ABSTRACT
A. G. Hyde’s biography of Herbert – the first in the twentieth century – paid tribute to Walton (‘it must be frankly admitted that the labours of a modern biographer of Herbert are reduced to little more than a commentary on Walton’s narrative’) yet advanced in novel directions particularly by attending to the poetry qua poetry. Of the two chapters devoted to a discussion of ‘The Temple’, the first centred on ‘The Church-porch’, and the second – reprinted below – on the other poems. Hyde’s view is summarily stated in the very opening paragraph of his biography, where his mention of poets like Crashaw, Vaughan, Herrick, and Quarles terminates in the judgement that ‘Herbert must be allowed a very high, if not the highest, place’. See also above, p. 32.
Source: Hyde, ‘The Temple’: The Shorter Poems, in ‘George Herbert and his Times’ (1906), Ch. XV.
