Paideia Today, Season Two, Episode Seventeen, George Herbert
George Herbert is arguably the foremost devotional lyric poet in the English language. Prodigiously gifted, his intention to serve as an Anglican priest was interrupted by the positions he was offered in public service. He functioned for seven years as Public Orator at Cambridge University before briefly serving in Parliament. He returned to his initial vocation, however, by serving as the rector of the little parish of St Andrew's Church, Lower Bemerton, Salisbury. And it is there that he in all likelihood wrote the personal devotional poems - in English, Latin, and Greek - that are now his greatest legacy. Shortly before his death at the age of 39, he sent a literary manuscript to Nicholas Ferrar, the founder of a semi-monastic Anglican religious community at Little Gidding, recommending that he publish the poems if he thought they might "turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul", and otherwise to burn them. In 1633, Ferrar published all of his English poems in The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. They were received with great public approval and reprinted regularly throughout the seventeenth century.
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