Coleridge, who knew all about dejection, claimed "substantial comfort" from reading Herbert. It helped his "tendency to self-contempt". Yet Coleridge thought only a Christian, "an affectionate and dutiful child of the Church", could really understand Herbert because "religion is the element in which he lives, and the region in which he moves". "So it is," remarks John Drury before dryly noting that some of Herbert's most sympathetic critics have not been dutiful children of the Church: "Indeed, in recent times, this has been spectacularly so."

Drury writes to those who, like the shop assistant of urban myth, are spectacularly unaware of the Christian narrative within their culture. The reader gets an explanation of the poem "H. Baptisme (II)" as "In the sacrament of Holy Baptism children were, and are, named and admitted into the fellowship of the Christian Church." A line in "The Cross" — "Thy will be done" — is glossed: "The Christian's familiar daily prayer goes ‘Our Father...' etc. Or (my personal favourite) "‘Suit' in the second line is a word Herbert used for courtship, usually of putting his case to God — not for posh clothes." If anyone doubts the level of ignorance that might necessitate such exegeses there are sadly all too many teachers, examiners and lecturers who can testify in Drury's defence. As Orwell said, "We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men" (and women).

It does raise the question of Drury's ideal readership. Is this Life written for posterity, imagining a time when all criticism will require restatement of the obvious? Is it for future undergraduates skulking in a college library and riffling through the index for those few pages covering the poem on their syllabus? Or is it written for a more sophisticated audience, of the kind who might readily buy a hardback literary biography and read it from start to finish? That this is published by Allen Lane suggests a more commercial appeal but it's hard to imagine the average consumer of literary biography needs such extensive signposting, unless Britain is more culturally bankrupt than previously thought possible.

Allen Lane was presumably quick to pick up on the commercial potential of Drury's thesis: "The primacy of love over theology...is a major reason for the hold Herbert's Christian poetry has on modern readers — secular and even atheist as they may be." For Drury it doesn't matter if the reader can't access the theological framework, everyone can understand love. Herbert "put in less religious terms" is all about love and Drury, true son of the Church of England, is keen to put things in less religious terms if it means getting the general idea over, even when that could come across as capitulation. As a strategy it's well-meaning but flawed: "In ‘Dialogue' the apparatus of Christian myth, doctrine and devotion are subordinated to Herbert's arch-topic of love. The reader needs only some experience of love's happiness, storms and conflicts and a willingness to be truthful about them to engage with such poetry." Thus with one sentence Drury obviates the entire reason for his own book.

The strength of Music at Midnight is Drury's close textual analysis and in this regard he's a better guide to the poetry than some literary critics, at least the ones who forget the virtues of keeping it clear and simple. His feel for the delicate interplay of form and content is reminiscent of the brilliantly perceptive Helen Vendler (Drury clearly admires her style of literary criticism), and experiencing Herbert as a technician through Drury's expert guidance is one of the book's biggest rewards. He isn't above getting down to good old English iambic pentameters and showing how they reveal important themes, how "the form suits the matter". Herbert's "fine poetic thrift" in this regard is what makes him the poet's poet. Drury notes, "When I told James Fenton that I was occupied with Herbert he exclaimed ‘The Poet!' and explained, ‘Both in intention and execution'."