The Complete English Works of George Herbert Introduction by Ann Pasternak Slater

Introduction by Ann Pasternak Slater

George Herbert was born in 1593, the fifth son of Richard Herbert of Montgomery and Magdalene Herbert, to whom John Donne dedicated his elegy ‘Autumnal Beauty’. He was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was appointed Reader in Rhetoric in 1618 and Public Orator in 1620. Herbert was an excellent Greek and Latin scholar and was fluent in Italian, Spanish and French; he was also an accomplished amateur musician. He seemed destined for a great public career and attracted the attention of two powerful and influential figures, the Duke of Richmond and the Marquess of Hamilton, and, when they met, King James I took a liking to him. However, when his two aristocratic patrons, and then, in 1625, King James, all died, any hope of immediate preferment was dashed. In 1626 he resigned his seat in Parliament and took holy orders, becoming Rector of Bemerton, a tiny rural parish on Salisbury Plain, in 1630. In the previous year he had married Jane Danvers after a courtship of only three days, and their marriage was a happy one. Herbert died of consumption at the age of forty on March 1, 1633.