He is best known by his collection of moral and religious poems, called _Divine Emblems_, which were accompanied with quaint engraved illustrations.

These allegories are full of unnatural conceits, and are many of them borrowed from an older source.

He was immensely popular as a poet in his own day, and there was truth in the statement of Horace Walpole, that "Milton was forced to wait till the world had done admiring Quarles." George Herbert, 1593-1632: a man of birth and station, Herbert entered the Church, and as the incumbent of the living at Bemerton, he illustrated in his own piety and devotion "the beauty of holiness." Conscientious and self-denying in his parish work, he found time to give forth those devout breathings which in harmony of expression, fervor of piety, and simplicity of thought, have been a goodly heritage to the Church ever since, while they still retain some of those "poetical surprises" which mark the literary taste of the age.

His principal work is _The Temple, or, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations_.

The short lyrics which form the stones of this temple are upon the rites and ceremonies of the Church and other sacred subjects: many of them are still in great favor, and will always be.