Reviews for A Concordance to the Complete Writings of George Herbert

The average rating for A Concordance to the Complete Writings of George Herbert based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-01-09 00:00:00 Linda Neighborgall For, as Goethe holds, and I go some of the way with him, the best sign of originality lies in taking up a subject and then developing it so fully as to make every one confess that he would hardly have found so much in it . . . so that if the centre or core of my dissertation remains Bibliomania, its environs extend far beyond it, as towns grow from a single citadel, institution or workshop, into a county, but remain towns. Examine the rest, therefore, in like sort, and you shall find a true picture of a book and all its relations and purposes: its joys, advantages, infirmities and offences. 'The Author To The Reader Plenty of books and leisure for good reading, methinks, is a sufficient portion of itself, beatus ille qui procul negotiis, happy is he who is free from worldly cares, and he does well that will accept such a life. It was the counsel which the politic Cicero gave to his best friends, as it was the life he himself wished most to live. No less than this is implied in that remark of his when he longed to buy the books of Atticus: If ever I do, he said, supe Crassum divitiis atque omnium vicos et prata contemno, I shall be the richest of millionaires and shan't envy any man his manors and meadows. Now go brag of thy money. '32.7 __________ This book is insane. No, really. Jackson said it himself, he's out-Burtoned Burton . . . I first read Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy many years ago, and enjoyed it immensely . Burton's work, ostensibly about Melancholy, is split into the Causes of Melancholy, Cures of Melancholy, and Love and Religious Melancholy. Split into sections members, and subsections, Burton merely uses these high level topics to launch into all manner of topics sprinkling quotations and anecdotes from an astounding number of authors throughout. Jackson has taken Burton's work as a model and anatomises Bibliomania as Burton did Melancholy. The art was perfected by Robert Burton and he remains its unapproachable master. Many have larded their lean books with the fat of his masterpiece, but he has had no imitator till now, save Charles Lamb in an experiment which was never meant to be more than a fragment. [Curious fragments, Miscellaneous Prose] . . . From this enjoyment of so wide a calmness I found an inclination to reproduce it, and proceeded more by instinct than design, as though sauntering into a domain of unexplored tranquillity, wherein I beheld the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies, and began, for gladness, to extend its bounds. This ancient manner, with its undulations and digressions, its dingles and coppices of verbiage, its elegant parterres of selected prose and verse, its sharp contrasts of grassy plots and arid places, is not, I am well aware, the fashion of these times when all men hurry and many torture us with noises which disrupt our thoughts and interrupt our lives To attempt to mimic Burton is a lofty goal, as Jackson says himself, but he hits his target and and arguably takes it almost to an extreme in terms of quotations: There are anywhere from 1-17+ footnotes per page referencing his sources, amounting to a staggering number of quotes and references. I have trawled the seas of authorship; presumed to put my sickle in other men's corn. I have rifled gardens; picked pockets; dipped my bucket into friendly wells; charged my battery at others' dynamos; gone up and down the world of imagination, which without doubt can do wonderful things and beget strange persuasions; climbed Parnassus, roamed round Helicon, stared at Olympus; looked through  Magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn; 'Keats, Ode to a Nightingale hobnobbed with bards and philosophers by the proxy of many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, in  The Muse-discovered World of Islands Fortunate 'Cowley, Pindarique Ode and gathered as I went rare thoughts and fine phrases.  And words more sure and sweet than they. Love could not think, truth could not stay. 'Crashaw, Hymn to St Thomas I have perchance in some instances jumbled up these many good things immethodically, but not always; there is order in my chaos, nor do I beg pardon for those wild parts, for unless you have chaos within you cannot give birth to a dancing star. Greater men have failed, how then shall I, that am vix umbra tanti philosophi, hope always to please? No man so absolute, Erasmus holds, to satisfy all, except antiquity, and not, as it is managed in this age, even that. 'Tis the common doom of all writers: I must (I say) abide it; I seek not applause, enough  If my slight Muse do please these curious days. 'Shakespeare, Sonnets, 38 As Burton has his favourites: Hierome, Hercules de Saxonia, etc, so does Jackson; the authors he references the most being: Dibdin, Montaigne, Boswell, John-Hill Burton, Robert Burton, Elton, Edward Fitzgerald, Hunt, Lamb, Lang, etc Burton's work isn't an absolute prerequisite to this; Jackson's Anatomy can definitely be enjoyed on its own, but having a familiarity with Burton's work will definitely help you to appreciate this one more fully. As for those other faults of style, manner as distinct from matter and method, I am exposed to attack on all fronts, and most by comparison: I have missed my mark, fallen short, o'ershot it; out-Burtoned Burton here, vulgarized him there, and diluted him too often; I am barbaric, unscholarly, provincial, amateurish, sentimental, glib, garrulous, what you will; a dealer in tautologies, rhetoric, gusto, purple patches, rhapsodies, cliche, vogue words, rags gathered together from several dunghills, excrements of authors, toys and fopperies confusedly tumbled out, as he said of his own book, without art, invention, judgment, wit, learning, harsh, raw, rude, phantastical, absurd, insolent, indiscreet, ill-composed, indigested, vain, scurrile, idle, dull and dry; and with him I confess all; few writers are more frequent in this kind of mischief. Thou canst not think worse of my performance than I do myself, for in the first place I have my vision of what it might have been, and in the second, any work in this kind must remain an effort rather than an achievement, and in that alone I am belike overbold in advancing it. But thou canst still say tis not worth reading; to which I reply again briefly and yet I hope sufficiently: the choice is thine; and if it is as bad as I have said, I yield it, I desire thee not to waste time in perusing so vain a work, I should be peradventure loth myself to read myself or thee so writing. But such arguers may please to consider that I have precedents; 'tis not the first usurpation of an author's style and method; others have done as much and not always as frankly, but the theme is mine, the whole discourse being a kind of picture of mine own disposition . . . And when I have spread all my reasons out, it remains, and it must be plain to all perspicacious readers, that this treatise is writ for mine own exercise and satisfaction: I have made a recreation of a recreation,' to please myself, not in vanity, but as a game is played, and if you like not my game, go play something else, I shall not be offended. As was probably expected, the number of quotes I collected from this work topped my previous highest, Leopardi's Zibaldone, before Montaigne overtook that. As such, instead of selecting the best of the bunch, as is my usual MO, I thought I'd select one per subsection to attempt to give anyone interested a flavour of the work as a whole . . . I attempted to do this but quickly met the word limit. In place of this, I'll simply state that if you enjoyed and appreciated Burton, and also have a love of Books (with a capital B) and everything about them, you'll greatly enjoy the insane number of anecdotes that Jackson relates, and the thread he has used to weave them all together via the following topics which can be seen in my comment below (word count hit; listed a'la the sections of Burton's Anatomy, in an attempt to mimic the style of Burton's analytical contents pages) __________ I also want to thank Jackson for providing titles for many, many books; a small number of which looked interesting enough for me to want to read in the future. Achieving, as they do, so much in the economy of life, it is no surprise to learn from Richard de Bury that their origin is divine: all the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, unless God had provided mortals with the remedy of books', and in many other parts of the same dissertation this most notable authority apostrophizes books in terms which outrace praise and exalt them beyond most mortal things, which I shall have occasion to cite. In the meantime let him relate how they are masters who instruct us without rod or ferule, without angry words, without clothes or money, and that if you come to them they are not asleep; if you ask and enquire of them they do not withdraw themselves; they do not chide if you make mistakes; they do not laugh at you if you are ignorant; they to all who ask and enfranchise all who serve them faithfully; they are the treasured wealth of the world, the fit inheritance of generations and nations, necessities of life.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-05-01 00:00:00 Patricia Creamer I read this work over a period of several months. If you love books, collect them, hold them, smell them, etc... you will love this work. Jackson wrote it in the style of Burton's Anatomy of Meloncholy, and it was HUGELY entertaining. It also made me realize that my love of books directly competes with my love for Christ...not good.