere deceit. As a matter of fact, Catherine de Medici and Charles IX were themselves at an impasse: their politics of civil tolerance dissatisfied ultra-Catholics, who

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accused them of not fighting the enemies of God, and Protestants, who complained that the Catholics kept breaking the successive edicts of peace.3 On August 22, when Coligny was first wounded by a musket shot, suspicion immediately fell on the leader of the intransigent Catholic party, the Duc de Guise. Rather than arresting him and provoking a rebellion of the ultra-Catholics, the French crown made the decision to execute several Protestant leaders in the hope of weakening the Huguenots, who were ready to take up arms again. The targeted executions degenerated into massive violence on the part of the Catholic populace, who felt encouraged in killing the “heretics.”4 Marie-Madeleine Fragonard stresses the fact that this decision constitutes an early occurrence of “reason of state” being registered – by the Protestant faction in this case but also by moderate Catholics – as an incommensurable moral error.5 The extent of the violence, which could only be a horrific and devilish machination if not a purely gratuitous slaughter, was such that it introduced in the eyes of many an unbridgeable gap between the accidents of human history and the signs of God’s providential time, which had become fully illegible – a tragic rift. The rift was all the more unbridgeable as it pitted opposed “rationalities” and “imaginations” against each other.6 The response of many European monarchs usually supportive of the Protestants and allied against the Hapsburgs shows that they were afraid of seeing rebellion flare up at home. In many instances they sought to contain, censor, or minimize the scandal.7 Yet, despite their endeavors, the news of the horrific massacre gradually rippled out throughout Europe, by word of mouth, through ballads and oral accounts,8 but also within growing transnational networks which sought to secure the circulation of letters, resistance tracts,9 histories (both regional and universal), and ideas that might ultimately hold in check “spectacles” of such “monstruous Barbarity” that were contrary to all “Right,” whether “Human or Divine.”10 Refugees that had escaped the massacre flocked to more auspicious lands, often crossing the Channel, bringing with them live testimonies, but also a variety of professional skills, including linguistic expertise, religious ideas, and political theories they could make good notably as teachers of the French language or as enlightened tutors. The Protestant humanists Philippe Duplessis-Mornay and Hubert Languet – the

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latter acting as a mentor to Philip Sidney – also present in Paris at the time of the massacre – were among those who fled Paris for their lives.11 For Sidney, Robert Stillman writes, witnessing the massacre and perhaps even seeing “the mutilated corpse of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny” was “both a life experience and the monumental tragedy of his day.”12 It determined his political engagements, his moderate, ecumenical piety, and even his understanding of poetic fiction, as a space and creative process that could “downsize” the tyranny of history.13 Central to the discussion in this chapter are the textual forms the massacre and its general context gave rise to over the course of the ensuing decades and into the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, not only in France, but also in England: these ranged from philosophical to historical treatises of new kinds, from plays14 to pasquils, Menippean satires, epic and historic poems,15 songs,16 and epyllions, all of which underwent generic inflexions to better render the heightened consciousness of tragic, historic time born from the “watershed” event.17 Born respectively a decade and two decades after the massacre, Edward Herbert and George Herbert could hardly have experienced the tragedy firsthand. Yet this chapter will argue that some of the forms in which the Herbert brothers chose to write reflect their engagement in transnational debates or conversations that had become topical with the massacre and that were reactivated in startling ways at the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War. Edward was sensitized from his very first trip to France in 1608 to crucial political debates directly derived from the earlier French confessional wars. These were central in the elaboration of his own philosophy of truth, consent, and religious toleration,18 but also in his way of approaching his work as a historian. Rather than opting for the “downsizing” of history that Stillman makes evident in Philip Sidney’s “cosmopolitan poetics,” Edward seems to have engaged in new forms of history writing that might be conducive, perhaps even performative, of some of the same ideals as those that had been promoted by his kinsman. He sought to extend further the irenic quality of the latter’s piety, but also, perhaps, gave in to a sense of disillusionment that Sidney had been able to resist in his own day. As for George Herbert, though his work as a “historian” has hardly ever been acknowledged, this chapter hopes to suggest

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that the connections he had to the Continent through his brothers Edward and Henry – who provided him with books purchased in Paris19 – and his sensitivity to international religious politics and history offer the best context for understanding what is at stake in his understudied “The Church Militant” (c. 1619–23?). The poem offers surprising parallels (and perhaps even echoes) with what could be called post-massacre French historiographical poetry. Before looking at the texts by Edward Herbert that engage with history, and defining them generically, it is important to briefly retrace the specific religious context to which he was introduced at the time of his sojourns in France. The situation and people Edward encountered there exerted powerful influence on his thought and on the forms in which he chose to write. In his autobiography – an account of his personal actions and of the genesis of his philosophical oeuvre in relation to a historical moment – he insists on the hospitality of the Duc Henri de Montmorency, a moderate Catholic whose nephew was none other than Admiral Coligny. After the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, MontmorencyDamville had supported the Protestants in the Languedoc and been a member of the cross-confessional faction of the “Malcontents,” led by François d’Anjou. In 1593, he had been awarded the title of Constable, or supreme commander of the French Army, in gratitude for his support of Henri IV. Along with Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, Navarre’s Protestant councilor, Montmorency was keen on promoting the idea that Henri IV embodied the reign of “reason” against the monstrous excesses of the Catholic League. He therefore belonged to a group called the “Politiques.” This party favored political unity over confessional strife.20 Herbert also frequented the Genevan philologist Isaac Casaubon, staying in his home in Paris, and possibly the latter’s friend Jean Hotman.21 Both men shared with Duplessis-Mornay conciliatory views on religion. So much so, in the case of Casaubon, that when he was invited by Henri IV to be one of the judges in the famous Fontainebleau conference that took place in 1600, featuring a theological debate on the Eucharist between the Catholic bishop Jacques Davy Du Perron22 and Mornay, he agreed to declare Du Perron the winner for political reasons. Later, Scaliger would criticize Casaubon for accepting Henri’s invitation, stating that he had been like “an ass

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amongst monkeys, a doctor amongst ignorants” (“Non debebat Casaubon interesse colloquio Plessiæano; erat asinus inter simias, doctus inter imperitos”).23 The more radical Huguenot Agrippa d’Aubigné claimed that another controversial debate opposed him against Du Perron right after the Fontainebleau conference.24 D’Aubigné, who had also long been in the service of Henri de Navarre, bore a lasting grudge against the cardinal. Ironically, it is Mornay who, in his Traité de l’Eucharistie (1598), was the original elaborator of a new, pacified rhetorical method according to which differences in religion were to be broached, and a consensus gradually found. Debaters were to proceed “syllogistically without any ­extravagating” (“syllogistiquement sans extravaguer”),25 testing contradictions through the application of common sense and shedding light on the moment when the opponent’s inference departed from his original premises or when his “innovations” betrayed the meaning of earlier Christian tradition.26 Mornay’s political ideas on the resistance to tyranny had already been promoted in England at court by the Sidney faction in the 1570s and 1580s, and would continue to be by the French reformer himself during his frequent visits to England. It seems quite clear that his conciliatory methodology (or “emerging Protestant scholasticism”27), originally conceived in response to the religious violence that had reached its peak with the Paris massacre, served as a useful model in Edward Herbert’s own elaboration, in De Veritate, of the “criteria for truthful cognition”28 that rested upon the exercise of “Natural Instinct” (itself derived from the idea of “common sense”). Around 1607–8, when Herbert encountered these ideas in France, Duplessis-Mornay had of course given up his earlier hopes that Henri IV could act as a great conciliatory prince in Europe. Ever since the 1600 disavowal at Fontainebleau, he no longer benefited from the king’s personal support. Despite the Edict of Nantes and its mild politics of tolerance, no true reconciliation of Catholics and Protestants lay in view, dividing Protestants in turn among themselves as to what course of action to follow in their relation to Catholics as well as the state. However Mornay used his vast European epistolary networks, and the support of such European intellectuals as Grotius and Scaliger,29 to try to convince James I  to play the role of protector of a great Protestant transnational

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peace – a role, it seems, the Scottish and English king was himself quite eager to play.30 Herbert’s first travels to France correspond to this particular moment: one of a continued attempt on the part of the French crown to endorse a form of civil toleration which gave only relative freedom of faith to the Protestants while containing them; one, also, in which prominent members of the Huguenot church promoted a conciliatory ecclesiology that might bring together all European Protestants under the benevolent protection of James I. When Edward returned to France as ambassador in 1618, the ­situation had evolved, both within the alliance of Protestant churches and between Protestants and Catholics. After the assassination of Henri IV, Henri’s second wife, Marie de Medici, held power as regent (1610–14), then as the head of the State Council (1614–17). She had given Louis XIII a strict Catholic upbringing and had favored reconciliation with the Pope, breaking away from Henri IV’s Gallican ecclesiastical politics. Soon after Louis XIII was freed from tutelage in 1617, he sided with Ferdinand II in the early stages of the Thirty Years’ War, but then opted for a diplomatic solution. Allegedly mediating between the Emperor and the Evangelical Union of Protestant Churches, he actually favored Catholic power. His policy in relation to the Protestants in France was duplicitous: under cover of enforcing the Edict of Nantes, he sought to check the Reformed Party – in the name, once again, of reason of state – and went so far as to re-establish Catholic worship in Béarn.31 In the meantime, Mornay’s vision of a union of Protestant churches had also stumbled against the blocks of internal Protestant  dissensions in France, growing doctrinal controversies between Calvinists and Dutch Arminians (or Remonstrants), and the Thirty Years’ War. The national synod of Tonniens (May–June 1614) had attempted to establish the basis of a unification of French Protestant churches with the support of Geneva and James I.32 But the Bohemian crisis called everything into question again. As ambassador in France at the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, Edward was particularly sensitive to the appeals of Frederick  V, Elector Palatine: “This unfortunate kingdom [i.e. Bohemia],” Frederick V wrote to Cherbury, “has felt its first assault and even

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now serves as a Stage on which the bloodiest and most horrific Tragedies, never before heard of between Christians, are rehearsed” (“Ce pauvre royaume la a eu la premiere attaque & a servi iusque a cest heure comme d’un Theatre sur lequel se sont exerces les plus sanglantes & horribles Tragedies qui ayent onques este ouyes entre les Chrestiens”).33 But Edward’s renewed attempts as ambassador to convince James I to bring military aid to the Protestants in the Palatinate were in vain. In 1621, in the midst of Louis XIII’s campaign against Protestants in the southwest of France, and in keeping with Mornay’s vision, Herbert also tried to convince James to act as a mediator between Louis XIII and his Protestant subjects. Cherbury was immediately accused by the Duc de Luynes of “meddl[ing]” with French “affairs.” Much of his attempted action in support of the French Protestants was frustrated.34 It has often been suggested that Edward Herbert turned to the writing of two histories, his Expedition to the Isle of Rhé and The life and raigne of King Henry the Eighth, at the end of the 1620s and beginning of 1630s because he was seeking preferment and hoped to win Charles I’s favor.35 Herbert does not shy away from lavish compliment to both Buckingham and Charles in his dedications. And it is true that, in many ways, his Expedition is an attempt to justify Buckingham as an honorable player of history, despite the debacle and his loss of popularity, to show Buckingham’s matching of action with intention, whatever the accidents and the outcome. In  his own autobiography, or memoirs, he had already tried to demonstrate the consistency of his own actions within particular moments in history, leading up to his most heroic deed: the publishing of a treatise on a brand-new (to his own mind) approach of the question of Truth. Yet this fuller “conversion” to history in the later part of his life, after having devoted previous intellectual efforts to writing a treatise in the philosophy of cognition, is highly meaningful. It is consistent with his dedication to the cause of the Protestants on the Continent, to Mornay’s valuing of commonsense rationalism in negotiating religious consensus, and finally to Grotius’s theorizing of the principles of natural law in his work on war and peace (De jure belli ac pacis was published in Paris one year after Herbert’s De Veritate, in 1625 – Herbert possessed a ­presentation copy of the work, as well as a presentation copy of

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Grotius’s 1626 Excerpta ex trageodiis36). Faced with the tragedies of history and the inscrutability of God’s providential design, Herbert, like Grotius, had come to believe that some wars were just and had to be fought in the name of natural law. A letter he sent to Grotius from London in June 1631, when revising the Expedition, bears witness to his method as a historian and his desire to gather all possible viewpoints before forming his own judgment by applying his natural instinct to the information under study. He asks Grotius to inform him about accounts of Buckingham’s unsuccessful expedition and the surrendering of Protestant La Rochelle to Louis XIII that might have escaped his knowledge by circulating only in manuscript form before publication: perhaps it may be permitted to ask that if anything has appeared about our affairs, namely, about the expedition against the Île de Ré, the assistance provided in the recent siege of La Rochelle, and any other misdeeds (from which that unfortunate war with the French was undertaken), that it be made known to this letter carrier (as though to a man of known veracity). In the meantime, these books have come into my hands: La descente des Anglois, Isnard, the Mercure François, de Rupella captâ Triumphus a book by the Jesuit Collège de Clermont, and other minor works […] if any author who is not of common stock is shortly to publish [deleted: in Latin] on this affair, I would like to know about it from you. It remains that you believe me to seek out these matters with a spirit that is not hostile to the French, although I do not deny that there are some ­misrepresentations which demand a swift avenger.37

Once the facts were established, once the viewpoints considered and carefully compared, a battle of just histories was to “avenge” the lost battle in arms. Edward was not alone, however, in responding to the religious conflicts by embracing the art of writing history. The French confessional wars had, in the same way as Buckingham’s expedition here, led to a surge in Protestant historiographical endeavors and publications, from essays in “immediate” or quasi-immediate history, such as Jean de Serres’s Life of Coligny (translated and published in English in 1576) or de Thou’s monumental Historia sui ­temporis (comp. 1547–1607), to new Protestant renderings of universal

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history. For rewriting the past was crucial in forwarding fresh ideas. The fact that Herbert had already given his own account of the expedition to Charles I for perusal in 1630 when he wrote to Grotius asking for more information, then withheld the publication of the English and Latin versions of the Expedition until after his death, may, however, suggest discomfort on Herbert’s part after all. Perhaps Herbert was uncertain of his ability here to fully identify the truth of the matter. Or perhaps his reticence spoke to how ineffective he believed his historiographical thrust (like Buckingham’s armed thrust) might be on the European scene. The contexts of the Thirty Years’ War and the narrative of military setback risked only further fostering a sense of disillusion. He was, nonetheless, sharpening his method as a historian for his next historical work, The life and raigne of King Henry the Eighth. In her study of Herbert’s historical masterpiece, Christine Jackson claims that “Herbert threw his gauntlet into a bitter and well-rehearsed historiographical conflict in which combatants, constrained by confessional loyalties and royal censorship, competed to present Henry either as a flawed Protestant hero […] or as a cruel tyrant.”38 By rising above a narrowly national narrative and building on such material as Francesco Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia and Thou’s Historia sui temporis as well as English antecedents,39 and  looking into unexplored foreign as well as domestic state papers, Herbert produced an ambitious and balanced study of Henry VIII that ­ considerably renewed previous historiography. His account carefully distinguishes between the private and the public figure, and repeatedly draws the line between the hagiographic and the secular. Edward avoids dwelling upon doctrinal matters (simply referring the reader to “the places where [these matters] are controverted”) and skips quickly over the executions of the Reformers under Mary I, to which John Foxe had devoted his martyrological Acts and Monuments. He is particularly intent on situating Henry’s actions within a comprehensive view of European affairs and speaks against the proliferation of religious sects whose teachings contradict the quest for “common, authentic and universal truths.”40 Here again we see Herbert “rejecting religious partisanship” and “applying […] rationality,”41 putting his philosophy to the test.

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Another of his later works extends his historical vision further still, beyond the borders of western Christendom and ecclesiastical history: De religione gentilium errorumque apud eos causis, published posthumously in Amsterdam in 1663 by Gerardus Johannes Vossius. Historians of religion have repeatedly acknowledged the novelty of Herbert’s theistic account of religion, which posits religion as a “genus,” and his seminal role in the development of comparative religious anthropology.42 His inquiry allows for a critical outlook on the superstitions of the Christian religion just as much as on those of the “gentiles.” In this innovative work, Herbert remains faithful to his earlier method. He continues to carefully circumscribe errors through rational and moral appraisal and celebrates the pagans (or Ancients) in their own conceptualization of conscience. It was their goal, too, to “free [the conscience] from all Errors and Imperfections.”43 This approach is confirmed in the letter he sent Vossius along with his manuscript, dated August  15/25, 1645. In his epistle, he recognizes his debt to his correspondent’s previous historicization of beliefs, On the theology of the pagans, and on Christian natural philosophy (De theologia gentili, et physiologia Christiana. Sive de origine ac progressu idololatriae, Amsterdam, 1641). Herbert submits his work to Vossius’s scrutiny, asking him to note all differences in their respective works, “whether they aris[e] from a mistake on my part or on yours.” Herbert wishes that his book in the end be part of a common work, and that the exchange with Vossius might permit its “forces” to “advance together.” What is most striking, perhaps, in this letter, as Richard Serjeantson has suggested, is the way in which the broad, universal scope of his historicization is the only frame which fully enables Edward Herbert to rediscover God’s providential design, too often obscured in the history of the Christian Church and its superstitious innovations: I have discerned a kind of Universal Providence that has always been an attribute of the supreme God. I have pursued its traces (though dim) into the Pagans’ religion itself. Nor is it an objection that the Church Fathers […] often inveigh against the Pagans. For most of what they are able to expose in their religion is made up, false and ridiculous.44

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The same argument – the “false and ridiculous” inventions of the Church – had lain at the basis of Mornay’s attack on the iniquity of the Roman Catholic Church, which had too often succumbed to the assaults of Antichrist.45 Though its roots reached down in the post-massacre Huguenot ecclesiastical historiography, Edward Herbert’s history of religion(s) spread its branches further, broadening communion beyond the rule of Christian kings and confessions. His disillusionment with the Thirty Years’ War, which only seemed to replicate on a larger scale the French confessional wars, and the growing doctrinal tensions in England, provoked him not only to try to act through the writing of history, but also to look for God’s providential design beyond obscured Christendom. Much of the same vision, this chapter would now like to suggest, is at stake in George Herbert’s “The Church Militant,” a poem which has long suffered from poor critical appreciation because judged as at odds with Herbert’s usual devotional lyricism. George Herbert who, unlike his brothers, never crossed the Channel, is seldom thought of as a historian. Yet there are at least two instances in which his poetry speaks a historiographical language: in his Latin poem “Triumphus Mortis” – a poem explored in Chapter 2 below – and the final section of his Temple, which will be dealt with here. Following Hutchinson, critics have generally considered the poem to be an early composition, but have also underscored that internal evidence points at revisions between 1619 and 1623 – in other words, in the first stages of the Thirty Years’ War.46 While Greg Miller’s analysis of poem 32 in Lucus shows the relevance of reading the Latin poem within this European context and stresses the poet’s use of mythological history to deal with contemporary international politics,47 the contexts which have been proposed to make sense of “The Church Militant” have most often been broader (invoking biblical sources and Augustine’s City of God) or narrower (invoking a national, political context). In one of the most compelling articles published to this day on the poem, Lindsay G. Gibson and John Kuhn make a case for reading this “apocalyptic history of the migration of the true Church” – translated into Latin by James Leeke soon after its 1633 publication – in relation to the genre of the Anglo-Latin epyllion, or “mini-epic” that flourished in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot.48 Gibson and Kuhn insist that

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Herbert’s choice of writing the poem in English and downsizing the satirical vein of its Latin antecedents signals a willful departure from the tradition. It allows Herbert to express a surprisingly “anti-institutional” and “unpatriotic” position in relation to the motif of the translatio empirii, a disillusionment with regard to the British ecclesiastical and political institution.49 The poem, however, also needs to be placed in its European literary, polemical, and historiographical context for us to make full sense not only of its disillusionment, but also of its specific politics and its relation to the notion of Providence. In particular, the opposition in commentaries on “The Church Militant” since Hutchinson’s edition between Herbert’s commendation of Spain and his condemning of France has probably been overstated, proving to be somewhat misleading.50 In Herbert’s ­279-line “great Chronicle” of “time” (96), his allusions to Spain are not particularly laudatory. Rather, they are in perfect keeping with a broadly European way of writing ecclesiastical history in the period, and which is to be found also in French epic poetry produced during the confessional wars.51 This poetic and historiographical tradition builds on the topos of empires as lands of fertility that become only ephemerally the favored locus of God’s visible Church. Herbert thus “historically” (not to say “objectively”) alludes to the pre-eminence of the Holy Roman Empire of the Hapsburgs then, in turn, to the British Empire, as the successive “gardens” of the arts and religion. The translatio, or slip, from one empire to the next is made possible through the Reformation and the establishment of the British Church under Henry VIII: […] Art makes a garden there; Then showres Religion, and makes all to bear. Spain in the Empire shar’d with Germanie, But England in the higher victorie: Giving the Church a crown to keep her state (ll. 87–91)

Herbert’s poem dwells remarkably longer on the translatio and destructive work of Sin than on the flourishing of the True Church as they both travel from empire to empire, the “one Antichrist” “twist[ing]” itself in turn into each new realm (l. 205). The short historical epic dwells upon “Rome” where “Sinne,” or the Antichrist,

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“resolv’d one night / To be a Church-man too, / and wear a Mitre” (ll. 163–4). Putting on “fine vizards,” he “conceal[s] his crimes” and is able to “finely work each nation / Into a voluntarie transmigration.” “All poste to Rome: Princes submit their necks / Either t’his publick foot or private tricks” until “the whole world did seem but the Popes mule” (ll. 186, 193–6, 204). It is worth noticing that the passage where Herbert has been said to dwell disparagingly on France is the same one that includes the sharp criticism of England that almost led to the poem’s censorship:52 Religion stands on tip-toe in our land, Readie to passe to the American strand. When height of malice, and prodigious lusts, Impudent sinning, witchcrafts, and distrusts (The marks of future bane) shall fill our cup Unto the brimme, and make our measure up; When Sein shall swallow Tiber, and the Thames By letting in them both pollutes her streams: When Italie of us shall have her will, And all her calender of sinnes fulfill; Whereby one may foretell, what sinnes next yeare Shall both in France and England domineer: Then shall Religion to America flee (ll. 235–47)

Herbert speaks prophetically, but his vision is just as e­vocative of the near past as it opens onto the future. After the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the image of the waters of the Seine, “all redde with blood,”53 polluted with the bodies of thousands of dead Protestants, but also with the metaphorical blood of the guilty state and of Catholic corruption, found its way into just about every Protestant historical account of the tragedies of the civil wars, in prose as in verse. Some of these were translated in English very quickly after the massacre, such as Jean de Serres’s De furoribus gallicis, or Three parts of commentaries containing the whole and perfect discourse of the ciuill warres of Fraunce (1574), or his later and longer An historical collection, of the most memorable accidents, and tragicall massacres of France, vnder the raignes of Henry. 2. Francis. 2. Charles. 9. Henry. 3. Henry. 4. (1598). Herbert’s allusion to the infected Seine does not retain the graphic gore and precision of some of the other accounts we find

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(the format of the epyllion not making room for long descriptions and epic similes). Yet the memory of the massacre, itself understood as a cold-blooded, deceitful plot, lies lurking in the murky waters of the Seine, themselves polluted by the infectious waters of Roman Catholicism that have seeped into France through the instrumental influence of Catherine de Medici. If England does not position itself correctly on the European stage, it will fail to uphold the Protestant cause in Europe; the Thames will be polluted in turn and the True Church will have no other choice than to sail westward toward the New World. One French history that is particularly worth mentioning in ­relation to Herbert’s poem is Simon Goulart’s Mémoires de l’Estat de la France sous Charles IX, published anonymously in several editions between 1576 and 1579, and which circulated quite widely in Protestant Europe.54 The French Protestant pastor and author intersperses his long historical compendium of the civil upheavals with a short epic on universal ecclesiastical history of approximately the same length as Herbert’s epyllion.55 This poem is placed right after his account of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.56 Goulart’s, like Herbert’s epyllion, takes the reader back to primitive times, to ancient Egypt and Greece, whose history offers thought-provoking analogies with contemporary situations. His insistance on the common responsibility of European countries for the plight they are experiencing in the present, for the “flight” of “Sacred Truth” that is besieged in “Heaven,”57 and the apparently doomed battle against the Antichrist are only some of the many parallels that can be established with Herbert’s poem. Both poems interestingly yearn, through a possibly ­self-referential image, for a single sheet of paper that might contain, at last, a “true history” (“Quand je pense aux pays parmi l’Europe epars, / Je voy mille discours s’offrir de toutes parts / Demandons un papier d’histoire veritable / Qui paigne les malheurs de ce siècle admirable”).58 The allusion in Herbert’s poem to the patent of Constantine’s donation (“Within a sheet of paper, when was rent / From times great Chronicle, and hither sent,” ll. 95–6) is less obviously self-referential, but still i­ntimates the need for a “Chronicle” like Herbert’s abridged history in verse that might do justice to the True Church.

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Critics, including Wilcox, Gibson, and Kuhn, have noted how George Herbert’s “The Church Militant” fits in with a more general surge in anti-Catholic and anti-Jesuit literature in England, in Latin and in English, in prose and in verse in the decade following the Gunpowder Plot. While parallels with John Donne’s Ignatius his Conclave (1612), among other texts, are useful, it is also worthwhile noting that this is not a specifically British phenomenon, nor is it linked solely to the Gunpowder Plot. A similar upturn is to be noted among French Huguenot controversialists, poets, and historiographers. During these years, Mornay – all too conscious that what he saw as Catholic infection had continued to fester and spread through the actions of Marie de Medici and Louis XIII, despite the Edict of Nantes, and who continued to appeal to James I for support – published his Mystery of Iniquity, leveled in particular against Bellarmine.59 It makes sense to think of Herbert’s epyllion as having been written in the 1610s, not so much because of its supposed youthful imperfections, but rather because it took part in a transnational Protestant controversy that had direct literary repercussions in England. Yet the date of its composition could also be a later one, as suggest interesting parallels with yet another Huguenot’s tragic account of Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The most powerful poetic text to have been published on the subject is undoubtedly Agrippa d’Aubigné’s seven-part epic, Les Tragiques. Written over the course of several decades, the full poem was not published until 1616, when d’Aubigné printed it from his own presses set up in Maillé, together with a Universal History in two volumes (Histoire universelle, 1616 and 1618). A (somewhat vexed) poetic disciple of Du Bartas, d’Aubigné had originally considered dedicating his Histoire universelle to James I.60 In 1604, Henri IV, whose praise d’Aubigné ostensibly withdrew from his final version of the poem, suspected his former servant of planning a trip to England to ask James I to act as protector of the Protestant churches in France. Though d’Aubigné’s works did not appear in print in England until much later in the seventeenth century, a copy of his Histoire universelle appears, for instance, in the catalogue of Sir Kelnem Digby’s library.61 More crucially yet, in ­relation to d’Aubigné’s links with England, Julien Gœury has shown that one of the French pastors of London (active in the church on Threadneedle

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Street), Adrian de Rocquigny, possessed a copy of d’Aubigné’s Tragiques, which he closely imitated in passages of his own poetic work, Muse chrestienne (or “The Christian Muse”), published in London in 1627, and again in 1633. Gœury convincingly argues that Rocquigny saw himself as the “official poet” of the congregation in London, suggesting that devotional poetry was an important instrument for forming communities and organizing their resistance.62 It is not my purpose to argue that George Herbert read a copy of d’Aubigné’s poem, nor that the poem might have served as a direct model. Herbert’s “miniature” ecclesiastical history does not come near the ambition of d’Aubigné’s epic. However, there are several startling similarities with Herbert’s “The Church Militant,” especially in the fifth book, “Arms” (“Les fers”), in which d’Aubigné describes in detail the tragic scenes of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and other historical events of the period as if painted on the vaults of heaven. As in Herbert’s poem, religion and the arts are described as taking root in gardens that are soon infected by the action of sin. As in Herbert’s poem, the Antichrist puts on masks and vizards, dressing up as a Pope or, alternatively, as the Italianate Queen Regent Catherine of Medici in France, to better deceive God’s true Children. As in Herbert’s poem, the kingdoms of western Christendom (“Des regnes d’occident,” V, l. 254) are brutally invaded by “Sinne’s” (or Satan’s) armies. As in Herbert’s poem, where “Sinne” turns into a slick “writer” (“The Church Militant,” l. 165), Satan coats his words in makeup (V, l. 39). As in Herbert’s poem, the Seine is “clotted” (“caillé,” V, l. 871) with infection. As  in Herbert’s poem, the whole structure of the book  is built upon a double point of view. For indeed, before Herbert’s historiographical verse launches onto the account of the Church’s  course, with Sin following upon its heals, the poem unfolds for us God’s vision. It shows him sitting above the World, in the locus of the “glorious,” invisible Church that is not subject to the passing of time and to its tragedies: Almightie Lord, who from thy glorious throne Seest and rulest all things ev’n as one The smallest ant or atome knows thy power, Known also to each minute of an houre



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Much more do Common-weals acknowledge thee, And wrap their policies in thy decree, Complying with thy counsels, doing nought Which doth not meet with an eternall thought. But above all, thy Church and Spouse doth prove Not the decrees of power, but bands of love. (ll. 1–10)

Similarly, in d’Aubigné’s “Les fers,” the poet first shows God looking away from the miseries and governments of the world, diverting his gaze from the darkness of the “enemy earth,” wrapping himself instead in his own “light” and “life” to sit on his throne above (“Dieu retira ses yeux de la terre ennemie: / La justice et la foi, la lumière et la vie / S’envolèrent au ciel,” V, ll. 1–3). In both poems, the omniscient, glorious vision, however, lies beyond the reach of human eyes and even of states. In Herbert’s text, “Common-weals” only hopelessly try to emulate God’s justice, as subtly suggested by the burden repeated five times in the poem, and with which it concludes: “How deare to me, O God, they counsels are! / Who may with thee compare?” Providence remains hidden behind the disorderly and inevitable accidents of tragic human time. Readers have puzzled over d’Aubigné’s reason for waiting until 1616 to publish his epic poem. The confessional civil wars had long ago ended, the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre seemed to be receding in the past – but not, however, for d’Aubigné, who grew angry at the thought that Protestants had been lulled through a false edict of peace and civil toleration. The battle was lost more than ever, less than ever won. Mornay’s own failed conciliatory strategy was there to testify to the extent of the tragedy, to the utter obscuring of God’s providential scheme for the True Church. Like Edward Herbert, who found James I’s policy in the Palatinate lukewarm and tried to move him to military intervention, d’Aubigné thought that some wars are more just than false peace. George Herbert’s poem is certainly less vengeful than d’Aubigné’s, but it is tragically desperate too, even while it gestures toward another (invisible) vision beyond the tragedy. George Herbert’s “The Church Militant,” with its dramatization of the “Antichrist,” “Eastern Babylon,” and “Western Babylon,” recalls the rich anti-papal literature and historiography of the first two decades of the seventeenth century in Britain as in France.

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Its purpose may well relate to the state of the Protestant churches of Europe that were looking for another providential protector after Henri IV’s conversion to Catholicism. Under the false auspices of the Edict of Nantes, they were waging a battle against a lurking Antichrist. However, especially when d’Aubigné’s Tragiques are read side by side with Herbert’s “Triumphus Mortis” (c. 1623), it gains another layer of meaning. It may be even more relevant to the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, which reactivated the sense that the battle among the kingdoms of Europe was more fully than ever lost. In a less vindictive way than d’Aubigné’s call to fire (both the fire of anger and of military action63), Herbert’s poem reminds us that even though Providence is fully hidden from mortal eyes, and the battle seems forever tragically lost by the visible Church, “judgement shall” in the end “appear.” Both he and his brother Edward were deeply inspired, it seems, by the European tradition of ecclesiastical historiography that flourished in the wake of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and the deep sense of tragic time that came along with the horribly scandalous event. They drew on European Protestant ecclesiastical historiography in different ways. Edward elaborated a history of religion(s) that would bring to light a providential design that, at the limited level of a divided Christendom, could only remain obscured. He looked beyond the failed conciliatory Huguenot endeavors he had originally believed in and supported, to a broader irenic view. George, for his part, had an eye on the New World, rather than on the wisdom (and errors) of ancient pagans (although they too are alluded to in “The Church Militant”), but more humbly acknowledged, in his less than epic poem, that God’s Providence was invisible, or “beyond compare.” Both brothers imagined a broader communion on the other side of the great tragic rift. It is out of this gap that their respective historiographical discourses, reflections, and poetics emerged.

Notes  1 References to d’Aubigné’s poem are from J.-R. Fanlo (ed.), Œuvres, Tome V, Les Tragiques, I and Tome VI, Les Tragiques, II (Paris: Garnier Classiques, 1995). Here vol. V, section 5, ll. 703–4.

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Translations are mine. The full poem was recently translated by Valerie ­Worth-Stylianou, Agrippa d’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2020) but it is based on another version of the poem than the one given in Fanlo’s French reference edition.   2 For a discussion on the relevance of the label “Wars of Religion,” see the introduction, pp. 1–10.  3 The historical synopsis in this chapter owes much to Tatiana ­Debbagi-Baranova’s unpublished inaugural talk, “The Wars of Religion and Their Aftermath,” given at the “Herbert in Paris” Conference, Sorbonne Nouvelle, May 18, 2017. Trans. D. Lagae-Devoldère, L. Sermin Meskill, G. Miller, and A.-M. Miller-Blaise. I wish to thank Tatiana warmly for her invaluable help in working through her synthesis of the French historical context.  4 Denis Crouzet has argued that Catholic violence against Protestants during the massacre was motivated by a genuinely ritualistic, eschatological fear. Les guerriers de Dieu. La violence au temps des troubles de religion, vers 1525 – vers 1610. 2 vols (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1990). See volume 1 in particular.   5 Fragonard, “L’établissement de la raison d’état.”   6 Denis Crouzet, La Nuit de la Saint Barthélemy. Un rêve perdu de la Renaissance (Paris: Arthème/Fayard – Pluriel, 2010 [1994]), p. 12.   7 Nate Probasco, “Queen Elizabeth’s Reaction to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre,” in Charles Beem (ed.), The Foreign Relations of Elizabeth I. Queenship and Power (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 77–100.  8 See for instance Robert Sempill’s Scots ballad, “Ane new ballet set out be ane Fugitue Scottisman fled out of Paris at this lait Murther,” in T.  G. Stevenson (ed.), The Sempill ballates. A series of historical, political, and satirical Scotish poems, ascribed to Robert Sempill. 1567–1583 (Edinburgh, 1872), pp. 173–6. Sempill is known to have spent part of his life in Paris. Amy Blakeway demonstrates that this ballad, on a subject that “functioned as a call for Protestant unity in the face of the Catholic threat,” was performed at the Scottish court during Killigrew’s visit there as English ambassador in 1574. Regency in Sixteenth-Century Scotland (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015), p. 133.  9 One of the most popular tracts to circulate throughout Protestant Europe was the anonymous Réveille-Matin des Français et de leurs voisins, officially published in Edinburgh in 1574, though the actual location was more probably Basle. The massacre helped spur François Hotman to write his Francogallia (1573), Théodore de Bèze his Du

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droit des magistrats sur leurs sujets (1574), and Duplessis-Mornay his Vindiciae contra Tyrannos (1579). 10 Hugo Grotius, De jure belli ac pacis (1625), quoted here after E. Tuck’s English edition, The Rights of War and Peace (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005), p. 106 (sections XXIX and XXX in the “Preliminary discourse”). 11 On Duplessis-Mornay’s escape and voyage from the port of Pollet (near Dieppe) to the church of Rye, see Hugues Daussy, Les Huguenots et le roi. Le combat politique de Philippe Duplessis-Mornay (1572–1600) (Geneva: Droz, 2002), pp. 87ff. 12 Stillman, Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism, p. 177. 13 Stillman, Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism, p. 5. 14 In France, the Catholic François de Chantelouve published the only tragedy to deal immediately with the event, La Tragédie de feu Gaspard de Coligny jadis Amiral de France, contenant ce qui advint à Paris le 24. d’août 1572 (1575), justifying the massacre for political reasons and presenting Coligny as a tyrannical character. French Protestants do not seem to have favored this medium in the early aftermath of the massacre, but turned toward ballads, poetry, and tracts. Chandieu, whose devotional poetry is discussed by Guillaume Coatalen in this volume, penned elegiac poems in memory of Coligny. Marlowe’s later Massacre at Paris (1593) of course reverses Chantelouve’s point of view in attributing the role of the proud, tragic hero to Guise instead of Coligny. 15 In England, Anne Dowrich is particularly noteworthy: The French ­historie, that is, A lamentable discourse of three of the chiefe, and most famous bloodie broiles that haue happened in France for the Gospell of Iesus Christ (London, 1589). On English responses to the massacre more generally, including Marlowe and Dowrich, see Christopher Archibald, “Remembering the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Elizabethan England,” Studies in Philology, 118.2 (2021), 242–83. 16 See in particular the well-known hymn “Cantique fait par Monsr. de Maisonfleur après le massacre de Paris faict à la Saint-Barthelemy” by the Protestant poet Jérôme Lhuillier de Maisonfleur, who found refuge with François d’Alençon (duke of Anjou) during the massacre, before passing to England, where he was to negotiate Alençon’s marriage with Elizabeth I. The hymn was conserved in manuscript form and later published in Henri Léonard Bordier’s Le Chansonnier Huguenot du  XVIe  siècle (Paris and Lyon, 1870), pp. 288–94. See  also Audrey Duru, “Les Cantiques du Sieur de Maisonfleur: une anthologie ‘entre deux chaires’: périple editorial entre 1580 et 1621,”

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Bibliothèque  d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 73.1 (2011), 33–60, in ­particular n. 33, 42. 17 Stillman, Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism, p. 177. 18 See Chapter 6 by Anita Sherman, this volume, pp. 145–55. 19 See Miller-Blaise, “George Herbert’s French Connections,” pp. 48–68. 20 See Introduction, p. 4. 21 Jean Hotman was the son of François Hotman (see note 9 above) and had served as a diplomat in England. On J. Hotman’s The Ambassador, see Chapter 11 by Eleanor Hardy, this volume. See also Marie-Céline Daniel, “A Diplomat and a Translator: Jean Hotman and the Good Use of Translations for a Soft Diplomacy,” Caliban, 54 (2015), 35–49. DOI: 10.4000/caliban.2892. 22 Du Perron’s own father was a Huguenot. His brother Jean was commonly referred to as the “Great Converter” (“Le Grand Converstisseur”): he had been instrumental in Henri IV’s abjuration of the Protestant “heresy” and conversion to Catholicism as well as the conversion of other important members at court. 23 Pierre Des Maizeaux (ed.), Scaligerana, Thuana, Perroniana, Pithoeana et Colomesiana, or Remarques historiques, critiques, morales et littéraires de Jos. Scaliger, J.-Aug. de Thou, le cardinal Du Perron, Fr. Pithou et P. Colomiès (Amsterdam: Covens & Mortier, 1740), vol. 2, pp. 259–60. 24 This second controversy is strangely only reported by d’Aubigné in his Memoirs. See Mémoires de Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné, ed. Ludovic Lalanne (Paris: Charpentier, 1854), pp. 100–6. Whether actual or, more likely, fictional, it speaks to d’Aubigné’s political positioning and understanding of the Protestant cause. 25 Quoted in Claude Blum, “De la méthode de résoudre les controverses: le Traité du Concile de Duplessis-Mornay,” in Michel Péronnet (ed.), Controverses religieuses (XVIe–XIXe siècles). Actes du 1er colloque (Montpellier: 1979), vol. 1, pp. 117–30, here p. 123. My translation. The treatise was first translated in English in 1600 under the title Fovvre bookes, of the institution, vse and doctrine of the holy sacrament of the Eucharist in the old Church (London: printed by I[ohn] Windet, for I. B[ing] T. M[an] and W.P[onsonby]). 26 On this subject, see Blum, “De la méthode,” and Mark Greengrass, “Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, Jacques VI et Ier, et la réunion du christianisme 1603–1619,” Albineana, Cahiers d’Aubigné, 18 (2006), ­423–61. 27 Greengrass, “Philippe Duplessis-Mornay,” p. 430. 28 See Chapter 6 by Anita Sherman, this volume, pp. 157–61.

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29 See Introduction, p. 4, and Chapter 10 by Sean McDowell, this volume, pp. 242–5, 256. 30 This is evidenced notably in his Basilicon Doron (1599), which was translated into French by J. Hotman in 1603, the same year Hotman brought out his Ambassador in French and English, in Paris and London. (On J. Hotman, see notes 9 and 21 above.) 31 Louis XIII’s own grandmother, Joan of Albret, had initially authorized and supported the Reformed religion in Béarn. 32 See Greengrass, “Philippe Duplessis-Mornay,” pp. 443–52. 33 Letter from Frederick V, the Prince Elector, to Edward Herbert in Paris, dated September 24, 1619, in Old Herbert Papers at Powis Castle and in the British Museum, ed. Morris C. Jones (London: Private, 1886), p. 104. Trans. with G. Miller. 34 The Life of Edward, First Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written by himself, ed. J. M. Shuttleworth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 107ff. For a more in-depth study of Edward’s ambassadorships in France, see Chapter 3 by Nancy Zaice, this volume. 35 See, notably, “To Sir Edward Herbert,” in C. H. Hereford, P. Simpson, and E. Simpson (eds), Ben Jonson, Vol. VIII (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947), p. 68. This is even suggested by David A. Pailin, in “Herbert, Edward, first Baron Herbert of Cherbury and first Baron Herbert of Castle Island (1582?–1648),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). John Butler disagrees with this view. See Lord Herbert of Chirbury (1582–1648): An Intellectual Biography (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1990), pp. ­361–2. 36 See Felix Waldmann, “An Unpublished Letter from Herbert of Cherbury to Grotius on the Expeditio in Ream Insulam: Commentary, Text, and Translation,” Grotiana, 38 (2018), 1–14, here p. 4, n. 11. 37 Waldmann, “An Unpublished Letter,” pp. 12–13. 38 “‘It is unpossible to draw his picture’,” p. 137. 39 He drew on William Camden in particular, who had been a guest at Lady Magdalen’s home in Chelsea in earlier years, as well as Bacon. See Jackson, ‘“It is unpossible to draw his picture,’” p. 137. 40 Life and raigne of King Henry the Eighth (London, 1649), pp. 292–6. 41 Jackson, “‘It is unpossible to draw his picture,’” p. 148. 42 See J. Samuel Preus, Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. ix–xii, 206; Guy G. Stroumsa, A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), chap. 1; and Kevin Schilbrack, “What isn’t religion,” Journal of Religion, 93.3 (2013), 291–318, in particular 307–8.

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43 The Antient Religion of the Gentiles, and Causes of Their Errors Consider’d, ed. and trans. William Lewis (London: printed by John Nutt, 1705), p. 339. 44 Translation by Richard W. Serjeantson, in his unpublished paper “Edward Herbert: A Pagan Apologist?,” given at the University of York, May 14, 2016. For the original Latin, see G. J. Vossius, Opera, vol. 4, Epistolae. 6 vols (Amsterdam, 1695–1701), p. 375. 45 Le Mystère d’iniquité, c’est-à-dire l’Histoire de la papauté ... où sont aussi défendus les droicts des empereurs, rois et princes chrestiens contre les assertions des cardinaux Bellarmin et Baronius was published in French in 1611 and almost immediately translated into English, under the title The mysterie of iniquitie: that is to say, The historie of the papacie Declaring by what degrees it is now mounted to this height, and what oppositions the better sort from time to time haue made against it. Where it is also defended the right of emperours, kings, and Christian princes, against the assertions of the cardinals, Bellarmione and Baronius (London: printed by Adam Islip, 1612). 46 Herbert, Works, p. 543. In her 2007 edition of The English Poems of George Herbert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Wilcox only slightly revises Hutchinson’s arguments for an early dating of the poem, arguing that “the positive references to Spain (ll. 89, 265) and the negative treatment of France (ll. 241–6)” imply “that it was written when Charles […] was considering a match with the Spanish Infanta (up to 1623) rather than a French princess (Henrietta Maria, whom he married in 1625)” (p. 664). Like Hutchinson, and many other critics, she also draws attention to the allusion to America (ll. 235–48) as a reference to the Virginia Company, in which the Herbert family was actively involved around 1623 (p. 664). The internal evidence, as we shall see on pp. 49–52 below, is inconclusive. 47 See George Herbert’s Latin Verse, pp. xiv-xvi. 48 Lindsay G. Gibson and John Kuhn, “James Leeke, George Herbert, and the Neo-Latin Contexts of The Church Militant,” Humanistica Lovaniensia, 67.2 (2018), 379–425, here 379. Leeke’s translation Ecclesia militans survives in a unique manuscript copy at Durham Cathedral Library, ms. Hunter 27, f. 190r–202r. For more details, see Gibson and Kuhn’s article, p. 390, n. 26. Gibson and Kuhn also draw attention to the eventual owner of the manuscript, Isaac Basire, “a French-born minister and intellectual with connections to ceremonialist figures” such as Leeke (p. 403). 49 Gibson and Kuhn, “James Leeke,” p. 407. 50 See note 46.

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51 See Bruno Méniel, Renaissance de l’épopée: la poésie épique en France de 1572 à 1623 (Geneva: Droz, 2004); Katherine S. Maynard, Reveries of Community: French Epic in the Age of Henri IV, 1572–1616 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018), p. 110; and Timothy Hampton, Literature and Nation in the Sixteenth Century: Inventing Renaissance France (Ithaca, NY  and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 14–19. 52 The debate around the possible censorship of these lines was first reported by Izaak Walton, “The Life of Mr. George Herbert” in The Lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert and Robert Sanderson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 315. 53 According to the signaled 1598 English translation of Jean de Serres’s history, An historical collection, of the most memorable accidents, and tragicall massacres of France (London: Thomas Creede, 1598), p. 257. 54 On the complex publication history of Goulart’s Memoirs, see JeanFrançois Gilmont and Amy Graves-Monroe, “Les Memoires de l’estat de France sous Charles IX (1576–1579) de Simon Goulart: bilan ­bibliographique,”  Histoire et civilisation du livre, 11 (dated 2015; published 2016), 227–38. Available online: https://revues.droz.org/ index.php/HCL/article/view/2326 (accessed June 15, 2021). Goulart succeeded Beza after his death in 1605 as the leader of the Company of Pastors in Geneva. His commentaries of Du Bartas were translated in English and published several times in London, testifying to broad circulation. See, for example, William L’Isle of Wilburgham, Esquier for the King’s Body. Part of Du Bartas: English and French, and in his owne kinde of Verse, so neare the French Englished, as may teach an English-man French, or a French-man English. With the Commentary of S. G. S. (London: John Haviland, 1625). His Admirable and moral histories also appeared in London in 1607. 55 In early editions of the Memoirs, the poem is attributed to “L. M. S.,” i.e. “Le Ministre de Senlis,” who is probably none other than Goulart. 56 The poem would exert a direct influence on Agrippa d’Aubigné’s Tragiques, which we examine below. 57 The text is quoted here from Memoirs de l’Estat de la France sovs Charles IX, 3 vols (Middleburg, 1578), vol. 1, p. 588 v°. My t­ ranslation. 58 589 v°. 59 See note 43 above. 60 On Du Bartas and James VI/I, see Auger, Du Bartas’ Legacy. 61 George Digby, Bibliotheca Digbeiana, sive, Catalogus librorum in variis linguis editorum quos post Kenelmum Digbeium eruditiss. virum

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possedit illustrissimus Georgius Comes Bristol nuper defunctus: accedit & alia bibliotheca non minus copiosa & elegans: horum auctio habebitur Londini ... Aprilis 19 (London: H. Brome and B. Tooke, 1680), p. 53. The edition of d’Aubigné’s work that is listed is the one that was published in Amsterdam in 1626. The catalogue also includes Les Ambassades & Negotiations de Card. du Perron (Paris: 1629), Traitte de l’Eucharistie contre Sr. Plessis Mornay par du Perron (1632), Refutation des Heretiques par Card. du Perron (Paris: 1633), Response de Sieur du Plessis a l’ Evesque d’ Evreux (Saumur: 1602), and Mornay’s Concerning the Trueness of the Christian Religion (1587). 62 See Julien Gœury’s two articles, “‘Muse chrestienne,’ ou le larcin de Rocquigny. Contribution à l’histoire de la réception des ‘Tragiques’ d’Agrippa d’Aubigné au xviie siècle,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 71.3 (2009), 489–525; “Parti sans ‘esprit de retour’? Adrian de Rocquigny, ancien, diacre et poète ‘officieux’ de l’Eglise française de Londres,” Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 157 (2011), 147–58. 63 Maynard, Reveries of Community, p. 108.

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2 The Thirty Years’ War and George Herbert’s communion, an answer to violence Greg Miller

Jacques-Auguste de Thou’s Historia sui temporis (Account of His Times) praised Henri IV of France for the Edict of Nantes, which he saw as an alternative to the “flames, exiles, and proscriptions” of war.1 Thou, president of the Paris Parliament, had helped negotiate the terms of religious toleration in France. In a letter responding to Thou on March 4, 1604, King James wrote that he hoped “to achieve and manage a good work so worthy an important conclusion, [namely] to the solace and universal peace of Christendom.”2 John King’s four sermons before James at Hampton Court on September 30, 1606, described a “new golden age of Christian peace and unity” presided over by a “godly prince, exercising his divinely ordained powers of church and state, advised by godly bishops, themselves occupying offices of apostolic origin” and teaching “a genuinely catholic Christian doctrine.”3 Throughout his reign, James continued to strive for what he conceived as a united Christian Europe grounded in scripture, sharing common beliefs, and overseen by princes working in council. James sought to export his “middle way” between radicalism, be it Protestant or Roman Catholic, as a source of peace. In a similar vein, employing a rhetoric both pugilistic and civil, George Herbert imagined a contentious communion among disputants as the Christian response to war. Like his brother Edward, he follows his kinsman Philip Sidney and his Philippian cohort in imagining poetry to cultivate such a communion.4 James articulated what he saw as two parallel threats to his Christian order in England: “the papists and the Puritans.”5

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Similarly, in describing how best to minister to the “Papist” or the “Schismatick” in his parish, Herbert attempts, through prayer and “a very loving, and sweet usage,” to “reduce them to the common Faith” (“The Parson Arguing,” The Country Parson).6 While civil and international confessional wars raged across Europe from Bohemia to the Low Countries, Herbert added his own particular emphasis to James’s international strategy, explicitly engaging not only domestic but also continental issues and actors. This discussion will focus largely, though not exclusively, on Herbert’s Latin verse and the policies of King James and King Charles. Herbert engaged in a spiritual battle for personal, national, and international peace. For George Herbert, peace was a sign of right alignment with God. Personal, national, and international peace were, for him, interlinked. In “Peace,” the character “Sweet Peace” asserts the centrality of communion: “that repose / And peace which ev’ry where / With so much earnestnesse you do pursue / Is onely there” (ll. 39–42). Herbert’s allegory implies disdain, as Sidney Gottlieb has argued, for the “worldly crown Imperial,” a showy, courtly flower whose roots are rotten.7 Pride’s blooms fade and die, as in “The Rose.” The human blooms of sorrowful souls “depart / To see their mother-root” in the wintertime of penitence and grief (“The Flower,” ll. 10–11). Such peace is not merely the absence of war or conflict. Herbert’s final experience of joy in The Temple is in a meal, the loving glance, the “quick eyes” of the Host. Peace will lighten his load, sweeten his heart, and kill death. Communion begins in being seen, known, and made whole. What Herbert presents as the sole means to peace was, however, a core source of European conflict between and within states and religious communities. Herbert’s early draft of “The H. Communion,” included in the Williams manuscript, took part in the conflict. Janice Lull describes the poem as mocking a variety of definitions of the nature of the Eucharist.8 The final poem does not mock competing Eucharistic theologies, insisting instead on God’s “grace, which with these elements comes / Knoweth the ready way, / And hath the privie key, / Op’ning the soul’s most subtile rooms” (ll. 19–22). In his mature work, Herbert attempts to further “peace and unity” by minimizing theological controversy at both the personal and

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pastoral levels. “Love (III)” and “The Banquet” strive not to define the nature of the sacrament but rather to enact a loving, transformative encounter. When describing “The Parson in Sacraments,” Herbert offers in answer to the parson’s “confusion” about his role in the sacrament, “to throw himself down at the throne of grace, saying, Lord, thou knowest what thou didst, when thou appointedst it to be done thus; therefore doe thou fulfill what thou didst appoint.”9 He eschews contentious definition. Herbert’s Latin sequence Lucus (Sacred Grove), probably written around 1624, ends with poems focusing at length on war and peace. Poem 32, “Triumphus Mortis” (“Death’s Triumph”) was written in response to the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War. In this poem, the “glans” (“acorn”) has two meanings: as the seed that gives rise to, and is the seed of, the tree of death, and as a cannon ball.10 The tree of life, Christ’s cross, is an altogether different kind of tree that alone can overpower the death impulse driving war (ll. 49–65). In the poem immediately following, “Triumphus Christiani. In Mortem” (“The Triumph of the Christian, Against Death”), Herbert addresses Death directly and agonistically: “Quid ipse faciam? Qui nec arboreas sudes / In te, nec arcus … Quid ergo? Agnum & Crucem” (“What will I do for myself? I’m not the sort to use tree-sized stakes /Against you … / What then? The Lamb and the Cross”) (ll. 3, 5–6). The sequence explicitly sets aside the weapons of war, trusting in Christ alone. Herbert repudiates war, while engaging in spirited, spiritual battle with intimates, whether Roman Catholic or Puritan. Throughout the European confessional wars, Christian communities felt and registered eschatological anguish, leading to violent acts against opponents, all in the name of God’s call for purity. “The Church Militant” gives evidence that Herbert shared that anguish. Sin seeks out religion in all its forms across history and throughout the world, from the Nile, to the Tiber, the Seine, the Thames, and America, ultimately returning to the point of origin, ending in apocalypse: providential unveiling. Wherever truth appears, truth is hounded and routed: “The Church shall come, & Sinne the Church shall smother” (l. 266). Herbert’s trust is in God’s final judgment and not in any one nation or institution, and he represents the beginnings of Christianity, by contrast, as peaceful. The converted Roman soldier

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Thirty Years’ War: George Herbert’s communion 63

loses pride in his battle wounds and fears violence: “The great heart stops, and taketh from the dust / A sad repentance, not the spoils of lust: / Quitting his spear, lest it should pierce again / Him in his members, who for him was slain” (ll. 67–70). For Herbert, peace is more than the absence of war; it is also an inner state that contributes to the particular social and political relationships necessary for peace. Two Latin poems written in 1613, when Herbert was roughly twenty years old, were discovered in the mid-twentieth century in a collection of epithalamia presented to the “Winter Queen,” Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I, and her husband, Frederick, Elector Palatine (1610–23) and King of Bohemia (1619–20). The poems are now housed in the Vatican, Catholic troops having transported Frederick’s library to Rome. Herbert’s poems included in the Cambridge Latin Gratulatory of 1613 are “Sume Palatini versus de numine Phoebi” (“Accept poems from Palatine Phoebus’s divinity”), and “En Aurora vocat, lectus genialis in aula est” (“Lo, Dawn calls, the marriage bed is set”). The  celebrations are among the more erotic of Herbert’s poems, and the desiring gaze, the loving look, as in much of Herbert’s sacred verse, is central. The warning implied in Herbert’s marital praise is politically informed. Many in England would champion Frederick as the leader of a Protestant apocalyptic fight against the Roman Catholic “whore of Babylon.”11 “Intereà procede Comes Germano-britanne / Et coelom vultus exhilarato tui, / Ne quâ consuleres, populúmve ad bella vocares, / Hâc facie dominae conspiciare tuae” (“For now, German and British imperial courtier, step forth /And let this look on your face bring joy to heaven, / This face as you gaze admiringly at your lady, but not such a face / As consults, or calls people to war”) (ll. 8–11). In his praise of the royal match, Herbert daringly warns against warmongering, praising loving joys, both intimate and corporate, instead. The more mature “Triumphus Mortis” (“Death’s Triumph”) addresses the violence that was to follow Frederick’s disastrous role as champion of the Protestant cause at the heart of the Holy Roman Empire, a role many English Protestants, despite their monarch’s temperance, supported passionately. By many accounts, James continued to hope for a Spanish match for Prince Charles as a means of

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bringing peace. James had begun negotiations with King Philip III of Spain as early as 1603 for such a match for Prince Henry, both monarchs imagining such an alliance as bringing about domestic and international Christian concord.12 The epithalamion directs Frederick to gaze lovingly on his bride, and thereby to please God. The poem is also a direct warning against Frederick using this marital alliance to plan war. Herbert makes use of the transformative, loving gaze, central to his Latin and English poetry, for political ends. The final poem in Lucus invites readers to see themselves as enclosed and circumscribed by God’s look, or, if blinded and unseeing, to demand to be seen by God and thereby be given sight: “Ah, cernam; Tu, qui caecos sanare solebas, / Cùm te non videam, méne videre putas? / Non video, certum est iurare; aut si hoc vetuisti, / Praeuenias vultu non facienda tuo” (“Ah, let me see; do you think I see you, / Who used to heal the blind, though I do not see? / In truth I swear I’m blind; or should you forbid my oath / With your glance prevent what’s about to happen”) (“Ad Dominum,” “To the Lord,” ll. 6–10). The final English poem of The Temple, “Love (III),” stages a similar anxiety of abandonment, of no longer seeing or being seen: “Who made the eyes but I?” “Truth Lord, but I have marred them,” Herbert’s speaker responds. God’s retort: “You must sit down,” is followed by Herbert’s ­obedience: “So I did sit and eat” (ll. 11–12, 17–18). In both poems concluding a sequence, the speaker finds the courage and prophetic urgency to invite communion. Each sequence ends without being over; work remains to redeem the time and transform the world. God is there – even when felt as absent – to see the faithful as they are and to repair and transform them with his loving gaze, as at the end of “The Glance”: “What wonders shall we feel, when we shall see / Thy full-ey’d love!” (ll. 19–20). Frederick V and Elizabeth are, or should be, a microcosmic embodiment of that divine gaze. This discussion has focused largely on poems composed ­relatively early in Herbert’s career: 1613 (the poems to Prince Frederick and Princess Elizabeth), 1616 (the poems against Andrew Melville), and c. 1623–4 (Sacred Grove). In a later poem written as part of the sequence in response to the death of Herbert’s mother, Herbert again refers to war in the context of personal peace.

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Magdalen Danvers was buried on June 8, 1627, and John Donne’s ­commendatory sermon was entered with George Herbert’s sequence in the Stationers Register on July 7. King Charles’s foreign policy was more bellicose than his father’s. In March of 1627, Charles organized a rebellion of French Huguenots against the French king, and in June of 1627, Buckingham was sent with an English fleet to blockade the Isle of Rhé in the Siege of La Rochelle. The English fleet was repulsed within three months, with very heavy casualties, some in England seeing the defeat as orchestrated by Buckingham himself. (Edward Herbert later wrote a defense of Buckingham’s role in the battles.) George composed his sequence as the British fleet began its war with France, the Herbert clan grieving the death of their matriarch, Lady Magdalen Danvers, addressed as “Genetrix” (“Foremother”), an honorific used by Lucretius to describe the earth as universal mother (De Rerum Natura, 1.599). George Herbert writes a verse letter to his mother in Heaven: “Nos miserè flemus, solésque obducimus almos / Occiduis, tanquam duplice nube, genis. / Interea classem magnis Rex instruit ausis: / Nos autem flemus: res ea sola tuis” (“We weep wretchedly, our bleary eyes covering / As if with layers of clouds, day after day, the succor of the sun / Meanwhile the King outfits a vast fleet for great deeds of daring: / But we weep: that is the sole matter at hand for your people”) (Poem 9, ll. 5–8).13 Couplet 4 describes the outfitting of the English fleet, couplet 5, its setting sail after delay, and couplet 6, the combatants in the upcoming battles. Line 7 begins by correlating temporally the mourning already begun with the emerging public military events. The words seem to march across the page with a strong resolution at the close; military meters serve a family’s battle with death. Grief over the virtue of the mother of George and her “people” – both her clan and the public who claim her virtue as theirs – take imaginative precedence over a major military campaign. “Watchword” (tessera) is key here; it can mean a signal to begin an assault. The family is at battle with death, their warfare distinct from Buckingham’s. Herbert did not know at the time of his writing, of course, that Buckingham’s assault would end disastrously. The forces of Tillius  – Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, commander of the Catholic League forces – decisively defeated the Protestants at

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the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, removing Frederick and Elizabeth from their throne and subduing much of Central Europe, and Tilly fought against the Danes in 1626, winning a decisive victory at the Battle of Lutter on August 26–27, destroying much of the Danish fleet. In the summer of 1627, Tilly was planning a final assault, joining his forces with those of Albrecht von Wallenstein before launching what would prove a successful invasion of Jutland in September. In one line, Herbert mentions two great adversaries, the eminently successful Catholic military commander responsible for a string of momentous successes against Protestant states and princes, and “France,” with whom James hoped to make peace through the marriage of Charles to Henrietta Maria. The poet’s circle’s grief, however, is the focus of poem. The fleet’s departure is delayed by rain; if there had been no rain, the tears of the Herbert clan would have delayed the fleet’s departure, implying hyperbolically that the personal took precedence over the public. Perhaps the poem implicitly criticizes Charles and Buckingham’s abandonment of James’s peace-loving policies, imagining impending warfare as of less importance than mourning a mother linked linguistically with Gaia or Venus (Vergil, The Aeneid 1.590). Herbert wrote poems addressing the possibility of civil war in Britain. In one of the poems of Musae Responsoriae (Muses in Response), his sequence written in answer to the Scottish Presbyterian Andrew Melville, Herbert foretells the violent conflict that will take place between Scotland and England, taunting the rebellious Scots: “does so much cold sharpen your zeal?” The poet imagines communion as preferable to war: “Aut potiùs Christi sanguis demissus ab alto / Vicinúsque magìs nobiliórque fluit: / Ne, si flamma nouis adolescat mota flabellis, / Ante diem vesto mundus ab igne ruat” (“Or, better, the blood of Christ sent down from above / Flows closer and more nobly: / Lest if the flame should grow up, set astir by small new fans, / Before the appointed day, the world by your fire should perish”) (Poem 35, “To Scotland. An Exhortation to Peace,” ll. 9–12). Herbert imagines conflict within England, as well as between Scotland and the rest of Great Britain, portraying Andrew Melville’s confidence in his own purity as a form of idolatry, his “zeal” endangering the world with the fire of apocalypse “before the appointed day” and hence against

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God’s plan. Herbert’s imagined antidote to Scottish heat, caused through antiperistasis (cold supposedly causing nearby objects to turn hot, here the North Sea warming Scotland to unholy zealotry) is communion. This early attack on the “dangerous torches” of Scottish zeal find parallels in Herbert’s reading of England (and himself). Sidney Gottlieb makes a persuasive case for the consistency of late English poems like “Conscience” (Temple) with Musae Responsoriae (Muses in Response) with “a nonconforming, radical Protestant, a danger not only to one’s peace of mind but also to one’s church and society.”14 Gottlieb argues that the poems in Muses in Response, not published in print until Herbert’s death, though perhaps circulated privately, are intensely public, with political and even military implications:15 Herbert’s militaristic rhetoric had historical analogues. Herbert composed at least some of his poems in The Temple, particularly late poems like “Conscience,” while he was a priest in Wiltshire, a time during the “Western Risings” against the Established Church by large numbers of nonconformists, a significant number of whom were weavers by profession.16 In this poem from Musae Responsoriae, Herbert attacks weavers who preach: “Et nunc perlongas Scripturae stamine telas / Torquet, & in Textu Doctor vtroque cluet” (“And now he twists very long threads through the warp / Of Scripture, a recognized Expert in both forms of Weaving”) (19.5–6). We find a similar idea in “Jordan (II)” (Temple); Herbert attacks such “weaving” as getting in the way of the simplicity of God’s love and grace: “So did I weave myself into the sense” (l. 14). Herbert chastises himself in ways that echo his attacks on the “Pure Ones,” nonconforming Protestants. He models a kind of self-scrutiny and self-regulation for his readers. Christ’s blood serves as a better antidote to self-righteous zeal than the cold waters of the North Sea. Herbert purports to offer alternatives to military rhetoric: communion’s direct simplicity. Herbert calls his nonconforming adversaries to communion, disagreeing with the Scottish reformer while naming common ­ beliefs and opponents. Herbert does not see his disagreement with Melville as being about essential matters of faith. In fact, on two thirds of Melville’s poem’s content – including the celebration of God’s glory – Herbert declares that he and Melville are in utter

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agreement; nor did any of the great reformers – Martyr, Calvin, Beza, or Bucer – attack the reformed Church in England (as in Poem 33, ll. 1–4). Herbert asserts that he and Melville differ only on “Ritibus … Sacris” (“Sacred Rituals”) (Poem 4, ll. 3–6), about which disagreement is allowed: “O bene quòd dubium possideamus agrum!” (“How fitting that we take our stands on the undecided field!”) (l. 8). Herbert concludes the sequence in celebrating Melville as a poet and scholar. While Melville represented his differences with the Established Church as essential, Herbert saw them as open to debate. Herbert made Melville an intimate adversary. King James, unlike many English Protestants, engaged in serious dialogue with Roman Catholic adversaries. He “played down doctrinal differences and reserved his criticism for papal pretension to the supremacy and the power to depose secular rulers,” offering tolerance, if not toleration, for Roman Catholics who did not openly defy the established order.17 James argued that the Roman Catholic Church, though obstinately refusing reformation, taught key “catholic” truths about the Incarnation and Trinity. In the first years of his reign, James engaged in an unsuccessful dialogue with Pope Clement VIII, calling for a general council of Christian princes. Registering disagreement over the centrality of scripture and salvation through faith alone, George Herbert nevertheless translated the Roman Catholic writers Valdesso and Cornaro. In his poetic exchange with Pope Urban VIII, Herbert disagreed with Urban in a relatively civil manner. James Doelman suggests that Poems 25–28 in Sacred Grove (Lucus) are a poetic exchange with the newly elected Pope Urban VIII, who reigned 1623–44, beginning in the last years of James’s reign.18 Immediately following Poem 25, “Rome. Anagram” (“Roma Anagr.”), appears Poem 26, “The Reply of Pope Urban VIII” (“Vrbani VIII Pont. Respons.”), which appears among Pope Urban’s published poems (1623). Perhaps Pope Urban had seen Herbert’s Poem 25 in manuscript by 1623 and responded, or, as James Doelman suggests, Edward Herbert shared the manuscript of Sacred Grove with the French coterie of Urban VIII, then Cardinal Barberini, while serving as England’s ambassador to France (no later than 1624). Barberini had first served as papal legate to France in 1601, where he delivered congratulations on the birth of the dauphin, the future

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Louis XIII, returning in 1604 to serve as nuncio under Henri IV. Edward may very well have met Barberini during his trip to Paris in 1608. It is possible that George Herbert received the response, perhaps through his brother Edward, and replied further, including the dialogue in Sacred Grove. In Poem 30 of Muses in Response (“De lupâ lustri Vaticani”) (“Concerning the she-wolf of the Vatican brothel”) – presumably not sent to the Pope – Herbert claims to show in an anagram how he can bypass the dangers of Rome.19 Doelman notes that Herbert’s satire in “Rome. Anagram” avoided a common insult, the Protestant play on the Roma/Amor palindrome as confirming a supposed Roman Catholic addiction to “backward love” (homosexuality). Roman Catholic and Protestant critics alike made this accusation against Urban VIII. (His predecessor Julius III had been accused of pederasty, primarily because of his relationship with his adoptive nephew Innocenzo del Monte.20) Instead, Herbert develops a series of four poems in which he traces the decline of Roma from classical greatness to its current state, where the love of the nations, Herbert asserts, has retreated. He nevertheless flatters Urban: “Pontificem tandem nacta est sibi Roma poetam: / Res redit ad vates, Pieriósque duces” (“Rome has at last obtained for herself as pope a poet: / The state reverts to prophets and Pierian rulers”) (Poem 28, ll. 1–2). Herbert, in comparison with most Protestant contemporaries, interacts with the Pope respectfully. The poems in Lucus were probably composed in 1623–4, after the election of Pope Urban VIII, a little more than a year after an illness that had left Herbert “at deaths dore,” as described by Cambridge contemporary Joseph Mead.21 As such, they may have been part of an attempt by Herbert to create a manuscript of work of English and Latin prepared for publication to survive his death. Such a manuscript would have had a more stridently polemical tone than The Temple as we know it. The sacred grove of the poems through which we wander in Lucus might be said to be distinctly British, as in Poem 6 “In pacem Britannicam” (“On the British peace”). The poem begins by asking why England alone in Europe has avoided bloody warfare, ending with a prayer that Christ move over English waters, where religion is the “regina quietis” (“queen of quiet”) (ll. 1–2 and 7–8). At the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War,

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in part because of the policies of King James, Britain remained, comparatively speaking, a locus amoenus, a pleasant place of peace, a kind of sacred grove. As Herbert writes in “Providence,” “tempests are calm to thee; they know thy hand” (l. 45). Herbert attempts to cultivate peace at home and abroad, in his public orations, as well as in poetic exchanges like the one with Pope Urban, perhaps via the intermediary Edward Herbert at the French court. Many of the poems in Sacred Grove were likely written at the same time as Herbert’s Cambridge Oration lauding Prince Charles on October 8, 1623. George’s brother Thomas was commander of a ship whose responsibility it was in 1623 to return Prince Charles to Britain from Spain. Though Herbert acknowledged that war sometimes might be necessary, his Cambridge Oration at the return of Charles and Buckingham from Spain puts forth graphic, arresting, and extended descriptions of war’s miseries: Other nations, their hands raised to heaven, their tears falling to earth – dirty, hungry – beg for peace all day long, all night long; we should take care that this behavior not move us to disgust, or that like sullen and squeamish sheep, we spit out what nourishes us. Is there anyone who does not know the miseries of War? Consult histories, where inquiry is safe, and beyond the reach of a weapon. Behold all manner of butchers’ stalls, truncated corpses, the mutilated image of God, the trifling remnant of life, a little span of life long enough for grieving, the conflagrations of cities, the crashes, the plundering, the raped girls, pregnant women twice killed, little babes spewing more milk than blood, crude representations – no, really rather shadows of humans – tortured, beaten, weakened by hunger, cold, filth. How bloody is that glory reared upon the necks of human beings! Where it is unclear whether the one who acts or the one who suffers is more miserable!22

One notes in both passages the “sacred groves” of peace, the oration referring specifically to Cambridge University, a seat of Christian learning. In “Death’s Triumph,” Death, the origin and fruit of war, commands mankind to bow down: “mortalibus actum est / Corporéque atque animo. Totus mihi seruiat Orbis” (“for mortals in body and soul / It is finished. Let the Entire Earth serve me”) (ll. 100–101). The grandiloquent “It is finished” demonically echoes Christ’s words from the cross (John 19:30). Death sits at

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hell’s table eating “deserts” (l. 58). The war dead are served up as candy or cake, with gunpowder and ash as the sugar and frosting. Death addresses us with great learning and energy. Death’s meal parodies communion. The final two lyrics in Sacred Grove offer us a saving ­alternative nourishment and playful intimacy. Poem 34, “On Embosomed John,” stages a competition in which the poet jostles with Christ’s favorite disciple for nourishment, sucking Christ’s breasts. Instead of the bloodbath of the Thirty Years’ War, which Herbert imagined with prophetic immediacy – a war that would destroy by some estimates more than a quarter of the population of large portions of Bohemia, Germany, and Central Europe23 – we have a struggle over “lac cum sanguine … deuolutum” (“the milk rolling down with blood”) (l. 7). Christ’s blood and milk, in contrast with the blood of war, nourishes. Herbert does not assail cities. He assails Heaven’s “Throne Seats” (Thronos) (l. 9) in prayer, doing battle with Death itself.24 The two characters in the poem, contending  with one another, commune. The short poem enacts sacred comedy in response to a lengthy mock-heroic tragedy grounded in a violent historical moment. The contrast is studied, deep, and resonant. And it continues in the final poem of the sequence, Poem 35 “Ad Dominum” (“To the Lord”). Herbert almost invariably evokes sweet tastes and fragrances when presenting communion, for reasons Miller-Blaise’s study foregrounds.25 As in “The Odour,” we are encouraged to see, smell, and savor its fruits, God’s presence in the believer’s heart. The speaker addresses God with mock-pugilism that is also serious: “Christe, decus, dulcedo, & centrum circiter Hyblae, / Cordis apex, animae pugnáque páxque meae” (“O Christ, the glory, sweetness, and nearly hundred-fold Hyblas, / The heart’s apex, my soul’s battle and peace”) (ll. 1–2). Herbert does not intend to overthrow Christ’s glory and sweetness, though Christ is his “soul’s battle and peace.” The English poem “The Banquet” apostrophizes Herbert’s “hands and breath”: “Strive in this, and love the strife.” Communion is not an escape from battle. The poet’s internal battle is part and parcel of the experience. Few readers have addressed the degree to which the language in this poem comments on human combat – most explicitly war – as a false battle and feasting – a

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hellish misunderstanding of God’s will, with holy communion, by contrast, the right battle, with peaceful fruits. Not all of Herbert’s engagements with poets were as c­ ombative as with Andrew Melville and Pope Urban VIII, the psalms of Clément Marot being a prominent example.26 Guillaume Coatalen, in Chapter 12 of this volume, argues that Herbert was shaped by the poetry of Grévin, Chandieu, and Sponde. One hears possible echoes by George Herbert of the French poet Théophile de Viau, an international cause célèbre of the 1620s, as well. Edward Herbert wrote a lengthy and loving description of the grounds of the Duc de Montmorency’s estate, where both Edward Herbert and Théophile de Viau often resided as guests. Viau immortalized the estate of Chantilly in his long poem Sylvia’s House (La Maison de Sylvie). Edward, traveling with the poet Aurelian Townsend, met the Old Constable de Montmorency and King Henri IV in 1608. Edward probably met Viau in Paris or at the Montmorency estate, perhaps also during Viau’s stay in England.27 In this volume, Cristina Malcolmson notes that Edward was in residence at Merlou, some five miles from Chantilly, when Viau was living under the protection of the Duc de Montmorency, having been sentenced to death, burned in effigy at the gates of the estate. She also speculates that Edward helped Viau attempt to flee to England. 1625, Viau wrote a letter to Buckingham, Edward Herbert’s patron, in deep gratitude for Buckingham’s help in freeing him from prison. Passages in Viau’s great poem echo Jonson’s “Upon Penshurst,” written about an estate of the Sidney–Herbert clan. Ben Jonson and Edward Herbert were friends, means by which Viau might have come to know the poem. In each of the poems, the aristocrat’s table is replete with delights: in Jonson’s, deer, pheasant, carp, and eel offer themselves up willingly to be eaten; in Viau’s, partridges and pheasants are more abundant than in the Paris markets, the lord of the manor taking care to feed them in winter, fish fighting over which of them first will be hooked by Sylvia, lady and reigning genius of the place (Ode 2). At Jonson’s Penshurst, King James and Prince Henry are imagined as hunting on the grounds. At Viau’s Chantilly, King Henri IV is imagined as hunting a mistress. Edward was ambassador to France 1619–21, returning in 1622 in a diplomatic effort to engage Louis XIII as an ally of the

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Elector Frederick and his wife, James’s daughter Elizabeth, part of a ­strategy first begun under the reigns of Henri IV of France and Philip III of Spain to ally England through marriage with both Protestant and Catholic houses in Europe, placing James at the center of a new peaceful order between warring factions. In 1623, Viau was denounced by Jesuits and sentenced to be burned alive, his case spawning a pamphlet war in France. Viau’s poem may have come to George through his brother Edward. We know from Edward’s library that works by the Italian philosopher Giulio Cesare Vanini, whose ideas profoundly influenced Viau, were in his collection.28 John Drury notes, drawing from Walton, that George Herbert worked hard in his preparation for the role of orator to master Italian, Spanish, and French.29 There is an unusual and arresting imagistic parallel between “Ode  7” of Viau’s La Maison de Sylvie and George Herbert’s “Vertue”: “Quelle couleur peut plaire mieux / Que celle qui contrait les Cieux / De faire l’amour à la terre?” (“What sight can be more pleasing / Than the color that forces the Skies / And the land into love-making?”) (ll. 8–10). In “Virtue,” Herbert begins, “Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, / The bridal of the earth and skie:” (ll.  1–2). Viau refers often to the “darts” of his lady’s eyes (“Ode  6”) as having the power to destroy and transform. His Sylvia’s eyes so stun the tritons of the park’s basins that they metamorphose into white deer, water gods becoming timorous beasts (“Ode 2”). Love’s dart “pierces through” friends in love (“Ode 4,” stanza 2). Similarly, in Herbert’s English and Latin poems, as we have seen, the intimate gaze is a central determinant. In “Discipline” and “Love Unknown,” the loved speaker is violently (and ultimately, lovingly) restored. In “Longing,” he asks that God “Pluck out thy dart, / And heal my troubled breast which cryes, / Which dyes” (ll. 83–5). Viau, like Herbert, registers complaint as healthy and restorative, focusing on friendship as an antidote to political violence and courtly intrigue: “Mais la douleur des bons esprits / Qui laisse des soupirs écrits / Guérit avec la vengeance” (“the sorrows of generous minds / Who leave behind their written sighs / Are healed in their getting vengeance”) (“Ode VIII,” ll. 58–60). George Herbert’s poems of complaint operate similarly, to restore readers’ health, to “turn to the advantage of any dejected

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poor soul.” None of these similarities, common to much baroque poetry, suffices to make a convincing case for George Herbert having read Viau, but the cumulative evidence raises the possibility. The argument here is more than a question of influence; both poets at roughly the same time offer pastoral fields as alternatives to battlefields, and with distinctively parallel imagery. Another point of commonality in the pastoral sequences La Maison de Sylvie and Lucus is hostility toward Jesuits as bringers of discord. George Herbert shared Viau’s antipathy for the Jesuit order, particularly in its perceived hostility to royal authority, a hostility also voiced by King James. Following the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 led by Robert Catesby and his allies, and the assassination of the tolerant Henri IV in 1610 by the Catholic fanatic François Ravaillac, James engaged in a drive against recusancy. In the final lines of “Death’s Triumph” before the concluding couplet, Death tells us “exilit omni / Tormento peior Iesuita, & fulminat Orbem” (a “Jesuit arose / Worse than all war’s engines, and hurls lightning at the World”) (ll. 95–6). Herbert probably refers here to the Spaniard Jesuit Mariana who had defended regicide in De Rege et Regis Institutione (1599). Herbert thereby implies that supporters of an ultramontane Catholicism as opposed to a Gallican order – particularly, though not exclusively, the Jesuits – were indirectly responsible for the “deaths of Kings” (the assassinations of Henri III and IV, as well as plots against the lives of Elizabeth I and James I, among others). On May 18, 1620, in a Latin letter to King James thanking him for the gift of a book of his Latin works to the Cambridge University Library, Herbert wrote, “Iam dari nobis vellemus Iesuitam aliquem, vt ex affrictu Libri vestri hominem illico contundamus” (“We would like to be presented with some Jesuit now, to crush the man then and there using your Book to grind him down”). Viau often refers to the Jesuits who tormented him in prison as “noirs Lutins” (“black-robed goblins”) and “les fils du Diable” (“the Devil’s sons”) (“Letter to His Brother,” ll. 63–4). In the same poem, Viau refers movingly to the assassination of Henri IV: Le plus brave de tous les Rois Dressant un appareil de guerre

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Thirty Years’ War: George Herbert’s communion 75 Qui devait imposer des lois À tous les peoples de la terre, Entre les bras de ses sujets Assuré de tous les objets Comme de ses meilleures gardes, Se vit frappé mortalement D’un coup à qui cent hallebardes Prenaient gardent inutilement.30 (ll. 130–40)

Both poets register a loathing of war. Viau served as a soldier in the French confessional wars. The two poets’ loathing extends to the assassination of tolerant kings by fanatics, including members of the Jesuit order. The two poets share other points in common. The nightingale figures prominently throughout Sylvia’s House, singing the poet’s sorrow, articulating his grievances, and praising his audience, at the same time registering his inability to please his audience (including the Duke and Duchess of Montmorency), before ultimately going silent and praising the “King of Kings” (“Le Roi des Rois”) (“Ode X,” ll. 65–6). The basins of the park are fed by “two silver brooks” (“deux ruisseaux d’argent”) that render their surroundings livelier and cooler (“Ode 3,” l. 6). Herbert “en[vies] no man’s nightingale or spring” and “plainly say[s] my God, my King.” All of which brings me back to George Herbert’s “Peace,” where we began. The poets share a “forceful humility,” moving from kingly to divine grandeur, Herbert more forcefully registering the difference between the two. Both present a pastoral landscape of conflict that borders on, but clearly distinguishes itself from, the field of battle. Again and again in his poems, George Herbert pursues what he lacks: peace; struggling with intimate adversaries, internal and external. His pugilistic civility shares common ground with his brother Edward’s combativeness. We find in George Herbert’s verse, orations, and life a preoccupation with peace. He sought a battleground where the outcome was something other than slaughter and misery. And the call that draws him forward is the call to a communal meal, mirth, and joy. He imagined communion as the sole means of warring against war without shedding blood. That battle follows the vision of James I, however chimeric from our perspective, of a peaceful world beginning in a peaceful Europe that

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might confront and overcome the horrifying scandal of Christian disunity, violence, and war. After the death of James I in 1625 and the ascension of King Charles, in his English poems Herbert moved more deeply inward, where a more fruitful kind of battle than international or civil war might take place. The pastoral poetry of Lucus and the Cambridge Oration give a strong sense of the work leading to that poetic work in English. George Herbert’s poetry, like the work of his kinsmen the Sidneys, is in dialogue with the work of Italian and French contemporaries across national, linguistic, and creedal boundaries, striving with the tragic and brazen under love’s felt sovereign gaze.

Notes  1 The Works of Jacques-Auguste de Thou, ed. Samuel Kinser (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), vol. 1, p. 2. Quoted by Joatham Parsons, The Church in the Republic: Gallicanism and Political Ideology in Renaissance France (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), p. 37.  2 Quoted in William Brown Patterson, King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 3.   3 Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake, “The Ecclesiastical Policy of King James I,” Journal of British Studies: Politics and Religion in the Early Seventeenth Century, New Voices, 24.2 (April 1985), 169.  4 Stillman, Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism.   5 Fincham and Lake, “King James I,” p. 170.  6 Herbert, Works, p. 262.  7 Sidney Gottlieb, “George Herbert’s Case of ‘Conscience’: Public or Private Poem?” Studies in English Literature: 1500–1900, The English Renaissance, 25.1 (1985), 109–26.   8 Janice Lull, The Poem in Time: Reading George Herbert’s Revisions of “The Church” (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990), pp. ­106–7.  9 Herbert, Works, p. 257. 10 Freis, Freis, and Miller, George Herbert’s Latin Verse, pp. 153–65 and 265–9. Subsequent references to Herbert’s Latin verse, unless otherwise noted, are to this text. 11 Archbishop Abbot, for example, thought a war defending Frederick would initiate the necessary apocalyptic battle against what he saw

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as the Antichrist: “That by piece and piece, the Kings of the Earth that gave their power unto the beast (all the work of God must be fulfilled) shall now tear the whore, and make her desolate, as St. John in his revelation hath foretold” (quoted in Fincham and Lake, “King James I,” p. 198). James sought a match with the Infanta of Spain to balance the marriage of his daughter to a Protestant prince. This effort galvanized Protestant resistance in England. Upon the return of Prince Charles and Buckingham from Spain following an unsuccessful marriage negotiation, Jeffrey Powers-Beck writes, “Britons responded with an immense celebration, marking what Sir Bejamin Rudyerd called ‘the turn of Christendom.’” “Conquering Laurels and Creeping Ivy: The Tangled Politics of Herbert’s Reditum Caroli,” George Herbert Journal, 17 (1993), 7. John K. Hale notes that the “sums of expenditure on the rituals of public joy – bonfires and bells, fireworks and street parties – broke all records.” “George Herbert’s Oration before King James, Cambridge 1623,” in Rhoda Schnur et al. (eds), Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Cantabrigiensis: Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, 30 (July–August 2000) (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2003), p. 254. 12 Glyn Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta: The Cultural Politics of the Spanish Match (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 1. Powers-Beck writes, “The prospect of a Spanish match survived the initial stages of the European wars because James used the match to resist involvement in those wars and because he hoped eventually to procure the return of the Palatinate through the negotiations. While the Spanish had no intention of surrendering the Palatinate to Frederick, they had an interest in continuing the negotiations. In May of 1622, Charles grew anxious to hasten the match, and suggested to Count Gondomar that he, the Prince, woo the Infanta in person. When Endymion Porter returned to England in January of 1623 with news that the negotiations were proceeding, Charles received his father’s permission to make the journey.” “Conquering Laurels,” pp. 4–5. 13 Poems from this sequence are taken from Memoriae Matris Sacrum, trans. and ed. Freis, Freis, and Miller. 14 Gottlieb, “George Herbert’s Case of ‘Conscience,’” pp. 113–14, 116. 15 “George Herbert’s Case of ‘Conscience,’” p. 117. 16 Gottlieb makes use of several historical sources here, including D. G.  C. Allan, “The Rising in the West, 1628–1631,” Economic History Review, 2nd Ser. 5.1 (1952), 76–85; Eric Kerridge, “The Revolts in Wiltshire Against Charles I,” Wiltshire Archeological and Natural History Magazine, 57 (1950), 64–75; and Buchanan Short,

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In Contempt of All Authority: Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586–1660 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). 17 Patterson, Reunion of Christendom, p. 183. 18 James Doelman, “Herbert’s Lucus and Pope Urban VIII,” George Herbert Journal, 32 (2008/9), 43–53. 19 There was a perceived intertextuality between Herbert’s two Latin sequences (Lucus and Musae Responsoriae) among the first readers of Musae Responsoriae upon its print publication by Duport in 1662. George Herbert’s Latin Verse, pp. 70–1. 20 Doelman, “Herbert’s Lucus and Pope Urban VIII,” p. 45. 21 Charles, A Life, p. 93. 22 “Quod aliae gentes manibus in coelum sublatis, lachrymis in terram manantibus, ieiunae, squalidae, perdiae, pernoctes flagitant, cauendum ne id nobis nauseam moueat, aut tanquam oues taedulae & fastidiosae, cibum respuamus. Ecquid nescitis miserias Belli? consulite historias; illic tuta cognitio est, atque extra teli iactum. Ecce lanienas omnimodas, truncata corpora, mutilatam imaginem Dei, pauxillum vitae, quantum satìs ad dolendum, vrbium incendia, fragores, direptiones, stupratas virgines, praegnantes bis intersectas, infantulos plus lactis quàm cruoris emittentes; effigies, imo vmbras hominum fame, frigore, illuvie, enectas, contusas, debilitatas. Quam cruenta gloria est, quae super ceruicibus hominum erigitur? vbi in dubio est, qui facit, an qui patitur, miserior.” George Herbert’s Latin Prose, pp. 18–21. 23 Peter H. Wilson, The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy (London: Penguin, 2009), pp. 786–94. 24 The “Thrones” are probably celestial beings referred to in Colossians 1:16, Revelation 20:4, Luke 22:30, and Matthew 19:28. 25 Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise, Le Verbe fait image: Iconoclasmes, écriture figurée et théologie de l’lncarnation chez les poètes métaphysiques. Le cas de George Herbert (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelles, 2010), pp. 383–6. 26 See Chapter 15 by Helen Wilcox, this volume, for a discussion of Herbert’s use of the French psalm tradition. 27 See Chapter 9 by Cristina Malcolmson, this volume, for a discussion of Viau and Edward Herbert. 28 I thank Cristina Malcolmson for this important observation: “Iulii Caesaris Vanini Neapolitani theologi, philosophi, & iuris vtriusque doctoris. De admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis: Libri quatuor.” Jesus College Fellows’ Library, Oxford University, M.1.7. Lucilio Vanini was tortured and executed as a heretic in Toulouse in 1619.

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29 Drury, Music at Midnight, p. 115. 30 “The most courageous of all kings / Preparing a war machine / Which was expected to establish rule / Over every nation on earth, / Protected with special care / In the arms of his subjects / As by the best of his guards / Knew he was wounded mortally / By the blow, against which a hundred long spike-axes / Carefully defended in vain” (my translation). Après m’avoir fait tant mourir, Œuvres choisies, ed. Jean-Pierre Chauveau (Paris: Gallimard, 2002), p. 196. At the time of his murder, King Henri IV was preparing for war.

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“Being” James I: Herbert of Cherbury’s vexed diplomacy Nancy Zaice

In 1619, James I chose Sir Edward Herbert as England’s ­ambassador to France out of a list of eighteen “of the fittest men for that employment.”1 Herbert had experience with court politics, both domestically and internationally, having spent time in the courts of Elizabeth I and James I, and in various European courts during his travels abroad between 1608 and 1617. His relationship with the Elector Palatine, Frederick V, and his wife Elizabeth, James I’s daughter, exposed him to the vicissitudes of international politics. Herbert established a close friendship with the politically powerful Montmorency family, who introduced him to key political players in France as well as the nuances of international politics (from their perspective). At the time of his appointment, however, Herbert was inexperienced in the art and practice of international diplomacy itself. Perhaps James saw him as particularly malleable or, given his reputation as short-tempered, zealous, and impulsive, as a potential scapegoat should difficulties develop in Anglo-French relations. Whatever James’s motives, Herbert applied his own metaphysical idealism to his new appointment, dedicating himself through that principle to a distinctive concept of courtiership.2 Unfortunately, this put Herbert and his ambassadorship unknowingly in philosophical and practical conflict with James’s European political agendas. Herbert had faith in a continuum between the individual good and the general good, thinking that the truthful individual of good will, whom Herbert considered universal and whose universality he strove throughout his life to embody, might discern the King’s best interests and thereby act on his behalf.

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James embraced an international policy for ensuring and ­ aintaining peace in Europe that involved marrying his daughter m to a prominent Protestant head of state and his son to a Catholic one, ideally Spanish.3 A Catholic marital alliance would match his son, Prince Charles, with the Spanish Infanta María, creating a powerful bond with the Hapsburgs, whose dynasty dominated the Holy Roman Empire. Since the Hapsburgs were Catholic, James envisioned that these unions would bind Catholic and Protestant factions within a familial network, encouraging peace and religious toleration throughout Europe. What James may not have foreseen was that, in addition to its implications for Britain abroad, this political policy would also have negative repercussions at home for both him and Charles. Thomas Cogswell points out that previous marriages within royal families had “strictly followed confessional [or religious] lines; thus James was proposing the first exception to this rule.”4 Perhaps the distance growing between the nobility and the English people, alluded to in Herbert’s 1608 “State Progress of Ill,”5 left James less cognizant of the extent to which a Spanish alliance and marriage could further separate the nobility from those over whom they ruled, or perhaps he felt such opposition to his royal prerogative relatively unimportant, given that his Queen Consort Anne was Roman Catholic and their sons Protestants. Many English nevertheless feared that the prince’s children might be raised Catholic, risking a return to Catholicism and threatening the central role of Protestantism in the English state.6 Cogswell argues that the prospect of a Catholic marriage may have been a major contributor toward the rift that eventually developed between the monarchy and the English people,7 consistent with Samuel Rawson Gardiner’s earlier assessment that it was the defining factor.8 Against this complex backdrop, Herbert departed for France in May 1619 with vague instructions from James. The King’s initial instructions, dated May 7, 1619, were long on formality, but short on specifics, advising, “There bee not many particulars that wee have to give you in charge by way of Instruccon … but this one generall end, … w’ch is, to give that King the best assurance you may, from time to time of o’r Brotherly freindshippe and affeccon towards him.”9 To satisfy this directive and to elicit both James

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I’s and Louis XIII’s trust in him as ambassador, Herbert would comport himself in keeping with an important archetype governing loyal service to one’s monarch, that of Castiglione’s courtier.10 As an aspiring “citizen of the world”11 and both a t­ raditionallyand self-educated man in literary, philosophical, and religious matters, Edward Herbert’s behavior displays a practical understanding of philosophical and psychological concepts found within Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier. His hope was that his evolving embodiment of the ideal courtier or civil servant would illuminate truth in others and motivate them to go out and do the same. It was Herbert’s belief that his ambassadorship was a sacred trust comprising three primary responsibilities: his person or “appearance” must bespeak that of a courtier of James I; his actions must both be, and appear to be, those of England’s ­representative of James I; and finally, he must provide honest, accurate advice to his sovereign. While Herbert’s temperament has led some critics to argue that his ambassadorial display emanated mostly from ostentatious vanity,12 Herbert’s ambassadorial correspondence indicates otherwise. His actions display an adherence to his epistemological paradigm, Castiglione’s courtier’s understanding of the importance and role of appearances, and practical strategy.13 Herbert’s first actions on his mission reveal a perceptive thinker cognizant of his complex circumstances. He would have recognized that the day he departed for France, May 13, 1619, was inauspicious, since it was the same day as Queen Anne’s funeral,14 a ceremony which James postponed for months, Herbert claims in his autobiography, because he lacked the funds to bury her in a manner befitting the Queen of England.15 Herbert felt that a parsimonious display of his ambassadorial entourage and their equipage in France would give a poor impression, potentially showing a lack of respect for the French king Louis XIII, revealing too much about England’s finances, and reducing Herbert’s and subsequently England’s power in the relationship. Herbert believed that first impressions matter and intended to make his a good one. He describes his entourage as a “train of an hundred and odd persons” and proudly asserts that he furnished his Paris ambassadorial residence “richly.”16 Herbert instructed



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gentlemen in his retinue to make a point of escorting Count Gondomar’s gentlemen into his kitchen to witness, where after my usual manner, were three spits full of meat, divers pots of boiled meat, and an oven, with store of pies in it, and a dresser board, covered with all manner of good fowl, and some tarts, pans with tarts in them after the French manner; after which, being conducted to another room, they were showed a dozen or sixteen dishes of sweetmeats, all of which was but the ordinary allowance for my table.17

Herbert’s fidelity to his role was flawless. His preparation made the positive impression on the Continent he hoped. A letter on March 24, 1620 from the Duke of Lenox at Whitehall stated how thrilled he was to tell Herbert of the positive reports James was receiving regarding Herbert’s “travells and cariage [during] his employment” in France.18 Herbert’s difficulties with James, however, became apparent early in his diplomatic assignment, when it came time to renew the oath of alliance between England and France, an oath originally signed in Louis XIII’s minority. Misunderstandings arose regarding Herbert’s status as an ambassador ordinary or ambassador extraordinary. Butler describes the difference: “[An] ambassador extraordinary was a much more considerable personage than an ordinary,”19 with one being sent for a special need such as negotiating a treaty and the other for a certain length of service. Butler also states, “Herbert’s large retinue suggested extraordinary status, but nothing in the official correspondence suggests he enjoyed it, although he obviously felt that he needed to act like an Ambassador Extraordinary.”20 Though Herbert barely alludes to the confusion in his Autobiography, the collection Old Herbert Papers at Powis Castle and in the British Museum includes separate undated royal warrants addressed to Herbert: one calling for Herbert to be compensated as simply an “ambassador” (undated, included in the 1619 correspondence) and another as “ambassador extraordinary” (undated, included in the 1620 correspondence).21 Herbert’s confusion may have been justified. Evidence suggests that Herbert served in both capacities. In a letter to Naunton on December 20, 1619, Herbert suggested that if it was decided that his appointment was

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not that of an ambassador extraordinary, James could give him a temporary appointment to the higher status, writing, “I think there will be no difficultie to suffer them to giue mee ye respect of an Extraord’rie Amb’r for one day.”22 Perhaps he was given such a brief appointment, but we have no evidence that Herbert’s suggestion was answered, the confusion about his appointment causing problems with protocol when planning for the event. Though James’s charge to Herbert to sign the oath was clear, his directions regarding its context and trappings were not. Herbert made repeated requests for guidance as to the King’s vague directive to proceed in “due manner and forme.”23 The French delayed the renewal, but as the final date for the ceremony drew close and decisions had to be made without royal input, Herbert acted upon his own ideas of how an ambassador, serving in the place of the King of England, should appear. Herbert justified his sumptuous displays to James and Naunton24 as opportunities to both influence the French people’s perception of England’s power and c­ ommunicate to them England’s good will and respect. He stated in a dispatch on January 8, 1620, “I confesse I founde it necessary at this time to oblige ye people euen by exterior showes to ye solemnity and due respect of this great alliance betwixt ye two Crownes. Besides [that] I was in plaine termes told [that unles ye same pompe were obserued on o’r side wee must not expect [that] on theirs.”25 Herbert knew the politics at work in Paris. If England did not provide the proper pomp and circumstance, the French would question England’s commitment and dedication to the alliance. Though Herbert successfully represented James in the signing of the oath and its accompanying ceremony, neither James nor Charles fully reimbursed him for personal monies spent during his ambassadorship,26 which may indicate their evaluations of those expenditures. James’s lack of communication also hampered Herbert’s responses to the nexus of trouble that engulfed his ambassadorship: the three inextricably intertwined issues of Bohemia and the Palatinate, Protestants residing within France, and the pursuit of a Catholic marital alliance. James believed that the betrothal and marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to Frederick V, the Elector Palatine, in 1613, would help maintain peace in Europe. With the same objective, he began negotiations in 1614 for the marriage of

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his son Charles to the Spanish Infanta María.27 Butler contends that James perceived a benefit: “A Spanish alliance would bring England closer to the Hapsburgs, who of course were also the ruling family of Spain, and might lead to better relations with the [Holy Roman] Empire as well.”28 Increasing tensions on the Continent, however, would eventually lead to the unraveling of James’s vision, dragging England, and consequently Herbert, into the continental conflict. Compounding Herbert’s difficulties in dealing with the ­complexities of the Bohemian-Palatinate situation and the Spanish alliance was again James’s lack of direction in his initial written instructions to Herbert, dated May 7, 1619: And because o’r meaning is not to bee wanting in any good office w’ch may testifie the reality of o’r professions unto [the French king] you shall lett him knowe, that wee understanding of the troubles wherew’th his kingdome is at this present embroyled, have givin you order, as well out of o’r singular love unto him … to offer him in o’r name the best assistance, that wee can afford him, either by o’r faithfull advise or otherwise, whensoever hee shall have at any time occasion or use of o’r helpe, and shall think fitt to signify so much unto us.29

James’s meaning here is “wanting,” however, because exactly what he truly intends to offer (advice, troops, and/or monetary support, etc.) is unspecified. Also, the specific “troubles” to which he refers are ambiguous. Is James referring to the problems Louis was having with French Protestants, other domestic issues, or was he possibly referring to difficult relations with other states, such as Spain, or all of these? Perhaps James meant for his ambassador to ask an open question, to better ascertain the French king’s intended response to civil unrest and to adjust his offer accordingly. Unfortunately, Herbert assumed that in all situations, James would be pro-Palatinate and pro-Protestant, would be willing to back these positions with action,30 and lastly, as a good sovereign, would want Herbert’s honest opinion.31 Herbert was sorely mistaken when he acted under these misapprehensions. This, combined with Herbert’s long-standing and close friendship with the Elector and Electress Palatine, may have interfered with his ability to perceive James’s hesitancy.32 Only three months after

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arriving in France, the Elector Palatine Frederick was elected to and accepted the crown of Bohemia. Herbert felt confident that James would support Frederick’s ascendency. Both religious and family affinities supported this conclusion: Frederick was the husband of James’s daughter Elizabeth and a Protestant. Also, Herbert wrote to James in December 1619: “[Frederick] holds [that] by right of ye Bohemen’s election; which freedome of their State appearing by diuerse [Papal Bulls in 1212, 1216 and 1221] which yet doe not make but declare them electiue, cannot by any late and priuate contract be frustrated. That therefore [the] question of right is not properly proposed to his Highnes but to the Bohemians.”33 From Herbert’s perspective, since the kingship of Bohemia had been designated an elective one since the thirteenth century, no other state should deny or interfere with their process and choice. Regional clashes arose because Ferdinand of Styria34 had been appointed in 1617 as King-designate of Bohemia by Matthias, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (another Hapsburg).35 An ardent believer in the concept of Divine Right and hereditary kingship, James viewed Frederick’s action as one of usurpation.36 Louis XIII of France also reacted negatively.37 According to his September 9, 1619 and December 31, 1619 letters, Herbert believed the Jesuits had convinced Louis that Frederick had accepted the crown of Bohemia for religious reasons and had his sights set upon becoming the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire,38 potentially giving the Protestants the balance of power over Catholics in the region.39 Frederick’s action in accepting the crown of Bohemia left James in a conflicted and precarious position, both personally and politically.40 Herbert favored Frederick’s acceptance of the Bohemian crown and advised James in a September 9, 1619 dispatch to “assist in this great work, hauing by the means of winter approaching time enough to resolue, and prepare.”41 Because of Herbert’s prior military service, he understood the strategic delay that the onset of winter posed for amassing monies and troops. In October 1619, Herbert again encouraged James to “resolue to comfort [Frederick, Elector Palatine] to ye acceptation of this offred Crowne” and informed him of forces in France willing to join with James and move upon his orders, assuring him “of many seruants and honorets in this Countrie [that] will voluntarily offer their liues in ye

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quarrel.”42 Herbert expected James not only to send support and troops to his son-in-law but also to ask France to remain neutral in the conflict. James did neither. Staying true to his ideals but also wanting his actions to be in concert with James’s desires, Herbert repeatedly wrote to James and his ministers, asking not only how to proceed in supporting Frederick but also how James intended to act. From September 1619 to February 1620, Herbert sent at least ten dispatches directly or indirectly asking for direction and/or an indication of England’s intentions.43 To explain his persistence, he wrote to James on October 21, 1619 that he was “p’tly warranted by ye Palatines Highnes, assureing mee yt yo’r S.M. would accept well of any good office I should doe his Highnes in this kinde.”44 Fredrick and Elizabeth put Herbert in an untenable situation by asking him to intervene with France on their behalf and implying that James would approve of any support Herbert gave,45 an assurance that proved false. In heated exchanges with Louis’s ministers about Bohemia, which Herbert proclaimed he engaged in only “oppos[ing] by way of answer to their obieccons,”46 Herbert pressed his original case with James but tried to remain noncommittal with the French. As time wore on, Herbert foresaw that James’s inaction and unresponsiveness would likely have an influence on French neutrality and told him so, revealing values in keeping with a belief that monarchs needed forthright communication and information relating to the good of the state.47 Later actions, recalling him unceremoniously and not reimbursing him, imply James did not view or credit Herbert’s actions in the way he had intended. Irritated at Herbert’s pressure, both King James and his Secretary of State Naunton reprimanded him for overreaching and curtailed his diplomatic speech. Mortified, Herbert pled in a letter on February 5, 1620: “I am so farr from being faulty in this busines, that I neuer engaged the King my Master in it, nor had other ends in speaking to the Minist’r of this State, then that they would not resolue w’thout his Ma’ties aduice.”48 Herbert also believed that France’s finances, internal political instability, and religious t­ ensions severely inhibited its ability to act in any meaningful way in the Bohemian-Palatinate situation, irrespective of what they actually wanted to do. He argued that France would remain neutral because

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of “their unapnes at this time to giue any [financial] assistance to either partie, their Treasure d’Espargne being quite exhausted” and that potential funding sources were already exploited or emptied.49 He also cited the “late diuisions of their Princes” and the “disconten’t of those of [the] [Protestant] Religion (w’ch is growne to that extremitie, [that] this state doth speake of raysing forces to suppresse them).”50 Herbert surmised that the French had enough on their domestic, political, and financial agendas to keep them from realistically joining forces with Spain, but he also realized that there may have been factors of which he was unaware. Herbert grew increasingly frustrated with James’s lack of ­communication with the French, as well. In January 1620, Herbert bluntly advised James, through Naunton, that the French felt they had “entreated of his M’y of Gr. Bretagne to know how his Ma’ty would declare himself in this busines of Bohemia, but could neuer obtain answer.”51 Based upon Herbert’s own experience with James, he probably believed the French and stated, “if his S.M. continue to take no notice of this busines that this state will take [that] occasion to resolue w’thout his Ma’ty” and provide “promised succoure to ye Emperour”52 threatening to invade the Palatinate, Frederick’s hereditary lands. Ultimately, as Roman Catholics, the French court claimed that unless James asked them to remain neutral (and made it worth their while), “this Kings alliance obligeth his Ma’ty very much unto the other side [against Frederick].”53 Recognizing the potential offense that James might take at his forthright tone, Herbert added, “I am heer to obey, and not to give direcc’ons only I have taken the boldness to offer unto his S.M. a little discourse of [the] business as they understand it here.”54 Recognizing the boldness and riskiness of his reports, Herbert put his responsibilities to kin and country first and informed James of the French perception and perspective on his inaction, despite the fact that James may not have wanted to hear it. These details illustrate Herbert’s perception of his duty to make his case honestly, even in the face of his monarch’s displeasure. Although it is admirable that Herbert had insight into the motivations of Louis XIII, it is perhaps odd that he did not wonder whether some of the same rationales could explain the behavior of his own king. This oversight may perhaps be at least partially explained

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by Herbert’s understanding of the parameters of his courtiership, where he should act as “a cleare lampe that sheweth forth and bringeth into light … inflameth and provoketh unto virtue.”55 By this dictate, Herbert would believe that his purpose was to educate and advise those who led kingdoms. Since crowns appeared unstable around him, he reinvigorated his efforts to include in his “courting” all those in positions of power or leadership. His goal was the “training and helping forwarde of the Prince to goodnesse, and the fearing him from evil, the fruite of it.”56 As courtier, Herbert saw himself as a trusted advisor, an “instructor,” who gained the sovereign’s favor for the greater good. In keeping with the metaphysics of De Veritate, Herbert saw that he must work to become a more virtuous person, while at the same time working for a better society and world. In doing so, he would not only earn the opportunity for what he terms “Eternal Blessedness” or eternal happiness, but also create a better world.57 For Herbert, advancing good in the world culminated in both personal good and reward in the afterlife, or eternal blessedness. He describes this – what I term Herbert’s “circle of good” – as follows: The preservation of the world in general seems to depend everywhere on the preservation of individuals in particular, and so the particular Providence of nature in every creature shows itself first in individuals then imparts itself to species and genera, paying less attention to isolated cases; and returns finally by the same stages to the point at which the universal divine Providence reaches ourselves. This appears to concern itself first with the universal, then with the genus, next, at a great distance with the species and finally with the individual. Thus what is conducive to our preservation is itself preserved.58

Herbert links the personal and general good, mutual benefit or goodness flowing throughout the universe in a circular fashion.59 His idealism made what one might call the “middle tier” of ambassadorship relatively inconsequential; the individual initiative of the well-intended courtier who embodied a Platonic ideal became for him the most important means of serving his king and the good. Herbert applied his understanding of this circularity in his diplomatic dealings, particularly when reporting on his and the French perspectives on negotiations surrounding the marital alliance with

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the Infanta María of Spain. The ideal of disinterested or impartial reporting must have been made more difficult by the fact that Herbert never trusted the Spanish and grew increasingly suspicious of their dealings with England the longer he resided in France. Evidence of his concerns first surfaced in his dispatches to James about Spain’s ambassador to England, Count Gondomar,60 who had become an influential favorite of James. In February 1620, Herbert attempted to warn James of Gondomar’s untrustworthiness, stating, “The com’on voice here is that he comes to amuse the world” and “comes to giue light,”61 but “The better sort feare lest that light bring Coullor with it and deceipt.”62 Herbert, like Castiglione, noted that a courtier’s merry facade may disguise hidden motives: “Therefore is there also no paine so bitter and cruel that were a sufficient punishment for those naughtie and wicked Courtiers that make their hones and pleasant manners, and their good qualities a cloake for an ill end.”63 Thus, courtiers are responsible and, in the end, will be punished if they give poor advice or have inappropriate motives. In his Life and raigne of King Henry the Eighth, Herbert provides an example of such an individual in the depiction of Cardinal Wolsey.64 Additionally, we know from De Veritate that Herbert believes that “all religion law and philosophy and, what is more, conscience, teach openly or implicitly that punishment or reward awaits us after this life,”65 so such disreputable characters will be punished in the afterlife. Practicality required he report his concerns to James. In the negotiations for the Spanish marriage, Herbert was cast in the role of informant. In February 1623, when Prince Charles proposed a clandestine adventure to Spain with Buckingham to woo the Spanish Infanta María and finalize marriage arrangements, Herbert reported the French court’s “sense” of the ill-advised and politically dangerous trip. Herbert’s March 1623 dispatch bluntly told James the truth as he heard and saw it: “[The French court] all wth one minde, take it for granted, that your S. Majesty, doth by any meanes desire to joyne wth Spaine, wch as they inferre, out of the permission, your S. Majesty gave his Highenes to undertake a Journey … so full of danger.”66 The concern for Charles’s safety was warranted. Though Herbert indicated later in the same letter that the French government was willing to offer Charles safe

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passage through France,67 powerful factions existed within France that might have wished the Prince ill. Also, though Herbert reported that the French considered Charles safe in Spain, they doubted that the King of Spain, “havinge his Highenes in his Power, [would] really conclude the Matche, wthout some notable advantage, to himselfe.”68 Thus, if a marriage had taken place, the French suspected Spain would not easily “suffer his Highenes to returne” and that the least they imagined was “betweene Curtesy and Constraint, his Highenes wilbee detained in Spaine, till the Infanta have children, whom that Kinge will keepe, and bringe up in the Roman Catholiq religion.”69 To compound the uncertainty of such a trip, the French were “assured from Rome, that the Pope, hath not yet given a dispensation, for his Highenes, and the Infanta’s marriage.”70 Charles’s trip and the Spanish marriage were uncertain at best and potentially dangerous at worst. A savvy political observer, Herbert understood that the French wished to wait and see how the marriage negotiations concluded before deciding how to act regarding the Palatinate issue. Herbert relates, “[They] thinke it to bee somuch to the Prejudice of their Allyance and friendship wth your S.Majesty, that they take Counsaile, for reintegratinge themselves wth Spaine.”71 Given all of the attendant difficulties, both the wooing and the politics came to naught. Glyn Redworth wonders, “how the partners in a stately dance could so woefully misinterpret each other’s moves and signals.”72 and recognizes that their complex misapprehensions doomed the possibility of the marriage, creating hard feelings domestically and internationally and leading to complex, destructive long-term consequences.73 Ultimately, Herbert’s sources and recommendations proved correct, and Charles and Buckingham returned to England without the Infanta in October 1623. The Spanish marriage was off.74 When James turned to France’s Princess Henriette Marie as a possible marriage partner for Charles, he again chose not to involve Herbert in the marriage treaty negotiations. In early 1624, James sent Henry Rich, Earl of Kensington and Holland, to gather information about and eventually court Henriette Marie for Charles.75 Ever the true courtier, Herbert rose above what had to be a stinging personal and political slight to report what he had heard the French

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saying about and expecting from the negotiations. Herbert advised James to proceed carefully because he knew that the French were not necessarily negotiating in good faith. Herbert acted in keeping with his understanding of the essence of courtiership by telling James, in a dispatch on April 23, 1624, the truth of the situation as he saw it and advising James of the likely political and military ramifications of a French marriage.76 Herbert knew his input would not be well received. In a plain and forthright manner, with phrases such as “I doubt not” and “God forbidde” peppered throughout, Herbert presented his insights on the marriage negotiations. Herbert saw James as negotiating from a strategically weak position because he had agreed to so much in the Spanish marriage negotiations for the Infanta, stating that France intended, “to require the same priviledges, [the King of Spain] did,” and those at court, particularly the Jesuits, argued that it was “a business … easie for the [French] Kinge, as havinge the precedent of Spaine.”77 France expected the Spanish marriage concessions, as stated in the Treaty with Spain of July 1623,78 that decreased persecution of English Catholics (one Herbert would probably favor, but James may not have wanted to agree to), protection as a continental ally, and the contractual relinquishment of any English hereditary rights to the French throne, contending, “Yf I bee not mis-informed, they will strive to dispose your S. Majestie to relinquishe, your S. Majesties title to, and stile of Kinge of this Country, wch. God forbidde yet, your S. Majestie should ever accorde.”79 Herbert explained to James that the French were asking much and offering little and seeing this match as both easily won and profitable for them (the French) in many ways, “since, by this means, hee will ever have, a partie in England, to counterballance, those of the Relligion here, to wch, their owne comoditie of havinge a shorter passage, into your S. Majesties Cuntreys, then they could have from Spaine.”80 France’s trade relations with England would potentially be less cumbersome and more lucrative than with Spain, providing benefit to France but little to England. Herbert thought James should ask for more and consider other marital alliances for Charles (or at least threaten to), stating, “In regard wherof, your S. Majestie may bee pleased, to bring [France] … to some reall and infallible proofes, of assistinge your S. Majestie, in the recovery of

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the Palatinate, at the same time, or before, your S. Majestie makes any other Allyance.”81 Herbert also suspected a stalling tactic by the French for a number of reasons. He worried that the French were delaying negotiation, under the guise of needing time for figuring out political strategy as it related to England and the Hapsburgs, hoping to get the upper hand politically and coming out as “arbiters” of the situation: Or, yf none of these advantages, and some others, perchance, wch I have not yet discovered, can bee obtained, they pretende at least, to prolonge the treatie, that they may gaine time, to advise, how they are to behave themselves, in the warre, betwixt your S. Majestie, and the House of Austria, of wch they would render themselves, arbiters.82

Herbert was not the only one who understood the importance of appearances and was not to be outmaneuvered by the French. Also, Herbert thought that the French were distracting James, so they could oppress the French Protestants (particularly the Calvinists) before any treaty might be negotiated to protect them, stating, “in the meane time, [settling] their owne Affairs at home, to the assured detriment of those of the Relligion.”83 Determined to complete this potentially powerful alliance, however, James was probably not pleased with Herbert’s forthright manner, opinions, or advice.84 In August 1624, James recalled him to England. Herbert’s later correspondence indicates that he was accused of overreaching his position, and he was not offered another such high-level court appointment. Butler contends that Herbert’s frank dispatch ended his diplomatic career.85 Though Butler may be correct, nevertheless this was one of Herbert’s finest moments as a courtier and provided a pivotal point in his personal understanding of courtiership and whom he needed to court and serve. Set in the maelstrom of seventeenth-century religious and ­political strife, Edward Herbert’s ambassadorship to France was fraught with risk. Though Herbert traveled the Continent and its courts extensively in the years before serving as ambassador, he was inexperienced in international diplomacy per se. As a­ mbassador, Herbert sought to serve for (what he believed to be) the greater good, particularly as it related to James and England. In the

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instances where James’s commands were clear or obvious, Herbert performed, complied, and stated repeatedly, in his dispatches to James, that he “did in nothing varie from his Ma’ties commandm’t” and endeavored to hold James’s “commandem’ts in yt reuerence,” he would “neyther adde to, nor take away from their p’rfection,”86 and seek in all things to serve his sovereign. Herbert served James skillfully in many complex and politically fraught situations: renewing the oath of alliance between England and France, representing England’s trade interests,87 providing James with useful, valid, and accurate information on other European ambassadors’ visits and their implications, conveying French views on Palatinate issues, and reporting Spanish and French capabilities and troop movements, Catholic influence at the French court, and the status of Protestants in France. Herbert faced issues where religious and political motives, beliefs, powers, and egos were all intertwined. In  dealing with those issues and when faced with incomplete or vague direction, Herbert relied upon his knowledge of the situation, his metaphysical and epistemological paradigms, and his understanding of the role of courtier. If given what he considered conflicting or problematic direction, he felt it his duty to tell his sovereign the truth as he saw it. Herbert believed that as a good monarch, James would welcome his perception and understanding of the truth. Unfortunately, often James did not, or preferred not to, see the situation as Herbert did and at times perceived Herbert’s input as overreaching his position. James did not share Herbert’s ideal of the universal individual. Throughout his life, Herbert had questioned and wrestled with beliefs regarding monarchy, courtiership, and societal institutions. Moreover, he took ownership for how such concepts and institutions functioned in the world and his role in their benefit to society. He worked to be an exemplar of a public Renaissance figure, but also strove to remain entirely unique. True to his concept of truth, Herbert insisted on the unity of the general and personal good, and he pursued both as a defender of the right to individual conscience, particularly in his role of courtier. Some look at Edward Herbert as unpredictable and evaluate him on the short-term outcomes of some of his decisions: in other words, his dismissal. Increasingly, Herbert is moving out of the shadow cast by the romantic portrayal

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of his autobiography. His quest for a route to religious toleration, as seen within his philosophical treatise De Veritate, completed during his ambassadorship to France, has borne richer fruit. His idea of delving into the truths common to all religions has caused Ivan Strenski to see Herbert as one of the early fathers of the field of Religious Studies,88 a far more impressive accomplishment than the negotiation of marriage treaties that Redworth sees as contributing to the demise of the second Stuart monarchy.89 True to his concept of truth, Lord Herbert of Cherbury insisted on the unity of the general and the personal good; as a defender of the right to individual conscience, he pursued both.

Acknowledgment The author is grateful to Professor Teresa Herzog for her ­suggestions and support.

Notes   1 Edward Herbert, Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, ed. Sidney Lee (London: J. C. Nimmo, 1886), p. 183. Later known as Lord Edward Herbert of Chirbury. King James named Edward Herbert to the Irish peerage of Castle Island on May 31, 1624 and the English barony of Chirbury on May 7, 1629. Though alternative spellings of “Chirbury” and “Cherbury” exist, both Mario Rossi and John Butler decided upon Chirbury, due to the spelling of the town by that name near Herbert’s home, Montgomery Castle. Because modern scholarship refers more often to “Cherbury,” the editors of this volume have chosen the more common spelling of “Cherbury.”   2 See Chapter 6 by Anita Sherman, this volume, for a better ­understanding of Herbert’s notion of “conformity” and his historical metaphysics.  3 This chapter contains a somewhat simplified discussion of James I’s international and domestic politics, particularly as they relate to the French ambassadorship of Edward Herbert of Cherbury. Fuller discussions of the international and domestic cultural and political milieu are beyond the scope of this project, but some useful historical context is required here. For an expansive and detailed discussion

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of the political complexities of James I’s foreign policy in Europe, relating to the Palatinate, see Peter Wilson, The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy (London: Penguin, 2009) and John Butler’s discussion, “The Political Situation in England and James I’s Foreign Policy’” in Lord Edward Herbert of Chirbury (1582–1648): An Intellectual Biography (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1990), pp. 242–258; for a discussion of the proposed Spanish marriage, see Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta; and for a more general explanation, see Samuel Rawson Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution 1603–1660 (New York: Crowell, 1970).  4 Thomas Cogswell, “England and the Spanish Match,” in Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (eds), Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603–42 (London: Longman, 1989), p. 112.  5 Edward Herbert, “State Progress of Ill,” in The Poems, English and Latin, of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury 1665, ed. George Charles Moore Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), pp. 9–13. In “State Progress of Ill,” dated “Aug. 1608” and located “At Merlow in France” (p. 13), Herbert expresses his perceptions about growing divisions between the nobility and the people based upon his years touring the Continent. For a full explication of the poem and explanation of this concept, see Nancy L. Zaice, “Lord Edward Herbert of Chirbury: ‘Being’ and Creating the True Renaissance Courtier” (DPhil thesis, University of South Carolina, 2006), pp. 87–105.   6 Cogswell, “England and the Spanish Match,” p. 113.   7 Cogswell, “England and the Spanish Match,” p. 110.  8 Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts, p. 30.  9 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 89. 10 Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. Thomas Hoby (London: Dent, 1966). Italian Baldassare Castiglione’s manual of upright correctness and urbanity was not just a guide to success in international relations and to acceptable court display; it was far more. Olga Zorzi Pugliese, in “The Development of the Dialogue in Il Libro De Courtegiano: From the Manuscript Drafts to the Definitive Versions,” finds direct parallels in Plato’s Protagoras to Castiglione’s message that the work of the courtier is “to use the means at his disposal to ingratiate himself to the prince, to instruct him and teach him virtue.” In Jean-François Vallée and Dorothea B. Heitsch (eds), Printed Voices: The Renaissance Culture of Dialogue (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), p. 81. 11 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 43.

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12 Chapter 4 by Michael Schoenfeldt, this volume, catalogues some of these perspectives and provides a nuanced evaluation of Herbert’s behavior. 13 One of the four forms of truth in Herbert’s metaphysical paradigm includes what he terms “truth of appearance” or veritas apparentiae, the actual manifestation of a thing in the material world. For a complete explanation of the four forms of truth, see Zaice, “‘Being’ and Creating the True Renaissance Courtier,” pp. 87–105, 106–39. 14 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 189, n. 2. 15 Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, pp. 241–2. Jemma Field, in “‘Orderinge Things Accordinge to his Majesties Comaundment’: The funeral of the Stuart  queen  consort Anna of Denmark,” argues that Queen Anne’s ostentatious funeral was designed to emphasize the power and wealth of the Stuart monarchy and to increase the chances of a Hapsburg match. Women’s History Review, 30.5 (2021), 835–55. 16 Herbert, Autobiography, pp. 190–1. 17 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 237. 18 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 120. 19 Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, p. 300, n. 14. 20 Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, p. 300, n. 14. 21 Old Herbert Papers, pp. 213 and 136, respectively. Edward Herbert’s second ambassadorship began in February 1622. 22 Old Herbert Papers, p. 261. 23 Old Herbert Papers, pp. 90, 258–69. At least four requests can be found in Old Herbert Papers, including ones dated December 24, 1619, December 30, 1619, January 8, 1620, and January 30, 1620. 24 Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, p. 299, n. 12. Sir Robert Naunton (1563–1635) served as Secretary of State (1618–21). 25 Old Herbert Papers, p. 267. Though dates are recorded using old style (Julian) dating on the dispatches, we have converted all dates to current new style (Gregorian) dating. 26 Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, pp. 305–8. Butler includes a full discussion of Herbert’s attempts to receive salary and expenses from James and Charles. Butler contends that the ambassadorship “nearly bankrupted him,” and Herbert never fully recovered financially from it. 27 Cogswell, “England and the Spanish Match,” p. 107. Formal negotiations opened in 1617. Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts, p. 24. 28 Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, p. 245. 29 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 90. 30 Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, p. 259. Butler contends he and Mario M. Rossi agree on this.

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31 Castiglione, The Courtier, p. 279. 32 Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, p. 91. During the years 1611–14, Herbert spent his time alternately between the court and the country. I would contend that during that period he would likely have at least made acquaintance with James’s daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, who married Frederick, the Elector Palatine in 1613 (p. 115). In his Autobiography, Herbert mentions visiting the couple multiple times in Heidelberg and for lengthy stays in the years preceding his ambassadorship (pp. 151, 176). Butler contends that the Elector was known as “idealistic, wellintentioned, and high[ly] principled” (p. 115, n. 6) and the Electress as “charming, intelligent and beautiful … inspiring loyalty wherever she went” (pp. 115–16, n. 6). The closeness of Herbert’s friendship with the “Winter Queen” Elizabeth is demonstrated in her letter to him from The Hague, included in the “Appendix” to the Autobiography on p. 356. 33 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 263. 34 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 263. During Herbert’s ambassadorship, the Styria, now part of Austria, was a duchy of the Holy Roman Empire. 35 Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, p. 247. 36 In 1526, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand assumed the throne; a monarchy that theretofore had been elected was assumed to have ­ become hereditary. When Bohemians reasserted their old right of election, the action was interpreted as a threat to hereditary monarchies in general. 37 Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, pp. 248–9. 38 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, pp. 243, 263. 39 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 264. 40 In recent correspondence, Greg Miller pointed to George Herbert’s Latin poems, presented as part of an anthology to Frederick and Elizabeth, contending that George seems to anticipate the possibility of war, asking that Frederick gaze on Elizabeth’s face with admiration, but “not with such a face / As consults, or calls people to war.” George Herbert’s Latin Verse, p. 179. 41 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 243. 42 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 253. 43 Old Herbert Papers alone contains ten dispatches, dated September 1, 1619, September 9, 1619, November 4, 1619, December 14/21, 1619, and December 31, 1619, undated (believed January 1619), January 8, 1620, February 15/25, 1620, and June 29, 1620. These requests all come before the February 5, 1620 dispatch where Herbert complains about his curtailed speech in the matter.

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44 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 202. 45 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 254. 46 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 262. 47 Castiglione, The Courtier, p. 262. Castiglione believed that “good” monarchs “have more scarcitie than of anything els, of that which they neede to have more plentie of, than any other thing; namely, of such as should tell them the truth” and would never punish a courtier for telling something he did not want to hear. 48 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 274. 49 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 264. 50 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 265. 51 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 265. 52 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, pp. 266, 265. 53 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 266. 54 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 266. 55 Castiglione, The Courtier, pp. 31–2. 56 Castiglione, The Courtier, p. 261. 57 Most, if not all, of Herbert’s actions make sense when viewed through his personal values and epistemological paradigm, though his autobiography’s entertaining and colorful prose often clouds readers’ ­judgment. 58 Herbert, De Veritate, ed. Meyrick H. Carré, p. 136. 59 Zaice, “‘Being’ and Creating the True Renaissance Courtier,” pp. 45–6. 60 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 236, n. 4. Diego Sarmiento de Acuna, Count de Gondomar. Ambassador to England 1613–18 and 1620–2. Gondomar was the chief negotiator of the Spanish match, traveling to Spain in 1622 to complete it. 61 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, pp. 278–9. 62 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 279. 63 Castiglione, The Courtier, p. 265. 64 Edward Herbert, The life and raigne of King Henry the Eighth, 1649 (London, 1672). 65 Herbert, De Veritate, p. 301. 66 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 463. 67 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 464. 68 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 463. 69 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p 464. 70 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 63. 71 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 463. 72 Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta, p. 1. 73 Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta, pp. 134–40.

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74 Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta, p. 138; Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, p. 291. 75 Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, pp. 292, 304, n. 32. 76 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, pp. 465–6. 77 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 465. 78 Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta, pp. 181–2. 79 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 466. 80 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 465. 81 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 466. 82 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 466. 83 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 466. 84 Prince Charles and the French princess wed in 1625. 85 Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, p. 294. 86 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, pp. 98, 239. 87 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 91. Herbert mediated such disputes surrounding France’s 1619 commandeering of an English ship “in the Roade of Tunis laden w’th goods and merchandize to the value of 10000li by one Mansini of the ffrench Kings Chamber.” 88 Ivan Strenski, Thinking About Religion: An Historical Introduction to Theories of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 9–27. 89 Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta, p. 140.

4

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Ceremony and self: Belligerent civility in Edward Herbert’s Autobiography Michael Schoenfeldt

The so-called Autobiography of Edward Herbert, eldest brother of George Herbert, is a peculiar work. The volume contains an unstable amalgamation of swashbuckling adventure, international intrigue, rampant narcissism, and deistic conviction. With no apparent irony, Herbert tells us that he mysteriously grows taller between the ages of 36 and 40 while in France. He also announces that he was inexplicably lighter than men far shorter and slenderer than he. He boasts, moreover, that “the shirts, waistcoats, and other garments I wear next my body, are sweet, beyond what either easily can be believed, or hath been observed in any else.”1 Yet in its self-absorbed idiosyncrasies, Herbert’s Autobiography measures the dogged resistance of the raw materials of history to the generic patterns and value systems through which we aspire to understand them. Unlike the profound inwardness explored in the devotional poetry of his younger brother George, the Autobiography is an aggressively superficial work. Where Edward traveled frequently to the Continent, particularly France, and became a part of the European intellectual community, George never left England, despite the rebellious threat in his poem “The Collar”: “No more; / I will abroad” (ll. 1–2). But like George, who hoped that his devotional poems would “ryme [the reader] to good,” Edward defends his work on utilitarian grounds, hoping that it “may best declare me, and be most useful to … my posterity.”2 The work is written by a sixty-year-old disgruntled courtier under the pressures of a civil war that made the neutrality to which he aspired impossible to sustain; it is nonetheless a valuable record of the frivolous, violent, vain, yet strangely familiar world of early modern England.3 If

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The Temple is George Herbert’s lyric evidence of his struggles for ­spiritual submission, the Autobiography is Edward Herbert’s prose narrative of his battles to achieve social mastery. In it, Edward reveals himself to be as attentive to the nuances of social ceremony as George was  to the rhythms of devotional liturgy. While the contrast between the younger brother’s searing devotional subjectivity and the elder brother’s aggressive superficiality could not be more absolute, they have more in common than might initially be apparent. Both brothers are immensely learned, and both are fine poets. Both show a fine-tuned sensitivity to the nuances of behavior, appearance, and status. Together, they tell us something valuable about the hazards and prospects of selfhood in early modern Europe. The Autobiography enters the public domain by aptly ­anomalous means. While George’s poems are published posthumously, probably through the intervention of Nicholas Ferrar, Edward’s Autobiography remains an ignored family document into the eighteenth century. The work was discovered by Horace Walpole among a group of manuscripts at Powis Castle, and the response of its first audience is not auspicious. “I took it up and soon threw it down again,” Walpole relates, “as the dullest thing I ever saw.” He takes it home with him, and then decides to read from the manuscript to a grieving friend to “amuse her”; soon, reports Walpole, “we could not get on for laughing and screaming.” Walpole decides such an amusing work must be published, but Lord Powis refuses, apparently unwilling to sanction a publication which could bring mockery and disgrace upon an ancestor. Walpole, however, “sat down and wrote a flattering dedication to Lord Powis, which I knew he would swallow; he did, and gave up his ancestor.”4 Appropriately, the aristocratic vanity that suffuses the text also plays a central role in its initial publication. Edward Herbert’s earliest memories demonstrate the processes by which the child is indeed the father to the man. “The very furthest thing I remember,” notes Herbert, “is, that when I understood what was said by other[s], I did yet forbear to speak lest I should utter something that were imperfect or impertinent.”5 This performative anxiety – projected uncannily onto the memories of what it was like to be a toddler – really is the primal scene of the

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Renaissance ­courtier, terrified of being judged, of saying something that is not appropriate to the occasion at hand. And when the child Herbert finally does choose to speak, his first utterance entails a philosophical question about his place in the universe: “When I came to talk, one of the furthest inquiries I made was, how I came into this world.” The initial response to this precocious toddler is astonishment: “I was wondered at by others, who said, they never heard a child but myself ask that question.”6 One can see in the s­elf-aggrandizing construction of these early memories both a nervous obsession with how he is perceived by others and a philosophical concern with the fundamentals of existence. While philosophical concerns will play a major role in other parts of Edward Herbert’s varied oeuvre, a preoccupation with the impression he makes on others continues to stalk the Autobiography. When he first goes to court – out of “curiosity,” he assures the reader, “rather than ambition” – he manages to catch the aging Queen Elizabeth’s eye: “As soon as she saw me, she stopped, and … demanded, ‘Who is this?’” When told who he is, and whom he had married, “The Queen said it is pity he was married so young, and thereupon gave her hand to kiss twice, both times gently clapping me on the cheek.”7 One frequently wonders if his memory of Elizabeth’s flirtation is modified by his excessive self-regard. A  similar scenario plays out much later, at the ceremony where he was made Knight of the Bath by King James. Herbert remembers of this occasion that “I could tell how much my person was commended by the lord and ladies that came to see the ­solemnity.”8 Repeatedly, Herbert will construe himself as the cynosure of attention. We need to remember that such self-regard is not simply a ­narcissistic pathology; rather, it is an almost inevitable product of a world in which status is at best ephemeral, based on one’s capacity to attract and sustain the attention of others.9 This exaggerated scrutiny of the effect one has on others can also be turned inward, on the self, as a kind of manic self-control. But such self-control can result in sudden explosions of furious anger. Herbert concedes that he possesses a predisposition to “choler and passion.” He  shares this predisposition with his brother George, who, Edward tells us, “was not exempt from passion and choler, being infirmities to

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which all our Race is subject.” Whereas George will channel his anger into a remarkable poem of choleric rebellion – “The Collar” – Edward will engage in a multitude of quarrels over perceived slights of honor. The oath sworn by the Knights of the Bath provides Edward with a convenient excuse for indulging his proclivity to choler. Herbert announces that the responsibilities of a knight entail the effort to enforce justice by whatever means are necessary: “never to sit in a place where injustice should be done, but they shall right it to the uttermost of their power; and particularly ladies and gentlewomen that shall be wronged in their honour, if they demand assistance.” Herbert concedes that this self-aggrandizing oath is “not unlike the romances of knight errantry.”10 Herbert boasts about “how strictly I held myself to my oath of knighthood,” and claims, somewhat disingenuously, that “I never had a quarrel with man for my own sake … I never without occasion quarreled with anybody.”11 As we will see, his definition of the appropriate justification for a quarrel could be disputed. Perhaps Shakespeare’s Hotspur suffered from the same righteous delusion. The invocation of the antiquated literary genre of ­knight-errantry proves apropos; some of the most ludicrous moments of the Autobiography derive from Herbert’s truly quixotic attempts to live up to these increasingly archaic expectations. While in France to “attain knowledge of foreign countries,” for example, Herbert attempts to restore a “knot of ribbon” which a “French chevalier” takes from the head of a 10-year-old girl. Herbert approaches the chevalier “courteously, with hat in my hand, [and] desired him to do me the honour, that I may deliver the lady her ribbon.”12 When the chevalier refuses, Herbert threatens violence; the chevalier then flees with Herbert in hot pursuit. The chevalier then gives the ribbon to the girl, which enrages Herbert, who wants credit for heroically forcing the restoration of the ribbon. Herbert then challenges the chevalier to a duel, as if mortal violence were commensurate to the injured honor. But this duel, like so many of the duels that Herbert p ­ recipitates, is never fought. In this episode, which we might call “the rape of the ribbon,” the pursuit of knightly honor unintentionally elicits its opposite. What starts out as a battle for prestige quickly

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becomes preposterous farce. This episode entails one of those many unfought duels that Lawrence Stone has explored, duels in which “the challenge itself acted as a safety valve for that ferocity of language which contemporaries seemed quite unable to control … Violence in word or deed was thus regulated, codified, restricted, sterilized.”13 This is a culture in which honor and status are tied to the ability to threaten, and damage, other’s bodies. “The issues men fought over,” argues Stone, “were prestige and property, in that order … a gentleman carried a weapon at all times, and did not hesitate to use it.”14 Herbert feels that the continual threat of violence is particularly necessary for social prestige in France; he asserts that in France, “there [is] scarce any man thought worth the looking on that had not killed some other in duel.”15 It is telling not just that he links status to violence, but also that he expresses status in terms of being observed, of being “thought worth the looking on.” That fastidious attention to the ways one is scrutinized even pervades the culture’s violent propensities. Norbert Elias has proposed that “one of the most decisive transitions” in what he calls the “Civilizing Process” of western Europe “is that of warriors to courtiers.”16 This was particularly true under the comparatively peace-loving James I. As Malcolm Smuts argues, the Jacobean peace “affected the way ordinary courtiers defined their conduct and their relationship to the King.” Smuts in fact singles out the career of “Lord Herbert of Cherbury” as a vivid example of “the dangers and frustrations faced by men trying to fulfill in James’s reign the neo-chivalric courtly ideals personified by Elizabethans like Sir Philip Sidney and the second Earl of Essex.”17 Herbert’s autobiography reveals the jagged fault lines of this seismic transition. As he reveals in the Autobiography, the family’s aristocratic prestige is steeped in blood. His grandfather achieved authority on the wild Welsh border through the exercise of martial accomplishment: “My Grand-Father was noted to be a great enemy to the Outlaws and Thieves of his time, who robbed in great numbers in the Mountains in Montgomeryshire.”18 His brother Richard possessed “much Reputation both in the wars [in the Netherlands] and for fighting single Duels, which were many, in so much that between both, he carried, as I have been told, the

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scars of four and twenty wounds upon him to his grave.” His brother William fought in “the Wars in Denmark … and then went to the Wars in the Low Countreys but lived not long after.”19 A brother named Thomas fought in Germany, “where he shewed such forwardness, as no man in that great army before him was more adventurous on all ­occasions.”20 Thomas also “fought divers times with greate Courage and Successe with divers men in single fight.”21 Even Henry, who became Master of the Revels, “hath given severall proofs of his Courage in Duells.”22 In many ways, the ­comparatively pacifist George was the outlier in this family of warriors.23 The Herberts, then, were a family whose status was achieved and sustained largely through the exercise of military valor. But Edward feels it is critical that youth nonetheless be trained in the nuances of courtly behavior. They should be taught “how to come in and go out of a room where company is, how to make courtesies handsomely, according to the several degrees of persons he shall encounter, how to put off and hold his hat.”24 He recommends in particular Stefano Guazzo’s Civil Conversation and Giovanni Della Casa’s Galateo as books which describe “the discreet civility which is to be observed in communication either with friends or strangers.”25 “Precepts in this point,” Herbert continues, “will be  found more useful to young gentlemen, than all the subtleties of the schools.”26 The Autobiography repeatedly betrays a culture whose languages of status are mired in a military culture that is no longer relevant to courtly conduct. Edward Herbert indeed views the battle for status at court as analogous to actual warfare, and directly compares the deployment of verbal sparring necessary in the battles for prestige at court to the maneuvers of actual battle: A man’s wit is best showed in his answer, and his valour in his defense … as men learn in fencing how to ward all blows and thrusts, … so it will be fitting to debate and resolve beforehand what you are to say and do upon any affront given you, lest otherwise you should be surprised.27

Both warfare and courtiership require profound p ­ remeditation of one’s tactics, particularly because this is a world in which success

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depends on one’s capacity for defense against the a­ggression of others. Under the precise manners and silken finery of the Renaissance court, a status bloodbath was being continually waged that threatened to erupt in the physical violence it so often resembled. The Autobiography is replete with the threats of physical and verbal violence by which the battles for status and esteem were waged. Herbert is particularly sensitive to the nuances of honor and decorum by which a precarious prestige was achieved and sustained in the courts of Europe. In one particularly absurd encounter, Herbert tells a Frenchman that “I heard he had a fair mistress … and that I would maintain I had a worthier mistress than he.” The Frenchman responds with a clever blend of bluster and burlesque: “If we try who is the abler man to serve his mistress, let both of us get two wenches, and he that does his business best, let him be the braver man.”28 Herbert, though, seems to miss the joke completely. Instead of allowing masculinist humor to defuse the tense situation, as the Frenchman invites him to do, Herbert insults the fellow, and “look[s] somewhat disdainfully on him.” Ultimately, though, no duel ensues. Later, in an inn, Herbert overhears one “speak of King James, my master, in a very scornful manner.” Although Herbert could have ignored the comment, he instead dares all the interlocutors to fight. Battle is averted by their agreeing to “ask the King’s forgiveness, wherewith also the King’s health being drank around the table, I departed.”29 It is easy to see how a belligerent individual such as Edward could choose to conflate points of personal honor and occasions of patriotic pride. When Herbert is appointed ambassador to France in 1619 at the urging of the Duke of Buckingham, this conflation becomes part of his job description.30 The earl of Worcester, though, offers an appropriate warning to the easily incensed Herbert, telling him “that being now made ambassador, and a public person, [he] ought not to entertain private quarrels.”31 Initially, Herbert seems surprisingly capable of pouring oil over troubled waters. As he relates, When I came to Paris the English and French were in very ill ­intelligence with each other, insomuch that one [Englishman] … was

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assaulted and hurt upon Pontneuf, only because he was an English Man. Nevertheless, after I had been in Paris about a Month, All the English were so wellcome thither, that no other Nation was so acceptable amongst them.32

But the role of peacemaker proves difficult for the excitable Herbert to sustain in practice. Herbert tells us his primary ambassadorial mission is to “regain the honour which the Spaniard pretended to have gotten” from the previous ambassador by an admittedly “small punctilio.” His efforts to regain his nation’s honor blend slapstick comedy and tactical ingenuity. On his way to visit the French king, Herbert’s coach overtakes that of the Spanish ambassador, which produces a quandary: “either I must go the Spanish pace, which is slow, or if I lusted to pass him, that must hazard the suffering of some affront like unto that our former ambassador received.”33 Herbert resolves to pass him, and to use the occasion “to redeem the honour of the King my master some way or other.” The episode fuses the scurrilous and the sublime. After they exchange “some extravagant compliments,” the Spanish ambassador “took his leave of me, went to a dry ditch not fahr off, upon pretence of making water, but indeed to hold the upper hand of me while I passed by.”34 In response, Herbert “left my coach, and getting upon a spare horse I had there, rode into the same dry ditch, and … bid him afterwards to get to his coach … the Spanish ambassador, who understood me well, went to his coach grumbling and discontented.” Despite his obvious pleasure in retelling his victory, Herbert suggests that he “should scarce have mentioned this passage, but that the Spaniards do so much stand upon their pundonores [points of honor].”35 Trying desperately to distance himself from the punctilious Spanish, Herbert betrays a sense of self that is intimately bound up with the very ceremonies he attempts to deride. Indeed, Herbert relates an anecdote that suggests chillingly that shallow surfaces and trivial ceremonies may be all we have. An ambassador was scolded by King Philip of Spain for paying too much attention to “some such pundonore as this.” He had a bold response that gets at the core of this savagely superficial society: “How, for a ceremony? Your Majesty’s self is but a ceremony.”36

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Belligerent civility in Edward Herbert’s Autobiography 109

While Herbert does not elaborate on the implications of this audacious reply, the anecdote indicates that even the most fundamental political distinction hinges on nothing more substantial than ceremony. It is perhaps no accident that the question of whether monarchy is anything more than an empty ceremony is being fought over in England as the aging Herbert writes his Autobiography. This desperate assertion of the essential importance of allegedly superficial enterprises can help us begin to understand the apparently irrational bluster Herbert repeatedly engages in. If a f­undamental sense of self hinges on such frivolous solemnities, then they are indeed worth fighting for. Indeed, failing to honor someone according to their status could produce devastating results. As Norbert Elias argues, the liturgy of extravagant deference that infused courtly behavior was not just empty ritual: In court society … the chance of preceding another, or sitting while he had to stand, or the depth of the bow with which one was greeted … were not mere externals … They were literal documentations of social existence, notations of the place one currently occupied in the court hierarchy.37

Rituals of courtly deference performed and exhibited one’s place in the social hierarchy. This is why failures of such rituals can be so hazardous. In France Herbert meets a man and “saluted him without much ceremony.”38 Herbert is then put under house arrest by this person, who happens to be the Governor of Lyon; the Frenchman is “much offended” at Herbert’s “behavior and language.”39 Addressing someone with the appropriate ceremony is frequently the difference between friction and friendship. In part because of his unrestrained belligerence, and in part because of his inability to sustain this impossibly delicate dance of ceremonial precedence, Herbert’s ambassadorial career is at best a mixed success. Herbert is recalled from France for challenging the French favorite, the Duc de Luynes, to a duel. But Luynes died soon after from a fever, and Herbert was sent back to France with “no instructions, but [to] leave all things to my discretion.”40 This carte blanche may reflect the confidence that James I had in Herbert. But Herbert’s task was made even more difficult by the turbulent and

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changing currents of international politics. The English were at that time seeking a marriage between Prince Charles and the Spanish princess. Herbert was placed in a deeply compromising situation, trying to maintain good relations with the French while not interfering with English interests in Spain. These contrary vectors pressure all his ambassadorial encounters and transform even a casual dinner into an international incident. In such a world, the most mundane requests take on great p ­ ersonal and international importance. When passing through France, for example, Count Gondomar, the former Spanish ambassador to England (the subject of a devastating satire in Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess), asks to borrow a coach from Herbert. Herbert apparently reads the situation brilliantly, telling Gondomar “after a free and merry manner, he should not have my coach … because he would put a jealousy betwixt me and the French, as if I inclined more to the Spanish side than to theirs.”41 Gondomar then asks to dine with Herbert. Herbert’s response superbly dodges the implicit political pitfalls of accidental ­partisanship: “I told him, by his good favour, he should not dine with me at that time, and that when I would entertain the ambassador of so great a King as his, it should not be upon my ordinary, but that I would make him a feast worthy of so great a person.”42 Herbert then proceeds to exhibit the purportedly typical fare that he deems unworthy of such an exalted guest as Gondomar: three spits full of meat, divers pots of boiled meat, and an oven, with store of pies in it, and a dresser board, covered with all manner of good fowl, and some tarts, pans with tarts in them after the French manner … [and] a dozen or sixteen dishes of sweetmeats, all which was but the ordinary allowance for my table.

Herbert proves himself here an able master of ceremonies, ­transforming his deferential refusal of hospitality into a compliment to Gondomar while exhibiting his own magnificence through a lavishly furnished table that he describes as mundane. The essence of conspicuous consumption, the meal becomes a fully political occasion that Herbert handles deftly. And Gondomar is appropriately admiring, confessing that “he meant only to put a trick upon me, which he found I had discovered, and that he thought

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Belligerent civility in Edward Herbert’s Autobiography 111

that an Englishman had not known how to avoid handsomely a trick put upon him under a show of civility.”43 Such acrobatic ­performances of a precarious prestige were the quotidian milieu of the Renaissance ambassador. But despite many such provisional victories, Herbert’s mission in France was unlikely to succeed in the long term. Indeed, when Charles and Buckingham pass through Paris on their way back to England from Spain, eager for war with Spain, they do not contact Herbert. Ironically, the voyage to Spain was itself implicated in the same literary genre of chivalric romance that seems so frequently to cause Herbert to stumble. Herbert quotes the Duke of Savoy to the effect that Charles and Buckingham’s trip to Spain “was a trick of those ancient knights errants, who went up and down the world after that manner to undo enchantments.”44 The political slight was profound, and the damage to Herbert’s position and reputation irreparable. Herbert, though, concludes the Autobiography just before his impending recall from France, and so manages to end on a note of some triumph. He mentions that he has just finished his De Veritate, a work humbly dedicated to “the whole human race.” In it, Herbert attempts to identify the five notions common to all religions. He describes the book with characteristic modesty as “so different from any thing which had been written heretofore, I found I must either renounce the authority of all that had been written formerly concerning the method of finding out truth … or hazard myself to a general censure.”45 Uncertain whether to publish this truly radical work, even after the great Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius urges him to do so, Herbert takes his manuscript, kneels, and asks for “some sign from heaven.” He immediately hears “a loud though gentle noise … from the heavens, for it was like nothing on earth, which did so comfort and cheer me, that I took my petition as granted.” As a result, “I resolved to print my book.”46 Herbert’s interpretation of what the thunder said is enhanced by the anomalous meteorological conditions: the noise comes from “the serenest sky that ever I saw, being without all cloud.” Herbert, then, uses divine inspiration to authorize his profound challenge to biblical revelation. This literally astonishing moment allows Herbert to conclude his autobiography on a note not of diplomatic failure but rather of heavenly approval.

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Like some of his younger brother’s devotional poems (as in “The Collar” and “Jordan [II]”), the work closes with a sound that can be interpreted as the voice of God. It is perhaps telling that one of the central tenets of De Veritate is that every religion believes that the deity hears and answers prayers. In the novel Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes, the narrator exclaims: “What a curious vanity it is of the present to expect the past to suck up to it.”47 One of the many rewards of reading an intransigent and largely unsatisfying text from the past such as Herbert’s Autobiography is that it does not suck up to us. Its frequently insufferable vanity prevents us from liking only those parts of the past that make us feel better about ourselves. The work offers a necessary if unpalatable complement to the somewhat more comforting vision of the Renaissance self that is made available in the devotional work of Edward’s justly celebrated younger brother George. The Autobiography is a hard book to read, in part because it is written with a remarkable lack of self-consciousness by a vainglorious and belligerent narcissist. But those traits were at least in part produced and nurtured by the world of immense but elusive privilege inhabited by the Renaissance aristocracy, in which identity is an ever-changing status commodity in a world of shifting allegiances. It is perhaps tempting but ultimately unsatisfying to cushion the work’s weirdness in a cozy blanket of irony. In one of the few sustained recent readings of the book, Eugene Hill suggests that Herbert is “laughing along all the way” with us.48 But I think this is too easily insulates us from the profound discomfort the book should elicit. Christine Jackson gets closer to the truth when she argues that “Herbert’s notorious vanity was in reality a thin veneer which hid the inadequacies he struggled to overcome in his drive to develop and maintain a masculine identity worthy of his lineage.”49 And the strain of concealment is betrayed in the various places where that veneer begins to shred. As we locate the Autobiography in the uneven trajectory of Herbert’s multifarious career, we might ask with his friend Ben Jonson: “What man art thou, that art so many men, / All-virtuous Herbert?”50 Rife with radical inconsistency, the Autobiography manifests in particularly egregious form the multiple personalities that history and criticism

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Belligerent civility in Edward Herbert’s Autobiography 113

tend to amalgamate into one. It is fascinating, moreover, to think about what Herbert does not describe in this memoir, things we would find much more interesting than the endless duels and battles for status he chooses to narrate. We want to know what it was like to be the friend of John Donne and Ben Jonson. We want to know so much more about what it was really like to be George’s brother, Henry Herbert’s brother, and Magdalen Herbert’s eldest son. Rather than telling us these things, though, Herbert chooses instead to give us a life immersed in a network of fluctuating political connections and complex social interactions, assuming that would be of much greater interest, and use, to posterity. There, too, we can measure some of the distance between our own limited if deep engagements with the period, and the period’s sense of what is important to convey to the future. When he published the manuscript, Walpole anticipated that readers would be astonished to discover that “the History of Don Quixote was [also] the Life of Plato.”51 Herbert is, in the words of his most recent editor, J. M. Shuttleworth, “the last knight-errant and the first deist.”52 Throughout the work, and certainly throughout his life, Edward Herbert displays a volatile mix of medieval ethics and modern ideas, of superannuated chivalry and strategic cunning, of thoughtless self-absorption and ecumenical capaciousness. Like so many of the products of this period we sometimes call the Renaissance, the work exhibits a sobering compound of values we share, and attitudes we abhor. The pugnaciously epidermal quality of the Autobiography reminds us that appearance can be substance, that literary genre can determine conduct, and that history is always at best an unstable and partially indigestible mixture of forward-looking apprehensions and retrograde assumptions. Reading the Autobiography forces us to acknowledge the chafing of our contemporary notions of integral selfhood against the strange and strained selfhood of early modernity, articulated more by violence than introspection. With one leg firmly planted in the Middle Ages and the other striding toward the Enlightenment, Edward Herbert reminds us of the awkward, lumbering transitions that constitute the period we call the Renaissance.

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Notes  1 There are two editions of Edward Herbert’s autobiography: The Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, ed. Sidney Lee, and The Life of Edward, First Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written by himself, ed. J. M. Shuttleworth. Throughout this chapter, I have used the former (2nd revd edn, 1906), while always checking it against the latter, which is an original spelling edition. Here, pp. 111–13.  2 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 1.   3 See Chapter 6 by Anita Sherman, this volume.  4 Herbert, Autobiography, p. xli.  5 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 15  6 Herbert, Autobiography, pp. 15–16.   7 Herbert, Autobiography, pp. 43–4.   8 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 44.   9 See Alexandra Shepard, Accounting for Oneself: Worth, Status and the Social Order in Early Modern England  (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 10 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 45. 11 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 51. 12 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 49. 13 Lawrence Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy: 1558 to 1641 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 244. On the duel in European history, see also Victor G. Kiernan, The Duel in European History: Honour and the Reign of Aristocracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); and on the English concept of aristocratic honor, see Mervyn James, “English Politics and the Concept of Honor,” in Culture, Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 308–414. 14 Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy (1965), pp. 223–4. 15 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 52. 16 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process. Vol. 2: Power and Civility, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon, 1982), p. 259. 17 Malcolm Smuts, “Cultural Diversity and Cultural Change at the Court of James I,” in Linda Levy Peck (ed.), The Mental World of the Jacobean Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 110. See also Richard McCoy, Rites of Knighthood: The Literature and Politics of Elizabethan Chivalry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). 18 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 3. 19 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 8.

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20 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 9. 21 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 10. 22 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 9. 23 George’s last oration as University Orator at Cambridge was an untimely and undiplomatic praise of peace at a moment when the country was clamoring for war. See Joseph Summers, George Herbert: His Religion and Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), pp. 40–2; Kenneth Alan Hovey, “Holy War and Civil Peace: George Herbert’s Jacobean Politics,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture, 11 (1985), 112–19; Chapter 2 by Greg Miller, this volume; and my Prayer and Power: George Herbert and Renaissance Courtship (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 33–6. 24 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 38. 25 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 42. 26 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 43. 27 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 36. 28 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 65. 29 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 97. 30 On the complex representational duties of a Renaissance ­ambassador, see Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (Cosimo Classics, 1955), and Timothy Hampton, Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009). 31 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 101. 32 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 96. 33 Herbert, Autobiography, 109–10. 34 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 110. 35 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 110. 36 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 111. 37 Norbert Elias, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon, 1983), p. 94. 38 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 90. 39 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 91. 40 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 123. 41 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 127. 42 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 127. 43 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 127. 44 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 130. 45 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 133. 46 Herbert, Autobiography, pp. 133–4. 47 Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot (London: Jonathan Cape, 1984), p. 130.

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48 Eugene D. Hill, Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Twayne’s English Authors Series. (Boston, MA: G. K. Hall, 1987), p. 109. 49 Christine Jackson, “Memory and the Construction and Experience of Elite Masculinity in the Seventeenth-Century Autobiography of Lord Herbert of Cherbury,” Gender and History, 25.1 (2013), 126. 50 Ben Jonson: The Complete Poems, ed. George Parfitt (London: Penguin, 1988), p. 73, “To Sir Edward Herbert,” ll. 1–2. 51 Quoted by H. W. Blunt, “The Philosophy of Herbert of Cherbury,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1.3 (1889–90), 117. 52 Shuttleworth, The Life, p. 57.

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Part II

Reconsidering conformity, community, and universality

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5 “Gerson, a Spirituall Man”: Herbert and the University of Paris’s reformist chancellor Christopher Hodgkins

This chapter will address an almost cursory allusion and its deeper implications. In Chapter 26 of The Country Parson, “The Parson’s eye,” George Herbert makes a brief, positive reference to Jean Charlier de Gerson (1363–1429), a late medieval French Catholic theologian and Chancellor of the University of Paris with whom the Protestant priest-poet had a good deal in common. Herbert is discussing how the country parson’s watchful eye can help his parishioners to achieve the proper balance between an overly abundant diet and an abstemious one, and in doing so he notes that “Phisicians bid those that would live in health … to feed variously, now more, now lesse.” Then Herbert invokes “Gerson, a spirituall man, [who] wisheth all to incline rather to too much, then to too little; his reason is, because diseases of exinanition” – that is, ­undereating – “are more dangerous, then diseases of repletion” – that is, overeating.1 That is the entire quotation. Yet this fleeting mention suggests Herbert’s greater debts to this man who once led the University of Paris. Resemblances and differences between Herbert and Gerson will be considered in order to shed a clearer light not only on the specific issue at hand – the spiritual and physical consequences of diet and their relation to ascetic discipline and social order – but also on Herbert’s individualized pastoral theology, and his habitual interest in discovering truth across sectarian and national lines. As we do so, we should bear in mind Gerson’s high standing among Protestants in Herbert’s day, as well as Gerson’s context of late medieval church upheaval; for

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after his birth in 1363, Gerson lived most of his life under a divided western Christendom, as the Avignon papacy attempted to make its own definitive break with Rome, if not with “Romanism.”2 Given Gerson’s famed role in this late medieval schism, the most salient thing to understand about Herbert’s relation to Gerson is that this Frenchman was very much a Protestant’s kind of Catholic. While this claim may sound patronizing or even faintly insulting to Gerson, it is a fact of Gerson’s reception history that he was a posthumous favorite of the men who, about a century after his death in 1429, permanently divided Christendom and made the definitive break with Rome. Though we should exercise care in claiming “proto-Protestant” status for a late medieval reformist like Gerson, it is nevertheless true that Martin Luther (1484–1546), Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), and John Calvin (1509–64) admired Gerson’s thinking and his piety, and cited him as an authority in their writings, Luther most of all.3 For instance, in Tischreden (Table Talk) No. 1288 (December 1531), Luther numbers Gerson among the “ceteri patres” (“other fathers”) to whom reformed believers should look for spiritual guidance;4 and in Table Talk No. 1346 (January–March 1532) he praises Gerson for writing “tres libros, quod papa autoritate divina scripturae sit subiectus” (“three books to show that by divine authority the pope is subject to the Scriptures”).5 Furthermore, in Tischreden No. 5523 (Winter 1542–3), Luther holds forth at some length in a congeries of German and Latin on Gerson as a morning star of reformation – however wavering at times: Ir wist nicht, in quantis tenebris fuerimus sub papatu. Gerson ist der beste; der fieng an, wiewol er nicht gar gewiß war, wo er darin war, idoch kam er dohin, das er die distinction funde in hac quaestione, utrum [num] in omnibus sit obtemperandum potestati papae: Quod scilicet non esset peccatum mortale non obtemperare, und hieng doch hinan: Si non fieret ex contemptu. Er durffte sich nicht erwegen, das er den riß hett gar her durch gethan. Doch was es den leuten etwas tröstlichs; drumb nenneten sie in doctorem consolatorium, und daucht sie viel sein. Er ist daruber auch condemnatus (Er ist aber vom Papst auch als ein Ketzer verdammt und in Bann gethan worden). Drumb hies mich der cardinalis zu Augspurg auch ein Gersonisten, cum a papam appelarem ad concilium Constantinum.6

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George Herbert and Jean Charlier de Gerson 121 You don’t know in what darkness we were under the papacy. Gerson is the best; he began [to attack the papacy], although he was not altogether sure what he was about. Yet he got to the place where he found the distinction in this question, Whether one should in all things submit to the power of the pope? He answered that it’s not a mortal sin not to submit, but then he appended the condition, “If it isn’t done out of contempt.” He could not resign himself to the fact that he had really broken up [with the pope]. Yet what he said was comforting to people; therefore they called him the consolatory doctor as often they do. As a consequence he was also condemned. But furthermore he was damned and banished by the pope as a heretic. Accordingly the cardinal at Augsburg called me a Gersonist when I appealed from the pope to the Council of Constance.7

Clearly, for Luther, to have been condemned as a “Gersonist” was a badge of honor, an honor also claimed by Luther’s most noted disciple and lieutenant Philip Melanchthon. In his Loci Communes Theologici (1521), Melanchthon cites Gerson as endorsing the evangelical position: “Gerson et alii hac ratione usi sunt: ideo posse traditiones omitti, quia Episcopi non habeant ius onerandi Ecclesium traditionibus” (“Gerson and the others make use of this reason: that they can omit certain traditions, because bishops have no right to burden the Church with [these] traditions”) (my translation).8 Calvin, while less expansive than Luther, also enlists his fellow Frenchman Gerson as a papal opponent, noting that during the crisis over Pope John XXII’s teaching of “mortalism” (the extinction of the soul at death), Gerson helped to compel the pope’s recantation.9 Thus Herbert, deeply acquainted with the writings of all these reformers, would naturally number Gerson among them as proto-Protestant – if not fully Protestant. Notably, Herbert was joined in this favorable opinion by later seventeenth-century Puritan Richard Baxter (1615–91), who found Gerson a great aid to meditation.10 One may ask whether it is reasonable for modern scholars to apply the term “proto-Protestant” to Gerson’s particular case. As a prefix, “proto” (from Greek and Latin for “first”) carries a range of meanings: “earliest, original; at an early stage of d ­ evelopment, primitive; incipient, potential” (OED 1.a).11 Is our preferred definition of “proto-Protestantism” full-blown – sprung more or less whole

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from the brow of Zeus? Or is it embryonic – presenting certain incipient Protestant ideas awaiting further evolution and development? Clearly, Gerson was not “proto-Protestant” in the former sense; unlike John Wycliffe (1330–84) and Jan Hus ­(1369–1415), he never broke definitively with the papacy; nor did he insist, like Luther and Calvin, on salvation by grace through faith alone. Yet Gerson’s teaching was indeed “proto-Protestant” in the latter sense, for, as Luther and his successors recognized, Gerson pointed away from the pope’s supremacy and toward biblical authority; he wrote persistently against papal abuses; he taught that certain papal proclamations and church traditions ought to be overruled by the words of scripture; and he defended the right of church councils to check the power of the Vatican. Thus, although Gerson’s “morning star” did not shine as brightly as Wycliffe’s, it shone brightly enough to catch George Herbert’s Protestant eye two centuries later. From the two priests’ similar responses to ­ ecclesiastical upheaval and division, let us turn to more personal ­resemblances. First, Gerson  and Herbert enjoyed youthful success in the academy  –  Gerson at the University of Paris, and Herbert at Cambridge – both rising quickly through native brilliance to prominent office. By the time Herbert was twenty-six, he had been elected Public Orator at Cambridge, usually a close step to the King’s Privy Council;12 while Gerson took just a bit longer to rise even higher, becoming Chancellor of the University of Paris at the still young age of thirty-two and an international figure soon after.13 Second, each man became an advocate for his national church, whether French or English. Gerson came to the chancellorship in 1395, at the height of the Great Schism between Rome and Avignon, and soon became the leader of the Conciliar Movement which asserted the rights of church councils over papal decrees to settle ecclesiastical disputes; and later, in 1409–10, Gerson joined protests by French masters of theology against papal favoritism toward the mendicant orders, while celebrating and defending the unique traditions of national churches, including the Gallican church, against papal overreach. Gerson gave an important sermon opposing papal tyranny, articulating the conditions under which a pope might be deposed.14 Similarly, Herbert, born into the already Protestant Church of England, became probably the most famous poetic celebrant of

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“The British Church” standing apart in its “fine aspect in fit aray” (l. 8) and “double-moat[ed]” (l. 29) against foreign meddling and especially papal dominance.15 But third, it is in spirituality that we find their closest r­ esemblance, for it is as a “spirituall man” that Herbert takes notice of Gerson in The Country Parson. Both men practiced and advocated a warm gospel piety based on close biblical study, in contrast to scholastic speculative theologies, whether Catholic or Protestant; and Gerson’s voluminous spiritual writings – penitential sermons, a harmony of the gospels, Latin devotional poems, theses on preaching and the cure of souls, commentaries on the Song of Songs and the Magnificat, books on mystical theology and the theology of consolation – these earned him the admiring titles of both Doctor Christianissimus (“the Most Christian Teacher”) and – as Luther noted – Doctor Consolatorius (“the Consoling Teacher”).16 The  affective warmth of Gerson’s Consolation of Theology has been much remarked, along with Gerson’s attention to the power of the affections – both good and evil – to sway the heart. This warmth often resembles that found in The Imitation of Christ, now generally attributed to Thomas à Kempis. Indeed, Gerson was in Herbert’s day and until the twentieth century often, if erroneously, credited with having written The Imitation – though it was in the later seventeenth century that Cardinal Bossuet had concluded against Gersonian authorship.17 Evidence of Gerson’s warmth of expression is abundant; Gilbert Ouy observes that, by the age of eighteen, Gerson was “writing Latin prose and verse, not only correctly, but harmoniously”; indeed, that “he was certainly endowed with an excellent ear for music, notably for the music of words, in French as well as in Latin.”18 Nowhere is this gift more evident than in his surviving lyrics, all in Latin. One in particular anticipates Herbert not only in theme but also in form, style, and feeling. “Carmen de puritate Sacrae Scripturae respectu aliarum” (“A Song of the purity of Holy Scripture compared to other [books]”) celebrates the Bible in a flowing columnized poem that compares the fresh springs of divine revelation with the outflow of worldly folly. Evoking the water imagery of Psalm 42:1 (“As the hart panteth after the water brooks”), Proverbs 5:15 (“Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine

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own well”), and Matthew 5:6 (“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness”), the poem imagines the freshets of pure heavenly revelation attracting the spiritually thirsty away from competing ditches draining Earth’s filth: CARMEN DE PURITATE SACRAE SCRIPTURAE RESPECTU ALIARUM

A SONG OF THE PURITY OF SACRED SCRIPTURE COMPARED TO OTHER [BOOKS]

Montibus altis Exoritur fons Purior auro; Unda nec ullo Spurcida coeno Lumine solis Obice fulget. Tu bibe tutus; Te speculeris Te tua nunquam Fallet imago. Plurimus inde Rivulus exit Lapsus ad ima Putrida tellus Quo mage distant Sordibus opplet Noxia miscens In quibus anguis, Ranula, vermis Bufoque serpunt. Mors latet undis. Si sitis urget Cautior esto. Vis speculari. Reddere verum Vix simulacrum Turbida possunt. Terreat hoc vos Quos derelicto Fonte sophiae Terrea potant.

High in the mountains Rises the spring Purer than gold; Waves undefiled Not filthy with mire Girded by sunlight’s Radiant wall. You there, drink safely; Look at yourself; You never will be Deceived by that image. From that great height Many a brook flows Falling to depths Of decaying earth— More distant sloughs Teeming with filth Noxiously mixed Squirming with snake, Vermin, and frog And slithering toad— Roiling with death. If thirst stirs you there To drink, then beware Your will to explore. Even true waters Can turn to defiled In those murky stews. Fear then, all you Departing the pure Wisdom’s cascade To drink of the bog.19

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Addressing one of Herbert’s favorite topics, the unique and ­unadulterated virtue of scripture, Gerson pictures the Bible’s limpid transparency as pure mountain spring water illuminated by sunlight (ll. 1–7), while likening worldly writings to a kind of putrid catch pool (ll. 12–20). In Herbert’s paired English sonnets praising the Bible, the images also are of liquid and light: of “Infinite sweetnesse” sucked from “ev’ry letter” (“The H. Scriptures I,” ll. 1–2), and of pure heavenly radiance itself, excelling the astrologers’ stars, which “are poore books, & oftentimes doe misse: / This book of starres lights to eternall blisse” (“The H. Scriptures II,” ll. 13–14).20 Readers will note a difference in tone between Gerson’s “Carmen de puritate” and Herbert’s English poems, for Gerson is more exuberant at portraying evil in all its putrescence; his polemic sounds more like Spenser’s exposures of foul Errour and Duessa in The Faerie Queene Book 1 Cantos 1 and 2 (with their fulsome appeals to nausea), than like the relatively understated and decorous Herbert, who seldom resorts to the fecal or cloacal – though readers of Herbert’s tour de force “Triumphus Mortis” (“Death’s Triumph”) will find him capable of quite graphic and visceral description, at least in Latin. But despite such differences, Gerson’s poem clearly anticipates, and indeed more than matches, Herbert’s Protestant enthusiasm for the Bible itself – its font of miraculous  goodness and truth, offered neat to every Christian for the slaking of spiritual thirst.21 If both Gerson and Herbert are so widely remembered as ­spiritual mentors, they also shared a later-life narrative of worldly disappointment that occasioned their devotional fruition, for their fourth major resemblance is that both left behind their important university positions in religiously divided times and then wrote spiritual classics while living in retirement. Gerson taught that church councils overruled even popes and prevailed at the Council of Constance that ended the Great Schism between 1415 and 1417 by engineering the removal of the Avignon antipope (Benedict XIII) and two rival Italian popes (Gregory XII of Rome and John XXIII of Pisa) and the election of a new consensus Roman pope (Martin V).22 But this result, which meant the loss of Gallic control over the papal throne, increased the ire of the Duke of Burgundy – already incensed by Gerson’s past expulsion of Burgundian agents from the

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French court – so that after the Council of Constance Duke John the Fearless (Jean sans Peur, 1371–1419) barred Gerson’s return to his chancellorship in Paris. Furthermore, the new pope Martin V, once empowered, predictably condemned Gerson’s limitations on papal power and closed the Vatican to him as well.23 So Gerson, forbidden entry both to Paris and to Rome, retired first to Rattenberg in the Austrian Alps, and for the last decade of his life, from 1419 to 1429, lived in the prosperous city of Lyons, where he wrote his Boethian classic The Consolation of Theology and the other works already mentioned.24 Herbert’s decline was less spectacular but still dramatic: from Cambridge Public Orator and Privy Counsellor-in-waiting, he was elected Member of Parliament in 1624 only to see his court hopes recede with the death of King James I in 1625, and his health collapse soon after.25 Herbert clearly struggled to find “employment” under the new Caroline regime, finally settling as parson at St Andrew’s Bemerton under the patronage of his Pembroke cousins while completing his poetic and prose masterworks The Temple and The Country Parson – and his translations and annotations of foreign works, Luigi Cornaro’s Treatise of Temperance and Sobriety and Juan de Valdés’ One Hundred and Ten Considerations – before his premature death in 1633.26 Thus, each man was remarkable in his rise to prominence and in his eclipse, both in worldly terms being “lost in a humble way”; yet the writings of each yield an afterglow that persists to the present day. No doubt there are notable distinctions to be drawn between the consoling chancellor and the comforting country parson. Besides obvious differences in social rank (Gerson was a commoner of humble origins while Herbert was born to the aristocracy) and in national allegiance, and in the two centuries which separated them, there is no denying that, for all of Gerson’s many reformist challenges to specific popes, he ultimately acknowledged papal supremacy.27 Furthermore, though Gerson’s churchmanship at times verges on Gallicanism in its objections to the Vatican’s ultramontane usurpation of local French authority, he did not, as did Herbert in Britain, see his homeland as “double-moat[ed]” against papal authority. Indeed, at the same Council of Constance where he saw the Great Schism healed, Gerson pushed relentlessly for the

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suppression of Wycliffe’s anti-papal Lollardy,28 and having heard Hus speak before the Council, Gerson voted rather unconsolingly to hand the Czech reformer over to be burnt as a heretic.29 And, given that Gerson flourished at precisely the time when England’s Henry V was successfully invading France – and that Gerson’s last work was a defense of Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Orléans30 – his Gallic soul might have recoiled from the superlatives of Herbert’s “British Church.” Yet even in these ecclesiastical and national differences, there was nothing of the blind chauvinist about either churchman – both of whom pointedly criticized the besetting sins and divisions of their respective kingdoms and churches. After this brief survey of the striking personal similarities – and not unimportant differences –between Gerson and Herbert, a deeper questioning of where, when, how, and why Herbert calls Gerson to witness is in order. Herbert’s sole known reference to Gerson comes while he is discussing the role that the country parson should play in encouraging healthy eating in his parish. Herbert invokes the Frenchman to make the point that, whatever the dietary or spiritual value of fasting, diseases of “exinanition” are more dangerous than those of “repletion.” Herbert’s larger context is that a “various” diet is the healthiest, neither always rich nor always spare. As he wrote in Outlandish Proverbs 575, “Two ill meales make the third a glutton” – that is, “If one doesn’t breakfast or dine adequately, he will grossly overeat at supper.”31 So, in the midst of warning against gluttony and praising the spiritual value of fasting as a form of “mortification,” Herbert steps back to appreciate the goodness and the pleasures of a varied table, on the advice of a “spirituall” Frenchman. Although Herbert gives no precise reference for this allusion, it is likely that he is recalling Gerson’s sermon bearing the combined Latin and French title, Poenitemini, contre la gourmandise (“Repent and Be Saved: Against Gluttony”), from a sermon series preached in Paris during Advent and Lent of 1402–3. Like many Gerson scholars, D. Catherine Brown notes that, even in the midst of preaching against carnal sins like overeating, Gerson often points out the dangers of immoderate fasting: “Sometimes in order to avoid gluttony,” Gerson writes, “one can fall into the opposite vice of too great and foolish abstinence, which leads to frenzy and damages the

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brain so that an incurable disease results.”32 Modern readers may find it amusing or pleasant to be reminded by a medieval churchman not to take abstinence too far, and no doubt a valiant trencherman like Luther found this aspect of Gerson’s teaching congenial. Michael Schoenfeldt is in this sense correct that Herbert’s explicit reason for invoking Gerson is “as a guide to commensal conduct rather than to religious devotion”; 33 and in his essay “George Herbert’s Consuming Subject,” Schoenfeldt writes that Herbert’s “devotional self … [is s]o different from our post-Cartesian selves, which are constituted by separating body from spirit and biology from morality, … [but instead] is constituted by the corporeal substance it attempts to discipline.”34 Indeed, I have written elsewhere that Herbert was interested in diet “chiefly for physical rather than directly spiritual reasons … much of Herbert’s discussion of fasting in The Country Parson deals with the effects that particular foods had on the ‘great obstructed vessel’ that was Herbert’s tubercular body.”35 However physically oriented Herbert’s dietary interests may have been, there are deeper, indeed permeating, spiritual principles in Gerson’s penitential sermons that Herbert probably found even more admirable, and which in fact define the devotional sensibility underlying Herbert’s pastoral theology. These Gersonian principles are the ones highlighted by Brian Patrick McGuire in his book Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation: first, the principle that “je renvoye chascune personne a sa conscience” (“I refer each person back to his own conscience”); and second, that “l’amour espirituelle de legier glice en la charnelle” (“every spiritual love easily turns into a carnal one”).36 Throughout Herbert’s Chapter 26, “The Parson’s eye,” he attends almost entirely to the inward spiritual conscience, recommending the parishioner’s careful self-examination, particularly in search of his or her personal besetting weaknesses and sins. Of chief interest to the parson is the boundary within each soul between “lawful” use of God’s gifts – food, drink, wealth – and the “sinful” abuse, where gustatory pleasure turns to gluttony and godly thrift to coveting. And animating the parson’s pastoral care is his sad assurance that spiritual loves often mask carnal ones, or that, as he adds archly, “A man may be both Covetous, and Intemperate, and yet hear Sermons against both.”37

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Thus, like many a careful casuist, Herbert acknowledges ­candidly that such boundaries between the healthy and the sinful can be distressingly blurry, and that they vary from person to person. So even in formulating a few general “grounds” or principles for the parishioner’s self-examination, Herbert, like Gerson, leaves room for human variability; the purpose being not to set a single standard  for all people to measure one correct quantity in saving money or eating a meal, but rather to establish a single goal: never to “abuse the Creature” – stated more positively, to use all of God’s good creations as God intends, to bring true blessing to others and to ourselves. It is here that Herbert’s gaze in “The Parson’s eye” veers from matters of diet and bodily health to social and class relations. For remarkably, the one “Creature” above all whom Herbert would have no one abuse is a household servant; therefore he is especially harsh in mocking the rationalizations which supposedly godly people use to cheat their own needy domestics in the name of thrift. “[T]o give one instance for all [kinds of covetousness]” Herbert writes, if God have given me servants, and I either provide too little for them, or that which is unwholsome, being sometimes baned meat, sometimes too salt, and so not competent nourishment, I am Covetous. I bring this example, because men usually think, that servants for their mony are as other things that they buy, even as a piece of wood, which they may cut, or hack, or throw into the fire, and so they pay them their wages, all is well.38

Herbert’s tone of moral indignation here is striking, and it is just as striking that his preferred example of coveting is not one of sexual lust or of culinary indulgence, but rather of economic meanness and arrogance. Like Gerson, Herbert is aware that low and venal motives often masquerade as high and holy ideals, and so he would have his parson, and his parishioners, give them no quarter within themselves. A more positive instance of Herbert’s belief that social generosity is the true spiritual end of “temperance” – and one in keeping with Gerson’s sermonic Lenten theme – is found in the concluding stanza of “Lent,” Herbert’s most extensive poetic treatment of fasting.

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Herbert attempts to defend state-mandated fasting in the Lenten season (ll. 1–42) – with mixed success – and along the way raises the Gersonian possibility that in some cases church “Authoritie” might overstep its bounds and violate the individual’s conscience (ll. 16–18). But Herbert turns in his concluding lines away from nettling questions of enforceable minimum food intake, and toward the suddenly urgent question of the hungry poor at his door: Yet Lord, instruct us to improve our fast By starving sinne and taking such repast       As may our faults controll: That ev’ry man may revell at his doore, Not in his parlour; banquetting the poore,       And among those his soul. (ll. 43–48)39

All pleading and quibbling have ceased, and the poem’s previous concerns about mere compliance and prudent moderation have dropped entirely from view. They are supplanted by a scene from Isaiah – a scene, and a prophecy, which call authority’s decent and indifferent decrees into serious question: Is it such a fast that I have chosen? … a day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow his head as a bulrush, and to spread sack-cloth and ashes under him? … Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? (Isaiah 58:5–7)

The acceptable fast, says Isaiah, is not a literal fast at all. It does not consist in posture, or formal prayers, nor even in “afflicting one’s soul” by withholding food. A true fast is simply true repentance, shown not by ascetic or ritual acts but by practical acts of mercy and justice. In this view, ascetic motives have little to do with Lent. The proper way to show one’s sorrow for sin and love for God is not to starve oneself for atonement, but to feed others out of gratitude. Indeed, Herbert’s poem amplifies the meaning of the Isaiah passage by portraying the penitent’s act of mercy as a joyous “revell.” The gladly repentant man celebrates “[n]ot in his parlour,” the figurative space where the prosperous indulge their ­appetites

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in private feasting, but rather “at his doore,” that figurative place where he has a view of the needy world and can call out to “the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind” as they pass by. From there he can even go out, like the persistent host in Christ’s parable, and compel them to come into his house and feast (Luke 14:12–24). But for Herbert this reveling is itself no mere figure; it is a literal affair of knives and trenchers, meat and drink; for The Country Parson’s Chapter 9 (“The Parson’s state of Life”) and Chapter 10 (“The Parson in his house”), which deal with diet and fasting, are followed immediately by Chapter 11 (“The Parson’s Courtesie”), which directs the parson to have the poor to his table often, and to set them “close by him,” where he can “carve” for them himself.40 In “Lent,” once the needy are seated, and are enjoying their meal, the host can look around the table and find “among those,” in a stunning recognition, “his soul” – possibly the happiest reveler of them all, for the whole literal “banquet” is its spiritual food.41 By converting a fast to a literal and spiritual feast, Herbert bears an implicit debt to many predecessors: John Chrysostom (c.  ­ 349–407), Augustine of Hippo (354–430), Thomas Becon (1512–67), and The Book of Homilies.42 But another probable debt is to Gerson – the “spirituall man” who, having warned that motives of conscience trump tradition, and that “every spiritual love easily turns into a carnal one,” would be delighted by a conscientious poet like Herbert who converts a carnal love – whether of greedy feasting or pharisaical fasting – into a spiritual one. Given the profound influence on Herbert of Gerson’s magisterial Protestant admirers, and the intimation of Herbert’s deeper familiarity implied by his one laudatory reference to Gerson, we should not be surprised to find the moderating, evangelical spirit of one late medieval French reformer informing both the diet and the devotion of this one reformed, and reforming, priest and poet in the Church of England. Furthermore, Herbert’s recourse in The Country Parson to wisdom from across La Manche – and across the even wider divide between Canterbury and Rome – may also remind us of his appreciation for Luigi Cornaro (1467–1566) and Juan de Valdés (c. ­1490–1541), like Gerson both reform-minded Catholics, in their cases a sixteenth-century Venetian and a Spaniard, with whom

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Herbert felt a kinship and whose respective works on diet and theology Herbert translated and annotated. Cornaro, author of the Trattato de la vita sobria (1558), became a successful entrepreneur, financial advisor to the Bishop of Padua, patron, and popular writer, who late in life published a Solomonic reflection on past excesses and present hard-won wisdom, recommending moderation in all things, particularly food and drink. Terry G. Sherwood states of Cornaro that “[t]he connection between diet and spiritual existence accounts for Herbert’s interest” in translating what he called The Treatise of Temperance and Sobriety. Confessing his own earlier intemperance, Cornaro recommends the sober order of dietary temperance. Excess food and drink had undermined his health, and he recommends his reformed dietary habits, even at his advanced age, for his life “is not a dead, dumpish and sowre life; but cheerfull, lively, and pleasant.”43 In Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England, Michael Schoenfeldt elaborates on Herbert’s imitation of Cornaro and, ironically, on Herbert’s resulting “attempt to conquer his ague through control of his consumption [which] only makes him more susceptible to the pulmonary disease of consumption.”44 Nevertheless, says Schoenfeldt, Herbert’s fascination with digestion and nutrition informs and even inspires many of his poems: not only “Lent,” but also “Affliction (I),” “Repentance,” “Sighs and Grones,” “Even-song,” “The Collar,” “Nature,” “The Rose,” “Conscience,” “L’Envoy,” “The Odour,” “The Invitation,” and “Love (III)” are all concerned with how “the very substance necessary to sustain life becomes a cause of illness and a medium of punishment,” while “the body seems to turn upon itself in an act of civil war.” Ultimately, Schoenfeldt notes, Cornaro “made the link between hygiene, Christianity, and temperance very explicit.”45 If Herbert’s translation of Cornaro indicates a mind open – sometimes incredulously – to “outlandish” ideas, his annotations of “Valdesso’s” One Hundred and Ten Considerations show him at his most generous, balanced, and discerning with foreign wisdom, and on dangerously controversial matters. Juan de Valdés was a Spanish critic of the Roman Church and papal policy, a correspondent of Erasmus (1466–1536), and a contemporary of Luther. An associate of Spain’s Alumbrados (and later chamberlain to Pope

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Clement VII, 1478–1534), he embraced aspects of evangelical piety even while, like Gerson before him, opposing schism. Probably this moderating sensibility, a continental precursor to the English  via media, recommended Valdés to Herbert, though it is Valdés’ devotion to Christ’s person and his conviction of God’s all-powerful grace that most often wins Herbert’s praise. In 1632, at the request of Nicholas Ferrar (1592–1637), Herbert read the Iberian reformer’s never-published Spanish Ciento y Diez Consideraciones in the Italian and French translations of 1550 and 1563, and it probably recommended Valdés to Herbert, as it had to earlier Protestants, that all copies of the Spanish originals had been suppressed by the Inquisition. It is therefore hardly surprising that Herbert’s ­Word-centered faith was attracted to the Considerations, many of which are concerned with the proper interpretation and place of scripture within the devotional sphere. Yet, ironically, it is with Valdés’ views on scriptural inspiration and authority that Herbert disagrees most vehemently. Herbert deplores Valdés’ “slight … regard” for the Bible in Consideration 63 (as “but children’s meat”), concluding that “[t]here is no more to be said of this Chapter but that his opinion of the scripture is unsufferable.” Indeed, Herbert wonders how this “unsufferable” opinion “could befall so good a man as it seems Valdesso was, since the Saints of God in all ages have ever held in so pretious esteem the word of God, as their Ioy, and Crowne, and their Treasure on earth.” (Compared with Valdés on this point, Gerson’s abovequoted paean to the Bible marks him in Herbert’s terms as one who indeed treasures the “word of God” as “pretious.”) However, Herbert continues, “[Valdés’] owne practice seems to confute his opinion, for the most of his Considerations being grounded upon some text of scripture, shewes that he was continually conversant in it, and not used it for a time onely, and then cast it away, as he sayes strangely.”46 In other words, in Herbert’s eyes Valdés’ actual scripturalist behavior belies, and therefore redeems him from, his residual papist principles. And indeed, it is Herbert’s view of Valdés as proto-Protestant, despite the perceived Roman darkness around him, that moves him most strongly to recommend this Spanish reformer for publication in Protestant England. Thus, in Herbert’s introductory letter to Ferrar, he writes with a kind of grateful awe

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that “God in the midst of Popery should open the eyes of one to understand and expresse so clearely and excellently the intent of the Gospell in the acceptation of Christs righteousnesse … a thing strangely buried, and darkned by the Adversaries” at the Vatican.47 On the whole, then, Notes on Valdesso display Herbert as, first, profoundly concerned with doctrinal truth, but yet questing for such truth primarily not as exclusionary but as redemptive. The very fact that he advocates for the publication of Considerations, “unsufferable” parts and all, indicates an outlook, not unlike Milton’s in Areopagitica, that seeks to “apprehend and consider … and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better,” an outlook which regards “a good book” as “the precious life-blood of a master spirit.”48 Thus Herbert is unwilling to discard the whole simply because he disagrees with it in part, nor to offer up a censored or sanitized version. Second, Herbert’s “notes” tell us that he was no mere “­proof-texter,” but that he saw particular doctrines as interwoven in a larger biblical and theological fabric. Indeed, his eye for coherence is what leads him to call out Valdés for neglecting what often is called “the whole counsel of God,” that is, the totality of what scripture says on a subject; in Valdés’ case, for neglecting the Bible’s warnings against despising the material creation and against presuming on one’s own spiritual enlightenment. Third, and finally, the fragments of Notes on Valdesso reveal, in their very off-handedness, what Herbert takes for granted: that God’s Word written is the final arbiter of truth and reality; that God’s Word spoken is the decree that makes and unmakes worlds and souls; and that God’s Word made flesh in Christ is the only hope and merit in which the believer can trust – regardless of nation or sect. As Herbert wrote elsewhere, with great economy, “Thy word is all, if we could spell” (“The Flower,” l.  21).49 Even shards can shine brilliantly, and in their very brokenness remind us, however poignantly, of the whole from which they came. One could wish that, as with Cornaro and Valdés, Herbert had written more extensively about Gerson’s dietary advice and his spirituality, but this all-too-brief mention in The Country Parson confirms some of Herbert’s chief characteristics: his bone-deep disposition toward moderation, not just as a theological position,

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but as a way of being (and eating); his devotion to an individually nuanced pastoral care which taught each soul to consult his own conscience while suspecting his own tendency to whiten his own sepulcher; and, finally, Herbert’s love of finding spiritual fellows, as a kind of special grace, even across the distances of nationality and time. This brief comparative glimpse reveals that we are only ­beginning to see what George Herbert learned from this great protesting Catholic Jean Charlier de Gerson – like Herbert a university prodigy, a spiritual patriot, a heart-deep divine, a man budding and blossoming in defeat – and, yes, a poet too. In keeping with the theme of this present collection, devoted to Herbert’s interests in things European, let us conclude by observing that his interest in specifically foreign wisdom places his reputation for patriotic insularity in the larger context of his more generous universality. As is clear from his use of the phrase “outlandish” in his letters and in The Country Parson, Herbert believed that truth is all the more certain for being affirmed by foreign sayings in strange settings; and as Anne Myers has said of the Outlandish Proverbs, “their curiousness or outlandishness [is] part of a moral value that makes them seem less foreign.”50 For Herbert, nothing confirms home truth more than hearing it as news from a far country.

Notes  1 Herbert, Works, p. 267.   2 G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes, Jean Gerson, Apostle of Unity: His Church Politics and Ecclesiology (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1999), p. 11.   3 David Schmiel, “Via Propria and Via Mystica in the Theology of Jean le Charlier de Gerson” (PhD dissertation, Concordia Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, 1969), pp. v-vii. An instructive parallel with these reformers’ appropriations of Gerson is John Milton’s (1608–74) treatment of Francesco Petrarcha (1304–74). According ­ to Deirdre Serjeantson’s (2014) article, Milton saw Petrarch as a “political, proto-Protestant, and authoritative” predecessor (p. 852). Serjeantson observes that “Milton’s Petrarch,” despite Satan’s implicitly Petrarchan rhetoric of temptation in Book 9 of Paradise Lost, appears more ­explicitly and positively as a forbear to the Protestant cause in

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Milton’s Of Reformation (1641) and in his Sonnet 18 on the persecution of the Waldensians under the “Babylonian woe” of the papacy. Milton refers back to Petrarch’s three Canzoniere, “Fiamma dal ciel,” “L’avara Babilonia,” and “Fontana di dolore” – ­commonly known as the Babylon or Avignon sonnets – which lament the “Babylonian captivity” of the papacy removed from Rome to Avignon (1309–77). Serjeantson notes that Milton, following earlier Protestant writers, from John Harington to George Abbot, reads Petrarch’s “fontana di dolore” (“fountain of sorrows”) “as anti-papal in the broadest sense – that is, as critical of the institution of the papacy, rather than a particular aspect of its history” (pp. 835–6) – and as a prescient condemnation of Rome’s “Babylonian woe.” “Milton and the Tradition of Protestant Petrarchism,” The Review of English Studies, 65 (2014), 831–52. Significantly, Gerson imitates Petrarch in his undated youthful eclogue Pastorium Carmen, which satirizes the corruptions brought on Christ’s innocent Bride the Church through the Donation of Constantine; writing under the cover of a pastoral allegory modeled on Petrarch’s Bucolium Carmen (c. 1346–7), Gerson becomes in the 1380s “the very first author, not only in France, but in the whole of Northern Europe, to have been inspired by Petrarch” – and inspired, like the later Milton, along reformist lines. Gilbert Ouy, “Discovering Gerson the Humanist: Fifty Years of Serendipity,” in Brian Patrick McGuire (ed.), A Companion to Jean Gerson: Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, Vol. 3, (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), p. 94.   4 Martin Luther, Tischreden Luthers aus den jahren 1531 und 1532; nach den aufzeichnungen von Johann Schlaginhaufen. Aus einer Münchner handschrift herausgegeben von Wilhelm Preger. (Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1888), p. 19, and Luther’s Works: American Edition. Table Talk, ed. and trans. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), vol. 54, p. 133.  5 Luther, Tischreden, p. 38; Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 54, p. 142.   6 Martin Luther, Luthers Werke in Auswahl. Achter Band. Tischreden, ed. Otto Clemen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1962), vol. 8, p. 318.  7 Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 54, p. 443.  8 Philip Melanchthon, Corpus Reformatorum: Philippi Melanchthonis Opera quae supersunt omnia. Vol. 21: Loci Communi Theologici, ed. C. G. Bretschneider and H. E. Bindseil. (Halle: C. A. Schwetschke and Son, 1834 et sequ.), pp. 464–5.  9 John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960), vol. 2, p. 1147.

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10 Louis L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation: A Study in English Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1962), pp. 168–70. 11 The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) confirms that the word “protoProtestant” was in use by 1604 – though not by Herbert. 12 Cristina Malcolmson, George Herbert: A Literary Life (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 22. 13 Meyjes, Jean Gerson, Apostle of Unity, p. 49. 14 Brian Patrick McGuire, “In Search of Jean Gerson: Chronology of his Life and Works,” in Companion to Jean Gerson, p. 20; McGuire, Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2005), pp. 207–8. 15 Herbert, Works, pp. 109–10. 16 D. Catherine Brown, Pastor and Laity in the Theology of Jean Gerson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 252. 17 Jeffrey Fisher, “Gerson’s Mystical Theology: A New Profile of its Evolution,” in Companion to Jean Gerson, pp. 226–7; Yelena Mazour-Matusevich, “Gerson’s Legacy,” in Companion to Jean ­ Gerson, p. 397. 18 Ouy, “Discovering Gerson the Humanist,” p. 109. 19 Jean Charlier de Gerson, Œuvres complètes, ed. Palémon Glorieux (Paris, Tournai, Rome, New York: Desclée & Cie, 1962), vol. 4[–5], pp. 133–4. My translation, consulting with Greg Miller and Catherine Freis. 20 Herbert’s Latin poem, Lucus V, “In S. Scripturas,” also uses these metaphors of honey and starlight, while also celebrating the Bible’s unique power to guide and chart one’s life. See Herbert, Works, p. 411. 21 Gerson’s complete works were published in Latin six times before 1502 (McGuire, Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation, p. 358), so it is likely that Herbert would have had access to them during his years as both student and fellow at Cambridge. According to Yelena Mazour-Matusevich, St. François de Sales was an ardent admirer and student of Jean Gerson. See “Gerson’s Legacy,” pp. 357–99. Herbert may well have encountered Gerson through his readings in the works of de Sales. 22 Brown, Pastor and Laity, p. 8; McGuire, Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation, pp. 269, 247, 245, 277. 23 McGuire, “In Search of Jean Gerson,” p. 28; McGuire, Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation, pp. 278, 282, 279–80. 24 McGuire, Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation, pp. 286, 290–1, 300–5.

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25 Malcolmson, A Literary Life, pp. 55–6, 78–9. 26 Malcolmson, A Literary Life, pp. 99–103, 166 n. 2. 27 Brown, Pastor and Laity, p. 76. 28 Brown, Pastor and Laity, p. 39. 29 Brown, Pastor and Laity, p. 82. 30 McGuire, Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation, p. 319. 31 Herbert, Works, p. 340. 32 Brown, Pastor and Laity, p. 149, quoting Gerson, Œuvres complètes, vol. 7, p. 803. 33 Michael Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England: Physiology and Inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1999), p. 190, n. 34. 34 Michael Schoenfeldt, “George Herbert’s Consuming Subject,” in J. F. S. Post and S. Gottlieb (eds.), George Herbert in the Nineties: Reflections and Reassessments (Fairfield, CT: George Herbert Journal Special Studies and Monographs, 1995), p. 106. 35 Hodgkins, Authority, Church, and Society, p. 68. 36 McGuire, Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation, p. 143. 37 Herbert, Works, p. 264. 38 Herbert, Works, p. 265. 39 Herbert, Works, p. 86. 40 Herbert, Works, p. 243. 41 For an extended version of this discussion of “Lent,” see my Authority, Church, and Society, pp. 64–86. 42 Thomas Becon, The Early Works of Thomas Becon, ed. John Ayre (Cambridge, MA: The Parker Society, 1843), pp. 104–5; Church of England, Certaine Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches in the Time of Elizabeth I (1547–1571). A Facsimile Reproduction of the Edition of 1623. 2 vols in 1 (Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1968), vol. 2, p. 93. 43 Terry G. Sherwood, Herbert’s Prayerful Art (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), p. 74, quoting Herbert, Works, p. 303. 44 Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves, p. 114. 45 Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves, pp. 122–6; Schoenfeldt, “Consuming Subject,” p. 130, n. 22. 46 Herbert, Works, pp. 317–18. 47 Herbert, Works, pp. 304–5. 48 John Milton, Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (Indianapolis: Odyssey Press, 1957), pp. 720, 728. 49 Herbert, Works, p. 166.



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50 Anne Myers, “‘Forrain Wisdome’ and Proverbial Style: Exchange, Participation and the Self in ‘The Church-porch’ and the Outlandish Proverbs,” presented at the “Herbert in Paris” Conference at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, May 18, 2017 and quoted by permission of the author.

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Conformity and consent in Herbert of Cherbury Anita Sherman

In the midst of the Civil War, as he looked back upon a long and eventful life from the retirement of Montgomery Castle, Lord Herbert of Cherbury harbored no doubts about his most lasting achievement: the writing of De Veritate nearly thirty years before. His epitaph makes this clear. The only deed deemed worth recording is his authorship of that work: “auctoris libri, cui titulus est, ‘De Veritate.’”1 His memoirs written in the 1640s also attest to the high stock he placed in the book. They break off with a striking tableau: Herbert in the summer of 1623, while ambassador to Paris for King James, prays that God will give him a sign whether to publish his manuscript.2 The passage captures the complexity of Herbert’s personality and the interpretive challenges posed by his philosophical theology. The tableau that he stages is an iconographic topos: an individual kneeling in prayer, holding a book near a window, and receiving a sign from heaven. The scene of devotion implies that Herbert believes in prayer and that God answers human prayers – beliefs stated and confirmed in De Veritate.3 Furthermore, by noting the fine weather, the stillness of the air and the absence of clouds, he both deflects and invites criticism: from doubters who might allege coincidence and charge him with mistaking dry thunder for the divine voice, and also from believers who take it as an article of faith that God speaks in thunder and lightning.4 In  keeping with the criteria set out in De Veritate for evaluating the veracity of discrete sense perceptions, Herbert insists that on the day he prayed, optimal conditions were met for receiving a v­ eridical

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sign and personal revelation. Moreover, the feeling of cheer and comfort that he experienced amounts to that “motion of assent” which he considers constitutive of probability.5 Regardless of how one gauges Herbert’s tone in this passage, his invocation of God’s imprimatur shows his high estimation of the book.6 This eclectic mix of faith, empiricism, and phenomenological attentiveness is characteristic of Herbert. What was Herbert trying to accomplish in De Veritate? Why was he most proud of this volume, his earliest, more than of the other eight eventually published? Herbert is usually recognized as a pioneer in the study of comparative religions and as a precursor for later deists, besides being a friend of John Donne, brother to George Herbert, and a metaphysical poet himself.7 But he is seldom discussed as a thinker whose philosophical program exposes the political underside of skepticism, reaching beyond accommodation to neutrality. Other than perhaps during his last years, he did not see himself that way. Instead, like Hobbes, Locke, Edward’s brother George, and other seventeenth-century thinkers appalled by the murderous violence of religious sectarians, Herbert saw himself as a peacemaker, offering a philosophical base for an ethics and a politics geared toward harmonious coexistence. As he declares in his preface “LECTORI INGENUO” (“To the Candid Reader”), he has “laid the foundations or ground-plan of the structure of truth.”8 When Herbert asks, “Where, then, can an anxious and divided mind turn to find security and peace?” given “the multitude of sects, divisions, sub-divisions and cross-divisions,” the answer is in his own pages.9 De Veritate operates as a guide and handbook for the perplexed, tutoring them in how to discriminate among classes of truth and how to distinguish certainty from probability, possibility, and error. In the process, it launches a salvo against the fashionable skeptical opinion that nothing can be known (“nihil scitur”). Like Descartes, Herbert wants to counter skeptical arguments that threaten the foundations of knowledge by offering a system that will defeat them once and for all. But unlike Descartes, he refuses to give skeptical doubt the floor. Unlike Descartes, Herbert sidelines uncertainty, effectively silencing it, and presents his philosophical system as a set of irrefutable propositions. Adopting these propositions will produce a reformed consciousness that, in turn, will

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serve as the basis for an inclusive commonwealth. In laying out the criteria for truthful cognition, he exalts conformity and consent as epistemological ideals. These ideals – when tested by the perils of praxis – will underwrite a stance of political neutrality. For Herbert, consent, even as he elides it with a sensation of internal approval, is also a cosmopolitan principle that is open to the world, with both spatial and temporal dimensions.10 How did Herbert, a champion of truth and enemy of skeptics, end up embracing retreat, privacy, and neutrality? The answer is perforce historical and biographical. Herbert gradually changes in the face of personal setbacks and turbulent public circumstances as well as owing to his intellectual work of the 1630s, researching and writing his two histories: Expedition to the Isle of Rhé and The life and raigne of King Henry the Eighth. Yet the seeds for this change are already present in his philosophy, growing out of the appreciation for beauty implicit in his ideals of conformity and consent. Over twenty years after De Veritate, on Wednesday, September 4, 1644, Herbert’s castle in the Welsh Marches was besieged. According to the report of James Till, Lieutenant Colonel of Horse under the Parliamentary commander, Sir Thomas Myddleton, Till arrived “suddainly to Mountgomery … with about 800 foote and horse … and sent Edward Lord Herbert a Summons to yield the Castle; whereupon the sayd Lord Herbert entred into a Parlee with him.” Bringing his diplomatic skills to bear upon the situation, Herbert attempted to take charge and bargained for time.11 Till agreed on two conditions: that Herbert discharge some of his garrison and that he permit them “to place great store of Powder … within the Bulwarks of the said Castle for that night.” Herbert accepted. Till launched a night-time attack.12 Faced with the panicked behavior of his staff, some of whom leapt from the castle walls, and Till’s bravado, Herbert reiterated his demand that the Parliamentary troops retreat and wait until the morning for an answer. Till refused. Negotiations ensued until “articles of agreement” were drawn up and witnessed. These articles reveal Herbert in action. Resorting to pen and paper, he spelled out the conditions of the troops’ occupation. He tried to control the damage the soldiers might do by insisting that “noe violence shal bee offred to … any p’son or p’sons within his castle,” by limiting the size of the

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garrison stationed at the castle and by listing the property to be protected, including his library.13 Herbert had left London two years earlier after a disastrous experience in Parliament. On May 20, 1642, he angered his ­ colleagues in the House of Lords by “speaking moderately.”14 Moderation at this late date in the unraveling relations between king and parliament was a difficult balancing act. On May 20, the fear was that the King, now in York, was recruiting supporters because he intended “to make War against Parliament.” The Lords therefore resolved that those serving or assisting the King “in such Wars” were “traitors.” Herbert stood up and said he “should agree” to the resolution against the King if he “could be satisfied that the King would make War upon the Parliament without Cause.” This produced an uproar. Herbert may have hoped to temper the mood of the gathered peers to narrow the breach they were opening with the King’s supporters.15 If so, his comment backfired. Herbert was “commanded to withdraw” from the chamber, which he did. Rossi imagines a long night of meditation, deeming it the final push into “the blind alley of neutrality.”16 The next day Herbert asked for pardon, professing “he meant no Ill, neither to the King nor to this House.” He petitioned for release from detention and for “Leave to go into the Country for his Health; and, if he cannot have his Health in England, he desires Leave to go for a Time beyond the Sea, for the recovering of his Health.”17 His request was granted. But before leaving London, he entrusted his two prize possessions – a draft of his history of Henry VIII and a manuscript of John Donne’s Biathanatos inscribed to him in April 1619 – to Thomas Masters, his erstwhile assistant, asking him to deposit the two works at the Bodleian Library in Oxford until further notice.18 Herbert’s decision to lie low and take a middle way produced isolation. Why did Herbert of Cherbury attempt to remain neutral? After all, like so many aristocrats of his age, Herbert had grown up aspiring to model his comportment on the flower of chivalry. He held his honor in high esteem, jousting, dueling, and fighting in the Low Countries. He served as ambassador to France. As late as 1639, during the first Bishops’ War, Herbert heeded the King’s summons to York, as he did again the following year. How, then, do we account for his turn to neutrality? “Neuters” were reviled in

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s­ eventeenth-century England, likened to bats, mongrels, two-sided Jacks, and half-way-men, among other slurs. Citing Judges 5:23, a favorite text for condemning those opposed to war,19 the preacher Thomas Adams inveighed, “Woe be to him that is a neuter. Curse ye Meroz, because they tooke not the Lords part in the day of battell. Here, even to stand and but looke on, is treason: to take part with neither is to be an enemy to both.”20 Herbert’s philosophical ideals help explain his political trajectory from royal servant to “neuter” to parliamentary stipendiary. As a philosopher, he had made it his goal to refute skepticism by isolating a set of criteria for identifying truthful cognition. These criteria – conformity and consent, developed in the second decade of the seventeenth century – were still playing out thirty years later as historical events and pressures forced Herbert to come to terms with the political corollaries of his philosophy, including (ironically) an appreciation for neutrality and political skepticism. His aesthetic and epistemological understanding of truth as conformity contributed to his eventual stance of skeptical detachment. At the start of De Veritate, conformity is linked to consent, both criteria for truthful cognition. Together they form the basis for a radical intervention in the theory of adiaphora – the highly political, religious discourse negotiating the boundaries between the “fundamentals” of doctrine and “indifferent” things. Herbert vastly expands the universe of indifferent things by narrowing the fundamentals of religious belief to five “Common Notions.” These are: (1) There is a supreme God; (2) this deity ought to be worshipped; (3) this worship ought to be manifested in a life of virtue, piety, and charity; (4) penitence is the proper response to transgression; and (5) expect reward or punishment in the afterlife. The last two notions are more controversial than the first three. Herbert associates penitence with a gospel of works, a belief in free will, and a merciful deity; unlike his brother George, he has no truck with predestination. The fifth Notion is discussed in De Veritate when Herbert marshals arguments for the afterlife, most famously that God would not operate like a cozening tradesman.21 Over the course of his career, this minimalist platform becomes Herbert’s idée fixe, promoted in work after work with evangelical fervor. As his persona puts it in A Dialogue Between a Tutor and his Pupil, “For

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it is of great moment towards the making of an universal peace, if men can be brought to believe that their ancestors from all ages, and in all countries, have worshipped one and the same God.”22 Herbert is not alone in drafting a set of core beliefs designed to defuse religious conflict. As Ronald Bedford reminds us, Guillaume Postel, Jacob Acontius, and many others throughout Europe had “a vision of concord” that depended on reducing doctrine to a few key principles with which all peoples could agree.23 But Herbert is one of the earliest seventeenth-century thinkers to borrow the Stoic concept of universal consent (“consensus gentium”) and use it as an epistemological criterion for identifying “Common Notions” of religion (“notitiae communes” or “koinai ennoiai”).24 This adaptation attests to the European temper of his mind.

Consensus Universalis “Universal consent,” Herbert declares, “will be found to be the final test of truth,” and again, “Universal Consent must be taken to be the beginning and end of theology and philosophy.”25 Consent, like assent, is an inward motion that occurs in response to – or, in conformation with – divinely implanted ideas. Cicero attributed to Epicurus the view that “the gods exist, because nature herself has impressed a conception of them on the souls of everyone.”26 Herbert explains: “I do not find this Universal Consent only in laws, religions, philosophies and written expositions; I hold that certain inner faculties are inscribed in our minds by which these truths are brought into conformity.”27 This internal process of recognition or apprehension involves “Natural Instinct.”28 In his memoirs, Herbert elaborates on this, observing that the “morall vertues” have been “confirmed for the most part by the Platonique, Stoiques, and other Philosophers, and in generall by the Christian Church as well as all Nations in the World whatsoever, They being Doctrines imprinted in the soule in its first originall.”29 Herbert was reproved for this logic.30 Readers as different as Gassendi and Locke argued that if consent were a criterion of truth, then all matter of nonsense would pass muster as veridical. Locke attacked Herbert head on in his Essay

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Concerning Human Understanding, targeting the innateness of Common Notions and refuting the validity of consensus as a criterion, noting “that we are assured from history, of many men, nay whole nations, who doubt or disbelieve some or all of them.”31 Gassendi was more circumspect, couching his objections in a letter that was never sent, but he too wondered how Herbert could invoke universal consent when faced with “la grande contrariété des jugements qui se rencontrent presque sur chaque sujet” (“the great contrariety of judgments that one finds on almost every subject”).32 Richard Baxter likewise questioned “this consent of all mankind,”33 while Pierre Bayle had a slew of objections, including the prevalence of polytheism.34 Given this criticism, some of it leveled during his lifetime, why is Herbert so committed to the idea of consent? For Herbert, consent in De Veritate has an incipiently aesthetic dimension associated with the idea of musical consent or harmony. Arguing by analogy, he observes that the “Natural Instinct” triggering consent to the Common Notions “anticipates reason in perceiving the beauty of the proportions of a house built according to architectural principles … And the same point can be noticed in judging beautiful features, or graceful form, or harmony in music.”35 The instant appreciation of beauty or proportion, he adds, is like “Gratitudo”, the “gratitude” we experience upon encountering the innate idea of God.36 Yet consent is not only an aesthetic “feeling of conviction” characterized by “clear inner assent” corresponding to “Universal Consent.”37 The global reach of consensus gentium extends to the whole world, embracing indigenous tribes in the present and the pagan peoples of the past. Herbert is not thinking of social class or “the poorer sort,” as he likes to say, when imagining the global community, but rather of his fascination with anthropology and comparative religion. His curiosity about the variety of individual beliefs is a means to an end, namely, his general claim that that the Common Notions are ontological universals.38 The empirical evidence of global consent legitimizes a metaphysical armature in which the mind assents to universals. In this reasoning he is not alone.39 Herbert’s De religione gentilium, largely written during his retirement in Wales and published posthumously in 1663, is an erudite compilation of his own extensive readings in the field of

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comparative religion; major sources include De theologia gentilium (1642) by Gerard Vossius, De diis Syris (1617) by his friend and executor John Selden, Roman authors such as Varro, as well as recent accounts of the New World. Herbert’s principle of consent is both aesthetic and c­ osmopolitan while wedded to innate ideas. His philosophy of mind tends toward realism and idealism: universalia sunt realia. Nevertheless, he arrives at skepticism through a circuitous route. His aesthetic appreciation for the relation of conformity will lead him to value an epistemological neutrality that shares features with the skeptical suspension of judgment (épochè).

Conformatio Conformity is a complex word with a long and checkered history. Its most salient meaning for students of the seventeenth century is accommodation to the established church: going along to get along. Recently, Gregory Dodds has argued that the discourse of conformity was part of the Erasmian legacy in England and was co-opted, not only by the establishment, but also by extremists as a way of rhetorically occupying the via media. In Dodds’s view, conformity masquerades as a synonym for moderation when in fact it means uniformity.40 More often, conformity bluntly evokes state power. Conformity is also a term from diplomacy and international relations designating shared borders and the contiguity of nations – a usage in play for Herbert given his diplomatic background.41 Additionally, it has a distinguished philosophical genealogy, going back to Scholastic theologians and before them to Aristotle, and designates the metaphysical and epistemological agreement between different mental entities. For philosophers conformitas means congruence, correspondence, fit, or match. Thus, the connotations of conformity extend in two directions: first, toward the discourse of philosophy and theology in which the vocabulary of analogy, alignment, and metaphysical intimacy looms large; and  second, toward the coercive practices of institutional power and individual maneuvers of self-preservation and dissimulation crafted in response, a usage touched on in The life and raigne of King Henry

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the Eighth.42 A metaphysics of unity melds with a political aesthetic of ­camouflage: perfect harmony in tension with forced assimilation. This can manifest itself in many ways.43 What is important here is Herbert’s exaltation of and allegiance to the term. Herbert defines conformity repeatedly, seeking to fix its i­dentity once and for all; but no sooner has he asserted a definition with trenchant finality than his thinking seems to evolve so that he appends or inserts a subordinate clause lightly modifying the prior version. Insofar as Herbert seems to be experimenting with a “grammar” of conformity in De Veritate, we can say (in a Wittgensteinian vein) that his usages bear a “family resemblance.” But as Stanley Cavell reminds us, “All that the idea of ‘family resemblances’ is meant to do, or need do, is to make us dissatisfied with the idea of universals as explanations of language.”44 While Herbert is not prepared to disavow universals, his dissatisfaction with conformity as a universal is palpable. In his work the polysemy of conformity risks dissolving into an all-purpose semantic variable. It is as though Herbert were trying to conjure a new “form of life” for the word: a form of life that might solve the problems encountered by consciousness. As Cavell explains, “You cannot use words to do what we do with them until you are initiate of the forms of life which give those words the point and shape they have in our lives.” Herbert is trying to use the aesthetic connotations of the word to initiate a form of life committed to ethical, political, and religious harmony. Herbert exalts conformity as a perfect fit between knower and known, a relation marked by symmetry and balance as the mind and its objects face off and match up. “Est enim Veritas… Harmonia quaedam inter objecta & facultates Analogas… Ita instructus, duplicem, eamque mutuam actionem in rebus observare potes. Objecta enim agunt in nos; Nos etiam agimus in objecta; quae tamen ita uno eodemque temporis momento perficiuntur, ut quasi omninò insensilis sit differentia” (“Truth is a harmony,” he declares, “between objects and their analogous faculties … When we have grasped this we can see that a double movement takes place; objects affect us, and we affect them; but both activities occur at the same moment, so that the difference between them is almost ­unnoticeable”).45 Truthful perception works like a dance:

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e­ verything synchronized and in concert. To drive home this synergy, Herbert makes conformity the chief criterion for gauging the truth of a belief or sensation, functioning as the measure of a successful act of cognition. Herbert may be reaching toward a notion of disinterestedness here – or perhaps impartiality or neutrality – but if so, he conceives of disinterestedness not as detachment, but as a felicitous meeting of perceiver and perceived, a coming together he revisits as an ideal when writing history.46 Conformity, imagined as an aesthetic conjunction, thus insures against the myriad ways in which cognition can go awry, disabling falsity and misprision. Resorting to simile, however, Herbert concedes that, “Aliqua tamen utì sanitates” (“truth, like health, requires its special circumstances”), noting “ita & Veritatis datur latitudo” (“Truth is highly conditional”).47 He then lists ten conditions for producing the epistemological conformity necessary for the grasping of truth. His conditions are designed to refute skepticism and challenge the skeptical strategies known as the modes of Aenesidemus. These modes were devised in antiquity, relayed by Sextus Empiricus in the second century, and made famous in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the French thinkers Montaigne, Charron, Bayle, and others. As Montaigne’s “Apologie for Raymond Sebond” attests, these ancient techniques for inducing doubt were remarkably effective, threatening the foundations of knowledge. Sometimes Herbert uses classical examples: the case of the jaundiced eye that makes the world look yellow or that of the sick man for whom honey tastes bitter.48 But usually, Herbert offers refinements because he wants his conditions to apply, not only to the external sensory problems ­ favored by skeptics, but also to internal problems of apprehension having to do, for example, with beauty and memory. He attempts to understand why “pulchri enim Idea … nos afficit” (“the idea of beauty … excites us”) and “ut Memoria sit constans, integra, stabilis” (“how memory can remain reliable, fresh and steady”).49 So he introduces conditions not addressed by Aenesidemus: for example, by tackling the question of how to neutralize temporality and hold questions open long enough to reach truthful perception.50 Ever the optimist, Herbert hopes to overwrite the ten skeptical modes by devising a set of conditions that will at once displace and

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s­upplement the skeptical analysis of perception by dealing with inward apprehensions.51 Seventeenth-century documents and letters testify to the ­difficulties that Herbert’s contemporaries had with his p ­ hilosophical prose. For example, Descartes thanks Mersenne for sending him a copy of his 1639 French translation of De Veritate: “j’y ay trouvé beaucoup moins de difficulté en le lisant en françois, que je n’avois fait cy devant en le parcourant en latin …” (“I can only say that I had much less difficulty in reading it in French than I had had with the Latin”), adding “encore que je ne puisse m’accorder en tout aux sentimens de cet autheur, je ne laisse pas de l’estimer beaucoup au dessus des esprits ordinaires” (“although I cannot be in complete agreement with this author’s opinions I nevertheless consider that he is much above ordinary minds”).52 Similarly, Jacob Aretius, an Oxford theologian, writes to Mersenne that “Excellentissi Baronis de Cherbury tractatum de Veritate amamus omnes, atque (ut par est) elogijs ornamus, sed vix millesimus quisque (vel eruditiorum) intelligit. Heroica ingenia vere sunt Aquilae (In nubibus)” (“we all admire the most excellent Baron of Cherbury’s treatise De veritate, and (as is just) adorn it with praise; but scarcely one in a thousand (even of the learned) understand it. Heroic intellects indeed are eagles (in the clouds)”).53 De Veritate’s obscurity is usually ascribed to the denotational slippage in the key terms of its argumentation.54 Yet the distinction between “residual” and “emergent” ­discourses, coined by Raymond Williams, helps clarify Herbert’s use of conformity. The residual connotations of conformity involve the language of philosophy and theology going back several centuries. Most familiar perhaps is the idea that the soul should conform itself to the will of God, although Herbert specifically dismisses this locution when he reviews his own aims. He declares polemically: Much may be added to what I have said, but I leave this to the Schools. It is sufficient in this work to have laid the foundation of truth. If any doubt this let them consider the definitions of the Authors, such as that truth is the conformity with the Divine mind, truth is the form of true objects, truth is the property of each thing since it is founded on it. Such assertions are only morsels or fractions of definitions which it is tiresome to discuss.55

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Herbert is confident his account has displaced inferior definitions of truth, including those involving conformity to God’s will. Herbert’s idiosyncratic understanding of conformity is ­Janus-faced – at times looking back toward the “Schools” he rejects in acknowledgment of his Oxford and Paduan teachers,56 but also looking forward to emergent forms of philosophical writing and scientific investigation. As mentioned, he was in conversation with Descartes, Gassendi, and Mersenne, among others. He translated Hobbes’s De principiis, an early draft of De corpore.57 His library, numbering at least a thousand books, was furnished with scientific and medical treatises.58 He shared with his brother George a friendship with Francis Bacon. Bacon appointed Herbert, along with John Selden, the executor of his papers in an early draft of his will.59 Critics may dispute the extent to which Bacon influenced Herbert, but it is clear they shared certain broad aims.60 Like many seventeenth-century thinkers, both were goaded by the challenge of skepticism to identify the mechanisms that produce cognitive error and thereby advance truth. Herbert’s aesthetic sensitivity to the relational processes of perception may well owe something to Bacon. This aestheticism manifests itself in a Baconian appreciation for nature’s intricacies and in the emergent discourse of wonder associated with it.61 He is amazed at the varieties of smell, reiterating his lament over the inadequacies of language.62 Whether discussing opium or absinthe, the croaking of frogs, or the rose in winter, his precise descriptions are infused with wonder.63 In one puzzling instance, he conflates conformity and skin, asserting, “Organum externum conformationis, est Epidermis, sive ipsa cutis extremitas” (“The external organ of conformity is nothing but the epidermis or extremity of the skin”).64 Skin is a person’s interface with the world, necessitating a homeostatic equilibrium of sorts that enables truth of perception. These examples suggest that Herbert counts himself among those connoisseurs belonging to a “community of inquirers” united by a “sensibility” that Daston and Park characterize as “a state of painstaking attention trained on new, rare, or unusual things and events.”65 Herbert’s fascination with the body notwithstanding, in the end his thesis about conformity inhibits him from asking further questions. His descriptions often open or end in assertions of

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“­conformity,” effectively shutting down investigation rather than opening it up. “Flavour,” for example, he defines as “Facultatis quae gustat objectum proprium est Sapor; Medium debitum est Aqua quaedam salivalis insipida; quae si adsit, & conditiones quas in principio libri attulimus, rectè conformatur Facultas ista” (“the special object of the faculty of taste, and the correct medium is a kind of tasteless saliva, the presence of which, together with the conditions described at the beginning of the book, ensures that this faculty is in conformity”).66 On occasions like this one, conformity functions rhetorically as a self-evident claim that precedes a disquisition on the great variety of flavors, but it tends not to promote further research, as it might do in Bacon. While Bacon has utility in his sights and operates with the certainty that society will benefit from probing nature’s secrets, Herbert is less confident about experimental science and more resigned to the limits of human reason. He says, “Pauca enim sunt (eaq; obscura) quae in naturalibus deprehendimus” (“There are few features of nature which we can comprehend, and even they are obscure”).67 Nature inspires aesthetic wonder, but rather than leading to experimentation, Herbert’s aesthetic sensibility compels him to look within and deepen his understanding of the human mind. Herbert’s interest in beauty is often ascribed to Neoplatonism thanks to poems that trade in Neoplatonic conceits.68 Sarah Hutton groups Herbert with the Cambridge Platonists even while acknowledging the “blend of Stoic, Neoplatonic and Aristotelian elements” in Herbert’s thought.69 A scrap of paper relating to beauty found among Herbert’s letters shows these eclectic affiliations. Under the title “The new Philosophy of Beauty,” Herbert has jotted notes where Neoplatonism, scholasticism, and traces of the new science mingle promiscuously.70 Calling “Beauty the most visible part of knowledge,” he begins with “the most visible part of beauty, which is Collour.” After observing color’s “calme light,” he considers the “Phaenomenon” of the sky’s color “in white and blew” as well as the relative beauty of diamonds and sapphires, supposing that “the white must have somewhat in it of the Orientall and ferne” if it is to be as beautiful as the blue sapphire. “The second part of beauty,” he declares, “is Figure this consists in a 3fold proportion, according

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to the Genus, Species and Individūū.” After a few examples, he takes up “The Beauty of Order” or “the 3d Beauty” before reverting to discussion of color. Praise of proportion unites this taxonomy of beauty. Herbert praises proportion alongside symmetry and harmony throughout his poetry and prose, criteria of beauty that also inform his concept of conformity.71 Objects and faculties “are not haphazardly brought into conformity with each other”; rather, “Ad objecta enim facultates suas Analogas Harmonicè excitari” (“faculties are harmoniously directed toward objects”).72 When it comes to “discovering” the Common Notions, Herbert assures “the Reader” (“Lector”) that “ut miro quodam gaudio perfusus, intus Harmonicè respondentes Facultates undè conformantur, senseris” (“he will be filled with extraordinary pleasure and experience an intimate harmony of the faculties through which the notions are brought into conformity”).73 The happiness produced by the apprehension of the Common Notions borders on a type of aesthetic experience given its imbrication with the beauty of conformity as a relation: “illi tamen Harmonicè respondet. Ex quorum actione reciprocâ, sensum tanquam resultantiam sive concentum quendam oriri volumus” (“A conforming faculty,” he reiterates, “corresponds harmoniously with the object … And from this mutual activity … apprehension springs as the outcome of the blending of forces”).74 Conformity is an activity of coming together in joyous reciprocity. As Herbert puts it, “Vires enim & fortitudines Facultatum in objectis cognatis propriis ita nos totos occupant, ut Veritatis systema pulcherrimum nunquam satis mirari possimus” (“The force and energy of the faculties when they are allied with their appropriate objects satisfy our spirits so completely that we must always marvel at the beauty of the system of truth”).75 Here the connection between conformity and the aesthetic experience of beauty is clearly stated. Later, he develops this insight, applying it not to the “system” but to the question of proportion and harmonic numbers when assessing objects of beauty.76 Herbert melds aesthetic evaluation, scholastic faculty psychology and Pythagorean number theory in his explanation of conformity as a principle of cognition. In sum, Herbert believes that truth is the result of cognitive and perceptual processes that are structurally aesthetic. Wonder arises

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not only in response to the stimulus of aesthetic objects, but also as a manifestation of the aesthetic dimension of the mind’s deep structures. Two aesthetic orders, then, coexist in Herbert’s epistemology. The first envisions infinite iterations of perceptual conformity, as when Herbert declares that “omne novum objectum novam facultatem conformantem” (“every new object enters into conformity with a new faculty”).77 This relation – if properly configured – is neutral, meaning unbiased, undistorted.78 Supervening on the objective neutrality of the conforming relation is the second aesthetic order, which addresses the way the subject regards the object. This involves affect, in Herbert’s case the wonder inspired by the beauties of nature. The conjunction of conformity and neutrality reveals Herbert’s incipient exploration of aesthetics because it sets up an ideal premised on a spectator’s distance and an attitude of aesthetic judgment toward inner as well as outer states and objects. Herbert’s interest in questions of judgment increases over the course of De Veritate, but his metaphors become less aesthetic and more juridical. Midway through the text, he is not reaching toward the disinterestedness of aesthetic judgment so much as toward the impartiality of a disciplined and disciplining conscience – a topic, Herbert assures us, to which he will someday devote a treatise.79 The consensus gentium is expressed now as a universal demand for law understood as a rule for conscience. Thus, Herbert remarks that “Haud mirum interea, ex occulto Naturae stimulo legem si postulent gentes universae. Hoc ipso enim Notitias suas communes in ordinem redactas innuunt, recta subindè ut Conscientiae detur norma” (“it is not surprising if all the inhabitants of the earth demand a law, since they are urged on by a secret impulse of nature; for thereby they lead us to perceive that what they desire is that their Common Notions should be clearly arranged, so that they might have a rule for conscience”).80 Herbert echoes Paul’s sense that even “the Nations” have rules of conscience inscribed in their hearts (Romans 2:14–15). The difference is that the Common Notions occupy the place of Paul’s law. Herbert may also be recalling another verse from Romans: “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (12:2). Paul contrasts the worldly compliance entailed by conformity and the spiritual transformation of the mind. But for Herbert,

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c­onformity and mental renewal are not opposites; instead, they are mutually constitutive. A reformed mind will perceive truth and hence cease quarreling over indifferent matters.81 If Herbert cannot suspend judgment in the skeptical sense and thereby sustain an aesthetic of neutrality, he nevertheless endorses a skeptical detachment from doctrinal details. He believes that if the mind is in right conformity experiencing inner motions of consent, a peaceful polity will follow. This position, formulated between 1618 and 1620, perhaps in response to the doctrinal strictures issued by the Synod of Dort, will undergo modifications over the next three decades even as it continues to color his thinking. In time Herbert will discover that his aestheticization of conformity has political implications to be reckoned with.

Conformity / Neutrality in The life and raigne of King Henry the Eighth (1649) While the political implications of Herbert’s philosophy of mind are intimated in De Veritate, they are more fully developed in his posthumously published The life and raigne of King Henry the Eighth (1649), one of Herbert’s last works and arguably his masterpiece.82 In King Henry the Eighth, Herbert uses consent and conformity in conventional ways – consent usually extracted under duress and conformity represented as politic deference to arbitrary authority.83 Conformity and consent are simplified and politicized. However, when Herbert discusses the Reformation or religion, he usually harks back to the Common Notions and thereby reclaims the moral high ground for conformity. He may be channeling the Erasmian usage of conformity as political moderation when he represents the Common Notions as offering a middle way in his history of the Reformation. Overall, his text shows appreciation for compromise in various manifestations: skills of negotiation and arbitration; respect for Parliament and law-making; support for rulers intent on eliciting consensus from quarreling factions, such as his idealized portrait of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V working to convene the Council of Trent; and sympathy for neutrality as a political strategy.

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Herbert surely did not foresee his own career as a historian when he delivered his disparaging view of historical writing at the conclusion of De Veritate as based on “conjecture, and therefore … upon insecure foundations.”84 Herbert has high standards when circumstances lead him to redact historical narratives. He certainly takes a skeptical view of historical sources and encourages readers to come to their own conclusions. A fall from royal favor precipitated Herbert’s turn to history. After five years as ambassador to France for King James, Herbert was recalled in 1624. Historians dispute the reasons.85 Herbert’s career never recovered from what he himself called “so notable a Disgrace.”86 Thereafter, his most successful attempts to leverage his experience were his forays into history writing: first, his Expedition to the Isle of Rhé, and second, his The life and raigne of King Henry the Eighth. Both were written with the encouragement of Charles I, who gave Herbert access to state papers and to Sir Robert Cotton’s library, and both were published posthumously. The  Expedition to the Isle of Rhé is a thinly veiled apology for the Duke of Buckingham’s failed leadership of that campaign. Relatively short, it debunks French accounts of the siege of the citadel of St. Martin near La Rochelle as well as exploring the causes of the English defeat. The history of Henry VIII, by contrast, is a monumental work that consumed more than a decade of Herbert’s life. Not only did Herbert consult all the primary sources he could get hold of – letters, treaties, and statutes, many of which are faithfully transcribed – but also the widest possible range of European historians, from Sleidan to Sandoval, Buchanan to Foxe, Guicciardini to Sarpi, Jacques-Auguste de Thou to Jean du Bellay, and many more.87 His deep immersion in Reformation history seems to have shifted his understanding of conformity and consent in more political directions. The life and raigne of Henry the Eighth’s value is enhanced by the fact that King Charles is the intended audience. Herbert’s dedicatory epistle begins: “I Present here in all humble manner unto Your Maiesty a Worke, the Authority whereof is solely Yours.”88 Herbert reminds the King of his support and involvement in the writing of this history, despite disagreements (“your judicious Animadversions”89). If we take Herbert at his word and see Charles

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as the manuscript’s immediate, implied reader, then it follows that Herbert – ever the ambassador and purveyor of humanist counsel  –  hoped his tome would influence the course of current affairs. For instance, Herbert’s efforts to explain Henry VIII’s remarkable mastery of his parliaments seem keyed to his sense that Charles could use some pointers.90 Overall, the deteriorating political situation of the 1630s ­influences Herbert’s presentation of events a century earlier, especially policies pertaining to the management of religious conflict. Herbert seizes every opportunity to showcase talents for negotiating consensus. When King Henry makes conciliatory gestures of a similar sort, Herbert praises him. He remembers how, early in Henry’s reign, the emperor “constituted our king arbiter of all emergent differences,” and in his final portrait revisits this thwarted hope, “to make himself arbiter of Christendom”; and “had it not cost him so much, none had ever proceeded more wisely.”91 But if Henry disappoints as an arbiter of religious differences, he is admirable as a manager of parliaments. Herbert observes that effective leadership deploys spies and twists arms, but he draws the line at violence: “Neither should they [princes] inforce any thus violently, when business may be done in a calm and gentle manner: the harmony of government consisting in such a delicate proportion, that no one part can safely be strain’d higher, unless the rest may well be tun’d and accorded thereunto.”92 Yet, although Herbert documents domestic efforts to broker a peaceful Reformation, he is equally interested in imperial diets and religious councils. Herbert focuses on the European arena for several reasons: to distinguish his project from those of his predecessors like William Camden, to show Henry as primus inter pares and hence as less anomalous in his behavior, and to display his own cosmopolitanism and shrewdness as a diplomat. As his autobiography puts it, “My Intention in Learning Languages being to make my selfe a Citizen of the world as farr as it were possible.”93 His ­partiality for global citizenship is one of the political corollaries of his philosophical investment in universal consent. When Herbert ponders the causes of the Reformation, for example, he muses about the fractured unity of Christendom and the problems of managing dissent with an eye to his own utopian

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notions of universal consensus.94 Herbert suggests that religious conflict could have been prevented had people been content to dissent inwardly and to distinguish good from ill doctrine privately. This would have permitted them to “conserve” their consciences. He regrets the loss of a united Christendom because the public airing of religious controversy threatens “the comfort of a good life.” Elsewhere Herbert speculates about the beginnings of the Reformation in England and how it might have been prevented. He identifies crucial turning points, but always excessive “rigour,” insufficient “moderation,” and paucity of “charity” are the culprits. This nostalgia for the consensus omnium of the Middle Ages coexists with his relish for exposing ecclesiastical abuses and papal weakness. His glee at demystifying relics is palpable.95 Nevertheless, his wistful longing for medieval unity complicates the violent ­anticlericalism of his later writings: De causis errorum and De religione laici, Appendix ad sacerdotes (1645), De religione gentilium (1663), and A Dialogue between a Tutor and his Pupil (1768). In this earlier text, Herbert counsels religious uniformity – let everyone consent to a few basic articles of faith such that they maintain “towards God, and among themselves, an uniformity” conducive to peace. He hints that this uniformity should not be “severely commanded,” implying that a more relaxed approach to religious enforcement is advisable. Herbert finds Henry’s imposition of uniformity through the Six Articles (1539) offensive, calling it “the bloody statute.”96 Herbert at the same time attempts to recuperate uniformity as a wise approach to the management of religious conflict. His appeal to privacy, conscience, and Stoic reserve amounts to a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy intended to mitigate the indignities of dissimulation. He hopes thereby to dispel the punitive connotations of conformity, of which he is fully aware.97 He wants to rehabilitate the term for the sake of his high-minded universalism, grounded in an Ur-monotheism. Universalism will sanitize conformity’s repressive connotations.98 One political consequence of this Erasmian effort to recuperate conformity is a fascination with church councils. Herbert delights in reporting the dysfunctional conduct of councils and the various ways that the goal of consensus is deferred or defeated by

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­ artisanship. But he also recognizes that councils offer an ideal way p to settle differences and arrive at compromise. Herbert wishes the Lutherans and Protestant princes had participated at Trent, even as he chronicles the Council’s bumpy start.99 As his account of the Council’s proceedings develops, Herbert gradually takes on the Hapsburg emperor Charles V’s point of view.100 This empathetic identification is not as surprising as it might seem. Reid Barbour has reminded us, for example, that the community gathered at Great Tew, whose “chief contribution” was “that skepticism itself might serve as the most godly form of Protestant heroism,” is fascinated by Charles V’s abdication, finding in the emperor’s “vexed” combination of retirement and engagement a model for reflection. They “admire the providence of God as it operates through Charles across the world” in his pursuit of “the unity of religion.”101 Herbert’s admiration derives not from the abdication so much as from other factors: the sense that groups prone to faction will accomplish nothing without the oversight of a strong leader; and the predilection for thought-experiments involving world rule (e.g. If I were emperor, how would I handle religious conflict?). He also projects his own appreciation for the beauties of Chantilly, the seat of the Duke of Montmorency – a highlight of his memoirs102 – onto the emperor when he stops at the same castle.103 Usually, however, Herbert’s identification with the emperor confines itself to his frustrated efforts to reconcile conflicting religious interest groups, especially in the conciliar arena. Herbert shares the emperor’s exasperation with his fractious charges and with the polarizing details of doctrine.104 Herbert’s ideas of properly exercised authority and wise ­leadership glimmer through the veil of his Tudor history. During the decade devoted to research and writing, Herbert becomes increasingly intrigued by neutrality as a political strategy, even as he loses interest in the rituals of the honor code (tournaments, heraldry, ambassadorial decorum). He comments, for example, on how Charles V plays the neutrality card, saying, “The emperor, who had now engag’d our king and Francis to a war, and therein reveng’d himself on both, thought it safer to be neuter, than to declare himself either way.”105 Later, Herbert notes that King Henry would have done better sometimes had he remained more of

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a spectator than an actor.106 Herbert comes to value spectatorship and measured engagement as war heats up around him. This belated discovery turns out to agree with his long-standing conviction that tendentious thinking and rash judgment result in destructive action. His philosophical preoccupation with “unbiased” perception legitimizes political neutrality. Herbert presents the highs and lows of Henry’s career, letting the reader decide for himself.107 He frequently says, “I shall leave these things to the liberty of the indifferent reader.”108 However, Herbert’s interest in neutrality does not prevent him from passing judgment on Henry VIII. In the dedicatory epistle to King Charles, Herbert describes Henry as one who was “subject to more obloquies, then any since the worst Roman Emperours times” and whose “sanguine humour came to be somewhat sanguinary and inclining to cruel.” The volume closes with a body count: “two queens, one cardinal (in procinctu, at least) or two (for Poole was condemn’d, tho’ absent) dukes, marquisses, earls, and earls sons, twelve; barons and knights, eighteen; abbots, priors, monks and priests, seventy seven; of the more common sort, between one religion and another, huge multitudes.”109 This unblinkered assessment of the damage Henry inflicted makes it difficult to accept Rossi’s view that Herbert refuses to pass judgment because he is at heart a dilettante.110 Herbert does not withhold criticism when appraising Henry’s life; instead, he aspires to a kind of equilibrium, noting of the king, for example, that “where he did ill, he made or found many complices.”111 The studied neutrality of Herbert’s narrative persona is ­consistent with his philosophy and his politics. He suspends judgment from time to time because he wants to remain dispassionate and detached – like the Emperor Charles summoning divines of each persuasion and asking them first to air and then to work out their differences, even as he arranges their diets, synods, and councils. Similarly, Herbert sees himself as orchestrating historical voices, silencing extremists with their salacious gossip, synthesizing at times, but generally giving his sources a free and equal hearing. His approach to the documents is eclectic and impartial, as Jean Bodin recommends.112 While this may strike some as “cold” and others as showing “witty distance” or a “secular mindset,” I see Herbert’s



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diffidence as evidence of several strands in his thought:113 his ­skepticism about historical memory, his sense that good leadership (and historiography) involves skill at arbitration, and his increasing appreciation for reserve, issuing from his philosophical investments in consent and conformity.

Doing Nothing How does this survey of Herbert’s commitments to conformity and consent help us understand his actions in the emergency of September 1644? In response to Herbert’s written appeal ­concerning his material losses and the safety of his family, Sir Thomas Myddleton, the Parliamentary commander, tries to safeguard Herbert’s person and estate. Reporting to Parliament, he attests to Herbert’s disaffection from the Royalist party. In this “ ­certificate,” Myddleton testifies that from 1642 to 1644 Herbert “hath done nothing that might justly offend the houses of Parliament.” Ultimately, Herbert’s neutrality amounts to doing nothing when war rages around him. Herbert’s position is a far cry from Milton’s in “Sonnet 19”: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” If political neutrality is seen as corresponding to the ­impartial mind, then Herbert’s disengagement from the Civil War can be interpreted as a principled stance showing that the order of knowledge produces social order. Consider the notion of mind that Herbert evokes in the closing tableau of his memoir, with which we began. It is characterized by conformity and consent understood as a kind of aesthetic epistemological composure. At once gathered in prayer and alert to God’s signs, as he kneels by an open window, Herbert feels serene, neutral: poised to perceive truth. Twenty years later when he has retreated to his castle on the Welsh Marches, he still seeks to arrive at truth through the promotion of conformity and consent. But, while it may have been enough in 1620s Paris for Herbert to preside over the competing apprehensions of his own interiority, now his mind seethes. The bounded self notwithstanding, the war without invades the war within. Herbert strips pagan religions of their ornaments and in

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De religione gentilium works feverishly to reveal “the radical implications of occult m ­ onotheism.”114 Herbert may not theorize about the social ­contract or sovereignty or toleration, let alone rights, as Locke was later to do. Nevertheless, thanks to the terms by which he defines truth, his project acquires political overtones of a utopian stripe. In Herbert’s ideal commonwealth, peace prevails because everyone subscribes to the primacy of the “Common Notions and what has been universally accepted by every religion, age and country.”115 There is precedent for political nonpartisanship in the ­stoicism advocated by Justus Lipsius in his best-selling dialogue, De Constantia.116 Like a stoic sage in times of persecution, Herbert submits his mind to right reason, even while presiding over humane learning. The stoic shares with the skeptic a search for wisdom that involves “the complete elimination from his mind” of beliefs, passions, and desires “which cause harm … which, if acted upon or expressed, would bring him into some kind of conflict with other men or with the world itself.”117 The skepticism of Lipsius and Montaigne led them to value self-preservation. In the emergency of civil war, Herbert may well be drawn to self-preservation through stoic apatheia and skeptical ataraxia. He may perhaps be modeling his conduct on that of Lipsius and Montaigne when he retreats to his library. In my view, however, the allure of neutrality for Herbert in the 1640s should not be ascribed to a desire for security. Instead, Herbert’s attitude of schooled detachment and political impartiality should be seen as stemming from his recalibrated understanding of conformity and consent in the aftermath of his historical research. Despite setbacks and the inescapable political connotations of ordinary language, his aspirations for these key words persist. He still wants these twin pillars of his philosophy to have aesthetic, metaphysical, rhetorical, empirical, and scientific meanings that will enable peoples around the globe to live in harmony. While he may recognize that this is far-fetched in a society where only political meanings matter and polarized discourse rules, in Lord Herbert’s optimistic imagination – spanning straits of geography, time, and philosophy – cosmopolis is on the horizon, almost within reach.118



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Notes 1 Herbert was buried in London at St Giles’s-in-the-Fields. His epitaph reads: “Hic inhumator corpus Edvardi Herbert equitis Balnei, baronis de Cherbury et Castle-Island, auctoris libri, cui titulus est, ‘De Veritate.’ Reddor ut herbae; vicesimo die Augusti anno Domini 1648.” Reddor ut herbae (“I will return as grass,” or “I am redeemed as grass”), with its whiff of theological heterodoxy, is Herbert’s anagram for his own name. See “Epitaphium in Anagramma Nominis Suit, Reddor Ut Herbae” from his posthumously published Poems, p. 125. Sidney Lee doubts that he wrote his own epitaph, attributing it to Philip, Lord Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield. See his edition: Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (London: William W. Gibbings, 1892), p. 299. 2 The Life of Edward, First Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written by himself, ed. Shuttleworth, pp. 120–1. All citations in this chapter, unless otherwise noted, are to this edition, abbreviated hereafter to The Life. 3 “Sed cùm orari, immò exorari posse Numen illud omnis moneat Religion, & Providentia particularis statuenda est, quod (ut caetera mittam argumenta in summis rerum angustiis) sensus auxilii Divini passim docet” (“Every religion believes that the Deity can hear and answer prayers; and we are bound to assume a special Providence – to omit other sources of proof – from the universal testimony of the sense of divine assistance in times of distress.”) See De Veritate, pp. 292/211 and 294/213. All citations of De Veritate are, first, to Meyrick H. Carré’s edition and translation (Bristol: University of Bristol, 1937), reissued by Routledge in 1992; and, second, to G. Gawlick’s 1966 facsimile edition of De Veritate’s third edition (London, 1645). J. Aubrey confirms Herbert’s belief in the efficacy of prayer, reporting that “Mr Fludd tells me that he [Herbert] had constantly prayers twice a day in his house, and Sundays would have his chaplain read one of Smyth’s sermons.” See Brief Lives, ed. Richard Barber (London: The Folio Society, 1975), p. 141. The transcriptions given in this chapter do not recreate Edward Herbert’s distinctive use of italics. 4 See, for example, the following exchange from a popular Protestant seventeenth-century catechism, The way to true happiness leading to the gate of knowledge (London, 1610): “How was the Law given? In thunder and lightning. Why was it given with such terror? That the people might more reverence him that gave it” (p. 14) and “What are

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the effects of his [the Father’s] magnificence? Lightning, thunder, and voices, &c,” p. 114. 5 De Veritate, pp. 318/235. While it may be tempting to dismiss this passage as a parody of superstitious thinking, that would be too easy. Hill canvases the variety of reactions over the centuries, concluding that “the revelation shows the ironic force of Providence, teaching the true by parodying the false.” Hill, Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, p. 115. Compare the dry thunder of Aeneid VIII, ll. 523–36, a sign from Venus that Aeneas recognizes as “a covenant for wartime” against the Laurentians. The Aeneid, trans. S. Ruden (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). 6 Samuel Hartlib provides further proof, noting that Herbert wished “to speake with Aristotle et Plato to know of them what they would have judged of his De Veritate” (30/4/42B, Ephemerides, 1640) and that “Of the whole Booke hee said Hee had rather bee the Author of it if hee were put to his choice then to bee King of Poland” (30/4/31A, Ephemerides, 1639). See The Hartlib Papers, ed. Leslie M. Greengrass and M. Hannon (HRI Online Publications, 2013). See also Anita Gilman Sherman, “Poland in the Cultural Imaginary of Early Modern England,” Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies, 15.1 (2015), 56. 7 See, among others, Robert Ellrodt, Seven Metaphysical Poets: A Structural Study of the Unchanging Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Margaret Fuller, “The Two Herberts,” in Papers on Literature and Art (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846), pp. 15–34; David A. Pailin, “Should Herbert of Cherbury be regarded as a ‘deist’?” Journal of Theological Studies, 51 (2000), 113–49; Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 8 Herbert, De Veritate, p. 73. 9 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 75/1. “Satis fuerit interea ista Veritatis fundamenta (ad Euthygrammae cujusdam Ichnographiae modum) posuisse.” “Quid modò tam integrum, tam sanum in rebus ut sit, quò anxius & sui malè compos animus se vertat? Hinc tot sectae, schismata …” (p. 1). 10 For cosmopolitanism as a symptom of “loser romanticism,” see Peter Sloterdijk, The Art of Philosophy: Wisdom as Practice, trans. Karen Margolis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), pp. 45–6. 11 He offered “a large summe of money to free him and his Tennants and Neighbors from Plunder and his Castle from a Seige, desiring an answer thereof upon the next Friday morning at nine of the Clock.”

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Mario M. Rossi, La vita, le opere, i tempi di Edoardo Herbert di Chirbury (Florence: Sansoni, 1947), vol. 3, p. 524. 12 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 525. 13 The document reveals Herbert’s anxiety about safeguarding his books and manuscripts, a later paragraph stipulating “that there shall be noe person or persons enter into the library or study of the said Edward Lord Herbert, or the two next rooms or chambers adjoining to the said study or library, during the time of the absence of the said Edward Lord Herbert, or at any other time.” (Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 524). Herbert had renovated the castle in 1622–5, adding a new L-shaped building where the library had pride of place. Dunstan Roberts, “‘Abundantly replenisht with Books of his own purchasing and choyce’: Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s Library at Montgomery Castle,” Library and Information History, 31.2 (2015), 117–36. 14 Shuttleworth, “Introduction” to The Life, p. xxvii. 15 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, pp. 77–8. 16 “Tutta la sua vita risorgeva ora a spingerlo nel vicolo cieco della ­neutralità.” Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 79. 17 House of Lords, vol. 5, pp. 77–8. 18 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 89. See Rossi’s quarrel with Edmund Gosse’s dating; he surmises that Donne’s gift to Herbert occurred earlier (vol. 3, p. 410). 19 Jeanne Shami, John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in the Late Jacobean Pulpit (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 69–70. 20 Thomas Adams, A Commentary or, exposition upon the divine second epistle generall, written by the blessed apostle St. Peter (London: Richard Badger [and Felix Kyngston] for Iacob Bloome, 1633), p. 908. 21 “Is it likely that eternal happiness should be offered to me as an article is offered for sale, and then, just as I am about to purchase it, that the contract should be broken in the manner of a dishonest tradesman? Am I to be defrauded of the immortality and eternal blessedness which I was on the point of enjoying?” “An mercatoris subdoli vafritie aeterná (quae ostentabatur) feolici tatem mihi quasi praestináti, & tantum non potienti exuetur pactum? An mihi fraudi erit immortalitas & Beatitudo illa aeterna, quâ jam fruï incoeperam?” Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 329/246. 22 A Dialogue between a Tutor and his Pupil (New York: Garland, 1979), p. 153. 23 Bedford, The defence of Truth, p. 215. 24 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 125/4. The legacy of Stoicism is most evident universal in De Religione Laici (1645) when Herbert juxtaposes ­

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consent with right Reason (Ratione recta), exhorting the reader to “distinguish things brought to light by right Reason and universal consent from those rummaged out by hearsay” (p. 103). 25 “Summa igitur veritatis norma, erit Consensus Universalis”; “Consensus Universalis & prima & summa Theologia & Philosophia habendus est,” De Veritate, pp. 117/39, 118/40. 26 Cicero, De Natura Deorum 1:43–4, cited in Jasper Reid, “The Common Consent Argument from Herbert to Hume,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 53.3 (2015), 404. 27 “Non solùm interea ex Legibus, Religionibus, Philosophiis, ­sciptorum denique monumentis quibuscunque Consensum illum universalem eruimus; sed & Facultates aliquas internas, ex quibus veritates istae conformantur, in nobis describi volumus.” Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 118/40. 28 “I hold, therefore, that this universal consent is the teaching of Natural Instinct and is essentially due to Divine Providence.” (“Consensum illum Universalem, tanquam doctrinam Instinctus Naturalis & necessarium Providentiae divina Universalis opus habemus.”) De Veritate, pp. 117/39. Bedford comments, “Herbert appears blandly to ignore Montaigne’s devastating objections” to the belief that man has an innate capacity to grasp truth. The defence of Truth, p. 53. 29 Herbert, The Life, p. 24. 30 For the early reception of De veritate, see Richard W. Serjeantson, “Herbert of Cherbury before Deism: The Early Reception of the De veritate,” The Seventeenth Century, 16.2 (2001), 217–38. Serjeantson notes that before the 1670s, “readers were excited, influenced, and often confused by his writings and their purposes” (p. 217). 31 1.3.15–19. R. I. Aaron argues that Locke’s real target is not Herbert, but the Cartesians, cited in Bedford, The defence of Truth, p. 78. See Aaron’s John Locke, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), pp. 84–8. See also Jonathan Barnes, cited in Serjeantson, “Herbert of Cherbury before Deism,” p. 236. 32 “Quelle raison pourrait-on rendre de la grande contrariété des jugements qui se rencontrent presque sur chaque sujet?” (cited in Serjeantson, “Herbert of Cherbury before Deism,” p. 223). See “Ad Librum D. Edoardi Herberti Angli, De Veritate, Epistola,” in Pierre Gassendi, Opera omnia, vol. 3 (Lyons: Laurent Anisson and Jean Baptiste Devenet, 1658), pp. 411–19. 33 Richard Baxter, More Reasons for the Christian Religion, and no reason against it … being… II. Some Animadversions on a tractate De veritate (London, 1672), p. 129.

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34 Reid, “Common Consent,” p. 408. 35 De Veritate, pp. 139/60. “Ideò in domo secundùm regulas Architectonicas extructâ, pulchrum symmetriae prius ab Instinctu Naturali percipitur, quàm ipsa ratio, quae ex proportionibus partium  … perficitur; quod in venustate faciei, formae elegantia, concentu harmoniae &c. satis constat.” De Veritate, p. 60. George Herbert’s “The Church-Floor” makes a similar point: “Blest be the Architect, whose art / Could build so strong in a weak heart” (ll. 19–20). 36 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 296–7/215. 37 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 81/6. 38 “Pure Common Notions are universals, distilled as it were from the wisdom of Nature itself.” (“Per se denique Notitiae Communes (tàquam exipsâ naturae sapientiâ depromptae) sunt universales”). De Veritate, pp. 139–40/60. 39 Reid, “Common Consent,” p. 405. 40 Gregory D. Dodds, Exploiting Erasmus: The Erasmian Legacy and Religious Change in Early Modern England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). Similarly, Ethan Shagan notes, “what a dangerous chameleon the via media turned out to be.” See “Beyond Good and Evil: Thinking with Moderates in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies, 49.3 (2010), 501. Shami cautions that “evidence of ‘moderation’ or ‘conformity’, of course, is difficult to gather and interpret.” John Donne and Conformity, p. 17. 41 J. H. Elliott, Spain, Europe and the Wider World 1500–1800 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 7. 42 See, for example: “For though (as Sanders saith) he would by the Bishop of Rochester’s exemplary death have brought More to a conformity, yet finding that it was impossible …” (Henry the Eighth, pp. 392–3). For The life and raigne of King Henry the Eighth, I have used the Folger Library’s first edition (1649) and the 1870 Alexander Murray reprint of Kennet’s 1719 folio edition. Unless otherwise noted, all citations are to the latter. The margins of the first edition list some of the sources that Herbert and his assistants, Thomas Masters and Rowland Evans, consulted. The first edition also includes the dedicatory epistle to King Charles. 43 For example, King James uses the term to describe the devil’s wily pliancy: “For that olde and craftie Serpent, being a spirite, hee easilie spyes our affections, and so conformes himselfe thereto, to deceave us to our wracke.” Conformity here suggests mimicry, metaphysical intimacy, subjugation, and even complicity. See Daemonologie

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(Edinburgh, 1597), p. 8. But the term can also imply structural integrity and inner strength, as Justus Lipsius suggests when he says (in John Stradling’s translation) that “our minds must be so confirmed and conformed that we may bee at rest in troubles, and have peace even in the midst of warre.” See De Constantia (London, 1594), 1.1.72. The Latin reads: “firmandus ita formandusque hic animus, ut quies nobis in turbis sit, & pax inter media arma.” 44 Stanley Cavell, “Excursus on Wittgenstein’s Vision of Language,” in Alice Crary and Rupert Read (eds), The New Wittgenstein (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 21–37. Note page 35. 45 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 148/68. 46 See Kathryn Murphy and Anita Traninger’s edited collection, The Emergence of Impartiality (Leiden: Brill, 2014), for historically nuanced distinctions among impartiality, neutrality, and disinterestedness, as well as for impartiality’s skeptical origins. See also Peter Dear, who maps the shift from ontology to epistemology in the seventeenth century by tracking the way a concern with truth – which resides “in some kind of conformity between the thing itself and the idea of the thing” – turns into a privileging of disinterestedness. “From Truth to Disinterestedness in the Seventeenth Century,” Social Studies of Science, 22.4 (1992), 620. For a polemical overview of the changing fortunes of “the neutral observer” in western philosophy, see Sloterdijk, Wisdom as Practice. 47 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 88/12, 78/4. 48 “To the man with jaundice everything is yellow, and all things taste bitter to the fevered tongue.” (“indè in oculo icterici omnia flava; in lingua febricitantis omnia amara sentiuntur”). De Veritate, pp. 102/25. 49 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 152/72, 237/156. 50 “The object should remain for a sufficient time,” Herbert declares, explaining that “when we pass from external to internal apprehension, time is so necessary that without it nothing can be adequately perceived. It is for this reason, due to insufficient examination of assertions, that rash and premature judgments and ludicrous beliefs gain ground.” “Sed cùm à foro exteriore in interius illud ventum fuerit, mora adeò est necessaria, ut sine illâ nihil rectè perfici queat. Inde ex propositionibus nõ satis expensis praecocia & temeraria judicia, fides sublestae & verniles, imò & nullae oriuntur, Neq.” De Veritate, pp. 92–93/16. 51 Abraham Stoll comments on “the array of technical terms used to describe interiority” in Herbert’s work. See Milton and Monotheism

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(Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2009), p. 287. As Reid Barbour has observed, this attention to the mind’s inner workings is typical of “the Caroline exploration of internal circumstance” prompted by the “critical legacy of skepticism.” See Literature and Religious Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 16. 52 Marin Mersenne, Correspondance du P. Marin Mersenne, ed. Cornelis de Waard, René Pintard, Bernard Rochot, and Armand Beaulieu, 17 vols (Presses Universitaires de France and  Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1932–88), with particular attention to vol. 8. Descartes later gave Herbert a first edition of the Meditations. Herbert was interested enough that he started a translation of the Discours de la Méthode; see Rossi, Herbert, vol. 2, p. 537; C. J. Fordyce and T. M. Knox, “The Library of Jesus College, Oxford: With an appendix on the books bequeathed thereto by Lord Herbert of Cherbury,” Oxford Bibliographical Society, Proceedings and Papers, 5 (1937), 53ff. 53 Mersenne, Correspondance, vol. 8, p. 404 (cited in Serjeantson, “Herbert of Cherbury before Deism,” p. 220). 54 Hill finds Herbert’s “oddity of usage” to be most problematic with respect to the term “faculty” (Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, p. 27). Other scholars attribute the difficulties of Herbert’s writing to the “syncretism” of his thought, surveying his wide and eclectic reading in the tradition of Quellenforschungen. See Bedford, The defence of Truth, p. 88; Michael Morgan Holmes, Early Modern Metaphysical Literature: Nature, Custom and Strange Desires (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 45–6; and Daniel Pickering Walker, The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972). 55 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 286/205. 56 In 1615 Herbert attended the lectures of Cesare Cremonini in Padua, himself a follower of Pomponazzi. John Butler, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1582–1648): An Intellectual Biography (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1990), pp. 103–4. See also Rossi, Herbert, vol. 1, pp. 232–3. 57 Bedford, The defence of Truth, p. 133; Rossi, Herbert, vol. 1, p. 281. Richard Tuck describes Herbert’s version not as a translation, but as “notes on a text of De corpore,” in Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 296. 58 See National Library of Wales 5298E for Herbert’s library catalogue, c. 1630.

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59 Reid Barbour, John Selden: Measures of the Holy Commonwealth in Seventeenth-Century England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), p. 193, who in turn cites Mordechai Feingold, “John Selden and the Nature of Seventeenth-Century Science,” in R. T.  Bienvenu and Mordechai Feingold (eds), In the Presence of the Past. Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol. 118. (London and New York: Springer, Dordrecht, 1991). 60 See Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, p. 126; Armando Carlini, Classe di scienzi morali, storiche, e filologiche (Florence: RealeAccademia dei Lincei, 1917); Rossi, Herbert, vol. 1, pp. 279–80; W. R. Sorley, “The Philosophy of Herbert of Cherbury,” Mind, 3.12 (1894), 492; Bedford, The defence of Truth, pp. 138, 83; Jackson, “‘It is unpossible to draw his Picture’,” pp. 137–8; Greg Miller, George Herbert’s”Holy Patterns”: Reforming Individuals in Community (New York, London: Continuum, 2007), especially chapter 6 on George Herbert’s “longstanding and public” friendship with Bacon, p. 107. 61 See, for example, Herbert’s references to the larynx (De Veritate, pp. 218/138) and teeth (De Veritate, pp. 176/96). 62 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 212/132 and 136. 63 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 222 /142, 216/136, 167/87. 64 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 230/149. 65 Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998), pp. 288, 218. 66 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 221/141. 67 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 270/189. 68 See “The Idea” in The Poems of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. 1665. John Churton Collins (ed.) (London: Chatto & Windus, 1881), p. 109. Spenser’s Neoplatonic “An Hymne in Honour of Beautie” is cited as inspiration, Butler, Herbert, p. 469. 69 Sarah Hutton, “Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the Cambridge Platonists,” in Stuart Brown (ed.), Routledge History of Philosophy. Vol. 5: British Philosophy and the Age of Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 21. 70 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, pp. 442–3. 71 In “To Mrs. Diana Cecyll,” the third stanza reads: “Nor is that ­symmetry of parts and form divine / Made of one vulgar line, / Or such as any know how to define, / But of proportions new, so well exprest / That the perfections in each part confest / Are beauties to themselves and to the rest.” See Poems, p. 52. See also De Veritate, pp. 139/60.

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72 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 92/15. 73 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 141–2/62. 74 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 153–4/73. 75 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 161/80. 76 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 176/96. 77 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 110/33. 78 See Dabney Townsend on “objective neutrality” as “the fundamental aesthetic state” in Aesthetic Objects and Works of Art (Wolfeboro, NH: Longwood Academic, 1989), p. 94. 79 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 186–7/106. 80 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 188/108. 81 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 296/215. 82 Locke praised Herbert’s history of Henry VIII in “Some Thoughts Concerning Reading and Study for a Gentleman,” The Works of John Locke (London: Thomas Tegg 1823), vol. 3, p. 299. This compensates for Locke’s frontal attack on Herbert’s Common Notions in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. For more recent praise of Herbert’s history, see Jackson, “‘It is unpossible to draw his picture’”; W. Moelwyn Merchant, “Lord Herbert of Cherbury and SeventeenthCentury Historical Writing,” Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmodorion (1956), 47–63; Alfred Leslie Rowse, “Caroline Philosopher,” History Today, 27.3 (1977), 198–9. 83 For example, “The gallants of the court finding now the king’s favour manifestly shining on Woolsey, apply’d themselves much to him: and especially Charles Brandon, who for his goodly person, courage, and conformity of disposition, was noted to be most acceptable to the king in all his exercises and pastimes.” Henry the Eighth, pp. 141–2, my emphasis. See also, “Adrian … was (Jan. 9.) chosen pope, though not with such an universal consent; but that (as I find by our records) our cardinal had sometimes nine, and sometimes twelve, and sometimes nineteen voices. Guicciardine seems much to wonder at this ­election …” Henry the Eighth, p. 216, my emphasis. 84 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 322/239. “Quamvis igitur hypotheticae & prorsus infirmae (respectu nostrî) Basi innitatur Antiqua omnis Historia … Conjectaria tamen …,” p. 239. Herbert’s skepticism about history taps into a long-standing debate about the relative merits of historians, philosophers, and poets. See, e.g., Sir Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poetrie (1583) and Jean Bodin’s Methodus (1566). 85 Jackson follows Rossi, saying that Herbert “exceeded his brief by working to support James I’s son-in-law, the Elector Palatine in the Bohemian crisis, and irritated the French king by his efforts to prevent

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persecution of the Huguenots,” p. 135. Bedford thinks Herbert was too outspoken about Prince Charles’s matrimonial prospects, pp. 4–5. Butler agrees, noting that Herbert relayed unfavorable reports to King James first about the Spanish match and then about the betrothal to Henrietta Maria (Lord Herbert of Chirbury, pp. 288–95). See also Chapter 3 by Nancy Zaice, this volume. 86 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 467. 87 One of the pleasures of reading the Folger Library’s 1649 edition is that there are wide margins on which appear some of the sources that Herbert and his assistants, Thomas Masters and Rowland Evans, consulted. The first edition also includes the dedicatory epistle to King Charles. 88 Fol. A2r. 89 Fol. A2v. 90 For example, “The king (whose masterpiece it was to make use of his parliaments) not only let foreign princes see the good intelligence betwixt him and his subjects, but kept them all at his devotion.” Henry the Eighth, p. 656. As Jackson puts it, “Herbert’s judicious presentation of Henry’s kingship offered a timely reminder that a monarch who honoured his constitutional obligations to seek counsel from his nobility and secured the compliance of Parliament and the law courts could not be deemed a tyrant or be denied the obedience of his subjects.” “‘It is unpossible to draw his picture’,” p. 147. 91 Herbert, Henry the Eighth, pp. 196, 744. 92 Herbert, Henry the Eighth, p. 267. 93 Herbert, The Life, p. 17. 94 Herbert, The Life, pp. 175–6. 95 Herbert, The Life, p. 615. 96 Herbert, Henry the Eighth, p. 628. 97 When Herbert gets wind that he will be recalled as ambassador, he writes to Buckingham, saying, “But I shall conforme myself evr, to my good L and mastrs will, onely could not chose but be troubled yf anyway—I should be thought unworthy to keepe that trust, wth that perpetuall faithfullnes and affection, I have inviolably mantained towards his M. or the exercise of my charge here might give me reason to expect.” Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, p. 465. See also Chapter 3 by Nancy Zaice, this volume. 98 Today we might expect that an irenic agenda would celebrate dissent and difference rather than conformity. But, as Pailin notes, the intellectual shift from uniformity to tolerance occurs at the end of the seventeenth century when “fear of dire secular consequences” had abated

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such that “the intellectual pressure was not to find a common position on which all could agree (some religious lowest common denominator)” but was rather to spur “vigorous debates about the reasonableness of belief” (“Should Herbert of Cherbury be regarded as a ‘deist’?,” 126). Toleration, according to Pailin, would have been too risky earlier. 99 Herbert, Henry the Eighth, p. 710. 100 I disagree with Hill that “though neither a Protestant nor even a Christian, Herbert, like many of his countrymen, was fervently opposed to the papacy and to its close ally, the Spanish crown” (Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, p. 9). While it is true that Herbert opposed the Spanish match in the 1620s, in King Henry the Eighth, where all the European leaders are first-order Machiavellians, the Spanish crown comes off arguably better than most. 101 Barbour, Literature and Religious Culture, pp. 22, 40, 41. See Miller, George Herbert’s “Holy Patterns,” chapters 3 and 4, for a detailed account of George Herbert’s relations with the community at Great Tew. 102 Herbert, The Life, p. 47. 103 Herbert, Henry the Eighth, p. 633. 104 Herbert, Henry the Eighth, pp. 698, 709, 728. 105 Herbert, Henry the Eighth, p. 705. 106 Herbert, Henry the Eighth, p. 744. 107 Jonathan Swift decided for himself, judging by his heavily annotated copy of the history. Of Herbert, he says, “This palliating Author, hath increased my Detestation of his Hellish Hero in every Article.” Of Henry, he says, among other things, “I wish he had been Flead, his skin stuffed and hangd on a Gibbet, His bulky guts and flesh left to be devoured by Birds and Beasts, for a warning to his successors for ever. Amen” (cited in Butler, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, pp. 397, 387). 108 Herbert, Henry the Eighth, p. 402. Sometimes his deferrals to the reader smack of defensiveness: “But as these things are set down by way of description, and not of apology, so I will leave them to come to my history, which for being free and impartial, will speak him better to the judicious reader than my annotations can,” p. 585. Note Herbert’s aspiration to impartiality. 109 Herbert, Henry the Eighth, pp. 745–6. 110 “Discutere e criticare importa una decisione, e Herbert non vuol decidere—forse perché, anche como storiografo, era un dilettante, e il dilettante, cosciente della transitorietà dei suoi interessi, evita d’impegnarsi per restare libero di mutare opinione,” vol. 2, pp. 506–7.

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111 Herbert, Henry the Eighth, p. 585. Jean Bodin thinks the historian should be even-handed toward his subjects. “If a reproach is due,” he says, “it would be more suitable for a historian to make a mild criticism after the narrative has been given or to withhold his opinion altogether.” He clarifies, “Any writer vituperates Nero more than enough when he recounts that he murdered the most honorable men, his tutor, two wives, his brother Britannicus, and finally his mother.” Method for the Easy Comprehension of History, trans. Beatrice Reynolds (New York: Octagon Books, 1966), p. 53. 112 Bodin offers criteria for evaluating historians, among them “to be free from all emotion—a condition which we require in this author whom we seek,” p. 44. He models this approach, saying, “I will bring forward the essential argument on each side and leave the matter to individual judgment,” p. 51. Bodin may be adapting Tacitus’s counsel in the Annales of writing “sine ira et studio.” 113 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 2, p. 509; Merchant, “Lord Herbert of Cherbury,” p. 60; Jackson, “‘It is unpossible to draw his picture’,” p. 148. 114 Stoll, Milton and Monotheism, p. 79. 115 Herbert, De Veritate, p. 302. 116 Lipsius, De Constantia, pp. 81–2; see Book 2, Chapter 2, p. 45 in George Bishop’s 1586 Latin edition. 117 Tuck, Philosophy and Government, pp. xiii, 62. 118 Lagrée, Le Salut du Laïc, p. 26: “On peut noter combien cette théorie de la vérité est portée part un fort optimisme épistémologique lui même fondé sur un optimisme anthropologique à racines théologiques.”

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“Devout humanism” and its problems: George Herbert and François de Sales Richard Strier

George Herbert and François de Sales are similar figures in a number of ways. They were close to being contemporaries, though St. François (born 1567) is of Shakespeare’s generation while George Herbert (born 1593) is of that of Descartes, and they both bear a special place in the mainstream religious histories of their respective countries and cultures (if there were Anglican saints, George Herbert would be one).1 They were both “devotional” writers and drew on some of the same biblical and patristic sources. More importantly, they are regularly praised in the same way  – for the clarity and beauty of their (relatively) plain vernacular styles and, even more strikingly and distinctively, for the “sweetness” of their natures. François de Sales had a more eminent and public career in his church than George Herbert did in his, and St. François was much more involved in denominational confrontation (being a bishop in Calvinist territory, and seeking to convert the Calvinists).2 Yet while François de Sales certainly wanted to pacify his region, he apparently never advocated violence in the process.3 Similarly, George Herbert, in his ministerial identity, sought to convert those who held doctrines different from his own by purely verbal and “loving” means.4 Both have been presented as exemplars of “devout humanism.” The following essay will develop this last claim but will not allow the beguiling term to obscure doctrinal differences between the two masters of language and of spirituality. Contrary to a dominant line in studies of religion and religious poetry these days, doctrine does matter;5 it can affect piety rather

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than being overridden by it. This essay will attend to moments when doctrine does indeed affect piety. The term “devout humanism” seems to have been coined by Henri Bremond. Bremond characterized the movement as a development of the seventeenth century that differed from the “Christian humanism” of the sixteenth. “Devout humanism” was practical rather than philosophical and, most of all, was devoted to the cultivation of personal holiness.6 This will certainly do as part of a definition. But to understand the phenomenon in its particularity, we need to add another feature to it, a feature that directly contradicts one of Bremond’s premises. He saw “devout humanism” as ­anti-elitist.7 But, in fact, social elitism is of its essence. “Devout humanism” was a movement that intended to show that a “devoted” life was perfectly compatible with elite life in the world.8 This is where the comparison between François de Sales and George Herbert takes biographical and social hold. The similarities are striking: they were both from elite families (though François de Sales’ material circumstances were much better than George Herbert’s); they both gave up careers in “the world” (François’s father wanted him to go into the law, which he did for a while, and Herbert famously gave up his “court-hopes”); and they both wrote works intended to bring a specific social group into accord with Christianity.9 To understand the social dimension of “devout humanism,” a larger historical context is needed. The great cultural and spiritual movements in Europe from (roughly) the fourteenth to the ­seventeenth century – the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Catholic or Counter-Reformation – were all, from a sociological point of view, responses to the increasing wealth and urbanization of the population.10 The Renaissance and the Reformation were devoted to extending literacy – that is, to founding schools. Literate culture could no longer be, as Jacob Burckhardt put it about the p ­ receding period, “essentially clerical.”11 From a religious perspective, this can be seen as creating a Europe-wide demand for an upgrading of the status of the ordinary – that is, nonordained – Christian. In the fifteenth century, the devotio moderna and the popularization of Rhineland mysticism can be seen as responses to this demand, as were the Hussites in Bohemia, confraternities in Italy and, in part, the Lollard movement in England.

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The  success of the Reformation can be accounted for by how ­thoroughly it met the demand for “upgrading” of the (so-called) laity.12 Luther saw his task as that of undoing “the terrible domination of the clergy over the laity,” the idea that only those in orders, and especially those who were cloistered, were “the religious.”13 By claiming that baptism was the essential Christian ceremony, Luther broke down this distinction. Not everyone was or could be ordained  – which was, for Luther, just a matter of occupying an office – but virtually everyone in Europe had been baptized, and “we who have been baptized,” Luther proclaimed, “are all uniformly priests.”14 No special activities – or refraining from activities  – characterized the lives of “the religious.” “However numerous, sacred, and arduous” the activities of “monks and priests” might be, they are, said Luther, “in no way whatever superior to the works of a farmer laboring in the field, or of a woman looking after her home.”15 But it was not only the Protestant Reformation that responded to the demand for religiously upgrading the laity. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Erasmus preceded Luther in seeing baptism as the essential Christian “vow” and “the holiest of ceremonies.”16 Erasmus sought to break down the barrier between the layman and the “religious.” “I would have all Christians,” said Erasmus, “live in such a way that those who alone are now called ‘religious’ appear not religious enough.”17 Whether or not Ignatius Loyola was influenced by Erasmus – and this is a contested topic – the Company of Jesus must be seen as part of the movement to bring the religious life into the world.18 The Jesuits, a “company” not an “order,” were not cloistered and were devoted to establishing schools. But their specific focus was the social – and also (this is the “revolutionary” part) the intellectual elite.19 They wanted to capture the part of the laity who mattered. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises is not an ascetic text. The aim is not to urge the exercitant “to embrace one state of life or way of living rather than another.”20 The goal is not rejection of the world but “indifference” to it; the exercitant should come “not to prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor” – or, and this is important, vice versa.21 We can arrive at “perfection” in “whatever state or kind of life God our Lord”  – and here the phrasing gets very careful (and perhaps ­paradoxical) – “shall grant

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us to choose.”22 Perfection can be arrived at “in whatever state or kind of life.” This is a remarkable assertion in a tradition in which “perfection” was normally thought of as available only to a very few, and within a very particular, restricted, and carefully delineated “kind of life.” I do not mean to deny that there are more ascetic and austere moments in the Exercises, or that the text is entirely consistent in its commitment to “indifference.”23 But it is the accommodating side of the Exercises that establishes the tradition in which to view St. François de Sales and the text that always figures as the high point and model of “devout humanism,” his Introduction to the Devout Life (first edition, 1609). The Introduction is a book written by a member of the social elite (though a clergyman) for other members of the social elite (though layfolk).24 It is framed as an address to a fictionalized upper-class female who would like to live a “devout” life – she is named “Philothea” – but who needs and wants instructions as to how to do so. The gendering of the addressee (based on actual elite women whom François had counseled) is perhaps less important for its content – there is very little advice that is specific to women – than for its tone. The mode is that of loving ­instruction rather than of severe moralizing or rigorous rule-giving. In the Preface to the book, St. François explains that while there are many manuals on devotion for persons “wholly withdrawn from the world,” his purpose is to instruct “those who live in town, within families, or at court,” those who “live an ordinary life as to outward appearances” (“une vie commune quant a l’exterieur”).25 The essential message is not only that people in all lawful ­ vocations  – including soldiers, workers (“artisans”), and courtiers – can live a “devout” life, but that such a life is not gloomy but extremely pleasurable. The pleasurableness of the devout life, its “sweetness” (“suavité” or “douceur”) is François de Sales’ most distinctive and sustained note. It accounts for his constant, almost obsessive, reference to honey (of which he seems to have been a connoisseur),26 and for his characterization of devotion as “true spiritual sugar” (“le vray sucre spirituel”).27 In this capacity, it eliminates all unhappiness, perturbation, and vice: “from the poor it takes away discontent, care from the rich, grief from the oppressed, pride from the exalted,

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melancholy from the solitary, and dissipation from those who live in society [en compagnie].” It is a version of Ignatian “indifference”: it makes honor and contempt alike useful to us; it accepts pleasure as well as pain. It provides a steadiness and calmness of heart and (naturally) “fills us with a marvelous sweetness” (“nous remplit d’une suavité merveilleuse”).28 The ultimate reason for this is that the devout life fulfils “the nature [l’estre] that God has given” to us.29 This is where theology underlies devotion. There is a fundamental ethical and spiritual optimism here.30 We are very far from the world of Luther and Calvin, where sin is an inextricable part of our fallen “nature.”31 Yet we are not in the world of St. Teresa. St. François was an admirer of hers and has to acknowledge her status and that of the other heroines and heroes of the spiritual life, but, interestingly, he does not think that they are, in general, to be imitated. He is suspicious of ascetic practices and of unusual spiritual experiences (this suspicion continues, in a modified way, even in his book for those more advanced in the spiritual life, his Treatise on the Love of God [1616]). In the Introduction, de Sales is quite wary of “inspirations,”32 and insists, as he continues to do in the Treatise, that they can be diabolical as well as holy.33 With regard to inspirations, visions, and such, especially insofar as they concern anything important or extraordinary, one must consult one’s confessor and spiritual director.34 “Extraordinary” is almost always a negative term in the Introduction.35 About ecstasies and raptures, St. François insists, quite strikingly, that “such perfections are not virtues”;36 he sees such “high and elevated pretensions” as subject to illusions and deceits; and he urges Philothea not to aspire to such or to worry about such. He is wary – in the best (the only?) joke in the book – of “spiritual mushrooms” (“champignons spirituelz”).37 This negativity derives not only from normal ecclesiastical distrust of unregulated and non-institutionalized spirituality but also from St. François’s special commitment to ordinariness and, more particularly, to the quality of being “négligé” – for which, perhaps, “unaffected” can stand as a translation. There is something showy and therefore uncouth in obvious acts of asceticism or displays of spiritual gifts. True humility does not call attention to itself (Tartuffe is not a model).38 Any quality or

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virtue is invalidated by advertising or admiring itself. “If beauty is to have good grace, it should be unstudied [negligee].”39 This quality allows everyone to use the gifts that God has bestowed without ostentatious worrying about pride, and it certainly allows everyone to “take and keep his proper rank without damage to humility” (“Certes, chacun peut entrer en son rang et s’y tenir sans violer l’humilité”).40 The praise of being “négligé” sounds very much like praise of normal aristocratic behavior, but François de Sales is very clear that the quality he is describing is not the same as sprezzatura, which is the cultivated appearance of ease and unaffectedness. One might say that being négligé is the state that sprezzatura tries to mimic.41 St. François critiques the use of apparent humility as a strategy, “when we pretend to want to be last in the company and to be seated at the foot of the table, but with a view to moving more easily to the upper end” (“nous faisons contenance de vouloir estre les derniers et assis au bas bout de la table, mays c’est affin de passer plus avantageusement au haut bout”).42 As the passage about “rank” suggests, the gospels and ­traditional Christian emphases on humility and poverty are troubling for a conception of spirituality within the life of the elite, and, unsurprisingly, the question of marital chastity is troubling within a tradition that exalts and especially values virginity. St. François struggles with the question of legitimate sexuality. He does arrive at something like a conception of chaste sexuality within marriage, but he gives a strict rule about it: married couples must always follow “the order appointed for the procreation of children … even at times when conception cannot take place.”43 He is nervous about the whole matter and congratulates himself for treating the topic without embarrassing himself.44 By contrast, on the question of social and economic behavior, he is uninhibited. The key is one’s psychological state. One can be spiritually abject on errands to persons of quality because one is aware that there is no merit in such deeds.45 As long as one has “poverty of spirit,” there is no problem with being rich. “You can possess riches without being poisoned by them, if you merely keep them in your home and purse, and not in your heart”; if one does this, one can have “le grand bonheur du Chrestien” – “the advantages of riches for this world, and the merit of poverty in the other”

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(“les ­commodités des richesses pour ce monde et le merite de la pauvreté pour l’autre”).46 This is a happy arrangement indeed. And one may strive to increase one’s wealth – as long, of course, as this is done in the right spirit.47 One can, indeed must, attend to one’s good name (la reputation). One can be witty (eutrapelia [eutrapelie] is redeemed from its Pauline status as a vice and returned to its Aristotelian status as a virtue).48 One can go to balls and dances.49 It is a duty to be clean, neat, and well dressed. Devout persons should be “always the best dressed in a group” (“tous-jours les mieux habillés de la trouppe”)50 – but, as always, without affectation. The conception of indifference is quite brilliantly used to justify nonasceticism with regard to food, since to eat whatever is put before you – even if you like it – involves not exercising one’s will.51 All these sorts of behavior help and respect social life, and social life is the realm of charity. The reason why one must attend carefully to one’s good name is that “good name is one of the bases of human society” (“l’un des fondemens de la societé humaine”),52 and without it one causes scandal, which charity forbids. The reason why one must dress carefully and well is that it manifests “a sort of contempt of those you associate with to frequent their company in unbecoming attire.”53 Along with being négligé, the other virtue that, for St. François, has a kind of magical potency is “condescendance.” But where being “négligé” cannot be a conscious attitude, lest it undermine itself, “condescendence” is an attitude. It  is a commitment to agreeableness, to not interfering with ordinary social life. As a natural outgrowth (“comme surgeon”) of charity, St. François attributes an extraordinary potency to it, a capacity to “make indifferent things good, and dangerous things permissible.”54 It even, he goes on to say, “removes harm [la malice] from things in some way evil” (“aucunement mauvaises”), like games of chance (as distinguished from those of skill).55 This is why – and this is not a joke – “the blessed Ignatius Loyola accepted invitations to play cards” (“le bienheureux Ignace de Loyola estant invité a joüer l’accepta”), even, presumably, when chance was involved. 56 This is the sort of moment that raised hackles against St. François’s Introduction during his lifetime (he defends himself against such criticism in the preface to the Treatise on the Love of God),57 and, needless to say, it is the sort of moment that Pascal

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subjects to withering contempt in the Provincial Letters.58 But the attitude behind such a moment is definitive of devout humanism. Bremond notes that, had he had the time, he could have shown that a temper similar to French devout humanism was present “among the Anglicans of the first half of the seventeenth century.”59 Helen Gardner agrees.60 She points to “A Litanie” where, in a semi-public and ecumenical “rectified devotion,” Donne prays to be freed from thinking that those who seek God “are maim’d / From reaching this worlds sweet” (ll. 133–4; emphasis mine) – the word seems to come with the attitude.61 Of and to Jesus, Donne states that “through thy poor birth … thou / Glorifiedst Povertie,” but “soon after riches didst allow, / By accepting Kings gifts in the Epiphanie” (ll. 158–61). Donne approaches the deepest strain in St. François in not wishing the religious and the social to be at odds, praying to be freed “From indiscreet humilitie.” Such overtness “might be scandalous,” and might, in the world, “cast reproach on Christianitie” (ll. 149–51). Gardner offers a biographical explanation of why, at the time the poem was probably written (1608), Donne would have prayed more strongly “to be delivered from contempt of the world than from over-valuing it.”62 But, as John Carey points out, after Donne’s ordination in 1615, Donne maintained this view, reassuring his auditors that to seek God “with a whole heart” does not mean “to seeke nothing else,” and insisting that God manifests Himself to man, “as well in the splendor of Princes Courts, as in the austerity of John Baptist in the Wildernesse.”63 So Donne, in “A Litanie” and in the sermons, does seem like an exponent of “rectified” (Protestant) “devout humanism.” One would think that, in “The Church-porch,” George Herbert was another. The poem introduces a book of devotional lyrics and is explicitly addressed to a young (in this case male) member of the gentry whose “Rate and price” is enhanced not only by his “sweet youth” but also by his “early hopes” – presumably for advancement in the world (stanza 1).64 This youth is, like de Sales’ wealthy and devout young woman, a special “treasure.” But Herbert’s poem, even in its revised form (he did extensive work on it),65 is hardly an introduction to a “devout life,” and hardly even a piece of ­humanism – if, that is, humanism has an ethical core.66 Critical attempts to take it seriously as ethical discourse (as Louis Martz

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and, to some extent, Joseph Summers, do) or as the exterior life of the gentleman for whom the lyrics of the Williams manuscript of The Temple were written (Christina Malcolmson) have been largely unsuccessful.67 The poem does have moments that might be called Salesian, but it is mostly devoted to the realm of prudential and manipulative social behavior, to what Bacon called “the small wares and petty points of cunning.”68 The two aristocrats, George and François, are equally fastidious in their attention to clothing. Stanza 32 of Herbert’s poem reads: In clothes, cheap handsomnesse doth bear the bell. Wisedome’s a trimmer thing, then shop e’er gave. Say not then, This with that lace will do well; But, This with my discretion will be brave.    Much curiousness is a perpetuall wooing,    Nothing with labour, folly long a-doing. (ll. 187–92)

The economy in the first line here (“cheap handsomnesse”) seems to be merely literal, but the second line attempts a rather witty revaluation of values, where “Wisdome” is the finest accoutrement. But the imagined revision of elite self-dialogue about clothing is strained and rings false. The aesthetic judgment of what does (goes) well with what hardly seems worth reproving, and no one would say or even think, “This with my discretion will be brave.” If it refers to dressing intelligently, the line might work, but insofar as it means to substitute discretion for “bravery,” it is both hyperbolic and irrelevant. The couplet returns us to the normal prudential world of the poem – being overly concerned with one’s clothing is a waste of time. As we have seen, for François de Sales neatness in clothing is a version of pious “condescendance,” of charitable consideration and sociability. He relates cleanness to godliness, but carefully. “In  a way” (“en quelque façon”), he says, bodily cleanliness expresses an inward state, and God requires bodily cleanliness in those who approach his altar.69 Herbert’s stanza (62) that begins “Affect in all things about thee cleanlinesse” is truly Salesian; the identifying term of devout humanism appears: Let thy mindes sweetnesse have his operation Upon thy body, clothes, and habitation. (ll. 371–2)

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Stanza 55, on kindnesses, does seem to have a genuine ­high-mindedness to it, and a Salesian sense of pleasure. Its final sentence reads, “All worldly joyes go lesse / To the one joy of doing kindnesses” (ll. 329–30). The presence in the stanza of “great places” (l. 327) as a special means to usefulness is only slightly discordant. But the next stanza (56), on humility, strikes the true note of “The Church-porch.” It sees humility in entirely strategic terms and is much more troubling than St. François’s vision of “riches” in both worlds. “Pitch thy behaviour low,” says young Herbert, “thy projects high,” and so, he concludes “shalt thou humble and magnanimous be” (ll. 331–2). This sounds a bit like Claudius’s opening speech in Hamlet (“one auspicious and one dropping eye”), but even this somewhat dubious balance is lost as the stanza proceeds. The real aim is self-affirmation. “Sink not in spirit” the next line begins, and the stanza’s couplet worries that “humblenesse” might be carried too far – a recurrent concern in the poem. “Be not thine own worm,” says stanza 44.70 The highest moment of Christian (that is, non-class-bound) humanism in the poem comes with its first imperative, “Beware of lust” (stanza 2), where a remarkable understanding of baptism as connected to the crucifixion meets with a conception of “holy lines” that combines natural law with the Bible. Yet by stanza 5 we arrive at “Drink not the third glasse.” As with the stanza that sees “great places” as especially useful for “doing kindnesses,” a number of moments that look ethically admirable in the poem turn out to be less so on inspection. “Be calm in arguing,” stanza 52 (l. 307a) opens. Here we do seem to be entering into something like the world of François de Sales with the observation that “fiercenesse makes … truth discourtesie” (ll. 307b–8). But the reason for maintaining calmness is not the harm that loss of it does to others; the impropriety is in letting anything disturb the equilibrium of the self. Why should someone being wrong about something affect one? “Why should I feel another mans mistakes / More then his sicknesses or povertie?” (ll. 309–10). The point is that since one does not care about those aspects of another (his sicknesses or poverty), it is inconsistent to be upset at  another’s ­mistakes.71 Interestingly, Herbert has a moment of self-consciousness here. Realizing how utterly anti-empathic this picture is, he hastily adds, “In love I should” (be moved by the plight of others) before, quite

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appropriately in the context, d ­ ismissing the issue: “but anger is not love” (l. 311). The second stanza on calmness (stanza 53) gives up any pretense of other-concern; it focuses on the pleasure of watching someone lose his composure (one can “enjoy his frets”) and on the tactical advantages of sangfroid. Herbert reminds us that “cunning fencers suffer heat to tire” (l.  316). Similarly, the stanza (59) that begins by admirably advising “Scorn no mans love,” and explaining that “Love is a present for a mightie king,” ends by giving a different reason for not scorning any person’s love: one never knows when another might be of use. Again, “cunning” is praised: “The cunning workman never doth refuse / The meanest tool, that he may chance to use” (ll. 353–4). The “cunning workman” here, willing to use “the meanest tool,” is not the poetic craftsman (as some critics have imagined) but the uninhibited social opportunist. The “meanest tool” is a lower-class person. But what of “the devout life”? What there is of this seems to consist almost entirely of church-going and Sunday behavior. There is virtually no “doctrine” in the poem, though heaven is seen as a “bargain” that one can get for giving alms (stanza 63) and for behaving properly.72 Humility is, as we have seen, not recommended. At one lovely and powerful moment, the young aristocrat is told that “Kneeling ne’ere spoil’d silk stocking” (l. 407). But the poem does not continue in that mode. Its “religious” advice, like its worldly advice, is about behavior – in this case, behavior in church. Don’t gaze about for good-looking women (stanza 70); don’t let your mind enter its normal state of constant strategizing (stanza 71; see stanza 57, where “thy minde” should be “still plotting”); and most of all – this must be a serious matter, since four stanzas (72–5) are devoted to it – don’t make fun of the preacher. One stanza earlier in the poem (stanza 25) had recommended introspection, and the penultimate stanza returns to the topic. “Summe up at night, what thou hast done by day,” it begins, and continues in a nicely sartorial mode: “Dresse and undresse thy soul: mark the decay / And growth of it” (ll. 453–4). This seems like powerful, if rather unspecific advice (compared, for instance, to the charts in Ignatius), but the stanza continues with a disconcertingly jaunty analogy: “if with thy watch, that too [your soul] / Be down, then winde up both” (ll. 454–5). This is, to borrow the title of a book

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derived from François de Sales and eviscerated by Pascal, “devotion made easy” indeed.73 Whatever the moments of disingenuousness in de Sales’ book, it is, overall, a picture of a devout life, an entire life lived – in “the world” – in relation to the divine. Whatever Herbert’s “The Church-porch” is, it is not that. The lyrics, with their core of Reformation theology, give us a perspective entirely different from a prudential and merit-earning one.74 But what of Herbert’s other work of instruction? The prose work published in 1651 – nineteen years after Herbert’s death – as A Priest to the Temple is a late work of Herbert’s (if someone who died at the age of forty can have “late” works), and is, on the face of it, a very different sort of piece from either “The Church-porch” or the Introduction to the Devout Life. It is aimed, after all, not at a lay person in the world but at a churchman in the world (and in a particular situation). But it does not seem unreasonable to ask about the work’s relation to “devout humanism” and to what I have characterized as the Europe-wide project of Christianizing the laity. It has been persuasively argued that The Country Parson is indebted to a book that also informs “The Church-porch,” Stefano Guazzo’s Civil Conversation (1574).75 This courtesy book, popular in early modern England (translated in 1581; expanded in 1586), has been seen as being addressed to the “gentiluomo” rather than (or as well as) to the “cortegiano” – but it should be borne in mind, as Frank Whigham reminds us, that even if the distinction holds, both figures were gentry.76 With regard to Herbert’s biography, it has been suggested that in giving up “court-hopes” and accepting the rectorship at Bemerton, Herbert was not giving up his elite status but simply swapping one kind of elite status (as a well-born public figure in Cambridge and potentially the court) for another, the priesthood or ministry considered as another sort of elite, a professional elite defined in the modern way as deriving from education, skills, and institutional function.77 It has even been suggested that in taking the Bemerton living, Herbert was still “on the make,” and saw that position as itself a stepping-stone (his predecessor in that living became a bishop in 1629).78 I do not think that Herbert saw Bemerton in this way. But that he retained a sense of superiority to most of his parishioners is, I think, simply a fact. Whether this was based on his status

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as a minister or priest or whether it also contained an element of ­conscious social and intellectual superiority is a matter for debate. Kristine A. Wolberg probably overstates the matter in speaking of “the consistently aristocratic tone of The Country Parson,”79 but it must be acknowledged that the work never has anything very positive to say about ordinary country folk. The best that George Herbert can say about them is that they “esteem their word”; but he notes that they do so because honesty is “the Life of buying, and selling.”80 That they are “much addicted” to old customs, he finds to be neutral, and usable by him; that they are “led by sense, more then by faith, [and] by present rewards, or punishments, more then by future” is lamentable but, again, usable.81 That they are “very observant” about how favors are distributed, and quick to assume ill will when they are not favored, present problems for the parson, but can be managed.82 Their tendency to believe in purely natural causation must be systematically combated, and their “cunning to make use of another” in petty injustices must be “narrowly” watched and censured.83 They are “thick, and heavy, and hard to raise to a poynt of Zeal,” “not sensible of finenesse.”84 The Country Parson is highly aware of social distinctions. He has plenty of advice for the local gentry, and he is insistent that his status allows, indeed requires, that he (and his church wardens) speak boldly to the elite in the parish “when occasion requires”85 – a point of continuity from “The Church-porch,” where the aspiring young man is told to use “respective boldnesse” to “great persons” (l. 253). Together with Wolberg’s demonstration of the connection to Guazzo, and Regina Walton’s demonstration of a continuum that runs from Pope Gregory’s sixth-century Regula Pastoralis to Herbert’s work,86 the best treatment I have encountered of the general tenor of The Country Parson is the Foucauldian one put forth by Douglas J. Swartz.87 Swartz’s account is entirely compatible with those of Wolberg and Walton (though Swartz does not mention either Guazzo or Gregory). Foucault’s analysis of “pastoral power” as unique to Christianity (and articulated in a text like Gregory’s Regula), and as eventually absorbed into secular “governmentality,” is remarkably germane to The Country Parson.88 However low an opinion Herbert had of the intellectual capacities and habits of his country parishioners, he did think them capable of

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being worked on, fashioned, disciplined – in the full early modern sense, “improved.”89 And he – through exercising his office properly (not through his own particular characteristics) – was the man to do it. Subjectification, in the strong Foucauldian sense, was the goal: to create proper subjects of the church and state, subjects with the subjectivities to be such.90 The goal is power over the souls and, rather less systematically, the bodies of his parishioners. I do not mean to suggest any element of personal ambition or power-seeking in this. The Parson’s aim is to disappear, as Stanley Fish would say, but to disappear into his role.91 The Parson seeks to manifest and create what Nicholas Ferrar saw Herbert himself as manifesting: “obedience and conformity to the church and the discipline thereof” – as long as this is construed to include, as Herbert undoubtedly thought that it did, obedience and conformity to the state as well.92 In this text, through its deep commitment to that Reformation product, the national church, one can see “pastoral power” and state power coming together.93 Herbert says, rather astonishingly, that the Parson has “no title” to either his heavenly or his earthly country “except he do good to both.”94 The first sentence of the text asserts both the special status of the priest – Herbert did not shy away from the word – as the “Deputy of Christ,” and his goal, which is “the reducing of man to the Obedience of God.”95 That Herbert’s conception of such obedience did not exactly coincide with the one that was coming into favor in his national church as he wrote in the 1630s does not alter the goals of the text, though it may have affected the text’s publication history.96 François de Sales’ Introduction can be seen as another pastoral text, but it seems less clearly a case of “pastoral power” and does not feel at all panoptic, which “The Church-porch” often does (see the Country Parson “standing in Gods stead to his Parish” and “standing [I assume metaphorically] on a hill as considering his Flock”).97 In the Introduction, Philothea’s confessor appears surprisingly rarely; her “guardian angel” is mentioned more often, but does not seem to have a panoptic function. The connection to Guazzo is even stronger in St. François than in George Herbert, and, like Guazzo’s Civil Conversazione, St. François’s Introduction is concerned with “la vie civile,” and not at all with the state.98 The difference is to be accounted for mainly by the difference between

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French Catholicism and “Anglicanism” in the early seventeenth century, and partly by the audience for the two books: lay folk versus pastors, and intra- (de Sales) versus cross-class. “Suavité” is barely present in The Country Parson. There are, however, a few places that might be called Salesian in the text. The lines from “The Church-porch” about the “mindes sweetnesse” bursting out into the person’s “body, clothes, and habitation” recur almost verbatim when Herbert thinks about the cleanliness of the parson’s apparel.99 A passage in which Herbert imagines a moment in the Christian life when “Angels minister to us their owne food, even joy and peace” sounds exactly like St. François, though Herbert goes on to urge vigilance during such states.100 Herbert notes that someone who is socially offensive in how he eats – “either in his order or length of eating” – is not only scandalous, but, and here is the Salesian touch, “uncharitable.”101 The treatment of riches in The Country Parson is pure “devout humanism,” with the full whiff of bad faith involved. After stating that “riches are the blessing of God, and the great Instrument of doing admirable good” (compare stanza 55 of “The Church-porch”), Herbert has to explain how this “crosseth not our Saviours precept of selling what we have.”102 We have seen the extraordinary role that condescendance plays in de Sales’ book. The term is less important to Herbert, but the chapter on “The Parson’s Condescending” does lead into something like a vision of a charitable community. The chapter turns out to be about processions on Rogation Days. In the idealized picture of this that Herbert presents, “neighborliness” mediates beautifully between the sacred and the secular, and we get what might be thought of as a village mode of Salesian “devout humanism.” But another mention of condescension in the text is more typical. Herbert’s parson “condescends to humane frailties” ­sometimes and “intermingles some mirth in his discourses” if he thinks this will make his instructions “roote deeper” in a particular ­situation.103 This alerts us to the fact that even more, perhaps, than “The Church-porch,” and much more than De Sales’ Introduction, The Country Parson is an enumeration of strategies. Everything is valued for its use – “pleasantness of disposition,” dinner or supper parties, alms, wives. There is a skill involved in using each (recall “the cunning workman”). The chapter on “The Parson’s

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Courtesie” is not about the virtue in general but rather about how to use dinner parties to best moral effect (as a carrot rather than a stick). The next chapter, on charity (distinguished from courtesy), is about how to dole out alms so as to make the recipients maximally grateful and dependent. The now famous chapter on “Socratic” catechizing presents it as a skill in individual manipulation.104 The text’s recurrent insistence on knowing the particulars of social and ethical life derives from the same goal – that of being able, as we would say, to “get to” individuals, or as Herbert would say, to make each of them, in a wonderful pun that links the internal and the external, “discover what he is.”105 Foucault notes that pastoral power “cannot be exercised without knowing the inside of people’s minds,” and that “it is linked with the production of truth – the truth of the individual himself.”106 He must discover what he is. The Parson places virtually unrelenting teleological pressure on himself and his community. Nothing has independent value and nothing is done for pleasure. The Parson does not choose his wife out of “affection,” or for “beauty, riches, or honour.” He chooses her strictly for having a “humble, and liberall disposition” that can be shaped into further virtues by her husband.107 Herbert’s vision of devout life, for both the parson and his community, is, perhaps strangely, much dourer than that of St. François, and Herbert’s Christian is in some ways more ascetic. Max Weber saw “innerworldly asceticism” as distinctly Protestant.108 The comparison of Herbert and St. François with regard to food is instructive. We have noted that the ideal commensal behavior in the Introduction is to eat whatever is set before you; in The Country Parson, it is “to eat little, and that unpleasant.”109 And regarding sex, Herbert is even more squeamish than St. François. When Herbert mentions the topic (which is rarely), it is in the context of something (like eating) that can easily become sinful.110 That St. François, as a good Catholic, exalts virginity over marriage is hardly surprising. It is surprising that George Herbert, a serious Protestant, also does. The Country Parson considers “that virginity is a higher state than Matrimony.”111 St. François, as we have seen, makes a significant attempt to imagine something like marital chastity – as so many Protestants did.112 But not George Herbert. The “devout

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humanism” of The Country Parson is very stringent – while also being, as I have noted, heavily civic. So, the Protestant “devout humanism” of The Country Parson is behaviorally stringent while also being heavily civic. But what of doctrine in the text? “Doctrine and Life” is a crucial pairing for Herbert. The opening chapter of The Country Parson ends on this phrase, and it features prominently in an important poem about preaching in The Temple.113 Yet The Country Parson is overwhelmingly concerned only with the second of the terms. Wolberg points out how unusual this is in the English context.114 But insofar as doctrine is treated, it is clearly of the Reformation sort. In promulgating Socratic questioning as a model for Christian catechizing, Herbert explains that the comparison is purely formal. He rightly notes that for Socrates the method implied that “that the seeds of all truths lay in every body.” This, with regard to Christianity, Herbert strongly denies. The key truths of Christianity are “above nature.”115 When these special truths have been learned and internalized from the catechism, “that which nature is towards Philosophy, the Catechism is towards Divinity.” Nature does not lead one to “Divinity.” In speaking of preaching, Herbert states that the special feature of the Parson’s sermons is “Holiness” – which is entirely different from wit or eloquence. Again, he distinguishes sharply between Christian and classical assumptions. “Holiness,” Herbert says, is “a Character that Hermogenes never dream’d of.”116 Hermogenes is brought in in here only to make this distinction.117 Scripture is all in all for the parson – “there he sucks, and lives.” To understand this text of texts, prayer is essential because, in relation to this text, “the well is deep, and we have nothing of ourselves to draw with” – nothing of ourselves.118 But, as I have said, these are among the few theological moments in the manual.119 Its theology is certainly Reformed, yet it does not proclaim “the priesthood of all believers.”120 The priesthood of The Country Parson is the priesthood. How far ordinary folk can approach the holy life that the Parson ideally exemplifies is never made clear. It is never actually specified that they can do so. Here too, François de Sales’ Introduction is oddly more “Lutheran.” Finally, Herbert’s lyrics must be brought into the context I have been developing. Two issues need to be considered. One is whether

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there is a Salesian tone or mode in the poetry (as opposed to the supposedly more Ignatian one of Donne);121 the other, not entirely unrelated, is whether there is a significant social and/or humanistic mode in the lyrics. The first claim can be answered affirmatively if the point is merely, as Martz does, to contrast Herbert’s lyrics with Donne’s Holy Sonnets. There is no doubt that Herbert’s lyrics are less showy and melodramatic. But the further question is whether “the chief and distinctive direction of Herbert’s poetry” is toward calmness – certainly a state of being that St. François treasured.122 Elizabeth Clarke has denied this parallel, and I think she is right.123 The key “calmness” texts are “Conscience” and “The Familie.” In the former, Herbert (or his speaker, if this convention must be observed) says, “My thoughts must work, but like a noiselesse sphere; / Harmonious peace must rock them all the day” (ll. 8–9). But to quote these lines as indicating a norm is to take them out of their context. Herbert is addressing a “prattler” who would refuse him all pleasures in the world – an over-active conscience. It is in relation to that voice that the normative claim is made, and the repeated “musts” (“must work … must rock”) can be seen as pointing toward an ideal, not a reality. The poem ends on a militant, not a quiet note – the cross becomes a weapon against the “prattler,” who has persisted through the announcement of how the soul “must” be. In “The Familie,” the speaker states that he wishes to have a heart in which “Joyesoft are there, and griefs as oft as joyes; / But griefs without a noise” (ll. 17–18), and yet the stanza ends by attributing to these “griefs” a special amount of effective volume (“louder than distemper’d fears”) and a special “shrillness.” So it is not clear whether the ideal is quiet or a special kind of noise. Moreover, to take these poems as distinctively “Herbertian” is to ignore his numerous lyrics defending emotional noise and claiming that raw emotionality has a special privilege with God.124 The elimination of turbulence and urgency from the inner life certainly was a goal for St. François, but it was certainly not consistently or predominantly so for the Herbert of the lyrics.125 The difference here derives from “doctrine” – from differing theological pictures of the postlapsarian self. But what of the “sweetness” connection? There is undoubtedly something there. It is a favorite positive term (in their different

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languages) for both George Herbert and François de Sales, and this has to be significant.126 They both saw the religious life as providing pleasure, including in the Eucharist. But this does not mean that their Eucharistic theologies were identical, a consideration that must enter into the comparison.127 In reconstructing Herbert’s Eucharistic doctrine, as in reading his poetry, care must be taken to acknowledge distinctions. His poem on “The H. Communion” presents a strong dualism – one that is tonally and affectively, but not ontologically, mitigated.128 St. François, following the Catholic and especially Teresian mystical tradition, does not wish to distinguish sharply between the physical and spiritual.129 With regard to “sweetness,” Herbert is clear on its metaphorical – or better, psychological – nature.130 “The Odour” is about how “sweet” the words “My Master” are to the speaker. It is the meaning of  the words that he savors – “With these all day I do perfume my mind” (emphasis mine). The speaker hopes that his status in having a beloved “Master” might imply that he has some positive status as this Master’s servant. Most of the poem is optative, a prayer evoking a wished-for state, not one experienced in the present. For Martz, the line that begins the sestet of “Prayer (I)” – “Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse” – is “the core of that Salesian spirituality which pervades The Temple.”131 What this overlooks is that after the conceits of the octave and the sensual phrases of the sestet, the poem ends on a severely abstract and intellectual note: “something understood.” “Love (III)” might seem to be the ultimate Salesian poem – one in which courtesy is the final Christian lesson – but the poem is committed to a number of distinctly theological (doctrinal) positions: that grace is irresistible, and that divine love “does not find” but, as Luther said, “creates its object.”132 Now, briefly, to the issues of sociability and world-affirmation in the lyrics. “Constancie,” with its picture of the man “To God, his neighbor, and himself most true,” is a key text here, as is the poem on “Lent.” The figure celebrated in “Constancie” seems to have all the unpleasant features of the stoic sage, who does not like to deal with “sick folks, women, those whom passions sway,” and the poem ends by undercutting the self-sufficiency that it seems to be celebrating. This figure “still is right, and prayes to be so still.”

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The ending of “Lent,” where the speaker encounters his own soul among those to whom he is giving alms, is indeed a wonderful moment. But it is unique in Herbert’s volume. To put it more moderately, as George Herbert Palmer does, “such moments” of social concern “are rare” in the poetry. Palmer is right that “the personal relation of the soul to God” dominates the lyrics.133 As for full-throated affirmation of the human condition in Herbert’s poetry, it lasts for exactly three lines at the opening of “Mans medley” where “All creatures have their joy: and man hath his” (l. 3). By the middle of the stanza, we are already warned that “if we rightly measure, / Mans joy and pleasure, / Rather hereafter, then in present, is” (ll. 4–6). The second stanza ventures a kind of uncomfortable version of the Ficinian celebration of man’s medial state in the universe,134 but the odd third stanza (in which the soul is lace on the coarse stuff that man wears) turns monitory again, and by the middle of the poem, the proper human (Christian) is reassured that he can indeed partake of the world’s “cheer” – but only with a tiny bird-like sip after which he must immediately lift up his head “and think / Of better drink / He may attain to, after he is dead” (ll. 22–4).135 When Herbert gives a rose to a figure urging him to “take more pleasure / In this world,” the gift is entirely ironic and non-celebratory. Worldly sweetness “lies,” and is, at best, an emetic or cathartic (“The Rose”).136 “Onely a sweet and vertuous soul” really matters, and it, in one of Herbert’s greatest puns, “never gives” (“Vertue,” l. 13). The ideal for earthly life in the lyrics is even more dour than in The Country Parson, since the pleasures of communal and civic life are virtually absent from “The Church.” Herbert was consistent throughout his career in recommending non-cheerfulness about life “here.” In “The Church-porch,” “A  sad, wise valour is the brave complexion”; in “The Church,” “The Size” celebrates a Christian’s “long and bonie face”; and, of course, the country parson “is generally sad.”137

Notes 1 See Michael de la Bedoyere, François de Sales (New York: Harper, 1960); Viviane Mellinghoff-Bourgerie, François de Sales (1567–1622),



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George Herbert and François de Sales 195 Un Homme de Lettres Spirituelles (Geneva: Droz, 1999); for Herbert, see the complex treatment of his heritage in Justin Lewis-Anthony, If You Meet George Herbert on the Road Kill Him: Radically Re-thinking Priestly Ministry (New York: Mowbray, 2009). 2 See Jill Fehleison, Boundaries of Faith: Catholics and Protestants in the Diocese of Geneva (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2010). 3 On St. François and non-violence, see Jason Sager, “François de Sales and Catholic Reform in the Seventeenth Century,” Dutch Review of Church History, 85 (2005), 269–82. 4 For Herbert on treating those who hold “strange” (that is, non-Church of England) doctrines with “a very loving and sweet usage,” see “The Parson arguing,” in A Priest to the Temple, Or, The Country Parson in The Works of George Herbert, ed. F. E. Hutchinson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945), p. 262. This edition will hereafter be cited as Works, and Herbert’s treatise will be cited as The Country Parson (clearly the title that Herbert intended, since, as Joseph Summers pointed out, 33 of the 36 chapters begin with the words, “The Countrey Parson.” See George Herbert, His Religion and Art, p. 200, n. 6. Angela Balla makes a case for Herbert’s place in the history of toleration. See “Neighbourliness and Toleration in the Work of George Herbert,” Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, 35 (2012), 113–41. 5 For a discussion of books on (English) religious poetry that ­downplay or argue against the importance of doctrine, see my “Doctrine and Life: The Impact of the Reformation,” in “Literature and the Reformation: A Forum,” ed. Susannah Monta and Richard Strier, Religion and Literature, 49.3 (published spring, 2019; dated autumn 2017), 133–41. 6 Henri Bremond, A Literary History of Religious Thought in France. Vol. 1: Devout Humanism (1916), trans. K. L. Montgomery (New  York: Macmillan, 1928), p. 15. Vol. 1 of Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France depuis la fin des guerres de religion jusqu’a nos jours was published in 1916. The first chapter of the book is “From Christian Humanism to Devout Humanism” (“De L’Humanisme Chrétien a L’Humanisme Dévot”): the argument is summed up on p. 15 of the History, p. 17 of the Histoire. 7 For the anti-elitism claim, see Bremond, History, p. 57; Histoire, pp. 71–2. 8 I have argued this in “Sanctifying the Aristocracy: ‘Devout Humanism’ in François de Sales, John Donne, and George Herbert,” Journal

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of Religion, 69.1 (January 1989), 36–58; and, in revised form, in Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), Essay 5. 9 For the biography of François de Sales, see note 1 above; for George Herbert’s “court-hopes,” see Izaak Walton, The Lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, Robert Sanderson (London: Oxford University Press, 1927), p. 276. For Herbert’s biography see (aside from Walton), Charles, A Life, and Drury, Music at Midnight. 10 I have argued this in the “Introduction” to The Unrepentant Renaissance from Petrarch to Shakespeare to Milton (Chicago, IL: Univerity of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 1–23. 11 Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, intro. Benjamin Nelson and Charles Trinkaus, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore, 2 vols (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), vol. 1, p. 211. 12 See Clive Staples Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), p. 42. 13 The Babylonian Captivity [Pagan Servitude] of the Church, in Martin Luther: Selections from his Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961), p. 345 (on ordination). I do not know why Dillenberger accepted “Pagan Servitude” in the title of De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae. 14 Luther, Babylonian Captivity, in Selections, p. 345. 15 Luther, Babylonian Captivity, in Selections, p. 311 (on baptism). 16 Desiderius Erasmus, The Enchiridion of Erasmus, trans. R. Himelick (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963), p. 40; see also The Paraclesis, in Christian Humanism and the Reformation: Desiderius Erasmus, Selected Writings, trans. and ed. John C. Olin (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 97. 17 Erasmus, Letter to Paul Volz, in The Enchiridion, p. 128. 18 See Terence O’Reilly, “Erasmus, Ignatius Loyola, and Orthodoxy,” Journal of Theological Studies, 30 (1979), 115–27; and Ricardo Garcia-Villoslada, Loyola y Erasmo: Dos Almas, Dos Epocas (Madrid: Taurus, 1965). 19 See Judi Loach, “Revolutionary Pedagogues? How Jesuits Used Education to Change Society,” in John O’Malley et al. (eds), The Jesuits II: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), p. 66; and Aldo Scaglione, The Liberal Arts and the Jesuit College System (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1986). 20 The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. Anthony Mottola (New York: Doubleday, 1964), p. 40.

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21 Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises, pp. 47–8. 22 Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises, p. 75. 23 For a more extended treatment of the Spiritual Exercises, see Strier, The Unrepentant Renaissance, pp. 189–93. 24 For an excellent treatment of some of the “traditions de civilité” in and behind the Introduction, see Mellinghoff-Bourgerie, François de Sales, ch. 2, and Ruth Murphy, St. François de Sales et la civilité chrétienne (Paris: Nizet, 1964). 25 St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, trans. John K. Ryan (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1950), pp. 33, 35–6; Oeuvres de Saint François de Sales, Tome III: Introduction à la Vie Devote, ed. Henry Benedict Mackey (Annecy: Niérat, 1893), pp. 6, 9. I have reproduced the French as it appears in this edition, without accents in many places where contemporary French would place them. Page references hereafter, first to the translation, then to the original. 26 De Sales notes that it has different tastes when made from different flowers. Apparently, honey made from thyme is the best (Introduction, pp. 131/138). 27 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 42/18. 28 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 42/18. 29 De Sales, Introducion, pp. 53/34. 30 See Bremond, Devout Humanism, p. 94; also relevant is Michael S. Koppisch, “Desire and Conversion in François de Sales’ Traité de l’amour de Dieu,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, 19 (2012), 123–37; and, somewhat more complexly, Michael Moriarty, Disguised Vices: Theories of Virtue in Early Modern French Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 120–9. 31 For Luther and Calvin, even the regenerate are sinful. The classical formulation is Luther’s “simul justus et peccator (homo Christianus simul justus et peccator, sanctus, prophanus, inimicus and filius Die est).” D. Martin Luthers Werke Kritische Gesamtausgable, ed. J.  C.  F.  Knaake et al. (Weimar: Bohlau, 1883–2009), XL1, p. 368. For an English translation, see Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, ed. P. S. Watson (London: J. Clarke), p. 226: “A Christian man is both righteous and a sinner, holy and profane, an enemy to God and yet a child of God.” 32 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 258/320. 33 See St. François de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, trans. Henry Benedict Mackey, O.S.B. (1910; rpt. London: Catholic Way Publishing, 2015), pp. 391, 467. Hereafter Treatise. 34 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 261–2/325.

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35 See, for instance, de Sales, Introduction, pp. 110/261, 111/325. In the Treatise, “extraordinary” is a complex term, but still one with a potentially negative as well as a positive valence (see pp. 148, 196, 393, 681). 36 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 126/131. 37 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 252/320. 38 See Jacqueline Plantié, “Molière et François de Sales,” Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France, 72 (1972), 909–27. 39 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 133/143. 40 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 137/148, 134/145. 41 I was helped to this distinction by a conversation with Clay Greene of Yale University at the “Herbert in Paris” conference at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, May 2017. 42 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 135–6/147. 43 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 228/276. 44 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 229/278. 45 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 140/152–3. 46 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 162/185. 47 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 163/187. 48 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 196/231. For Paul’s condemnation of eutrapelia, see Ephesians 5:4, and George Ricker Berry, The Interlinear Greek–English New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1897), p. 508; for Aristotle’s praise of eutrapeloi, see Nicomachean Ethics, 1128a10, trans. and ed. Harris A. Rackham (ed.), LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932), p. 246. 49 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 77/65, but see the cautions on pp. 210/250. 50 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 193/227. 51 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 182/219. 52 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 143/155. 53 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 192–3/227. Ryan’s translation – “don’t allow anything negligent and careless to be about you” – is unfortunate and misleading here. St. François uses neither of the equivalent words: “n’y ait rien sur vous de trainant et mal ageancé.” 54 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 212/253. 55 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 209/248. 56 De Sales, Introduction, pp. 212/253. 57 De Sales, Treatise, p. 50. 58 See especially Letter IX in Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters (first edition, 1656), trans. Alban J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin, 1967), pp. 132–46. For commentary, see A. W. S. Baird, Studies in Pascal’s Ethics (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), chapters 3–4.

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59 Bremond, Histoire, p. xiii. He also mentions that he would be able to show the influence on these Anglicans of his “devout humanists,” “especially” (“notamment”) the influence of François de Sales. 60 Helen Gardner (ed.), John Donne: The Divine Poems, rev. edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p. xxvi. “A Litanie” is cited from this edition. 61 For Donne’s defense of taking such a “divine and publique” name for his “own little thoughts,” and for “a rectified devotion,” see John Donne, Letters to Severall Persons of Honour by John Donne, ed. Charles Edmund Merrill, Jr. (New York: Sturgis and Walton Co., 1910), pp. 29–30. 62 Gardner, Donne: The Divine Poems, p. xxv. For the probable dating, see p. 81. 63 John Carey, John Donne: Life, Mind and Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 113–14. The quotation is from The Sermons of John Donne, ed. George R. Potter and Evelyn M Simpson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), vol. IX, pp. 327–8. 64 I have followed Hutchinson, who follows the Bodleian manuscript of The Temple, in numbering the stanzas of “The Church-porch” (see Hutchinson’s Introduction, Works, pp. l-liii) All quotations from George Herbert’s poetry and prose are from the Hutchinson edition (see note 4 above). 65 For the revisions, see Hutchinson’s edition, which provides the earlier versions. 66 For a cogent argument that humanism must be seen in this way, see James Hankins, Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). On Hankins’s view, Machiavelli is not a humanist. 67 Martz, The Poetry of Meditation, p. 291; Joseph H. Summers, The Heirs of Donne and Jonson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 89–95; Cristina Malcolmson, Heart-Work: George Herbert and the Protestant Ethic (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), ch. 3. Hodgkins in “Impossible Art: Groaning Beautifully at Herbert’s ‘Church’ Door” – forthcoming in George Herbert and the Beauty of Truth, ed. Andrew Harvey – presents “The Church-porch” as the Law to the Church’s gospel, but recognizes that the Pauline– Lutheran conception of the Law is that it sets a standard that cannot be kept. The “precepts” of “The Church-porch,” on the other hand, certainly can be (“Drinke not the third glasse,” etc.). Hodgkins notes that “the speaker of The Church-Porch seems secure and even rather smug.”

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68 “Of Cunning,” in Frances Bacon, The Essays, ed. John Pitcher (London: Penguin, 1985), p. 129. 69 De Sales, Introduction, p. 192/226. 70 This echoes George Herbert’s advice to his younger brother Henry in Paris: “be proud, not with a foolish vaunting of yourself when there is no caus, but by setting a just price of your qualities: and it is the part of a poor spirit to undervalue himself and blush” (Herbert, Works, p. 366). Hutchinson dates this letter 1618 (with George twenty-five and Henry twenty-three), but Charles makes a convincing case for an earlier date (1614) (with George twenty-one and Henry nineteen). A Life, pp. 77–8, 83–4. “The Church-porch” was probably composed or being composed at the time of this letter. 71 Roger Greenwald (pers. comm.) has noted that these lines, taken in isolation, could mean that one ought to care more about the other’s sickness or poverty than about his mistakes. This is possible if, indeed, these lines are taken in isolation. But the moment of self-consciousness that immediately follows undercuts that reading. 72 Summers, The Heirs of Donne and Jonson, struggles with this, p. 92. 73 On “devotion made easy,” see Strier, The Unrepentant Renaissance, p. 194. 74 That Reformation theology is central to the lyrics is the argument of Strier, Love Known, and of Gene Edward Veith, Jr, Reformation Spirituality: The Religion of George Herbert (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1985). On the question of whether there is a fundamental continuity or discontinuity between most of the lyrics and the prefatory poem, see Strier, Resistant Structures, pp. 110–17. “Submission” is a key poem in this controversy. 75 On The Country Parson and Guazzo, see Kristine A. Wolberg, “All Possible Art” George Herbert’s The Country Parson (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008). Gillies’ contrast of “holy” with “civil” conversation seems unhelpful: “The Conversational Turn in Shakespeare,” pp. 1–26 (6–8). 76 For a distinction between the intended audiences of Guazzo’s manual and that of Castiglione’s The Courtier, see John Lievsay, Stefano Guazzo and the English Renaissance, 1575–1675 (Chapel Hill: Univeristy of North Carolina Press, 1961), ch. 1. For Whigham’s reminder, see Ambition and Privilege: The Social Tropes of Elizabethan Courtesy Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 214, n. 29. 77 See Ronald W. Cooley, “George Herbert’s Country Parson and the Enclosure of Professional Fields,” George Herbert Journal, 19 (1995), 1–25; expanded in Cooley, “Full of All Knowledg”: George Herbert’s

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Country Parson and Early Modern Social Discourse (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), ch. 3. 78 Cooley, “Full of All Knowledg,” p. 41. 79 Wolberg, “All Possible Art,” p. 68. 80 Herbert, Works, p. 228. 81 Herbert, Works, pp. 283, 254. 82 Herbert, Works, p. 243. 83 Herbert, Works, pp. 265, 270. 84 Herbert, Works, pp. 233, 248. 85 Herbert, Works, p. 226; and see pp. 232, 268, and 270. 86 The continuum with Pope Gregory’s Regula is demonstrated in Regina Walton’s “‘Then Order plaies the soul’: George Herbert and the Rule of Life,” presented at the “Herbert(s) in Paris” conference at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, May 2017. 87 See Swartz, “Discourse and Direction: A Priest to the Temple, or, the Country Parson and the Elaboration of Sovereign Rule,” Criticism, 36 (1994), 189–212. 88 See Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” Critical Inquiry, 8 (1982), 777–95 (especially 783), and Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–8, ed. Michael Sennellart, trans. G. Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp.  ­127–230, with many references to Gregory’s Regula (pp. 153, 163, 168, 172, 174, 180–1, 18–19). For the uniqueness to Christianity, see pp. 148ff. 89 For Herbert and “improvement,” see Country Parson, pp. 241, 275, and Cooley, “Full of All Knowledg,” pp. 144–6. 90 Foucault states that the goal of all his work “has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects,” “The Subject and Power,” p. 777. 91 See Stanley Fish, “‘Void of storie’: The Struggle for Insincerity in Herbert’s Prose and Poetry,” in Derek Hirst and Richard Strier (eds), Writing and Political Engagement in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 31–51. 92 “The Printers to the Reader [of The Temple],” Works, p. 4. In  Authority, Church, and Society, ch. 2, Hodgkins sees Herbert’s position with regard to church and state as identical with the constitutional monarchism of Richard Hooker, but it is hard to see any sense of limitations on state power in The Country Parson. Swartz, “Discourse and Direction,” points out the historical irony (given the role of the House of Commons in the English Revolution) in Herbert’s presentation of Justices of the Peace as “reliable relays of central command” (p. 198); Country Parson, p. 277.

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93 See Swartz, “Discourse and Direction,”198. 94 Herbert, Works, p. 239. 95 Herbert, Works, p. 225. Foucault points out that with the full ­institutionalization of the church in the Middle Ages, “the problem arises of whether parish priests can be seen as pastors” (Security, Territory, Population, p. 153). Herbert, of course, said emphatically, yes. Foucault points out that the Catholic church, until Vatican II, said no (p. 160, notes 57–9). 96 See Elizabeth Clarke, “The Character of a Non-Laudian Country Parson,” Review of English Studies, n. s. 54 (2003), 479–96. Clarke argues that Herbert’s manual was not Laudian enough to be published in the 1630s, and too Laudian to be published through a parliamentary leader in the early 1640s. 97 Herbert, Works, pp. 254, 264. Clay Greene presented something like a “panoptic” reading in “The Visible Spirit: Pneumatology and Control in The Country Parson,” at the “Herbert in Paris” conference at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, May 2017. The classic formulation is in Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Random House, 1979), pp. 195–228. 98 On François de Sales and Guazzo, see Mellinghoff-Bourgerie, François de Sales, pp. 63–8. 99 Herbert, Works, p. 228. 100 Herbert, Works, p. 280. 101 Herbert, Works, p. 266. 102 Herbert, Works, p. 274. 103 Herbert, Works, p. 268. 104 Herbert, Works, pp. 255–7. Stanley Fish has drawn extensively on this chapter in The Living Temple: George Herbert and Catechizing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). 105 Herbert, Works, p. 257. For the text’s insistence on “particulars,” see pp. 230, 233, 248, 265–6 (“smallest actions”), 275, and 277 (re serving on parliamentary committees). This is perhaps a ­significant connection to Bacon, as is suggested by Arnold Stein, George Herbert’s Lyrics (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), p.  120. For Herbert and Bacon generally, see Summers, George Herbert, His Religion and Art, Appendix B; and Catherine Gimelli  Martin, “George Herbert and the Pan-European ‘Merchants of Light’,” Renaissance Society of America Conference, March 2018. 106 “The Subject and Power,” p. 183. 107 Herbert, Works, p. 238.

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108 See Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons, foreword by R. H. Tawney (New York: Scribner’s, 1958), chapters 4–5. 109 Herbert, Works, p. 242 (said twice). 110 Herbert, Works, p. 230. 111 Herbert, Works, p. 236. In an early version of “The Church-porch,” Herbert spoke of “A Virgin-bed, which hath a speciall Crowne.” He dropped this from the revised version, but obviously decided, finally, to reaffirm it here – after, it seems, his own marriage. 112 See, inter alia, Charles H. George and Katherine George, The Protestant Mind of the English Reformation, 1570–1640 (Princeton,  NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), ch. 7; Roland M. Frye, “The Teachings of Classical Puritanism on Conjugal Love,” Studies in the Renaissance, 2 (1955), 148–59; James Grantham Turner, One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). 113 See “The Windows,” l. 11. For commentary, see Strier, “George Herbert and Ironic Ekphrasis,” Classical Philology, 102 (2007), 96–109 (special issue, Ekphrasis, ed. Shadi Bartsch and Jas Elsner). 114 Wolberg, “All Possible Art,” pp. 19ff. 115 Herbert, Works, p. 256. 116 Herbert, Works, p. 233. 117 Nonetheless, Miller-Blaise has shown that there is an (unstated) ­positive relation to Hermogenes in this passage as well as the stated negative one. See Le Verbe fait image, p. 310. See also Annabel M. Patterson, Hermogenes and the Renaissance: Seven Ideas of Style (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970). 118 Herbert, Works, pp. 228–9. 119 Another such moment is “The Parson’s Consideration of Providence,” which is pure Calvin – secondary causation is virtually denied (pp. 270–2; see also pp. 247 and 281). Compare Calvin, The Institutes, vol. I., p. xvi. 120 See notes 13–15 above. 121 Contrast drawn by Martz, The Poetry of Meditation, pp. 145–6. 122 Martz, The Poetry of Meditation, p. 145. 123 See Theory and Theology, ch. 2. Clarke’s chapter is the most extended scholarly attempt to question the Herbert–de Sales connection asserted by Martz. 124 On this, see Strier, Love Known, ch. 7, and Strier, Unrepentant, ch. 1. 125 See Clarke, Theory and Theology, p. 137 (also pp. 82–4, 89, 110, 128–9).

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126 For the pervasiveness of the term in late medieval (western) affective devotion, see Mary Carruthers, “Sweetness,” Speculum, 81 (2006), 999–1013. For the role of the term in Herbert’s poetry, see Christopher A. Hill, “George Herbert’s Sweet Devotion,” Studies in Philology, 107 (2010), 236–58, and Miller-Blaise, Le Verbe fait image, pp. 383–6. 127 For an exercise along these lines, see William C. Marceau, The Eucharist in Théodore de Bèze and St. François de Sales (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1993). 128 For an analysis, see Strier, “George Herbert the World,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance [now Early Modern] Studies, 11 (1981), 211–36 (especially 214). 129 I believe that this is true of Richard Crashaw as well, another devotee of “sweetness” in the religious life, and another poet who has been seen as close in sensibility to St. François de Sales. See especially Vincent Roger, Le Coeur et La Croix: L’esthétique baroque de Richard Crashaw (1612–1649) (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2012), pp. 138–62 (on “sweetness,” see pp. 155–61). Roger does not see Crashaw and Herbert as identical in sensibility (pp. 177–8). 130 Schoenfeldt’s “Herbert and Pleasure,” George Herbert Journal, 38 (2014–15), 145–57, seems to me regularly to confuse sensual with non-sensual pleasure. Miller-Blaise perhaps avoids doing this, but I think overstates the claims that Herbert would make for the “sweetness” of his own lyrics and for the identification of them with “l’expérience de la Communion” (Le Verbe fait image, p. 384). 131 Martz, The Poetry of Meditation, p. 299. 132 This is final thesis for the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518 (Luther, Selections, p. 503). For its significance, see Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. Philip S. Watson (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), pp. 722–5. For an analysis of the poem in these terms, see Strier, Love Known, pp. 74–83. 133 George Herbert Palmer, The Life and Works of George Herbert, 3 vols (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1907), vol. 2, p. 111. Hodgkins struggles with this in Authority, Church, and Society, pp. 198–209. I  agree with Miller-Blaise that The Temple does not in general portray “une union avec Dieu qui abolirait toute subjectivité,” but I disagree that this puts Herbert (or his persona) into a world of Salesian “dévotion civile” (Le Verbe fait image, p. 172). 134 See Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, trans. Michael J. B. Allen with John Warden (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), vol.  3, p. 2. Herbert’s picture of man “With th’ one hand

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t­ ouching heav’n, with th’ other earth” (l. 12) is probably not intended to suggest an uncomfortable, tense, and perhaps unsustainable position, but it cannot help but do so. 135 Schoenfeldt’s “Herbert and Pleasure” makes the “medley” seem more balanced than it is (p. 148). The poem ends in praising affliction. For fuller analysis, see Richard Strier, “George Herbert and the World,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 11, 211–36. 136 Hutchinson (p. 510) points out that the country parson, who is to be highly knowledgeable in “home-bred medicines,” prescribes roses “for loosing” (p. 261). 137 Herbert, Works, p. 267. Even if, as Miller-Blaise has suggested to me, “sad” here means something like steadfast, serious, or dependable rather than sorrowful, the effect (and affect) is basically the same. Izaak Walton, The Life of Mr. George Herbert, ed. Charles W. Eliot (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1909), p. 406.

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George Herbert’s The Country Parson and John Calvin’s pastoral advice Kristine A. Wolberg and Lynnette St. George

In another of his Salisbury walks [George Herbert] met with a ­neighbor minister; and after some friendly discourse betwixt them, and some condolement for the decay of piety, and the too general contempt of the clergy, Mr. Herbert took occasion to say: “One cure [is] principally that the clergy themselves would be sure to live unblamably.” – Izaak Walton1

Perhaps there has never been a time in church history when there was not a “general contempt of the clergy.” Certainly, we can trace this theme from Alfred the Great through Chaucer and beyond.2 That there was a particular public outcry in both John Calvin’s and George Herbert’s times is well established. Calvin’s “Preface to the King of France” before his Institutes of the Christian Religion expresses his lamentations on this topic. He concludes a long catalog of offenses of the French (Roman Catholic) clergy with this final plea: “Mais que cependant l’Evangile de Dieu ne soit point blasphemé pour les malefices des meschans” (Institution 15), that is, “let not the gospel of God be evil spoken of because of the iniquities of evil men.”3 Calvin’s cure for the ills of the clergy is first and foremost a return to biblical doctrine. His Institutes, commentaries, and other writings flesh out his readings of such doctrine. In Herbert’s day, a “lament for the state of the English clergy [was] the perpetual refrain of … reformers.”4 But Herbert had no need to set down a theological foundation for his pastoral manual. As has been clearly established by Herbert scholars through recent decades, the doctrine of the early modern British church and George Herbert

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himself comported significantly with the basic theology of Calvin.5 There is little disagreement on this head. However, over the years, there has been much disagreement on how to read George Herbert’s The Country Parson. This work has been examined in turn in light of early modern sociology (Ronald Cooley), the character book (Cristina Malcolmson), and the courtesy tradition (Kristine Wolberg). Most commonly, scholars have used The Country Parson as a source of information about Herbert and his thinking as it relates to topics and themes in The Temple. The oft-noted emphasis on the outer man has led at least one critic to accuse The Country Parson of gross insincerity and a “holiness … wholly made up of external marks, or signs.”6 And without sufficient context, this judgment might seem appropriate. But Herbert was working within a context that reached back in time (to the Pauline Epistles) and across the English Channel (to Reformation Europe). We need not establish Calvin’s Commentaries to the Pastoral Epistles as directly influencing The Country Parson to recognize that an examination of Calvin on Pauline pastoral advice will helpfully inform our understanding Herbert’s focus on ministerial appearances. And given the strong Calvinistic influences on the British church in Herbert’s day, it makes perfect sense that this should be so. Both Calvin and Herbert – and one might add Paul – stressed the crucial relationship of Doctrine to Life and how addressing the observable behavior of the pastor, his “life,” was all important for upholding and authenticating his “doctrine.” Let us begin with the need for such a thing as The Country Parson – and for advice to Christian ministers in general. We may go all the way back to St. Paul’s first letter to Timothy. In his final words, Paul encourages Timothy (and, by extension, all pastors) this way: “But thou, O man of God, flee these [sinful] things, and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, and meekness. Fight the good fight of faith: lay hold of eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses” (I Timothy 6:11–12).7 Among other difficulties for the pastor, Paul does not here mention a particular contempt for the full-time pastor in his day. But Calvin takes advantage of these verses to decry in detail a special burden of contempt toward

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clergy. He begins his explication of verse 14 by referencing “all the godly,” but then devotes two full paragraphs to the trials of those whose office and work it is to preach the gospel. After some general remarks Calvin enumerates the persecution peculiar to godly ministers: Je laisse à parler des feux, des glaives & bannissemens, & de tous les efforts furieux des ennemis: je laisse les calomnies & autres tormens  …  Les ambitieux s’eslevent a l’encontre de nous: les Epicuriens & Lucianiques jettent leurs risees, les desbauchez & impudens nous agacent, les hypocrites murmurent & grondent entre leurs dens, les sages selon la chair nous mordent a la traverse, nous sommes sollicitez cà & là par divers moyens: brief c’est un grand miracle quand quelqu’un persevere constamment en une charge si difficile & dangereuse. Le seul remede contre tant de difficultez, c’est d’avoir les yeux fichez a l’apparitiō de Christ, & mettre là toute son attente. (our emphasis.)8 I say nothing about fires, and swords and banishments, and all the furious attacks of enemies. I say nothing about slanders and other vexations … Ambitious men openly attack us, Epicureans and Lucianists jeer at us, impudent men provoke us, hypocrites murmur at us, they who are wise after the flesh secretly bite us, we are harassed by various methods in every direction. In short, it is a great miracle that any man perseveres steadfastly in an office so difficult and so dangerous. The only remedy for all these difficulties is, to cast our eyes toward the appearing of Christ, and to keep them fixed on it continually. (our emphasis)9

This is one of several such passages in Calvin’s ­commentaries to the Pastoral Epistles. Clearly, Calvin perceived a special persecution of Christian ministers in his day. Herbert likewise is alive to this problem. In addition to a number of comments made throughout The Country Parson, he devotes an entire chapter (28) to the subject of “The Parson in Contempt.” He begins this discussion with acknowledging a seemingly indisputable situation: “The Countrey Parson knows well [of] the general ignominy which is cast upon the profession … [and that] he must be despised.”10 Before Herbert gives his practical advice to the parson on how to address this problem, he explains why it is important that “[the parson] endeavours that none shall despise him.” This is because the pastor’s chief

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concern is his people’s spiritual formation: “for where contempt is, there is no room for instruction.” In this chapter Herbert recommends ways to approach the contemptuous parishioner. While he mentions doctrine in this chapter, the focus of his counsel is squarely upon a pastor living a holy life before his detractors. His advice begins, “He endeavours that none shall despise him … This he procures first by his holy and unblameable life, which carries a reverence with it, even above contempt” (our emphasis). Here we see how Herbert’s thrust in The Country Parson is clearly on the observable life of the pastor rather than on the inner man.11 This is quite intentional, and keeping this in mind will prevent us from misreading The Country Parson. With this background, let us look at the common themes in Calvin’s Commentaries to the Pastoral Epistles and Herbert’s The Country Parson. The Country Parson (and we will use Herbert’s title throughout and not Oley’s Priest to the Temple) begins with Herbert’s defining chapter, “Of a Pastor.” Here he sets out his “complete definition” of a minister, which he derives from St. Paul (Col. 1:24): the minister “fills up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh, for his Bodie’s sake, which is the Church.” From this Herbert derives the “charter and duty of the Priesthood”: “The Duty, in that a Priest is to do that which Christ did, and after his manner, both for Doctrine and Life.” These words, “Doctrine and Life,” are key to grasping Herbert’s focus and purpose in The Country Parson.12 They are, in fact, key to Paul’s Pastoral Epistles, and, not surprisingly, key to Calvin’s commentaries on them as well. St. Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus weave the themes of ­doctrine and life inextricably. Paul begins his first letter to Timothy warning against teachers of false doctrine: “As I besought thee to abide still in Ephesus, when I departed into Macedonia, so do, that thou mayest warn some, that they teach none other doctrine.” He goes on quickly to explain the important connection of this to living out the faith: “Neither that they give heed to fables and genealogie which are endless, which breed questions rather than godly edifying which is by faith. For the end of the commandment is love” (1 Tim. 1:3–5, our emphasis). The rest of the epistle moves back and forth between issues of doctrine and life, faith and conduct, as in I Timothy 1:8–10 where Paul explains that sound doctrine will

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preclude such behavior as murder, adultery, slavery, lying, perjury, and “any other thing that is contrary to wholesome doctrine.” Positively, in I Timothy 3, Paul teaches that overseers and deacons, teachers of true doctrine, must be “unreproveable, the husband of one wife, watching, temperate, modest, harborous, apt to teach, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre, but gentle, no fighter, not covetous,” and so on. Throughout Paul’s epistles to Timothy and Titus, his focus is the inseparability of true doctrine and right living – especially for the Christian minister. Perhaps the most succinct enunciation of this theme comes in I Timothy 4:16 where Paul admonishes Timothy: “Take heed unto thyself, and unto learning,” or as a modern translation (The New International Version) puts it, “Watch your life and doctrine closely.” All throughout the Pastoral Epistles, Paul emphasizes the interconnection between true doctrine and righteous living. So it is no surprise that this is precisely the focus of Calvin in his commentaries and Herbert in his pastoral manual, The Country Parson. On the central verse (I Tim. 4:16: “Take heed unto thyself”) Calvin writes, “Un fidele Pasteur doit avoir soin de deux choses à savoir d’etre diligent a enseigner, et de se garder pur de tous vices” (“There are two things of which a good pastor should be careful; to be diligent in teaching, and to keep himself pure”).13 Calvin goes on to write, “Car ce ne sera pas assez qu’il forme sa vie a toute ­honnetete … si avec la saintete de vie il ne conioint l’affection continuelle d’enseigner. Et la doctrine ne profitera de gueres, si la sainctete et honnetete de vie n’est correspondante” (“[i]t is not enough if [the pastor] frame his life to all that is good and commendable … if he does not likewise add to a holy life the continual diligence in teaching; and, on the other hand, doctrine will be of little avail, if there be not a corresponding goodness and holiness of life”).14 Again, in Calvin’s commentary on the Epistle to Titus 2:1, “But speak thou the things that become wholesome doctrine,” Calvin makes a strong connection between lifestyle and apologetics. He writes, “Or [Paul] met deux parties de la saine doctrine, l’une par laquelle est magnifie la grace de Dieu en Christ, dont nous scachions où il nous faut chercher notre salut” (Commentaires 426) (“[Paul] makes sound doctrine to consist of two parts. The first is that which magnifies the grace of God in Christ and the second is that by which the life

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is trained to the fear of God, and inoffensive conduct”) – “l’autre, par laquelle nostre vie est formee à la crainte de Dieu, & a droiture envers nos prochains” (i.e., “[Paul’s readers] … needed especially to be exhorted to the practice of a good and holy life”).15 Here we see Calvin making a holy life essential to the transmission of “sound doctrine,” like Paul, emphasizing the interdependence of true doctrine and holiness of life for effective ministry. Like the Pastoral Epistles and Calvin’s Commentaries on them, The Country Parson is Herbert’s advice to clergy (including himself). In “The Author to the Reader” he writes: “I have resolved to set down the Form and Character of a true Pastour, that I may have a Mark to aim at” (224).16 In several places, Herbert, like Paul and Calvin, emphasizes the critical relationship of doctrine to life. In a chapter one would expect to be full of theological texts, “The Parson’s Library” begins with this surprising statement: “The Countrey Parson’s Library is a holy Life.”17 Regarding apologetics, The Country Parson teaches that a holy life is just as important as sound doctrine. We see this in chapter 24, “The Parson Arguing,” which begins, “The Countrey Parson, if there be any of his parish that hold strange Doctrines, useth all possible diligence to reduce them to the common Faith” by using prayer and “a very loving, and sweet usage of them.”18 This holy behavior, with particularized apologetics, will bring his erring parishioners back to true doctrine. Herbert then emphasizes the importance of the pastor’s own doctrine and life: These and like points he hath accurately digested, having ever besides two great helps and powerfull perswaders on his side: the one, a strict religious life; the other an humble, and ingenuous search of truth … which are two great lights able to dazle the eyes of the mis-led, while they consider, that God cannot be wanting to them in Doctrine, to whom he is so gracious in Life. (our emphasis)19

Here we see for Herbert – like Paul and Calvin – the critical importance of a godly life to endorse and communicate the teachings of sound doctrine. The Epistle of Paul to Titus has a similar focus on doctrine and life and further explains how working together, true doctrine and a holy life protect the minister and the gospel from the blame

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of the ungodly and help the unbeliever to faith. Titus 2 begins, “But  speak thou the things which become wholesome doctrine.” Then Paul goes on to explain how this doctrine should be incarnated in the lives of all – especially the pastor: “In all things show thyself an example of good works with uncorrupt doctrine, with gravity, integrity, And with the wholesome word, which cannot be condemned, that he which withstandeth, may be ashamed, having nothing concerning you to speak evil of” (verses 7–8). On this point Calvin emphasizes that the good life of the pastor will authenticate his message and preclude false accusations: “Te monstrant toy-mesme en toutes chose pour patron, Car autrement la doctrine aura bien peu d’autorite, si la vertu & maieste d’icelle ne reluit en la vie du Pasteur”20 (“In all things shewing thyself: For doctrine will otherwise carry little authority, if its power and majesty do not shine in the life of the [pastor]”).21 Commenting on verse 8 Calvin writes: “Que la bouche soit fermee aux infidels, … qu’il ne leur faut point donner aucune occasion de mesdire”22 (“[T]o shut the mouth of wicked men, … we should give no occasion for slander”).23 Herbert makes a similar point, explaining how a holy life is the best answer to the contemptuous unbeliever: “[the pastor] endeavours that none shall despise him … for where contempt is, there is no room for instruction. This he procures first by his holy and unblameable life, which carries a reverence with it, even above contempt.”24 On Titus 3:8, Calvin explains that true doctrine and a good life are inseparable for all believers: “Mais quoi que la façon de parler qui est yci mise soit ambigue, toutefois on peut assez facilement cognoistre l’intention de S Paul: a scavoir que la fin de la doctrine Chrestienne est, que les fideles l’exercent en bonnes œuvres”25 (“the meaning of Paul is sufficiently clear, that the design of Christian doctrine is, that believers should exercise themselves in good works”).26 Again, for Herbert – like Paul and Calvin – a holy life is critical for defending true doctrine and bringing unbelievers to faith. Within the themes of doctrine and life, there are numerous detailed points of comparison between Calvin’s pastoral commentary and Herbert’s advice to clergy. Under “The Parson’s State of Life,” for example, Herbert advises seminarians against ­“Curiosity

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in prying into high speculative and unprofitable questions,” calling this a “great stumbling block to the holinesse of scholars.”27 Likewise, in Calvin’s commentary on Titus 3:9, “Mais refrène les folles questions” (avoid foolish questions), Calvin warns: “Mais ceux qui s’enquierent curieusement de toutes choses, et avec ce ne sont iamais arrestes” (“those who inquire curiously into everything, and are never at rest”); he says “on les peut appeler vrayement questionnaires” (“they may be truly called Questionarians”). He uses the doctors and students of the Sorbonne as a negative example: “Brief, Saint Paul condamne yci tout ce que les escoles Sorboniques estiment digne de singuliere louange”28 (“[i]n short, what the schools of the Sorbonne account worthy of the highest praise [“inquiring curiously into everything” and “never being at rest”] – is here condemned by Paul”).29 It is the holiness of the pastor or seminarian’s life that is the focus of both Calvin’s and Herbert’s advice. Perhaps this shared focus is not surprising since both Calvin and Herbert prize the Bible as the source of all sound teaching. In “The Parsons Knowledge,” Herbert writes, “The chief and top of his knowledge consists in the book of books, the storehouse and magazene of life and comfort, the holy Scriptures. There he sucks, and lives.”30 Writing on 2 Timothy 3:16 (“For the whole Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable to teach, to convince, to correct, and to instruct in righteousness”), Calvin writes, A enseigner, Il [Paul] monstre yci par les especes en combien de sortes l’Escriture est utile. Et en premier lieu il met Enseigner, cōme aussi cela va le premier en ordre: car l’exhortation & la reprehésion ne serviroyent de rien si premierement on n’a enseigné ... Cette est dōc la principale science, La foy en Christ: puis apres s’ensuit l’institution de regler la vie ... En cette sorte, quiconque scait bien user des Escritures comme il appartient, à celuy la rien ne defaut de ce qui appartient a salut & a bien vivre.31 Here [Paul] enters into a detailed statement of the various and manifold advantages derived from the Scriptures. And, first of all, he mentions instruction, which ranks above all the rest … The most valuable knowledge … is “faith in Christ.” Next follows instruction for regulating the life … Thus he who knows how to use the Scriptures ­properly, is in want of nothing for salvation, or for a holy life.32

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Interestingly, for Calvin and Herbert a holy life is both the outcome and the source of the Bible’s power. Calvin explains that only the enlightened believer can know that scripture is “dictated by the Holy Spirit.” He writes, “il n’y a que ceux qui sont illuminez par le saint Esprit, qui ayent des yeux pour voir ce qui devoit bien estre clair et visible à tous … Ce mesme Esprit donc, qui a rendu Moyse & les Prophètes certains de leur vocation, rend[ent] aussi maintenant tesmoignage a nos cœurs, qu’il s’est servi de leurs ministere pour nous enseigner”33 (“[t]he same Spirit, therefore, who made Moses and the prophets certain of their calling, now also testifies to our hearts, that he has employed them as his servants to instruct us  … None but those who have been enlightened by the Holy Spirit have eyes to perceive what might indeed, to have been visible to all, and yet is visible to the elect alone”).34 Similarly, Herbert writes, “wicked men, however learned, do not know the Scriptures, because they feel them not, and because they are not understood but with the same Spirit that writ them.”35 Herbert earlier had explained that “[i]n the Scriptures [the Parson] finds four things: precepts … doctrines … examples … and promises … But for the understanding of these, the means he useth are first, a holy Life.” This is quite a claim for the holy life – that it enables the reader of scripture to understand it. Herbert provides a New Testament reference to support this idea: “Remembering what his Master saith, that if any do Gods will, he shall know of the Doctrine, John 7 [v 17].”36 Herbert’s proof text for this contention is curious. He chooses the Geneva Bible’s (1599) translation: “If any do God’s will he shall know of the Doctrine,” as opposed to a transliteration from the Greek (which Herbert undoubtedly knew), “If any man wills [or wishes] to do God’s will, he shall know the doctrine” – a translation favored by both Luther and Calvin and one that does not omit the Greek word “wishes” found in the biblical text. The weight this translation places on living the holy life for understanding sound doctrine is remarkable.37 So, we might ask at this point, how are Calvin and Herbert’s focus on “Doctrine and Life” helpful for reading Herbert’s The Country Parson? How does this likeness help us to put to rest accusations of Herbert’s “insincerity” and (what some see as) his uncomfortable emphasis on outer appearances?38

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The answer lies in taking Herbert at his word when he describes the purpose of his pastoral manual. It is not to lay down a foundation of theology – for he took that to be already laid down in scripture and the doctrines and teachings of the Church of England, doctrines and teachings that were heavily informed by the teachings of Calvin and the continental reformers.39 Nor is The Country Parson about personal faith or private religious experience. (For  more on this, we may gladly turn to Herbert’s poetry in The Temple.) Rather, Herbert’s purpose in The Country Parson is to set down the “Form and Character of a true Pastour” that he might “have a Mark to aim at”40 – indeed, that he might create a “mark” for all pastors to aim at. Herbert assumes that his readers are – or strive to be – “true Pastor[s],” that is, those already converted and called to the Christian ministry. The Country Parson, then, is calling the converted pastor to a life that, by its visible holiness, will counteract the prevailing contempt of clergy. Herbert writes in one of the opening chapters, “The Parson’s Life”: “The Countrey Parson is exceeding exact in his Life, being holy, just, prudent, temperate, bold, grave in all his wayes … And … [especially] … wherein a Christian is most seen … he labours most in those things which are most apt to scandalize his Parish.”41 Herbert’s emphasis on the outer life of the parson is not surprising given the purpose of the work: to help his readers (and himself) see a picture of the model parson’s public self. Occasionally in The Country Parson Herbert pulls back the curtain to reveal something of the parson’s inner man, as in, “The Countrey Parson is generally sad because he knows nothing but the Crosse of Christ, his minde being defixed on it with those nailes wherewith his Master was.”42 But this spiritual self-revelation is far from his overarching purpose, which is not to lay a theological foundation of ministry nor to describe the private beliefs and feelings of the pastor, but rather to help the pastor to live a holy life before his parishioners. Herbert believed that the theological foundation had already been laid by St. Paul, Calvin, and the Church of England. His business in The Country Parson was rather to build upon this foundation by giving his readers a visible “Mark to aim at.” As Herbert makes clear in his poem “The Windows,” Christian pastors must be like stained glass windows – they can only effectively “preach [the] eternal word” when God’s life “shines within”

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the preacher. If right doctrine is not “anneal[ed]” to a holy life – like stained glass windows without light – the pastor’s doctrine “shows watrish, bleak, & thin.” “[S]peech alone / Doth vanish like a flaring thing, / And in the eare, not conscience ring.” But –

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Doctrine and life, colours and light, in one When they combine and mingle, bring A strong regard and aw … (ll. 11–13)

Herbert’s purpose in The Country Parson is to depict a model parson whose public life fits his doctrine and thus whose “strong regard and aw” might overcome the contempt of the clergy of his time – and all times.

Notes   1 Izaak Walton, The Life of Mr. George Herbert, ed. Charles W. Eliot (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1909), p. 406.   2 Cooley, “George Herbert’s Country Parson,” p. 12.   3 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975), vol. 1, p. 19.   4 Cooley, “Full of all Knowledg,” p. 12; Wolberg, “All Possible Art,” pp. 95–7.  5 See Daniel W. Doerksen, Picturing Religious Experience: George Herbert, Calvin, and the Scriptures (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2011); Hodgkins, Authority, Church, and Society; Barbara K. Lewalski, Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979); Strier, Love Known; Veith, “The Religious Wars in George Herbert Criticism,” pp. 19–35.  6 Stanley Fish, Versions of Antihumanism: Milton and Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 155.  7 All biblical quotations (unless otherwise specified) are taken from the Geneva Bible (1599) through www.BibleGateway.com (accessed January 2019).  8 Calvin, Commentaires sur les Épistres de Saint Paul, par Jean Calvin 1561, ed. C. Badius (Lyons: 1589, n.d.), p. 400.  9 Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, trans. William Pringle (Edinburgh: T. Constable, 1856), p. 166. 10 Herbert, Works, p. 268.

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11 For more on this, see the first chapter of Wolberg’s “All Possible Art.” 12 Herbert, Works, p. 225. 13 Calvin, Commentaries, p. 391. 14 Calvin, Commentaries, p. 117. 15 Calvin, Commentaries, p. 426. 16 Herbert, Works, p. 224. 17 Herbert, Works, p. 278. 18 Herbert, Works, p. 262. 19 Herbert, Works, p. 263. 20 Calvin, Commentaires, p. 427. 21 Calvin, Commentaries, p. 313. 22 Calvin, Commentaires, p. 427 23 Calvin, Commentaries, p. 315. 24 Herbert, Works, p. 268. 25 Calvin, Commentaires, p. 431. 26 Calvin, Commentaries, p. 338. 27 Herbert, Works, p. 238. 28 Calvin, Commentaires, p. 431. 29 Calvin, Commentaries, p. 339. 30 Herbert, Works, p. 228. 31 Calvin, Commentaires, pp. 415–16. 32 Calvin, Commentaries, p. 250. 33 Calvin, Commentaires, p. 415. 34 Calvin, Commentaries, p. 249. 35 Herbert, Works, p. 228. 36 Herbert, Works, p. 228. 37 For a more detailed discussion of this see Wolberg, “All Possible Art,” pp. 33–4. If Herbert had, instead, been thinking of the Authorized (King James, 1611) version (“If any man will doe his will”) the result would be the same. Both the Geneva and the Authorized versions put the focus on outward “doing” rather than on inner “willing” or “wishing” to do God’s will. 38 This also may diminish the argument regarding Herbert’s being a Laudian-friendly ceremonialist. 39 See Doerksen, Picturing Religious Experience; Hodgkins, Authority, Church, and Society; Lewalski, Protestant Poetics; Strier, Love Known; and Veith, Reformation Spirituality. 40 Herbert, Works, p. 224. 41 Herbert, Works, p. 227. 42 Herbert, Works, p. 267.

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Edward Herbert’s The Amazon and De Veritate Cristina Malcolmson

Edward Herbert wrote The Amazon and completed De Veritate during his terms as English ambassador to France, 1619–21 and 1622–4. While in France, Herbert was frequently the guest of the ducs de Montmorency, a family of Catholic moderates sometimes referred to pejoratively as politiques by the parti dévot, or ultra-Catholics. The willingness of members of the Montmorency circle to question traditional wisdom probably influenced both of Herbert’s works. Edward Herbert argued against the dogma of institutionalized religion in his philosophical work De Veritate and for divorce in his unfinished play The Amazon. This chapter analyzes the final “Song” in The Amazon as linking human affection with the “natural instinct” of De Veritate, a spiritual power that, for Herbert, moves both animals and humans, provides the basis for credible knowledge, and legitimizes divorce. The Amazon is a play fragment found in 2009 and published in 2016 in the Malone Society’s Collections XVII.1 One of the arguments in our introduction is that the manuscript of The Amazon was likely written in 1623–4. This dating is supported by diplomatic letters that Herbert as ambassador wrote to King James and others in the English court, and which have the same watermark as The Amazon.2 Another detail that corroborates the dating is that the play fragment alludes to philosophical ideas which appear in Herbert’s De Veritate. Herbert completed the manuscript of De Veritate in June 1623 and published it in Paris before he returned to England in July 1624.3



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Edward Herbert, the ducs de Montmorency, and French religious conflict Several of the diplomatic letters written by Herbert during this period list Merlou as their location.4 This is one of the chateaux that belonged to the ducs de Montmorency. According to Herbert’s autobiography, the “brave old General” Henri de MontmorencyDamville hosted the twenty-six-year-old Herbert very early on in his first trip to France in 1608, and, aside from providing him with a residence at Merlou for several months, invited him frequently to Chantilly, the Montmorency grand estate “five or six miles distant.”5 Earlier historians of this period and of Edward Herbert claimed that Damville, a moderate Catholic, was “leader” of the “politiques,” an “organized party” with a formulated policy of religious tolerance, developed in response to the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris in 1572.6 More recent historians have called such conclusions into question, arguing that “this was hardly … a movement of politiques who simply sought a peaceful resolution of religious and political differences, as some have suggested. … it was not a movement at all, but a heterogeneous group of malcontent nobles who harbored various ambitions.”7 Nevertheless there can be no doubt that Damville, although a Catholic, had a long history of Protestant alliances. For instance, in 1574–6, he fought along with other “Malcontents” like Francois d’Anjou and the Huguenot Henri, Prince of Condé, in order to limit Henry III’s absolutist ambitions and force him to agree to the Edict of Beaulieu, which authorized the right of public worship for the Huguenots. Damville had issued a proclamation in 1574 “pleading for at least limited liberty of conscience.”8 This was particularly critical in Languedoc, the province that he governed, which included both Huguenots and Catholics.9 Damville also allied himself with then Protestant Henri de Navarre, who later became Henri IV by converting to Catholicism. Henri signed the Edict of Nantes, which made a distinction between religious and civil unity, freed citizenship from its sectarian determinant, and increased the rights and privileges of the Huguenots.10 If there were no organized party of “politiques” or

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established policy of tolerance, there was a recognition among some of the Catholic moderates that, as Herbert paraphrased from Peter Jeannin, an advisor to Louis XIII, “better to have a peace which had two religions, than a war that had none.”11 As Tatiana DebbagiBaranova stated in her paper, “The French Religious Context and the Aftermath of the Wars of Religion,” when Herbert first came to France during the reign of Henri IV in 1608, he would have met with a “conciliatory spirit” and heard of “interdenominational hope,” especially in the chateaux of the Montmorencys.12 However, by the time of Herbert’s terms as ambassador, in 1619–21, and 1622–4, Louis XIII was on the throne and displaying a far less tolerant attitude toward Protestants, and, eventually, moderate Catholics. Damville and his son Henri, who became Duke in 1614, saved Herbert more than once from the sometimes dangerous social dilemmas into which the Englishman’s sense of honor propelled him.13 It is clear that the ducs de Montmorency considered themselves his guardian and ally. Certainly, they included him frequently in their social circles. Herbert met Damville in 1608 originally through his daughter Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency, Princess of Condé, who lived in Paris next door to the English ambassador to France, Sir George Carew.14 Aside from his time spent at Merlou and Chantilly in 1608, Damville’s son also granted Herbert the use of Merlou in 1619 from summer to winter to avoid the plague, and Herbert’s diplomatic letters suggest that he lived at Merlou from August to November of 1623 as well.15 Herbert would have enjoyed the society at Chantilly at various times during these periods. It is difficult to identify the individuals who made up this society. Bedford lists Rabelais, Montaigne, La Boétie, Mornay, and Hugo Grotius as sympathetic to the “politique” view. However, most of these men were no longer living when Herbert visited France. The Huguenot writer Philippe Duplessis-Mornay (1549–1623) was sixty-nine when Herbert first came to France in 1608. DuplessisMornay was still quite active in his support of the Huguenots and represented the French Protestants at the Synod of Dort in 1618. The Dutch Protestant scholar Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) had defended the decision of the Dutch state in the early 1610s to offer religious toleration to both Arminians and Calvinists. This religious

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coexistence ended in 1619, when the Synod of Dort outlawed Arminianism, and Grotius was imprisoned. He escaped to France in March 1621, and was protected by the French monarchy, although he was also pressured to convert to Catholicism. His writings continued to argue for toleration on questions of doctrine, and that the state, not the church, should determine what modes of thought and behavior deserved punishment.16 It is clear that his works had  a major effect on Herbert’s thinking, and both shared an interest in a religious consensus that appealed to non-Christians.17 In 1623, Herbert sent his work De Veritate to Grotius to read, and Grotius urged him to publish it. It is possible that Grotius may have been a guest at Chantilly.18 In his autobiography, Herbert states that he studied with Isaac Casaubon in Paris in 1608. A classical scholar who was already corresponding with Grotius in 1608, Casaubon moved to England in 1610 after the assassination of Henri IV and lived under the patronage and protection of King James. Grotius appealed to Casaubon frequently to encourage James to support a policy of religious coexistence in the Dutch Republic.19 Eugene Hill comments that Herbert’s poem “A State-Progress of Ill,” a satire on the church and monarchy composed at Merlou in 1608, “shows the daring political speculation that Herbert encountered in his first visit to France,” even though its primary debt is to Donne.20 Debbagi-Baranova argues that the religious wars in the sixteenth century posed a challenge to the divine right of kings, especially from the Protestants who believed that the Catholic kings practiced a form of tyranny, but also from the Catholic nobility, who were intent on limiting the powers of the monarchy.21 Hill points out that irreligion had become fashionable after the long, destructive wars, and tells us that, according to Mario M. Rossi, Montmorency social events would have included a lot of jesting about the Church.22 We do know of one poet who stayed at Chantilly under the protection of the second Duke. Théophile de Viau wrote verses critical of church and state, as well as beautiful lyrical pastoral, for example, La Maison de Sylvie, honoring Chantilly and the Duke’s wife. As a Huguenot, Viau was educated at Protestant schools in Saumur in 1611, where Philippe Duplessis-Mornay served as governor. Viau became the leader of a court coterie of libertins érudits from 1616 to

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1622, and developed a style of “philosophical libertinism” emphasizing the power of nature and sexual freedom. He was influenced by the philosopher Giulio Cesare Vanini, and both were protégés of Montmorency. Although Vanini had not yet arrived in Paris in 1608, and had been executed for heresy by the time Herbert returned as English ambassador, Vanini’s philosophy emphasizing the power of nature rather than the Christian God may have been important in the Montmorency circle.23 Herbert owned a copy of Vanini’s De admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis (Paris, 1616), the more audacious of his two works.24 Herbert also owned works by Campanella and Pomponazzo, two other important proponents of Italian naturalism.25 Although his library does not include works by Viau, Herbert was in Paris when Viau’s works were published in 1622, and when his play Pyrame et Thisbe was probably put on. However, Viau soon became a target for the ultra-Catholic party at court, the parti dévot. Henri II, duc de Montmorency, served as Viau’s patron as he faced accusations from Parliament and eventually a trial.26 When in July 1623 the Parliament ordered his arrest, he escaped to Chantilly, and on August 26 fled north, presumably to escape to England, but was caught before he could leave the country. It is interesting that Edward Herbert was at Merlou during the month of August 1623 and could easily have visited Viau at Chantilly. Perhaps Herbert also aided in the attempted escape to England. According to Giulio Pertile, Viau began composing La Maison de Sylvie during this period.27 Certainly, Viau and Herbert fell foul of the same courtier, the Duc de Luynes, favorite of King Louis XIII, and during the same period, when the parti dévot was seeking to increase its control over Louis XIII.28 Herbert’s altercation with the Duke could be considered as another example of his frivolous peccadillos about honor. However, Herbert visited the Duke only because King James had commanded Herbert to “mediate a peace” between the court and the Huguenots in 1621, or at least inform the French that the English king “would not permit their total ruin and extirpation.”29 Louis XIII and his favorite were already limiting the freedoms of the Huguenots in 1617, and they responded with rebellion. When Herbert was able to carry out James’s instructions, Louis XIII’s troops had captured Saumur, and were in the field in St. Jean

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d’Angely. Herbert was granted an audience with the King, but Louis responded only that he should speak to the Duc de Luynes, who would reveal “his Majesty’s true intention.” The Duke responded quite brusquely to Herbert’s account of James I’s concerns.30 Both Herbert and James had underestimated the French king’s renewed interest in the religious wars. In his diplomatic letters, Herbert spoke of “the seditious Priests and Jesuits,” and “the bigot party” who were pushing Louis XIII into opposition with the Huguenots.31 Perhaps the term “bigot” is Herbert’s attempt to correct what he saw as a misrepresentation in the phrase the parti dévot.32

The Amazon and De Veritate Herbert’s protest against “the bigot party” continued into The Amazon and De Veritate. He sought freedom from traditional church authority in the radical arguments in favor of divorce in The Amazon and in the replacement of orthodox Christian doctrine with a universal religion, one which would not move so disastrously from doctrine into war and execution. The Amazon was written between the months of June 1623 and February 1624, perhaps when Herbert was residing at Merlou between August and November. It features King Cleobulus who rules by love not force, and refuses to invade the country of the Amazons, despite his councilor’s urging that keeping the peace was a “shame / Both to your People, Cuntrey, house, and power” (ll.  219–29).33 In the first scene, two Amazons consider whether marriage is natural or a humanly constructed institution (ll. 13–27).34 They affirm that, if divorce were permissible to both wife and husband, and adultery were punished by death, they could accept the marriage bond. Otherwise marriage is a “tirany, wch husbands gainst our sex / do exercise” (ll. 25–6). There are only three scenes of The Amazon that we know of, but they portend quite a complex plot. In the first scene, two Amazons condemn the problems of marriage and advocate for the freedom to divorce. In the second scene, the nearby King Cleobulus laments the loss of his children twenty-one years ago and chides his c­ ounselor about his penchant for war and lack of respect for women. In the

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last scene two male characters, Polidorus and Aristander, sing about the power of love. Their names recall the Palamon and Arcite of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and the play Two Noble Kinsmen. In those works, Palamon and Arcite fall in love with the Amazon Emily, the sister of Hippolyta, both recently conquered by Theseus, and one of the young men is killed. We can speculate that Herbert’s play was meant to have a happier ending: Polidorus and Aristander return to Cleobulus their father after twenty-one years, and then fall in love with and marry two Amazons, perhaps the two in the first scene of the play. In this song, Herbert explores love as the power moving the ­universe that he has also been considering in his work of natural philosophy, De Veritate. Through this force, Herbert explains human affection, the power that moves both animals and humans, the role of Providence in earthly experience and the plot of plays, and the importance of allowing human desire to seek its proper object. The “free and proper will” (l. 65) that the Amazons find legitimate in those seeking divorce is linked by Herbert to the power that governs the universe. Before I analyze the song, some explanation is needed about the state of the manuscript. The last lines of the manuscript appear first (ll. 296–316) because Herbert wrote out at the end of the song a clean copy of lines that he had revised multiple times at the beginning of the song. I have also included in the passage below the only remaining lines in the song that Herbert did not cross out. These lines, 281–90, appear in the manuscript after the original beginning of the song, but before the revised version: Polidorus, Aristander,              Fol. 9r What cannot Love. Whithr doth not extend His might and fatall powr.? Wch from our first. Vnto our latest hower Wch from the one. Vnto the othr ende Of this great Vniverse. Leaves nothinge free      300 ore wch in some degree. His Influence. doth not ascende. Whose power belowe most visible in fier. As fast as it doth burne



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All that it toucheth to it selfe. doth turne Till joyned in one flame. they both aspire Vnto thier place. where changed into light And vanished from our sight They both injoy. what they desire While those small bodies wch they leave behinde   Whats incorrupt and pure Like to true lovers. can no way indure To haue anothr forme. in them confind But constant still into that former flame From whence. their purenes came Do still mantaine their proper kinde

 310

For who can giue anothr cause then love       281/Fol. 8v Why that wants will doth growe Why that wants vnderstandinge yet doth know Why that wants body. yet wee finde doth move. Bringinge not only downe celestiall powers But even exaltinge ours To the celesttiall seate above But not plant beast. or man alone, but fier still in this love doth burn. And all                     290

This is a remarkable poem about love as well as about “plant, beast. or man” (l. 288). Herbert makes good on his claim at the beginning of the poem that the power of love, extending “from the one. Vnto the othr ende / Of this great Vniverse. Leaves nothinge free / ore wch in some degree. / His Influence. doth not ascende.” Love’s influence extends but also “ascends,” or is ascendant, in the sense, according to the OED, of being superior or pre-eminent over all, including plants and animals. The revisions show that Herbert was considering both “extend” and “ascend” for this word. In De Veritate, Herbert posits that the natural world moves not because of the mechanistic action of material atoms but because of a spiritual force he calls “plastic power” or “plastic virtue” (“plastica vis”).35 Herbert says, “The elements, minerals and vegetables give no evidence of possessing foresight, and yet display ­knowledge, strikingly directed towards their own preservation.”36

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In his analysis of De Veritate, R. D. Bedford explains, “In all the lower forms of life on earth there is discernible everywhere. … an impulse directing life towards self-preservation; we see in Nature, in animals and plants and even in elements, an impulse which according to differences of species produce behaviour directed toward the same end.”37 This provides a gloss for lines 281–3 of the fourth stanza: “For who can giue anothr cause then love / Why that wants will doth growe / Why that wants vnderstandinge yet doth know.” Both plants that lack will, but still grow, and animals that lack understanding, yet know how to survive, demonstrate the presence of this “plastic power.” The following passage clarifies the spiritual dimension of “plastic power”: Any one who refuses to look for the law by which these principles combine with our own in the mind or Harmony of the world, that plastic power which reduces different kinds of food to one form, may learn to know it through his inner consciousness. Thus the pike, the cat, and the human being will each form their limbs in the same manner as does a gudgeon, and according to the knowledge appropriate to their own species, direct the food to the proper points. The spiritual element in us pervades all these operations.38

Herbert’s De Veritate is an historically significant work that looks backward in time to the Platonism of Plotinus and Ficino and forward to the refutation of skepticism by Descartes, as well as to the refutation of Descartes’s mechanical philosophy by the Cambridge Platonists.39 Instead of the sharp division between soul and body important to Descartes, Herbert claims that there is a spiritual force driving material things and processes. To make this point, Herbert seeks to prove that truth is not found through the schools or the church, but through faculties that all humans share. The work is in large part a theory of knowledge.40 Herbert rejects the skepticism of Montaigne. For Herbert, we cannot know everything, but we can know some things through what he calls “natural instinct” (“instinctus naturalis”).41 This knowing is not discursive, but intuitive, and it is linked with the knowledge of plants and animals who cannot discourse, but nevertheless know how to act in order to survive. Humans take in objects from the external world

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in an active rather than a passive way, and in accordance with innate faculties and ideas; the mind is not the “tabula rasa” that Locke posits.42 Instead, “natural instinct” provides the intuitive knowledge necessary for understanding. When there is a conformity between the outer object and the inner faculty, the result is a “peculiar satisfaction of the mind,” as Meyrick H. Carré puts it in his introduction to his English translation of De Veritate.43 With this satisfaction, truth is known: This natural instinct also includes religious faculties innate to man. Herbert says, “I assert … that the same religious faculties have been imprinted on the soul of every normal person in all ages. Accordingly we must suppose that the faculties for wisdom, for repentance, for knowledge and for conscience with which, together and with their objects, we have been endowed, have never been lacking to man in any period or country. A rose produces the same effect now as it did of old at Pérgamum. We must believe the same of our faculties, of objects, and still more of the Universal Providence of the World.”44

For Herbert, a rose in ancient Anatolia has the same effect as a rose in seventeenth-century France, and our faculties that understand the rose are similar to the faculties of repentance and conscience. Herbert is keen to sweep away the unfounded certainties of ­institutionalized religion, including those of Catholic priests and those of Calvinists, whose doctrine of predestination he finds untenable. He  believes that “natural instinct” is shared by all people throughout all time. This  instinct accepts five common religious notions: There is a supreme God. This supreme God ought to be worshipped. The connection of virtue with piety is the chief part of religious practice. Wickedness, vice, or crime must be expiated by repentance. There is reward or punishment after this life.45

For this reason, Herbert promoted religious tolerance between Catholics and Protestants, as did his hosts the Dukes of Montmorency. According to Daniel Walker, Herbert “was hoping to provide a basis of universally accepted or acceptable beliefs on which some enduring religious peace could be constructed.”46

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The  third of the Common Notions is important here because it subordinates church liturgy or ritual of any kind to virtuous behavior. Most significant, however, is the implication that no difference in religious views warrants execution by the church or state. In Herbert’s metaphysics, the desire for immortality in man is like the instinct for self-preservation in animals, and both are the work of divine Providence. “Natural instinct” was the means by which Herbert fought against skeptics and, as R. D. Bedford puts it, in favor of “a view of the universe which was God-centered, God-animated, and God-sustained, subject at every turn to the impress of Divine Providence and in which all created things moved as within a continuum of divine activity.”47 It is clear that Herbert was not an atheist, although he was apparently not very interested in Christology.48 Now we can see why Edward felt able to dedicate an early version of De Veritate to George Herbert (as well as William Boswell, Edward’s secretary) and to ask both to “expunge anything which they found in it contrary to good morals or the true Catholic faith.”49 One of the faculties most important in De Veritate is love. As Herbert puts it: In the first place, I shall speak of love, because it is the foremost faculty both within and without us; for if sympathy is a kind of love, things which lack intelligence can love, such as the palm and the vine. Love was the first of the inner emotions. This faculty is above all sensitive to the divine beauty and goodness, and afterwards to all the divine attributes … The proof of this rests on the witness of the inner consciousness, in proper conformity, or on the witness of genuine faith; for this faculty is only completely satisfied with God Himself, and is indeed the divine itself in us … The common object of this faculty is physical love. For this reason the feeling which relates to the perpetuation of the species, so long as it is not infected with unlawful lust or concupiscence, is humane and may spring from the faculty which seeks the general good.50

The song in The Amazon connects lawful human desire to the power that controls the universe, “from the one. Unto the othr ende” (l. 299). This control, the power of Love’s “might and fatall power” (l. 297), is perhaps also meant to become evident in the plot, through the miraculous return of the sons to their father.



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In his use of the imagery of fire in the second and third stanzas of the song, Herbert evokes Platonic love, and particularly that of Ficino: Whose power belowe most visible in fier. As fast as it doth burne All that it toucheth to it selfe. doth turne Till joyned in one flame. they both aspire Vnto thier place. where changed into light And vanished from our sight They both injoy what they desire. While those small bodies wch they leave behinde Whats incorrupt and pure Like to true lovers. can no way indure To haue anothr forme. in them confind But constant still into that former flame From whence. their purenes came Do still mantaine their proper kinde (ll. 303–16)

Ficino wrote, “The goal and end of mind is Truth and Goodness itself, namely God; towards God it moves like fire, with an essential instinct.” Bedford in his work on De Veritate explains, “the human soul is directed by an innate desire towards some end peculiar to it, and … this end must be capable of attainment.”51 This seems to be the point of the second and third stanzas, but the poetic details are much more difficult to grasp. Herbert begins the second stanza by characterizing Love’s power below as most visible in fire; that is, the power of Love is not only like the physical element of fire, but that power also works through fire: “Whose power belowe most visible in fier. / As fast as it doth burne, / All that it toucheth to it selfe. doth turne, / Till joyned in one flame, they both aspire” (ll. 303–6). Fire turns everything it touches to itself, and the fire and what it burns then moves upwards in one flame. The poem continues to refer to fire and what it consumes, but begins to sound a great deal like the human love of two people: “they both aspire / Vnto thier place, where changed into light, / And vanished from our sight, / They both injoy what they desire” (ll.  306–9). It is difficult to imagine fire and what it

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consumes desiring to be light, but perhaps this is what Herbert means. However, the words “they” and “both” now suggest not simply the element of fire and what it consumes, but also the human physical passion that joins two people. This “fier” moves upwards as it becomes spiritual, and results in a satisfaction that is the result of finding one’s true “place” (l.307) and, in the case of lovers, joining with another soul. The third stanza makes this double reference explicit in line 312, when the poem states that the fire and what it consumes are “like to true lovers.” In both cases, following this exaltation, the bodies that remain in the human world cannot take on another “form” (l. 313), nor do they change character or “kinde” (l. 316). In the case of whatever material thing the material fire has consumed, only ashes remain – matter without shape – and, in the case of lovers, they cannot consider infidelity or love for another person, because of the purity gained through union with their first love. The phrase “another form” recalls Herbert’s frequent use of the term in his poetry to refer to the recovered spiritualized self. In “The Idea, Made of Alnwick,” the lovers find their original and divine form after the process of spiritual transformation: “So when that form the Heav’ns at first decreed / Is finished within, Souls do not need / Their Bodies more, but would from them be freed.”52 The song in The Amazon suggests, however, that, while the souls are enjoying each other in their spiritual “place” above, the bodies ward off any other kind of attraction. The stanza outdoes Donne in obscureness, but also recalls Donne’s poem “The Ecstasy,” in which the souls join in conversation above their still bodies. Herbert formulates what is left below as “those small bodies” (l. 310). By small, he may simply mean insignificant, but the term may also to refer to atoms.53 This seems possible because Locke used the term in Elements of Natural Philosophy in 1704: “It may be now fit to consider what these sensible bodys are made of, and that is, of unconceivably small bodyes, or  atoms, out of whose various combinations bigger molleculae are made.”54 In addition, “corpus individuum,” or indivisible body, was a Latin term for atom originated by Cicero.55 If Herbert does refer to atoms, he may be claiming that his version of Platonic form is superior to the atoms below. Bedford clarifies:

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Edward Herbert’s The Amazon and De Veritate 231 In opposition to mechanical philosophers who, in his view, reverse the true order of being by deriving the spiritual from the corporeal, and to the empiricists who derive the intellect from sense perception, Herbert holds as axiomatic the doctrine of Plotinus (from whatsoever source it may have reached him) and of the Florentine Neoplatonists that form is the absolute prius in respect of matter: the whole is prior to the parts and cannot be derived from them. Since the soul, according to the familiar Neoplatonic tag, is “form,” it is composed of something entirely different from matter and cannot be derived from matter.56

In Herbert’s poem, matter does not determine the soul, and, in fact, the soul in love purifies the body, rendering it incapable of considering another lover, just as ashes cannot accept another form (ll.  310–16). Thus, Herbert affirms a “God-centered” universe which “Leaves nothinge free / ore wch in some degree / His Influence. doth not ascende” (ll. 300–2). There is evidence in the manuscript that Herbert was planning to relate Love as the power of the universe even more closely to “natural instinct.” Whereas Herbert crossed out everything in the song that is not included in the passage quoted above, another line is drawn from the stanza on “plant beast. or man” to reposition it near line 3 of the second stanza. The shared rhyme scheme and meter, as well as the word “all” in line 305 in the second stanza and in line 295 of the fifth stanza suggest that Herbert meant to add lines 281–90 between stanzas 1 and 2: What cannot Love. Whithr doth not extend His might and fatall powr.? Wch from our first. Vnto our latest hower Wch from the one. Vnto the othr ende Of this great Vniverse. Leaves nothinge free ore wch in some degree. His Influence. doth not ascende. For who can giue anothr cause then love Why that wants will doth growe Why that wants vnderstandinge yet doth know Why that wants body. yet wee finde doth move. Bringinge not only downe celestiall powers But even exaltinge ours To the celesttiall seate above

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But not plant beast. or man alone, but fier still in this love doth burn. And all that it toucheth to it selfe. doth turne Till joyned in one flame. they both aspire Vnto thier place. where changed into light And vanished from our sight They both injoy. what they desire While those small bodies wch they leave behinde Whats incorrupt and pure Like to true lovers. can no way indure To haue anothr forme. in them confind But constant still into that former flame From whence. their purenes came Do still mantaine their proper kinde

This new placement of the stanza puts even more emphasis on the Plotinian universe, whose hierarchy includes a sharp division between the sublunary, the changeable elements below the moon, and the celestial spheres above, which are unchangeable. Obviously, this is an important distinction to Donne as well in “Valediction: forbidding Mourning.” The meaning of line 281, however, remains unanswered: “Why that wants body. yet wee finde doth move.” This could refer to the soul or “form,” or perhaps to the power of Love itself. The soul or Love that does not have a body is found “Bringinge not only downe celestiall powers / But even exaltinge ours / To the celesttiall seate above” (ll. 285–7).

Conclusion The precise link between De Veritate and lines 281–3 in The Amazon suggest that, in 1623, Herbert’s mind was focused on the workings of “this great Vniverse,” workings which he did not believe could be illuminated by the dogmas of the established church. The Montmorency circle brought him into contact with military officials, philosophers, and poets who challenged these dogmas and made it possible to consider new explanations, as well a form of religion that did not result in war and ­destruction. Although Herbert wrote most of De Veritate before

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1623, n ­ evertheless his visit to Paris in 1608 as well as his acquaintance with the Montmorency circle from that time familiarized him with the problems of the religious wars and motivated him to propose a ­solution. According to Roger Johnson, he was also ahead of his time in using “a comparative method of study, and a presupposition of parity among all religions.”57 The Amazon features the same kind of independence of thought and willingness to question traditional norms evident in De Veritate and in the Montmorency circle. The song at the end of The Amazon unites the two works, revealing that Herbert’s interest in “this great Vniverse” was epistemological, non-traditional, and religious (l. 300).

Notes  1 Cristina Malcolmson, Matteo Pangallo, and Eugene Hill (eds), The Amazon (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. ­198–222. All subsequent line numbers will refer to this text.   2 Malcolmson, Pangallo, and Hill, The Amazon, pp. 200–2.  3 The 1624 edition was in Latin, and very difficult to read. It was ­apparently Marin Mersenne who translated it into French in 1639 and made the work much easier to understand for several readers, including Descartes. Serjeantson, “Herbert of Cherbury before Deism,” pp. 219, 221. Thanks to Anita Gilman Sherman for this article, and see her “The Politics of Truth in Herbert of Cherbury,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 54.1 (2012), 189–215.   4 Sidney Lee (ed.) clarifies, “The village whence the castle takes its name is now known as Mello. The old forms Mellou and Meslou are known, but not that of Merlou.” The Autobiography of Edward Herbert, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (London: Nimmo, 1886), p. 91, n. 1. For the letters, see The National Archives, Public Records Office (hereafter PRO) 30/53/5/101, Herbert to Calvert, folio 2 (Aug. 1623); PRO 30/53/5/99, Herbert to James I, folio 1 (Aug. 1623); PRO 30/53/5/113, Herbert to Buckingham, folio 2 (Oct. 1623); PRO 30/53/5/120, Herbert to James I, folio 2 (Oct. 1623); Bodleian Library, Add. 72293, Herbert to Trumbull, folios 142r (Aug. 1623), 145r (Sept. 1623), 146v (Oct. 1623), 149r (Nov. 1623).  5 Herbert, Autobiography, pp. 90–3, 97–8; the distance is given on p. 97.  6 Bedford, The defence of Truth, p. 213 and Franklin Charles Palm, Politics and Religion in Sixteenth-Century France (Gloucester, MA:

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Peter Smith, 1969), p. 14 call him the “leader”; Palm refers to “an organized party” (p. 14).   7 Mack P. Holt, The Duke of Anjou and the Politique Struggle during the Wars of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 30. See also Mark Greengrass, France in the Age of Henry IV (Harlow: Longman, 1995), pp. 14–16, and Joan Davies, “Neither Politique Nor Patriot? Henri, Duc de Montmorency and Philip II, 1582–1589,” The Historical Journal, 34.3 (1991), 539–66.  8 Holt, The Duke of Anjou, p. 47.  9 Holt, The Duke of Anjou, pp. 47–8. 10 Debbagi-Baranova, “The French Religious Context.” 11 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 216 and n. 1. 12 Debbagi-Baranova, “The French Religious Context.” 13 Herbert, Autobiography, pp. 92–3, 139–40, 173–4. 14 Herbert, Autobiography, pp. 90–1. 15 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 199–200; on 1623, see n. 3. 16 Henk J. M. Nellen, Hugo Grotius: A Lifelong Struggle for Peace in Church and State, trans. J. C. Grayson (Boston, MA: Brill, 2014), pp. 137–40, 171–5, 185–6. 17 Nellen, Hugo Grotius, p. 139; Hill, Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, pp. 21–2; Bedford, The defence of Truth, pp. 214–15. 18 Herbert, Autobiography, p. 247. 19 Bedford, The defence of Truth, p. 213; Nellen, Hugo Grotius, pp. 58–9, 139–40. Butler comments on Casaubon in Lord Herbert of Chirbury (1582–1648), pp. 30–1. 20 Hill, Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, p. 67. 21 Debbagi-Baranova, “The French Religious Context”; see also Holt, The Duke of Anjou, p. 54. 22 Hill, The Duke of Anjou, p. 6; Rossi, Herbert, vol. 1, p. 115. 23 Nicholas S. Davidson emphasizes Vanini’s phrase, “Nature is God,” and concludes that, for Vanini, nature is entirely independent of God, and that everything in the world has a purely naturalistic explanation. “‘Le plus beau at le plus meschant esprit que le aye cogneu’: Science and Religion in the Writings of Giulio Cesare Vanini, 1585–1619,” in John Brooke and Ian Maclean (eds), Heterodoxy in Early Modern Science and Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 72, 73. J.S. Spink finds that, for Vanini, nature manifests God, in French Free Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire (New York: Greenwood Press,  1960), p. 37. See also Bedford’s treatment of Herbert, Vanini, and Viau, The defence of Truth, pp. 244–5. Bedford finds Vanini to be a “deist,” but not Herbert (pp. 239–40, 245).

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24 Fordyce and Knox, “The Library of Jesus College,” p. 90; Giulio Pertile, “Marvell as libertine: Upon Appleton House and the Legacy of Théophile de Viau,” The Seventeenth Century, 28.4 (2013), 397. Davidson points out the importance of the title, ‘which refers to nature as “the queen and goddess of mortals”’, p. 68. 25 See Fordyce and Knox, “The Library of Jesus College,” for Campanella (pp. 80, 92, 97) and Pomponazzo or Pomponatius (p. 80). On Italian naturalism, see Spink, French Free Thought, pp. 7–9 and Pertile, “Marvell as libertine,” p. 397. Herbert attended the lectures of another proponent of Italian naturalism, Cesare Cremonini (Autobiography, p. 157; see also Bedford, The defence of Truth, p. 245). 26 Viau was accused of blasphemy and indecent writings, and eventually imprisoned in 1623. He protested that he had not authored the poems published under his name. He was eventually freed in 1625, but the years in prison undermined his health, and he died in 1626 (Spink, French Free Thought, pp. 43–5). 27 For these details, I am indebted to Greg Miller, who shared with me his unpublished “Introduction, Théophile de Viau: Poet of Natural Freedom.” Miller comments on the parti dévot, p. 11. He also ­recommended Pertile, “Marvell as libertine.” Pertile considers the “libertin érudits,” uses the phrase “philosophical libertinism” (pp. 396–7), analyzes Vanini’s influence on Viau (pp. 396–405), identifies them as protégés of Montmorency (p. 400), and dates La Maison de Sylvie (pp. 402–3). 28 Herbert, Autobiography, pp. 215–23; Miller explains Viau’s complex relationship with de Luynes, p. 11. 29 Herbert, Autobiography, pp. 219–20. 30 Herbert, Autobiography, pp. 219–23. 31 Sir Edward Herbert to Sir Robert Naunton, Paris, December 14/24, 1619, Montgomeryshire Collections (London: Whiting and Co.), vol. 20, p. 259; Rossi, Herbert, vol. 2, p. 173. 32 Thanks to Tatiana Debbagi-Baranova for her help on this. 33 Compare with Herbert’s description of the increasing pressure on Louis XIII to battle with the Huguenots in the Life: “Monsieur de Luynes, continuing still the King’s favorite, advised him to war against his subjects of the reformed religion in France, saying, he would [not] be a great prince as long as he suffered so puissant a party to remain within his dominions,” p. 215. 34 At the time, England was the only Protestant country that had not changed ecclesiastical laws to create a form of legalized separation which allowed for the possibility of remarriage. Thomas Cranmer

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and Martin Bucer sought to change English divorce law but failed. See Lawrence Stone, Road to Divorce: England, 1530–1987 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 1–11, 141–8, 183–210, 301–53. There were some divorces with remarriage because of confusion or officials who did not agree with the laws barring it. See Tim Stretton, “Marriage, Separation and the Common Law in England, 1640–1660,” in H. Berry and E. Foyster (eds), The Family in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 18–39; Bernard Capp, “Bigamous Marriage in Early Modern England,” The Historical Journal, 52.3 (2009), 537–56. 35 Herbert, De Veritate, trans. Meyrick H. Carré (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 169. References to De Veritate in this chapter are to this translation, unless otherwise noted; Bedford, The defence of Truth, pp.  105–10. I follow Bedford in his claim that “The Platonic Metaphysic” was central to De Veritate (chapter 4) and in his contrast of Herbert’s philosophy to Cartesian dualism (p. 108). Many thanks to Curtis Whitaker for pointing out the links between Herbert’s song and Lucretius’s hymn to Venus which opens De Rerum Natura. I was not able to follow up the implications of these links in this paper, but I assume there would be some major differences, including Herbert’s belief in the immortality of the soul. 36 Herbert, De Veritate, p. 120. Herbert’s original Latin reads, “Ita enim elementa, mineralia, vegetablia (quibis discursus & ratio negavi videtur) ad propriam sapiunt conservationem.” De Veritate, facsimile of 1645 edition, ed. Günter Gawlick [Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann / Günther Holzboog, 1966, p. 42]). 37 Bedford, The defence of Truth, p. 106. 38 Herbert, De Veritate, p. 169. “Quomodò principia ista cum nostris cohaereant, rationem ex Anima, sive Harmonia mundi qui petere recusat, ex vi illa plasticâ diversas eduliorum naturas in unum compingente, sensu interno edoctus excogitet. Ideò ex eodem gobione lucius, felis, homo, sua formabunt singuli membra, & juxta scientiam quam propriae speciei obtinent, in partes suas alimenta abire cogent; Quod Divinum interea nobis inest, ista omnia permeat.” Gawlick, De Veritate, p. 89. 39 Bedford, The defence of Truth, pp. 105–10. 40 Herbert, De Veritate, Introduction, p. 20. 41 See particularly Carré’s “Introduction” for commentary on “natural instinct,” De Veritate, pp. 30–3. The concept of natural instinct is borrowed from the Stoics and sixteenth-century Neoplatonists, but adapted for Herbert’s own uses. In the text of De Veritate, see Carré,

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pp. 115–45, and Gawlick, De Veritate, pp. 37–74. Bedford, The defence of Truth, comments further, pp. 105–10. 42 Herbert, De Veritate, p. 132. Locke devoted extensive labor and space to a refutation of Herbert; see Serjeantson, “Herbert of Cherbury before Deism,” pp. 220, 226–7. 43 Herbert, De Veritate, Introduction, p. 17. 44 Herbert, De Veritate, p. 78; “A nobis igitur universum aestimamus humanum genus, & easdem facultates in foro interiori hominis cujuscunq; sani & integri etiam ab omni aevo descriptas futisse (tanquam Notitiam aliquam communen) proponimus. Proinde faculatates ad Sapientam, Resipiscentian, Scientiam, Conscientiam, quae nobis una cum objectis traditae, nulli defuisse vel saeculo, vel regione, vel quidem Homini existimandum est; vives easdem quae Pergami olim, modò obtinent rosa. Idem de Facultatibus, Objectis, immo, & de Providentia rerum Universali existimandum est.” Gawlick, De Veritate, p. 4. 45 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 289–307. I use the translation of R.  A.  Johnson, in “Natural Religion, Common Notions, and the Study of Religions: Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583–1648),” Religion, 24 (1994), 213–24; from Gawlick, Dev, 1. “Esse Supremum aliquod Numen” (p.  210); 2. “SUPREMUM ISTUD NUMEN DEBERE COLI” (p. 212); 3. “Virtutem cum pietate conjunctam (quae sub proba Facultatum conformatione hoc in Opere describitur) praecipuam partem Cultus Divini habitam esse & semper fuisse” (p. 215); 4. “Horrem scelerum Hominum animis semper insedisse; Adeoque illos non latuisse Vitia & scelera quaecunq; expiari debere ex poenitentia” (p. 217); 5. “Esse praemium, vel poenam post hanc vitam” (p. 220). 46 In The Ancient Theology, p. 165, Walker cites Rossi, Alle Fonte Del Deismo e Del Materialismo Moderno (Florence, 1942), pp. 18–21. Walker also demonstrates that De Veritate played a significant role in the project of Comenius and Hartlib to establish a reunion between Protestant sects, as well as with Catholic moderates (pp. 173–4). 47 Bedford, The defence of Truth, pp. 107–8. 48 Serjeantson, “Herbert of Cherbury before Deism,” pp. 227–8. 49 Cited in Margaret Bottrall, George Herbert (London: Murray, 1954), p. 18. 50 Herbert, De Veritate, pp. 197–8; “Primò autem de Amore, quia prima & quidem extra nos & in nobis Facultas. Amant enim, quae non ­intelligunt (sympathia si sit amor) vide palmam, vide vitem: vide teipsum. Primus Affectus internus fuit Amor. Facultas autem ista pulchritudini, & Bonitati Divinae imprimis, & totis denique attributis quodammodò responder … Probatur ex Sensu Interno ritè ­conformatio,

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seu verâ Fide. In Deo enim unicè acquiescit Facultas ista, maximè deniq; in nobis ipse est Deus ... Commune objectū Facultatis istius est ipse Amor corporeus; ideò qui in propriam speciem fertur affectus, nullâ illicitâ libindine sive concupiscentiâ pollutus, tanquam humanus, à Facultate consulente bonum commune deduci potest” (Gawlick, De veritate, pp. 117–18). 51 Bedford, The defence of Truth, cites Ficino and expands on his statement, p. 114. 52 The Poems of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury, ed. G. C. Moore Smith (1923), p. 75, ll. 64–6. 53 For “small” as insignificant, see OED IV.17. Thanks to Richard Strier for pointing out this possibility at the session on “Edward Herbert (I)” at the “Herbert in Paris” conference, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France, May 18–21, 2017. 54 OED, “atom,” II.4. 55 Anthon, Charles. A Copious and Critical English–Latin Lexicon, Founded on the German–Latin  Dictionary of Dr. Charles Ernest  Georges, First American Edition, Carefully Revised, and Containing  a Copious  Dictionary of Proper Names from the Best Sources, ed. Joseph Esmond  Riddle and Thomas Kerchever  Arnold (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1864), p. 45. See also Lewis and Short’s Latin Dictionary, available online: www.perseus.tufts.edu/ hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0059:entry=individuus&highli ght=atom (accessed January 31, 2022). 56 Bedford, The defence of Truth, pp. 91–2. 57 Johnson, “Natural Religion,” p. 213.

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Part III

The voices of transnational communities: From conversation to song

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Edward Herbert within the fellowship of gentlemen plain speakers Sean H. McDowell

In the introduction to his edition of The Life of Edward, First Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written by himself, J. M. Shuttleworth observes that in “his English prose writings” Herbert “generally adopted the plain, direct style, yet his philosophical works and some of his poetry were written in turgid Renaissance Latin.”1 That Herbert chose a more involuted style for his Latin is unsurprising, given the redoubtable presence of Cicero in the Latin curriculum of his time. That he adopted a plainer style when writing in his native tongue requires more explanation, for it signals Herbert’s participation in the literary exchanges of a fellowship of Inns of Court men and their friends in the early decades of the seventeenth century. Many of these men were members of either the Middle Temple or Lincoln’s Inn and participated in the dining and drinking evenings at the Mitre and Mermaid taverns on the first Friday of every month.2 Most of the town wits who participated in these exchanges considered themselves gentlemen highly invested in matters of law, politics, and diplomacy. They were largely cosmopolitan in their outlook, interested in travel and nascent forms of travel writing, and often turned to continental writers for inspiration. They valued parody, satire, and sophisticated literary jokes and preferred a plainer way of speaking to the more elaborate speech of the late Elizabethan and early Stuart courts. Herbert is not often considered an active member of this fellowship, apart from his friendship with John Donne. Yet the circulation of his poems in manuscript miscellanies issuing from this fellowship and

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his advocacy for plain speech suggest a more active identification than is usually acknowledged. Matters of style are seldom simple. Here, the oft-cited c­ omparison of elocution, style, and ornament to clothing is suggestive. Most seventeenth-century English literary commentators speak of style as clothing one’s ideas in words and phrases, tropes and figures. For Thomas Wilson, elocution, the enactment of style, “getteth words to set forth invention and with such beauty commendeth the matter, that reason seemeth to be clad in purple, walking afore both bare and naked.”3 George Puttenham speaks in similar terms: he defines exergasia, the refinement of one’s style, as clothing the “bare and naked body” in “rich and gorgeous apparel,” which then will “seemeth to the common usage of the eye much more comely and beautiful than the natural.”4 Writing in 1631, around the time that Herbert was working on his biography of Henry VIII, Sir William Alexander similarly calls language “but the Apparel of Poesy, which may give Beauty, but not Strength.”5 All of these writers voice a commonplace understanding of style in the period. Like actual clothing, then carefully regulated in England through class-based sumptuary laws, a writer’s choice of style signified beyond itself, often in complex ways. It was a means of signaling one’s identity to the world; but more than that, it fostered a way of being in the world. Many members the fellowship associated with at the Inns of Court and the Mitre and Mermaid taverns (i.e.  Inns of Court members Donne, John Hoskyns, Richard Martin, Christopher Brooke, Hugh Holland, and Benjamin Rudyerd and friends and associates Aurelian Townsend, Henry Goodere, Hugh Holland, Inigo Jones, Ben Jonson, Robert Phelips, Richard Crannock, Henry Wotton, and Thomas Coryate) found in the rhetorical writings of the Flemish humanist Justus Lipsius foreign wisdom and welcome permission to depart from the overly wrought discourse of the earlier Elizabethans in favor of a more gallantly plainer style befitting the ideals of constancy and truthfulness many intellectuals throughout Europe valued as personal antidotes to prolonged civil strife. A key work here was Lipsius’s Epistolica Institutio, published in 1591. This work was so influential among the members of this fellowship that two of its prominent members copied excerpts from it for their own use or that of others.

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Hoskyns  includes a redaction of Lipsian advice about the proper style of familiar letters in his Directions for Speech and Style, his rhetorical instruction manual for a younger Inns of Court man, possibly Robert Harley ­(1579–1656).6 Subsequently, Jonson copied almost verbatim Hoskyns’s descriptions of letters and their ideal stylistic requirements into his commonplace book, Discoveries. Lorna Hutson, its most recent editor, speculates that Jonson “probably realized” Hoskyns’s indebtedness to Lipsius.7 Lipsius wrote the Epistolica Institutio as a primer for students in the art of letter-writing, a prominent literary genre among humanists, lawyers, travelers, and prospective diplomats. He champions the familiar letter over all other letter types and distinguishes this kind of letter by what he calls its “conversational style.” Because a letter is “A message of the mind to someone who is absent or regarded as absent,” intended either “to bear witness to a feeling or to bring up a subject,” Lipsius believed its purpose is best fulfilled if the writer treats the letter as a conversation with the recipient.8 The “conversational style” implicitly assumes an intimacy between sender and recipient and thus becomes instrumental in fostering communion among individuals. Lipsius considers its elucidation the primary goal of the Epistolica Institutio as a whole. This style exhibits five qualities: “brevity, clarity, simplicity, elegance,” and “decorum.” All five combine to produce a discourse charged with the grace and liveliness of witty conversation, which the London wits and continental humanists equally valued. Lipsius considers brevity the most important quality of a familiar letter. Not surprisingly, he invokes the familiar clothing metaphor to discuss the relationship between verbal ornament and honesty. He agrees with Demetrius that letters should not be books: Although many things are reported, are many words required? I submit that, just as in conversation or stories, so in letters, wordiness is odious. And yet, as you can see, the most unskilled affect it, and usually the most loquacious are the least eloquent. As those with puny bodies puff themselves up with clothes, so those destitute of wit or wisdom are prodigal with words. But brevity appeals to me and to everyone of taste, at least if it is used judiciously and moderately. For I know that even here it is possible to go astray: as in archery, he does not err less whose shot falls short of the target than he who

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shoots beyond it; so it is in writing: he errs who says less than the subject calls for, or he who says more.9

Lipsius’s inclusion of himself among “everyone of taste” shows his awareness of education and class distinctions: educated, u ­ pper-class correspondents can be brief presumably because they can see through false flowery language. Edward’s younger brother George later uses a similar archery metaphor when speaking of his literary intentions at the beginning of The Country Parson (c. 1632): “I have resolved to set down the Form and Character of the true Parson, that I may have a Mark to aim at: which also I will set as high as I can, since hee shoots higher that threatens the Moon, then hee that aims at a Tree.”10 For both Lipsius and George Herbert, eloquence requires proper aim. Familiar letters especially, Lipsius says, hit their mark through conciseness, and “thin and diverse subjects should not be burdened with a pleated style.”11 Of course, not all letters are addressed to one’s familiars. But even more “serious” or “erudite” letters addressed to “distinguished persons” should not be repetitive, overly involuted, or excessively ornate: the “chief point of art is to write suitably,” he says, a point of view emphasizing, as most early modern writers do, the necessity of decorum. Lipsius says of clarity that the “greatest vice of style is not merely to be misunderstood, but even to be understood with difficulty.”12 The excessive “ingenuity” of the writer “should not demand a judge or interpreter”: “You must therefore write clearly – and if you can, briefly; but on the condition that you should know brevity to be a matter of praise, clarity of necessity,” he advises. “The style will then be clear if three conditions are met: if its words are fitting, if they are current, if they are coherent.” Such a style becomes “elegant” if, in addition, it is “altogether brisk, lively, and elevated, and reveals a certain attractive grace and charm.”13 This description calls to mind the poetry and prose of Philip Sidney, an acquaintance of Lipsius, who also was a literary model for several of the Inns of Court writers, Hoskyns especially.14 As for simplicity, Lipsius touts two kinds: simplicity of ­composition and of style. One’s style “ought to be simple, careless, unstudied, most resembling everyday conversation.”15 He turns to the familiar clothing analogy, only this time in a way suggestive



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of Mary Ellen Rickey’s much later examination of the “art that ­conceals art” in the verse of George Herbert:16 Just as women are said to adorn in order not to seem adorned, for the same purpose only should ornament accompany a letter, and not be affected in it or by it. As for the thought, I take it that a kind of simplicity and forthrightness should shine throughout the composition, and disclose the special candor of a free mind. For in nothing do the nature and individuality of anyone more clearly shine forth (as Demetrius has aptly written) than in a letter. Thus your best features ought to be displayed here, especially for someone to whom you write in friendship; so, I say, let it be sprinkled with tender feelings and good will, as it were with sweets; and let it be delightful to the taste of the reader.

Avoid ornateness – and the appearance of ornateness. Be forthright. Sprinkle your letter “with tender feelings and good will.” Speak as you would to a friend, especially if you write in friendship. Only then, Lipsius tells his students, will you develop the conversational style. With Lipsius’s description of the conversational style in mind, Edward Herbert’s comments on style during his leisurely account of his education and intellectual formation gain in resonance. Herbert considers rhetoric fundamental to learning and emphasizes the importance of style in self-expression: It would bee fit that some time bee spent in learning of Rhetorique or Oratory to the intent that vpon all Occasions you may express yourselfe with Eloquence and Grace, For as it is not enough for a man to haue a Diamond vnlesse it bee pollisht and cutt out into its due angles above and a foyle bee sett vnderneath whereby it may the better transmit and vibrate its native lustre and Rayes, Soe it will not bee sufficient for a man to haue a greate vnderstanding in all matters vnlesse the said vnderstanding bee not onely polished and cleare in the definitions and divisions belonging to any art but well vnderset and illustrated with those Figueres Tropes and collours which Rhetorique affords where these is vse of Perswasion.17

Herbert does not employ the clothing metaphor here but ­nonetheless speaks of style in analogous terms of personal adornment. His diamond metaphor bespeaks his elevated social station:

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he speaks from firsthand experience about a specific element of fine jewelry craftsmanship. He draws attention to the function of a diamond setting, the way gold or silver “foyle” can “better transmit and vibrate” the cut and polished diamond’s “native lustre and Rayes.” One’s knowledge must receive an analogous cutting  and  polishing to shine for its “native lustre” to shine. Herbert prefers stylistic clarity and simplicity to further this end: I can by noe meanes yet commend an affected eloquence there being nothing soe pedanticall or indeed that would giue more Suspition that the Truth is not intended then to vse overmuch the Comon formes prescribed in schools. It is well said by them yet That there are two parts of Eloquence Necessary and Recommendable; One is to speake hard things plainly soe that when a knotty or intricate busines hauing noe method or Coherence in its parts shall bee presented It will be a singular part of oratory to take those parts in sunder set them together aptly and soe exhibite them to the vnderstanding. And this part of Rhetorique I much commend to euery body, there being noe true vse of speech but to make things cleare perspicuous and manifest which otherwise would bee perplext doubtfull and obscure. The other part of Oratory is to speake common things ­ingeniously or wittily there being noe litle vigor and Force added to words when they are deliuered in a Neate and fine way and somewhat out of the Ordinary Rode, common and dull language Relishing more of the Clowne than of the Gentleman but herein also Affectation must bee  avoyded, it being better for a man by a Native and clear Eloquence to expresse himselfe then by those words which may smell either of the Lamp or Inkhorne soe that in generall one may obserue That men who Fortify and vphold theire speeches with strong and euident Reasons haue euer operated more in the minds of Auditors then those who haue made Rhetoricall Excursions.18

Herbert describes a standard of oratory at odds with the “­pedanticall” style of expression he saw all too commonly “prescribed in schools.” Rather than rely “overmuch” on “Comon formes” gleaned through imitation, he explains that true oratory should entail a balance between speaking “hard things plainly” and speaking “common things ingeniously or wittily.” Such balanced speech creates the “vigor and Force” one would expect from a true gentleman. Rather than liken style to clothing, thereby

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investing value in ornamentation, Herbert’s switch to a diamond places a greater emphasis on light, an image naturally associated with enlightenment. This switch in metaphors from clothing to diamonds emphasizes actual worth over fashion. He later uses precious metals to establish a similar idea of valuation: an “ordinary siluer piece with its due stamp vpon it,” he goes on to say, is better “then an Extraordinarye gilded piece which may perchance contayne a baser mettle vnder it.” Similarly, he says, a man should “prefer a well favoured, whollsome woman though with a Tawny Complexion before a besmeared and painted face.”19 With these last comparisons, Herbert sounds like Bassanio reasoning himself to the correct answer in the test of the caskets and thereby winning fair Portia’s hand and fortune.20 Here again, intrinsic worth or beauty matters more than ornamentation. Herbert resists a view of style as falsifying. Notice that Edward Herbert’s two-part discussion of oratory in his autobiography nicely captures all five of the Lipsian ­criteria. The first three – brevity, clarity, and simplicity – are implicit when Herbert declares that there is “no true use of speech but to make things clear, perspicuous, and manifest, which otherwise would be perplexed, doubtful, and obscure.” The remaining two – ­elegance and decorum – figure in Herbert’s discussion of the “other part” of oratory, the need to “speake common things ingeniously or wittily there being no litle vigor and Force added to words when they are deliuered in a Neate and fine way and somewhat out of the  Ordinary Rode, common and dull language Relishing more of the Clowne than of the Gentleman.” A balance must be struck between the imperative to communicate clearly and the need to engage the intelligence of one’s audience (elegance) within the proper confines of circumstance (decorum). It is the same balance Lipsius touted, the same one that the English gentlemen lawyers, wits, and diplomats enacted in their own work, and it appears to have stuck with Herbert for the rest of his life in his vernacular writing. Herbert appears to have developed his understanding of the plain style not in isolation but as part of his friendships with several of the figures within the fellowship of plain speakers. In 1608, he traveled to France with Aurelian Townsend, his first visit to a nation that

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would figure prominently in his later career. His friendship with Donne receives ready testimony in several places, for instance in his “Elegy for Doctor Dunn” or in Donne’s verse letter “To Sr Edward Herbert. At Julyers.” Such was the closeness between these two that Donne entrusted his friend Herbert with a manuscript copy of his potentially controversial Biathanatos for safe keeping. His friendship with Jonson finds expression in the poems he addressed to the playwright, “To his friend Ben. Johnson, of his Horace made English” and “Satyra Secunda. Of Travellers: (from Paris),” which begins, “Ben Johnson, Travel is a second birth,  / Unto the Children of another earth” (ll. 1–2).21 Yet we would be mistaken if we viewed these associations strictly as isolated relationships. They were instead connections within a network of writers who exchanged verses and ideas with each other and who shared interests in travel, diplomacy, and international relations, especially with continental Europe. The manuscript miscellanies in which Herbert’s poems ­circulated include many of the same poems by the same members of literary community to which he belonged.22 Poems by Jonson, Thomas Carew, Francis Beaumont, Richard Corbet, Henry King, and William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, regularly appear, sometimes in bunches. The presence of the third earl of Pembroke suggests that class distinctions between nobles, lesser gentry, and men-about-town did not matter enough within the fellowship to discourage sociability, at least within the bounds of literary exchange. Edward Herbert was not as robust a contributor as some of the others. Most of the time, his poems appear individually, situated between those by other more regular poets. In this, his poetic circulation resembles that of Hoskyns, another less frequent contributor whose poem “Absence,” first published in Francis Davison’s A Poetical Rhapsody (London, 1602), was copied into several later manuscripts that also feature Herbert poems. But there are a few exceptions: one manuscript (Haslewood-Kingsborough [II]) presents four Herbert poems in a row – “A Description,” “To  her Face,” “To her Mind,” and the “Epitaph” to Cecilia Boulstrode –and another (Bodleian, MS Rawl., Poet 31) presents five in a row, including three of these same four (“A Description,” “To her Face,” and “To her Mind”) with the epitaph copied later

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in the miscellany. In such instances, the manuscript scribe may well have wanted to gather disparate Herbert poems in one place. Other Herbert poems found in multiple manuscripts tended to travel with some of the same poems by others in thematic groupings that shade into conversations of a sort. The “Epitaph” on Cecilia Boulstrode is one such poem. Boulstrode died on August 4, 1609 at Twickenham Park, the home of her cousin Lucy, Countess of Bedford, who became a patron of both Jonson and Donne. R. C. Bald believes their mutual friend George Garrard solicited memorial verses from each of them.23 At the time of her death, she appears to have been the mistress of Thomas Roe, a friend of Herbert’s, and this connection likely prompted Herbert’s “Epitaph.” Yet Herbert’s poem seems to be a riff on Donne’s. Both Donne’s and Herbert’s poems tout Boulstrode’s virtues (no surprise, given the occasion), but both also personify death as an adversary. Donne’s poem begins by emphasizing Death’s power in a series of grammatically knotty rhyming couplets: Death I recant, and say, vnsaid by mee What ere hath slipt, that might diminish thee, Spirituall treason, Atheisme t’is to say That any can thy summons disobey, Th’earths face is but thy table, and the meate Plants, Cattle, men, dish’d for Death to eate, In a rude hunger nowe hee millions drawes Into his bloudie, or plaguy, or starued iawes; Nowe hee will seeme to spare, and doth more wast Eating the best fruite, well preseru’d to last. (ll. 1–10)

Donne tends to be at his most stylistically dense in his poems of posthumous praise. The poem continues for another sixty-five lines, meditating on the nature of mortality, characterizing Boulstrode’s virtues as misunderstood, and ending with a description of the collective grief at the loss of her example. By contrast, Herbert’s epitaph simplifies the contest between death and Boulstrode in not quite one third the number of lines and with a simpler syntax: Methinks Death like one laughing lyes, Shewing his teeth, shutting his eyes,

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Only thus to have found her here He did with so much reason fear, And she despise. For barring all the gates of sin, Death’s open wayes to enter in, She was with a strict siege beset, So what by force he could not get, By time to win. This mighty Warrior was deceived yet, For what he, mutin in her powers, thought Was but their zeal, And what by their excess might have been wrought, Her fasts did heal. Till that her noble soul, by these, as wings, Transcending the low pitch of earthly things, As b’ing reliev’d by God, and set as large, And grown by this worthy a higher charge, Triumphing over Death, to Heaven fled, And did not dye, but left her body dead.

Herbert’s poem offers another take on the same death, only one truer to the precepts of plain speaking derived from Lipsius. The poem traveled in sequence with Donne’s and Jonson’s as variations of a set of themes. In the Harley Noel ms., it is the third poem in a quartet featuring first Donne’s elegy, then Jonson’s epitaph, and is followed by Donne’s “Breake of Day.” Bodleian, MS Rawl., Poet 31 also prints Jonson’s and Herbert’s Boulstrode epitaphs together as a pair in the same order, with Donne’s poem appearing seven poems later, and the Phillipps ms. prints Herbert’s epitaph one poem away from Donne’s “Breake of Day.” Also in the Phillipps ms., Herbert’s epitaph is immediately preceded by Francis Beaumont’s “Why should not pilgrims to thy body come,” a poem that likewise precedes the two-line fragment of the Herbert epitaph copied at the end of the Osborn ms. These and other recurring groups come across as literary conversations of a sort, preserved for later enjoyment by some reader familiar with these literary exchanges. Because many poems appearing in manuscript lack ­attribution, and because many of the poets share stylistic preferences, the



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authorship of some poems remains unclear. Herbert has the curious distinction of sharing a dubium with Donne, the poem “Ode: Of our Sense of Sin,” which appears in thirteen seventeenth-century manuscripts. Five of these attribute it to Donne (“J. D.”); one (Bodleian, MS Rawl., Poet 31) attributes it to Herbert; most modern editors want to give it to neither poet. Vengeance will sit above our faults; but till She there doth sit, We see her not, nor them. Thus, blinde, yet still We leade her way; and thus whil’st we doe ill, We suffer it. Vnhappy he, whom youth makes not beware Of doing ill. Enough we labour under age, and care; In number, th’errours of the last place, are The greatest still. Yet we, that should the ill we new begin As soone repent, (Strange thing!) perceive not; our faults are not seen But past us; neither felt, but onely in Our punishment. But we know our selves least; There outward shews Our minds so store, That our soules, no more then our eyes disclose But forme and colour. Onely he who knows Himselfe, knows more.

If Donne’s, the poem sounds less like the Donne of the Boulstrode epitaph than like the Donne of some of the love lyrics. If Herbert’s, it is Herbert in his more philosophical mood. Yet in both cases, it exhibits the plain style both poets use in lyrics: the vocabulary is simple, the line of thought clear, and the argument brief. A preference for enjambment throughout (a feature common in some of Herbert’s poems) enhances its already latent conversational quality. The willingness of some of Donne’s and Herbert’s contemporaries to attribute it to either poet seems less surprising the more we consider it in the context of these manuscript miscellanies. If anything, the multiple attributions reveal to degree to which both poets were

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thought to inhabit the same discursive milieu. At least in the eyes of several scribes and manuscript compilers, from the 1620s onward, Herbert was connected to the same literary fellowship as Donne, Jonson, Carew, Hoskyns, Townsend, and the others through ties of friendship, affinities in literary taste, shared attitudes toward selfexpression, or all three. Herbert’s poetry also evinces the cosmopolitan character one finds generally in the poetry issuing from this fellowship of plain speakers. His “Satyra Seconda,” a poem I referenced earlier, shows this character in abundance. Likely it dates from Herbert’s 1608 stay in France. Though addressed to Ben Jonson, the poem, as a satire, adopts the style and pose of Donne’s satires and makes  a direct allusion to Metempsychosis. Indeed, one could subtitle the poem, “Donne’s Satyres Go to France.” In the opening lines, Herbert reveals his worldliness by showing disdain for clueless English travelers who are ignorant of French customs and whose grasp of French is tenuous: Ben Johnson, Travel is a second birth, Unto the Children of another earth, Only as our King Richard was, so they appear, New born to another World, with teeth and hair, While got by English Parents, carried in Some Womb of thirty tun, and lightly twin, They are delivered at Callis, or at Diep, And strangely stand, go, feed themselves, nay keep Their own money freightwayes; but that is all, For none can understand them, when they call For any thing. No more then Badger, That call’d the Queen Monsieur, laid a wager With the King of his Dogs, who understood Them all alike, which, Badger thought, was good. (ll. 1–14)

He shares a joke with Jonson, who similarly would have frowned upon these ignorant travelers. His targeting of the hapless Sir Thomas Baghott, who embarrassed himself at the French court, is reminiscent of Donne’s targeting of the “motley humorist” in Donne’s “Satyre I.” In the following verse paragraph, Herbert likens the birth of these English travelers from the “Womb” of a “thirty tun” ship to a kind of transmigration, in a hyperbolic manner similar to Donne’s Metempsychosis:

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Edward Herbert within the fellowship of plain speakers 253   But that I may proceed, since their birth is Only a kind of Metempsychosis; Such Knowledge, as their memory could give, They have for help, what time these Souls do live In English Clothes, a body which again They never rise unto: but as you see, When they come home, like Children yet that be Of their own bringing up; all they learn, is Toyes, and Language: but to attain this, You must conceive, they’r cousen’ed, mock’d & come To Fauxbourgs St. Germans, there take a Room Lightly about th’Ambassadors, and where, Having no Church, they come, Sundays, to hear, An invitation, which they have most part, If their outside but promise a desert, To sit above the Secretaries place, Although it be almost as rare a case, To see English well cloth’d here, as with you At London, Indians: … (ll. 15–33)

They “never rise” again “unto” the “body” of English clothes because they become so smitten with French fashions that they try to ape them. But they lack sufficient taste to succeed, which is why their attempts to be fashionable are as successful as those of native peoples brought as curiosities to London from newly discovered lands. Herbert’s focus on travel and on travelers in a satirical vein squares with the fellowship’s later interest in Coryate’s Crudities (1611), the travelogue Thomas Coryate began during his own travels in 1608. Coryate, who acted as a kind of jester in the household of Prince Henry and who thus was not afraid to be the butt of jokes, served as the beadle of the Mermaid Club. Coryate’s Crudities is prefaced by dozens of poems that satirize various ways of looking at commendatory verses in a similar vein as Herbert’s satire on English travelers. Poem by poem, Herbert’s creative work seems to be involved in a general conversation with his earliest readers, many of whom also contributed poems that together found their way into larger manuscript miscellanies. John Gillies recently has described what he calls a “turn” in early modern attitudes toward conversation that happens to coincide with Shakespeare’s lifetime.24 Of the

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“three distinct species of conversational theory” he describes  – “civil, holy and d ­ialectical” – the last, which derives from Montaigne’s essay Sur l’art de conférer, accords with the notion of conversation underlying Herbert’s literary exchanges. As Gillies describes it, “Conversing here is an art of the mind, a free exploration of ideas and opinions, less to be valued for its utility than as, [in the Florio translation] ‘the most fruitful and natural exercise of our spirit.’”25 Strikingly, Gillies links this conception of conversation with Montaigne’s description of a natural speech that is simple, concise, unpretentious, and yet vehement – all values that accord with Lipsius’s description. One can hear this natural speech most obviously in Herbert when he tries his hand at popular genres. The sonnet, as Herbert received it in the early decades of the seventeenth century, still carried a courtly cast, as in the case of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Though Shakespeare could ventriloquize an entire range of speech patterns, from the highest to the lowest of English social classes – and indeed manages to cover all three positions on the conversational spectrum, as Gillies demonstrates – his sonnets tend toward a more obviously rhetorical than natural speech. Listen, for example, to Sonnet 127, a meditation on the Dark Lady’s “raven-black eyes”: In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name; But now is black beauty’s successive heir, And beauty slandered with a bastard shame: For since each hand hath put on nature’s power, Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face, Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower, But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace. Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven-black, Her brow so suited, and they mourners seem At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack, Sland’ring creation with a false esteem. Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe, That every tongue says beauty should look so.26

The publication of Shakespeare’s Sonnets in 1609 elicited a strong response in at least some of the lyricists writing at this time. For example, Katherine Duncan-Jones speculates that their p ­ ublication

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precipitated George Herbert’s composition of his “New Year Sonnets” to his mother Magdalen, the start of what would become the younger Herbert’s nearly lifelong project to turn delightful verse into a sacrifice.27 In this poem, Shakespeare adds extra stresses to his iambic lines. In addition, the syntax becomes knotty at times, especially in the third quatrain, the logic of which invites rereading for full comprehension. Both stylistic features are in keeping with the other sonnets in the sequence, not a line out of place. They are not discursive anomalies but features of Shakespeare’s distinctive voice. Now listen to Edward Herbert’s meditation on the beauty of blackness in his “Sonnet of Black Beauty”: Black beauty, which above that common light, Whose Power can no colours here renew But those which darkness can again subdue, Do’st still remain unvary’d to the sight, And like an object equal to the view, Art neither chang’d with day, nor hid with night; When all these colours which the world call bright, And which old Poetry doth so persue, Are with the night so perished and gone, That of their being there remains no mark, Thou still abides so intirely one, That we may know thy blackness is a spark Of light inaccessible, and alone Our darkness which can make us think it dark.28

In contrast to Shakespeare’s poem, Herbert’s diction is simpler, as is his grammar. The line of argument is more straightforward, and he develops fewer ideas in keeping with the Lipsian emphasis on both clarity and brevity. A “kind of simplicity and forthrightness” does “shine throughout the composition” and in this way “disclose(s) the special candor of a free mind.” This is not to say that the poem is therefore simplistic. An Italian sonnet (in contrast with Shakespeare’s English version, itself a readier vehicle for tackling more ideas), Herbert plays with the rhyme scheme in the octet: rather than employ the standard abba abba arrangement, he inverts the envelope of the second stanza – baab – which plays

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against the sonic expectations of the earlier sonnets. In an interesting way, this reversal of a and b rhymes conveys something of the back-and-forth pursuit of black beauty. The terminal words of lines 1, 4, 5, and 8 – respectively “light,” “sight,” “view,” “persue” – all can be seen as attempts to hold or capture or contain the rhyming features of beauty between each pair (“renew,” “subdue,” “night,” “bright”). In line 5, the speaker adopts the b rhyme as if to harmonize his gaze with the subdued renewal of black beauty, only for said beauty to settle into his own prior a rhymes to convey its night brightness. Edward Herbert reinforces the sense of his description through formal variation, much as his brother George routinely indulges in such behind-the-scenes formal play in The Temple. The sonnet is conversational, the way a familiar letter should be, according to Lipsius. The Lipsian “conversational” style, reaffirmed by Herbert many years later in his autobiography, can be seen as a cornerstone of the literary taste of the Inns of Court writers with whom Herbert felt an affinity. Indeed, it may well be one of the markers distinguishing this literary fellowship from others at the time even as it signaled an affinity with continental intellectuals similarly invested in ideals of truthfulness and constancy. This clear, simpler style nodded both toward rhetorical wit as well as toward ­commonly accepted a­ssumptions about a gentleman’s honor. It also harmonized naturally with the kind of intellectual openness that ­Anne-Marie M ­ iller-Blaise recently has identified as central to the affinity between Edward Herbert and Donne. Neither a ­mere imitator of Donne nor an inferior philosopher, as John Locke described him, Herbert’s choice of the plain style contributes to his identity as a serious literary figure in his own right, willing to engage in dialogue with others who technically were his social inferiors even as he considered them his literary and intellectual equals.

Notes  1 Herbert, The Life, ed. Shuttleworth, p. ix. All subsequent quotations from Herbert’s autobiography in this chapter will come from this edition.

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  2 For more on these convivial societies, see Michelle O’Callaghan, The English Wits: Literature and Sociability in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), especially chapters 1 (“Gentlemen lawyers at the Inns of Court”), 2 (“Ben Jonson, the lawyers and the wits”), and 3 (“Tavern and table talk”). O’Callaghan’s book augments and in some cases corrects earlier treatments of urban clubbing such as I. A. Shapiro, “The Mermaid Club,” Modern Language Review, 45 (1950), 6–17; Stanley Fish, “Authors-Readers: Jonson’s Community of the Same,” Representations, 7 (1984), 26–58; Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Towns, 1660–1770 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); Pascal Brioist, “Que de choses avons nous vues et vécues à la Sirène,” Histoire et Civilisation, 4 (1991), 89–132; Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies 1580–1800: The Origins of the Associational World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000); and Timothy Raylor, Cavaliers, Clubs, and Literary Culture: Sir John Mennes, James Smith, and the Order of Fancy (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994).  3 Thomas Wilson, The Art of Rhetoric, excerpted in Renaissance Debates on Rhetoric, trans. and ed. Wayne A. Rebhorn (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2000), p. 180.  4 The Art of English Poesy by George Puttenham: A Critical Edition, ed. Frank Whigham and Wayne A. Rebhorn (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2007), p. 333.  5 Anacrisis: or, A Censure of some Poets Ancient and Modern, reprinted in Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century. Vol. 1: 1605–50, ed. Joel Elias Spingarn (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1968), p. 182.   6 L. Brown Osborn, The Life, Letters, and Writings of John Hoskyns, 1566–1538 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1937), p. 106.   7 The copied passage in Discoveries encompasses the sections De optimo scriptore, Cicero, De stilo epistolary Inventio, and the subsections on Brevitas, Perspicuitas, Vigor, and Discretio. See David Bevington, Martin Butler, and Ian Donaldson (eds), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, vol. 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 571–6.  8 Justus Lipsius: Principles of Letter-Writing: A Bilingual Text of Justi Lipsi Episolica Institutio, trans. and ed. R. V. Young and M. Thomas Hester (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), p. 9.  9 Lipsius, Principles of Letter-Writing, p. 25.

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10 Herbert, Works, p. 224. My thanks to Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise for reminding me of this parallel. 11 Lipsius, Principles of Letter-Writing, p. 27. 12 Lipsius, Principles of Letter-Writing, p. 29. 13 Lipsius, Principles of Letter-Writing, p. 33. 14 See Roger Kuin, “Sustainable Energy: Philip Sidney and John Donne,” John Donne Journal: Studies in the Age of Donne, 33 (2014), 63–93, for a lively account of Sidney’s influence on Donne’s creation of energia in his poetry. Hoskyns illustrates his Directions for Speech and Style largely with quotations from Sidney’s Arcadia. 15 Lipsius, Principles of Letter-Writing, p. 31. 16 See Mary Ellen Rickey, Utmost Art: Complexity in the Verse of George Herbert (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966), especially “The Clothing of the Sonne: Complexity in Apparent Simplicity,” pp. 148–79. 17 Herbert, The Life, p. 27. 18 Herbert, The Life, pp. 27–8. 19 Herbert, The Life, p. 28. 20 The Merchant of Venice, 3.2. 21 All quotations of Herbert’s poetry come from The Poems English and Latin of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, ed. George Charles Moore Smith. 22 Evidence of the extent and character of Herbert’s literary connections becomes apparent in the surviving manuscripts containing his poems. Copies of Herbert’s poems survive in fifty-six seventeenthcentury manuscripts. Most of these are miscellany compilations, but one, British Library, Add. MS 37157, was intended to feature Herbert’s work and thus figures prominently in G. C. Moore Smith’s twentieth-century edition. Of these fifty-six extant witnesses, thirtysix are also significant repositories of poems by Donne, including three Group III mss. – the Narcissus Luttrell, O’Flahertie, and Dobell manuscripts, which carry the respective Donne Variorum sigla, C9, H6, and H5 – seven manuscripts associated with Group III (B13, H7, HH1, HH4, HH5, O21, and Y3), and one additional manuscript, B30 (Harley Noel), which the Donne Variorum editors have concluded is associated with Group I. Herbert’s association with Group III is tantalizing, in that the textual editors of the Donne Variorum have shown that Group III tends to capture the earlier versions of Donne’s poems in cases where Donne revised them during the period of their manuscript circulation. For  more on this subject, see The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, ed. Gary A. Stringer et al.,

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vol. 7.1 (Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2005), pp. lx–lxxiv. 23 R. C. Bald, John Donne: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 177–9. 24 Gillies, “The Conversational Turn in Shakespeare.” 25 Essayes Written in French By Michael Lord of Montaigne, Done into English by John Florio (London, 1613), p. 519. 26 William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. S. Wells and G. Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 766. 27 Shakespeare’s Sonnets, The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series (London: Thompson, 1997), p. 71. 28 It is possible Herbert had in mind Fulke Greville’s “Sonnet CI” from Caelica: “In night when colors all to black are cast, / Distinction lost, or gone down with the night” (ll. 1–2). See Alexander B. Grosart (ed.), The Friend of Sir Philip Sidney (London: Elliot Stock, 1894), pp. 82–3. My thanks to Greg Miller for noting this possible resonance.

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11 “The little World the Great shall blaze”: Edward Herbert, Thomas Carew, Giambattista Marino, and the poetics of embassy Eleanor Hardy In 1619 Edward Herbert, later Lord Herbert of Cherbury, was appointed ambassador to France. The appointment came as a surprise to him: in his autobiographical Life of Edward, First Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written by himself, he recalls that when the messenger arrived asking him to come before the privy council, he feared he was in some sort of trouble: My self litle knowing then the Honor intended me, askt the Messenger whether I had done any fault that the Lords sent for me so suddainly, wishing him to tell the Lords that I was going to Dinner and would afterwards attend them. I had scarce dined when another Messenger was sent, this made me haste to Whitehall where I was no sooner come, but the Lords saluted me by the Name of Lord Ambassador of France. I told their Lordships thereupon that I was glad it was no worse, and that I doubted by their speedy sending for me, some Complaint, though false might have been made against me.1

This passage suggests Herbert’s good humor amidst his concern that an unwarranted bad reputation has preceded him. Somewhat ironically, of course, accounts such as this in Herbert’s Life have given him the reputation of a dilettante, which has often meant that his not inconsiderable achievements as an ambassador and courtier have gone unrecognized. In Britain, Herbert was strongly associated with continental Europe, a fact too little recognized in critical responses to his work. He spent most of his time between 1608 and 1610 traveling around France and fighting in the Siege of Juliers.

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In 1614 he again left England and spent time on the Continent, fighting in the Low Countries and visiting many European cities, as well as finding himself in various conflicts and misunderstandings. During his travels Herbert proposed (and occasionally fought in) many duels and became a close friend to Henri I de Montmorency and his son, and other members of the French intelligentsia (possibly including the libertin poet Théophile de Viau), with whom he associated both during his travels and his time as ambassador to France. He received this appointment in 1619, was recalled for the first time in 1621, and then served for another two years from 1622 to 1624 – a time of great poetic richness and scandal in the French court, as Giambattista Marino was publishing some of his most popular works, and Théophile was being arrested and put on trial in one of the earliest trials for literary obscenity.2 Two of Herbert’s best known and most important literary works are intimately connected with France and his travels on the Continent: his philosophical magnum opus De Veritate – written in Latin and intended for an international audience – which was begun in England but predominantly written in France, and published in Paris in 1624; and his autobiographical Life. This latter text, which is largely responsible for Herbert’s reputation as a brawling dilettante, charts his life up to the end of his ambassadorship in France, and concludes with his own account of the publication of De Veritate. Some of Herbert’s earliest dateable poems also relate to his time traveling between 1608 and 1610, and a significant portion of his poems were either written while Herbert was abroad or were inspired by foreign events or writers.3 This chapter situates Herbert’s love lyrics within the European culture in which they were written, linking them with both English and Italian writers (such as Thomas Carew and Giambattista Marino), and draws connections between Herbert’s time as ambassador and theories of embassy which inform these lyrics. Junctures between contemporary theories of literature and diplomacy also regularly explored questions of truth, representation, and mimesis, often through examples of the rhetorical trope of metonymy. I argue here that Herbert’s poems share these preoccupations, which can also be seen in his philosophical explorations of truth. The poems from Herbert’s time as ambassador feature the recurring device of

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the constituent parts of a woman standing metonymically for her entirety. This chapter explores whether, and how, such “microcosms” can truthfully – mimetically – represent “macrocosms” in embassy and poetry, ideas which can usefully be explored by using Herbert’s theories of truth, as described in De Veritate. Herbert’s philosophy and poems, particularly the love lyrics inspired by his time abroad as ambassador to France, show a preoccupation with the parts that make up a whole, and, more particularly, the individual integrity of such parts and the unity of a  whole. A richly ambiguous phrase in the third line of Herbert’s “A  Description” encapsulates these ideas, and provides my framework for exploring Herbert’s and Carew’s adaptations of Giambattista Marino: I Sing her worth and praises hy Of whom a Poet cannot ly The little World the Great shall blaze. (ll. 1–3)

As in so many of Herbert’s poems, the nouns and pronouns are obscure: who is the woman of the first line; is “she” a literal woman or rather the “World”? Is the opening “I” the same as the “Poet” who cannot lie, and is “singing” to be equated with poetry? What is being sung of, the “little World,” or the “Great”? Is this “Great” a greater world, or a collective noun, as in “the great and the good”? Verbs too become misleading, particularly the terminal “blaze.” The most obvious reading is that the “little World” shall light up and illuminate the “Great,” but the syntax of agency is ambiguous, allowing for the possibility that, in fact, the “Great” will illuminate the “little World.” As well as indicating that something shall be revealed or illuminated, the delayed verb, left hanging at the end of the line, could also suggest something enthused, fired up, or set alight with passion. These fiery actions, balanced in the potential meaning of the word “blaze,” also begin to slip dangerously toward destruction (something set alight and burnt down). In these opening lines, action, agency, and agents are all ambiguously abstruse. Schools of criticism have often presented both Herbert and Carew as the “little Worlds” which “blaze forth” the work and  poetic genius of their predecessors, and they are regularly seen as the

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distillation and combination of more famous poets (in Carew’s case, Donne and Jonson, and in Herbert’s Donne and Marino).4 However, Scott Nixon’s work on Carew has demonstrated how his audacious elegy for Donne does not “merely celebrate,” but actively engages with Donne and demonstrates Carew’s “ability to distil, reflect, and move beyond [Donne’s] poetic achievement.”5 A  key part of Nixon’s argument (which marked an important turning point in studies of Carew’s poetry) rests on Herbert’s reference to Carew in his own elegy for Donne: Having deliver’d now, what praises are, It rests that I should to the world declare Thy praises DUNN, whom I so lov’d alive, That with my witty Carew I should strive To celebrate thee dead (ll. 47–51)

Nixon notes that “this passage brings together important themes of imitation and competition.”6 However, to make a nuanced distinction, the idea that Carew and Herbert were in “competition” with each other is only one reading of this passage, and a reading which is not alive to the ambiguity of the verb “strive.” Nixon understands this as suggesting that Herbert is directly “striving” with Carew, the two trying to outdo one another competitively, whereas the phrase simultaneously suggests that Herbert is saying he and Carew must both “strive” – work together – to find that language worthy of celebrating Donne. The suggestion in these lines that Herbert and Carew were both involved in a shared (rather than divisive) poetic enterprise (here, celebrating Donne) is reinforced when we consider that Herbert and Carew were “striving” with one another approximately twelve years earlier through shared reworkings of an older poet’s verse when both were in Paris and probably associating with Marino. Just as “the little World the Great shall blaze” could indicate the illumination of one great world by a smaller or suggest how the great will be eradicated by the “little World,” Carew’s and Herbert’s adaptations of Marino similarly convey their appreciation for the verse they are imitating, and their attempt to reinvent and appropriate it. This chapter centers on the poetry and philosophy that relates

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to Herbert’s longest sojourn on the Continent, during his time as ambassador, and develops the idea that Herbert’s poetry arises from his membership of specific social and institutional worlds. In doing so, Herbert’s literary output and exchanges indicate that the embassy itself was a site of literary production. As an ambassador, Herbert wrote verse in response to eminent continental poets, such as Marino, and exchanged poems with Carew. Both Herbert and Carew can also therefore be considered as kinds of “literary ambassadors,” serving as conduits for French and Italian literature in England, thus demonstrating how travel represented an opportunity to productively imitate new customs and styles. Herbert and Carew must be included in any speculation about the transmission of Marino’s verse and reputation to England, not least since their work influenced the later community of poet-translators that centered around Thomas Stanley.7 In 1646 Stanley, who had returned from a four-year European tour following the fall of Oxford to the Parliamentarians, established a network of writers and aristocrats to “preserve pre-war traditions of literary community and aristocratic patronage in post-war London,” although the group’s raison d’être was translating and imitating continental and classical verse.8 Marino was a popular poet within this group, which produced many translations and adaptations of his verse: for example, there is an extant a copy of Marino’s Della Lira Del Cavalier which Stanley gave to Edward Sherburne, filled with the latter’s annotations and notes for translations.9 In particular, the group produced many poems on the themes of love and beauty which Carew and Herbert were so preoccupied with. James Shirley, another member of the network Stanley established, wrote that Stanley had superseded Carew as “the Oracle of Love,” arguing: “Thy number carry height, yet cleer and terse, / And innocent, as becomes the soul of verse.”10 Shirley’s poem clearly indicates the influence that Carew’s poetry had on Stanley, but the “innocence” of Stanley’s verse is in fact like Herbert’s poetry, particularly his adaptations of Marino. This chapter has two focuses. The first half looks at the role of Herbert and his ambassadorial secretary, Thomas Carew, as translators of the work of the Italian poet Giambattista Marino. At its heart is a comparative analysis of Herbert’s reworking of one of Marino’s sonnets, and a poem by Carew which I show was almost

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certainly written in parallel with Herbert’s. I argue that Carew and Herbert were writing and exchanging verse at the embassy in Paris, and that Carew in particular capitalized on the currency of helping to introduce a new poet to England in the 1620s. In the second half of this chapter, I address those poems which make up the majority of Herbert’s oeuvre – poems on women and love – and will argue that, unlike his contemporaries, Herbert eschews both the erotic impulse seen in so many of Carew’s poems, and also the chaste engagement with surface detail favored by later lyricists such as Stanley and Sherburne. I suggest that the combined influence of Marino, and his role as ambassador, helped to infuse Herbert’s love lyrics with the trope of metonymy. Herbert uses this trope to sublimate the women his poems are purportedly addressed to into a state of abstraction and an aesthetic principle, and to interrogate ideas of truth and representation.

“Travel is a second birth”: Poetry in the embassy Early modern theorists and modern critical scholarship have ­recognized the productive conversation and overlap between literary and diplomatic words and representation. Timothy Hampton has emphasized the importance of sociability in diplomatic and literary contexts in his discussion of what he terms “diplomatic poetics” in Fictions of Embassy, a study which emphasizes dialogue within and across literary diplomatic texts. This theory also points to the dialogue between artifice and reality in literary texts, recalling Wotton’s comment that an ambassador is “an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.”11 Various early modern historians and philosophers drew on literary works and conventions in their discussion of diplomacy, including Alberto Gentili, Hugo Grotius, and Torquato Tasso, and there is also a high incidence of early modern authors who were engaged in diplomatic work, including Thomas More, Thomas Wyatt, Philip Sidney, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell, as well as the topics of the current study, Edward Herbert and Thomas Carew.12 Joanna Craigwood has discussed the intersection of literary – and specifically poetic – frameworks and theories of embassy and diplomacy, coining the term “poetics of

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embassy” to describe “a theory of literature informed by diplomatic ideas and a theory of diplomacy informed by literary-theoretical concerns.”13 Extending these analyses of the intersections of literature and diplomacy prompts a consideration of the embassy itself as  an important site of literary production and circulation. Herbert, as his Life demonstrates, did not expect to be an ambassador, and it is likely that he chose Carew for his retinue not only for the young poet’s previous diplomatic service and experience, but also for his literary talent, which Herbert was almost certainly aware of, possibly through their many mutual friends, including Donne and Jonson. Herbert probably met Carew during his early travels on the Continent, when he stayed with Sir Dudley Carleton in Venice in 1614/15; Carew was in Carleton’s service at this time, although was dismissed for an indiscretion in 1616, at which point he began circulating his verse and promoting his wit to potential patrons, perhaps explaining how he came to Herbert’s attention. When Herbert traveled to France with Carew in his service the two evidently composed verses together, translating and imitating Marino as well as one another, as Thomas Stanley and Edward Sherburne later did in the late 1640s.14 Marino was perhaps the greatest Italian poet of the early ­seventeenth century. Born in Naples, Marino, like Herbert, traveled throughout Europe, becoming entangled in love affairs, violent quarrels, and assassination attempts, as well as enduring spells of imprisonment. He rose to prominence during the first two decades of the seventeenth century, winning early fame with a canzone about kisses (which Herbert imitated in his poem “Kissing”), before publishing his Rime in two parts in 1602, and republishing this collection of over 400 poems in 1614 as La lira, with an additional third section. However, his greatest works were written and published during his time in Paris, including the Epitalami (1616), La galleria (1620), and his most famous work, L’Adone (1623). The core elements of Marino’s verse can be summarized as witty concepts or metaphors, which provoke surprise and wonder at their ingenuity and novelty, while nevertheless being grounded in rhetorical tropes and literary convention. Marino’s amatory poems tend to focus on a single feature or action of his mistress, such as her earrings, beauty spot, or the manner in which she sews or rolls dice.



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In his poem “Mentre la sua donna si pettina,” itself an adaptation from Lope de Vega, Marino describes his mistress combing her hair, in an extended metaphor of a ship sailing: Onde dorate, e l’onde capelli, Navicella d’avorio un di fendea; Una man pur d’avorio la reggae Per questi errori preziosi e quelli; E, mentre i flutti tremolanti e belli Con drittissimo solco dividea, L’or de le rotte fila Amor cogliea, Per formarne catene a’ suoi rubella Per l’aureo mar, che rincrespando apria Il procelloso suo biondo tesoro, Agitato il mio core a morte gia. Ricco naufragio, in cui sommerso io moro, Poich’almen fûr, ne la tempesta mia, Di diamante lo scoglio e ‘l golfo d’oro!15 Golden waves – and the waves were tresses – an ivory vessel clove one day; a hand also of ivory piloted it here and there through precious paths; and while it plowed the lovely shimmering billows in the most rigid of furrows, Love gathered in the gold of broken threads to forge chains for his rebels. Through the golden sea, which as it rolled revealed its stormy blond treasure, my agitated heart went to its death. Fortunate shipwreck, in which I die drowned, for at least in my storm the reef was of diamond and the gulf gold!16

The metaphor which runs throughout the poem is revealed in an aside in the first line – “e l’ondi capelli” (“and the waves were tresses”) – but the poem still generates meraviglia through the sustained and wittily unfolded conceit, the ornamentation of the concept, and the way in which metaphors build on one another, so that in the eighth line Love can gather the broken threads from the waves of hair and forge new chains. When Herbert reworked Marino’s verse in his poem “A Vision” he dispensed with the aside in which Marino identified the central conceit of the poem (that the woman’s hair is like a golden sea), and turned the poem into a kind of riddle, finishing with the lines, “Let no Philosopher of Knowledge boast, / Unless that he my Vision can unfold” (ll. 23–4). However, the accompanying authorial marginal notes to this poem

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offer a gloss on each new aspect of the central conceit, rendering this challenge obsolete. As Mirollo notes, Marino’s conceits are at times “momentarily puzzling but in almost every instance either the context or some familiarity with the lyric tradition quickly yields the image or idea. In any event, it is hardly ever intentionally obscure.”17 Herbert’s love lyrics, and particularly those inspired by Marino, do not display the obscureness of his earlier satires and elegies, but instead possess the lightness of touch, or sprezzatura, of Marino’s finely turned lyrics. Herbert and Carew were among the first to adapt and translate Marino’s verse into English, and this must be considered in the context of their employment in ambassadorial service. Between 1615 and 1623 – his period of greatest poetic creativity and success – Marino was not only living in Paris but was honored by the court and patronized by Louis XIII. Herbert and Carew, based in Paris and frequenting the court between 1619 and 1624, could hardly have avoided meeting Marino, or hearing of him. Both were influenced by Marino – imitating, paraphrasing, and translating his work in their own poems – making them strong candidates for introducing Marino’s poetry to English literary circles, alongside two other early translators, Samuel Daniel and William Drummond of Hawthornden.18 Of these early adaptors, Herbert and Carew carry the distinction of having probably met Marino, and undertaking translations and adaptations of his work together, rather than in isolation. Reinforcing this argument that Herbert and Carew were jointly involved in a transmission of Marino’s verse to England is ­evidence which suggests that following their return from Paris their poetry  was being circulated and read together. Nigel Smith notes that during Carew’s time on the Continent his verse began to circulate in England in manuscript much more widely, and that some of it was sent to addresses in England from Paris: examples include his elegy on Lady Peniston, “sent to my Mistresse out of France,” “To my Mistresse in absence,” “To her in absence: A Ship,” and “Vpon some alterations in my Mistresse, after my departure into France.”19 As well as an increase in the circulation of his verse during his time abroad, when Carew joined the literary circle of Ben Jonson, Thomas May, and John Selden, it was specifically

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the continental experience behind him that made him stand out, according to Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon.20 There is manuscript evidence which suggests that Herbert and Carew’s verse was being compiled and circulated together when they returned from France, seen most clearly in British Library Additional MSS 25303 (termed the “Colchester MS” in Beal’s Index of English Literary Manuscripts). The compiler of this manuscript appears to have had a strong interest in Carew, with twenty seven of his poems (and second copies of two poems) collected in the volume, and it is probably the earliest sizeable collection of Carew’s verse, as well as providing the earliest witness for several poems.21 The manuscript also contains two poems by Edward Herbert: his elegy for Prince Henry and his poem on Lady Diana Cecil. Although these are two of Herbert’s most circulated poems, Add. MS 25303 contains a uniquely detailed witness of the elegy for Prince Henry, which was clearly not derived from the 1613 printing of this poem, and contains probably the earliest witness of the poem on Diana Cecil.22 The manuscript also seems to have been closely associated with the Herbert family: as well as containing the two poems by Edward Herbert, Add. MS 25303 contains several poems by William Herbert, third earl of Pembroke, and one of only three manuscript witnesses of George Herbert’s “Paradox: that the sicke are better than the whole.” In addition, Add. MS 25303, which demonstrates a clear interest in Carew’s verse, contains especially good witnesses of Herbert’s verse, and was associated with the Herbert family, was probably begun as Herbert and Carew returned from France. Beal’s CELM suggests that Add. MS 25303 can be dated to the “1620s–30s,” but Butler’s work on Carew’s communities of manuscript readers indicates that of the manuscript’s 171 pieces, all but two come from the 1610s and the 1620s, and that the elegies included in the manuscript all span the years from Carew’s entrance into the Middle Temple (1612) to Clarendon’s reference to Carew there in 1625, and that, “[t]aken together, they indicate a beginning copy date of approximately 1624.”23 The only witnesses of Carew’s poem, “Vpon some alteration in my Mistresse, after my departure into France,” appears in Add. MS 25303 and two other related  manuscripts, again suggesting that Herbert and Carew

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exchanged their verse in Paris and were later circulating it at home in England. As well as sending poems from France, Carew was also being influenced by poems in France, adapting a number of Marino’s verses. Carew’s poems “To A. L. Perswasions in love” and “A  Looking-Glasse” are adaptations of Marino’s “Bellezza caduca” and “La donna allo specchio” respectively, while his “Celia singing” is another treatment of the “cantatrice crudele” theme. Herbert’s Marinesque poems include “A Vision” (based on Marino’s sonnet “posie varie”), “To a Lady who did sing excellently,” “Upon Combing her Hair,” the ditty “Can I then live to draw that breath” (which has a possible connection to Marino’s canzone “La Lontananza”), and Herbert’s poems on color. Another of Herbert’s Marinesque poems is “A Description,” which Rossi argues was written in 1619, the same year he suggests Carew’s “The Complement” was written.24 Both poems are adaptations of Marino’s “Durante il bagno”: Moore Smith was the first critic to notice a similarity between the poems, and Rossi acknowledged that Carew and Herbert’s poems may have been written in dialogue with one another.25 Both poems, following Marino, are blasons of an unnamed woman, and both follow the same progression of features: face, neck, breasts, belly, thighs, and then “all this,” the total sum of the woman’s parts. This similarity of progression is not in itself distinctive, as it is the poet’s gaze traveling down his mistress’s body (we might think of Donne’s elegy “To his Mistress Going to Bed”); the sequence of features seems logical, rather than particularly unique, and can be found in a myriad of poems in the seventeenth century. However, various, more distinctive images and phrases across the two poems suggest that Herbert and Carew influenced one another. The two poems, like so many of Herbert’s and Carew’s, share the same kind of subtle humor and wordplay, and a propensity for extended metaphorical conceits filled with such rich imagery that the object of their verse is often lost under the weight of their fecund descriptions. In “A Description” and “The Complement,” both poems refer to their mistress’s head as the earth: “Thy round head, that globe of wonder” (“The Complement,” l. 28) and “Her Nose, th’ Æquator of this Globe” (“A Description,” l. 23).26 Both



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also refer to the “dew,” or sweat, of their mistress’s hand: “I love thee not for that moist palme, / Though the dew thereof be balme” (“The Complement,” ll. 49–50); and Here take her by the Hand, my Muse, With that sweet Foe, to make my Truce, To compact Manna, best compar’d, Whose dewy inside’s not full hard.            (“A Description,” ll. 45–8)27

The most striking echo between the two poems is in the eighth stanza of Carew’s and toward the end of Herbert’s: I doe not love thee for those thighes, Whose Alabastor rocks doe rise So high and even that they stand Like Sea-makers to some happy land. Happy are those eyes have seene them, More happy they that sail between them. (“The Complement,” ll. 43–8, my emphasis) At th’entrance of which hidden Treasure, Happy making above measure, Two Alabastor pillars stand, To warn all passage from that Land; At foot whereof engraved is, The sad Non Ultra of Mans Bliss:             (“A Description,” ll. 55–60, my emphasis)

These verbal parallels, and the use of the same meter in both poems, suggests that the poets had seen one another’s verses, and these two excerpts are also the strongest evidence that Herbert and Carew were responding to Marino’s poem “Durante il bagno,” in which the central conceit is that of the bathing woman’s legs as “due colonne alabastrine” (“two alabaster pillars”):    Durante Il Bagno Sovra bas d’argento in conca d’oro io vidi due colonne alabastrine dentro linfe odorate e cristalline franger di perle un candido tesoro. – O – dissi – del mio mal posa e ristoro,

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di natura e d’amor mète divine, stabilite per ultimo confine ne l’oceàn de le dolcezze loro; fossi Alcide novel, che i miei trofie dove mai non giungesse uman desio, transpiantandovi in braccio erger vorrei; o stringer, qual Sanson, vi potess’io, che, col vostro cader, dolce darei tomba a la Morte, e morte al dolor mio!     Woman Washing her Legs Within a shell of gold on silver base two alabaster pillars once I saw, breaking a treasure of white pearls ablaze on scented waves – a crystal with no flaw, O solace of my woes, O resting-place (I said) where Love and Nature, by God’s law, set the last limits of their ended race in the deep sea of their own bliss and awe! Would that I were a new Alcides! You in these my arms as trophy I would take, and know what no man’s longing could achieve. Or would that I were Samson! Grabbing you, with your delightful fall I thus would give a tomb to death and death to all my ache.28

All three poems describe alabaster columns, rocks, or pillars r­epresenting a woman’s thighs, and Carew compares these rocks to “Sea-markers to some happy land” (l. 46), recalling Marino’s reference to “l’oceán de le dolcezze” (l. 8, ‘the deep sea of […] bliss”). Marino’s subsequent allusion to Heracles by his patronymic, Alcides (“fossi Alcide novel,” l. 9, “Would that I were a new Alcides”), is picked up in Herbert’s description of his mistress’s “alabastor pillars […] At the foot whereof engraved is, / The sad Non Ultra of Mans Bliss” (ll. 57–60). This is an allusion to the Pillars of Heracles (the promontories that flank the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar), which, according to tradition, bore the warning “Ne plus ultra” or “Non plus ultra” (“nothing further beyond”) as a caution to sailors to go no further, and Marino similarly describes

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the “ristoro / di natura e d’amor mète divine / stabilite per ultimo confine” (“resting-place / […] where Love and Nature, by God’s law, / Set the last limits of their ended race”). However, these moments of greatest similarity between the three poems also indicate their crucial differences. “A Description” and “The Complement” are unlike “Durante il bagno” in that they describe the full body of woman, the poet’s gaze traveling down from head to toe, whereas Marino’s sonnet is specific in its admiration for a woman bathing her legs, before turning, in the sestet, to describe his own imagined bliss in her embrace. Here, Marino ­rapturously imagines taking his lady in his arms, or “vi potess’io, / che, col Vostro cader, dolce darei / tomba a la Morte, e morte al dolor mio!” (ll. 12–14 “Grabbing you, / with your delightful fall I thus would give a tomb to death and death to all my ache”), and Carew’s poem is similarly propelled toward the observer’s petite mort. “The Complement” is shot through with gorgeously sumptuous imagery: for example, the stanza in which he describes his mistress’s breasts: I doe not love thee for those mountaines Hill’d with snow, whence milky fountaines, (Suger’d sweete, as sirropt berries) Must one day run through pipes of cherries; O how much those breasts doe move me, Yet for them I doe not love thee: (“The Complement,” ll. 31–6)

The smooth sibilance and playful plosives add to the luscious imagery of syrup, berries, sugar and cherries, with the slight innuendo as the poet suggests he has been “moved” by his mistress’s breasts. The poem is filled with tumescent imagery of “pillars” and “towers,” of rocks “rising,” before turning to his mistress’s legs and “some happy land” located between them. Carew continues with characteristic carefreeness to describe sailing between his lady’s thighs and, essentially, dropping anchor; the poem then mentions a “moistness” and a “dewy balm” before declaring: “in thy embracing armes / Though in them one night to lie, / Dearest I would gladly die” (ll. 49–50, 53, 58–60). Although the sense of the phrase ­indicates the speaker’s willingness to give his life for one

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night with his mistress, it also suggests the desire for a different kind of “death” within his mistress’s arms. In contrast to the sexual energy of Marino’s and Carew’s poems, Herbert’s poem is coolly chaste. Far from sailing between his lady’s thighs, he is warned away from approaching any further: these pillars bear “The sad Non Ultra of Mans Bliss” (l. 60). Rossi has accused Herbert’s poem of not reaching the logical conclusion of a list of a lady’s beauty, but this dismissal of the poem limits greater consideration of its argument. Herbert’s poem, although not without eroticism and sensuality, does not have the same degree of sexual tension and relish as Carew’s, and so the conclusion of Carew’s poem (the speaker’s metaphorical orgasm, seen in the references to moisture and death in his lady’s arms) is not the same for Herbert.29 Unlike the sailor who can happily glide through the alabaster rocks in Carew’s poem, or the Samson of Marino’s who can bring these columns tumbling down to kill his ache for his mistress, the legs of Herbert’s mistress “warn all passage from that land” (l. 58), and the Latin tag engraved at their base signals that what is beyond is unknown and unknowable. This is a theme common across Herbert’s love lyrics, in sharp distinction to Marino and Carew’s. Although Carew’s poems often depict his undying devotion to “Celia,” which Butler describes as “somewhat of a holdover, a part of a new revival of chivalric love,” Smith argues that Carew primarily “used verse to find the erotic moment.”30 Carew’s poems make use of chivalric and mock-chivalric codes, but they are pre-eminently erotic, and it is the explicit eroticism of poems such as “A Rapture” that Carew is best known for, now and in his own time. Although he attempted to alter this reputation, it was used by his critics as a stick with which to beat him: in 1640 (the year of the first edition of Carew’s poems) Edward Dering asserted that, along with works by Ovid, Carew’s poems were “lascivious, idle, and unprofitable.”31 The brash opening declaration of “A Rapture,” “I will enjoy thee now my Celia,” gives way to Carew’s sensuous descriptions of caressing his lady’s naked body – “there I’le behold / Thy bared snow, and thy unbraded gold. / There my enfranchiz’d hand, on every side / Shall o’re thy naked polish’d Ivory slide” (ll. 27–30) – and “sinowie thighes” entwining (ll. 79–80). Carew, as in “The Complement,”



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employs a nautical simile to describe the actual moment of penetration and (male) orgasm: Thou like a sea of milke shalt lye display’d, Whilst I the smooth, calm Ocean, invade With such a tempest, as when Jove of old Fell downe on Danae in a storm of gold: Yet my tall Pine, shall in the Cyprian straight Ride safe at Anchor, and unlade her fraight: My Rudder, with thy bold hand, like a tryde, And skilfull Pilot, thou shalt steere, and guide My Bark into Loves channel, where it shall Dance, as the bounding waves doe rise or fall (ll. 81–90)

The comparison of his lady to milk and the employment of military metaphors (his reference to “invading” his lady) were favorite conceits of Marino, who was reworking Petrarchan motifs. In particular, the superseding of a familiar amatory metaphor (the lady’s skin as milk) with an additional metaphor which becomes dominant (her body is an ocean of milk), is again an especially Marinesque turn. Marino’s verse often displayed a chivalric deferral of the consummation of love, or instead imagined a consummation which is desired (as in “Durante il bagno”), but some of his poems did tend toward the kind of explicit eroticism couched in sensuous, dazzling metaphors and conceits that is found in Carew. The poems “La Postorella,” “Amori notturni,” “Il Duello,” and “Trastulli estivi” all focus on the act of sex, described through extended metaphors. Take, for example, the moment of consummation in “Trastulli estivi”: A la piaga d’Amor cadde trafitta, E, vinta al dolce assalto, Di bel purpureo smalto Rigò le piume, in un lieta ed afflitta. Io, vincitor guerriero, De la nemica essangue, Quasi in trionfo altero, Portai ne l’armi e ne le spoglie il sangue. Così l’alato arciero

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L’arsura in me temprò concente e viva De la fiamma amorosa e de l’estiva. Canzon, lasciar intatta de sé partire amata donna e bella Non ‘cortesia’, ma ‘villania’ s’appella.32 Pierced by the wound of Love she fell, and, conquered by the sweet assault, streaked her plumes with a lovely crimson glaze, at once joyous and grieved. I, victorious warrior, in lofty triumph bore arms and spoils bloodied by the pallid victim. Thus, the winged archer tempered in me the live and searing heat of the amorous flame and summer season. Song, to let one’s beloved and beautiful lady depart untouched should not be called “courtesy” but “rudeness.”33

The erotic delight taken in the image of a bloodied women is also found in Carew’s poems, such as “Celia bleeding, to the Surgeon,” a kind of male fetishizing of female penetration and blood which deliberately, I think, borders on satire in its extreme voluptuousness, but nevertheless strikes the modern reader as particularly toxic, especially the image in Marino of the man as a “warrior” whose triumphant “spoils” are “bloodied by the pallid victim.” The women in Herbert’s verse, in contrast, are seemingly ­impenetrable, his poems universally chaste and chivalric in tone, seen most clearly in “A Description” when the male gaze is averted from the lady’s “hidden Treasure” and warned against passing further. The male gaze in Herbert’s poem travels elsewhere. “A  Description” seems generally less concerned with orgasm and male pleasure than with its results: the capacity for reproduction, a theme emphasized by the Latin and Greek marginalia included in the poem, which has prompted criticism from Rossi and others. At lines 3 and 7 Herbert includes two marginal notes: the first accompanies the line “The little World the Great shall blaze”: “μικρόκοϭμοϛ μακρόκοϭμοϛ” (l. 3 “microcosm [and] macrocosm”), while the second marginal note provides the Latin aphorism alluded to when Herbert declares “thus you prove the Axiom true”: “Sol et homo generant hominem,” a translation from Aristotle’s Physics, “ἄνθρωπος γὰρ ἄνθρωπον γεννᾷ καὶ ἥλιος” (“man and the sun beget man”).34 These marginal notes have drawn ire from Herbert’s

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critics: Rossi finds them “pedantic” and off-putting, and Frank J. Warnke declares that they exhibit “Herbert’s characteristic vices of pedantry and obscurity.” Warnke dismisses the poem as one of Herbert’s “least fortunate,” and claims that his attempt at adapting Marino’s poem was utterly unsuccessful.35 Rather, I suggest that these two marginal notes indicate the essence of the poem’s depth and central preoccupation. Nicholas McDowell, in an article describing the poetic richness of the French court during Herbert’s time in Paris, identifies verse exploring minutiae that takes on ­macrocosmic significance as a defining feature of the “Cavalier” poets of the late 1640s, such as Stanley and Sherburne, who were translating and imitating Marino and one another, as Carew and Herbert had done in the early 1620s.36 The themes of macrocosm and microcosm, and reproduction, introduced in the third line of the poem (and confirmed by its marginal note), are developed throughout the poem. The Latin tag from Aristotle reinforces these ideas: Herbert’s “Sol et homo generant hominem,” before he proceeds to describe his mistress’s face and eyes in macrocosmic terms as the sky and sun, also suggests her reproductive powers. Later in the poem there is a curious moment that has been hitherto overlooked: Her Belly is that Magazine, To whose keepe Nature did resigne That pretious Mould, by which alone, There can be framed such a One: (ll. 51–4)37

The description of his mistress’s belly as a “magazine” – a storehouse or repository – suggests the woman’s miraculous childbearing capabilities: nature has given her the ability to “mould” another unique individual. This thought is completely absent in both Marino and Carew’s poem – “The Complement” makes references to his mistress’s belly, “Sleeke as satten, soft as jelly,” without suggesting the possibility of pregnancy – but is essential to Herbert’s. Cause and effect, meanwhile, seem entirely absent from Marino’s poetic concern with surfaces. The “little” and “greater” worlds of the third line of Herbert’s “A Description” can thus also be read as the small child that is carried in the woman’s body.

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However, the phrase “the little World the Great shall blaze” is, as I have noted, curiously slippery and ambiguous, and although it can be interpreted to indicate the reproductive, and divine, capabilities of womankind, it can also be read in a far more specifically homosocial, literary manner. The palindromic opening and ending lines of the poem – “I Sing her worth and praises hy, / Of whom a Poet cannot ly” (ll. 1–2, 69–70) – add to the theme of reproduction and repetition in the poem, but also provide a frame which emphasises the “I” of the speaker and the role of the poet. The opening lines thus modulate the phrase “the little World the Great shall blaze,” introducing the possibility that the subject of the phrase, the “little World,” may in fact be the speaker of the poem, and his ability to describe the entire world in his picture of a woman – the presumptively male speaker seeking to reclaim the agency of creativity, encompassment, and reproduction from womankind. And  of course, Herbert’s poem is a response to Marino’s picture of a woman, and not a literal woman, adding the further potential meaning that Herbert, the “little world,” shall “blaze forth” the poetry of Marino – reproducing but also reinventing and appropriating it. The poem becomes simultaneously a description of a beautiful woman, a celebration of female reproductive capabilities, and finally an elimination, or subsuming, of the woman in an assertion of male–male reproduction through poetry. The theme of microcosm and macrocosm also has relevance to the diplomatic context in which Herbert probably wrote this poem. An ambassador had to become the representative of the state and the sovereign, a traveling microcosm of the macrocosm, and was crucially the literal embodiment of the sovereign, standing as proxy for them at state events abroad. As the influential diplomatic theorist Alberto Gentili remarks, the ambassador is both like and unlike an actor playing the role of a king, “not merely taking part in a play for a few hours, but […] actually invested with the personality of his sovereign.”38 This embodiment, becoming, in effect, a m ­ icro-sovereign to the monarch’s macro-sovereignty, was achieved through words and rhetoric: Jean Hotman recorded that Demosthenes said, “Wee giue them not forces or shippes of warre to manage, but words, daies, houres, and moments.”39 The ways that theories of embassy can be applied to Herbert’s poetry,



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­ articularly his Marinesque verse, is the focus of the next part of p this chapter.

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Metonymy and embassy: “proportions new, so well exprest” In his attempt to offer a corrective to Rossi’s view of Herbert as a “dilettante,” Eugene Hill stresses Herbert’s role as a diplomat, and argues that this is ultimately the defining feature of all of Herbert’s writing.40 I would not make such a strong claim for the use of diplomatic theory in Herbert’s writing, but Herbert’s use of the rhetorical trope of metonymy and his concerns regarding truth and truthful representation (and therefore mimesis) are certainly bound up in contemporary diplomatic theory. Examining Herbert’s Marinesque poems through the lens of contemporary diplomatic and literary theory demonstrates the close intertwining of these practices, and also suggests how Herbert’s philosophical ideas – which were being developed and printed during his time as ambassador – inform the questions of truth and representation which were at stake in diplomatic and literary theory. One particularly notable example of the connections between literary and diplomatic theory is the intellectual and personal links between Alberto Gentili and Philip Sidney. Gentili, a talented Italian lawyer, moved to London in 1580, where he met Sidney at court. He later went on to become the leading European expert in the emerging field of international law and was the most ­influential diplomatic theorist in England in this period. In 1581 he was incorporated into the University of Oxford as professor of Roman law, and in 1587 he became the Regius professor of law until his death in 1608; Wotton was one of Gentili’s earliest students, and Gentili published prolifically during his time in England.41 Gentili dedicated his 1585 diplomatic treatise De legationibus libri tres to Sidney, crediting him with helping to influence the theory of embassy that this treatise describes, while Sidney’s literary treatise, The Defence of Poesy (c. 1582) places poetry under the trope of embassy, opening with an anecdote in a diplomatic setting.42 Craigwood has traced the personal connection between Sidney and Gentili, and notes that the Defence was written “during the

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period Sidney knew Gentili and was actively seeking diplomatic ­appointments, yet, d ­ isillusioned with his lack of success at court, was also turning to poetry as an alternative occupation.”43 She argues that Gentili’s diplomatic treatise and Sidney’s literary treatise share a single Platonic model for understanding diplomatic and literary representation, and that in their works literary mimesis and the mimetic art of embassy are analogous. Herbert, by his own admission, did not expect to be made ambassador, but he was clearly profoundly interested in theories of embassy: he owned five books by Gentili, and developed a friendship with Hugo Grotius, who was deeply influenced by Gentili’s magnum opus, De iure belli libri tres (1598).44 I have already argued above that, following his return from France, Herbert’s poems began to circulate more widely, and it can be assumed, therefore, that many early readers of his verse knew of him in the context of his being an ambassador. His poems also display a consistent interest in mimesis and truthful representation, concerns which Craigwood has shown were intimately bound up in diplomatic theory. Herbert’s explicit reference to the trope of microcosm and macrocosm in “A Description” also speaks to theories of embassy, which argued that the ambassador had to become a microcosm of the sovereign, a diplomatic version of the rhetorical trope of metonymy, where a part is named for the whole. The poem is also concerned with the problems of representation, particularly poetic mimesis, demonstrated in the opening and closing lines: “I Sing her worth and praises hy, / Of whom a Poet cannot ly” (ll. 1–2). These themes of mimesis and metonymy, which speak to diplomatic theory of the early seventeenth century, recur throughout Herbert’s verse, and can be linked with his theories of truth and perception in De Veritate (completed while he was ambassador in France). The most striking poetic sequence in which Herbert makes use of metonymy is his sequence on black beauty, beginning with a poem addressed to Diana Cecil, later the wife of Henry de Vere, eighteenth Earl of Oxford.45 This poem to Diana Cecil circulated in Add. MS 25303 alongside several of Carew’s poems (as I have discussed) and was also included in Herbert’s personal collection of his verse, British Library Add. MS 37157, where it forms part of a series of

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poems on black beauty. Mirollo is hesitant to suggest that Herbert’s poems on black hair, black eyes, black beauty, and “To  Black itself” could be influenced by Marino, since the theme has its roots in Petrarchism (both English and Italian), and Mirollo notes that when this theme “occurs among the Marinists [and Marino’s verse], it is usually part of a series of poems in which other colors are stressed in turn, for the sake of ingenuity and contrast. Such is not the case in Herbert.”46 However, while this is not the case in the printed editions of Herbert’s verse, when his poems on black beauty are read in the context of his personal manuscript collection of poems (BL Add. MS 37157, ff. 1r-25v) they do appear to be a part of a series of other colors. The collection contains poems celebrating various colors: green-sickness, or anaemic “white” beauty, brown beauty, and black beauty, with a series on black beauty giving way to a central run of poems celebrating brown and white beauty, before a final series on black beauty.47 When reconsidered as part of an ordered and balanced sequence, Herbert’s poems do begin to appear very much like a “series of poems in which other colors are stressed in turn,” in the Marinist manner. These poems are therefore Marinesque both in their treatment of color as source of surface wonder and delight, and in the way that they focus, in turn, on different parts of the woman’s body, directing attention to a single surface feature. The poems that form the sequence on black beauty move from “To Mrs Diana Cecil,” to “To her Eyes,” and “To her Hair.” Thus, individual physical aspects come to speak metonymically for the beauty of the entire woman. However, unlike Marino, Herbert’s poems do not delight in the sensuous surface detail of the woman being described, as all these poems collapse into a paean to an abstraction, seen in the way they progress from praising the dark woman, to praising her dark eyes and hair, until the poet addresses his verse to the color black: “Sonnet on Black Beauty.” These poems move further and further away from the body of the woman they initially describe until they become focused solely on the color of black itself. Thus, the body parts no longer metonymically represent the overall being of the woman; rather, the woman herself stands metonymically for the color black, itself an abstraction of color. The poem for Diana

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Cecil begins by praising her beauty, which is neither “of Milk, or Snow, / Or such as pale and whitely things do ow” (ll. 2–3), nor the “golden-sanded stream, / Which we find still the vulgar Poets theme” (ll. 8–9); instead, her beauty is “reverend black” (l. 10). The next poem, “To her Eyes,” begins immediately with the color that forms the poem’s focus: “Black eyes if you seem dark, / It is because your beams are deep” (ll. 1–2), and argues for the connection between the color black and “that first cause” (l. 15), because God was “at first […] hid / Within the veil of an eternal night” (ll. 18–19). “To her Hair” reinforces the divine limitlessness of the color black: although it begins by comparing the lady’s hair to “threads of life” (l. 7), by the fourth stanza the lady is entirely absent, and Herbert is given over to praising the color black itself:   […] past black, there is not found     A fix’d or horizontal bound? And so, as it doth terminate the white, It may be said all colours to infold,     And in that kind to hold   Somewhat of infinite? (ll. 19–24)

This is the theme picked up in the “Sonnet of Black Beauty,” which is entirely concerned with the color itself in its abstract form, attached to no object, as it is again in “Another Sonnet to Black it self,” which describes the awesome, all-encompassing nature of the color black. If all these poems are linked as a series (as the arrangement of Add. MS 37157 suggests), then Diana Cecil very rapidly disappears as the focus of the poems. Diana Cecil, in Herbert’s poem, functions as a starting point for Herbert’s increasingly abstract and philosophical contemplations on the color black. In the final stanza of “To Mrs Diana Cecil,” Herbert declares: Wonder of all thy Sex! let none henceforth inquire     Why they so much admire,   Since they that know thee best ascend no higher; Only be not with common praises woo’d Since admiration were no longer good, When men might hope more then they understood. (ll. 19–24)

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Diana Cecil’s admirers need not wonder why they admire her, but rather, in order to truly admire, they must understand what it is they are admiring; “[t]he mystery of Diana’s ‘rare beauty’ […] is  to be made understandable,” justifying the following sequence of poems.48 Black is the most celebrated color among Herbert’s love lyrics, but not the only one: he also wrote a series of poems celebrating “The Brown Beauty,” “The Green-Sickness Beauty,” a “white”haired beauty.49 That his chief interest here lay in the nature of these colors themselves, rather than the women who theoretically inspired them, is further suggested by a draft in Herbert’s hand among his papers in the National Library of Wales, which appears to be the beginning of a treatise on aesthetics. It begins: The new Philosophy of Beauty Of Beauty Beauty consists in Proportions and is defind by number & Proportion of the Parts. Proportion is 3fold, there is Proportion of {

Collour Figure or signature Order

Because Beauty is the most visible part of knowledge, I will beginne at the most visible part of beauty, wch is Collour […] In this part of Beauty women excell50

As well as recalling Donne’s Anniversaries (where Donne observes, “Beauty, that’s colour, and proportion,” l. 250), this draft treatise demonstrates the extent to which the female “subjects” of Herbert’s love lyrics are in fact often abstractions of aesthetic principles that he is exploring in his verse, an aesthetics concerned principally with the idea of “proportion” – a phrase which finds literal expression in the poem “To Mrs Diana Cecil”: Nor is that symmetry of parts and form divine      Made of one vulgar line,   Or such as any know how to define, But of proportions new, so well exprest, That the perfections in each part contest, Are beauties to themselves, and to the rest. (ll. 13–18)

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The poem suggests that any “part” of Diana Cecil, as it were, is perfect, and in its relation to the whole, an idea of perfect form. The poem posits this woman as the perfect representation of a metonymical example of a greater truth. Color becomes a metonym for beauty, and women become a metonym for color, as Herbert’s poems on color suggest – ostensibly praising female beauties, but more broadly treating a spectrum of colors, from pale, white beauty (the poem beginning “Innumerable Beauties, thou white haire,” the poems on green-sickness and anaemic pale beauty), to brown beauty (“The Brown Beauty”), and the many poems Herbert wrote on black beauty. Herbert’s most vivid female figure who does emerge from these poems, and who appears as the most awesome of all the “dark beauties” that he describes, is the figure of Death, in “To his Mistress for her true Picture.” This poem’s insistence on the transience of earthly beauty – “Flesh-beauty strikes me not at all, I know, / When thou do’st leave them to the grave, they show / Worse then they now show thee” (ll. 67–9) – may at first suggest that this will be a carpe diem verse, but there is no final turn urging young women to love while they still have time. Instead, the poem’s principal concern is with mimesis, and truthful and accurate representation. This theme appears in an earlier poem of Herbert’s in which he describes death in a specifically diplomatic metaphor. In the poem “Parted Souls” (beginning “I must depart, but like to his last breath”), Herbert describes how: Sleep, Death’s Embassador, and best Image, doth yours often so show, That thereby I must plainly know, Death unto us must be a freedom and a rest. (ll. 21–4)

In the year Herbert composed this poem about “Death’s Embassador,” 1608, he himself stayed at an ambassador’s r­esidence  – that of George Carew in Paris. “Parted Souls” proposes that in the case of sleep and death, the original can truly be represented by its ambassador: sleep approximates death, and through sleep the speaker of the poem “must plainly know” (my emphasis) the qualities of death (“freedom and a rest”). However, this certainty in the mimetic



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ability of the ambassador is questioned in Herbert’s later poem addressed to Death, where he begs her for “her true Picture”: Death, my lifes Mistress, and the soveraign Queen Of all that ever breath’d, though yet unseen, My heart doth love you best, yet I confess, Your picture I beheld, which doth express No such eye-taking beauty, you seem lean, Unless you’r mended since. Sure he did mean No honour to you, that did draw you so; Therefore I think it false: Besides, I know The picture Nature drew (which sure’s the best) Doth figure you by sleep and sweetest rest. (ll. 1–10)

The opening of the poem makes clear the speaker’s distrust in ­pictures representing something else, although this seems to be resolved when it is the “picture Nature drew.” Several lines later, however, Herbert asks: “Can pictures have more life / Then the original?” and concludes the poem by asking Death to “Grant me your true picture,” although by this point it is clear that neither the painter’s art nor nature’s picture is considered a truthful representation of “my lifes Mistress, and the soveraign Queen / Of all that ever breath’d” (ll. 1–2). This concern with mimesis, particularly of a sovereign, suggests the relevance of diplomatic theories to Herbert’s verse. As Craigwood argues, “such junctures of literature and ­diplomacy raise conceptual questions about representation,” and these conceptual questions, like Herbert’s verse, tend toward the abstract and the metaphysical. In particular, Craigwood identifies that an inherent problem in such cases of representation is the “tendency to reauthor and replace [the] original.”51 In the first part of this chapter I suggested that Herbert’s imitation of Marino tended toward a reauthoring of his verse, “blazing” Marino’s poems forth in manner which publicized them in England, but also appropriated them and reconfigured them. Early modern diplomatic theorists considered similar potential in the role of ambassadors, who metonymically, mimetically, ought to represent their sovereign, but might instead misrepresent or appropriate the role. This idea of true ambassadorial representation of the sovereign was a theorized ideal, particularly in Gentili’s De legationibus,

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where he engaged in the critical dialogue surrounding the “perfect ambassador,” begun with Torquato Tasso’s Il Messaggiero, written in the early 1580s. Il Messaggiero depicts the author in conversation with an angel, discussing, among other things, the political and ethical responsibilities of the ambassador, in particular the ambassador’s control over his instructions and the manner in which the ambassador should convey messages. The angel invokes the Homeric messengers who delivered the exact words they were instructed to convey, but modulates this by suggesting that in some circumstances the ambassador may alter or modify the message, as long as the essence remains the same. Gentili criticized this practice, alluding specifically to Tasso, and insisted on the importance of direct repetition.52 Gentili relates the ambassador’s perfect representation of the sovereign to Plato’s work on mimesis, and attempts to reconcile the  role of the ambassador with Plato’s argument in The Republic  that the mimetic arts may be counted as true arts only when they represent “sovereign truths.” These sovereign truths are the true conceptual forms of things created by the divine – the first of the tripartite schema that the Republic describes – whose truth is imperfectly expressed by individual things. These individual things are then imitatively copied by the mimetic arts, which, Plato suggests, are too distant from the sovereign forms to retain any truth. Herbert describes this familiar Platonic schema in his poem “The  Idea,” which opens: “All Beauties vulgar eyes on earth do see, / At best but some imperfect Copies be, / Of those the Heavens did at first decree” (ll. 1–3).53 The addressee of the poem is an “­imperfect copy” of the perfect “idea” which created them; they will eventually discard their “outward clay” and ascend: “Thus from above I doubt not to be behold / Your second self renew’d in your own mold, / And rising thence fairer then can be told” (ll.  73–5). The  perfect “idea,” Herbert here suggests, cannot be “told” or imitated, and the same thought is present in the poem’s concluding lines: “If the picture can / Here entertain a loving absent man, / Much more th’Idea where you first began” (ll. 91–3). Herbert’s epistemology, outlined in De Veritate, tries to reconcile this disjuncture between the perfect “idea” and the mimetic approximation of it. De Veritate offers a kind of taxonomy of different

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kinds of truth, proposing a quadripartite schema: veritas rei, which is the equivalent of the Platonic “idea,” an invariable, sovereign truth; veritas apparentiae, the truth of appearance, which is “highly conditional” because it comprises the variant modes through which objects present themselves; veritas conceptus, the truth of concept, which is the subjective perception and also the function of  the sensory organs; and finally, the veritas intellectus, the truth  of intellect.54 This final kind of truth, like veritas rei, is absolute and exists without error; it reconstitutes veritas rei through deciphering the veritas apparentiae and veritas conceptus. These intermediary truths, bookended by the inviolable veritas rei and veritas intellectus, are where errors (or lies) can be introduced, either as something appears to be other than it is, or as the perceptions of the senses are deceived or mistaken. Thus, Gavin Herbertson argues, the veritas apparentiae that the ambassador cultivates must be disingenuous, as they are trying to approximate the veritas rei of the sovereign, rather than their own truth, but this can nevertheless have an ethical and epistemological truth, as the veritas intellectus can decipher this representative truth to approach the veritas rei of the sovereign.55 Herbert’s epistemology, Herbertson suggests, helps to reconcile the tension between Gentili’s “perfect” (and therefore theoretical) ambassador, and the position of Jean Hotman (another diplomat acquainted with Sidney), who argued of ambassadors that “there is not almost any publike charge, wherein there is more lying, and sometimes by the Masters commaundment, and for the good of his service,” a statement echoed by Wotton’s remark about ambassadors being honest men “sent to lie abroad.”56 Herbert’s epistemology suggests that a good ambassador, by way of deception, can best approximate the absolute truth. While this attempts to reconcile the tension between the ambassador’s metonymic representation of sovereignty and honesty, when applied to the mimetic art of poetry, Herbert’s verse often seems to reach back through his forms of truth, only to give way in the face of the inexpressible veritas rei. Take, for example, Herbert’s series of poems on black beauty, where the woman stands metonymically for the color black, and the color stands metonymically for an aesthetic principle of beauty, and Herbert attempts to work backwards towards the veritas rei of

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knowledge. Knowledge is beyond mere beauty, because as his draft treatise on aesthetics suggests, “Beauty is the most visible part of knowledge.” Beauty, and the colors and women that figure it, is the veritas apparentiae of true knowledge. The sequence moves from the woman who is not “of Milk, or Snow,” to “Black eyes,” “Black beamy hairs,” and then “Black beauty,” before finally addressing “Thou Black.” In the final lines of “Another Sonnet to Black it self,” Herbert suggests the color’s affinity with knowledge: “when Earth’s common light shines to our eyes, / Thou so retir’st thy self, that thy disdain / All revelation unto Man denys” (ll. 12–14). The poem ends with a denial of revelation, of understanding, and this moment of dissolving into the unknowable or inexpressible is a repeated trope in Herbert’s verse. A particularly good example of this is the poem “To her Mind,” the final poem in a sequence begun by “A Description”: Exalted Mind! whose Character doth bear The first Idea of Perfection, whence Adam’s came, and stands so, how canst appear     In words? that only tell what hereTofore hath been; thou need’st as deep a sence As prophecy, since there’s no difference In telling what thou art, and what shall be: Then pardon me that Rapture do profess, At thy outside, that want, for what I see, Description, if here amaz’d I cesse Thus — Yet grant one Question, and no more, crav’d under Thy gracious leave, How, if thou would’st express Thy self to us, thou should’st be still a wonder? (ll. 1–14)

Here, language itself dissolves into a silence and a blank, and the poem finally closes with the rhetorical question asserting the miraculous nature of the mind, which contains within it the veritas rei, the “Idea of Perfection”: even if the mind could explain itself to the observer, such an explanation would be miraculous. The reference to Adam suggests that here Herbert is concerned specifically with the art of naming and perceiving things correctly, an art which reconciles the veritas rei and veritas intellectus through a congruence

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between veritas apparentiae and veritas conceptus – Adam’s mind was able to perceive and name all creatures on earth, while now Herbert asks how a mind “canst appear / In words?” The mind, which here metonymically stands for the divine “Idea,” is similarly impossible to express. Herbert’s epistemology in De Veritate theorized a way in which the perfect ambassador could be realized, and could, with personal integrity, stand absolutely metonymically for the sovereign. However, the reality of such perfect, mimetic representation of the veritas rei in his poetry dissolves into the inexpressible. In Herbert’s verse the microcosm cannot completely, mimetically, represent the macrocosm. Nevertheless, Herbert’s philosophy, ambassadorial pursuits, and poetry all display his keen engagement with the question of truthful representation. The first part of this chapter, which explored Herbert’s imitations of Marino’s verse, used as a starting point the potential, contradictory readings of the phrase “the little World the Great shall blaze” in Herbert’s poem “The Complement.” The verb “blaze,” I argued, carried the potential meanings of elucidating or consuming, and in its ambiguity points to the potential discontinuity between a part (the “little World,” or microcosm) and the whole (“the Great,” or macrocosm). The same ambiguity of phrase, and discontinuity between part and whole, is expressed in Herbert’s poem for Diana Cecil, when Herbert describes her “symmetry of parts and form divine” being constituted of “proportions new, so well exprest, / That the perfections in each part contest, / Are beauties to themselves, and to the rest” (ll. 13, 16–18). It seems the perfect example of the ideal form – the perfect representation of a greater truth, as “each part” has integrity to itself, “and to the rest.” But the sense of the phrase depends on “contest,” another ambiguous verb (like “strive,” discussed earlier in relation to Carew and Herbert’s elegies for Donne) which represents both discord (striving, contending) and ideal representation, in the now obsolete sense of bearing witness to something.57 Herbert seems particularly drawn in his verse to these verbs which signal both unity and tension. The rhyming of “exprest” with “contest” highlights the epistemological paradox at the heart of such ambiguous terms: in their very ambiguity they represent the inexpressible, as their ambiguity cannot be articulated.

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This chapter has explored the junctures between literature and embassy in Herbert’s works, both literal and more theoretical. Herbert’s adaptations and translations of Marino were a literal intersection of poetry and embassy, in the form of poetry that Herbert encountered and imitated when he was abroad. Carew’s and Herbert’s responses to Marino demonstrate that the embassy itself can be considered an institution of poetic production and circulation, an important physical (as well as theoretical) space for considering the confluences of embassy and literature. Similarly, considering Herbert’s adaptations of Marino and asserting that he and Carew were conduits for Marino’s verse in England, suggests that such works of poetic imitatio can be considered as a form of ambassadorial message, gathering information from abroad to transport home. This also links to the more theoretical convergence of embassy and poetry, as the ambassadorial art of representation (of the sovereign and of more specific messages) overlaps with literary theories of mimesis and truth. Here, Herbert’s epistemology and theories of truth demonstrate the essential d ­ ifference between ambassadorial mimesis and literary mimesis: where embassy combines both words and action, poetry is reliant on words alone, and in Herbert’s verse this language ­repeatedly dissolves into ­abstraction and the unknowable.

Notes  1 Herbert, The Life, ed. Shuttleworth, p. 89. All references in this chapter are to this edition.  2 See Herbert’s Life and also Mario Rossi, Herbert, especially vol. 2, chapter 4. See also Hugh Roberts, “Obscenity and the Politics of Authorship in Early Seventeenth-Century France: Guilaume Colletet and the Parnasse des poètes satyriques (1622),” French Studies, 68.1 (2014), 18–33.  3 Early poems inspired by, or written, during Herbert’s first trip abroad include: “I must depart,” “The State Progress of Ill,” and “Satyra Secunda.” Later poems inspired by his travels include “A Description,” “Upon Combing her Hair,” “Ditty in imitation of the Spanish Entre tanioque L’Avril,” “A Vision,” “Ditty to the tune of A che del Quantomio of Pesarino,” “A Ditty to the tune of

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Coseferite, made by Lorenzo Allegre to one sleeping to be sung,” and “Kissing.”  4 For the most important critical texts which established Herbert’s and Carew’s places in the “schools” of Donne and Jonson, see Hugh Kenner, Seventeenth Century Poetry: The Schools of Donne and Jonson (San Francisco, CA: Rhinehart Press, 1964); Earl Miner, The Metaphysical Mode from Donne to Cowley (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969) and The Cavalier Mode from Jonson to Cotton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971). For a discussion of Donne and Marino’s cultural similarities, see David Rees, “Marino and Donne,” in Harry Clayton Davis et al. (eds), Essays in Honour of John Humphreys Whitfield (London: St. George’s Press for the Department of Italian, University of Birmingham, 1975), pp. 181–97.  5 Scott Nixon, “Carew’s Response to Jonson and Donne,” Studies in English Literature, 39.1 (1999), 94.   6 Nixon, “Carew’s Response,” p. 90.   7 For more on the translations of Stanley and his associates, see Mario Praz, “Stanley, Sherburne and Ayres as Translators and Imitators of Italian, Spanish and French Poets,” Modern Language Review, 20.3–4 (1925), 280–94, 419–31, and Nicholas McDowell, “Reviving the ‘Cavalier Poets’: Coterie Verse and the Form of the Poetic Anthology,” Literature Compass, 7 (2010), 946–53 and “Towards Redefinition of Cavalier Poetics,” The Seventeenth Century, 32.4 (2017), 413–31 (415–19).  8 Nicholas McDowell, “Herrick and the Order of the Black Riband: Literary Community in Civil-War London and the Publication of Hesperides (1648),” in Ruth Connolly and Tom Cain (eds), “Lords of Wine and Oile”: Community and Conviviality in the Poetry of Robert Herrick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 106–26.   9 Giambattista Marino, Della Lira Del Cavalier, Parte terza, Divisa in amori, lodi, lagrime, devotioni & caprici (Venice, 1638). Now held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, 1063.a.22. 10 James Shirley, in Thomas Stanley, Poems and Translations (London, 1647), A2v. 11 Hampton, Fictions of Embassy. Izaak Walton, “The Life of Sir Henry Wotton,” in Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, ed. Izaak Walton (London: Thomas Maxey, 1651), b1r–c12v (c1v). 12 Herbert was familiar with several of these writers: he owned works by Gentili in his library, as well as poems by Tasso, and was a friend of Grotius. Full details of Herbert’s library will be provided in Dunstan Roberts’s forthcoming book, The Library of Lord Herbert of Cherbury

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(London: The Bibliographical Society). Joanna Craigwood, “The Poetics of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern England, 1580–1630” (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011), p. 4. See also Chapters 1, 2, and 9 in this volume by Anne-Marie ­Miller-Blaise, Greg Miller, and Cristina Malcolmson. 13 Craigwood, “The Poetics of Embassy,” p. 5. 14 For more on Stanley, Sherburne, and Marino, see McDowell, “Towards Redefinition of Cavalier Poetics,” pp. 415–19. 15 Giambattista Marino, Poesie Varie, ed. Benedetto Croce (Bari: G. Laterza & figli, 1913), p. 78. 16 Translation taken from James V. Mirollo, The Poet of the Marvellous: Giambattista Marino (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), p. 124. 17 Mirollo, Marino, p. 159. 18 Daniel’s “A Description of Beauty, translated out of Marino” was posthumously published in 1623, and Drummond’s works published between 1616 and 1656 contain some two dozen examples of complete or partial translations of Marino. For more on Drummond of Hawthornden’s role in introducing continental poetry to Britain, see Joshua Scodel, “Lyric,” in Gordon Braden, Robert Cummings, and Stuart Gillespie (eds), The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Vol. 2: 1550–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 212–47. 19 Nigel Smith, “Cross-Channel Cavaliers,” The Seventeenth Century, 32.4 (2017), 436. 20 Edward Hyde, The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, Lord High Chancellor of England, and Chancellor of the University of Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Printing House, 1759), pp. 15–16. 21 Brian C. Butler, “Manuscript Communities in Seventeenth-Century Verse: Thomas Carew and His Readers” (unpublished PhD thesis, University of North Carolina, 2002), p. 30. 22 Herbert’s elegy for Prince Henry appears in Josuah Sylvester, Lachrymae Lachrymarum (London: Humfrey Lownes, 1613). 23 Butler, “Manuscript Communities,” p. 42. 24 “The Complement” is titled “Love’s Complement” in the following manuscript sources: BL, Add. MS 21433, 35303, Harley MS 6057, Leeds Archives WYL156/237, St John’s College, Cambridge, MS S. 32 (James 423). Rossi, I, 195–6. 25 Herbert, The Poems, English and Latin, of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, ed. George Charles Moore Smith (New York: AMS Press, 1968), p. 140. First published 1923 by Clarendon Press (Oxford).

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Subsequent references, unless otherwise noted, are to this edition. Rossi, Herbert, vol. 1, pp. 195–6. 26 Thomas Carew, The Poems of Thomas Carew, with his Masque Coelum Britannicum, ed. Rhodes Dunlap (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957). 27 The image also recalls Donne’s “The Ecstasy”: “Our hands were firmly cemented / With fast balm which thence did spring,” The Complete Poems of John Donne, ed. Robin Robbins (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2008), p. 171. Herbert responded to this poem directly in his “An Ode upon a Question moved, Whether Love should continue for ever?” 28 Marino, Poesie Varie, p. 77. Translation taken from Joseph Tusiani, “Classics Revisited: Giambattista Marino and Gabriello Chiabrera,” Journal of Italian Translation, 5.2 (2010), 159. 29 Rossi, Herbert, vol. 1, p. 195. 30 Butler, “Manuscript Communities,” p. 69; Smith, Herbert, p. 449. 31 Quoted in James E. Ruoff, “Thomas Carew’s Early Reputation,” Notes and Queries, 202 (1957), 62. 32 Giambattista Marino, Marino e i Marinisti, ed. Giuseppe G. Ferrero (Milan: Ricciardi, 1954), p. 391. 33 Translation taken from Mirollo, Marino, p. 129. 34 Aristotle, Physics, 194 b 13. George Herbert plays with the same idea in Musae Responsoriae: “Sol generat populum luce fouente nouum” (“The sun produces a new people by its nurturing light”), “Augustissimo Potentissimóque Monarchie Iacobo,” The Complete Poetry, ed. John Drury and Victoria Moul (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2015), pp. 206–55 (206), l. 2. 35 Rossi, Herbert, vol.1, p. 196. Frank Warnke, “‘This Metaphysick Lord’: A Study of the Poetry of Lord Herbert of Cherbury” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1954), pp. 140–1; Warnke, “Marino and the English Metaphysicals,” Studies in the Renaissance, 2 (1955), 166. 36 McDowell, “Towards Redefinition of Cavalier Poetics,” pp. 415–19. 37 The 1665 printing of Herbert’s poems has “At whose peep” at the beginning of l. 52, which is preserved in Moore Smith’s edition of Herbert’s poem. However, the manuscript Bod. MS Rawlinson poet. 31, fo. 15r, which is perhaps the best extant witness of the poem, reads “To whose keepe,” which makes more sense, and is therefore the reading given here. 38 Hampton, Literature and Diplomacy, p. 9. Alberico Gentili, De legationibus libri tres, trans. Gordon J. Laing, 2 vols (New York: Oxford University Press, 1924), vol. 2, p. 139.

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39 Jean Hotman, The Ambassador (London: V[alentine] S[immes], 1603), F1r. 40 Hill, Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury. 41 A. J. Loomie, “Wotton, Sir Henry (1586–1639),” ODNB [Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]. For more on Gentili see Thomas E. Holland, “Alberico Gentili,” in Studies in International Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), 1–39; Gezina van der Molen, Alberico Gentili and the Development of International Law: His Life, Work and Times (Amsterdam: H. J. Paris, 1937); Artemis Gause, “Gentili, Alberico (1552–1608),” ODNB. 42 For more on Gentili’s dedication to Sidney, see Craigwood, “The Poetics of Embassy,” especially chapter 1; Katherine Duncan-Jones, Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1991), p.  271; Jan van Dorsten, Poets, Patrons, and Professors: Sir Philip Sidney, Daniel Rogers, and the Leiden Humanists (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 91. 43 Craigwood, “The Poetics of Embassy,” p. 39. 44 Four of these were bequeathed to Jesus College, Oxford: G.6.25 (1–3) Gall.; G.6.21 (1) Gall. The fifth book is at the National Library of Wales, MS 5298E. 45 Victor Stater, “Vere, Henry de, eighteenth earl of Oxford (­ 1593–1625),” ODNB. 46 Mirollo, Marino, p. 255. 47 Julia Griffin, “Studies in the Literary Life of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury” (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1993), pp. 48–9. 48 Ronald E. McFarland, “The Rhetoric of Optics in Lord Herbert’s Poems to Diana Cecil,” Medievalia et Humanistica, 5.2 (1974), 219. 49 For a study of Herbert and Carew’s poems on green-sickness, another example of verses that they may have written in response to one another during their time in France, see Ronald E. McFarland, “The Rhetoric of Medicine: Lord Herbert’s and Thomas Carew’s Poems of GreenSickness,” Journal of the Historical and Allied Sciences, 30.3 (1975). 50 National Library of Wales, HCMP, E2/6/3. A full transcription of the draft is provided in Rossi, Herbert, vol. 3, Appendix 18, pp. 442–3. 51 Craigwood, “The Poetics of Embassy,” p. 19. 52 For more on Gentili’s idea of the perfect ambassador, see Ursula Vollerthun and J. L. Richardson (eds), The Idea of International Society: Erasmus, Vitoria, Gentili and Grotius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 106–44. 53 The poem takes as its central focus Plato’s doctrine of “ideas” as described in the Parmenides.



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54 Herbert, De Veritate, p. 84. 55 Gavin Herbertson, “‘Death’s Embassadour’: Herbert of Cherbury in his Diplomatic Contexts,” Porridge (May 6, 2017), porridgemaga​ zine.com/2017/05/06/deaths-embassadour-herbert-of-cherbury-in-his-­ diplomatic-contexts/ (accessed 24 September 2021). 56 Hotman, E6r and Walton, “The Life of Sir Henry Wotton,” fo. c1v. 57 OED, “contest,” v. 2 and 4.

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12 George Herbert and three French Protestant poets (Chandieu, Grévin, Sponde) Guillaume Coatalen

Elizabethan sonneteers were deeply influenced by their French counterparts. Sometimes their sonnets appear faithful to their French originals, as in Spenser’s translations of Du Bellay’s Songes.1 Literary critics may be inclined to believe that French and English verse had less in common by the 1620s. After all, the Petrarchan sonnet sequence had gradually fallen out of fashion after the sonnet craze in the 1590s, and Shakespeare’s ultimate anti-Petrarchan collection of sonnets seemed to express the exhaustion of the genre, even though such sequences were still widely read.2 Consequently, the influence of French (and Italian) Petrarchan sources waned. Slightly later, in “Jordan (I),” George Herbert explicitly rejects the amorous discourse developed in such poems to devote himself to religious verse, in keeping with the sentiments and intentions of his two sonnets to his mother in 1610. When Herbert composed the poems which made up The Temple, older Petrarchan verse in French was nevertheless still reasonably popular at court (as was the “parody,” a practice close to what we would label an ­imitation – as in George Herbert’s own poem by that title). By the early seventeenth century in France, though the earlier more allegorical baroque vein remained, Malherbes’s smooth, clear style was clearly ascendant at the French court, while in England, John Donne’s metaphysical conceits still flourished. English poets continued to draw from earlier French models; Joshua Sylvester’s translation of Du Bartas’s La Sepmaine, for example, was hugely successful well into the seventeenth century. More surprisingly, Desportes’s “Spiritual

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sonnets” were translated into English as late as the 1630s, forty years after they were published in French.3 In short, French poets were still influential and very much read in England when Herbert built his verbal temple. What’s more, there is evidence that they contributed significantly to Herbert’s distinctive style. Such a quintessentially English work as Herbert’s Temple (1633), which seems to claim the Scriptures as its chief inspiration, might seem an unlikely candidate for such a discussion of stylistic influence. Many critics, including Helen Wilcox,4 have argued that Herbert’s English poems are deeply indebted to the Countess of Pembroke’s “translations” of the Psalms into metrical English verse. Since she was the poet’s kinswoman, albeit distant, the influence is likely. Philip Sidney’s sonnets and William Alabaster’s conceits are sources, too, probably, among others. Because the Church of England, with which Herbert is often associated, has long been treated as a predominantly national reaction against the Catholic faith in England and on the Continent, few attempts have been made to investigate possible influences by French religious poets. Herbert’s Temple is widely considered the source of a rich tradition illustrated by Christopher Harvey, Thomas Vaughan, and Thomas Traherne, to name but the most famous poets in the poetic genealogy. Herbert’s debts to the French tradition are not immediately apparent, nor does Helen Wilcox’s standard edition of his English poems record a single parallel taken from the French canon. Nevertheless, there is considerable evidence that French verse left a significant mark on George Herbert. Due to his aristocratic background, Herbert knew French, a language all courtiers were expected to master, seeking to perfect it during his time as Cambridge orator,5 and even if he never set foot on French soil, his brothers Edward and Henry were familiar with the country. Edward Herbert of Cherbury traveled to France as early as 1608 with Aurelian Townsend and was introduced to the French court by Sir George Carew, the English ambassador. Edward became friends with Henri of Montmorency, the connétable of France, and spent some time with Isaac Casaubon in Paris. He fought as a soldier on the Continent, notably in the Languedoc, from 1614 to 1616.6 From 1619 to 1624, he was engaged in diplomatic missions in Paris. Between 1614 and 1618, George sent his

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famous letter to Henry, who was residing in Paris, encouraging him to be “covetous … of all good … in Frenchmen, whether it be in knowledge, or in fashion, or in word.”7 Henry, the younger brother of Edward and George, was sent to France in the summer of 1615 to pursue his education and stayed with his brother in the spring of 1619 when Edward was appointed ambassador to France. Edward participated in the negotiations toward a match between Princess Henrietta Maria and Prince Charles, returned to England in 1621, and visited France again in 1623.8 His brothers’ presence in France increases the likelihood that George Herbert himself became intimately acquainted with the country’s literary culture. The poet’s familiarity with French verse seems indisputable. Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise has expertly examined the ­connections between Herbert’s French readings and his brothers’ repeated and lengthy stays in France.9 It is likely that they brought back religious, scientific, historical, mathematical, musical, and philosophical books; based on what we know from Edward’s gifts of his Latin and Greek works to Jesus College, Oxford University, they may very well have acquired printed or manuscript copies of French Protestant verse. Building on the work of Miller-Blaise, who rightly points out that George Herbert must have been a reader of Du Bartas, among other French poets, this essay examines the influence of three Protestant poets, namely Chandieu, Grévin, and Sponde, on George Herbert. Confessional wars and the persecution of Protestants in France led to a massive Huguenot immigration to England. In the second half of the sixteenth century, “well over 10,000 Protestants from northwest Europe fled to England,” with peaks in the 1570s and 1580s.10 The refugees came with their books, which doubtless included French Protestant verse; the books were borrowed and lent, they circulated. Such verse played a central part in consolidating their faith. Herbert’s brothers may have brought back poems in their luggage, or Herbert may have had access to Huguenot copies. George Herbert wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury11 and to Francis Bacon12 about the licensing of foreign books. He was worried about plans afoot to grant a monopoly on foreign books, which would have made the importation of books from abroad and their printing expensive for the library – and Cambridge s­ tudents,

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for whom such material was essential reading. Marian exiles brought editions printed in Geneva. In short, there was a vibrant market for, and circulation of, French books in England.13 The presence of French books in England partly explains George Herbert’s access to French verse. What’s more, books were printed in French in England. In 1569, Raphaël Micheli’s Premier Livre des poemes was printed in London by John Charlewood and dedicated to Sir Amias Paulet. Stéphan Geonget has shown that this was in fact a reprint under another name of Louis Le Caron’s collection.14 John Charlewood printed Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella, Giordano Bruno, and other Italian works. The majority of French books printed in London were French language textbooks such as those of Sainliens and Bellot.15 More to the point for our discussion is Marin Le Saulx’s verse printed by the famous Huguenot printer Thomas Vautrollier in 1577.16 Le Saulx’s collection of sonnets presents two poems per page, the second one answering the first, a mode of poetic conversation between poems within a sequence that one finds in less formulaic and more subtle, complicated, and sustained ways in Herbert’s Temple. Various copies of the French poets’ collections of poems have survived in British libraries, but it is not always possible to know when they entered the collections. Copies held in the UK include Exeter Cathedral’s 1588 copy of Jean de Sponde’s Meditations sur les psaumes, and Exeter University’s 1606 and 1641 editions of Octonaires mis en musique par Claude Le Jeune.17

The Poets A brief introduction to the three French poets under consideration as influences is in order here, since they are not widely known in the English-speaking world. Antoine de la Roche Chandieu (1534–91) was a theologian, a poet, and a diplomat. One of his religious pamphlets was printed in Cambridge by Thomas Thomas, the author of the famous Latin–English dictionary and printer for the university.18 A few works of his were translated into English, such as his meditations on Psalm  32,19 and a theological treatise,20 which Herbert

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may very well have read in the original Latin.21 A quick perusal of the h ­ oldings as recorded by COPAC shows that major British university and church libraries own, sometimes, several copies of his writings, which attests to his popularity in the Elizabethan and Jacobean reigns, as does the number of English citations of his works.22 While studying divinity, in his private devotions, or, later in his life, preparing sermons, Herbert may have turned to his Octonaires. The Octonaires were translated into Latin by Jean Jacquemot in a typically humanist spirit which considered works in Latin would last longer than in the vernacular and immediately have a larger international audience, without need of translation. Herbert may have read the Octonaires in Latin as well. In an important contribution on the Octonaires’ design,23 Olivier Millet remarks that the work launched a poetic subgenre in France on the world’s vanity which flourished in the seventeenth century. It was the model for Joseph du Chesne’s Morocosmie ou de la folie, vanité et inconstance du monde, published in 1583. Du Chesne was a Protestant, Henri IV’s doctor, and studied medicine in Bordeaux at the same time as Du Bartas. The topos of the world’s vanity was just as common in England and represented by Spenser’s Complaints or Visions of the World’s Vanitie, a translation of Du Bellay’s Songes. Jean de Sponde (1557–95) was the author of an edition of Homer with Latin commentary (printed 1583). He stopped composing love poetry and took up instead the composition of religious verse in 1582 after reading the Psalms, publishing Méditations sur les psaumes avec un essay de quelques poèmes chrestiens (1588). In 1593, he converted to Catholicism while in prison and spent the rest of his days writing against Calvinist theology, which would not have prevented Herbert from reading his earlier Protestant verse. Sponde’s poems appeared in anthologies from 1597 to 1611 and then fell into complete oblivion before Alan Boase rediscovered his sonnets on death in 1939.24 Jacques Grévin (1538–70) was Ronsard’s disciple and a ­physician. He wrote a treatise on poisons which he dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I, and which is mentioned in Speculum Mundi, a work printed in Cambridge in 1635. Grévin was a playwright; his Théâtre (1561) included two comedies and one tragedy, along



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with verse and two critical pieces on drama. His best-known work, the satirical poetic collection Gélodacrye (“laughter and tears” in Greek), was added to an augmented edition in 1561. He traveled to England, was received by Queen Elizabeth in 1560, shortly after her accession, and wrote sonnets on England and Flanders.

The Comparison The three Protestant poets, writing in French in an earlier period, are at two removes from Herbert’s English poems. This is not necessarily a problem for readers – learned readers tend to read works from the past, and George Herbert translated, or refers to, earlier writers: John Valdesso, among others. When John Donne’s persona describes his library in his study at Lincoln Inn in his first satire, he ends with a description of his copies of “Giddy, fantastic poets of each land” (l. 10).25 Centuries before comparative literature was taught in universities, Elizabethan students read verse from various lands, the most obvious sources being Italy, France, and Spain. Perhaps Chandieu, Sponde, and Grévin were among the poets Donne had in mind. Writing a few years later, George Herbert may have had a library quite like Donne’s. Furthermore, nostalgia for the Elizabethan age was common enough in the Jacobean and Caroline reigns. English poets read verse from earlier periods, certainly not just the most recent. It is helpful to distinguish between the treatment of ­classical ­languages and vernacular ones in early modern England. Vernacular sources are often omitted in the margins of printed or manuscript texts, Du Bartas being a notable exception, whereas sources in Latin and Greek are duly recorded. Latin, and to a lesser extent Greek, are often quoted in the original and not seen as, or at least not treated like, a foreign language. Montaigne quotes in Latin, which he sometimes paraphrases or translates. The Temple does not contain a single quotation in French, nor does it signal borrowings (apart from the Scriptures) in any language. It is interesting to note that the Williams and Bodleian manuscripts italicize some phrases that are quotations, a common practice in printed books meant to help commonplacing. In the absence of translations or paraphrases from bits

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of French poems, its influence is more difficult to pinpoint. I would like to argue it is still felt. Verse in French and Italian is rare in Jacobean commonplace books. Oxford students kept amorous songs in French in commonplace books, as in Bodleian manuscript Rawlinson D 431.26 Religious verse in French was dedicated by one Pierre Menjot to James I in 1613, “Meditation sur la peregrination mondaine,” a 150-verse long piece kept in British Library Royal manuscript 16 E XXXIV. The calligrapher Esther Inglis penned a beautifully illustrated copy of the Octonaires in an English translation in 1600 (Folger MS V.a.91) and 1607 (Folger MS V.a.92) and other bilingual copies of the same poems. It is difficult to know if Herbert knew of this translation, but the manuscripts prove Chandieu’s work was known in the British Isles under James I. Another copy survives in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.27 Pibrac’s immensely successful moral quatrains were also copied by Inglis on several occasions and translated into English by Joshua Sylvester and first printed in 1605. There is evidence one of her patrons was Sir Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, the surviving younger brother of Sir Philip Sidney and Lady Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. Inglis’s first manuscript gift, in 1605, was to Lady Susan Herbert, Countess of Montgomery, who was married to Mary Sidney’s son Philip in 1604. Inglis was the daughter of a refugee Huguenot family with a strong humanist heritage. She transcribed settings of the Octonaires as well. It is not unreasonable to speculate that members of the Herbert family performed them together.28 The translation of Desportes’s “Spiritual sonnets” by Scudamour in the 1630s proves that Counter-Reformation verse was read in England and valued by Protestant readers of various leanings. Nor did English readers like him have qualms about reading Calvinist material. The general design of each of the three French poets’ works differs from the Temple’s, but there are nevertheless some striking continuities. Chandieu’s collection is composed solely of octonaries. Herbert includes ten poems of eight lines, a form not often used in English verse at the time. Herbert’s choice of the octonary may owe much to Chandieu. In addition to his profane and religious sonnets, Grévin was a pamphleteer, a public figure, a playwright, and a medical doctor,

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while Herbert wrote fewer works, which were aimed almost exclusively at edifying himself, his flock, Christians in general, and other ministers, though it seems unclear whether Herbert intended his parishioners as an audience, given that he addresses God directly, contributing to what Malcolmson calls the “sincerity effect” of his poetry.29 It would be difficult to find a writer in the Elizabethan, or Jacobean reigns who tried his hand at so many literary genres as Grévin. Most of his sonnets are dedicated to persons whose names are inscribed in the verse, not unlike Ben Jonson’s epigrams written about, or addressed to, his friends and public figures. Grévin only rarely develops a more private voice, but when he does, the sonnet sounds like one of Herbert’s “private ejaculations,” as we shall see in sonnets 3 and 4 from his Gélodacrye, particularly. Their oral nature is quite striking. Indeed, they give the reader the illusion of hearing the sinner’s voice, pleading like an unperfect actor on the conscience’s stage – hence the stammering-like repetitions. Like Grévin, Herbert directly addresses God in an intimate manner. The ultimate model for both poets is the Psalms and, to a lesser extent, Job. Sponde’s design in his “Sonnets on Death,” which follow the “Stances de la mort” in print, as shown perceptively by Christiane Deloince-Louette,30 is closer to Herbert’s, since the sonnet sequence  is built like a temple in three sections: (1) man’s vain attempts to reach God through extraordinary deeds (2); man’s ensnarement in the world’s inconstancy; and (3) man’s discovery of death as the path to heaven. This structure to a certain extent resembles symbolically the portico, and the outer and inner sanctuaries, a tripartite structure characteristic of the temple of Solomon. Herbert’s “Church” is also tripartite, though the building is considerably larger, and its design not as clearly marked. Sponde mixes two modes just like Herbert: sometimes the poet’s “I” seems to address God and the reader intimately and privately; more often and more forthrightly in Sponde’s sacred poems, the preacherpoet addresses his flock. One major difference resides in the evident absence of liturgical poems in all three of our French sources, due to their adherence to a more austere form of Calvinism. Chandieu may have provided a model for plainness and ­sweetness, mainly but not exclusively a musical quality, two essential traits of Herbert’s style, while Sponde and Grévin appealed more to the poet’s

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sense of drama and staging inner spiritual conflicts. “Sweetness,” a deceptively vague and polysemic term, defined the highest quality that verse could possess, according to the standards of the 1630s and 1640s. It was fundamentally a musical trait, contrary to the OED’s entry, which applies it to painting in the Restoration period. Interestingly, collections of verse by Bèze, Chandieu, and Pibrac were printed alongside Bèze’s scriptural tragedy Abraham’s Sacrifice in Geneva in 1606, and early readers would have spotted similarities between the lyric and the tragic. Herbert’s plainness has not been discussed by many critics since the early 1980s, apart from Helen Wilcox and Anne-Marie ­Miller-Blaise who, in keeping with earlier discussion of Herbert’s “plain style” by Marcus, Manley, and others, attribute it to Sidney’s influence.31 This essential stylistic trait owes much to scriptural models. Herbert’s poems are predominantly based on the Scriptures. The French poets, too, composed their works almost entirely on scriptural sources, notably the Psalms.32 The occurrence of identical tropes of biblical origin is not in the least surprising. The allegory of the sinner as a reeling boat in a tempest, which occurs in Sponde and Grévin, is given a striking twist in Herbert’s Temple, in the beginning of “The Bag” (ll. 1–5): “Away despair! my gracious Lord doth heare. / Though windes and waves assault my keel, / He doth preserve it: he doth steer, / Ev’n when the boat seems most to reel. / Storms are the triumph of his art.” Herbert seems to take a biblical negative and turn it into a positive. Instead of an evil to be fled, storms make visible God’s omnipotence, which is true also of Donne’s “Hymn to Christ at the author’s last going into Germany.” They show us that it is in God alone that we can trust for our safety. God displays his “art” through storms. The source is Psalm 55:8: “I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest,” where the psalmist expresses his desire to flee the wickedness of the world, and also Job 30:22: “Thou liftest me up to the wind; thou causest me to ride upon it, and dissolvest my substance.”33 Beyond this common material, Herbert may have found his unique poetic voice, as it is heard in his Temple, by listening to these French ones. It seems that he was inspired by the personal appropriation of scriptural material coupled with the development of a markedly oral style. While the French poets remain somewhat solemn



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and ­liturgical in tone, Herbert lays the emphasis on the preacher’s modulating voice and sometimes vehement tone, in the manner of Calvin, when, for instance, he resists Satan’s assaults: let vs resist all suche things. For why? If we be so lazie as to make excuse, that bycause the world is wicked & froward, wee may well do as other do: that is ouerfond. For lo, here is Iob set before vs to condemne vs. For if he in those dayes withdrewe himselfe frō euill: ought not wee to do the like in these dayes too? Specially seeing that God gyueth vs warning, that wee cannot lyue holily without greate battelles and great hardinesse? And what more?34

A sense of intimacy and an ear for musical cadences may have drawn Herbert to Chandieu, whose Octonaries were set to music and printed in 1582 and 1606. Herbert, who played the lute, may have known the musical adaptations, he may even have sung the short pieces himself. More generally, the influence on Herbert of court or religious verse adapted to be sung to the lute has been understudied and underemphasized. Malcolmson discusses the family music and its likely manifestation in “Parodie” and other poems.35 The influence of musical interpretations of poems on verse not set to music has not been fully assessed, probably because of the existence of two distinct – albeit related – fields: musicology and literature. The poetic sources of madrigals have been extensively researched, but not the subtle borrowings of poets from verse set to music. The extended anaphora which is almost a refrain  –  “Quand on arrestera  ...” and its subtle final variation “Lors on ­arrestera  ...”  – bear pronounced rhetorical, structural, and dramatic similarities to poems like “The Sacrifice” and its refrain “Was ever grief like mine?,” the poem ending not with yet another expected repetition of a question but with a simple, clear answer: “Never was grief like mine.” “Octonaire V” contains a type of allegorical questioning often found in The Temple. The striking mise-en-page is also comparable with most of Herbert’s poems. The complicated stanza structure of some of the Octonaires, such as the fifth, would have appealed to Herbert whose own poems often exhibit the same complexity. The complicated stanza structure would have appealed to him, and the last line is strongly reminiscent of “repining restlesse / that may toss him to my breast” (“The Pulley,” ll. 17, 20):

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Vous, Fleuves et Ruisseaux, et vous, claires Fonteines, De qui le glissant pas Se roule roule en bas, Dites-moi la raison de vos tant longues peines. C’est pour monstrer au doigt que ta vie en ce Monde S’enfuit ainsi que l’onde, Et ta felicité Ne s’arrête icy-bas où rien n’est arresté. Yow fontains claire, yow floods, and brookes that runs apaine And with a slydeing pace Roules out your restles race Tell me I yow intreat, the cause of your long Paine It is to figure foorth, our lyues as fast to flie As we the streames do see, And that our onely bliss Rests no wayes heere below, where each thing restles is.36

George Herbert’s poems make use of similarly complex ­eight-line, rhymed stanzas: “The Glance,” “Frailtie,” “Artillerie,” “Humilitie,” and “The 23rd Psalm.” Chandieu’s octonaries end with the satisfying closure of an expected rhymed alexandrine after a short six-syllable line. Except for “Artillerie,” Herbert’s end with an emphatically diminished, rhymed final line. Such stanzas of varying length serve several purposes. In poems like “The Collar,” they emphasize both the absence of concord and the final resolution of the spiritual conflict. Whether it is Chandieu or Herbert, the stanza’s chaotic structure acts as a decoy, since a closer reading (or an attentive listening to a recitation) brings to light what one sees clearly in the English version in the Folger manuscript – rhyming couplets or simply isometrical lines. In some instances, Herbert’s effect is not so much of chaos as of dance, as in the seven-line stanzas of “The Flower”: “Grief melts away / Like snow in May, / As if there were no such cold thing” (ll. 5–7). One last essential purpose of the complex stanza structure is to provide a suitably supple structure to express the finer inflexions of spiritual anguish, like an actor on a stage. But while Chandieu uses these regular variations to show how changing the world is, Herbert celebrates divine harmony, even though some of his most innovative poems expose the sinner’s restlessness, as in “The Pulley” (ll. 17

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and 20): “repining restlessnesse […] may tosse him to my breast.” Undoubtedly, Herbert’s poetic project differs from Chandieu’s, who concentrates solely on the world’s vanity, which is just one of the topics Herbert explores in his vast temple. As shown by Olivier Millet, the Octonaires constitute a preparation for prayer, and quite a few poems placed in “The Church” address not being able to pray, asking for divine help, as in “Deniall.” Unlike Sponde, Herbert did not compose an entire collection on the topic of death’s presence, though it is nevertheless undeniable in The Temple. For instance, “Mortification” explores the many forms of death in a man’s life. Herbert’s verse does not contain the typically Calvinist image of decomposing corpses, sinews, and bones present in Sponde, and when it does, the bones become flutes, singing praise to the Lord.37 There are, nevertheless, two areas where Sponde may have influenced Herbert: in vehemence and musical repetition. Vehemence, in sixteenth-century rhetoric vehementia, is particularly evident in “The Collar” and its likely homonym (“choler”). This depiction of the poet’s revolt against God’s discipline is comparable in tone and diction with the two stanzas from Sponde’s “Stances sur la mort” with its “Et quoi?,” better translated by “What?” and its intimate use of “tu” (thou). “What? shall I ever sigh and pine?” (“The Collar,” l.3) recalls “Et quoy? m’envies-tu ton bien que je souhaite?” and the accumulation of insistent negative constructions in the same poem echoes Sponde’s “Non, ce ne m’est que mal.” Herbert’s orality may have partly found its source in the French poet’s, while both were indebted to the genre of the sermon. More fundamentally still, this very same line, “Non, ce ne m’est que mal, mais mal plein d’esperance,” with its subtle Herbertian modulation, avant la lettre, from “que mal” to “mais mal,” powerfully encapsulates a major belief in divine grace in the midst of despair. The model for vehementia in French Calvinist verse, sermons, and pamphlets resides in Calvin’s own practice.38 The end of Herbert’s poem, with its return to a far more measured plain style, does not merely correct the poet’s anger but agrees with Calvin’s perception of vehementia which is most effective when based on simple language as opposed to the excesses of the grand style, as in the following passage taken from his Communion sermon for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper in September 1549:

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When we see that God nourishes our bodies, that is a blessing already. But we don’t come here to gorge ourselves by eating and drinking. Why then? It is to signify to us that we ought not to seek here our physical life. For “we have homes to eat and to drink in,” as St. Paul says [1 Cor 11:22], therefore we do not come here to nourish our bodies. What then? We have testimony that Jesus Christ’s wish here is to feed our souls. And will our souls be fed by bread and wine? No, not at all!39

God’s majesty is indeed experienced as inseparable from simplicity.40 The smooth final couplet in “The Collar” (ll. 35–6), “Methoughts I heard one calling, Child / And I reply’d, My Lord,” suggests the pathos in the halting rhetoric of prayer typical of the Psalms and constitutes no more than a stage or step, that of the child’s immature voice, perhaps, before ascending to a far more mature and measured voice. Still, Herbert elsewhere asserts, plainly and simply, at the end of “H. Baptisme (II)”: “Childhood is health” (l. 5). Ultimately, Sponde and Herbert explore the same situation, in the theatrical sense of the word, of the sinner paralyzed by his own sense of unworthiness. Thus, “observing me grow slack / from my first entrance in” (“Love (III),” ll. 3–4) is reminiscent of Sponde’s opening lines, “Mais dispose, mon Dieu, ma tremblante impuissance / A ces pesans fardeaux de ton obéyssance.” Sponde’s influence is not restricted to tone or figures of style. Herbert may have borrowed one of his favorite rhyme schemes from the poet. For example, the two stanzas from “Stances sur la mort” are sixains which follow the rhyme scheme aabccb used by Herbert in “Man’s Medley,” “The Invitation,” “The Banquet,” “The British Church,” “Nature,” “Repentance,” “Lent,” and “Life.” The sixain is also the most frequently used stanza41 in The Temple, predominantly associated with metrical adaptations of the Psalms, such as Sternhold and Hopkins’s version. Mario Richter points out the central part played by the antithesis and parallelism in Calvinist poetics,42 a combination often found in The Temple, as in “Justice (I)”: “Lord, thou didst make me, yet thou woundest me; /Lord, thou dost wound me, yet thou dost relieve me: /Lord, thou relievest, yet I die by thee: /Lord, thou dost kill me, yet thou dost reprieve me” (ll. 2–5), as well as in “A Clasping of Hands” or “A Wreath.”

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In his 1960 seminal study on metaphysical poets, Robert Ellrodt43 compared Grévin’s third sonnet in the second part of the Gélodacrye with John Donne’s Sonnet XIV, “Batter my heart, three person’d God.” Herbert too may have been influenced by some of his sonnets. They moved in the same circles. Donne was a dinner guest at Magdalen’s table when George was a boy. Donne preached Herbert’s mother’s commemorative sermons, published with Herbert’s Latin poems. It is more than likely they talked about poetry. The insistent repetition in “The harbingers are come. See, see their mark” (“The Forerunners,” l. 1) may owe something to Grévin’s epizeuxis “je voy, je voy” (La Gélodacrye II, “Sonnet 4,” l. 7). And the self-reflexive “arguments,” “cause” of a sinner debating with his conscience, is a trope exploited by Herbert in his most vehement pieces, “Thus argu’d into hopes, my thoughts reserved / No place for grief or fear” (“Affliction (I),” ll. 15–16). Many pages have been written about Herbert’s rhetoric, notably its dependence on Augustine’s rhetoric, but apart from Brian Vickers,44 few critics have analyzed Herbert’s use of precise figures such as the diacope or the epanalepsis. The ternary correspondence or parison between the three verbs and the three objects in Grévin’s third sonnet, “touche, époinçonne, entame / Le feu, le cueur, l’esprit” (La Gélodacrye II, “Sonnet 3,” ll. 7–8), is given a more perfect form in Herbert’s “The Call” (ll. 1–4): Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life: Such a Way, as gives us breath: Such a Truth, as ends all strife: Such a Life, as killeth death.

Beyond the use of particular figures of speech, like paronomasia, compare Sponde’s “bout”/“but” and Herbert’s “heaven”/“haven” in “The Size.” Herbert and his French counterparts share a deep distrust of quibbles or quiddities coupled with the conscious use of puns for a higher spiritual aim. “Envie” in Sponde’s “Stances de la mort” – (l. 10), “Mais tandis que je couve une si belle envie” – means longing but may be decomposed into “en vie,” “to be alive,” since the sinner longs to be alive after death. Given the circulation of texts from the Continent to England and the proximity of Herbert’s and the three earlier French poets’

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poetics, there is a distinct possibility Herbert founded his own ­aesthetics on theirs. The musical transmission of Chandieu’s octonaries may very well have played a substantive role in shaping Herbert’s smoothness, while Sponde’s and Grévin’s more oral and dramatic verse seem to have helped the poet to compose his more private and troubled ejaculations.

The Poems Chandieu, Octonaires I Quand on arrestera la course coutumiere Du grand Courrier des cieux qui porte la lumiere, Quand on arrestera l’an qui roule toujours Sur un char attelé de mois, d’heures, de jours, Quand on arrestera l’armée vagabonde Qui va courant la nuict par le vuide des cieux, Descochant contre nous les longs traits de ses yeux, Lors on arrestera l’inconstance du Monde.45 When one may firmely staye, the ordinary rout Of the great Poste of heav’n that beares the light about When one may firmely staye, the ever-rouling yeire On his triumphant Teeme, of months, of houres, of dayes: When one may firmely staye, the many squadrons cleere Of twincling starrs that in, the emptie welking strayes, Darting against our heades, the long beames of their eye: Then maye he firmely staye, the worlds inconstancie.46        Octonaires V Vous, Fleuves et Ruisseaux, et vous, claires Fonteines, De qui le glissant pas Se roule roule en bas, Dites-moi la raison de vos tant longues peines. C’est pour monstrer au doigt que ta vie en ce Monde S’enfuit ainsi que l’onde, Et ta felicité Ne s’arrête icy-bas où rien n’est arresté. Yow fontains claire, yow floods, and brookes that runs apaine And with a slydeing pace Roules out your restles race



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Tell me I yow intreat, the cause of your long Paine It is to figure foorth, our lyues as fast to flie As we the streames do see, And that our onely bliss Rests no wayes heere below, where each thing restles is47 Octonaires XXIX Plustost on pourra faire Le jour qui luit N’avoir plus pour contraire L’obscure nuit Et marier le feu Avecques l’onde, Que de conj oindre Dieu Avec le monde. Far sooner shall yee sie The faire day light No more opposite be To the blak night Far sooner may a man Ioin eaven and o The fyre and water, than The world and God.48 Jean de Sponde, “Stances de la mort” Mais dispose, mon Dieu, ma tremblante impuissance A ces pesans fardeaux de ton obéyssance: Si tu veux que je vive encore, je le veux. Et quoy? m’envies-tu ton bien que je souhaite? Car ce ne m’est que mal que la vie imparfaite, Qui languit sur la terre, et qui vivroit aux Cieux. Non, ce ne m’est que mal, mais mal plein d’esperance Qu’après les durs ennuis de ma longue souffrance, Tu m’estendras ta main, mon Dieu, pour me guerir. Mais tandis que je couve une si belle envie Puisqu’un Bien est le bout, et le but de ma vie, Appren-moi de bien vivre, afin de bien mourir.49 But incline, my God, my trembling impotence to those heavy burdens of your obedience; if you wish me to live still, I too wish it. So then, do you grudge me your bliss, for which I long? For there is only pain

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for me in this imperfect life which languishes on earth, and would live in heaven. Yes, it is only pain for me, but pain full of hope that after the harsh tortures of long suffering, you will stretch out your hand, my God, to heal me. But while I cherish so sweet a longing, since good is the end and the aim of my life, teach me to live well in order to die well.50 Jacques Grévin, La Gélodacrye II. Sonnet 3 Souffle dans moy, Seigneur, souffle dedans mon âme Une part seulement de ta saincte grandeur; Engrave ton vouloir au rocher de mon cueur Pour asseurer le feu qui mon esprit enflame. Supporte, Seigneur Dieu, l’imparfaict de ma flâme Qui deffault trop en moy: Ren toy le seul vainqueur, Et de ton grand pouvoir touche, époinçonne, entame Le feu, le cueur, l’esprit de moy, ton serviteur. Eslève quelquefois mon âme despétrée Du tombeau de ce corps qui la tient enserrée: Fay, fay la comparoir devant ta majesté: Autrement je ne puis, ne voyant que par songe, D’avec la chose vraye esplucher le mensonge Qui se masque aisément du nom de Vérité.51 Breathe into me, O Lord, breathe into my soul / A part only of your sacred mightiness / Engrave your will into the roc of my heart / To fuel the fire which enflames my spirit. / Bear, my Lord, the imperfect of my flame / Which falters too much in me: Be the only victor, / And with your great power move, prick, excite / The fire, heart and spirit of me your servant / Lift sometimes my entangled soul / From the tomb of this body which holds it enclosed / Summon it before your majesty / Or else I cannot, seeing only in dreams, / From the true object peel the lie / Which easily bears the masque of Truth. (My translation) Jacques Grévin, La Gélodacrye II. Sonnet 4 Délivre moy, Seigneur, de ceste mer profonde Où je vogue incertain, tire moy dans ton port: Environne mon cueur de ton rampart plus fort, Et vien me deffendant des soldats de ce monde: Envoy’moy ton esprit pour y faire la ronde, A fin qu’en pleine nuict on ne me fasse tort;

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George Herbert and three French Protestant poets 313 Autrement, Seigneur Dieu, je voy, je voy, la mort Qui me tire vaincu sur l’oubli de son onde. Les soldats ennemis qui me donnent l’assault, Et qui de mon rampart sont montez au plus hault, Ce sont les argumens de mon insuffisance: La cause du débat, c’est que trop follement J’ay voulu compasser en mon entendement Ton estre, ta grandeur, et ta Toute-puissance. Free me, Lord, from this deep sea / Where I sail uncertain, draw me to your haven / Surround my heart with your stronger rampart / And come protect me from the soldiers of this world / Send me your spirit to mount the guard / So that in the middle of the night I will not be hurt / Or else, my Lord, I see, I see, death / which pulls me vanquished from its oblivious waters / The enemy’s soldiers who assault me, / And who from my rampart have climbed to the highest, / Are the arguments of my insufficiency / The cause of the debate is that, like a fool, / I have tried to encompass in my understanding / Your being, your might and your limitless power. (My translation)

Notes  1 Andrew Hadfield, “Edmund Spenser’s Translations of Du Bellay in Jan van der Noot’s A Theatre for Voluptuous Worldlings,” in Fred Schurink, Tudor Translation: Early Modern Literature in History (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 143–60. I am greatly indebted to Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise and Greg Miller for very helpful comments and suggestions.   2 For testimony on evolving literary tastes at the close of the seventeenth century, see Guillaume Coatalen, “Dudley Carleton and ‘the libertie of old fashioned poetrie’ on 8 November 1596,” Notes and Queries, 56.4 (2009), 563–6.  3 See Guillaume Coatalen, “An English Translation of Desportes’ Christian Sonnets Presented to John Scudamour by Edward Ski[…],” The Review of English Studies, 65.271 (September 1, 2014), 619–46.  4 Herbert, English Poems, p. xxviii.   5 Kathleen Lambley, Teaching and Cultivation of the French Language in England during Tudor and Stuart Times, with an Introductory Chapter on the Preceding Period (Manchester: Manchester University Press,   1920), remains the standard account on the topic. Herbert

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­ astered French, Spanish and Italian perfectly during his time as m Cambridge orator, as noted by Izaak Walton, The Life of Mr. George Herbert (London: Thomas Newcomb, 1670), reprinted in George Herbert: The Complete English Works, ed. Ann Pasternak Slater (London: Everyman, 1995), p. 350, quoted by Drury, Music at Midnight, p. 115.   6 David A. Pailin, “Herbert, Edward, first Baron Herbert of Cherbury,” ODNB.   7 See Herbert, Works, p. 366.   8 “HERBERT, Sir Henry (1594–1673), of the Revels Office, Tuttle Street, Westminster and Woodford, Essex; later of Ribbesford, nr. Bewdley, Worcs. and James Street, Covent Garden, Mdx,” in The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1604–1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Available online: http://www.histparl.ac.uk/volume/1604-1629/member/herbertsir-henry-1594-1673 (accessed February 1, 2021).   9 Miller-Blaise, “George Herbert’s French Connections.” 10 Charles Littleton, “Acculturation and the French Church of London, 1600–circa 1640,” in Bertrand Van Ruymbeke and Randy J. Sparks (eds), Memory and Identity: The Huguenots in France and the Atlantic Diaspora (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), p. 90. 11 Herbert, Works, p. 466. 12 Herbert, Works, p. 467. 13 Margaret Lane Ford, “Importation of Printed Books into England and Scotland,” in Joseph Burney Trapp and Lotte Hellinga (eds), The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Vol. 3: 1400–1557 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 179–201. 14 I am grateful to Jean Balsamo for informing me about this point. Louis Le Caron (1534?–1613) was a jurist, poet, and philosopher. 15 Andrew Pettegree, Malcolm Walsby, and Alexander Wilkinson (eds), French Vernacular Books / Livres vernaculaires français (FB) (2 vols) Books Published in the French Language before 1601 / Livres imprimés en français avant 1601 (Brill: Leiden, 2007). 16 Marin Le Saulx, The anthropogamie en forme de dialogue par sonnets chrestiens (London: Thomas Vautrollier, 1577). I am grateful to Jean Balsamo for drawing my attention on the book. 17 See, too, the 1582 edition. 18 Antonii Sadeelis viri clarissimi vereqve theologi De rebvs grauissimis controversis dispvtationes accuratæ theologice et scholastice tractatae: quarum cataloqum sequens pagina demonstrabit (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1584).

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19 Moste excellent meditations vppon the xxxii. Psalme, written in Latin by that godly lerned diuine Antonie Sadel, and nowe newly translated into English, for all those which loue to reade the comfortable doctrine of remission of sinnes. By VV.VV. student (London: printed [by Thomas Dawson] for Tobie Cooke and Thomas Man, 1579). 20 A treatise touching the Word of God written, against the traditions of men: Handled both schoolelike, and diuinelike. Where also is set downe a true method to dispute diuinely and schoolelike. Made by A. Sadeele. And translated into English, by Iohn Coxe, minister of the vvord of God (London: printed [by T. East?] for John Harison, 1583). 21 Locus de Verbo Dei scripto, adversus humanas traditiones, t­heologicè & scholasticè tractatus. Ubi agitur de vera methodo theologicè simul, & scholasticè disputandi. Authore A. Sadeele (Morges: Joannes Le Preux, 1583). 22 See S. K. Barker, Protestantism, Poetry and Protest the Vernacular Writings of Antoine de Chandieu (c. 1534–1591) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), Appendix B, pp. 299–303. 23 Olivier Millet, “Théologie, encyclopédisme et rhétorique: la composition des cinquante Octonaires de la vanite et inconstance du monde d’Antoine de la Roche Chandieu,” Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte Jahrgang, 40.1–4 (2016), 17–34. 24 See Jean de Sponde, Méditations sur les Psaumes, ed. Sabine Lardon (Paris: Champion, 1996), pp. 11 and 497 for the list of printed anthologies. Raphael du Petit-Val, who produced Du Bartas’s Weeks, printed one of these. 25 John Donne, The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, Vol  7, Part 1, The Holy Sonnets, ed. Gary A. Stringer and Paul A. Parrish (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005). 26 See Joshua Eckhardt and Daniel Starza Smith (eds), Manuscript Miscellanies in Early Modern England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). 27 Recorded in the Perdita database: https://web.warwick.ac.uk/english/ perdita/html (accessed September 24, 2021). See too http://recirc.nui​ galway.ie/2017/06/digital-receptions-esther-inglis/ for Esther Inglis’ works on the Internet (accessed September 24, 2021). 28 I am grateful to Simon Jackson for pointing out Inglis’ connection with the Sidney–Herbert clan. See also Sarah Gwenth Ross’s “Esther Inglis: Linguist, Calligrapher, Miniaturist, and Christian Humanist,” in Julie D. Campbell and Anne R. Larsen (eds), Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), pp.  159–182, and Anneke Tjan-Bakker’s “Dame Flora’s Blossoms:

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Esther Inglis’s Flower Illustrated Manuscripts,” English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, 9 (2000), 49–72. 29 Malcolmson, Heart-Work, p. 211. 30 Christiane Deloince-Louette, “Du psaume au sonnet. Les sonnets sur la mort de Jean de Sponde,” Recherches et Travaux, Bulletin de l’Université de Stendhal-Grenoble, 3.58 (2000), 39–54. 31 Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise, “‘O write in brasse’: George Herbert’s ­trajectory from pen to print,” Études Épistémè, 21 (2012); Leah S. Marcus, “George Herbert and the Anglican Plain Style,” in Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (eds), “Too Rich to Clothe the Sunne”: Essays on George Herbert (Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press, 1980), pp. 179–93; Frank Manley, “Toward a Definition of Plain Style in the Poetry of George Herbert,” in Maynard Mack and George De Forest (eds), Poetic Traditions of the English Renaissance (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 203–17. 32 On this subject see Chapter 14 by Helen Wilcox, this volume. 33 King James Bible, 1611. 34 John Calvin, Sermons of Master Iohn Caluin, vpon the booke of Iob. Translated out of French by Arthur Golding (London, 1574), p. 20. 35 Cristina Malcolmson, “George Herbert and Coterie Verse,” George Herbert Journal, 18.1 (1994/5), 159–84. 36 Transcribed from Folger MS V.a.91. 37 “But thou wilt sinne and grief destroy; / That so the broken bones may joy, / And tune together in a well-set song, / Full of his praises” (“Repentance,” ll. 31–4). See also “Dooms-day.” 38 See Olivier Millet, Calvin et la dynamique de la parole: Étude de la rhétorique réformée (Geneva: Droz, 1992). Herbert’s “What?” may owe something to Jean Calvin’s “Et quoy! Croyez vous que vôtre Conseil soit meilleur que celuy de Dieu?” Lettres choisies (Ulric Liebpert, 1602), p. 330. 39 Quoted in Arjen Terlouw, “‘Naturally More Vehement and Intense’: Vehemence in Calvin’s Sermons on the Lord’s Supper,” Reformation & Renaissance Review, 20.1 (2018), 74. 40 Millet, “Antoine de la Roche Chandieu,” pp. 321–2. 41 For a detailed list of stanzas used in The Temple, see the appendix in Coatalen, “La strategie poétique de George Herbert” (unpublished PhD thesis, Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2002), vol. 2, pp. 427–30. 42 Mario Richter, Jean de Sponde et la langue poétique des protestants, trad. française Y. Bellenger and F. Roudaut (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2011), p. 49.

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43 Robert Ellrodt, L’Inspiration personnelle et l’esprit du temps chez les poètes métaphysiques anglais (Paris: Corti, 1960), vol. 2, pp. 259–60, n. 83. 44 Brian Vickers, “Rhetoric in Seventeenth-Century English Poetry,” in Thomas N. Corns (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry: Donne to Marvell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 108–13. 45 Antoine Chandieu, Octonaires sur la vanité et inconstance du monde, ed. Françoise Bonali-Fiquet (Geneva: Droz, 1979). 46 Transcribed from Folger MS V.a.91. 47 Transcribed from Folger MS V.a.91. 48 Transcribed from Folger MS V.a.91. 49 Jean de Sponde, Œuvres littéraires, ed. Alan Boase (Geneva: Droz, 1978). 50 Geoffrey Brereton, The Penguin Book of French Verse. Vol. 2: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958), p. 159. 51 Jacques Grévin, Théâtre complet et poésies choisies, ed. Lucien Pinvert (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014).

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13 Becoming “a Citizen of the world”: Edward Herbert and continental music-making Simon Jackson

In one of the few references to his own music-making, Edward, first Lord Herbert of Cherbury describes his musical education at University College, Oxford. Proud of his abilities as an autodidact, Cherbury tells of how he learnt to sight-sing and to play the lute “with very litle or almost noe teaching,” just as he learnt a multitude of continental languages: “I did without any Master or Teacher Attaine the Knowledge of the Frensh Italian and Spanish Languages.” Yet, despite the similar methods with which he acquired his musical and linguistic abilities, there was also in Cherbury’s mind a clear distinction to be drawn between these two skills: My Intention in Learning Languages being to make my selfe a Citizen of the world as farr as possible, and my learning of Musicke was for this end that I might entertaine my selfe at home and together refresh my mynde after my studies to which I was exceedingly inclined, and that I might not neede the company of younge men in whome I obserued in those tymes much ill example and deboist.1

It’s a neat distinction that, on the surface at least, appears to make intuitive sense: Cherbury’s university education prepares him for his many European travels, and for the pinnacle of his career, his role as English ambassador to the French court of Louis XIII. By contrast, his musical education assumes the more modest role of entertainment – albeit a positively morally improving form of entertainment when contrasted with the ill example and debauchery of his fellow students.

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Yet, as Sidney Lee (the first editor of Cherbury’s autobiography) noted, any reading of Cherbury’s Life must be undertaken with a certain amount of care: “No defect is more patent in his memoirs than the total lack of a sense of proportion,” Lee remarked, commenting on Cherbury’s propensity for misrepresentation, exaggeration, and extravagant claims.2 When scrutinized, this chapter will contend, the neat distinction Cherbury articulates here between his linguistic and musical education begins to break down. Contrary to Cherbury’s claim, the extant evidence we have of Cherbury’s musical activities throughout his life points to a sustained and lifelong engagement with continental musical culture, one that, moreover, helped to orientate him on both the cultural and political world stage, and resonated with his philosophical outlook at key points. As much as his knowledge of languages helped define and shape his diplomatic career, Cherbury’s musical literacy and active participation in music-making played a significant role in his self-promotion as “a Citizen of the World.” To understand the role his musical activities might take in becoming “a Citizen of the world,” it is necessary first to examine what Cherbury understood by the term when he described his own cosmopolitan instincts. For the so-called “father of English Deism,” whose philosophical enquiries would seek after “Common Notions” of universal truth and foster a dedication to the study of comparative religion, the term is freighted with metaphysical commitments. The earliest reference we have to the notion of cosmopolitanism is in Diogenes Laertius’ account of the Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope: “Asked where he came from, [Diogenes] said, ‘I  am a citizen of the world [kosmopolitês].’”3 For Diogenes, this early cosmopolitanism defined itself negatively by what it was not – the Cynic’s refusal to identify himself as a citizen of Sinope and thus with his political obligations to his native city. As later inherited by the Stoic philosophers and Seneca, a more positive and influential interpretation of the term became possible. For the Stoics, cosmopolitanism became a desirable characteristic: as Christopher Brooke notes, summarizing the key tenets of Stoic doctrine, “The sage was, they said, both wise and free – a true cosmopolitan or citizen of the world.”4 At the heart of this Stoic cosmopolitanism is a sense of a universal human

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condition: “Cynic/Stoic cosmopolitanism urges us to recognize the equal, and unconditional, worth of all human beings,” comments Martha C. Nussbaum, “a worth grounded in reason and moral capacity, rather than on traits that depend on fortuitous natural or social arrangements.”5 It is our faculty of right reason that binds us all together: “Male or female, slave or free, king or peasant, all are alike of boundless moral value, and the dignity of reason is worthy of respect wherever it is found. This reason, the Stoics held, makes us fellow citizens.”6 Stoic cosmopolitanism was thus based on a principle of commonality among all humans, irrespective of the accidental circumstances of one’s birth, and posited two communities to which each person belongs – the accidental, local community of birth; and a wider, worldwide cosmopolis that gives this local community context. “My city and my country, as I am Antoninus, is Rome,” explains Marcus Aurelius, “as I am a human being, it is the world.”7 The cosmopolitan sage was thus both profoundly self-sufficient, while remaining deeply conscious of their responsibilities and duties to fellow human beings with whom they shared their humanity and their common reason. This Stoic ideal of cosmopolitanism had a great impact on seventeenth-century political and philosophical thought. Nan ­ Goodman argues for the influential place the idea of cosmopolitanism holds for the Dutch political philosopher Hugo Grotius and fellow Protestant thinkers: “the cosmopolis emerges as a central part of the intellectual project of the law of nations put forth by the Protestant thinkers Alberico Gentili, Hugo Grotius, and John Selden, with the main features of the law recast as the building blocks of the cosmopolis.”8 Cherbury would have encountered such ideas particularly through the writings of Grotius. Both Grotius’s work and his friendship were greatly valued by Cherbury: in the concluding pages of his Life, Cherbury describes Grotius as “that great scholar” who “exhorted me earnestly to print and publish [De Veritate].”9 For Grotius, the Stoic recognition of a universal human condition shaped his political philosophy. Influenced by Stoic cosmopolitan thinking, his De jure belli ac pacis (1625) argued for an international political philosophy that balanced the needs of the local with a more global sense of the fellowship of all people based on their shared humanity, proposing a great society of states.10

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In this neo-Stoic form of cosmopolitanism, we find a ­philosophical foundation for understanding both the impulses that lie behind Cherbury’s travels and the international character of his career, as well as the seeds of one of the most famous tenets of his philosophy: the five “Common Notions” of all religions. Prepared to leave his home, at first “to Attaine the Knowledge off Forraigne Countreys,”11 Cherbury’s career as a foreign diplomat should be seen in the context of a nascent contemporary sense of an increasingly interconnected, cosmopolitan world. Goodman argues that in being prepared to leave one’s home to serve abroad the political needs of one’s country, “the role of the new diplomat, the ‘resident ambassador,’ altered the climate of global relations considerably and sent it in a more cosmopolitan direction.”12 Diplomatic ­dispatches became more frequent and more detailed, and increasingly occupied with what might be characterized as a more cultural mindset, “concerned with matters that went beyond commerce, rumors of assassinations, or governmental coups – the stuff of medieval embassies – to include information about the culture’s attitudes towards marriage, tax paying, and religious practices.”13 Where Cherbury describes his diplomatic career in France in his Life, it is clearly informed by such cultural, cosmopolitan ideas of diplomacy: “besides the Times I spent in Treaties and Negotiations I had either with the Ministers of State in France, or Forraigne Ambassedors,” Cherbury recalls that he also spent time “obtayning some Intelligence of the Affairs of that Kingdome and Ciuill Conuersation … in the Garden of the Tuilleries or in the Park of Bois de Vicennes”; when the weather was bad, “they spent theire tyme in Uisits at each other houses where they interchanged ciuill Discourses or heard Musick or fell a dancing.” Later, he writes, he would “returne from the Tuilleryes … with Intention to write a dispatch to the King about some Intelligence I had receiued there.”14 Cherbury thus charmed information out of aristocratic French society: his dress, his linguistic skill, his general cosmopolitan demeanor, and even his ability to dance were all considered important weapons in his diplomatic armory. As we will see later, when we examine Cherbury’s dispatches concerning the legal status of the lutenist and composer Jacques Gaultier, these impulses toward a more cultural form of diplomacy are reflected in Cherbury’s own diplomatic communications.

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Cherbury’s philosophical ideas, too, were informed by Stoic principles that have a bearing on his desire to become “a Citizen of the world as farr as possible.” Where Grotius’s identification of natural instinct and shared human reason prompted his philosophical discussions of natural law, Cherbury turned instead to religion and the nature of Truth. At the heart of De Veritate lies an understanding of a shared human experience, or what Cherbury calls “Common Notions,” the criteria by which Truth is judged: “Truths of the intellect, then, are certain Common Notions which are found in all normal persons; which notions are, so to say, constituents of all and are derived from universal wisdom and imprinted on the soul by the dictates of nature itself.”15 Identifying a shared human perspective grounded in Right Reason, with a close affinity to the cosmopolitan philosophical tradition, the defining characteristic of these Common Notions is found in the idea of universal consent of all people (or, at least, those described by Cherbury as “normal”) across all times and all places: “In my view,” Cherbury writes, “Universal Consent must be taken to be the beginning and end of theology and ­philosophy.”16 It is on the basis of this idea that Cherbury expounds his five Common Notions of Religion, which continue to motivate his thought through to the end of his life, in his study of comparative religion in De religione gentilium (written 1645). Cherbury’s claims about his interest in learning languages at ­university should be read in the light of these neo-Stoic cosmopolitan contexts – not least because the universalist tendencies of cosmopolitan thought naturally confronted the difficulty of communicating across linguistic barriers, prompting a number of seventeenth-century thinkers (including Descartes, Comenius, and Newton) to consider the possibility of devising a universal ­language.17 It is the contention of this chapter, though, that Cherbury’s interests in music, too, played an important role in making him “a Citizen of the world as farr as possible.” I will now turn to the evidence we have of Cherbury’s musical practices, to demonstrate the international flavor of his musical tastes. Turning to the extant evidence of Edward Herbert’s ­music-making, its most striking aspect is its particularly continental character. Cherbury was an avid collector of continental music: a number of

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music books were included in his bequest to Jesus College, Oxford, and of those books, works by foreign composers far outstrip those by English composers.18 Even the music by English composers at times betrays distinctly continental leanings – take, for instance, Morley’s volume of Balletts (London, 1595) included in the collection, its full title “Di Tomaso Morlei il primo lirbo delle Ballette a cinque voci” playing into contemporary (and doubtless commercial taste) in displaying its Italianate pretensions, and containing s­ ettings of twenty-one Italian lyrics. Cherbury’s poetry, too, repeatedly makes clear its engagement with continental sources: three of his contrafacta (lyrics written for pre-existing music) have named continental origins: “Ditty in imitation of the Spanish entre tanto que L’Avril,” “Ditty to the tune of A che del Quantomio of Pesarino,” and “A Ditty to the tune of Cose ferrite, made by Lorenzo Allegre to one sleeping to be sung.” This interest in continental repertoire is demonstrated even more clearly when we examine Cherbury’s manuscript collection of lute music. The title page of his manuscript lute book stresses the diversely international nature of its contents, headed with an ostentation familiar to readers of the Life, “The Lutebooke of Edward Lord Herbert, of Cherbury and Castle Island, containing diverse selected Lessons of excellent Authores in severall Cuntreys. Wherin also are some few of my owne Composition Herbert.”19 The vast majority of the 242 pieces of lute music contained in this book are by continental composers. Although the lute book does contain some music by English composers – including John Dowland, John Coprario, “Sr Daniellie Inglese” [perhaps John Danyel, or Daniel Bachelor], and even some compositions by Cherbury himself – many of these composers spent a significant period abroad, learning the latest continental musical trends, and even styling themselves (as the above list suggests) in Italianate fashion. The lute book is likely to have been finally compiled at some point after Cherbury’s return from France in 1624, though the anthology was probably planned during his European travels between 1608 and 1624, collecting a significant proportion of its contents and, Iain Fenlon has argued, purchasing the bound manuscript books during one of his trips to Paris.20 This interest in collecting foreign music was doubtless set in motion by Cherbury’s travels around Europe with the poet Aurelian

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Townsend in the years following his university education. As noted by David Price, in his discussion of English musical patronage in the early modern period, the popularity of European travel had been steadily increasing since the trend had begun in the 1530s and 1540s, and “This number increased significantly when the threat of Catholic invasion diminished after 1588.”21 Such travel allowed aspiring courtiers to see at first hand the fashions and styles of the Continent, and such exposure led to the importation and naturalization of these foreign modes. The musical libraries of the aristocrats who traveled around Europe, like that of Edward Herbert, offer evidence of this fashionable trend for collecting continental music. Henry Fitzalan, twelfth Earl of Arundel, collected large amounts of Flemish and Italian music during his travels in the mid-sixteenth century. The similarly extensive library of Edward Paston (1550–1630) includes “many printed and manuscript setts of Lattin, French and Italian songs,” collected during his time in Spain and Italy during his twenties.22 This international trade in music was not confined to the ­importation of foreign music books alone. By the end of the ­sixteenth century, aristocrats abroad regularly persuaded musicians to return with them to England. David Price records that, in 1565, Thomas Sackville “imported” the Italian musician William Damon; three years later, Henry Howard, Earl of Northumberland, returned home with the Flemish James Dennys.23 Other gentlemen took musicians in their employment on their travels: during Edward Seymour’s embassy to Albert, Archduke of Austria in 1605, his retinue included the lutenist-composers John Danyel and Robert Johnson.24 These musicians were no doubt expected to represent to Europe the high standard of English music-making; but the opportunity for them to witness European musical fashions at first hand and to incorporate these features into their own music must also have contributed to the decision to take them abroad. The English greatly esteemed these imported musicians: they were so highly prized, in fact, that the English court was willing to risk a diplomatic dispute with France to protect the interests of one such musician. As noted earlier, cosmopolitan ideas in contemporary political thought were changing the face of diplomacy, with an increased emphasis on international cultural relations.

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The impact of this more cosmopolitan approach to diplomacy and cultural r­elations can be seen in one of the first diplomatic incidents that Edward Herbert had to deal with during his time as English ambassador to the French court, which involved Jacques Gaultier, a French lutenist and composer. In a letter to Sir Robert Naunton, James I’s Secretary of State, Herbert summarized the situation: “concerning Gaultier whoe for haueing killed a braue French Gentleman and of a noble house in a most base fashion fled to England where for his excelling on the lute, he was receyved to ye ffauor of my Lo. the Marques Buckingham [29th July, 1619].”25 Herbert, who in part owed his position as ambassador to Buckingham’s favor, was caught in an uncomfortable situation: his diplomatic dispatches record a certain amount of vacillation and confusion over the matter, unsure how best to proceed: “I finde yo’r Hon’rs words a little ambiguous,” Cherbury wrote to Naunton in September 1619, and doe not well conceive whether his Ma’tie meane all should be remanded on eyther side that are offenders, and on that condition he will send back Gauliter, or whether his Ma’tie use the examples of Bothwell and Tyrone to stoppe their further proceedings, as being inclined to keep him in England still.26

The English court stood its ground: Herbert was instructed to use the precedent of the traitors to the English crown Bothwell and Tyrone, who had fled English justice to live in France, to prevent Gaultier’s extradition. Herbert wrote to Naunton in triumph on October 25, 1619, with the news that “his Ma’tie hath taught this state to denie yt self.”27 Herbert, like many others, appears to have valued Gaultier’s music highly: twenty-one compositions by the French composer, many of them intabulations of popular dance melodies, are included in Herbert’s collection of lute music. After the extradition crisis, Gaultier continued to rise through English society, eventually becoming lutenist to Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s French wife. Gaultier, like many other continental musicians, became an invaluable asset in the musical life of the English court. The fraught case of Gaultier is hardly an exemplary case of musical diplomacy; elsewhere in the Life, Cherbury offers more positive musical models of the newfound cosmopolitan cultural

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relations. Take, for instance, Cherbury’s recollection of visiting a singing nun at Murano with the English ambassador: I was brought to see a Nunne in Murano who being an Admirable beauty and together singing extreamly well, who was thought one of the Rarityes not onely of that Place but of the Tyme … [she] sung soe extreamly well That when shee departed neither my Lord Ambassedor nor his Lady who were then present coulde finde as much as a word of fitting Language to returne her for the Musicke shee gaue us.

Cherbury, of course – ever the smooth-talking cosmopolitan ­gentleman – naturally found the right (Italian) words: “Testemony of the sense wee had both of the Harmony of her beauty and her voice, I sayd in Italian, Muoia pur quando vuol non bisogna mutar ni voce ni faccia per esser un Angelo, Dye whensoeuer you will you neither neede to Change voice nor face to bee an Angell.”28 The nun’s singing confounds ordinary speech and language; and though she was considered “one of the Rarityes not onely of that Place but of the Tyme,” in the hyperbole of Cherbury’s response we are led to understand that her singing transcends the particularities of the mundane world, even as this heavenly, angelic music is pressed into the service of international, diplomatic relations. We see, then, in Cherbury’s continental travels and his diplomatic activities an attunement to contemporary musical fashion. Like many fashionable young gentlemen of the period, he manifests an evident attraction to the music being made on the Continent, and a desire to import the best of this continental music-making back into his native land. But is this simply a modish impulse, driven not by cosmopolitanism but more superficial inclinations? Certainly, that would be the charge brought against him by many readers of the Life, and Cherbury himself was the first to criticize those for whom travel was little more than tourism, rendering transformation on the surface alone. His second satire, “Of Travellers: (from Paris)” mercilessly mocks the pretensions of those who on their travels initially remain resolutely English, keep their money in their pockets, and fail in their attempts to speak the language, gradually acquiring foreign airs and graces till they become “perfect men at Paris”:

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Edward Herbert and continental music-making 327 They are delivered at Callis, or at Diep, And strangely stand, go, feed themselves, nay keep Their own money streightwayes; but that is all, For none can understand them … … but as you see, When they come home, like Children yet that be Of their own bringing up; all they learn is Toyes, and the Language … [Now] perfect men at Paris, putting on Some forc’d disguise, or labour’d fashion, To appeare strange at home (ll. 7–10, 20–3, 36–8)29

In what ways does Cherbury’s cosmopolitan musical activity depart from the model of his fellow Englishmen abroad? To argue that Cherbury’s musical activity is intimately connected with the cosmopolitan aspirations described in his autobiography, we must recognize that for Cherbury music is far more than simple and superficial entertainment. Complementing the ideal of the cosmopolitan sage (whose perspective, as we have seen, uniquely connects the global and the local), music takes Cherbury inwards and indoors. As it does so, like the cosmopolitan, Cherbury discovers in music not the disjunction between microcosm and macrocosm, but the intertwinement of the two spheres. Even within the walls of his private study – his microcosm – music places Cherbury in the context of a harmonious macrocosm. This understanding of the nature of music plays an important role in Cherbury’s philosophical enquiry into the nature of truth. Cherbury’s De Veritate develops notions that descend from ­neo-Stoic and cosmopolitan ideas, particularly in its emphasis on Common Notions, certain truths that are universally acknowledged by all humanity across all times and places. These ideas are frequently expressed in explicitly musical terms. Musical ideas  – the concept of harmonious and discordant relationships, and the notion of consent between individual experience and universal truths – pervade Cherbury’s philosophical thought. In De Veritate, Cherbury’s cosmological model is that of the macrocosm and the microcosm, and the relationship between man and the universe is understood in terms of harmonious correspondences between

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objects in the world and our individual, subjective faculties. Truth is thus understood in terms of consent, and the recognition of harmonious consent stands, for Cherbury, as an indicator of truth: A relation is harmonious when it concerns truth and goodness, and in these cases we must believe that the required conditions have been supplied. It is disharmonious when it expresses error and wickedness; and here we must imagine that all the conditions, or at least those which require a true harmony with the object, are absent.30

For Cherbury, this consent between faculties and their objects is more than simply a resemblance between musical and philosophical ideas; he proposes that the faculties themselves are in some sense governed by the same ratios and proportions that govern musical harmony. To discern truth, he decides, “requires a knowledge of the proportion of activity in things and anyone who grasps this grasps the entire scheme of the world: for the harmony of the world is composed of such proportions. And these I acknowledge with the most learned Schools are bound up with numbers. Compute their intervals and you will find it so.”31 For this reason, he concludes, “Our minds are wonderfully responsive to music,” he writes, “since they are separated by the same intervals as it.”32 To listen to or to perform music, Cherbury is arguing, is to be simultaneously intensely introspective and part of a larger, macrocosmic world; for our individual bodies and minds and faculties to be set in sympathetic resonance with the eternal truths of the universe. Like the cosmopolitan belief in the fundamental, shared humanity of all peoples across the globe, access to these truths is common to all  human beings: they are founded on common faculties and grounded in a belief in universal and eternal truths.33 Most importantly, evidence survives to suggest that, for Cherbury, these ideas did not remain metaphysically detached from his lived experiences in the world. As a composer, Cherbury attempted to put these philosophical ideas about harmony into realized musical form. Writing in his Ephemerides, the polymath Samuel Hartlib recalls a discussion with Cherbury concerning his compositional practices: Lord Herbert Hase composed some excellent peeces for the Viole de Gambo which goe very gravely. Ex intimis Matheseos fundamentis hee saith they were composed. That kind of music that goes so



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gravely and brokenly is far more excellent then that other running kind which can never make such an impression  vpon the mind as that other dose of which also the Ancients speake. No body hase yet incepted Artem Inveniendi melodias, when wee have no Melody at all to make one. Only Le Maire seems to have done it and my Lord said that hee had some Rules for it.34

Beyond this note, we have no further record of Cherbury’s c­ompositions for the viola da gamba, though from Hartlib’s description of this “kind of music that goes so gravely” they sound similar in style to his compositions for the lute contained in the lute book. What is most striking here, though, is the description of Cherbury’s method of composition “Ex intimis Matheseos fundamentis” (“from the depths of the foundations of mathematics”) and of rules for the “Artem Inveniendi melodias” (“the art of inventing melodies”). The brief anecdote is richly telling: Cherbury believes he has apparently discovered some means of deriving from universals a kind of music that resonates so profoundly with the faculties of the mind that it resurrects the ancient power of music. Contemporary continental ideas of the mathesis universalis – that is, the founding, universal principle of mathematics which Descartes and Mersenne examined and which later in the century Leibniz would develop further – are brought into the service of a realized, practical a­ pplication in musical composition and performance. Where cosmopolitanism had at its heart the double vantage point of the global and the local, Cherbury’s harmonious philosophy of truth finds a parallel in the dual aspect of macrocosm and microcosm: universal principles and particularities brought into harmonious attunement  – or, to put it in terms of the Boethian tripartite model of world harmony, Cherbury’s musica instrumentalis performed on the viola da gamba finds harmony not only with the musica humana of the individual human, but with the wider musica mundana of the cosmos. This is a truly cosmopolitan music. Music acquires, then, for Cherbury a far greater significance than simple, ephemeral entertainment. In composing directly from rules derived from fundamental, universal principles, Cherbury’s compositions attempt to articulate in musical form the relationship between the local and the global, between the individual

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and the cosmos, between the microcosm and the macrocosm. The ­motivations behind his learning of languages and his learning of music thus become closely related: music may indeed have drawn Cherbury indoors, away from his morally suspect fellow students, but far from cutting himself off from the world, this withdrawal constituted a harmonious interaction with a macrocosmic vision of the universe. Recognizing the neo-Stoic cosmopolitan ideals that lie behind Cherbury’s thinking, and behind his activities in collecting continental music, and his desire to import this repertoire back into his native land, readers are encouraged to reject the ­tendency to interpret such acts in purely fashionable, modish terms, to see them instead as part of a larger understanding of a shared, common sensibility of music, able to communicate across political and national boundaries. As the example of the diplomatic incident concerning Jacques Gaultier suggests, human failings and error may mean these cosmopolitan ideals are hard won, utopian ideals; but it is to these ideals that Cherbury’s musical thought and activity aspires. For Cherbury, music could express in the particularities and instantiations of its performance the universal truths after which his philosophy sought: in so doing, it gave him a truly cosmopolitan perspective on the world.

Notes  1 The Life, ed. Shuttleworth, pp. 16–17. All future references to Herbert’s Life in this chapter are from this edition, unless otherwise stated.  2 The Autobiography, ed. Lee, 2nd revd edn (1906), p. xii.   3 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 6.2, trans. Robert Drew Hicks (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925), vol. 2, p. 65.   4 Christopher Brooke, Philosophic Pride: Stoicism and Political Thought from Lipsius to Rousseau (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), p. xii.   5 Martha C. Nussbaum, “The Worth of Human Dignity: Two Tensions in Stoic Cosmopolitanism,” in Gillian Clarke and Tessa Rajak (eds), Philosophy and Power in the Graeco-Roman World: Essays in Honour of Miriam Griffin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 31. For the influence of Stoic cosmopolitan ideas on later philosophic

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traditions, see also Nussbaum, “Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism,” The Journal of Political Philosophy, 5.1 (1997), 1–25.   6 Nussbaum, “Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism,” p. 7.  7 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.44, cited in Nussbaum, “Two Tensions,” p. 37.   8 Nan Goodman, The Puritan Cosmopolis: The Law of Nations and the Early American Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 25.  9 Herbert, The Life, p. 120. 10 Hugo Grotius, De jure belli ac pacis libri tres (Paris: Nicholas Buon, 1625), “Prologemena,” para.17. 11 Herbert, The Life, p. 41. 12 Goodman, Puritan Cosmopolis, p. 37. 13 Goodman, Puritan Cosmopolis, p. 38. 14 Herbert, The Life, pp. 102–3. 15 Herbert, De Veritate, p. 106. 16 Herbert, De Veritate, p. 118. 17 Goodman, Puritan Cosmopolis, p. 47. 18 The eight music books donated by Herbert were: William Byrd, Psalmes songs and sonnets (London, 1611); Allesandro Grandi, Motetti a voce sola (Venice, 1628); Claudio Monteverdi, Madrigale, books 3 (Antwerp, 1615) and 5 (Antwerp, 1615); Thomas Morley, Balletts, book 1 (London, 1595); G. B. Piazza, Lacrime sospiri et pianti canzzonetti a voce sola (unidentified); Ortensio Polidore, Motteti a voce sola et a doi (Venice, 1636), and Leonardo Simonetti, Soprano ghirlanda sacra scielta (Venice, 1636). The volumes by Piazza and Simonetti have since been lost, as have some of the other part books. Herbert’s will is held in the Public Record Office, PROB 11/205, ff. 256–8. For more information about Herbert’s bequest, including an inventory of the books donated to Jesus College, see Fordyce and Knox, “The Library of Jesus College.” 19 Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Music MS 689. 20 Fenlon notes, “the binding itself is similar both in general design and in its use of tools to a book bound for Maria de Medici by Georges Drobet in Paris about 1611, while the strips of vellum used by the  binder to strengthen the spine are from a French manuscript”; the paper stock has been identified by its watermark as being manufactured by Jacques le Bé. See Iain Fenlon, “Fitzwilliam Museum, MS Mu 689,” in Cambridge Music Manuscripts, 900–1700, ed. Iain Fenlon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 155–9 (p. 157). 21 David C. Price, Patrons and Musicians of the English Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 31.

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22 Price, Patrons and Musicians of the English Renaissance, pp. 32–3; for more information on Henry Fitzalan’s collection, see Charles W. Warren, “Music at Nonesuch,” Musical Quarterly, 54 (1968), 47–57. For Edward Paston’s music collection, see also Philip Brett, “Edward Paston (1550–1630); a Norfolk Gentleman and His Music,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 4 (1964), 51–69; Richard Charteris, “Newly Identified Italian Madrigals Englished,” Music & Letters, 63 (1982), 276–80; and Stewart McCoy, “Edward Paston and the Textless Lute-Song,” Early Music, 15 (1987), 221–7. 23 Price, Patrons and Musicians of the English Renaissance, p. 33. 24 Andrew Ashbee and David Lasocki (eds), “John Danyel” and “Robert Johnson,” in A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians, 1485–1714 (Aldershot: Ashgate 1998). 25 “Edward Herbert’s Book of Despatches (1619),” British Library, Add. MS.7082 (Stokes’ Collection), transcribed in Morris C. Jones (ed.), Old Herbert Papers at Powis Castle and in the British Museum, Collections Historical and Archaeological relating to Montgomeryshire and its Borders, 20 (1886), p. 234. 26 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 98. 27 Jones, Old Herbert Papers, p. 251. 28 Herbert, The Life, p. 73. Cherbury concludes, laconically, “These words it seemed were Fatall for … returning shortly afterwards I heard shee was dead in the meane tyme.” 29 The Poems of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, pp. 14–15. 30 Herbert, De Veritate, p. 265. 31 Herbert, De Veritate, p. 176. 32 Herbert, De Veritate, p. 178. 33 See Chapter 6 by Anita Sherman, this volume. 34 Samuel Hartlib, Ephemerides (January 1640), 30/4/42B in Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie, and Michael Hannon (eds), The Hartlib Papers (The Digital Humanities Institute, University of Sheffield, 2013), http://www.dhi.ac.uk/hartlib (accessed May 28, 2019).

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14 “Sweet Singers of our Israel”: French psalmody, the Sidneys, and George Herbert Helen Wilcox

In the mid- and later seventeenth century, readers who wished to praise the work of George Herbert repeatedly drew comparisons between his devotional poems and the biblical Psalms of David. Writing the first biographical account of Herbert in 1652, Barnabas Oley implied that the poet was a new David by describing him as the “sweet singer of the Temple.”1 Oley, taking playful advantage of the title of Herbert’s poetic collection, The Temple (1633), was drawing attention to the profoundly biblical inspiration of Herbert’s poems, as well as the musical metaphors and lyrical qualities of his verse. During the Restoration period, this association of Herbert’s skills with those of the original psalmist was taken up by a number of the poet’s many admirers, including the Presbyterian preacher and diarist Oliver Heywood, who celebrated Herbert in 1672 as “that incomparable sweet Singer of our Israel.”2 Oley’s earlier phrase, “the sweet singer of the Temple,” clearly identified Herbert with David as a writer of lyric verse in the psalmic tradition – high praise indeed for a devotional poet. Heywood’s later variation of this accolade took the idea further, adding the sense that Herbert’s “incomparable” skill was, like that of the psalmist, to give expression to the circumstances and emotions of each new generation of readers. Heywood, writing as a nonconformist preacher suffering persecution and exclusion in the later seventeenth century, no doubt had a particular sense of “our Israel” as his church in exile, to which Herbert’s poems spoke with their psalm-like range of joy and affliction. Herbert was, for Heywood, the recent ­psalmist-poet

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who could “sing” of his readers’ own situation – a writer whose art, as Herbert wrote of the power of the Holy Scriptures, was “in another” to “make me understood.”3 This process of intertextual “understanding” was, in fact, also a multilingual, intercultural phenomenon. My purpose in this chapter is not only to identify the psalm-like qualities and effects of Herbert’s lyrics in The Temple, but also to trace the specific sources of these aspects of his writing, including those from continental Europe and particularly the French tradition of vernacular psalmsinging. Who were Herbert’s predecessors, musically and poetically, in the early modern house of David? What might this lineage reveal about the nature of Herbert’s relationship with those who preceded him, and especially his debt to sixteenth-century French as well as English culture? What is it about Herbert’s poems that led them to be designated as a seventeenth-century psalter, speaking to readers in their own particular spiritual and political circumstances? These are the lines of enquiry to be pursued in the pages that follow.

“An anatomy of all parts of the soul”: The Psalms, Calvin, and the French tradition To begin with, it is important to re-establish some of the qualities of the biblical psalms – whose name means, literally, “a song sung to a plucked stringed instrument.”4 The 150 psalms, though popularly attributed to the harp-playing King David, were actually written over a period of up to a thousand years, and individual psalms are ascribed to a variety of different authors including David but also, for example, Solomon, Moses, and Asaph.5 These Hebrew poems encompass the full span of human emotions, giving vivid and intense expression to praise, rebuke, penitence, anger, triumph, complaint, and thanksgiving. As Calvin wrote, the psalms are “an anatomy of all the parts of the soul,”6 and they are unique in the Bible in addressing God directly, using language with a function that is, as Walter Brueggemann puts it, “not descriptive but evocative.”7 The pioneering English translator of verse psalms from the French, Anthony Gilby, commented in 1581 that, “whereas all other scriptures do teach us what God saith unto us,” the psalms “do teach

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us, what we shall say unto God.”8 The Book of Psalms forms the largest body of poetry in the Bible, employing Hebrew verse structures based largely on parallelism and the use of internal structures of echo and repetition.9 Their formal patterns and rhetorical devices are enormously varied – the Book of Psalms even includes some acrostic verses, a trick so beloved of early modern poets – but the psalms themselves have in common a shared attitude to the world. They assume that the events of human life, as well as the natural world, are inextricably linked to God and infused with the divine; they understand nature in fundamentally metaphorical terms.10 For the poets of the European Renaissance, whatever their denomination or language, the psalms offered a heaven-sent defense of poetry itself; if God’s own scripture contained rhetorically structured and richly figurative poetry at its heart, how could anyone speak against the art? As Sir Philip Sidney wrote in his Apology for Poetry, “the holy David’s Psalms are a divine poem,” that is, “songs … fully written in metre” manifesting “heavenly poesy.”11 The psalms were also an example and inspiration to those writers attempting to find appropriate language to express the inexpressible, or to discover words sufficient to convey the God who is himself “the Word.”12 As John Donne exclaimed to God, how could poets ever hope to “thrust into strait corners of poore wit / Thee, who art cornerlesse and infinite”?13 Despite their consciousness of the limits of “poor wit,” few sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century poets could resist trying to respond to this impossible challenge, and the translation of the psalms themselves into vernacular verse, particularly into stanzas designed for setting to music, became one of the most popular types of European post-Reformation poetic activity and a locus for the justification of poetry in the vernacular.14 The association of the psalms with singing was also vitally important to the developing patterns of Protestant liturgy; metrical psalms sung to simple melodies came to form a central aspect of reformed worship, stirring the emotions of those joining in the singing, but also firing Reformation debates about language, music, and the proper expression of spirituality.15 It is especially significant to an exploration of Herbert’s French influences that the true pioneers of vernacular psalm-singing in post-Reformation Europe were in fact the Francophone Protestants:

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the Calvinists in Geneva, and subsequently the Huguenots both within France and in exile. It has been justifiably claimed that “the singing of psalms was one of the incontestably distinguishing marks of Calvinist culture in Europe and America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.”16 Calvin himself translated or edited many psalms in metrical French verse, and in 1537 he argued that it is a thing most expedient for the edification of the church to sing some psalms in the form of public prayers by which one prays to God or sings His praises so that the hearts of all may be aroused and stimulated to make similar prayers and to render similar praises and thanks to God with a common love.17

By 1562 the Geneva Psalter had expanded to include all 150 psalms in French metrical verse, with melodies recommended for each; the volume was reprinted sixty-two times in the first two years after its publication, and was rapidly translated into a total of twenty-four languages.18 The theological justification for this ever-expanding use of the psalms for congregational singing in reformed worship was a typological reading of the Old Testament, interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures as a prefiguring of the Christian Gospel. David was seen as a “type” or foreshadowing of Christ, Israel came to signify the church, and the psalms as a whole were treasured as prophetic texts.19 As Calvin wrote in his prefatory epistle to the 1542 Psalter, “we shall find no better songs nor more appropriate for the purpose [of Christian worship] than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit made and spoke through him.”20 This understanding of the psalms is borne out by a piece of early modern French evidence discovered by the historian Natalie Zemon Davis: a Protestant linen-weaver from Cambrai confessed in 1566 that he was “led to knowledge of the Gospel” by a neighbor who “had a Bible printed at Lyon and taught me the Psalms by heart.”21 Encapsulating the relationship of wayward human beings with their ultimately redemptive God, the psalms give voice to spiritual experience across both testaments of the Bible, in poetic language that is both familiar and transcendent. The main sources of the texts of French metrical psalms in the Calvinist tradition were the humanist poet Clément Marot (1496–1544) and the Genevan church leader Théodore de Bèze

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(1519–1605), also known as Beza. Their eminently singable and memorable words were paired with melodies which were either collected or composed by the musician Louis or Loys Bourgeois (c. 1510–59) and harmonized by Claude Goudimel (c. 1514–72) to produce the Geneva Psalter in its several versions.22 This hugely significant work, the first fully scriptural hymn book of the Protestant era, was doubly based on a principle of copying or borrowing rather than any claims to originality: the words were, necessarily, closely allied to those of the biblical original, and the music was taken from pre-existing, often secular tunes which were “converted” to sacred use following the well-known musical practice of contrafactum.23 Indeed, the argument of this essay is that the lines of influence and interdependency in early modern metrical psalms and vernacular psalm-based poetry are the key to both their justification and their impact. This can be seen not only in the relationship of the biblical original to the resulting verse translations, and in the redeployment of familiar melodies set to new spiritual words, but also in the inter-relatedness of written text and oral performance. The choice of melody to be sung generally determined the shape of the written poetic stanza: the Genevan metrical psalms use 125 different tunes – perhaps not a surprising statistic for 150 psalms – but the translators also devised a remarkable 110 distinctive metrical and stanzaic forms to partner these melodies.24 As Elizabeth Clarke and Simon Jackson have demonstrated, the music left its imprint on the poetic meter, not only in the original French versification but in the sophisticated psalm translations into English verse that followed.25 The extensive psalm commentaries of Calvin, and the French psalm verses of Calvin, Marot, and Beza, spread swiftly and widely across early modern Protestant Europe, and reached English readers through the translations by, among others, Arthur Golding and Anthony Gilby.26 The French influence filtered into the growing stream of sixteenth-century English Protestant psalm-based poetry, which had begun as early as Wyatt’s penitential psalms and continued through Surrey’s metrical experiments to the pioneering sonnets of Anne Vaughan Lok, A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner, initiating the sonnet sequence in English with one 14-line poetic paraphrase for each of the verses of the penitential Psalm 51. The continuing association with France was made clear by the fact

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that Lok’s ­psalm-inspired sonnets, published anonymously in 1560, were appended to the English translation of sermons by Calvin.27 However, undoubtedly the most influential s­ ixteenth-century intervention in the development of psalm-singing in English was the enormously popular metrical psalter, The Whole Booke of Psalmes, compiled by Protestant exiles during the mid-century reign of Mary Tudor and first published in London in 1562. This collection, generally referred to by the names of its versifying compilers, Sternhold and Hopkins, became so widely used that it was often bound together in printed form with the Book of Common Prayer as the two key texts alongside the Bible for reformed congregational worship.28 Once again, the partnership of music and verse was essential to the success of The Whole Booke of Psalmes: it made extensive use of the familiar ballad meter and turned homely singing into an exercise in holiness.29 For those in the late sixteenth century, including Donne, who hoped for something greater – or at least more aesthetically inspiring – from biblical verse than these plain and often plodding stanzas, there was a strong sense that the French had indeed managed rather better than the English. As Donne ­commented with a sense of shame, the psalms had become “so well attired abroad” (surely a reference to the example set by the French) and yet “so ill at home”: “And shall our Church, unto our Spouse and King / More hoarse, more harsh than any other, sing?”30 This national embarrassment was soon to be remedied, however, by the ­completion of the Sidney psalter in the late 1590s.31

“Teach us how to sing”: The Sidney psalter The English verse translation of the entire Book of Psalms by Philip Sidney (1554–86) and his sister Mary (1561–1621) represents the pinnacle of sixteenth-century biblical poetry in English. The first forty-three psalms had been finished by Philip before his early death at the Battle of Zutphen; the remaining two thirds were completed by Mary and the first third revised by her, leading to a complete collection of immensely sophisticated lyric verse. The recent editors of the Sidney psalter are absolutely right to distinguish it from the preceding metrical versions in English, designed for communal

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singing; by contrast, this collection of elegant and inventive poems is a “fundamentally literary work.”32 Very importantly for our current purposes, the Sidneys’ translation was also thoroughly rooted in the French tradition. Philip had traveled to France during his continental tour with Hubert Languet, the French Protestant diplomat; he had translated a philosophical treatise by Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, counselor of France’s Protestant King Henri IV, as well as some of the poems of the French biblical poet Guillaume Du Bartas.33 Philip was also clearly an admirer of the qualities of the French, noting of Michel de l’Hôpital that he, an emblem of his nation, represented “judgment … firmly builded on virtue.”34 Mary Sidney was equally familiar with the French language and its literary tradition (if not with the country itself); in 1592 she published her English translations of Robert Garnier’s French tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, Antonius, and Duplessis-Mornay’s Discourse of Life and Death.35 It therefore comes as no surprise to discover that Philip and Mary Sidney together based their psalm translations on the French metrical psalm collection by Marot and Beza, Les Pseaumes en Vers Français avec leur melodies, as well as on the Calvinist scholarship of the Geneva Bible in English. Above all, the literary skills of the Sidney siblings were spurred by the metrical variety of the French verse psalm translations, with the result that the Sidney psalter makes use of no fewer than 126 different metrical patterns in the 150 chosen stanza forms.36 The collection is a tour de force of poetic craft and ingenuity of all kinds; the translation of Psalm 55, for example, rises to the technical challenge of using only three rhyme sounds (in honor of the Trinity) in seventy-two lines. The poetic skills on display recall Philip Sidney’s argument in his Apology for Poetry that a poet is as much a “maker” as a “prophet.”37 This most distinguished of English poetic psalters remained in manuscript in Mary Sidney’s lifetime, but was greatly admired by those, including Donne, among whom it was circulated. Donne’s poetic praise for the work has already been cited twice in this essay, but the summary of his opinion is worthy of quotation: a “Brother and a Sister” together “tell us why, and teach us how to sing” (my emphasis).38 In Donne’s view, the Sidney psalms both demonstrate the reason for writing poetry in the first place, and

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show exactly how it should be done well. The poet Samuel Daniel also wrote admiringly of Mary Sidney’s achievement in translating the psalter. Daniel acted as tutor to Mary Sidney’s son William at Wilton House, where Mary, married to the Earl of Pembroke, lived, worked, and kept what John Aubrey later referred to as a kind of literary “college.”39 Daniel praised the work of translation and revision that emerged from the intensely literary environment at Wilton: Mary’s psalms are “Hymnes that thou doost consecrate to heaven,” which David, “Israels Singer to his God did frame.”40 In this account, Mary Sidney is not quite seen as a type of David himself, as Herbert would subsequently be in the laudatory praises by Oley and Heywood with which this essay began. However, she is clearly perceived to be the psalmist’s rightful successor: in her new verse translation, Daniel asserts, Mary Sidney takes up the power of the vernacular and reconsecrates both it and the original psalms that David “did frame.” There are eighteen extant manuscripts of Mary Sidney’s revised and completed translation of the Book of Psalms, and it is a sign of the two-way relationship between this work and French literary and spiritual culture that one of these manuscripts found its way into the library of the Sorbonne in Paris.41 There is certainly no doubting the French influence on this verse translation of the psalms. At least fourteen of the stanza forms used by the Sidneys derive from the Genevan psalms, whose rhymes and melodies echo through the Sidney psalter.42 Psalm 38 is a revealing example. The second verse in the Marot–Beza translation reads: Ie n’ay sur moy chair ne veine     Qui soit saine, Par lire en quoy ie t’ay mis: Mes os n’ont de repos ferme     Iour ne terme, Par les maux que I’ay commis.43

The distinctive pattern of the short second and fifth lines, and the rhyme scheme, is followed exactly in the Sidney version: No sound part caused by thy wrath,     My flesh hath: Nor my sins let my bones rest.



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For my faults are highly spread     On my head, Whose foul weights have me oppressed.44

This is no slavish copying of the French text, as the English syntax and additional metaphors here highlight; however, the shared verse structure for the same psalm, and the similar degree of elaboration on the original biblical text, are striking. It is also clear that the Sidney version could have been sung to the same French melody.45 Katherine Larson suggests that Mary Sidney would have grown up “singing the French psalm settings of Clément Marot and Théodore de Bèze (1562)” and no doubt “hearing them through the walls of Henry Sidney’s house in London, which adjoined a French Protestant church.”46 The presence of the French vernacular psalm-singing tradition may in fact be discerned throughout the Sidney psalter, not only in specific parallels of language and melodic shape, but fundamentally in the English poets’ own commitment to a similarly relentless experimentation with varied and ingenious stanza forms. Psalm 13, for instance, originally put into English verse by Philip Sidney, uses a form that makes particularly telling use of contrasting line lengths and implied echoes: How long (O Lord) shall I forgotten be?    What? Ever? How long wilt thou thy hidden face from me    Dissever? How long shall I consult with careful sprite    In anguish? How long shall I with foes’ triumphant might    Thus languish? Behold me, Lord, let to thy hearing creep    My crying. Nay, give me eyes, and light, lest that I sleep    In dying. Lest my foe brag, that in my ruin he    Prevailèd: And at my fall they joy that, troublous, me    Assailèd. No, no, I trust on thee, and joy in thy    Great pity:

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Still therefore of thy graces shall be my    Song’s ditty.47

The very particular choice of stanza form builds into the structure of the poem the contrasts of voice and mood implicit in the biblical original: “How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord?” The alternate shortened lines highlight the double force of their sorrowful rhymes – “anguish” and “languish,” “crying” and “dying” – thus making the radical change of mood at the end of the psalm even more noticeable, as “prevailèd” and “assailèd” give way to “pity” and “ditty.” The last lines draw attention to another vital feature of the Sidney psalms: they are individualized, rendered personal, and the mark of the translator-poet is firmly placed on the text. God’s “graces” will be the subject of “my / Song’s ditty” (my emphasis); the poet, or singer, speaks out here, claiming for him- or herself the act of poetic praise with the emphatic “my” strategically placed at the very end of the penultimate line. This is, we might say, more than a translation, and it is for this reason that the Sidney psalter is sometimes referred to as a metrical paraphrase of the Psalms, implying that it expands the scriptural original and embraces a certain personal freedom and artfulness.48 The final line contains just two words, each of which refers consciously to the poem itself: the “Song,” product of poetic skill, tuneful in its language as well as its musical setting, and “ditty,” the lyric poem whose meaning or motto will be God’s merciful generosity.49 The words of the song-like poem, as the translator-poet insists in its conclusion, will lift those who speak, sing, or read it from “anguish” to “trust,” by shifting the focus from the misery of the “fall” to divine “pity” and “grace,” that key term of Protestant theology. In carefully and effectively constructed verse, a communal Hebrew song has been translated both culturally and theologically, turning it into a celebration of Christian redemption bearing the stamp of an English poet’s particular voice. The conscious presence of the translator is a notable feature of the entire Sidney psalter, indicating the purposefulness of the task and the personal investment of both translators in what they saw as a sacred as well as artistic enterprise. In the Sidneyan version of Psalm 45, for example – only the second of those for which Mary



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Sidney was entirely responsible – the biblical original refers to the psalmist’s “tongue” as a “pen,” a metaphor which is repeated but then expanded in the metrical paraphrase into a statement of her own intent:

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My tongue the pen to paint his praises forth, Shall write as swift as swiftest writer may.50

These lines not only draw greater attention than the passing phrase in the original to the necessary rhetorical skills of the singer/ speaker of a psalm, but they also sound a note of defiance when the words “as swift as swiftest writer may” emerge from the pen of a woman writer in the late sixteenth century.51 Mary Sidney makes no secret of her gender – indeed, she uses her female experience at several key moments in the translation, and strengthens the role of women in the world of the psalms, as in Psalm 68 where the biblical “damsels” become a “virgin army” and “battle maids.”52 Perhaps the most notable shift of gendered perspective may be seen in Sidney’s Psalm 139 where the poet-translator, herself the mother of four children, elaborates on the biblical recollection that God “covered me in my mother’s womb.”53 The paraphrase expands the reference to the unborn child and fleshes it out (as it were) with details from the inner world of the mother’s body, that “shop both dark and low,” where the works of God are felt “inly.”54 The fetus is envisaged as a building, with the backbone laid in the womb like a beam, and the ribs like rafters; the sense of developing new life is further evocatively described as “brave embroid’ry.”55 Sidney’s poetic imagination brings vivid experiential witness to bear upon the psalmist’s praise of God’s creating power. It could equally be said, however, that the Sidney psalter is also a monument to the creative energy and inventiveness of two remarkable Renaissance poets in the act of translation. The metrical and stanzaic variety on display in the Sidney psalter make it a showcase of early modern verse forms, from ottava rima to acrostics, and from sonnets to a dazzling range of English lyric meters.56 The underlying principle seems to be a combination of the appeal of formal ingenuity with an apparent desire on the part of the poets to give the fullest possible expression to the original psalm by finding an adequate equivalent in the English verse form. In Psalm 103, for example, a

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complex lyric verse form explores the paradox of the caring father God who nevertheless knows that his creation is “but dust”: And look how much The nearly touching touch The father feels towards his son most dear, Affects his heart, At every froward part Played by his child: So merciful, so mild, Is he to them that bear him awful fear. Our potter he Knows how his vessels we In earthy matter lodged this fickle form: Fickle as glass, As flow’rs, that fading pass, And vanish so, No not their place we know, Blasted to death with breath of blust’ring storm.57

The deliberate stanza construction and layout (so familiar a feature of early modern lyric verse with a deliberate variety of line lengths to match the rhythms and rests of a musical setting), confirms the sophistication of this verse translation, and particularly the use of the long final line to underline the sentiment of each stanza. The powerful emotion of the lines is also noteworthy: the tension of restraint and affection hinted at here in “the nearly touching touch” felt by a father toward his son, for example, and the rueful admission that human beings are “fickle as glass.”58 The balance of ideas, images, and sounds is also a characteristic of Mary Sidney’s artistry. The fading and vanishing flowers, which like humans leave no mark of their existence behind them, are finally dismissed as “Blasted to death with breath of blust’ring storm,” a line whose internal rhyme and framing alliteration drive home the violence of their demise. The translation of the opening verses of Psalm 130, “De Profundis,” gives further evidence of the way in which the Sidney psalter is original in both ideas and sounds, making the most of the intellectual and aural dimensions:



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From depth of grief Where drowned I lie, Lord, for relief To thee I cry: My earnest, vehement, crying, praying, Grant quick, attentive hearing, weighing.59

The first words of the psalm – “Out of the deep” – as translated by Mary Sidney in the opening two lines of this stanza reveal a knowing psychological sensitivity to the overwhelming force of grief. By adding the metaphor of drowning to the biblical original, the opening immediately becomes a powerful evocation of the disorienting and life-consuming sensations of loss and sorrow. On the other hand, the aural impact of the dense couplet that rounds off the stanza brings together the emotional urgency of the poem’s lament with an insistent clamor of repeated trochees, driving home the speaker’s prayer. Suddenly, the hammering pulse of the words assumes a greater prominence than syntax or semantics. It is perhaps not surprising that this psalm verse is one of the two Sidney psalms for which an early modern musical setting is extant; the aural and rhythmic patterns are integral to the impact of the poem’s meaning.60 The regular use of repetition as a rhetorical tactic is also a feature of the Sidney psalter, picking up on the phenomenon of parallelism in Hebrew verse which is also a recognizable trait of the intervening French translations. Marot’s rendering of Psalm 6, for example, begins: Ne vueil le pas o Sire Me re prendre en ton ire, Moy qui t’ay irrité, N’en ta fureur terrible, Me punir de l’horrible Tourment qu’ay merité.61

The repeated, insistent requests for mercy, based on the biblical psalm pattern, are intensified here in Marot’s complex pattern of rhyme which binds the verse and interlocks its sentiments. In her distinctive way, Mary Sidney also mirrors the parallelism that interconnects the Hebrew verses, clearly seen in the opening of her translation of Psalm 81. Although the joyfulness of this text is in

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direct contrast to the desperation of the penitential psalm translated by Marot, Sidney similarly begins her translation with a rhetoric of repetition, building on the Hebrew and French structures but with a technique all her own: All gladness, gladdest hearts can hold,     In merriest notes that mirth can yield, Let joyful songs to God unfold     To Jacob’s God our sword and shield.62

The bold, back-to-back use of “glad” in “gladness, gladdest” is a typical piece of Sidney syntax, unashamedly celebrating in “joyful songs” of “merriest note” the replacement of grief with “pleasure.” It is no wonder Amelia Lanyer wrote lavishly in praise of Mary Sidney (who was the Countess Dowager of Pembroke by 1611 when Lanyer published her own poems) as the poetic example for “after-comming ages,” especially for women writers.63 The “sweet harmony” of the psalms “written newly” by Sidney (with no reference to her brother here) was in Lanyer’s view such heavenly “musicke” that it was apt to “ring” in the “eares of Angells.”64 Lanyer seems to have taken courage from Sidney’s example as she wrote her own devotional poem, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, a narrative of the Passion of Christ based largely on scriptural sources, though in Lanyer’s case (unlike Sidney’s) drawing mainly on the New Testament. To Lanyer, Mary Sidney was an emblem of piety and poetry combined: With contemplation of Gods powrefull might, Shee fils the eies, the hearts, the tongues, the eares Of after-comming ages, which shall reade Her love, her zeale, her faith, and pietie;65

As is vividly suggested here, Mary Sidney’s psalms appealed to a broad range of readers, singers, composers, and writers who followed her in the early seventeenth century. Lanyer’s commendatory poem implies that Sidney’s audience included those who read the verse paraphrases of the psalms silently with their “eyes”; those who repeated them internally in their “hearts”; those who declaimed or sang them, in the home or the congregation, with their “tongues”; and those who heard with their “ears” the psalms



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set and sung to music.66 The verse translations of early modern Europe, typified here by the Sidney psalter building on the work of its French predecessors, created an interconnected community of otherwise differing believers.67 This potentially “contentious communion” was linked by an increasingly confident vernacular biblical poetry on the page, in translation and paraphrase, and in devotional practice.

“In his Temple doth every man speak of his honour”: Herbert and the Psalms As we have seen, the Sidney psalter was of undoubted significance to Lanyer, Daniel, and Donne, among its many contemporary admirers. However, it is fair to say that this magnificent verse translation of the Book of Psalms was also the single most important literary influence on George Herbert’s lyric poetry. Herbert’s volume of English poems, The Temple, was published in 1633, a mere twelve years after the death of Mary Sidney, and for the last few years of his life, Herbert was Rector of Bemerton, a benefice in the gift of Mary Sidney’s sons, the Earls of Pembroke, and located on the edge of the Wilton estate. It is evident that Mary Sidney permitted her psalm translation to circulate in manuscript among a coterie of family and friends (including, as we have seen, Donne, Daniel, and Lanyer) and it is unthinkable that Herbert, the poet, rhetorician, priest, cousin – and later the neighbor living almost on the ­doorstep  – could have been excluded from that privileged group with access to the Sidneyan version. More important than this historical evidence, however, is the witness of the poems themselves. As we shall see, Herbert’s lyrics share a great deal with the Sidney psalter in terms of inventive forms, lyricism, tone, vocabulary, psalmic voice, and ambiance. The stanza forms of the Sidney renderings of Psalms 38 and 88, for example, anticipate the expressive use of longer and shorter lines in Herbert’s lyrics such as “Longing,” “The Flower,” and “Deniall.” Instances of shared words and phrases frequently suggest Herbert’s close familiarity with the Sidney psalter. These include echoes of their versified Psalms 57 and 108 in Herbert’s “Easter,” the reworking of parts of their Psalms 34 and 38 into

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“The Invitation,” and direct echoes of their vocabulary in “Jordan (I),” “The Banquet,” and “The 23 Psalme.”68 I would suggest that three lines of mutual imitation and influence contributed to this relationship between the Sidney psalms and The Temple. First, there is obviously the common underlying source for the two collections of verse: the Bible itself, and specifically the most poetic and prayerful book of the Bible. Herbert’s lyric verse is scriptural to the core, and the Book of Psalms is the part of the Bible most frequently quoted and echoed in the shorter poems found in the central section of The Temple, “The Church.” Indeed, the scriptural quotation on Herbert’s 1633 title page, “In his Temple doth every man speak of his honour,” is not only a reference to the psalms sung in the Jewish temple but is itself a quotation from Psalm 29. Herbert himself grew up in a household which, as Donne commented in his funeral sermon for Herbert’s mother, “did, every Sabbath, shut up the day, at night, with a generall, with a cheerfull singing of Psalmes.”69 The prose translation of the Psalms by Coverdale formed one of the cornerstones of the daily liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer used by Herbert; alongside this, the finely tuned recent poetic rendering of the Psalter by the leading poets of his extended literary family would have been unmissable for Herbert’s own inspiration. The second linking factor is that both the Sidney psalter and Herbert’s “The Church” bring together a profoundly biblical sensibility with a keen rhetorical and musical ear, recreating the Hebrew songs of David in the forms and styles of early modern lute song. The Sidney and Herbert collections are both distinguished by their outstanding attention to formal invention, devising expressive and often unique stanzaic structures to shape the psalmist’s voice of human spiritual experience into the exquisite beauty of well-crafted Renaissance song. Third, it is fascinating to realize that the combinations of voice and verse, musical melody and verbal expression, scripture and poetry, brought to such inventive artistic fruition in the heterometric poetry of the Sidneys and Herbert, all had their mutual roots in French soil. The psalm-based theology and practice of Calvin, the metrical French verse of Marot and Beza, and the melodies of the Genevan Book of Psalms (Les Pseaumes en Vers Français avec leur melodies) were the starting point for Philip and Mary Sidney. Their work in turn

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inspired Herbert’s writing, but in the year before Herbert’s death and the posthumous publication of The Temple, the French metrical psalm tradition was again brought to prominence in England with the appearance of All the French Psalm Tunes with English Words.70 This volume was subtitled “being a collection used with the reformed churches of France and Germany” and, despite the predominance of the more straightforwardly metrical translations of the psalms such as Sternhold and Hopkins for use in congregational singing, it is notable that at least four of the English translations chosen for this collection were taken from the Sidney psalter.71 Lines of cultural and literary influence are rarely straightforward, and here the continental and English influences on Herbert, the “sweet singer of our Israel,” become intriguingly interwoven.72 In the light of all of this, it is perhaps surprising to recall that Herbert’s volume of English verse contains only one straightforward psalm translation, “The 23 Psalme”: The God of love my shepherd is, And he that doth me feed: While he is mine, and I am his, What can I want or need? He leads me to the tender grasse, Where I both feed and rest; Then to the streams that gently passe: In both I have the best. Or if I stray, he doth convert And bring my minde in frame: And all this not for my desert, But for his holy name. Yea, in deaths shadie black abode Well may I walk, not fear: For thou art with me; and thy rod To guide, thy staffe to bear. Nay, thou dost make me sit and dine, Ev’n in my enemies sight: My head with oyl, my cup with wine Runnes over day and night.

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Surely thy sweet and wondrous love Shall measure all my dayes; And as it never shall remove, So neither shall my praise.73

Herbert’s choice of Psalm 23 for his one direct rendering of a psalm in verse both fits with, and consolidates, the focus of “The Church” on the God who is welcoming, forgiving, and unwavering in his “sweet and wondrous love.” This phrase (from the opening line of the last stanza) also immediately highlights Herbert’s link with the Sidney psalter, since the word “sweet” – so frequently employed in The Temple – occurs in the Sidneys’ translation of Psalm 23 but not in the biblical original.74 The tone established by Herbert, building on and extending the emphasis of his predecessors, chimes with the confidence of his lyric “Love (III)” in which God is love personified, caring for and feeding his people; from the first line onwards, Herbert’s psalm is not just a celebration of the biblical “Lord” as a protective shepherd but an overarching statement of faith in the “God of love.” All translation involves interpretation, and the emphasis in Herbert’s “The 23 Psalme” is firmly on the mutuality of the loving relationship between God and humankind. There will be no “want or need” when God “is mine, and I am his,” a mirroring phrase which echoes Herbert’s lyric “Clasping of hands” with its intertwining of “mine” and “thine.”75 The poem also ends with a typically Herbertian reciprocal arrangement: because God’s love will “never … remove,” therefore “neither shall my praise.” This confident promise is based upon a small but significant shift in Herbert’s rendering of the preceding verse from the Coverdale translation with which he was most familiar. While the psalm as said and sung liturgically from the Book of Common Prayer refers to God’s preparing a table in the future tense,76 Herbert’s version brings this event into the present: “Nay, thou dost make me sit and dine.” The closeness of this line to the final words of “Love (III),” “So I did sit and eat,” highlights the Eucharistic overtones of Herbert’s interpretation of the psalm.77 The “God of love” has already offered himself as the food on which the speaker dines, and the “cup” is already constantly overflowing with the wine of the Communion.

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It is striking that Herbert’s one direct psalm translation into verse uses the ballad meter of the popular Sternhold and Hopkins psalter, and not the sophisticated stanza forms largely favored by the Sidneys and the French tradition. It is as though Herbert wished to make his own small contribution to the popular practice of metrical psalm translation and congregational singing, even if, as he did so, his warmth of tone and interpretative emphasis instilled the psalm with an unmistakably Herbertian quality.78 While Herbert’s pastoral instinct made him favor an aesthetic of simplicity and plainness – as asserted in the “Jordan” poems, for example – he would have had difficulty containing his poetic invention to complete a full set of metrical psalms in common meter for congregational singing. Like the Sidneys, Herbert was drawn to creative ingenuity, and the biblical Book of Psalms underpins Herbert’s poems in far more subtle and varied ways than through the process of translation and interpretation demonstrated in “The 23 Psalme.” More than ninety different psalms, from the celebratory to the despairing, are echoed or hinted at in Herbert’s lyrics.79 The Temple is infused with a sense of God’s omnipresence, whatever the circumstances and even if the speaker is not always immediately aware of this fact – and it is often an underlying echo of the psalms that offers implicit reassurance. In “The Temper” (I), for example, the speaker’s sudden shifts of mood are expressed in terms of heaven and hell: sometimes things are so positive that “I peere above” forty heavens, whereas on other days “to hell I fall.”80 In the background, giving a safety net against this fickle changeableness, is the comforting echo of Psalm 139 praising God for being everywhere: “If I climb up to heaven, thou art there: if I go down to hell, thou art there also.”81 At the other end of the emotional spectrum, “Repentance” recalls the tone of the penitential psalms in its opening lines which cry, “Lord, I confesse my sinne is great; / Great is my sinne: Oh! gently treat / With thy quick flow’r, thy momentanie bloom.”82 Herbert’s poem works its way toward a hopeful conclusion, arguing in the end that God will destroy “sinne and grief” so that “the broken bones may joy, / And tune together in a well-set song,” a direct incorporation of verse 8 from Psalm 51, “That the bones, which thou hast broken, may rejoyce.”83 “Repentance” typifies the complexity of Herbert’s use of the psalms: he borrows and reworks phrases from

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at least three different psalms in the one poem,84 but also develops these echoes so that they are integrated into the language and structure of his verse. For instance, it is evident that Herbert takes the idea of broken and reset bones from the psalm, but he typically adds punning references to the music (“broken” consort, or a line “wellset” to a melody) of his own poem’s lyric context. In “Mattens,” too, Herbert integrates phrases from three psalms, in this case to underpin the speaker’s expression of amazement at God’s daily mercies: My God, what is a heart, That thou shouldst it so eye, and wooe, Powring upon it all thy art, As if that thou hadst nothing els to do?85

The speaker’s bafflement at God’s unrelenting attentiveness to such an unworthy object is clearly a recollection of Psalm 8:4, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” The other two psalms underlying “Mattens” are prescribed in The Book of Common Prayer as part of the daily morning liturgy from which the poem takes its title, reminding us further of the deeply liturgical way in which Herbert experienced and consequently made use of the psalms.86 The main biblical text from which phrases recur in “Easter,” for example, is Psalm 57, assigned to be said or sung during Morning Prayer on Easter Day. The calendar of The Book of Common Prayer indicates that the complete psalter would have been prayed by the early modern Church of England in the space of a month; the words of the psalms were thus integral to the material of communal prayer, “the Churches banquet.”87 Herbert’s “Antiphon (I)” offers a very clear instance of the layers of psalmic influence at work in his lyrics. The poem’s title announces that, like the psalms, it has a song-like nature, and that – as in many a psalm – there are different voices to be heard within it. In this case, the song is identified as a specific kind of liturgical performance involving two distinct groups of singers, the “chorus” and the “versical,” reflecting the common liturgical practice of refrain and verse singing during prayers by congregation or choir, and soloist or priest, respectively.88 The alternating parts also recall the customary antiphonal chanting of psalms in the church. The title and structure of the poem, therefore, already identify its multiple



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psalm-like aspects – the poem as a song, the distinctive vocal parts, the communal performance, the use of alternating voices – even before the vocabulary and argument are encountered:

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Cho. Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing, My God and King.   Vers. The heav’ns are not too high, His praise may thither flie: The earth is not too low, His praises there may grow. Cho. Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing, My God and King.   Vers. The church with psalms must shout, No doore can keep them out: But above all, the heart Must bear the longest part. Cho. Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing, My God and King.89

The poem’s overall structure already suggests its musical and liturgical contexts, but the specific occasion of the “Antiphon” is made clear in the very first line, which also forms its refrain. This is a poem to celebrate a new morning, since its opening invitation is a combination of two main ideas from Psalm 95, known as the “Venite,” one of the psalms forming part of the liturgy of Morning Prayer in The Book of Common Prayer. Like Herbert’s poem, Psalm 95 opens with an exhortation to sing – “O come, let us syng unto the Lord” – while Herbert’s subsequent reference to “ev’ry corner” of the world is borrowed from verse 4 of the psalm, which proclaims that “In [God’s] hands are all the corners of the earth.”90 As if this were not enough psalmic presence for the opening chorus, the specific phrase that all the world is urged to sing, “My God and King,” is itself a double echo from the psalms. One of the reasons for singing to the Lord given in Psalm 95:3 is that he is a “great god: and a greate Kynge, above all goddes,” while Psalm 68:24 in the BCP version addresses God with the exact phrase of Herbert’s chorus, “my God and King.”91

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Although already saturated with the psalms, the poem goes on to announce its link with them even more forcibly: the church needs to shout psalms so loudly that “No doore can keep them out.” This does not seem to be a reference to dainty or highly crafted lyric verse, but to the noisy and enthusiastic sounds of popular metrical psalms sung by the congregation, both inside and outside the church building. The poem presents an image of psalm-singing as ubiquitous, forming part of the praise that reaches to the heights of heaven even if it has its origins in the “low” earth. The formal structure of “Antiphon (I)” is also all-encompassing. Like the lyrics of the Sidney psalter, it is elaborately crafted in a form not repeated elsewhere in the collection; yet that composition manages to include within it something of the simplicity of the metrical psalms as well as the profundity of the biblical original. Above all, however, Herbert concludes by adding another layer that reflects his commitment to the inner spiritual experience: it is the “heart” that is obliged to “bear the longest part” in this music-making. Just as in “Easter,” where the individual believer’s heart must play its part to “twist a song / Pleasant and long” in God’s praise,92 here in “Antiphon (I)” the personalized phrase “My God and King” must be personally expressed. Ultimately for Herbert, the most significant place where psalms are sung is the human heart, the dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit, the spiritual temple whose “frame and fabrick,” as Herbert puts it in “Sion,” is “within.”93

“The finenesse which a hymne or psalme affords”: Herbert’s new poetics Benefiting from the work of his predecessors in English biblical translation, as well as in the versification of the psalms in Geneva and at Wilton, it is evident that Herbert drew incalculably great inspiration from a variety of versions of the Book of Psalms – ­scriptural, liturgical, metrical, musical, congregational, lyrical, private, and communal, to name but some. However, Herbert went one step further than any of the translators or poets who preceded him, by addressing the underlying question of what a true song of praise for God should be. Herbert is the questioning poet who longs to know how to create a



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psalm – a poem that will strike just the right balance of originality and givenness, that might express the spiritual experience which passes understanding, and that may serve the needs of readers in the metaphorical Israels of the future. This issue preoccupies many of the lyrics in The Temple – including most notably the two “Jordan” poems, “The Forerunners,” and “The Quidditie”  – but Herbert addresses the matter head-on in “A true Hymne”: My joy, my life, my crown! My heart was meaning all the day, Somewhat it fain would say: And still it runneth mutt’ring up and down With onely this, My joy, my life, my crown. Yet slight not these few words: If truly said, they may take part Among the best in art. The finenesse which a hymne or psalme affords, Is, when the soul unto the lines accords. He who craves all the minde, And all the soul, and strength, and time, If the words onely ryme, Justly complains, that somewhat is behinde To make his verse, or write a hymne in kinde. Whereas if th’ heart be moved, Although the verse be somewhat scant, God doth supplie the want. As when th’ heart sayes (sighing to be approved) O, could I love! and stops: God writeth, Loved.94

The initial purpose of this poem derives from Psalm 45, which begins in the BCP Coverdale translation, “My heart is inditing [of a good matter],” of which Herbert’s second line is an almost exact transcription.95 The speaker’s heart wants to express its delight in God, “My joy, my life, my crown,” but can only come up again and again with the same set of simple phrases, which are themselves biblical in origin: God is “my exceeding joy” or “my joy and gladness,” for example, in Psalm 43:4.96 As the poem proceeds, the pairing of “a hymne or psalme” confirms that these stanzas are an exploration

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of what a “true” psalm in verse might be – a quest at the very center of The Temple. The poet’s radical conclusion seems to be that “these few words,” the biblical phrases of praise “My joy, my life, my crown,” rather like “My God and King” of “Antiphon (I)” or “My God, My King” of “Jordan (I),” should be sufficient in themselves, as long as they are genuinely “meant” or “indited.” Rhyme and rhetoric matter little, if the “soul unto the lines accords”; a psalm or hymn is finely made when the “heart” bears the “longest part,” as Herbert put it in “Antiphon (I).” Theologically, this emphasis on the psalms being given their worth when tested in the heart was a key argument of Calvin, who asserted that “voice and song” must “spring from deep feeling of heart” in order for the singing of psalms to have “any value or profit in the least with God.”97 Aesthetically, this is a risky strategy and could be used as a defense of well-intentioned holy doggerel – that is, if it were not for Herbert’s final stanza. Here a new “psalmist” comes into the picture: God himself, who (as in Herbert’s “Easter”) compensates with his own loving art for what is missing in human artistry and devotion. The final sentence of the speaker’s sighing heart in “A true Hymne,” “O, could I love!,” is answered by God, who in doing so matches up the rhyme, completes the poem and confirms the fulfillment of redemption. Herbert, then, is a poet seeking the “true Hymne,” the right kind of poetic psalm. He was blessed with the heritage of a line of French and English psalm-inspired commentators and poets, from Calvin and Marot up to and including the Sidney siblings. He was, in turn, honored as a poet in the tradition of David, not only by Oley and Heywood with whom this essay began, but also by so distinguished a figure as Francis Bacon, who dedicated his own psalm translations to Herbert during the poet’s own lifetime.98 The midseventeenth-century writer Ralph Knevet looked back to Herbert as a poet who “rightly knew to touch Davids harpe,” and at the end of the century the unknown editor of Select Hymns Taken from Mr  Herbert’s Temple (1697) assembled and trimmed a collection of Herbert’s most psalm-like lyrics into hymns.99 Perhaps Herbert’s principles as  a poet of the transnational Davidic inheritance may best be appreciated in the light of his approach to the Bible as a whole, summed up in “The H. Scriptures II”:



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Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine, And the configurations of their glorie! Seeing not onely how each verse doth shine, But all the constellations of the storie. This verse marks that, and both do make a motion Unto a third, that ten leaves off doth lie: Then as dispersed herbs do watch a potion, These three make up some Christians destinie: Such are thy secrets, which my life makes good, And comments on thee: for in ev’ry thing Thy words do find me out, & parallels bring, And in another make me understood. Starres are poore books, & oftentimes do misse: This book of starres lights to eternall blisse.100

The psalms within Herbert’s poems are those “dispersed herbs,” echoing one another and being brought into a new relationship within the space of the lyric, in which one biblical “verse” mingles unexpectedly with another “that ten leaves off doth lie” in the Book of Psalms or elsewhere in the Bible. The central metaphor of the stars suggests just how extensive – indeed, infinite – the possibilities of these textual “constellations” are for the scripturebased poet. There is a sense of mutual partnership with the Bible here, both in Herbert’s construction of his lyrics inspired by the psalms, and in the effects that they have on the reader. The “storie” or text of the psalms reveals the life or “destinie” of the reader/ singer, while the lived life brought to the biblical text completes it and “makes good” its “secrets.” This early modern exegetical principle of cross-reference, linking and merging the reader’s engagement and the poet’s art with its scriptural precedents, fully underlies Herbert’s poetics as a psalmist. Poetry, as Philip Sidney declared, is “an art of imitation,”101 and in “Jordan (II)” Herbert is firmly reminded by a divine voice that “There is in love a sweetnesse readie penn’d: / Copie out only that, and save expense.”102 Herbert is a poet of inspired copying: as he asks Christ with some desperation in “The Thanksgiving,” “how then shall I imitate thee, and / Copie thy fair, though bloodie hand?”103 The poet, like the

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psalm translator – and in fact any Christian – is required to imitate Christ, in deeds as well as words.104 In the end, an investigation of Herbert’s relationship to the psalms brings us back to the key challenge facing any devotional poet, encapsulated by Herbert in “The Flower”: We say amisse, This or that is: Thy word is all, if we could spell.105

Whether in Israel, Geneva, or Wiltshire; in Hebrew, French, or English; in the temple of “brasse and stones”106 or the temple of the heart; in poems of great simplicity or masterful rhetoric – the continuing task is for the translators and poets to find the “true” psalm for their own Israel, through learning to “spell” God’s word anew in the songs that they contribute to an international chorus across time and space.107

Notes 1 Barnabas Oley, “A Prefatory View of the Life and Vertues of the Author,” in George Herbert, A Priest to the Temple or The Countrey Parson His Character, and Rule of Holy Life (London, 1652), a11v. 2 Oliver Heywood, The Sure Mercies of David (London, 1672), p. 119. 3 “The H. Scriptures II,” in English Poems, p. 210. 4 The definition offered in the introduction to The Sidney Psalter: The Psalms of Sir Philip and Mary Sidney, ed. Hannibal Hamlin et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. ix. 5 See John Eaton, The Psalms (London: Continuum, 2005), pp. 4–8. 6 Calvin’s Commentaries: Psalms, trans. James Anderson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1948–9), vol. 1, p. xxxvii. 7 Walter Brueggemann, From Whom No Secrets are Hid: Introducing the Psalms, ed. Brent A. Strawn (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), p. 174. 8 Anthony Gilby, translator’s preface, in Théodore de Bèze, The Psalmes of David (London: Henry Denham, 1581), a3v. 9 See Eaton, The Psalms, pp. 14–19. For further discussions of the Psalms as poetry, see James Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and its History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

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1981), and Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985). 10 A classic instance of these features in combination may be found in Psalm 98:9: “Let the flouds clap their hands, and let the hills be joyful  together before the Lord: for he is come to judge the earth” (in the Coverdale translation used alongside – and later ­incorporated  into  – the Book of Common Prayer [BCP]); cited from The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662, ed. Brian Cummings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 560. All further references to the BCP are taken from this edition. 11 Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry (1595), ed. Geoffrey Shepherd (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973), p. 99. See also Anne Lake Prescott, “King David as a Right Poet,” English Literary Renaissance, 19 (1989), 131–51. 12 See John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” The Bible: Authorized King James Version (1611), ed. Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 13 John Donne, “Upon the translation of the Psalmes by Sir Philip Sydney, and the Countesse of Pembroke his Sister,” in Complete English Poems, ed. C. A. Patrides (London: Dent, 1985), p. 467. 14 See Rivkah Zim, English Metrical Psalms: Poetry as Praise and Prayer, 1535–1601 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Gijsbert J. Siertsema, “‘A Great Pasport of Poetrie’: Sixteenth-Century European Psalm Translations and the Emergence of Devotional Poetry in England” (PhD thesis, Amsterdam Free University, 1991); Hannibal Hamlin, Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), and “The Bible,” in Andrew Hiscock and Helen Wilcox (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern English Literature and Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 545–61. 15 For extensive discussion of the role of the psalms in these controversies on what should be sung in reformed churches, see L. P. Austern et al. (eds), Psalms in the Early Modern World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011); Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 55–7; and Jonathan Willis, “Protestant Worship and the Discourse of Music in Reformation England,” in Natalie Mears and Alec Ryrie (eds), Worship and the Parish Church in Early Modern Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 131–49.

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16 Charles Garside, Jr., The Origins of Calvin’s Theology of Music: 1536–1543, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 69:4 (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1979), p. 5. See also Miller-Blaise, “‘The name of Psalmes will speak for me’: Le rôle des psaumes dans la conception sidnéienne de la musique de la poésie,” Etudes Epistémè, 18 (2010). DOI: 10.4000/episteme.646 17 John Calvin, Ioannis Calvini Opera Selecta, ed. Peter Barth et al. (Munich: Kaiser, 1926–36), vol. 1, p. 369; cited and translated by Garside, Origins, p. 10. 18 See William L. Holladay, The Psalms Through Three Thousand Years: Prayerbook of a Cloud of Witnesses (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), p. 199, and W. Stanford Reid, “The Battle Hymns of the Lord: Calvinist Psalmody of the Sixteenth Century,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 2.1 (1971), 36–54. 19 See, for example, the title of a study by Thomas Worden, The Psalms are Christian Prayer (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1962). 20 Calvin, Opera Selecta, vol. 2, p. 17; cited and translated by Garside, Origins, p. 33. 21 Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1978), p. 189. 22 The 1539 volume contained eighteen psalms; in 1542, further psalms were added, and this was the first volume referred to as the “Geneva Psalm Book.” It was expanded again in 1543 and 1551, with additions including Bourgeois’ melody for Psalm 100, known as “The Old Hundredth” and still widely associated with the hymn “All people that on earth do dwell.” Finally, in 1562, the Geneva Psalter containing all 150 psalms was published under the title Les Pseaumes en Vers Français avec leur melodies (Geneva, 1562). 23 For a helpful definition and discussion, see Alasdair A. MacDonald, “Contrafacta and the Gude and Godlie Ballatis,” in Helen Wilcox, Richard Todd, and Alasdair Macdonald  (eds), Sacred and Profane: Secular and Devotional Interplay in Early Modern British Literature (Amsterdam: Free University Press, 1996), pp. 33–43. 24 See Austern et al., Psalms in the Early Modern World, p. 21. 25 Elizabeth Clarke and Simon Jackson, “Lyric Poetry,” in Hiscock and Wilcox, The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern English Literature and Religion, pp. 154–5. 26 The Psalmes of David and others. With M. John Calvin’s Commentaries, trans. Arthur Golding (London, 1571); Théodore de Bèze, The Psalmes of David, truely opened and explaned by Paraphrasis, trans. Anthony Gilby (London, 1581).

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27 Sermons of John Calvin, upon the Songe that Ezekias Made (London, 1560). 28 See Beth Quitslund, The Reformation in Rhyme: Sternhold, Hopkins and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–1603 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), and Ian M. Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 29 See Christopher W. Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 435–6. 30 Donne, Complete English Poems, p. 469. 31 For a discussion of the earliest manuscripts – definitely predating the planned visit of Queen Elizabeth I to Wilton in 1599 – see Sidney Psalter, ed. Hamlin et al., p. xxxii. 32 Sidney Psalter, p. xiv. 33 Duncan-Jones, Sir Philip Sidney; Anne Lake Prescott, French Poets and the English Renaissance: Studies in Fame and Transformation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978), p. 178. 34 Sidney, Apology for Poetry, p. 131. 35 See Marie-Alice Belle and Line Cottegnies (eds), Robert Garnier in Elizabethan England, (Cambridge: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2017), particularly pp. 19–49; Margaret P. Hannay, Mary Ellen Lamb, and Michael G. Brennan (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Sidneys, 1500–1700, vol. I (Aldershot: Ashgate 2015), p. 66; and Margaret P. Hannay, Philip’s Phoenix: Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). 36 This is the estimate offered by Margaret P. Hannay in “Re-revealing the Psalms: Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, and Her Early Modern Readers,” in Austern et al., Psalms in the Early Modern World, p. 219. The coeditors of The Sidney Psalter suggest an even more staggering number: in the 172 poems (taking into account the multiple poems making up Psalm 119) “the Sidneys repeat only one form (both stanza and meter) exactly” (p. xxiii). 37 Sidney, Apology for Poetry, pp. 98–9. 38 Donne, Complete English Poems, p. 468. 39 John Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (London: Secker & Warburg, 1949), p. 138. 40 Samuel Daniel, “To the Right Honourable, the Lady Marie, Countess of Pembrooke” (dedicatory poem preceding The tragedie of Cleopatra), in Delia and Rosamund augmented Cleopatra (London, 1594). 41 Sorbonne MS 1110.

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42 Hallett Smith, “English Metrical Psalms in the Sixteenth Century and their Literary Significance,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 9 (1946), 250. 43 Clément Marot et Théodore de Bèze: Les Psaumes en vers Français avec leurs melodies, ed. Pierre Pidoux (Geneva: Droz, 1986), p. 121. 44 Psalm 38, ll. 7–12, Sidney Psalter, pp. 73–4. 45 This has also been demonstrated by Clarke and Jackson, “Lyric Poetry,” p. 155. 46 Katherine R. Larson, The Matter of Song in Early Modern England: Texts in and of the Air (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), p. 49. 47 Sidney Psalter, ed. Hamlin et al., p. 28. All quotations from the Sidney psalms are taken from this edition. See also Mary Sidney Herbert, The Collected Works of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, ed. Margaret P. Hannay, Noel J. Kinnamon, and Michael G. Brennan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). 48 The term “paraphrase” literally refers to an expansion of the original text, resulting in a fuller interpretation of the original than implied by “translation.” Compare Herbert’s definition of prayer as “the soul in paraphrase” (English Poems, p. 178). See Miller-Blaise, “Mary Sidney et les Psaumes.” For a discussion of the early modern use of the terms “translation” and “paraphrase” in relation to the psalms, see Hamlin, Psalm Culture, pp. 8–13. 49 A “ditty” is both a short, simple song (OED 2) and a theme or motto (OED 3). The term is later used by Herbert in “The Forerunners,” ll.  11–12: God “will be pleased with that dittie; / And if I please him, I  write fine and wittie” (English Poems, p. 612), and in “The Banquet,” ll. 48–9: “Let the wonder of this pitie / Be my dittie” (p.  629), in this second case directly echoing Sidney’s rhyme and meaning. 50 Sidney Psalter, p. 87. In Coverdale’s translation of the psalm, included in the BCP for liturgical use, the phrase is “the pen of a ready writer,” but in the Geneva Bible it is “the pen of a swift writer,” suggesting once again the precedence of French Protestant influence in the Sidney psalter. Mary Sidney’s sensitivity to the parallelism of the Hebrew original is further in evidence here; see also note 9 above, and the discussion of Psalm 6 below. 51 See Suzanne Trill, “Sixteenth-Century Women’s Writing: Mary Sidney’s Psalms and the Femininity of Translation,” in Suzanne Trill and William Zunder (eds), Writing and the English Renaissance (London: Longman, 1996), pp. 140–58.

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52 Psalm 68:25 (BCP, p. 527); ll. 26 and 67, Sidney Psalter, pp. 124–5. 53 Psalm 139:12 (BCP, p. 602). Mary Sidney lost two children in infancy, but two sons lived to adulthood – William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, and Philip Herbert, fourth Earl of Pembroke – and acted as Herbert’s patron for the living at Bemerton. 54 Psalm 139, ll. 56 and 49, Sidney Psalter, p. 269. 55 Psalm 139, l. 55, Sidney Psalter, p. 269. The reference to embroidery echoes George Puttenham’s description of poetic rhetoric in The Arte of English Poesie (London, 1589), p. 114. I am grateful to AnneMarie Miller-Blaise for pointing out this parallel. 56 Hallett Smith famously described the Sidney Psalter as “a School of English Versification” (“English Metrical Psalms,” p. 269). 57 Psalm 103, ll. 57–72, Sidney Psalter, p. 196. 58 As a transition from the breakable clay of the potter’s vessel to the brevity of the fading flowers, this is an inspired image of fragility, echoing but transforming the original verse 15 (“The dayes of man are but as grasse,” BCP, my emphasis). Sidney’s simile may well have been the source for Herbert’s l. 2 of “The Windows”: man is a “brittle crazie glasse” (English Poems, p. 246). 59 Psalm 130, ll. 1–6, Sidney Psalter, p. 255. 60 BL Add MS 15117, 5v. The other setting, in the same manuscript and also anonymous, is of Psalm 51 (BL Add MS 15117, 4v–5r). The musical settings are closer to the artful lute songs of the day than to the simple, inherited hymn-like melodies for congregational use to which metrical psalms were generally sung. See Linda P. Austern, “‘For Musicke is the Handmaid of the Lord’: Women, Psalms, and Domestic Music-Making in Early Modern England,” in Austern et al. (eds), Psalms in the Early Modern World, pp. 99–109; see also Larson, The Matter of Song, pp. 53–63. 61 Les Psaumes en vers Français, ed. Pidoux, p. 14. 62 Psalm 81, ll. 1–4, Sidney Psalter, p. 159. 63 “The Authors Dreame to the Ladie Marie, the Countesse Dowager of Pembrooke,” l. 161, in The Poems of Amelia Lanyer: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, ed. Susanne Woods (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 29. 64 Lanyer, Poems, p. 27. 65 Lanyer, Poems, p. 29. 66 See also Hannay, “Re-revealing the Psalms,” pp. 219–33. 67 The metrical psalm translations appealed to early modern believers in many European countries and from all confessional traditions, from Catholic to Calvinist, despite their differences of practice or emphasis.

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For further discussion of this universalizing aspect of the psalter, see Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England, pp. 435–6, and Hamlin, Psalm Culture, particularly pp. 218–52. 68 See Noel J. Kinnamon, “A Note on Herbert’s ‘Easter’ and the Sidneian Psalms,” George Herbert Journal, 1.2 (1978), 44–8. The links between Herbert’s “The Invitation” and the Sidney Psalm 38 are sensitively explored in Clarke and Jackson, “Lyric Poetry,” pp. 155–6. See above, note 49, for the echo of the Sidneyan Psalm 13 in Herbert’s “The Banquet,” and note 58, for a link between the Sidneys’ Psalm 103 and “The Windows”; see below, note 74, for Herbert’s borrowings from the Sidneys in his own “23 Psalme,” and note 91 for his echo of the Sidney Psalter in “Jordan (I).” 69 Donne, A Sermon of Commemoration of the Lady Danvers (London, 1627), p. 133. 70 All the French Psalm Tunes with English Words (London, 1632). For a general consideration of Herbert’s relationship to French culture, see Miller-Blaise, “George Herbert’s French Connections.” 71 The Sidney psalms included in All the French Psalm Tunes are numbers 40, 41, 42, and 97. 72 The particularly French focus of this volume, as well as limitations of space, preclude a discussion of the important Dutch influences on the  development of early modern metrical psalmody. See, for example, Richard Todd, “‘So Well Attyr’d Abroad’: A Background to the Sidney-Pembroke Psalter and its Implications for the SeventeenthCentury Religious Lyric,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 29 (1987), 74–93. 73 “The 23 Psalme,” English Poems, p. 594. 74 Neither the Geneva Bible (favored by the Sidneys), nor the later BCP Coverdale translation or the Authorized Version (available to Herbert), features the word “sweet.” The Sidney Psalm 23 uses it in l. 5 to describe the “still waters” (indicating that they are fresh), whereas Herbert introduces it at the end of the psalm to characterize God’s “wondrous love.” For Herbert’s distinctive use of “sweet” in The Temple, see the glossary of English Poems, pp. xliv–xlv. 75 “Clasping of hands,” English Poems, p. 540. 76 While other biblical translations of verse 5 (Geneva, Authorized Version), like Herbert’s, set God’s actions in the present, Coverdale – almost always Herbert’s favored translation – places them firmly in the future: “Thou shalt prepare a table … my cup shall be full,” Psalm 23:5 (BCP, p. 484). The Sidneys’ rendering is halfway between Coverdale and Herbert: the laying out of the table, and the filling of

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the cup, are set in the present, but the feeding is still reserved for the future. 77 “Love (III),” English Poems, p. 661. 78 See the pioneering work of Coburn Freer on the influence of the ­metrical psalm translators’ style, if not their verse forms, on Herbert’s poetry: Music for a King: George Herbert’s Style and the Metrical Psalms (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972). It is interesting that a sequence of metrical psalm translations (1–7) was tentatively attributed to Herbert by John Playford in his Psalms and Hymns in Solemn Musicke (1671). However, as F. E. Hutchinson noted, these verses “have none of the felicity which distinguishes Herbert’s version of Ps. xxiii,” and “the evidence for assigning them to him is happily slender,” Works, pp. 554–5. 79 See part 2 of the scriptural index in English Poems, pp. 727–32. 80 English Poems, p. 193 81 Psalm 139:7, BCP, p. 602. 82 English Poems, p. 169. 83 English Poems, p. 170, BCP, p. 513. 84 Psalms 39, 51, and 59 all underlie “Repentance,” and there are incidental echoes of at least two other psalms, 90 and 104; see English Poems, pp. 168–72. 85 English Poems, p. 226. 86 The further echoes come from Psalms 51 and 95; see BCP, pp. 102, 105, and English Poems, pp. 225–8. 87 BCP, p. 783; the final phrase is from Herbert’s “Prayer (I),” English Poems, p. 178. 88 See, for example, the instruction to the “minister” to speak “in a loud voyce” and for the people to respond with their “aunswere” (Morning Prayer in the BCP, p. 110). 89 “Antiphon (I),” English Poems, pp. 186–7. 90 BCP, p. 105. 91 BCP, pp. 105, 527. The reference to “God” and “King” within one phrase also occurs in Psalms 5, 68, 84, and 145, as well as in Herbert’s “Jordan (I),” where the concluding words, “My God, My King,” are also a direct echo of the Sidneys’ Psalm 59. 92 “Easter,” ll. 13–14, English Poems, p. 140. 93 English Poems, p. 382. 94 “A true Hymne,” English Poems, p. 576. 95 BCP, p. 507. 96 In the Authorized Version and the BCP (p. 505) respectively. 97 Calvin, Institutes, cited by Freer, Music for a King, p. 72.

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98 Francis Bacon, A Translation of Certaine Psalmes (London, 1625). 99 The Shorter Poems of Ralph Knevet, ed. Amy Charles (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1966), p. 280; Anon., Select Hymns Taken from Mr Herbert’s Temple (London, 1697). 100 “The H. Scriptures II,” English Poems, p. 210. 101 Sidney, Apology for Poetry, p. 101. 102 English Poems, p. 367. 103 English Poems, p. 112. 104 This was, of course, perceived centuries before Herbert by Thomas à Kempis in his Imitatio Christi. 105 English Poems, p. 568. 106 “Sion,” English Poems, p. 382. 107 See Oliver Heywood as cited in the title of this essay, and Psalm 96:1, “O sing unto the Lord a new song” (BCP, p. 558).

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Index

Albret, Joan of (Jeanne d’) 56n31 Anjou, François d’ 54n16, 234n7 Aubigné, Agrippa de 16, 35, 39, 49–52, 52–3n1, 55n24, 58n55, 58–9n61, 59n62 Babylonian captivity 136, 196n13 Bacon, Sir Francis 12, 15, 28n42, 56n39, 151–2, 170n60, 183, 200n68, 202n105, 356 Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez de 20, 30n64 Barbaro, Francesco 1 Bartas, Guillaume de Saluste du 16, 30n61, 49, 58n54, 58n60, 296, 298, 300–1, 315n24, 339 Basire, Isaac 57n48 Bayle, Pierre 1–3, 23n6, 23n7, 146, 149 Baxter, Richard 121, 146 Bemerton 126, 186, 347, 363n53 Bellarmine, Cardinal Roberto 11, 49 Beza, Theodore (Théodore de Bèze) 53–4n9, 58n54, 68, 204n127, 336–7, 304, 339–41, 348, 358n8 Bodin, Jean 160, 174n111, 174n112

Bohemia 40, 61, 63, 71, 84–8, 176 Book of Common Prayer, Church of England 338, 348, 350, 352–5, 359n10, 362n50, 363n58, 364n74, 364n76, 365n86, 365n88, 365n91, 366n107 Bracciolini, Poggio 1–2 Bruno, Giordano 2, 299 Buckingham, George Villiers, Earl (later Marquess, Duke) 16, 21, 41, 65, 70–2, 77, 90–1, 107, 111, 172n97, 233n4, 325 Calvin, John (Jean) 18, 68, 120–2, 179, 197n31, 203n119, 206–217, 305–7, 316n38, 316n39, 334–348, 356, 360n16, 360n26, 361n27 Camden, William 56n39, 157 Campanella 222, 235n25 Carew, Sir George 220, 297 Carew, Thomas 19–20, 30–1n64, 248, 252, 260–295 “The Complement” 270–4, 277 Casaubon, Isaac 9, 19, 38–9, 221, 234n19, 297 Castiglione, Baldassare 82, 90, 96n10, 99n47, 200n76

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Index 401

Chandieu, Antoine de la Roche 20, 54n14, 72, 296–306, 310–12, 315n22, 315n23 Chantelouve, François de 54n14 Charles, Prince of Wales (later King Charles I) 15–16, 20, 41–3, 61–6, 70, 81, 84–5, 90–2, 97n26, 110–1, 156–7, 160, 167n42, 298, 325 Cicero 145, 166n26, 230, 241, 257n7 Coligny, Gaspard de 35–8, 42, 54n14 communion 4–9, 12, 14–16, 18, 21, 45, 52, 60–79, 193, 204n130, 243, 307, 347, 350 Eucharist 7, 18, 21, 38–9, 55n25, 58–9n61, 61, 193, 204n127, 350 contrafacta 323, 337, 360n23 Cornaro, Luigi 68, 131–4 cosmopolitanism 2, 11–13, 19, 21, 23n10, 37, 142, 147, 241, 252, 319–330, 330n5 councils and conciliarism 60, 68, 121–7, 155–60, 260 Danvers, Lady Magdalen (Magdalen Herbert, before remarriage) 6–7, 22, 25n20, 56n39, 65, 113, 255, 309 Descartes, René 9, 12–3, 28n43, 28n44, 141, 150–1, 169n52, 175, 226n3, 233n3, 322, 329 Des Maizeaux, Pierre 55n23 Digby, Sir Kelnem 49 Donne, John 7, 19, 49, 113, 141, 165n19, 167n40, 182,

192, 195–6n8, 199n60, 199n61, 199n62, 199n63, 199n67, 200n72, 221, 230, 232, 242, 248, 251–2, 256, 258n14, 258n22, 259n23, 263, 266, 283, 289, 291n4, 291n5, 293n27, 301, 309, 335, 338–9, 348, 359n13 Dowrich, Anne 54n15 Du Perron, Cardinal Jacques Davy 38–9, 55n23, 59n61 Du Perron, Jean 55n22 Duplessis-Mornay, Philippe See Mornay, Philippe Duplessis Edict of Beaulieu 219 Edict of Nantes 21, 35, 39–40, 49, 52, 60, 219 Elizabeth I, Queen of England 20, 53n7, 54n16, 74, 80, 103, 300–1, 361n31 Elizabeth Stuart (see Stuart, Princess Elizabeth) Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor 40, 98n36 Ferrar, Nicholas 102, 133, 188 Ficino 204n134, 226, 229, 238n51 Foxe, John 43, 156 Frederick V, Elector Palatine (King of Bohemia, “The Winter King”) 40, 56n33, 63–6, 73, 76–7n11, 77n12, 80, 84, 86–8, 98n 32, 98n32, 98n40 Gassendi, Pierre 9, 27n33, 145–6, 151, 166n32

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402

Index

Gerson, Jean Charlier de 17, 119–39 Goudimel, Claude 337 Goulart, Simon 48, 58n54, 58n55 Greville, Fulke, Lord Brooke 14, 259n28 Grévin, Jacques 20, 72, 298, 300–4, 309–10, 312–13 Grotius, Hugo 3, 9, 19, 39, 42–3, 54n10, 56n36, 111, 220–2, 234n16, 265, 280, 291n12, 320 Guicciardini, Francesco 43, 156 Gunpowder Plot 45, 49, 74 Harley, Sir Robert 13–4, 243 Henri IV, King of France (Henri III de Navarre) 11, 38–40, 49, 58n51, 60, 69, 72–4, 79n30, 219–21, 339 Henrietta Maria, Princess (later Queen of France, also Henriette Marie) 57n46, 66, 171–2n85, 91, 171–2n85, 298, 325 Henry VIII, King of England 8, 15, 25n27, 43, 46, 143, 156–61, 171n82, 242 Herbert, George Works Poems, English Affliction (I) 132, 309 Antiphon (I) 6, 352–6 Artillerie 306 Bag, The 304 Banquet, The 15, 62, 71, 308, 348, 362n49, 364n68 British Church, The 123, 308 Call, The 309 Church Militant, The 7, 16, 29n53, 38, 45–6, 49–52, 57n48, 62

Church-porch, The 7, 11, 139n50, 182–9, 194, 199n64, 199n67, 200n70, 203n111 Church-rents and schismes 14 Clasping of Hands 308, 350 Collar, The 101, 104, 112, 132, 306–8 Conscience 67, 76n7, 132, 192 Constancie 193 Deniall 307, 347 Discipline 73 Dooms-day 316n37 Easter 347, 352–6, 364n68 Envoy, L’ 132 Even-song 132 Familie, The 7, 192 Flower, The 61, 134, 306, 347, 358 Forerunners, The 309, 355, 362n49 Frailtie 306 Glance, The 64, 306 Heaven 48 H. Baptisme (I) 308 H. Communion, The 61, 193 Humilitie 306 Invitation, The 132, 308, 348, 364n68 Jordan (I) 296, 348, 351, 355–6, 364n68, 365n91 Jordan (II) 67, 112, 351, 355–7 Justice (I) 308 Lent 129–32, 138n41, 193–4, 308 Life 308 Longing 73, 347 Love (III) 62, 64, 132, 193, 308, 350 Love unknown 73 Mans medley 194

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Index 403

Herbert, George (cont.) Works (cont.) Poems, English (cont.) Mattens 352 Mortification 307 Nature 132, 308 New Year Sonnets 255 Odour, The 71, 132, 193 Peace 61, 75 Prayer (I) 193, 365n87 Providence 70 23 Psalme, The 348–51, 364n68, 364n73 Pulley, The 305–7 Quidditie, The 355 Repentance 132, 308, 316n37, 351, 365n84 Rose, The 61, 132, 194 Sacrifice, The 305 Sighs and Grones 132 Sion 354 Size, The 194, 309 Submission 200n74 Temper (I), The 351 Thanksgiving, The 357 true Hymne, A 355–6 Vertue 73, 194 Windows, The 203n113, 215, 363n58, 364n68 poems, Latin and Greek Cambridge Latin Gratulatory of 1613, sonnets 63 Lucus (Sacred Grove) 8, 11, 16, 22, 45, 62, 64, 68–9, 74, 76, 78n18, 78n19, 78n20, 137n20 Memoriae Matris Sacrum (To the memory of my Mother, A Consecrated Gift) 65–6 Musae Responsoriae (The Muses in Response) 8, 66–9, 78n19, 293n34

Vrbani VIII Pont. Repons. (The Reply of Pope Urban VIII) 68–9 Roma. Anagr. (Rome. Anagram) 68–9 Triumphus Mortis (Death’s Triumph) 45, 52, 62–76, 125 prose works Briefe Notes on Valdesso’s Considerations, and a letter to the translator 68, 126, 132–4, 301 Country Parson, The 7–8, 18, 27n37, 61, 119, 123, 126–131, 134–5, 186–91, 194, 195n4, 200n75, 200–1n77, 201n87, 201n89, 201n92, 202n96, 202n97, 205n136, 207–17, 244, 358n1 Oratio (Oration, Cambridge, October 8, 1623) 16, 70, 75–6, 76–7n11, 115n23 Outlandish Proverbs 12, 27–8n37, 28n41, 127, 135, 139n50 Herbert, Lord Edward of Cherbury Works Amazon, The 18–19, 218–38 Autobiography (The Life of Edward, First Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written by himself) 9, 13, 17, 38, 41, 82–3, 95n1, 98n32, 101–16, 157, 163n1, 219, 221, 233n4, 233n5, 235n25, 235n28, 247, 256, 319, 327

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404

Index

Herbert, Lord Edward of Cherbury (cont.) Works (cont.) Book of Dispatches (also uncollected dispatches) 87, 90, 94, 97n25, 98n43, 321, 325 Colours, sonnets on 280–4, 288 Complement, The (also Love’s Complement) 270–4, 277, 289, 292n24 Description, A 248–9, 262, 270–1, 273, 276–7, 280, 288, 290n3, 292n18 De Veritate 13–15, 18–19, 26, 27n33, 28n44, 39, 41, 89–90, 95, 111, 112, 140–58, 163n1, 163n3, 164n5, 164n6, 165n21, 166n28, 166n30, 166n32, 166n33, 171n84, 218–38, 261–2, 280, 286, 289, 320, 322, 327 Dialogue between a Tutor and his Pupil, A 144, 158, 165n22 Epitaph 140, 163n1, 248–50 Expedition to the Isle of Rhé, The 17, 41–3, 65, 142, 156 life and raigne of King Henry the Eighth, The 15, 17, 25n27, 41, 43, 56n40, 90, 142, 147, 155–61, 167n42, 171n83, 172n90, 173n100, 173n108, 174n111 Letters to Calvert 233n4 to James I 233n4

to Naunton 83, 87–8, 97n24, 235n31, 325 Lutebooke of Edward Lord Herbert, The 323 religione gentilium, De (The Antient Religion of the Gentiles) 26, 44, 57n43, 146, 158, 162, 322 religione laïci, De 28n43, 158, 164n24 Sonnet of Black Beauty 255–6, 280–4, 287–8 State Progress of Ill 81, 96n5, 221, 290n3 To Her face 248 To Her Mind 248, 288 Herbert, Henry 27n38, 113 Herbert, Philip (Fourth Earl of Pembroke and First Earl of Montgomery) 20, 126, 347, 363n53 Hotman, Francis 53n9, 55n21 Hotman, Jean 38, 55n21, 56n30, 278, 287, 294n39, 295n56 Isnard, Jacques 42 James I, King of England (James VI of Scotland) 16, 21, 39–41, 45, 49–51, 60–76, 77n11, 77n12, 80–100, 103, 105, 107, 109, 114n17, 126, 140, 156, 167–8n43, 171–2n85, 218, 221–3, 233n4, 302 Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc) 127 King, John 60 Languet, Hubert 2–3, 36, 339 Leeke, James 45, 57n48 Le Jeune, Claude 20, 299

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Index 405

L’Estocart, Pascal de 20 Lipsius, Justus 19, 162, 168n43, 174n116, 242–7, 250, 256, 257n8 liturgy 102, 109, 228, 335, 348, 352–3 Locke, John 28n45, 141, 145, 162, 166n31, 171n82, 227, 230, 237n42, 256 Louis XIII, King of France 40–2, 49, 69, 72, 82, 86, 88, 220, 222–3, 235n33, 268, 318 Louis XIV, King of France 1, 4, 21, 24n15 Lucretius 19, 22–3n4, 65 Luther, Martin 120–3, 128, 132, 177–9, 193, 196n14, 196n15, 197n31, 204n132, 214 Luynes, Duke of (Charles D’Albert, duc de Luynes) 41, 109, 222–3, 235n28, 235n33 Maria-Anna, Infanta of Spain 57n46, 77n11, 77n12, 81, 85, 90–2, 95–6n3 Marino, Giambattista (also Giovanni Battista) 11, 20, 260–95 Marot, Clément 72, 336–48, 356, 362n43 Mary I, Queen of England 43 Maximillian II, Holy Roman Emperor 19 Medici, Catherine de 24n14, 35, 48, 50 Medici, Marie de 40, 49, 331n20 Melanchthon, Philip 2, 120–1, 136n8 Mersenne, Marin 13, 28n48, 29n49, 29n51, 150–1,

169n52, 169n53, 233n3, 329 Milton, John 135–6n3, 136, 136n3, 168–9n51, 265 Montaigne, Michel de 149, 162, 220, 226, 259n25, 301 Montmorency, Dukes of: Anne de Montmorency (1493–1567), Henri de Montmorency-Damville (Henri I, (1534–1614), and Henri de Montmorency (Henri II, 1595–1632) 3, 16, 38, 72, 75, 80, 159, 218, 219–23, 227, 232–3, 234n7, 235n27, 261, 297 Mornay, Philippe Duplessis 2–3, 36–9, 49, 53–4n9, 54n11, 55n25, 55n26, 55n27, 56n33, 58–9n61, 220–1, 339 Oley, Barnabus 209, 333, 340, 356, 358n1 Plotinus 226, 231 politiques 38, 218–220 proto-Protestant 120–2, 133, 135n3, 137n11 Psalms 3, 23n11, 72, 297–300, 303–4, 308, 315n24, 362n48, 336–66 Psalm-singing 20, 331, 335, 338, 336–41, 351–6 Sternhold and Hopkins 338, 349, 351, 361n28 Richelieu, Cardinal (Armand Jean du Plessis) 21 Rocquigny, Adrian de 50, 59n62

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406

Index

Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre 15, 21, 23n10, 24n14, 35–59, 219 Sales, Saint François de (Saint Francis) 7, 10, 18, 137n21, 175–205 Savonarola, Girolamo 10, 164n7 Scaliger, Joseph Justus 38–9, 55n23 Sempill, Robert 53n8 Sidney, Lady Mary (Mary Sidney Herbert) 3, 23n11, 302, 339–48, 358n4, 361n35, 361n36, 362n47, 362n48, 362n50, 362n51, 363n53 Sidney, Sir Philip 3, 23n10, 37, 60, 105, 171n84, 244, 258n14, 259n28, 265, 279, 294n42, 302, 335, 338–41, 357, 359n11, 361n33 Sidney, Baron Robert (Earl of Leicester, Viscount Lisle) 20, 302 Sponde, Jean de 20, 72, 298, 300–4, 307–8, 311–2, 315n24, 316n30, 316n42, 317n49 Sternhold, Thomas 308, 338, 349–51, 361n28 Stuart, Princess Elizabeth (Electress Palatine, Queen of Bohemia, “The Winter Queen”) 16, 40, 63–4, 66, 73, 80, 84–7, 98n32, 98n40 Synod of Dort 155, 220–1 Tertullian 26 Thirty Years’ War 1, 8, 16, 37, 40, 43–5, 52, 60–79, 95–6n3

Thou, Jacques-Auguste de 21, 31n66, 60, 76n1, 156 Thou, Nicolas de (Bishop of Chatres) 21 toleration 5, 16, 26n29, 37, 40, 51, 60, 68, 81, 95, 162, 172–3n98, 195n4, 220–1 Townsend, Aurelian 19, 72, 242, 247, 252, 297, 324 translatio empirii 46 transnational 5, 19–20, 25n19, 36–7, 39, 49, 315n28, 356 transregional 5–7, 10, 16, 19–21, 25n19, 25n26 Treaty of Westphalia 3 Urban VIII, Pope (Maffeo Vincenzo Barberini) 7, 11, 16, 27n33, 68–72, 78n18, 78n20 Valdesso (Juan de Valdés) 10, 68, 131–4, 301 Vanini, Giulio Cesare (also Lucilio Vanini) 23n5, 23n9, 73, 78n28, 222, 234n23 Vere, Susan de (Lady Herbert) 20, 302 Viau, Théophile de 16, 20–2, 23n9, 30–1n64, 72–5, 221–2, 234n23, 235n24, 235n26, 235n27, 261 Vossius, Gerardus Johannes 44, 57n44, 147 Walton, Izaak 10, 58n52, 73, 196n9, 205n137, 206, 294n11, 295n56, 314n5 Wilton 340, 347, 354, 361n31