himself to a compliance with the humours of the Duke de Luines, who was then the great and powerful favourite at Court, so that, upon a complaint to our King, he was called back into England in some displeasure; but at his return he gave such an honourable account of his employment, and so justified his comportment to the Duke, and all the Court, that he was suddenly sent back upon the same embassy, from which he returned in the beginning of the reign of our good King Charles I., who made him first Baron of Castle Island, and not long after of Cherbury, in the county of Salop. He was a man of great learning and reason, as appears by his printed book "De Veritate," and by his "History of the Reign of Henry VIII.," and by several other tracts.*

The second and third brothers were Richard and William, who ventured their lives to purchase honour in the wars of the Low Countries, and died officers in that employment. Charles was the fourth, and died Fellow of New College, in Oxford. Henry was the sixth, who became a menial servant to the Crown, in the days of King James, and continued to be so for fifty years, during all which time he hath been Master of the Revels, a place that requires a diligent wisdom, with which God hath blessed him. The seventh son was Thomas, who, being made captain of a ship in that fleet with which Sir Robert Mansell was sent

* Lord Herbert of Cherbury had also greatly distinguished himself in the Wars of the Netherlands by a romantic bravery. He was generous, and had great abilities; but it is sad to think of the brother of George Herbert as the author of "De Veritate," a book of which Hallam says, it is a "monument of an original independent thinker," but justly deemed inimical to every positive religion. He died 1648.

against Algiers, did there show a fortunate and true English valour. Of the three sisters I need not say more than that they were all married to persons of worth and plentiful fortunes, and lived to be examples of virtue, and to do good in their generations.

I now come to give my intended account of George, who was the fifth of those seven brothers.

George Herbert spent much of his childhood in a sweet content under the eye and care of his prudent mother, and the tuition of a chaplain or tutor to him, and two of his brothers, in her own family (for she was then a widow), where he continued till about the age of twelve years; and being at that time well instructed in the rules of grammar, he was not long after commended to the care of Dr. Neale, who was then Dean of Westminster, and by him to the care of Mr. Ireland, who was then chief master of that school; where the beauties of his pretty behaviour and wit shined and became so eminent and lovely in this his innocent age, that he seemed to be marked out for piety, and to become the care of Heaven, and of a particular good angel to guard and guide him. And thus he continued in that school till he came to be perfect in the learned languages, and especially in the Greek tongue, in which he after proved an excellent critic.

About the age of fifteen (he being then a King's scholar) he was elected out of that school for Trinity College in Cambridge, to which place he was transplanted about the year 1608; and his prudent mother, well knowing that he might easily lose or lessen that virtue and innocence which her advice and example

had planted in his mind, did therefore procure the generous and liberal Dr. Nevil, who was then Dean of Canterbury, and master of that college, to take him into his particular care, and provide him a tutor; which he did most gladly undertake; for he knew the excellences of his mother, and how to value such a friendship.

This was the method of his education, till he was settled in Cambridge, where we will leave him in his study till I have paid my promised account of his excellent mother, and I will endeavour to make it short.

I have told her birth, her marriage, and the number of her children, and have given some short account of them. I shall next tell the reader that her husband died when our George was about the age of four years. I am next to tell that she continued twelve years a widow; that she then married happily to a noble gentleman, the brother and heir of the Lord Danvers, Earl of Danby, who did highly value both her person and the most excellent endowments of her mind.

*

In this time of her widowhood, she being desirous to give Edward, her eldest son, such advantages of learning and other education as might suit his birth and fortune, and thereby make him the more fit for the service of his country, did, at his being of a fit age, remove from Montgomery Castle with him and some of her younger sons to Oxford; and having entered Edward into Queen's College, and provided him a fit

*Sir John Danvers, of Danvers House, Chelsea, a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to Charles I. It is distressing to think that after his excellent wife's death, at the breaking out of the Rebellion, he joined the rebels, sat as judge at the mock trial of the King, and affixed his signature to the death-warrant of Charles I.

;

tutor, she commended him to his care; yet she con-
tinued there with him, and still kept him in a moderate
awe of herself, and so much under her own eye as to
see and converse with him daily; but she managed
this power over him without any such rigid sourness
as might make her company a torment to her child
but with such a sweetness and compliance with the
recreations and pleasures of youth, as did incline him
willingly to spend much of his time in the company
of his dear and careful mother; which was to her
great content; for she would often say, " That as our
bodies take a nourishment suitable to the meat on
which we feed, so our souls do as insensibly take in
vice by the example or conversation with wicked com-
pany." And would therefore as often say, "That
ignorance of vice was the best preservation of virtue;
and that the very knowledge of wickedness was as
tinder to inflame and kindle sin, and to keep it burn-
ing."
For these reasons she endeared him to her
own company, and continued with him in Oxford four
years; in which time her great and harmless wit, her
cheerful gravity, and her obliging behaviour, gained
her an acquaintance and friendship with most of any
eminent worth or learning that were at that time in or
near that university; and particularly with Mr. John
Donne, who then came accidentally to that place in
this time of her being there. It was that John Donne
who was after Dr. Dorne, and Dean of St. Paul's,
London; and he, at his leaving Oxford, writ and left
there in verse a character of the beauties of her body
and mind. Of the first he says:

No spring nor summer beauty has such grace
As I have seen in an autumnal face.

Of the latter he says:

In all her words, to every hearer fit,

You may at revels or at council, sit.

The rest of her character may be read in his printed poems, in that elegy which bears the name of the "Autumnal Beauty." For both he and she were then past the meridian of man's life.

This amity, begun at this time and place, was not an amity that polluted their souls, but an amity made up of a chain of suitable inclinations and virtues—an amity like that of St. Chrysostom's to his dear and virtuous Olympias, whom, in his letters, he calls his saint; or an amity, indeed, more like that of St. Hierom to his Paula, whose affection to her was such that he turned poet in his old age, and then made her epitaph: "wishing all his body were turned into tongues, that he might declare her just praises to posterity." And this amity betwixt her and Mr. Donne was begun in a happy time for him, he being then near to the fortieth year of his age, which was some years before he entered into sacred orders-a time when his necessities needed a daily supply for the support of his wife, seven children, and a family ; and in this time she proved one of his most bountiful benefactors, and he as grateful an acknowledger of it. You may take one testimony for what I have said of these two worthy persons from this following letter and sonnet :

"MADAM,

"Your favours to me are everywhere; I use them, and have them. I enjoy them at London,