Didacticism and Edification: Herbert’s Poems in Three Restoration Manuscripts

Abstract

This article seeks to illuminate the ways in which the didactic qualities of Herbert’s verse were realized by three Restoration readers. Examining manuscript notebooks kept by Marmaduke Rawdon, Thomas Sparrow and Oliver Heywood, I investigate these three figures’ copying of Herbert’s verse (especially “The Church Porch”) and the ways in which that material interacts with other texts, both within and beyond their personal manuscripts. I make a case for Herbert as a critical figure to the self-pattering these books performed and the rules of conduct they prescribed for their compilers.