PREFACE. HE Poems of GEORGE HERBERT were pub lished after his death by his beloved friend Nicholas Ferrar, and at once attained pop ularity. Twenty thousand copies of "The Temple " were sold before Izaak Walton published the second edition of his "Life,” in 1674. Cowley alone rivalled the poet of the Church in public estimation. In spite of the quaintness and conceits peculiar to the age in which they were written, these Poems still retain a high place in our literature; the depth and reality of their religious feeling giving them a strong hold on English hearts, and the excellence of their language-pure and idiomatic as it is-preventing their becoming obsolete. Herbert was the Keble of his age, an age which boasted of Shakspeare, Bacon, Spenser, and Ben Jonson. He was probably personally acquainted with the first, as we know he was with the second of these great men. He, Donne, and Cowley were poets of another class, but great in their own sphere. Herbert is the best of the three, however, and remains the only one of them popularly read in the present day. The shrewd common sense of "The Church Porch "—the profound pathos of "The Sacrifice”the delicacy and beauty of "The Flower" and "Virtue"-the Spenser-like allegory of "The Pilgrimage" would alone stamp "The Temple" as the production of a true poet. "The Priest in the Temple" should never be parted from the Poems, on which it is a perfect commentary. While the Church of England exists the picture of the "Country Parson "-a portrait of Herbert himself-will be the delight of her ministerstheir guide and incentive to excellence. It is therefore with the certainty of having put "the right poet in the right place" that the Publishers add the Works of GEORGE HERBERT to the "Lansdowne Poets." For many of the Notes to this edition we have been indebted to the MSS. of the late Reverend Richard Valentine, who studied and annotated HERBERT'S Works with great care. THE PRINTERS TO THE READER.* HE dedication of this work having been made by the author to the Divine Majesty only, how should we now presume to interest any mortal man in the patronage of it? Much less think we it meet to seek the recommendation of the muses for that which himself was confident to have been inspired by a diviner breath than flows from "Helicon." The world therefore shall receive it in that naked simplicity with which he left it, without any addition either of support or ornament, more than is included in itself. We leave it free and unforestalled to every man's judgment, and to the benefit that he shall find by perusal. Only for the clearing of some passages, we have thought it not unfit to make the common reader privy to some few particularities of the condition and disposition of the person. Being nobly born, and as eminently endued with gifts of the mind, and having by industry and happy education perfected them to that great height of excellency, whereof his Fellowship of Trinity College in Cambridge, and his Oratorship in the University, to * Published with the first edition, Cambridge, 1633. |