DECEASE OP THE HON. WILLIAM HERBEKT. 259 



remember the ardour with which, although suffering from serious 

 illness he took up the plan of a tour in Greece in the summer of 1845, the 

 eagerness with which he examined the scenes so dear to the naturalist 

 and the scholar, or the amount of bodily fatigue Avhich he endured ia 

 prosecuting his researches, ascending mountains and climbing precipices 

 from which even a j'oung man might have been excused for turning 

 away. What vigour of body and mind he then preserved may be 

 judged from the little collection of Latin lyrics which he circulated 

 among his friends upon his return to England, loaded with the fruits 

 of his excursion. 



" Mr. Herbert died suddenly at his house in Hereford-street, at one 

 o'clock, on Friday, the 28th of May, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, 

 just after the completion of a revision of the species of his favourite 

 Crocuses, and while expecting an artist to make a drawing of the last 

 of the many species of Ophrys which he had picked up in his Medi- 

 terranean excursion. We are much indebted to a friend for the follow- 

 ing memoranda respecting the kind-hearted, noble-minded subject of 

 these remarks : — 



" ' William Herbert, the deceased Dean of Manchester, was thefourtli 

 son and fifth child of Henry, first Earl of Carnarvon, and was born 

 January 12, 1778. He commenced his public education at Eton, and 

 was still at that school in 1795, when he sent to the press the collection 

 of poems called Musae Etonenses, of which he superintended a second 

 edition in the present century. This work continues very popular, as 

 well for the intrinsic beauty of no small portion of its contents, as for 

 the high rank or great subsequent celebrity of many of its juvenile 

 authors. Its editor removed to Oxford, Mhere he obtained the Latin 

 prize on the subject Rhenus. In 1801 he printed Ossiani Darthula, 

 &c., a small volume of Greek and Latin poetry. His Miscellaneous 

 Poetry, in two volumes, 1804, was distinguished from similar effusions 

 by containing (in the entire second volume) the first elaborate and 

 truly critical illustrations of the ancient Scandinavian or Norse lite- 

 rature that had appeared in England ; the attempts of one or two pre- 

 cursors in that line having been merely popular and trivial. Versions 

 from the German and Portuguese, with original compositions in the 

 Danish, Italian, and Spanish, evinced his extensive command of 

 languages, not, however, extending to any of the oriental tongues. 

 About this period of his life he contributed articles to the Edinburgh 

 lieview, unconnected with any political or other bias of that work, but 

 devoted to the interests of learning. The most important in its bear- 

 ings was the review of Mitford's Harmony of Language. One of the 

 most generally esteemed of his poems, entitled Helga, in seven cantos, 

 was printed (with Vala and Brynhalda) in 1815, and a second edition 

 some years afterwards. Hedin, and the Wanderer of Jutland, were 

 published in 1820 and 1821. The heroic poem of Attila, King of the 

 Huns, in twelve books, accompanied by an historical treatise, was the 

 fruit of the occasional labours of many years, and appeared in 1838. 

 In 1842 IMr. Herbert, then become Dean of Manchester, reprinted, in 

 two volumes, a collection of all his previous unscientific works, except 

 Attila. Last year, 1846, there appeared, uniform therewith, a thin 



