SOURCE: Stapleton, Laurence. “The Graces and the Muses: Felltham's Resolves.” In The Elected Circle: Studies in the Art of Prose, pp. 73-92. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973.

In the following essay, Stapleton lavishes praise on the Resolves, disagreeing with scholars who have disparaged Felltham's use of metaphors.

Little is known of Owen Felltham; but in an age when most writers supported themselves by some other profession, many as clergymen, his lot was to become steward of an estate.¹ As a boy of perhaps twenty he had published a small book, Resolves, destined to be reprinted, with additions and changes, eleven times within a century and several times after 1800.² The book, listed in the Stationer's Register of 1623, probably came out that year. It contained a hundred short essays on questions of faith or conduct, moving to or incorporating a determination upon some course of action or behaviour—hence...