Review of the Temple, ^c. by George Herbert. 147 



otherwise without reproach." And we leani from his attendance at court, 

 and from his lines^ 



" Whereas my birth and spirit rather took 

 The way that takes the town ;" 



as well as from other passages in his life, that he was fond of gaiety and 

 dress, and apt to value himself upon his birth ; nevertheless, the habit of 

 his mind seems ever to have been of a serious cast, and in his second year at 

 the university we find him, in a letter to his mother, dedicating " his poor 

 abilities in poetry to God's glory," and rejecting all the subjects and figures 

 drawn from pagan mythology, so fruitful a source of the figurative language 

 of the day, and one of which his learning qualified him to make ample use. 



That he was an industrious student in the learning of the university, 

 his progress places beyond doubt. He was made bachelor of arts in 

 1611, master, and major fellow of his college in 161.5; and in 1619 he was 

 selected to fill the honourable ofiice of university orator. 



In this capacity he became known to James I., whom it fell to his ofiice 

 to thank for his gift of the " Basilicon Doron" to the university, which he 

 did in a letter, with the Latin and the conceits of which the royal pedant 

 was so highly delighted, that he pronounced the writer to be the "jewel 

 of the university." 



Herbert also gained credit by some verses against the celebrated Andrew 

 Melville, in defence of the church of England, and Lord Bacon dedicated 

 to him his translation of a portion of the Psalms of David into English 

 verse. 



At this period he seems but seldom to have visited Cambridge, re- 

 taining his oratorship only in compliance with his mother's wishes, and 

 chiefly to have followed the court, wliere he is said to have been enabled, 

 by the gift of a sinecure office, to indulge in his love for fine clothes and 

 court-like company. 



At this conjuncture, however, it pleased God, by the death of his royal 

 patron, James, and that of two of his most powerful friends, to detach him 

 at once from the dangers and uncertainties of a court life, as he quaintly 

 called it, "a nothing between two dishes," and to strengthen in him those 

 higher views, of which he had ever given more or less promise. Having 

 considered the subject during a year, he determined upon entering the 

 church. 



This resolution he announced to a friend, who would have dissuaded 

 him from it, on the ground of its being beneath his birth and expectations, 

 in the following very remarkable words : 



" It hath been formerly adjudged, that the domestic servants of the,King of heaven 

 should be of the noblest families on earth : and though the iniquity of the late times 

 have made clergymen meanly valued, and the sacred name of priest contemptible ; 

 yet I will labour to make it honourable, by consecrating all my learning and all my 

 poor abilities to advance the glory of that Ood that gave them ; knowing that I can 



