Much of the modern reputation of Lancelot Andrewes stems from an essay T.S. Eliot published in 1926, in which he ranked the sermons with 'the finest English prose of their time, of any time'. Eliot's essay marked the tercentenary of the death of a contemporary of Shakespeare, who between 1588 and his death had been successively or simultaneously vicar of St Giles Cripplegate; master of Pembroke College, Cambridge; prebendary of St Paul's; dean of Westminster; and bishop of Chichester, Ely and, finally, Winchester. What must have seemed a surprising tribute from the premier poet of Modernism to a relatively forgotten cleric was of course part of Eliot's own journey towards a conservative (and at times cod-English) Christian identity. He underwent Anglican baptism the following year, and in 1928 reprinted the essay in a manifesto volume entitled For Lancelot Andrewes. In its preface he nailed his own colours to the mast as being (like his clerical hero) 'classicist in literature, royalist in politics and Anglo-Catholic in religion'.

LRB 3 August 2006 | PDF Download