Altar poem

[1] The second poem is also in Greek and was the work of Lucius Julius Vestinus, who describes himself as “High-priest of Alexandria and all Egypt, Curator of the Museum, Keeper of the Libraries of both Greek and Roman at Rome, Supervisor of the Education of Hadrian, and Secretary to the same Emperor.” The 26 lines of the poem represent the altar's self-referential soliloquy, but the initial letters of the lines are also an acrostic that spell out a complimentary message to the Emperor.

They are arranged as altar shapes centred upon each of the Classical Muses, but chiefly their names are only used as markers of the various aspects of the poem recommended to the king.

An earlier anonymous example in Francis Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody (1602), the address of a rejected lover, approximates the form of George Herbert.

It appears untitled near the end of the “Haemon and Antigone” episode in his The Chaste and Lost Lovers, beginning with the lines “Those that Idalia’s wanton garments wear/ No Sacrifices for me must prepare”.

[13] In the last quarter of the century appeared Samuel Speed's verbally “servile imitation” of Herbert,[14] also titled “The Altar”, in his Prison Pietie (1677).

John Dryden satirised the Baroque taste in his “Mac Flecknoe” and Joseph Addison singled out Herbert's “The Altar” and its companion piece, “Easter Wings”, as a false and obsolete kind of wit.

[16] In Germany, too, where there had been a similar craze, Johann Leonhard Frisch composed some extreme examples, including an altar bearing a flaming heart, as satires upon the style.