When George Herbert on his deathbed entrusted his poems to his friend Nicholas Ferrar for safekeeping and publication, he described them as “a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul,” which might “turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul.” The depressive nineteenth-century poet William Cowper wrote that while his “malady” could not be cured by Herbert’s verse, it was at least “alleviated” by it. A century later, Coleridge admitted that Herbert afforded him “substantial comfort.”

Herbert’s own summary of his literary achievement, however, simultaneously encapsulates and undersells his work. Granted, readers will undoubtedly find “spiritual conflicts” in his religious poetry but, as with fellow poet-priests Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Donne, it would be a mistake to assume his oeuvre is purely devotional. Similarly, those dejected poor souls among us may feel shortchanged if expecting Herbert’s lyrical charms to be solely restorative, the equivalent of a succor-giving tonic.

It is thus easy to misinterpret Herbert. It doesn’t help that his reputation has been clouded by that of Donne, the predominant poet of that era; or that previous biographies (particularly the first from 1670 by Izaak Walton) have strayed into hagiography or been low on historical and critical analysis. Now, though, with John Drury’s magnificent Music at Midnight, Herbert is given the reappraisal he deserves.

Drury’s book is a careful blend