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In lieu of an , here is a brief excerpt of the content: Herbert's "The 23d Psalme" and William Barton's The Book of Psalms in Metre Eric R. Smith Eric R. Smith State University of New York — Binghamton Notes 1. F.E. Hutchinson, ed., The Works of George Herbert (1941; corr. rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945), p. 537. All quotations from Herbert's poetry will be from this edition, indicated by line number only in the text of my essay. 2. Louis L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation: A Study in English Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century (1954; rev. ed. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1962), p. 318. 3. William Barton, "To the Reverend and Religious Ministers of England especially in and about London," in Four Centuries of Select Hymns (London, 1668), sig. A3-A5. The "old" presumably refers to the Coverdale psalter rather than to the Authorized Version. Barton does not make clear why the latter was not a worthy replacement of Coverdale's translation. In "The Author's Epistle to the Reader" in Six Centuries of Select Hymns (4th ed., London, 1688), p. 344, Barton claims that this collection was "formerly put forth against my will, by an imperfect Copy, and in great disorder, An. 1668." In his separate preface to this 1688 edition, Barton's son Edward elaborates that his father had prepared the prefatory epistle, but the paraphrases themselves were "unpollished and as yet not Methodized" when they were "surreptitiously printed without the knowledge or consent of the Author." This accounts for the presence of the version of Herbert's poem in this volume after it had been deleted from the previous edition of 1654. 4. I quote from Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins, Certayne Psalms Chosen out of the Psalter of David, and Drawen into English Metre (London, 1649). The so-called "Old Version" of Sternhold and Hopkins, completed as early as 1562, was of course enormously popular and was regularly bound into the Book of Common Prayer along with Coverdale's psalter. For Herbert's relationship to the "Old Version" and other metrical paraphrases, see Coburn Freer, Music For A King: George Herbert's Style and the Metrical Psalms (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1972). For Freer's comments on "The 23d Psalme," see pp. 130-33. 5. Edward Barton, Preface to Six Centuries of Select Hymns (London, 1688). 6. In his article for The Dictionary of National Biography , A.B. Grosart identifies two other editions: 1646 and 1651. Although neither of these editions are listed in the STC nor were registered in the Stationer's Register for those years, it is possible that they were pirated editions. However, in the previously cited Preface to Six Centuries of Select Hymns , Edward Barton lists just the editions of 1644, 1645, and 1654. More likely, therefore, those editions cited by Grosart are "ghosts." 7. Hutchinson, pp. xlii ff.; Joseph H. Summers, George Herbert: His Religion and Art (1954; rpt. Binghamton: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1981), pp. 11-15; and C.A. Patrides, ed., George Herbert: The Critical Heritage (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983) summarize the changing fortunes of Herbert's reputation. Robert H. Ray, George Herbert in the Seventeenth Century: Allusions to Him, Collected and Annotated , Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1967, demonstrates the quantitative increase in references to Herbert following the publication of Walton's Lives . 8. I wish to thank Professor Alvin P. Vos of the State University of New York at Binghamton, who read and commented on earlier drafts of this study and encouraged me throughout my work on this project. Copyright © 1985 Sidney Gottlieb/George Herbert Journal ...

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