Selected Works. George Herbert

      MEMOIR OF GEORGE HERBERT

      George Herbert was born in Montgomery Castle, Shropshire, on the 3d of April 1593. His father, Richard Herbert of Blakehall, was descended of a younger branch of the family of Pembroke. His mother was Magdalen Newport, the youngest daughter of Sir Richard Newport of High Arkall, in the county of Salop. Donne, who knew her well, has, in one of his finest poems, the “Autumnal Beauty,” commemorated her noble qualities and her majestic person. Izaak Walton tells us, that as “the happy mother of seven sons and three daughters,” she would often thank God that He had given her “Job’s number and Job’s distribution.” When her fifth son, George, was four years old, her husband died. After the lapse of a few years, she removed to Oxford, to superintend the education of her youngest son, Edward, afterwards the celebrated Lord Herbert of Cherbury, author of the once famous book, De Veritate prout distinguitur de Revelatione.

      George, in the meantime, whose childhood had been spent, as Walton says, “in a sweet content, under the eye and care of a prudent mother, and the tuition of a chaplain,” had been removed to Westminster School, then under the presidency of Mr. Ireland. During the three years he remained at Westminster, he is said to have attained to considerable proficiency in classical, and especially in Greek learning. About the year 1608 he was entered of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he enjoyed the almost paternal care of Dr. Nevil, then Dean of Canterbury and Master of the College. His name appears on the Register of Scholars under date 6th May 1609. At Cambridge he seems to have distinguished himself greatly. In 1611 he took his Bachelor’s degree; within two years thereafter he was chosen a Fellow; he became Master of Arts in 1615; and on the 21st October 1619, on the resignation of Sir Francis Nethersole, he was elected to the distinguished post of Public Orator to the University.

      Walton has described this portion of Herbert’s career with fine feeling and much beauty of expression. “As he grew older,” he says, “so he grew in learning, and more and more in favour both with God and man: insomuch that, in this morning of that short day of his life, he seemed to be marked out for virtue, and to become the care of Heaven; for God still kept his soul in so holy a frame, that he may, and ought to be a pattern of virtue to all posterity, and especially to his brethren of the clergy.” During all the time he was at College, continues the fine old gossip, “all, or the greatest diversion from his study, was the practice of music, in which he became a great master; and of which he would say, that it did relieve his drooping spirits, compose his distracted thoughts, and raise his weary soul so far above earth, that it gave him an earnest of the joys of heaven before he possessed them.”

      By his elevation to the office of Public Orator, which he held for eight years, Herbert was on the highway to court preferment. His predecessors, Naunton and Nethersole, had attained respectively to the dignities of Secretary of State and principal Secretary to the Queen of Bohemia. His debût in his new capacity was a successful one. James I had presented to the University a copy of his book, Basilicon Doron, and it was Herbert’s duty to acknowledge the honour. In a Latin letter, still extant, written with an elegance not unworthy of Milton or Buchanan, he intermingled with compliments to the King expressions “so full of conceits,” and so adapted to James’s taste, that the gratified monarch was pleased to pronounee the writer “the jewel of the University.”

      To the University itself the King at length came, where it was Herbert’s duty, as often as James could spare time from his sports at Newmarket and Royston, to welcome him with “gratulations and the applauses of an orator,” which “he performed so well, that he still grew more and more into the King’s favour.”{1} It was during these progresses that Herbert became acquainted with Lord Bacon and Bishop Andrews—an acquaintance that ripened into an intimacy which only ceased with the poet’s death. With Sir Henry Wotton, also, he was on terms of close friendship; and Donne esteemed him so highly, that on his deathbed he bequeathed to the son of the “Lady Magdalen” a seal, bearing the figure of Christ crucified on an anchor, and the motto, “Crux mihi anchora.”

      Herbert seems at this period to have been exceedingly solicitous for Court preferment, and with this view to have become an assiduous student of foreign languages. But his hopes were blasted by the death of James, who had, however, previously bestowed upon his favourite a sinecure, once the property of Sir Philip Sydney. With the profits arising from his post, which were valued at £120 a-year, an annuity which he enjoyed from his family, and the income he derived from his College and his Oratorship, Herbert was enabled to gratify what Walton calls his genteel humour for clothes and court-like company. How long he resided in London is not known. But shortly after the King’s death he retired into Kent, “where he lived very privately, and was such a lover of solitariness as was judged to impair his health nore than his study had done. In this time of retirement he had many conflicts with himself, whether he should return to the painted pleasures of a court-life, or betake himself to the study of divinity, and enter into sacred orders, to which his dear mother had often persuaded him. These were such conflicts as they only can know that have endured them; for ambitious desires and the outward glory of this world are not easily laid aside; but at last God inclined him to put on a resolution to serve at his altar.”{2}

      It was on his return to London that this resolution was first announced. The date of his ordination is unknown; but Walton discovered, from the records of Lincoln, that the prebend of Layton Ecclesia, in that diocese, was conferred upon him by Bishop Williams in the summer of 1626. At the period of his appointment, the parish church of Layton was in so dilapidated a condition that the parishioners could not meet in it for public worship. Herbert’s first step was to undertake its restoration, and “he lived,” says Walton, “to see it so wainscotted as to be exceeded by none.”

      In 1627 he lost his mother, who, in the twelfth year of her widowhood, had married the brother and heir of the Earl of Danby. For years before her death she seems to have suffered much; but she had a tender consoler in her son. “For the afflictions of the body, dear madam,” he wrote, in a letter still extant, “remember the holy martyrs of God, how they have been burned by thousands, and have endured such other tortures as the very mention of them might beget amazement; but their fiery trials have had an end; and yours, which, praised be God, are less, are

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