'He was not a man that the next age can forget': textual borrowings from George Herbert's The Temple, 1633-1715

In the preface to Select Hymns Taken out of Mr. Herbert’s Temple (1697), the anonymous author identifies the ‘general and deserv’d Acceptance’ with which the poems of George Herbert’s The Temple were met during the early-modern period, stating that he ‘hath obtain’d by way of Eminency, the Name of Our Divine Poet’. This study examines George Herbert’s admirers in the light of their textual borrowings from The Temple between 1633 and 1715, and interrogates the precise forms that this ‘general and deserv’d Acceptance’ took. In so doing, it more firmly situates Herbert’s reception not only in the historical moments of that period, but also in the specifically literary dimensions of his admirers’ borrowings, and examines the roles that Herbert was asked to play within their texts. The texts of little-studied writers like Thomas Edwards, Julia Palmer, Samuel Speed, and Nathanael Vincent are here considered alongside the works of well-known admirers of Herbert, such as Richard Baxter, Christopher Harvey, and Henry Vaughan. Examined in this study, therefore, are both previously identified sources in which writers made borrowings from Herbert, and previously unidentified sources, which also evidence borrowings from The Temple in either poetry or prose. Evidence of such borrowing is explored here through the lens of appropriative strategy and use of form: appropriations of poetic form; quotations and allusions in poetic content; and quotations, paraphrases, and citations in prose texts. Through its analysis, this thesis proposes three ways in which it is possible to frame the roles that Herbert was asked to play, demonstrating how Herbert’s admirers turned to his poetry as a means of: finding an exemplar in his poetic forms that could provide comfort and consolation; claiming an ally through the appropriation of his imagery and vocabulary in verse; and positioning a spokesman by quoting from him in prose works.

Ultimately, this study investigates the startlingly creative, inventive, and sometimes distinctly mischievous ways in which early-modern writers borrowed from, and, indeed, transformed the poems of The Temple. In so doing, it shows that, when it comes to questions of historical interpretation relating to textual reception, hermetic distinctions do not have to be made between gathering information about the contexts in which a text, such as The Temple, was disseminated and read, and examining the meaning apparently understood by its readers. The overarching purpose of this study, then, is to answer the question, ‘Where did The Temple go and what did it do?’