Charles 1977

possible meeting between Donne and Magdalene Herbert, December 1599 in Oxford; see n52 (34)

household book, Kitchin Booke -- detailed accounts of Magdalene Herbert's household (36)

"The handwriting of the five sons of whose handwriting we have samples shows similarities in the basic formation of letters that suggest similarities in early instruction; and it is likely that Mrs. Herbert, who took great care with her own hand, wa thw first teacher of penmanship for most of her children." (44)

"On 26 December 1628 Henry [Herbert] received from his stepfather Lady Danvers' copy of the Works of James I (now at the Houghton Library, Harvard University). Frances Herbert and her husband Sir John Browne named Danvers as godfather for their eldest son, and Danvers later arranged for the boy to study at Little Gidding." (57)

"In his will Donne bequeathed to Danvers 'what Picture he shall accept of those that remayne vnbequeathed.' His memorial sermon on Lady Danvers is a monument that needs no comment." (64)

"James obviously enjoyed visiting Cambridge and sharing in the academic exercises and entertainments there, and it would be surprising if he had not made the acquaintance of George Herbert before 1620, when Herbert wrote his letter and graceful epigram upon the gift of a copy of James's Latin works, [70] probably on 20 May 1620: 'Why, O stranger, dost thou remind us of the Vatican and Bodleian? A single book is a library to us.'" (69-70)

"From the accounts of both Walton and John Ferrar it appears that not even so close a friend as Nicholas Ferrar was aware of the existence of Herbert's English poems until Edmund Duncon was commissioned to carry them to Ferrar shortly before Herbert's death." (78)

"Copies of Herbert's English poems in commonplace books at the Cambridge University Library, the Bodleian, the British Library, and the University of Edinburgh Library are all derived from printed versions. Aside from small groups of amateur musicians (particularly in Salisbury) to whom he had perhaps sung some of his English lyrics, then, Herbert was not known as a writer of English verse until the publication of The Temple, which must have occurred before Michaelmas of 1633." (79)

"in the last months of 1624 Herbert was turning his back on worldly preferment, including further service in Parliament." (112)

perhaps his taking the orders "set the example for Nicholas Ferrar (Rather than Ferrar for him, as is often assumed)" (118)

Donne was staying at the Danvers home in Chelsea, late June through December 1625 (118) -- "Donne's sole reference to their encounter in the household of Herbert's motheris tantalizingly brief: 'Mr George Herbert is here.'" (119)

"Until he was past his mid-thirties, then, Herbert was never head of his own house or of his own table, but rather a part of the establishments of his family and of their connections." (120)

Herbert, colelcting poems for the volume commemorating Bacon

"It is entirely possible that Nicholas Ferrar was present as his friend's induction; and it is likely that this visit included a stay at Little Gidding before Herbert returned south." (123)

"Both Ferrar's niece Susanna Collett and her husband, Joshua Mapletoft, vicar of Margaretting (or Margetting) in Essex, took a particular interest in Herbert and in his writing, as we know from several of the Ferrar letters. At the time of Herbert's death Susanna's copy of the first of the Little Gidding Story Books was in the rectory at Bemerton, and she had earlier lent Herbert her copy of one of the Little Gidding Harmonies, which Arthur Woodnoth delivered to him in October 1631." (125)

period of illness for GH -- restricted diet, wrote "The Crosse," restoring Leighton, translating Lessius' Latin version of Cornaro's book (130)

"The death of Herbert's mother closed an era in his life, ended the strongest relationship he had known. A journey to Gidding not long afterward to talk with Ferrar, with whom he had much in common from association at Cambridge, from efforts in Parliament to save the Virginia Company and continue its influence in the New World, and from serving God in the diaconate, would have been well within the bounds of possibility." (134)

"Between Cambridge and Bemerton Herbert composed probably almost half the poems we now find in The Temple." (138)

Herbert "seems to have entertained a high opinion of women, having grown up in the household of a most remarkable and accomplished woman, with his sister-in-law Mary" (142)

GH's musica knowledge -- brother Edward's lute book (164); perhaps he sang some of his own poems, accompanying himself on lute; "the unusual number of poems in trochaic meter included among the 76 new poems that he added to the original of B suggests that some of them may have been intended for such setting and performance." (166)

"When Woodnoth arrived at Bemerton, then, late in September or early in October of 1631, he was seeking Herbert's counsel. Having given him 'my Cosens booke' (apparently a concordance), Woodnoth then delivered a letter from Ferrar and 'undertooke to explaine by telling him it concerned my self and so proceeded to a more playne demonstration of my desyres of his aduise and counsell.' Their discussions were interrupted by the canonical hours of prayer and by a visit to Wilton; but Herbert eventually wrote out, in two parts, the document that Woodnoth enclosed in this letter to Ferrar." (170)

Herbert's book included in the "Great Picture" of Lady Anne Clifford (172)

"Some months earlier Herbert had sent to Little Gidding a copy of his translation of Cornaro, we learn from the preface to the Hygiasticon, the volume in which it was published in 1634. From the hand of Edmund Duncon, Nicholas Ferrar had received the collection of Herbert's poems we now call The Temple. Herbert had in his cabinet other unpublished manuscripts, several of which would ultimately issue from the press: the works we know as The Country Parson, perhaps the Outlandish Proverbs (under whatever title Herbert used), and the Musae Responsoriae." (179)

Woodnoth ensures that the Story Book Susanna Mapletoft had lent Herbert is returned to her (181)

Herbert probably didn't send poems to Ferrar in a format suitable for licensing (182); probably were copied by Ferrar's nieces

Little Gidding copy of Herbert's poems is the manuscript B -- "a handsome work, executed in the characteristic Little Gidding hand (requiring some time for the newcomer to learn to read because of its exaggeration of letter forms and its arches and its filled loops). Both its calligraphy and its orthography differ from Herbert's own practice in that they are a bit inflated and pretentious, rejecting the simple and the usual; the entire work is artificial in the best seventeenth-century sense, a product of artifice with perhaps a slight overtone of 'It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope.'" (183)

hard to tell which niece copied it, since their handwriting is so similar -- see samples in Blackstone pg 30, 101; "these copyists give the impression of not being deeply involved in the content of what they were copying; many of the errors in the manuscript are the result of mindless inattention. They substituted their own more artificial spellings as they liked; they failed to notice when they had left the meter deficient; but worse, they let their minds wanter, and this lack of proper attention led, alas, to the utter loss of one line from 'The Size.'" (184)

"Ferrar supervised the entire procedure and very probably instructed the copyists about how the pages were to be rules (in red) and the poems laid out, and then painstakingly read over the new copy. When the work was completed, he added the title and the epigraph in his own hand (as H. P. Kennedy-Skipton noted many years ago)." (185)

Herbert probably didn't name the collection

"Herbert had a natural affinity for the proverb." (196) -- "The 463 proverbs copied into a Little Gidding Story Book (now at Clare College) are evidence that the Ferrar circle shared Herbert's interest." (197)