a first impression...

     At the start of John Drury's Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert, we are given a subtle, brief analysis of the music of the delightful 'Love (III).' Hard upon this, however, Drury delivers this ridiculous twaddle: 

     'It ['Love (III)'] is the work of a man who valued common 
     experience, common sense, and courtesy so highly as to 
     collect 1,184 proverbs - at the same time a mystic for whom 
     the actuality of immediate religious experience mattered 
     intensely, and more than orthodox doctrine' (4). 

If Herbert did in fact value the 'actuality of immediate religious experience,' it was only because reality corresponded to orthodox doctrine. What's more, contrary to Drury's resurrection of the 'mild,' inoffensive Herbert, the poet and priest were at one in seeing sin at the heart of that reality, sin redeemed by of all things real blood shed by Jesus the Incarnate Son. Furthermore, Herbert was obstinately Reformed in the way he understood such matters. 'The Holdfast' and 'The Water-Course' both attest to this in the most vivid way. (I note as an aside their absence from Drury's index.) 
     As for the fundamental dogmas of the Church, allow me to note this from 'Ungratefulnesse': 'Thou hast but two rare cabinets full of treasure,/ The Trinitie and Incarnation:/ Thou has unlockt them both,/ And made them jewels to betroth/ The work of thy creation/ Unto thy self in everlasting pleasure' (l. 7-12). Certainly that is the unio mystica of much sixteenth and seventeenth century Reformed thought, with its provenance in the works of Bernard of Clairvaux, Augustine, and the via moderna of the fifteenth centuries. It is also fundamentally grounded in the lived reality as confessed in the Church's classical creeds. (I note, again in passing, that 'Ungratefulnesse' is likewise missing from Drury's index.)      
     So, at this point I'm left with a first impression that is mixed to say the least. First, Drury has a subtle ear, and thus his grasp of Herbert's music seems from the start both deep and helpful for the reader. Second, however, he seems to give us a tired, all too old Herbert, happily cocooned in his 'mild' Anglican Church, above such nastiness as controversy over orthodox doctrine and the right worship of the people of God. To my ear, this Herbert tilted toward contemporary concerns over 'living together in disagreement,' in a mildly irenic church that embraces all through 'religious experience' shorn in good Jamesian fashion of dogma, liturgy, sacrament, and argument, is a lie, and this makes me just want to throw the book across the room.