The Temple: A Diplomatic Edition of the Bodleian Manuscript.
Voss, Paul J.
All Herbert scholars will welcome Mario Di Cesare's stunning diplomatic edition of the Bodleian Manuscript (Tanner 307). The beautifully printed edition departs from and complements The Bodleian Manuscript of George Herbert's Poems: A Facsimile of Tanner 307 (New York: Scholars' Press, 1984). Diplomatic editions differ from facsimiles by carefully reproducing in modern typesetting important features of the manuscript, including exact lineation, spelling, and abbreviations. Di Cesare states as his primary aim "an exact transcription, page by page of the text proper, rendering precisely the orthography and punctuation" (xi). The edition, exhaustive in scope and detail, succeeds admirably on this front: no subsequent diplomatic edition will ever be needed.
Di Cesare's edition accomplishes, however, much more. In the critical introduction, he argues that "the Bodleian Manuscript must have major authority for any scholarly or critical study of Herbert's poetry" (lxxx). Most editors of Herbert, including Di Cesare's own widely used edition (George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets), rely on the first edition of The Temple printed by Thomas Buck in 1633. Di Cesare's posits compelling arguments in favor of the Bodleian manuscript. He notes, for example, the "extraordinary coincidence" (xlii) of both the manuscript and Buck omitting line 40 of "The Size," suggesting that either the scribes of Little Gidding and the printer Buck used the same copy text, or that Buck worked directly from the Bodleian manuscript.
Di Cesare's analysis of individual poems also merits praise. Building upon the work of manuscript scholars Amy Charles and Janis Lull, Di Cesare discusses "Easter-Wings" in detail, showing how Buck turned, without manuscript authority, the poems ninety degrees to appear vertically. Buck's "most mischievous decision" (lxvii), Di Cesare contends, distorts meaning and reduces appreciation: "Beyond the shadow of a doubt, the manuscripts [both the early Williams manuscript and the Bodleian] presented these two poems as two poems" (lvii).
The Bodleian manuscript offers fascinating clues to other poems as well. Most editors, again following Buck, divide "Church Monuments" into four six-line stanzas, highlighting the conspicuous enjambment. The manuscript presents the poem without stanzaic division. Throughout the manuscript, the scribes of Little Gidding carefully marked interstanza spacing; lack of such division in "Church Monuments," according to Di Cesare, reveals the poem's "chilling continuity" (lxvii). Equally instructive are treatments of "Good Friday," "Deniail," and "The Collar." Most editions of The Temple have "Good Friday" as one eight stanza poem; the Bodleian manuscript provides only one title. The Williams manuscript provides, however, a separate title ("The Passion") for the final three stanzas, suggesting a different poem. Attention to prosody supports this notion. The final three quatrains, tetrameter lines rhyming AABB, depart from the previous five quatrains in dimeters and tetrameters. Although the scribes left no space for a separate title heading (not an atypical oversight), Di Cesare contends that Buck mistakenly printed the stanzas as one poem. based upon his analysis, Di Cesare revises the number of "separate and distinct poetic entities" in The Temple to 174 (compared with 164 in the Hutchinson edition).
Di Cesare does not burden his critical introduction with unnecessary theoretical complications. He discusses poetic intention and postulates a strong desire to remain faithful to the spirit of the original text. The forty-nine carefully selected illustrations demonstrate the notion that "Herbert's poetry is for the eye as well as for the ear" (xxxii). Five sections of superb textual notes and two indices complete the impressive scholarly apparatus. This diplomatic edition of The Temple will be widely used and cited for generations. With a quantum rise of scholarly interest in Herbert's poetry (more than 20 book-length studies in the past decade alone), Di Cesare's labor of love will ensure even greater fidelity to the enduring poetry of the country parson from Bemerton.
PAUL J. VOSS Georgia State University
