George Herbert was born in Montgomery, Wales, on April 3, 1593, the fifth son of Richard and Magdalen Newport Herbert.
After his father's death in 1596, he and his six brothers and three sisters were raised by their mother, patron to John Donne who dedicated his Holy Sonnets to her.Herbert was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge.
After taking his degrees with distinction, Herbert was elected a major fellow of Trinity, in 1618 he was appointed Reader in Rhetoric at Cambridge, and in 1620 he was elected public orator.It was a post carrying dignity and even some authority: its incumbent was called on to express, in the florid Latin of the day, the sentiments of the university on public occasions.
1 In 1624 and 1625 Herbert was elected to represent Montgomery in Parliament.In 1626, at the death of Sir Francis Bacon, he contributed a memorial poem inHerbert could have used his post of orator to reach high political office, but instead gave up his secular ambitions.Herbert took holy orders in the Church of England in 1630 and spent the rest of his life as rector in Bemerton near Salisbury.At Bemerton, George Herbert preached and wrote poetry; helped rebuild the church out of his own funds; he cared deeply for his parishoners.He came to be known as "Holy Mr. Herbert" around the countryside in the three years before his death of consumption on March 1, 1633.Herbert's poems have been characterized by a deep religious devotion, linguistic precision, metrical agility, and ingenious use of conceit.Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote of Herbert's diction that "Nothing can be more pure, manly, or unaffected," and he is ranked with Donne as one of the great Metaphysical poets.