BERBER! 



671 



stock having married the eldest son of the illustrious 

 Lord ('live, in whose favour Unit title wa> renewed 

 in 1H04. 



Herbert* KUW.VUD, LORD HKKUKKT OK CIIKK- 

 liruv, soldier, statesman, poet, and philosopher, 

 was horn of the ancient and noble Mouse of 

 Herbert, appan-ntU on the 3d March 1583, at 

 K \ton in Shropshire. He was sent to Oxford in 

 his twelfth year, and before lie lia<l <|iiite quitted 

 hi> studies he married an heiress considerably 

 older than himself. On the occasion of the coro- 

 nation of .lames I. lie was made a knight, and 

 in\eMed with various offices. He left home, 

 accordingly, for France in 1608, and in Paris 

 lived in terms of intimacy witli the Constable 

 Montmorency, Isaac Casaubon, and other dis- 

 tinguished men. After a brief return to his 

 native country, he set out again in 1610 for 

 the Low Countries, where he joined the arms of 

 Maurice of Orange ; and he again offered him his 

 services in 1614. After a campaign, he travelled 

 through Germany and Italy on horseback, and went 

 as far as Venice, Florence, and Rome. On his 

 way back he got into trouble through an attempt 

 which he made to rajse a troop of Protestant 

 soldiers in Languedoc for the Duke of Savoy. 

 Shortly after, he returned to England, and was 

 made a member of the Privy-council; then sent 

 to France, first as extraordinary ambassador, and 

 then as ordinary ambassador. He tried, but with- 

 out much success, the difficult task of negotia- 

 tion between Louis XIII. and his Protestant sub- 

 jects, was ultimately dismissed, and in spite of 

 eager solicitation never received any further 

 appointment. He was elevated first to be a peer 

 or Ireland, and then in 1630 to be a peer of Eng- 

 land, with the title of Baron Herbert of Cher- 

 bury. When the Civil War broke out he at 

 first sided with the royalists, but ultimately 

 surrendered his castle to the parliamentarians, 

 with whom he afterwards lived on easy terms. 

 He was commonly regarded as having saved his 

 possessions at the expense of his honour. He died 

 in London, 20th August 1648. 



The work by which Herbert, the friend of Donne, 

 Selden, Hen Jonson, Grotius, and Gassendi, was 

 best known to his contemporaries is his De Veritate 

 an anti-empirical theory of knowledge, which in 

 many respects anticipates the common-sense philo- 

 sophy of the Scottish school, and is at times even 

 Kantian. His De Religione Gentilium (1645) is a 

 'natural history of religion,' by means of which 

 Herl>ert finds that all religions, amidst their 

 extravagances or follies, recognise what were for 

 him the five main articles of religion that there is 

 a supreme God, that he ought to be worshipped, 

 that virtue and purity are the main part of that 

 worship, that sins should be repented of, and that 

 there are rewards and punishments in a future 

 state. In virtue of this ' charter of the deists,' 

 Herbert is not unjustly reckoned the first of the 

 deistical writers. The Expeditio Itm-h-i ugh/ami 

 Ducifi ( 1656) is a vindication of his patron's ill-fated 

 expedition. The ill-proportioned Life and Raigne of 

 King Henry VIII. ( 1649) glorifies Henry overmuch, 

 and is by no means accurate. His best-known 

 work, the Autobiography, a brilliant picture of the 

 man and of contemporary manners, may fairly \\e 

 regarded as a masterpiece in its kind ; but it is 

 disfigured by overweening conceit and self -glory 

 in his own personal beauty, noble blood, valour in 

 Quixotic duels, favours from famous ladies, and 

 generosity, and is not to l>e regarded as veracious. 

 It comes down only to 1624. The Poems, Latin 

 and English, which may be divided into sonnets, 

 elegies, epitaphs, satires, miscellaneous lyrics, and 

 occasional pieces, reveal in their author a repre- 

 sentative of Donne's, or the ' metaphysical,' school ; 



many, in the judgment of a recent editor, are of 

 real and true poem, in home M-p-M- resembling 

 Mr-owning, in Home anticipating Tennyson. Ke 

 Kemusal'ri monograph on Herltert ( Paris, 1874); 

 ( 'linrton CollitiH'H edition of the I'IMMIIH ( 1K81 ) ; and 

 Sid ne v L. Lee's edition of the Autobiography, with 

 introduction and continuation ( 1886). 



Herbert, GEORGE, an Knglihh joet, was 

 born irr Montgomery Castle, in Wale*, on the 3d 

 April 1593. His family was a younger branch of 

 that of the Earls of Pembroke. Hix eldest brother 

 was Lord Herbert ( q.v. ) of Cherlmry, who nay* of 

 him : ' My brother George was so excellent a 

 scholar that he was made the public orator of the 

 university of Cambridge, some of whose English 

 works are extant, which, though they ]>e rare in 

 their kind, yet are far short of expressing those 

 perfections he had in the Greek and Latin tongue, 

 and all divine and human literature. His life was 

 most holy and exemplary, in so much that about 

 Salisbury, where he lived Ijeneiiced for many (?) 

 years, he was little less than sainted. He was not 

 exempt from passion and choler, being infirmities 

 to which our race is subject ; but, that excepted, 

 without reproach in his actions.' George Herbert's 

 mother was a Newport, of the old Shropshire family 

 of the Newports of High Ercall. She was left a 

 widow, and devoted herself to the education and 

 training of her seven sons, in which effort she was 

 singularly successful. Her memory has come down 

 to us as one of those many mothers of the English 

 race to whom it owes so much. Under her influ- 

 ence and that of Dr Neville, Dean of Canterbury 

 and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, the 

 foundations were laid of a character of almost per- 

 fect beauty. In 1615 George Herbert was elected 

 Fellow of his college, and in 1619 promoted to the 

 office of Public Orator, in which place he continued 

 eight years, and, as Izaak Walton says, ' managed 

 it with as becoming a grace and gaiety as any 

 had ever before or since his time.' ' If during this 

 time,' he continues, 'he expressed any error, it 

 was that he kept himself too much retired, and at 

 too great a distance from all his inferiors, and his 

 clothes seemed to prove that he put too great a 

 value on his parts and parentage.' The ante- 

 cedents of his family, indeed, and his position at 

 the university, naturally led him to expect advance- 

 ment at court ; but on the death of King James 

 his thoughts became more decidedly drawn towards 

 a distinctly religious life a life which his mother 

 had always wished him to follow. After a period 

 of seclusion in the country, he finally deemed to 

 relinquish all expectation of court favours, and to 

 devote himself entirely to the religious life. In 

 1626 he was made prebendary of Lay ton Ecclesia 

 in the diocese of Lincoln, and in 1630, the year of 

 his marriage to a kinswoman of the Earl of Danby 

 and daughter of Mr Charles Danvers of Bainton, 

 in the county of Wilts, he was presented, by the 

 favour of his kinsman the Earl of Pembroke, to 

 the vicarage of Bemerton, near Salisbury ; King 

 Charles 1. saying, when the earl solicited the pre- 

 sentation which had lapsed to the crown, 'most 

 willingly to Mr Herbert, if it be worth his accept- 

 ance.' He only enjoyed this vicarage for three years, 

 dying 3d March 1633; yet in that short time he left 

 a memory which still survives. No one who reads 

 his Country Parson, a description of an ideal par- 

 son's life, which is doubtless to a considerable 

 extent a picture of his own life and conduct, will 

 be surprised at this fact. Walton says of him, 

 ' his aspect was cheerful, and his speech and motion 

 did lotn declare him agentleman; for they were all 

 so meek and obliging that they purchased love and 

 respect from all that knew him.' He was naturally 

 the intimate of the most cultured natures of his 

 day, but the reality of religious life led him, as it 



