When Wendy Cope developed an interest in poetry, she bought a selection of George Herbert's verse. She writes of his work: 'I took to it immediately. What especially appealed to me - and still does - was this poet's wonderfully playful delight in poetic form, and the fact that these playful poems are, at the same time, utterly serious...There is humour, as well as exuberant inventiveness, in his work, but no one challenges his standing as a seriuos...