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George Herbert's Authorship of ‘To the Queene of Bohemia’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
In 1870 H. Huth printed for the first time a poem evidently written in the early seventeenth century and bearing the title ‘To the Queene of Bohemia.’ The only sign of its authorship was the ‘G.H.’ printed after it. Aside from these initials no support was offered for the editor's statement that the poem was ‘probably from the pen of George Herbert.’ Four years later A. B. Grosart, apparently ignorant of Huth's book, printed the same poem from a different manuscript and ascribed the poem to George Herbert, not only because his manuscript too was initialed ‘G.H.’ but also because, as he argued, the poem's rhythm, form, and use of metaphors were like those found in The Temple? Further evidence for Herbert's authorship was supplied by the next two major editors of Herbert's works.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1977
References
1 Inedited Poetical Miscellanies, 1584-1700, ed. W. C. Hazlitt (London, 1870), n. pag.
2 Poetry and other literature was, of course, very frequently published in the seventeenth century with no better indication of its authorship than such initials. According to the Short Title Catalogue five books were published in the early seventeenth century under the initials ‘G.H.,’ three by George Hakewill (1636, 1627, 1632), one by George Hale (1614), and one by George Herbert (Outlandish Proverbs, 1640). Of the seven other authors listed in the Catalogue who might have signed their names ‘G.H.,’ only Gabriel Harvey is remembered today. His poetry, however, is not at all similar to ‘To the Queene of Bohemia.’
3 The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of George Herbert (London, 1874), 11, 54.
4 The English Works of George Herbert (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1905), III, 424. Herbert's friendship with Wotton, however, is based entirely on Walton's word, as Novarr, David has pointed out in The Making of Walton's Lives (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1958), p. 348 Google Scholar.
5 The Works of George Herbert (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945), p. 552. I quote Herbert from this text, with modern use of i/j and u/v.
6 Bradner, Leicester, ‘New Poems by George Herbert: The Cambridge Latin Gratulatory Anthology of 1613,’ Renaissance News, 15 (1962), 208–211 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 The translations of both poems are my own.
8 Lee, Sidney, ed., The Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (London: George Routledge, 1907), pp. 81, 94Google Scholar.
9 Hutchinson, p. 369.
10 As is shown, for example, in the following letter to Elizabeth from Sir Thomas Roe, written in March 1623 and published in Oman, Carola, Elizabeth of Bohemia (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 274–275 Google Scholar: ‘Most excellent Lady, be your owne queene. Banish all despaire and feares. Be assured the cause in which you surfer cannot perish. If God had not planted it, it had long since bene rooted out. Vouchsafe to remember the motto of our last, eternally glorious, Elizabeth, “This is done of the Lord, and it is wonderful in our eyes.” So shall the day of your retorne bee to those honors which you, above all princes, merit.’
11 This letter was sent from the Hague but unfortunately lacks any date (Lee, p. 203): ‘I pray be assured that my being in childbed hath hindered me all this while from thank ing you for your letter, and no forgetfulness of mine to you to whom I have ever had obligations from your love, which I will ever acknowledge and seek to requite in what I can.’ Perhaps Sir Edward had included ‘To the Queene of Bohemia’ in the letter with which Elizabeth seems so pleased.
12 Huth's unexplained suggestion, therefore, that the poem was written ‘about 1624’ seems correct. Palmer's later theory (III, 426), mentioned by Hutchinson (p. 552), that the poem might have been written after Frederick's death in 1632 is, on the contrary, quite untenable. The phrase ‘undivided Majestye’ (1. 34), which Palmer suggests might refer to the death of Elizabeth's partner in majesty, has, in fact, nothing to do with the Queen's marital status at all. A ‘divided’ majesty, in the terms of the poem, is one parceled out among scepters, attendants, pomp, and state and not inherent in the Prince himself. Queen Elizabeth, who does not depend on such supports, bears therefore a majesty which is ‘undivided.’ To comfort the Queen for an at least ten-year-old loss of lands by alluding to the more recent loss of her husband as a gain of majesty would be perverse, especially in a poem which glorifies the Queen's fecundity as a source of consolation.
13 p. 552.
14 p. 552.
15 II, 54.