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



That men equally, or it may be more excellent, than Herbert, do not 

 still exist, we do not mean to assert ; but the peculiar simplicity of his 

 character is necessarily rare, in a highly cultivated age like the present, 

 " when the progress of refinement has worn down society into a more 

 smooth and polished, but certainly a less characteristic surface j" and the 

 complete change which manners and habits of thought have undergone, 

 renders the biography of Herbert and such as Herbert, interesting, even 

 independently of their piety, but taken with that important addition, such 

 a life becomes a valuable example, and one, which notwithstanding the 

 difference of the times, there is still ample opportunity to imitate. 



" G. Herbert," observes Mr. Coleridge, " is a true poet, but a poet sui generis, 

 the merits of whose poems will never be felt without sympathy with the mind and 

 character of the man. To appreciate this volume, it is not enough that the reader 

 possesses a cultivated judgment, classical taste, or even poetic sensibility, unless he 

 be likewise a Christian, and both a zealous and an orthodox, both a devout and a 

 devotional Christian. But even this will not quite suffice. He must be an affectionate 

 and dutiful child of the church ; and from habit, conviction, and a constitutional 

 predisposition to ceremoniousness, in piety as in manners, find her forms and ordi- 

 nances aids of religion, not sources of formality; for religion is the element in which 

 he lives, and the region in which he moves." 



This adherence to what has been happily called the " patristic leaven," 

 will be understood by those who know what affection, what animation, is 

 found in the first writers of the Christian church, with what delight they 

 dwell upon the order exhibited in the Cliristian plan, and comment upon 

 the peculiar wisdom and simplicity of the word of God. 



From the faults of his day Herbert seems to have been preserved, with- 

 out being exactly aware of their variance with true poetry. His sense of 

 religion disinclined him from the employment of Venuses and Cupids, and 

 all the machinery of the pagan heaven, and thus cut off an ordinary and 

 fruitful source of allegory and false taste ; and he avowed his contempt for 

 amorous ditties at a time when, says Cowley, "poets were scarce thought 

 freemen of their company without i)aying some duties, or obliging them- 

 selves to be true to love." He indulged in no poem of fancy, strictly so 

 called, his muse following an order prescribed by his piety and his respect 

 for his church. 



His precepts are not unfrequently clogged by his verse, and would far 

 more appropriately have become a sermon. He often forgets that a similie 

 should either illustrate or elevate the subject, and his figurative language 

 occasionally impairs the effect of his fervour by giving it an appearance of 

 insincerity. Far inferior to his contemporary Carew in freedom of style, 

 and to his predecessor Drayton in rough grandeur, more chaste than Suck- 

 ling, less severe, but less witty than Hall, and far less so than his friend 

 Donne, his piety, quite as much as his poetry, has been considered as the 

 charm of his song, and the genuine love to God and man which is manifest 



