John Drury (1) (1936–)

George Herbert (1593-1633) is not one of those obscure poets you only ever meet in lecture courses about 17th-century poetry: we can still read him with the barest minimum of editorial support, because his language is so astonishingly simple, clear, and almost "timeless" as to leap the barrier of 400 years effortlessly; several of his poems have become well-loved fixtures in the hymn-books of English-speaking Christian denominations; ordinary readers still turn to his religious poetry for spiritual consolation; poets from Richard Crashaw to Seamus Heaney and Elizabeth Bishop have cited him as an inspiration and exemplar of how to write; Vikram Seth loves his work so much that he bought and restored the rectory where Herbert used to live...

On the other hand, ill-health and an early death apart, Herbert's life doesn't seem to have had any of the difficulties in it that mark someone out to be a genius. He came from a minor, but still prosperous, branch of a powerful aristocratic family. George Herbert's relative the Earl of Pembroke was married to the poet Mary Sidney, dedicatee of Arcadia. Herbert's mother was a friend of William Byrd and John Donne. His headmaster at Westminster School (and later friend and mentor) was Lancelot Andrewes, the most distinguished of the translators of the Authorised Version.

Unlike most self-respecting poets, Herbert did very well at school and at Cambridge, being elected at a young age to a fellowship of his college and to the important university office of Orator. He served for a while as MP for a constituency that belonged to the Herbert clan. In an age of highly-charged political and religious turmoil, he appears to have managed not to get involved in any conflicts worth speaking of. When it all got a bit too much, he elegantly stepped aside from academia and politics, married a relative of his stepfather's, and became a country rector at Bemerton in Wiltshire, conveniently halfway between the musical life of Salisbury Cathedral and the Earl of Pembroke's seat at Wilton. And then, just as everything was about to descend into chaos and civil war, he died peacefully and in an aura of sanctity just before his 40th birthday.

Despite all this High Tory silver-spoonery, you only have to look into one or two of Herbert's poems to get a feeling for what a lovely, modest man he must have been. The debate in his poems is always between Herbert and God, and you get the feeling that God must be enjoying it far too much to let either side achieve a decisive result. They're probably still at it...

John Drury evidently loves Herbert very dearly, although not too dearly to point out the occasional weakness in his writing. And, as an academic and a clergyman himself, he's also in a very good position to look critically at Herbert as a priest and as a religious writer. He's found a very interesting way to construct this biography, mixing detailed discussions of individual poems with passages of historical and biographical material thematically rather than chronologically. To some extent this might have been forced upon him by the fact that we know very little about when Herbert wrote what - almost the first anyone knew of his poems was when he handed over a pile of manuscript to a friend on his deathbed with a request to see if there was anything worth publishing. But it works very well - we aren't allowed to get too deeply involved in the trivia of the life or too abstractly pedantic about the texts and their theology, but always keep the one in the context of the other. This is basically an author who doesn't have any need to profile himself any more, sharing with us his private pleasure in a poet he admires, and it's therefore a book you can read with pleasure without being a literary scholar, a Christian theologian, or an expert on the 17th century (although it probably helps if you're at least a little bit inclined to those things!).… (more)

Reading this book makes me realize how blind I am before art. Drury carefully considers a number of Christian paintings, chiefly Medieval to Baroque, and points out how tiny details contribute to the meaning of the painting. He also considers beliefs that were familiar to early audiences that may elude modern viewers. This kind of book is very helpful to me. Instead of vague pronouncements on the painting, Drury offers concrete arguments about the meaning and composition which can really train the reader to better understand art. Not only are there reproductions of the work as a whole, there are many details illustrating specific points. Some readers may be a bit dismayed that Drury makes it very clear that he does not take the Bible literally. Coming into the modern era, Drury examines two paintings by Cezanne, arguing that The Large Bathers is appropriately viewed as a religious painting - a less successful argument in my view.… (more)