No open-access location is known for this record yet.
No open-access location is known for this record yet.
Herbert's "The 23d Psalme" and William Barton's The Book of Psalms In Metre by Eric R. Smith F. E. Hutchinson's commentary on Herbert's "The 23d Psalme" notes that William Barton in the second edition (1645) of The Book of Psalms in metro, 'Printed by Order of Parliament', introduced Herbert's version, with a few changes, but without naming the author. As there were many subsequent editions, Herbert's version must have become widely known.' A comparison of Herbert's poem with the version of it in Barton's 1645 edition, however, reveals that, contrary to Hutchinson's suggestion, the "few changes" that Barton made in Herbert's poem are significant and rob the poem of precisely those distinctively Johannine and Herbertian elements which set it apart from the numerous other contemporary paraphrases of the same psalm. And if Herbert's version became widely known, it was due to later poets' familiarity with editions of Tho Temple itself rather than to the dissemination of Barton's version of Herbert's poem that is found only in the 1645 edition of The Book of Psalms in Metro and the collection Four Centuries of Select Hymns (1668), unauthorized by Barton. As Hutchinson implies, the first edition of The Book of Psalms in Metro (1644) did not contain a paraphrase of the Twenty-third Psalm derived from Herbert's poem; the only paraphrase of the psalm in that edition was one most likely composed by Barton himself. Although it was omitted from the 33 Eric R. Smith editions after 1645, phrases from it appeared in other paraphrases in Barton's numerous collections. Because of the popularity of the 1644 edition, a revised edition was published the following year. In addition to the paraphrase from the previous edition is Barton's emended version of Herbert's poem, a paraphrase simply titled "1. Metre." A comparative reading of the two poems demonstrates the extent of Barton's revisions. Herbert's version is given first, followed by Barton's of 1645: The God of Love my shepherd is, And he that doth me feed: While he is mine, and I am his, What can I want or need? He leads me to the tender grasse, Where I both feed and rest; Then to the streams that gently passe: In both I have the best. Or if I stray, he doth convert And bring my minde in frame: And all this not for my desert, But for his holy name. Yea, in deaths shadie black abode Well may I walk, not fear: For thou art with me; and thy rod To guide, thy staffe to bear. Nay, thou dost make me sit and dine, Ev'n in my enemies sight: My head with oyl, my cup with wine Runnes over day and night. Surely thy sweet and wondrous love Shall measure all my daies; And as it never shall remove, So neither shall my praise. 34 HERBERT AND WILLIAM BARTON The living Lord my shepherd is, and he that doth me feed; Since he is mine, and I am his, what comfort can I need? He leads me to the tender grasse, where I both feed and rest; Then to the streams that gently passe, in both I have the best. Or if I stray thou dost convert and bring my minde in frame; And all this not for my desert, but for thy holy Name. Yea tho I walk in shade of death, yet will I fear no ill, Thy rod, thy staffe so comforteth and thou art with me still. Yea thou dost make me sit and dine, ev'n in mine enemies sight; My head with oyl, my cup with wine runnes over day and night. Thy grace and mercy certainly, shall measure out my dayes: And in the house of God will I for ever give thee praise. Although Barton makes changes in fifteen of the poem's twenty-four lines, most of his revisions involve only a word or two. The shift to direct address in his second stanza makes the stanza's address consistent with the Authorized Version and with Herbert's own last three stanzas. The most...
Loading…
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 3 citations exist upstream.
Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.