Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Some people definitely thought Herbert's shape poems were a joke. John Dryden, another famous seventeenth-century poet, hinted at his distaste for them in Mac Flecknoe: "Leave writing plays, and choose for they command / Some peaceful province in acrostic land. / There thou may'st wings display and altars raise, / And torture one poor word ten thousand ways." Cold burn. (Source.)
You could say that George Herbert was connected. His family was wealthy and "eminent," and Magdalen, his mother, was a patron and friend of fellow poet John Donne. (Source.)
John Donne wasn't just a casual friend of the Herberts. He was close enough that he actually gave the sermon at Herbert's mother's funeral. (Source.)
Herbert definitely knew what it meant to make sacrifices for God. He abandoned good opportunities at both Cambridge and in Parliament to become a priest. (Source.)