(c) GEORGE HERBERT (1593-1632) "The man I held as half-divine." In Memoriam. "Friend of my friend! I love thee, though unknown, And boldly call thee, being his, my own." "Content dwells not at Court." W. COWPER. Thealma and Clearchus. George Herbert was born in 1593, near the town of Montgomery. He was the fifth son of Richard Herbert, a descendant of the famous William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, who lived in the reign of Edward IV. He was educated at Westminster School, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he became a Fellow. He was B.A. in 1612, M.A. 1616. In October 1619 he became Public Orator. In 1615, while at Cambridge, in a letter to his mother, he remarked, that so many poems were written and consecrated to Venus that, for his own part, he had determined that his "poor abilities in poetry should be all and ever consecrated to God's glory." His mother was one of the most talented women of the day, and Donne wrote in her praise. Over her children she had great influence. Walton tells us he never knew Herbert, "I have only seen him." He says he "had heard he loved angling." G Herbert was ordained in 1626. He was a friend of Bacon. His poems were published under the title of The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations." The book was issued to the public in 1633, and read by King Charles I. when in prison. Walton, in his Life of Herbert, says his verses were thought so worthy to be preserved, "that Dr Duport, the learned Dean of Peterborough, had collected and caused many of them to be printed, as an honourable memorial of his friend Mr George Herbert, and the cause he undertook." Richard Baxter loved Herbert's poetry. A writer in the Times newspaper of the 1st of August 1902 makes the following excellent remarks upon the poems: "Widely as Herbert is read for the sake of his piety, we doubt whether he is reckoned at his full value. The temptation is to stop short at his conceits; to take them for all he has to offer, and to smile or close the book according to the reader's taste and knowledge. These conceits are not of the essence; they are the accidents of the age, and in particular, perhaps, of the influence of his mother's friend, Donne. Beneath them lies subtle and piercing thought, masterly insight into the spiritual nature, rare tenderness, a delight in things of beauty that his asceticism cannot conceal, and technical attainments of the highest order." Herbert wrote a prose sequel to The Temple as a guide to country parsons, which Hallam calls a pleasing little book; but the precepts are sometimes so overstrained, according to our notions, as to give an air of affectation (Literary History, Vol. II., Part III., Chapter II.) The first edition of Herbert's Outlandish Proverbs, &c., appeared in 1640. When Archbishop Benson was an undergraduate at Cambridge he won a prize for an English declamation on Herbert. It ended thus:— "The man himself has been far more to Englishmen, to scholars and to priests, than his work has been, far more deserving too of admiration and imitation than many weaklings whom late years have seen held up to us for examples. For he was not the mere muser or devout sentimentalist, but a most active and prosperous clergyman." This was delivered in the Hall of Trinity College on Commemoration Day, 1851. (See Benson's Life, by his son, Vol. I., p. 102). The footnote runs thus: "24 Jan. 1852. At the suggestion of the Master a window to commemorate George Herbert, notice of whom had lately been brought before the College by Mr E. W. Benson's English Speech on Commemoration Day." There are two windows in Trinity in which George Herbert is represented. In the one in the antechapel he appears standing behind our Lord in an |