A Concordance to the English Poems of Richard Crashaw

Abstract

The poetic stature of Richard Crashaw has probably been more variously assessed than that of any other poet of his day. Even among those critics who have recognized genius in him, there has been considerable difference of opinion as to just where his claim to poetic ability properly lies. Granted that his work is characterized by extraordinary inequality, and that some of what is not sublime is so far from sublimity as actually to be in bad taste, there are still too many poems which have evoked opinions quite at variance with one another. Strangely enough, both praise and belittlement of Crashaw's poetic talent have from the start been based largely upon his symbolism and imagery and his diction in general. Even a cursory reading of the pages devoted to him in Moulton's Library of Literary Criticism points up the exceptional amount of attention given to matters of diction by the best-known critics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There are continual references to such things as "cloying use" of certain words , "trivial conceits and over-elaborate fancies," "taste less use of conceits," "brilliant imagery and extraordinary diction," "conceits over-subtle and symbolical," and "imagination so nimble and subtle." The validity of judgments such as these can be established only by scholarly examination into Crashaw's diction. Yet, with the one exception of the chapter on symbolism in Austin Warren's excellent book, we have no study devoted exclusively to any aspect of Crashaw's diction. This concordance has been undertaken with the hope that it will facilitate and encourage such examination as will furnish a true grasp of his words and so pave the way for a better appreciation of the only first-rate English Catholic poet of the seventeenth century. The basic text for the concordance is The Poems of Richard Crashaw, edited by J.R. Tutin and published by George Routledge and Sons in the Muses' Library edition in 1905. This text was chosen after careful examination of L.C. Martin's definitive edition, The Poems English Latin and Greek of Richard Crashaw, published in 1927 by the Oxford University Press. The Mar in edition reprints in its entirety t he 1652 volume, Carmen Deo Nostro, Te Decet Hymnus Sacred Poems, and almost in its entirety the 1646 volume, Steps to the Temple, Sacred Poems, With other Delights of the Muses. Anyone familiar with the early edit ions of Crashaw 's poems knows that several fairly long poems in the 1652 edition are revisions of poems in the 1646 edition, with the changes so extensive as to merit treatment as completely new poems. To have made the definitive edition the basis for the concordance would have required the inclusion not only of the new lines of these latter poems as they appeared in the 1652 edition, but also of the many lines identical or almost identical with corresponding lines in the 1646 edition. For the purposes of a concordance such repetition is quite unnecessary. It was therefore thought best to use the Tutin edition, which prints only one version of each poem and supplements this version with a full collection of variant readings. Careful examination has been made of these variants, and a selection made of all significant uses of the words therein. Since it is generally agreed that Crashaw's translations are so free as to constitute original poems, they have been included as such in the concordance. Some four hundred lines to be found only in the definitive edition have been normalized and added to the work. All poems designated as spurious by the Martin edition have been omitted. Webster's New International Dictionary has been the sole authority for the spelling of the head words. Fairly frequent use has been made of the Oxford English Dictionary in establishing the identity of words now obsolete, and also in setting up the index form of the concordance. Because of the contemporaneousness of Donne and Crashaw, I have adopted outright from Combs' concordance to Donne the list of words to be omitted, The making of a concordance calls for countless hours of drudgery. I am grateful to the many students at Mercy College and Our lady of Mercy High School who have lightened the burden for me by helping in the more mechanical operations of the project. In particular, I wish to thank the following for much-needed assistance in the preparation and typing of the manuscript: Sister Mary Elise Michelin, R.S.M., Sister Mary Kevin Foley, R.S.M., Sister Mary Canice Johnson, R.S.M., Miss Ellen Doherty, and Miss Josephine Jokubaitis. Finally, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Herbert H. Petit of the Department of English of the University of Detroit for his guidance in dealing with the many problems that go with the making of a concordance, as well as for the steady encouragement I have received from him since the day the idea of undertaking this work was first entertained by me.