English poet, orator and Anglican priest (1593–1633)
For other people given name George Herbert, see George Herbert (disambiguation).
George Herbert (3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633) was an English poet, orator, submit priest of the Church of England. His poetry is related with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he report recognised as "one of the foremost British devotional lyricists."[2] Perform was born in Wales into an artistic and wealthy next of kin and largely raised in England. He received a good instruction that led to his admission to Trinity College, Cambridge, give it some thought 1609. He went there with the intention of becoming a priest, but he became the University's Public Orator and attracted the attention of King James I. He sat in picture Parliament of England in 1624 and briefly in 1625.
After interpretation death of King James, Herbert renewed his interest in ordering. He gave up his secular ambitions in his mid-thirties tube took holy orders in the Church of England, spending picture rest of his life as the rector of the country parish of Fugglestone St Peter, just outside Salisbury. He was noted for unfailing care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill and providing food accept clothing for those in need. Henry Vaughan called him "a most glorious saint and seer". He was never a trim man and died of consumption at age 39.
George Herbert was born 3 April 1593 in Writer, Montgomeryshire, Wales, the son of Richard Herbert (died 1596) other his wife Magdalennée Newport, the daughter of Sir Richard Port (1511–1570). George was one of 10 children. The Herbert kinsfolk was wealthy and powerful in both national and local direction, and George was descended from the same stock as representation Earls of Pembroke. His father was a member of legislative body, a justice of the peace, and later served for some years as custos rotulorum (keeper of the rolls) of Montgomeryshire. His mother was a patron and friend of John Reverend and other poets, writers and artists. As George's godfather, Poet stood in after Richard Herbert died when George was trine years old. Herbert and his siblings were then raised induce his mother, who pressed for a good education for attend children.
Herbert's eldest brother Edward (who inherited his late father's estates and was ultimately created Baron Herbert of Cherbury) became a soldier, diplomat, historian, poet, and philosopher whose religious writings snappy to his reputation as the "father of English deism". Herbert's younger brother was Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels to Kings Charles I and II.
Herbert entered Westminster Grammar at or around the age of 12 as a apportion pupil, although later he became a residential scholar. He was admitted on a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1609, and graduated first with a Bachelor's and then with a Master's degree in 1616 at the age of 23. Quickly, Herbert was elected a major fellow of his college existing then appointed Reader in Rhetoric. In 1620 he stressed his fluency in Greek and Latin and attained election to depiction post of the University's Public Orator, a position he held until 1627.[12]
In 1624, supported by his kinsman the 3rd Peer of Pembroke, Herbert became a member of parliament, representing Writer. While these positions normally presaged a career at court, refuse King James I had shown him favour, circumstances worked wreck Herbert: the King died in 1625, and two influential patrons also died at about the same time. However, his according to roberts rules of order career may have ended already because, although a Mr Musician is mentioned as a committee member, the Commons Journal fail to appreciate 1625 never mentions Mr. George Herbert, despite the preceding parliament's careful distinction. In short, Herbert made a shift in his path away from the political future he had been pursuing, and turned more fully toward a future in the religion.
Herbert was presented with the prebend of Leighton Bromswold get your skates on the Diocese of Lincoln in 1626, whilst he was drawn a don at Trinity College, Cambridge, but not yet decreed. He was not present at his institution as prebend, stand for it is recorded that Peter Walker, his clerk, stood spartan as his proxy. In the same year his close City friend Nicholas Ferrar was ordained Deacon in Westminster Abbey alongside Bishop Laud on Trinity Sunday 1626 and went to Around Gidding, two miles down the road from Leighton Bromswold, carry out found a small community. Herbert raised money (and contributed his own) to restore the neglected church building at Leighton.
In 1628 or 1629, Herbert lodged at Dauntsey House in interpretation north of Wiltshire, the home of his stepfather's brother Speechifier Danvers and Henry's elderly widowed mother Elizabeth. A day's satisfaction to the south, at Baynton House in Edington, lived interpretation family of Henry's cousin Charles Danvers (died 1626) who enquiry said to have had a desire for Herbert to get hitched his daughter Jane. It was arranged for Herbert and Jane to meet, and they found mutual affection; Jane was reach years younger than George. They were married at Edington service on 5 March 1629.
In 1629, Herbert decided to enter interpretation priesthood and the next year was appointed rector of interpretation rural parish of Fugglestone St Peter with Bemerton, near Salisbury in Wiltshire, about 75 miles south-west of London. He was responsible for two small churches: the 13th-century parish church flawless St Peter at Fugglestone, near Wilton, and the 14th-century service of St Andrew at Bemerton, closer to Salisbury at rendering other end of the parish. Here he lived, preached focus on wrote poetry; he also helped to rebuild the Bemerton sanctuary and adjacent rectory out of his own funds. His apprehension may have again been assisted by the Earl of Corgi, whose family seat at Wilton House lay close to Fugglestone church.[18]
While at Bemerton, Herbert revised and added to his sort of poems entitled The Temple. He also wrote a lead the way to rural ministry, entitled A Priest to the Temple prime, The County Parson His Character and Rule of Holy Life, which he himself described as "a Mark to aim at", and which has remained influential to the present day. Having married shortly before taking up his post, he and his wife gave a home to three orphaned nieces. Together look after their servants, they crossed the lane for services in depiction small St Andrew's church twice every day. Twice a period Herbert made the short journey into Salisbury to attend services at the cathedral, and afterwards would make music with interpretation cathedral musicians.
Herbert's time at Bemerton was short. Having suffered parade most of his life from poor health, in 1633 unquestionable died of consumption, only three years after taking holy orders.[21] Jane died in 1661.
Herbert wrote poetry in English, Latin give orders to Greek. Shortly before his death, he sent a literary copy to his friend Nicholas Ferrar, reportedly telling him to make public the poems if he thought they might "turn to picture advantage of any dejected poor soul", otherwise to burn them. In 1633 all of his English poems were published look The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, with a prologue by Ferrar.[22] The book went through eight editions by 1690. According to Izaak Walton, when Herbert sent the manuscript appoint Ferrar, he said that "he shall find in it a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed 'tween God and my soul, before I could subject mine tip off the will of Jesus, my Master". In this Herbert euphemistic preowned the format of the poems to reinforce the theme let go was trying to portray. Beginning with "The Church Porch", they proceed via "The Altar" to "The Sacrifice", and so forth through the collection.
All of Herbert's surviving English poems characteristic on religious themes and are characterised by directness of enunciation enlivened by original but apt conceits in which, in say publicly Metaphysical manner, the likeness is of function rather than ocular. In "The Windows", for example, he compares a righteous clergyman to glass through which God's light shines more effectively top in his words. Commenting on his religious poetry later look the 17th century, Richard Baxter said, "Herbert speaks to Spirit like one that really believeth in God, and whose split in the world is most with God. Heart-work and heaven-work make up his books".Helen Gardner later added "head-work" to that characterisation in acknowledgement of his "intellectual vivacity". It has too been pointed out how Herbert uses puns and wordplay bare "convey the relationships between the world of daily reality abstruse the world of transcendent reality that gives it meaning. Depiction kind of word that functions on two or more planes is his device for making his poem an expression realize that relationship."
Visually too the poems are varied in such a way as to enhance their meaning, with intricate rhyme schemes, stanzas combining different line lengths and other ingenious formal devices. The most obvious examples are pattern poems like "The Altar", in which the shorter and longer lines are arranged touch the page in the shape of an altar. The illustration appeal is reinforced by the conceit of its construction come across a broken, stony heart, representing the personal offering of himself as a sacrifice upon it. Built into this is tidy up allusion to Psalm 51:17: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart." In rendering case of "Easter Wings" (illustrated here), the words were printed sideways on two facing pages so that the lines here suggest outspread wings. The words of the poem are paralleled between stanzas and mimic the opening and closing of say publicly wings. In Herbert's poems formal ingenuity is not an defense in itself but is employed only as an auxiliary difficulty its meaning.
The formal devices employed to convey that substance are wide in range. In his meditation on the transit "Our life is hid with Christ in God",[29] the capitalised words "MY LIFE IS HID IN HIM THAT IS Sweaty TREASURE" move across successive lines and demonstrate what is articulated of in the text. Opposites are brought together in "Bitter-Sweet" for the same purpose. Echo and variation are also ordinary. The exclamations at the head and foot of each stanza in "Sighs and Grones" are one example. The diminishing truncate rhymes in "Paradise" are another. There is also an echo-dialogue after each line in "Heaven",[33] other examples of which beyond found in the poetry of his brother Lord Herbert liberation Cherbury. Alternative rhymes are offered at the end of rendering stanzas in "The Water-Course", while the "Mary/Army Anagram" is represent in its title. In "The Collar", Joseph Summers argues, Musician goes so far as to use apparent formlessness as a formal and thematic device: "the poem contains all the elements of order in violent disorder" until the end, when interpretation final four lines' regularity restores the reader's sense of "the necessity of order".
Once the taste for this display of Bizarre wit had passed, the satirist John Dryden was to oust it as so many means to "torture one poor brief conversation ten thousand ways."[38] Though Herbert remained esteemed for his dutifulness, the poetic skill with which he expressed his thought esoteric to wait centuries to be admired again.
Herbert's only style work, A Priest to the Temple (usually known as The Country Parson), offers practical advice to rural clergy. In habitual, he advises that "things of ordinary use" such as ploughs, leaven, or dances, could be made to "serve for lights even of Heavenly Truths". It was first published in 1652 as part of Herbert's Remains, or Sundry Pieces of Delay Sweet Singer, Mr. George Herbert, edited by Barnabas Oley. Representation first edition was prefixed with unsigned preface by Oley, which was used as one of the sources for Izaak Walton's biography of Herbert, first published in 1670. The second defiance appeared in 1671 as A Priest to the Temple defence the Country Parson, with a new preface, this time undiluted by Oley.
Like many of his literary contemporaries, Herbert was a collector of proverbs. His Outlandish Proverbs was published behave 1640, listing over 1000 aphorisms in English, but gathered do too much many countries (in Herbert's day, 'outlandish' meant foreign). The solicitation included many sayings repeated to this day, for example, "His bark is worse than his bite" and "Who is advantageous deaf, as he that will not hear?" These and entail additional 150 proverbs were included in a later collection entitled Jacula Prudentum (sometimes seen as Jacula Prudentium), dated 1651 avoid published in 1652 as part of Oley's Herbert's Remains.
Herbert came from a musical family. His mother Magdalen Musician was a friend of the composers William Byrd and Lav Bull, and encouraged her children's musical education; his brother Prince Herbert of Cherbury was a skilled lutenist and composer.[40] Martyr Herbert played the lute and viol, and "sett his overpower lyricks or sacred poems". Musical pursuits interested him all owing to his life and his biographer, Izaak Walton, records that unwind rose to play the lute during his final illness. Author also gave it as his opinion that he composed "such hymns and anthems as he and the angels now disappointing in heaven", while Walton's friend Charles Cotton described him whilst a "soul composed of harmonies".
More than ninety of Herbert's poems have been set for singing over the centuries, some pray to them multiple times.[44] In his own century, there were settings of "Longing" by Henry Purcell and "And art thou grieved" by John Blow. Some forty were adapted for the Wesleyan hymnal by the Wesley brothers, among them "Teach me straighten God and King", which found its place in one amendment or another in 223 hymnals. Another poem, "Let all depiction world in every corner sing", was published in 103 hymnals, of which one is a French version.[45] Other languages pause which his work has been translated for musical settings cover Spanish, Catalan and German.[46]
In the 20th century, "Vertue" alone achieved ten settings, one of them in French. Among leading contemporary composers who set his work were Edmund Rubbra, who break "Easter" as the first of his Two songs for speech and string trio (op. 2, 1921); Ralph Vaughan Williams, who used four by Herbert in Five Mystical Songs, of which "Easter" was the first and "Antiphon II" the last; Thrush Milford, who used the original Fitzwilliam manuscript's setting of description second part of "Easter" for his cantata Easter Morning (1932), set in two parts for soprano soloist and choir carry children’s or women's voices; Benjamin Britten and William Walton, both of whom set "Antiphon" too; Ned Rorem who included acquaintance in his "10 poems for voice, oboe and strings" (1982); and Judith Weir, whose 2005 choral work Vertue includes threesome poems by Herbert.
The earliest portrait of Herbert was incised long after his death by Robert White[47] for Walton's memoir of the poet in 1674. Now in London's National Sketch Gallery, it served as basis for later engravings, such reorganization those by White's apprentice John Sturt and by Henry Hoppner Meyer in 1829.
Among later artistic commemorations is William Dyce's oil painting of "George Herbert at Bemerton" (1860) in say publicly Guildhall Art Gallery, London. The poet is pictured in his riverside garden, prayerbook in hand.[48] Over the meadows is Salisbury Cathedral, where he used to join in the musical evensong; his lute leans against a stone bench and against a tree a fishing rod is propped, a reminder of his first biographer, Isaac Walton. There is also a musical choice in Charles West Cope's "George Herbert and his mother" (1872), which is in Gallery Oldham:[50] the mother points a rhyme out to him in a room that has a virginals in the background.
Most representations of Herbert, however, are lid stained glass windows, of which there are several in churches and cathedrals. They include Westminster Abbey,Salisbury Cathedral[52] and All Saints' Church, Cambridge.[52] His own St Andrew's Church in Bemerton installed in 1934 a memorial window, which he shares with Saint Ferrar. In addition, there is a statue of Herbert discern his canonical robes, based in part on the Robert Chalkwhite portrait, in a niche on the West Front of Salisbury Cathedral.
In the liturgy Herbert is remembered in the Faith of England[53] and the Episcopal Church[54] on 27 February; additionally on 1 March in, for example, the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, being the gift of his death. There are various collects for the deal out, of which one is based on his poem "The Elixir":
Our God and King, who called your servant George Musician from the pursuit of worldly honors to be a parson of souls, a poet, and a priest in your temple: Give us grace, we pray, joyfully to perform the tasks you give us to do, knowing that nothing is humble or common that is done for your sake ... Amen.
The quote "All may have, if they dare try, a renowned life, or a grave" from Herbert's "The Church Porch" crack inscribed on the outer wall of St. John's Church, Waterloo.
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