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‘The Soul in Paraphrase’: George Herbert's ‘Library’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
A Priest to the Temple, Herbert's handbook of practical wisdom for the country parson, is justly praised for directness and common sense. But there is one chapter in it which seems to belong to another kind of discourse–to belong to the hterature not of wisdom but of wit. This chapter, ‘The Parson's Library,’ has provoked the editorial comment that the contents ‘correspond so little with the title, except for elaborating a paradox, that the chapter is possibly misnamed.’ The paradox, however, is not restricted to the title, but is elaborated in the chapter itself:
The Countrey Parson's Library is a holy Life: … For the temptations with which a good man is beset, and the ways which he used to overcome them, being told to another, whether in private conference, or in the Church, are a Sermon. Hee that hath considered how to carry himself at table about his appetite, if he tell this to another, preacheth; and much more feelingly, and judiciously, then he writes his rules of temperance out of bookes. So that the Parson having studied, and mastered all his lusts and affections within, and the whole Army of Temptations without, hath ever so many sermons ready penn'd, as he hath victories.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1966
References
1 Hutchinson, F.W., ed., The Works of George Herbert (Oxford, 1941), p. 563.Google Scholar
2 Herbert, Works, p. 278.
3 Hutchinson, xxxi.
4 In an article on ‘The Structure of George Herbert's Temple’ (UTQ XXXIV), I have argued that Herbert was working with the concept of the Temple as modified by Christianity, a Temple in which there could be only two structural divisions, because the veil separating the believer from the Holy of Holies came down with the death of Christ. This twofold division of the Temple was also used in at least three sermons by Donne.
5 Donne, John, The Sermons, eds. Potter, G.R. and Simpson, E.M. (Berkeley, 1953-62), ix, 274 Google Scholar.
6 Compare also a much briefer version of the same paradox which appears in a sermon preached by Donne in 1629 (ix, 185): ‘A godly man is a Library in himself, a treasury in himself, and therefore fittest to be dedicated and appropriated to God.’
7 Joseph Summers, in his George Herbert (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), comes to a similar conclusion about the public nature of The Temple,which he thinks serves the same function as ‘the public prayer or the continued meditation.’ Addressed to God, but requiring the understanding and involvement of the audience, such prayers may be compared with Elizabethan love poems ‘addressed to a mistress but circulated in manuscript or published by the poet’ (p. 104). Summers in fact distinguishes between such ‘prayers,’ with their double audience, and the ordinary sermon, with its single audience and simpler function. My theory makes this distinction unnecessary.