The Poetical Works Of Gerard Manley Hopkins

623 Pages·1990·21.956 MB·English

by  Gerard Manley Hopkins

THE POETICAL WORKS OF
Gerard Manley Hopkins
THIS long-awaited complete edition of the poetry offers serious
students far more help than has been available hitherto. The texts
take into account all the manuscripts, and include the editor's
interpretation of the author's prosodic intentions. Any study of
Hopkins's poetic development will be aided by the chronological
arrangement not only of the poems but of the major variant read­
ings from the drafts. Early and late versions of some dozen poems
are printed side by side.
Readers will find glosses on thousands ofw ords, many annotated
here for the first time, the neglected early half of his output, before
the 'Deutschland', being given full attention. The headnote to each
poem sets out its intellectual or biographical background, and
provides guidance to critical articles on it, particularly those too
recent for inclusion in Dunne's Comprehensive Bibliography of
Hopkins. The detailed commentary quotes or refers to a wealth of
parallels in Hopkins's prose writings, and directs scholars to areas
for further research.
Professor MacKenzie's intimate knowledge of the manuscripts
results in separate descriptions of every draft, fair-copy, and sig­
nificant transcript of each poem. These are cross-referenced to
their reproductions in the editor's two-volume Hopkins Poetic
Facsimiles, in which the sequence and numbering of the poems are
those of the OET, making them companion volumes.
A substantial introduction unfolds the history of each album of
poetic manuscripts (A, B, etc.), with a penetrating analysis of
Hopkins's prosodic signs and use of accidentals. Because of
ambiguities disclosed, the editor argues that a definitive edition
may be beyond our reach; but the new light he throws on every
aspect of the poetry should prove a major stimulus to Hopkins
criticism.

THE POETICAL
WORKS OF
Gerard Manley
Hopkins
EDITED BY
NORMAN H. MACKENZIE
CLARENDON PRESS OXFORD
·
1990
Oxford University Press, Walton Stree� Oxford ox62DP
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Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press
Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press (USA)
© Editorial matter Norman H MacKenzie IIJ90
Poems by Hopkins © Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered,
Ir 4M ount Stree� London WIY 6AH, r990
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanica� photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
the prior permission of Oxford University Press
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, r8,u-r889
The poetical works of Gerard Manley
Hopkins.
I. Title II. MacKenzie, Norman H. (Norman
Hugh), r9r5-
82I'.8
ISBN o-u-;-8rr8 83-X
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, r8'14-r889.
The poetical works of Gerard Manley Hopkins.
(Oxford English texts)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
I. MacKenzie, Norman H. II. Title.
P�803.H#rrl)879 8d.8 88-29r35
ISBN o-u-;-8rr8 83-X
Set byJ oshua Associates Ltd., Oxford
Printed and bound in
Great Britain by Bidides Ltd.,
Guildford and King's Lynn
For Rita
Catherine and Ronald

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS is not ordinarily thought of as a learned
writer, but his intelligent curiosity, especially as an undergraduate, led him
into many unfrequented corners where an editor has to make his own
way-a delightful if time-consuming pursuit. Though the contributions of
rare-book dealers to the scholarly world are seldom recognized, unless I
had been able with their aid to surround myself with the sorts of books
which Hopkins himself knew, such as piquant Victorian speculations in
philology, this long-promised edition might have been still longer
deferred.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the friendly research environ�ent pro­
vided by the Douglas Library at Queen's, which, founded three years
before Hopkins was born, remains rich in works acquired during his life­
time while maintaining a liberal policy on new books and journals. I have
also benefited from the Robarts Library of the University of Toronto and
its Institute of Medieval Studies, and from Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley
with their multi-million holdings. To the Bodleian Library I owe many
courtesies during numerous visits, especially from David Rogers, who, e.g.,
accompanied me on two excursions to Scotland Yard's Forensic Docu­
ment Examination Laboratory, where Dr Seeley, the Director, showed
much interest in the problem of discriminating between Hopkins's entries
and those by Bridges. It was Dr Rogers who persuaded Bodley to have its
own Infra-red Image Converter constructed (making it the first great
library in the world, so far as we know, to be so equipped), and Dr Edward
Hall of Oxford's Research Laboratory for Archaeology and Art History
who designed the machine.
For special helpfulness I express my gratitude to the librarian of the
Oxford Union Society, Raymond Walters; to Ronald Browne of the
Writers' Library, Mount Street (later of the British Library); and Taylor
Milne of the University of London Institute of Historical Research; also to
the librarians of Heythrop College and Cambridge University Library; the
archivists of the Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire Archives in
Delapre Abbey; and Fr. Leonard Boyle, OP, of the Vatican Library, Rome.
Many specialists have shared their expertise with me. Hopkins's Latin
and Greek poems have been freshly translated for this edition by Colin
Hardie, late Senior Tutor of Magdalen College, Oxford. He also provided
extensive annotations, on which my commentary is mostly based. Ross
Kilpatrick, Head of the Department of Classics at Queen's, has been tire­
less in solving a number of conundrums created by the poet's avoidance of
viii Acknowledgements
commonplace syntax in Latin and Greek, as in English. A Horatian expert,
Ross also identified the source of No. 86, 'Not kind! to freeze me with fore­
cast', when I reported my suspicion that it was a free translation from the
classics. Other classical scholars who have offered useful suggestions have
been Harold Guite and Alexander McKay of McMaster University and
Frederick Winter, Emeritus Professor in the University of Toronto. Fr.
Robert Boyle, SJ, has allowed me to reprint his translation of 'Ad Matrem
Virginem , No. 91.
'
For Welsh, Dr Marie Surridge, head of the Department of French at
Queen's, a Welsh-speaking linguist trained at Oxford, devoted much care
to the two Welsh poems. The comments of Beryl S. Williams and
Christoph Kuper were also valuable. In Art History the directors and staff
of London galleries provided information concerning the acquisition dates
of various paintings which I thought might have influenced Hopkins: my
thanks go to the National Gallery, the Warburg Institute, the National
Portrait Gallery, the Tate and the Royal Academy. The members of the
Queen's Theological College were always at hand to discuss theological
questions.
On scientific subjects I submitted my interpretations to many highly
qualified experts. As an amateur bird-watcher I cherish the delectable
memory of discussing the identity of the bird(s) in 'Henry Purcell' with Sir
Peter Scott in a huge tropical walk-in aviary at Slimbridge, while a ruby­
throated humming-bird deftly removed from a lady nearby a strand of soft
silver hair needed to perfect her nest. Bruce Campbell took me bird­
watching around Oxford, and Martin Edwards, head of the Department of
Physics at the Royal Military College, Kingston, Ontario, a world authority
on birds and the environment, has contributed his opinion on delicate
problems. I record my gratitude to the windhovers near one Jesuit college,
where the Fathers routinely greeted me with the lament that no kestrels
had been observed since my previous visit, for invariably putting on for me
a display so characteristic that I 'caught' it from a quarter of a mile away.
Experts in the history of medicine, Robin Price of the W ellcome Institute,
London, and Samuel Shortt, a Queen's specialist, supplied me with facts
and references.
Geologists and librarians in the Natural History section of the British
Museum took endless trouble over the fossil tree in Appendix A. Though
they did not trace the particular find which occasioned the 'Original
Lines', they reinforced my suspicion that the verses were too wrong­
headed scientifically to be the work of Gerard Manley: I am here par­
ticularly indebted to John Cooper, Ann Lunn, and Jennifer Fitch. The
Geology Library at Queen's gave me a flying start in my investigations-it
preserves one of the finest collections of nineteenth-century British geo-
Acknowledgements
lX
logical journals, magazines, and papers in North America. In astronomy
my friend Alan Batten, Vice-President of the International Astronomical
Union, has cast a professional eye over some of my conjectures in a field
which was in younger days my hobby, and brought them up to date. I must
also thank David Hanes, a Queen's astronomer, for correcting the calcula­
tions I made from the Nautical Almanac in expounding 'Miror surgentem'
(No. 99) from the poet's allusions to Orion and the setting moon. In physics
Richard Phillips brought his Cavendish Laboratory knowledge to bear
on the diagnosis of the temperamental ailments from which the Infra-red
Image Converter in the Bodleian was suffering, and David Hanes helped
me on this subject also by clarifying my account of that instrument.
For contributions to the solution of other questions I thank Louise
Clubb, University of California; Marcia Allentuck with her command of
rare information; Fr. Joseph Costelloe, librarian of the Jesuit Curia in
Rome and translator of Fr. Schurhammer's monumental volumes on St
Francis Xavier; Brian Cullum of Shooter's Hill, London; Katharine
Longley of the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, University of
York, England; Fr. Justin McLoughlin, OFM, of the Friary, Stratford,
Essex; and Fr. Lawrence Braceland, SJ, of St Paul's College, University of
Manitoba. I owe much to the encouragement of Mrs T. S. Eliot, offered in
particular during one crisis in the history of this volume. Among editors
whom I must thank, John Bell, who had been responsible for the Fourth
Edition of the Hopkins Poems, gave me special support during the fashion­
ing of this one. And I shall not forget that it was A. Norman Jeffares who
diverted my energies into Hopkins exploration by inviting me to lecture on
the poet in Edinburgh to the International Association of Professors of
English, and to contribute the Hopkins volume in the Writers and Critics
series of which he was General Editor.
I have sought to acknowledge the work of other Hopkins scholars in the
Introduction, the head-notes and commentaries to individual poems, and
the select bibliography of some recent contributions affecting more than a
single shorter poem. To anyone inadvertently overlooked in this lively field
I tender my apologies. Particular thanks go to David Downes, Fr. Peter
Milward, SJ, James Cotter, Alan Heuser, Graham Storey, Hans-Werner
Ludwig, Jean-Georges Ritz, Rene Gallet, Gerald Roberts of Beaumont,
and Fr. Francis Keegan, SJ, of Mount St Mary's College, Spinkhill.
Margaret Patterson courteously sent me a copy of her unpublished
'Hopkins Handbook'. My thanks are also due to lvol Parker, and Ruth
Seelhammer of the Hopkins Collection of Gonzaga University. I have
valued the scholarship in the Netherlands from the pens of Leo van
Noppen and Rudy Bremer. Of constant assistance have been Tom Dunne's
almost infallible Comprehensive Bibliography and the Dilligan and Bender