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 http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924013185560 
 
GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
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 \ Author 
 
 GEORCE HERI'.KRT 
 
 FROM 'the 1674 
 
 ITTIUN OF THE TV^IVLK. 
 HIS rol^TKAlT 
 
 THE FIRST I'UIU-ISHED WITH 
 
GEORGE HERBERT 
 AND HIS TIMES 
 
 BY 
 
 A. G. HYDE 
 
 WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 London: METHUEN & CO. 
 * 1906 
 
 U; 
 
TO THE 
 
 Rev. henry MONTAGU BUTLER, D.D. 
 
 MASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 (of which GEORGE HERBERT WAS A FELLOW) 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE chief, if not the only, source of information 
 for a biography of George Herbert is the 
 well-known Life by Izaak Walton, first published 
 in 1670, Apart from this, and a brief memorial 
 included by Barnabas Oley in his Preface to The 
 Country Parson (1652), the materials in question 
 consist of hardly more than a few official records. 
 For this reason Walton's pages, familiar as they 
 are to many, have been largely drawn from in 
 the following chapters ; and if in many places the 
 quotations are of some length, this has seemed 
 better than to attempt what could only be an 
 obvious paraphrase of the text. Indeed, it must 
 be frankly admitted that the labours of a modern 
 biographer of Herbert are reduced to little more 
 than a commentary on Walton's narrative, except 
 when, as in the present instance, an effort has been 
 made to show the relation of its subject and his 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 writings to his own and later times. An acknow- 
 ledgment must also be made of the conveniences 
 afforded by the Rev. A. B. Grosart's complete 
 edition of Herbert's works in the Fuller Worthies 
 Library; while the materials for the chapter 
 dealing with Nicholas Ferrar and his household 
 have been derived mainly from Professor Mayor's 
 edition of the Two Lives (1855). 
 
 The author's thanks are due to the Very Rev. 
 J. Armitage Robinson, D.D., Dean of Westmin- 
 ster, for useful particulars as to the Abbey services 
 in Herbert's boyhood ; to Mr. John Sargeaunt, 
 author of Annals of Westminster School, for valu- 
 able information as to the Poet's school-days ; 
 to Dr. J. E. Sandys, Public Orator of the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge, for interesting details re- 
 specting the office formerly held by the Poet ; 
 to the Rev. H. B. Maling, Vicar of Leighton 
 Bromswold, for information concerning the Church 
 rebuilt by Herbert and his friends ; and to other 
 persons for help given or proferred in his under- 
 taking. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE POET AND THE AGE I 
 
 II. BIRTHPLACE, FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD . . .12 
 
 III. SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY 29 
 
 U IV. EARLY LIFE AND WRITINGS AT CAMBRIDGE . . 47 
 
 ^ — ^V, ORATOR AND THEOLOGIAN 62 
 
 VI. HERBERT AS A COURTIER 85 
 
 VII. THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT . . . . 109 
 
 VIII. FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES . . . .129 
 
 •^- IX. THE REORDERING OF THE CHURCH . . . ISl 
 
 X. TRANSITIONAL 1 73 
 
 XI. NICHOLAS FERRAR AND LITTLE GIDDING . .197 
 
 XII. BEMERTON : THE PARSON IN HIS CURE . .223 
 
 XIII. LAST DAYS 241 
 
 XIV. THE temple: I. THE CHURCH PORCH . . 257 
 XV. THE temple: II. THE SHORTER POEMS . . 269 
 
 XVI. THE COUNTRY PARSON AND OTHER WRITINGS . 289 
 XVII. CONCLUSION 309 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 GEORGE HERBERT ...... Frontispiece 
 
 From the 1674 Edition oftbs Temple (the first ptiilished with his 
 Portrait) 
 
 IZAAK WALTON 8 
 
 Prom the Painting hy Jacob Huysman in the National Gallery 
 
 RUINS OF MONTGOMERY CASTLE 12 
 
 From a Photograph ty J. Owen, Newtown, N. W. 
 
 MONTGOMERY CHURCH 1 4 
 
 From a Photograph by J. Owen, Newtown, N, W. 
 
 THE HERBERT MONUMENT (Montgomery Church) . . 18 
 
 From a Photograph hy J. Owen, Newtown, N. W. 
 
 LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY 24 
 
 From an Engraving after the Original Picture at Charlcott 
 
 THE CLOISTERS (Westminster Abbey) . . . -32 
 
 From an Engraving by ffamble after a Drawing by Thomson, i8ia 
 
xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 WESTMINSTER SCHOOL: THE COLLEGE HALL ... 34 
 From a Drawing hy J. T. Smith, 1808 
 
 MARBLES IN CLOISTERS. Showing the Dress probably 
 
 worn by Herbert when at the School . . 36 
 
 Prom an. Engraving ty R, Pollard after the Picture by R. M, Page 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE: — 
 
 THE GREAT GATE 40 
 
 From Le Keuiis Engraving 
 
 A bird's-eye view of THE COLLEGE ... 44 
 From Loggan's Print taken about 1688 
 
 THE GREAT COURT : NORTH-EAST CORNER. Showing 
 
 West Front of the Great Gate; Nevile's 
 Fountain ; South Side of Chapel ; King 
 Edward's Gate (or Clock Tower) and part 
 of Chambers — all in existence or built in 
 Herbert's time 48 
 
 From Le Kewis Engraving 
 
 INTERIOR OF CHAPEL. Showing Organ ... 76 
 
 From Le Keux's Engraving 
 
 INTERIOR OF HALL 94 
 
 From Le Keux's Engraving 
 
 BISHOP ANDREWES I40 
 
 From an Engraving by John Payne 
 
LIST OP ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 
 
 PAGE 
 JOHN DONNE, AS A YOUTH 1 44 
 
 From an Engraving by W. Marshall 
 LEIGHTON BROMSWOLD CHURCH : INTERIOR (present 
 
 time) 176 
 
 From a Photograph by P. J. Slater, Peterborough 
 
 LEIGHTON BROMSWOLD CHURCH: SOUTH-EAST VIEW OF 
 
 EXTERIOR 182 
 
 From Zouch's Edition of Walton's Lives 
 
 NICHOLAS FERRAR 200 
 
 From the Painting in Magdalene College Lodge, Cambridge {Photo- 
 graphed by Mason fif Basevi, Cambridge) 
 
 LITTLE GiDDiNG CHURCH: EXTERIOR (present time) . 206 
 
 From a Photograph by P. J. Slater, Peterborough 
 
 LITTLE GIDDING CHURCH: INTERIOR (present time) . 210 
 
 From a Photograph by P. J. Slater, Peterborough 
 BEMERTON CHURCH : — 
 
 exterior: EAST END. Showing part of Rectory 
 
 (present time) 228 
 
 From a Photograph by F. Frith &= Co. 
 
 exterior: WEST FRONT (present time) . . .232 
 
 From a Photograph by F. Frith 6s' Co. 
 
 SALISBURY CATHEDRAL 234 
 
 From a Pfiotograph by J. Valentine if Sons 
 
xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 GEORGE HERBERT AT BEMERTON 24^ 
 
 Prom the Painting by W. Dyce, R.A., in the Guildhall Gallery 
 {Photographed by the Pall Mall Magsizine) 
 
 BEMERTON CHURCH: INTERIOR. Showing the Altar, 
 
 under which Herbert was buried . . , 252 
 
 Prom a Photograph by J. Valentine 6* Sons 
 
 TITLE PAGES 
 
 THE LIFE OF MR. GEORGE HERBERT (the Original 1670 
 
 Edition) by Walton 14 
 
 THE TEMPLE i First and Second (Public) Editions. 
 
 Printed at Cambridge, 1633 .... 260 
 
 THE coUNTREY PARSON: The Original Edition. Pub- 
 lished in 1652, with yacula Prudentum and an 
 introduction by Barnabas Oley .... 290 
 
 Herbert's remains: The general title under which 
 
 the above were included (1652) . . . 290 
 
 OUTLANDISH PROVERBS : Title of the First Edition of 
 
 y acuta Prudentum. Published in 1640 . . 306 
 
GEORGE HERBERT AND 
 HIS TIMES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE POET AND THE AGE 
 
 A MONO the English poets who wrote more or 
 -*^- less on religious themes in the early and 
 middle years of the seventeenth century, a group 
 including Crashaw, Vaughan, Wither, Herrick (in 
 his MuscB Graviores) and Quarles of the Em- 
 blems— WAton for several reasons need not be 
 considered — George Herbert must be allowed a 
 very high, if not the highest, place. Comparison 
 of religious as of other poets is always difficult : 
 we like or dislike them as our intellectual or theo- 
 logical tastes enforce ; but for the most part they 
 draw from wells of experience too deep for our 
 common sounding, and if they refresh us in the 
 moral and material conflict of the world we should 
 accept the draught thankfully. Especially ought 
 we to do so when it is offered us with the peculiar 
 grace of this accomplished scholar and gentleman. 
 
2 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 The scion of a noble house, distinguished in aca- 
 demic if not in public life, and for some time in 
 no derogatory sense a courtier, what motive but a 
 generous one has he for concerning himself with 
 our welfare? To us as to his contemporaries 
 there is something singularly attractive in his 
 personality : in the tall, slender figure in canonical 
 habit, for which a Court dress and sword have 
 but lately been exchanged, and in the long and 
 grave yet kindly face under the round skull-cap, 
 framed in flowing locks and wearing the thinned 
 moustache of the clergy as well as laity of hb day. 
 Though a priest and High Churchman of the 
 school of Andrewes and Laud, he is himself 
 married ; he does not forbid wine, up to the third 
 glass ; and he admits of mirth, duly pruned of its 
 superfluities. His message is frankly evangelical, 
 affectionate, and stimulating. His book, "humbly, 
 doubtfully offered," as Dr. Macdonald says, is a 
 sermon, or series of sermons, in rhyme, and ad- 
 dressed to young persons, particularly to those 
 whom Milton would have called the " choicest and 
 hopefullest wits" of his own and later generations : — 
 
 Thon whose sweet youth and early hopes enhance 
 Thy rate and price, and mark thee for a treasure. 
 Hearken unto a Verser, who may chance 
 Rhyme thee to good, and make a bait of pleasure : 
 
 A verse may find him who a sermon flies, 
 
 And turn delight into a gaciifice. 
 
THE POET AND THE AGE 3 
 
 The device is an old one on the part of the 
 religious "verser," and in his own century it 
 proved successful; The Temple of "holy Mr. 
 Herbert," like The Christian Year of Keble in 
 the century just past, becoming a popular aid to 
 devotion and a household book. 
 
 Whatever the spiritual value or significance of 
 his message, it was delivered to the world in a 
 time of comparative peace. There had been 
 tumult and revolution in the Church before his 
 day, and there were to be tumults and revolutions 
 both in Church and State after his death ; but 
 throughout his shortened span of life, the Gun- 
 powder Plot failing ignominiously, no great ex- 
 plosion shook the social framework of England. 
 The Spanish Armada had given its futile assault 
 before his birth ; the attempted revolution of 
 Essex was quelled in his childhood ; and if English- 
 men took part in foreign wars it was without 
 contributing a Blenheim or a Waterloo to the 
 drum and trumpet story of the nations. It is 
 needless to say, however, that if there was tran- 
 quillity without, within there were forces at work of 
 serious import to the English race. The problem 
 of English kingship, and its legal powers and 
 limitations, was yet to be solved, and with it 
 the momentous question of the form and guise of 
 English Christianity. Were the English people, 
 
4 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 already expanding into newly discovered lands, 
 to part definitely and forever with their heritage 
 of ordered and beautified worship, or to adapt 
 its formularies to the growing needs of their 
 own and later times? Queen Elizabeth for the 
 moment had willed the latter course ; but the 
 strong Calvinism of the earlier revolution in the 
 Church still swayed the minds of many within its 
 fold, demanding even greater changes in its rites 
 and ceremonies, if not their total abolition. And 
 both parties to the controversy, being Englishmen 
 and taking their religion like their pleasures sadly, 
 were preparing to put the question to the argument 
 of force, the most simple if not the most con- 
 genial to reformers of their day. 
 
 Inevitably the Poet of the Church was allied to 
 the party of conservatism and reaction against the 
 drastic ideals of the extreme Puritans — to the 
 party called in its own time " Arminian " or Papis- 
 tical, of which Laud was the dominating spirit and 
 Andrewes the erudite and persuasive advocate ; 
 as Hooker had been the judicious apologist and 
 Jeremy Taylor was yet to be the golden-mouthed 
 orator. It was of this well-ruled and dignified 
 Church that Herbert wrote : — 
 
 I joy, dear Mother, when I view 
 Thy perfect lineaments and hue, 
 Both sweet and bright ; 
 
THE POET AND THE AGE 6 
 
 adding his frank but impolite criticism of the over- 
 adornment of Rome and the dishevelled habits of 
 Puritan worship. Happily, however, his office as 
 the " sweet singer " of the movement was destined 
 to be marred by none of the arbitrary acts which 
 too often impaired and sometimes frustrated the 
 work of its more prominent leaders. But his ser- 
 vices to the renascent Church were not of a pro- 
 minent or obvious kind. His self-sacrificing life 
 as a village priest, the report of which shed a 
 halo about his name, did not extend to three 
 years, and those his last ; his English verses, the 
 only ones that could have affected the movement, 
 were published posthumously ; and his Country 
 Parson did not appear until long after his death. 
 By his friends and admirers his place in the world 
 of religious thought and experience was recog- 
 nised ; but as a permanent influence in and upon 
 their struggling Church they would doubtless have 
 set him far below the more striking figures then in 
 its horizon. In doing so they would perhaps have 
 been right, for the place of a poet is still a dubious 
 one in the religious as in the secular world. 
 
 Other aspects of the time may be recalled, Her- 
 bert's short life of less than forty years (1593-1632) 
 reached from the latter days of Queen Elizabeth 
 to the eighth reigning year of the first Charles, and 
 may be said to span the gulf separating the old 
 
6 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 English world from ours. The splendours of 
 Elizabeth's and Shakespeare's time make a fas- 
 cinating picture for our imaginations ; but we 
 are not of it — a thin but palpable veil shuts off 
 our sober life from its brighter as well as 
 darker side. The seventeenth century made us 
 Puritans ; and Puritans we have remained ever 
 since, though many late signs point to an opposite 
 conclusion. The reign of James the First, and 
 the opening reign of his son, had, however, many 
 of the social and material marks of their more 
 spacious predecessor. They were still character- 
 ised by wealth, colour and show — the artistic in- 
 stincts of the Middle Ages were not yet dead, 
 and people when they could lived and moved 
 in an atmosphere of chromatic effects, to the sound 
 of tabor and pipe, and with gay pageants by land 
 and water. Their architectural environment was 
 still picturesque, as were also their costumes and 
 personal adornments, in spite of occasional ex- 
 travagance. The common notion, however, that 
 the two great political and religious parties of the 
 age were strongly contrasted in the matter of dress, 
 should be modified. The close-cropped Round- 
 head, with his prominent ears and unfashionable 
 clothing, and the fantastic fop among the Cavaliers 
 — the " antic " of contemporary caricature, with his 
 love-locks, ribbons and rosettes — were no doubt 
 
THE POET AND THE AGE 7 
 
 to be seen, but they were the extremes. The 
 rational part of the community on both sides cut 
 their hair and their garments by the rules of sense 
 and moderation. Hampden's locks were no shorter 
 than Strafford's ; and Milton's and Bunyan's were 
 as flowing and neatly kept as Herbert's own : while 
 the two " sonnes of Zion," the " godly dissenting 
 brother " and the " godly brother of the Presby- 
 terian way," shown in a contemporary print, would 
 have been called dandies by the generation before 
 ours. The race was still marked by personal 
 beauty, and famed for skill in music : Erasmus, 
 a hundred years before, had found the English the 
 most beautiful as well as the most musical of 
 peoples, and they continued to be praised for both 
 qualities. 
 
 It was an age of much family love, and of 
 tenderness for infancy and childhood — there are 
 no sweeter cradle-songs than those of the period. 
 Warm friendships also existed among men : if 
 enmities were strong and lasting, personal regard 
 and admiration were equally so. This is especially 
 true of the group with which Herbert was as- 
 sociated, the group including the saintly Bishop 
 Andrewes ; Dr. Donne, the " metaphysical " poet 
 and popular preacher ; Sir Henry Wotton, the 
 accomplished courtier and diplomatist ; Nicholas 
 Ferrar, the scholar-merchant who gave up the 
 
8 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 attractions of public life for one of religious s( 
 sion ; and last but not least, jlzaak Walton, 
 life of George Herbert can be written wit] 
 constant reference to his first and most exqu 
 biographer. Tradesman, Churchman and fis 
 man, pastoral poet and painter of Nature in 
 gentlest and fairest scenes, he used the subj 
 of his delightful Lives as he used the less fortu 
 living bait for his hooks, as if indeed he k 
 them. With his comely face and figure, a fish 
 rod under his arm, and a volume of his belc 
 Gesner or the "divine" Du Bartas in his hi 
 he must ever accompany those who attemp 
 write, as well as those who read, the Life 
 pictured with so much sympathy and power 
 Students of the inner trends of the time cai 
 fail to detect symptoms of revolt against som 
 its outward influences. The Reformation, if it 
 nothing else, made men think for themselves, 
 think as it were with the English Bible c 
 before them. From the days of its public rea( 
 at St. Paul's by "one John Porter," the "f 
 young man of a big stature" who "could i 
 well and had an audible voice," the transl; 
 Scriptures had been in the hands or in the m 
 of all, and religious experience had centred in 
 about the sacred text. But if the responsib 
 of working out one's salvation by an indepenc 
 
IZAAK WALTON 
 
 FROM THE I'AINTING BY JACOB HUYSMAN, IN THE NATIONAL GAI.LEU 
 
THE POET AND THE AGE 9 
 
 study of Christian documents had its benefits, it 
 al^o tended to lawlessness, and not seldom with 
 the more sensitive to gloom and distress. The 
 severe and often irresponsible preacher, layman 
 as well as cleric, was abroad in the land ; and 
 amid the noise of clashing creeds and doctrines 
 the desire for order, peace and opportunity for 
 quiet growth — in a word, for religious culture — 
 was felt by many. The affection in which a large 
 part of the community had come to hold the 
 Book of Common Prayer, " our good old Service 
 Book," as Walton calls it, and the "devised" 
 worship of the Church — both afterwards by the 
 Puritans — is an evidence of this feeling. But 
 with many the desire went further. There was 
 something like a revival of the old longing for 
 a retired and contemplative life which, a few 
 generations before, had driven men and women 
 to the cloister. Walton and his beneficed friends 
 appear to have engaged in the apostolic sport 
 of fishing partly in response to this impulse : 
 no one can read his Compleat Angler without 
 being struck with its strong current of devout 
 contemplation. With men like Burton, the an- 
 atomist of mirth not less than of melancholy, 
 a desire for the old cloisteral system was openly 
 expressed. At the great Dissolution, he says, 
 " some monasteries and collegiate cells might have 
 
10 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 been well spared ... for men and women to 
 sequester themselves from the cares and tumults 
 of the world ... to follow their studies . . . 
 and freely and truly to serve God." In the 
 case of Nicholas Ferrar this ideal was practically 
 realised in his community or rather family at 
 Little Gidding, where a round of religious services 
 was carried on day and night, and studies went 
 hand in hand with useful work, a circle of 
 
 Silence and sacred rest : peace and pure joys. 
 
 The influence of George Herbert on his own 
 age owed at least some of its force to this strain 
 of contemporary quietism : other minds as well 
 were turning to the definitely ordered religious 
 life. With him, unlike his friend Ferrar, the 
 active duties of a parish priest were joined to those 
 of the study, the ruled household, and the daily 
 offices of the Church. Ferrar's ideal might be 
 called the monastic, Herbert's the parochial. At 
 Little Gidding the private community, the re- 
 ligious house and its members, formed the centre of 
 thought and interest, though the community with- 
 out its walls was not neglected. At Bemerton, if 
 the Church was the centre, the parish was the 
 equal if not the chief care. The one gave to the 
 world the pattern of " reverent discipline and re- 
 ligious fear," with "soft obedience" and quiet 
 
THE POET AND THE AGE 11 
 
 labour ; the other, the pattern of the true spiritual 
 shepherd in the midst of his flock, preaching, 
 teaching, and exhorting to righteousness. The 
 one faintly foreshadowed the Anglican brother- 
 hoods and sisterhoods of our time : the other gave 
 the English Church an ideal of personal con- 
 secration which, if perhaps seldom fully realised, 
 has been and is still the mark and aim of many 
 of her sons. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 BIRTHPLACE, FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD 
 
 "/GEORGE HERBERT was born the third 
 ^^ day of April, in the year of our Redemp- 
 tion, 1593. The place of his birth was near to 
 the town of Montgomery, and in that castle that 
 did then bear the name of that town and county. 
 That castle was then a place of state and strength, 
 and had been successively happy in the family of 
 the Herberts, who had long possessed it : and with 
 it a plentiful estate, and hearts as liberal to their 
 poor neighbours : a family that had been blessed 
 with men of remarkable wisdom, and a willingness 
 to serve their country, and, indeed, to do good to 
 all mankind : for which they were eminent. But, 
 alas! this family did in the late rebellion suffer 
 extremely in their estates : and the heirs of that 
 castle saw it laid level with that earth that was 
 too good to bury those wretches that were the 
 cause of it." 
 
 Thus Walton begins what may well have been 
 the most congenial of his biographical tasks. 
 
s 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 H 
 
 o 
 
 
BIRTHPLACE, FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD 13 
 
 although personally unacquainted with its subject : 
 " I have but seen him," he says further on. Born 
 in the same year, and only a few months later 
 (9th August, 1 593), he had already survived him 
 by thirty-seven years, and had published three of 
 the five Lives by which his piscatorial fame has 
 been enlarged but not eclipsed : those of Donne, 
 Hooker and Wotton. The Compleat Angler had 
 appeared in 1653. His hand, therefore, was well 
 seasoned to literary toils ; and that it had not lost 
 but had rather gained in cunning is abundantly 
 proved by the felicity of his performance. In 
 several respects he was an ideal bidgrapher. He 
 loved and admired loyally ; but his hero-worship 
 was tempered by a wholesome resolution to tell 
 the truth, and by a shrewdness of judgment that 
 prevented him from raising his subjects into demi- 
 gods. He was painstaking in gathering his facts, 
 not over-credulous for his time, and determined 
 that, like his fishing treatise, his Lives should not 
 "read dull and tediously." The result was the 
 series of portraits that Wordsworth compared to 
 the colours of a lovely sky. Walton, in fact, was 
 an incorrigible artist ; he posed and draped his 
 figures as seemed good to him, and painted them 
 with a skill that Lely or Van Dyck might have 
 envied. His apologies for his "artless" pen may 
 be ignored. He was, in reality, the soul of inno- 
 
14 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 cent artifice, and could, whenever engaged on a 
 favourite theme — as in many passages in the 
 Angler and elsewhere — marshal his words in 
 mellow and seductive sequences unrivalled in 
 the language for their beauty and charm. 
 
 The landscape setting of Herbert's childhood 
 was in a high degree romantic. " Nature," affirms 
 the garrulous Fuller of Montgomeryshire, "can- 
 not be accused for being a step-mother unto this 
 county ; for although she hath mounted many a high 
 hill (which may probably be presumed not over 
 fruitful), yet hath she also sunk many a delight- 
 ful valley therein . . . which plentifully yield all 
 necessaries for man's comfortable subsistence." 
 The poet's birthplace, the town of Montgomery, 
 lies in one of these agreeable vales, that of the 
 Severn, not far from the Shropshire border. It 
 is noted for its fine situation, on the slope of a hill 
 on the river's eastern bank ; for its cruciform 
 church, containing a memorial of the Herbert 
 family ; and for sundry ancient remains, including 
 the dismantled fortress. This consists of a few 
 shattered walls above the town, the position com- 
 manding a wide prospect of English as well as 
 Welsh scenery. To the pilgrim in search of 
 Herbert relics, however, the site of the ancient 
 mansion known as Black Hall will, with the 
 church, probably afford the most interest ; for 
 
The LIFE 
 
 O F 
 Mr. GEORGE HERBERT. 
 
 Wifdom of Salom.4,10. 
 Ht fletfed God , and vpm beloved of him : fo 
 thtt wherea$ he lived among finners, hetran- 
 flated him. 
 
 J. ONDONj 
 
 Primed h'j Tho.-'Nememh, iot Richard Mar? iott, 
 fold by moft Bookfellers. M.DC.LXX. 
 
 THE ORIGINAL EDIIION (BY WALTON) 
 
BIRTHPLACE, FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD 15 
 
 there and not in the castle itself the poet is now 
 believed to have seen the light. ^ The house, 
 long since destroyed by fire, stood at the lower 
 end of the town, within the old walls, where a 
 deep fosse may still be seen. The memorial in 
 the church consists of the handsome monument 
 of Richard Herbert, father of the first and most 
 famous Lord Herbert of Cherbury and of the 
 poet ; the effigy being represented in complete 
 armour, with a recumbent figure of his wife by 
 his side. 
 
 Here the future poet of the Church, with his 
 brothers and sisters, spent most of his earlier 
 years. Whether the wilderness of mountains 
 about them attracted or repelled his mind we do 
 not know. Possibly they inspired more fear than 
 liking ; for old associations are not broken in a 
 day, and memories of traditional border feuds 
 doubtless lingered on and tinged the landscape. 
 Mountain fastnesses and brigandage have an 
 
 ' " His father was Richard Herbert of Blache-hall, in Mont- 
 gomery, Esq.," says Barnabas Oley in his first Preface to The 
 Country Parson; and Lord Herbert of Cherbury in his Autobio- 
 graphy describes the mansion as the family home. " It was an 
 ordinary saying in the country at that time," he declares, in re- 
 ference to the family hospitality, " when they saw any fowl rise : 
 'Fly where thou wilt, thou wilt light at Black-hall,' which was a 
 low building, but of great capacity, my grandfather erected in 
 his age ; his father and himself in former times having lived in 
 Montgomery Castle. " 
 
16 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 ancient alliance ; and it is quite possible that the 
 young scholar may have preferred the "sweet 
 security " of the streets of London or Oxford to 
 the companionship of his native hills. 
 
 The family had shown character and ability 
 for many generations, and, as Walton said, " a 
 willingness to serve their country," At Court, 
 in camps and at tourneys they were ever lucky — 
 
 The Herberts, every cockpit day, 
 
 Doe carry away 
 
 The gold and glory of the day, 
 
 runs an old rhyme, applied to another branch of 
 the house. Montgomery Castle is ofificially re- 
 corded as having been granted to the Herberts of 
 Cherbury by the Crown in the fifteenth century ; 
 but an old Welsh ballad recites that the fortress 
 and its broad lands came to them through marriage 
 with " a miller's daughter," who thus lamented her 
 elevation to a higher sphere of life : — 
 
 O God, woe is me miserable, 
 My father was a miller, 
 And my mother a milleress, 
 And now I am a ladie ! 
 
 Whether the house had its beginnings with 
 Charlemagne, and Hildegardis, daughter of Childe- 
 brand, Duke of Suabia, does not seem necessary 
 to prove. Most families have their royal or ducal 
 
BIRTHPLACE, FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD 17 
 
 origins, and Walton's plain genealogical tree needs 
 no grafts : — 
 
 " The father of our George," he says, " was 
 Richard Herbert, the son of Edward Herbert, 
 Knight, the son of Richard Herbert, Knight, the 
 son of the famous Sir Richard Herbert of Cole- 
 brook, in the County of Monmouth, Banneret, 
 who was the youngest brother of that memorable 
 William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, that lived in 
 the reign of our King Edward IV." His eldest 
 son, the future Lord Herbert of Cher bury, de- 
 scribes him as " black-haired and bearded ... of 
 a manly or somewhat stern look, but withal very 
 handsome and well-compact in his limbs and of 
 great courage." The name of Vaughan occurs in 
 his pedigree, though his son's relationship to the 
 author of Silex Scintilians may have been remote. 
 
 Of at least equal importance to the formation of 
 the poet's character was his beautiful and roman- 
 tically named mother, Magdalen Newport, " the 
 youngest daughter," Walton continues, " of Sir 
 Richard, and sister to Sir Francis Newport of 
 High-Arkall, in the County of Salop, Knight ; " 
 her father. Sir Richard Newport, being, it is said, 
 the largest landowner of his time in Shropshire, 
 and a descendant of the old reigning princes of 
 Powysland. Mrs. Herbert was " the happy mother 
 of seven sons and three daughters, which she would 
 
18 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 often say was Job's number and Job's distribution ; 
 and as often bless God that they were neither de- 
 fective in their shapes nor in their reason, and very 
 often reprove them that they did not praise God 
 for so great a blessing." After a promise of later 
 consideration of her " person, wisdom, and virtue," 
 Walton gives a short account of the poet's brothers 
 and sisters, which is of interest as showing that all 
 or most of his brothers inherited the family aptitude 
 for public life. Incidentally it affords a comparison 
 with that given of his brothers by Lord Herbert 
 himself. Edward Herbert fully confirms Walton's 
 praise of their " fortunate and true English valour ;" 
 but he adds the fact, omitted by Walton — perhaps 
 from ignorance — that four of them were inveterate 
 duellists ! 
 
 " My brother Richard," he says, " after he had 
 been brought up in learning, went to the Low 
 Countries, where he continued many years with 
 much reputation, both in the wars and for fighting 
 single duels, which were many, insomuch that 
 between both, he carried, as I have been told, the 
 scars of four-and-twenty wounds upon him to his 
 grave. . . . My brother William being brought 
 up likewise in learning, went afterwards to the 
 wars in Denmark, where, fighting a single combat, 
 and having his sword broken, he not only de- 
 fended himself with that piece which remaned. 
 
P 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 H 
 O 
 
 2; 
 
 S 
 P 
 
 o 
 
 H 
 « 
 
 w 
 X 
 
 w 
 
BIRTHPLACE, FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD 19 
 
 but, closing with his adversar)\ threw him down, 
 and so held him until company came in. . . . 
 Henry, after he had been brought up in learning 
 as the other brothers were . . . also hath given 
 several proofs of his courage in duels and other- 
 wise ; " while his youngest brother, Thomas, the 
 sailor, "fought divers times with great courage 
 and success with divers men in single fight." Of 
 the seven brothers, all of them "brought up in 
 learning," George the poet, and his next elder 
 brother, Charles, who died young as a Fellow of 
 New College, Oxford, are the only two not men- 
 tioned by him as proficient in duelling. 
 
 His brothers' exploits, however, pale ineffec- 
 tually beside those which Edward Herbert has 
 recorded of himself. By his own account, in his 
 Autobiography (not published until the eighteenth 
 centur^'^, and hence not available for Walton), his 
 character combined the finer qualities of the 
 Chevalier Bayard and Don Quixote with those of 
 an arrant but entertaining coxcomb. His valour, 
 he would have us believe, was not equalled 
 amoi^ his contemporaries. In the midst of his 
 diplomatic labours he was always ready for a 
 personal combat, and he distributed his challenges 
 like invitations to dinner. His reputation as a 
 duellist drove most of his adversaries from the 
 field before the actual test of batde ; and at the 
 
20 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 siege of Juliers he spent a whole night in search 
 through the camp for some one willing to cross 
 swords with him. But he explains this apparent 
 bloodthirstiness by regard for his oath of knight- 
 hood, and adds : "I never had a quarrel with 
 man for mine own sake : so that, although in mine 
 own nature I was ever choleric and hasty, yet I 
 never, without occasion given, quarrelled with 
 anybody." His vanity also is transparent. At 
 Court, Queen Elizabeth looked upon him "atten- 
 tively : " and at his knighting by King James, 
 "I could tell," he says, "how much my person 
 was commended by the lords and ladies that came 
 to see the solemnity then used, but I shall flatter 
 myself too much if I believed it." Nevertheless, 
 he was an efficient servant of the State, as am- 
 bassador to France and in other capacities ; and 
 as a bold and independent thinker his position has 
 long been recognised. 
 
 Although some uncertainty seems to exist as 
 to the date of her birth, Mrs. Herbert could not 
 have been much over thirty, if so old, when left 
 a widow — in 1596, or, as otherwise recorded, 
 in 1597. The following is Lord Herbert's list 
 of her sons : Edward (himself), Richard, William, 
 Charles, George, Henry and Thomas, the last 
 being "a posthumous." Her daughters were: 
 " Elizabeth, Margaret, Frances," but their places 
 
BIRTHPLACE, FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD 21 
 
 in the scale of age he does not give. Wal- 
 ton's reference to them is brief : " Of the three 
 sisters I need say no 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 generation." Their 
 brother tells us the names of their husbands, 
 with a few other details. Elizabeth, the eldest, 
 married Sir Henry Jones of Albermarles ; Mar- 
 garet married John Vaughan, son and heir to 
 Owen Vaughan of Llwydiart ; and Frances, the 
 youngest, married Sir John Brown, knight, of 
 Lincolnshire, her eldest son in turn maintaining 
 the family reputation as a duellist. 
 
 This was the little brood committed to Mrs. 
 Herbert's charge, to be brought up "in learning " 
 and other essentials of good citizenship. Their 
 ages ranged downwards from thirteen or fourteen 
 years to infancy. Probably they showed early 
 the characteristics of their race, and- may have 
 been difficult to manage ; but Mrs. Herbert was 
 clearly equal to the task. Under her firm but 
 affectionate rule, however, their lot could not have 
 been otherwise than happy. " 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." Their 
 
22 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 home was chiefly at Montgomery, and it was here 
 first, no doubt, that "the beauties of his pretty 
 behaviour and wit shined and became so eminent 
 and lovely . . . that he seemed marked out for 
 piety, and to become the care of Heaven, and of 
 a particular good angel to guard and guide him." 
 The future Lord Herbert had spent the first nine 
 years of his life in the home of his grandmother, 
 Lady Newport ; but his mother, wishing to give 
 him " 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 tutor, she commended him to his care ; yet 
 she continued 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 recrea- 
 tions and pleasures of youth as did incline him 
 willingly to spend much of his time in the com- 
 
 1 Edward Herbert was entered at University College, not Queen's. 
 
BIRTHPLACE, FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD 23 
 
 pany 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 conver- 
 sation with wicked company ; ' and would there- 
 fore say, ' That ignorance of vice was the best 
 preservation of virtue ; and that the very know- 
 ledge of wickedness was as tinder to inflame and 
 kindle sin, and to keep it burning.'" From what 
 we know by his own admissions of the natural 
 liveliness of Master Edward Herbert, it is more 
 than probable that this maternal supervision and 
 " moderate awe " were necessary. And even in 
 the case of his brother George, who is thought 
 to have joined his mother in her Oxford sojourn, 
 some such gentle oversight may well have been 
 needful, in spite of his angelic guardianship and 
 infant pieties. 
 
 According to Walton, it was while Mrs. Her- 
 bert was thus residing at Oxford for her son's 
 benefit that "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 the University ; and particularly 
 of Mr. John Donne, who then came accidentally 
 to that place." This was the brilliant if perplex- 
 
24 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 ing personality who, after many vicissitudes, 
 moral, intellectual and otherwise, became Dean 
 of St. Paul's, and the most admired preacher of 
 his day in the metropolis. But although the 
 " amity made up of a chain of suitable inclinations 
 and virtues," which was to bind them together 
 until the dean preached her funeral sermon in 
 1627, may have begun here, he could not with- 
 out an impossible breach of manners have then 
 addressed to the young and charming widow 
 his well-known poem " The Autumnal Beauty," 
 Walton's assertion notwithstanding. 
 
 Lord Herbert's Autobiography is of special in- 
 terest for the light it throws on his own education 
 and indirectly on that of the poet. The picture 
 he gives of his own boyhood and youth is dis- 
 tinctly entertaining ; and his insistence on the 
 truthfulness of the future author of De Veritate is 
 characteristic : "I remember in that time I was 
 corrected sometimes for going to cuffs with two 
 schoolfellows, being both older than myself, but 
 never for telling a lie." He admits his hot 
 temper, and " being subject to choler and passion 
 more than I ought." At nine he began to learn 
 Welsh, and between ten and twelve he acquired a 
 knowledge of logic and Greek. On his going to 
 Oxford, at twelve or thirteen, he remembered 
 disputing in logic and performing the required 
 
li'KUM AN |i;NCiUA\'INl. AI'TI'IK 'VWK (IKM.INAI. l'U:'rnN|i; A'l 
 
BIRTHPLACE, FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD 25 
 
 exercises oftener in Greek than in Latin. Like 
 all the Herberts, he had a natural gift of languages. 
 At Oxford or at home, without master or teacher, 
 he attained the knowledge of French, Italian and 
 Spanish, " by the help of some books in Latin or 
 English, translated into those idioms, and the 
 dictionaries of those several languages." He 
 studied music with no less success ; his brother 
 George, though doubtless at a much later date, 
 following his example. His object in learning 
 languages was to make himself "a citizen of the 
 world ; " and he acquired music for the worthy 
 end " that I might entertain myself at home, and 
 together refresh my mind after my studies . . . 
 and that I might not need the company of young 
 men, in whom I observed in those times much ill 
 example and debauchery." 
 
 His reflections on the " education of a gentle- 
 man " in his time are instructive. Latin and 
 Greek should be the basis of mental culture, and 
 Greek should have the precedence. The lad's 
 "governor for manners" should accompany him 
 to the University, by reason of the notorious 
 frailty of youth. He did not approve " for elder 
 brothers " the common University course of four 
 or five years, as if they " meant to proceed 
 Masters of Arts and Doctors in some science." 
 Too much of the subtleties of logic he contemned : 
 
26 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 it was good for little more than to make them 
 " excellent wranglers ; " " which art," he adds, 
 " though it may be tolerable in a mercenary 
 lawyer, I can by no means commend in a sober 
 and well-governed gentleman." Yet he should 
 know the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy : 
 geography, terrestrial and celestial, were of use ; 
 judicial astrology not so necessary. He ap- 
 proved of arithmetic, " for keeping accounts " : 
 geometry he considered " not much useful for a 
 gentleman ; " but for medicine he had the highest 
 regard. "This art will get him not only much 
 knowledge, but much credit," from the cures he 
 will be able to effect. Especially he conceived it 
 " a fine study, and worthy a gentleman" to be "a 
 good botanic, so that he may know the nature of 
 all herbs and plants." Anatomy he believed to be 
 a good preventive of atheism. Rhetoric and ora- 
 tory he considered desirable studies for those who 
 wished to express themselves " with eloquence 
 and grace." He advised the would-be orator to 
 "speak common things ingeniously and wittily 
 . . . common and dull language relishing more 
 of the clown than the gentleman." But bodily 
 exercises have his chief praise. Those which he 
 had mostly used, and desired to recommend to his 
 posterity, were " riding the great horse and fen- 
 cing." Dancing he also advised. Swimming was 
 
BIRTHPLACE, FAMILY AND CHILDHOOD 27 
 
 good for those who were not "given to cramps 
 and convulsions ; " he had not, however, acquired 
 it himself, owing to the prohibition of his over- 
 cautious mother. But fencing and riding, especi- 
 ally the art of "fighting a duel on horseback," 
 were the best accomplishments of a gallant man. 
 Carding and dicing he abhorred. 
 
 There is no reason to suppose that George 
 Herbert did not, in his early years, have the 
 same training as his eldest brother, or at least 
 that of a younger son in a great house. Later, 
 no doubt, as with Charles, the other son destined 
 for a scholar's life, there were differences. Who- 
 ever the " chaplain or tutor to him " may have 
 been, he was sure to be put under the classical 
 millstone at the earliest age possible. That he 
 was proficient in languages we know, and he 
 doubtless lisped in their grammars. Music he 
 probably learned in childhood ; the lute, viol, 
 "small organ," and other musical instruments, 
 were common in the better country-houses of the 
 day, and singing was almost universal. Whether 
 he was instructed in " riding the great horse," 
 dancing, swimming, and the like, we do not know ; 
 but, as Walton expressly tells us, he wore a sword 
 in his courtier days, and it may be presumed he 
 had been taught its use. We are not, however, 
 informed of his ever "going to cuffs" with his 
 
28 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 schoolfellows ; and altogether there is no reason 
 why his character in the innocent age of his 
 "pretty behaviour" may not have been what his 
 first biographer has drawn. The intelligent boy, 
 of studious habits and religious instincts, is found 
 in every generation ; though seldom without the 
 defects of his qualities, — pride it may be, or some 
 other earthly alloy. George, his eldest brother 
 admits, " was not exempt from passion and choler, 
 being infirmities to which all our [Herbert] race is 
 subject ; " but otherwise he was " without reproach 
 in his actions." Unfortunately, we have no early 
 portraits of him, as we have of Milton ; yet no 
 great stretch of imagination is required to picture 
 his slender frame in short coats, a diminutive ruff 
 or falling collar about his neck, his hair cropped 
 to a Puritan shortness, and his long, grave, litde 
 face full of sensitiveness and feeling — full, too, 
 of possibilities for future suffering and power. 
 
CHAI'TER III 
 
 SCIIOOI- AND UNIVJORSrrV 
 
 WITH ili<; beginninjr of his public school 
 career tin; life of George Merbert takes 
 a more (lefinile and easily followed coiirsi;. He 
 had remained with his mother and the family 
 chaplain until he was " about the age of twelve 
 years ; and beiiijj; at that time well instructed in the 
 rules of grammar, he was not long after com- 
 mended to the care of Dr. Neale, who was then 
 Dean of Weslminstor ; and by him to the care of 
 Mr. Ireland, who was then chief master in that 
 school." 'Ihere he continued until he. had attained 
 proficiency in the learned languages, " espc:cially in 
 th<: Greek and Latin tongue;, in which he after 
 proved an (sxcellent critic." The date of his ad- 
 mission is usually put down as 1604 or 1605. If 
 he entered at the former date he may have been 
 consigned to the care of Lancelot Andrewes, who 
 was <lean at the time, and have spent his com- 
 pulsory year as a town boy, prior to his election to 
 a King's scholarship, as a boarder in the deanery. 
 
 39 
 
80 GEORGE HERBERT AND HB TIMES 
 
 In that event the friendship between him and the 
 future bishop may have b^un when the dean was 
 fifty and Herbert not more than twelve years old. 
 If, on the other hand, he entered in 1605, Dr. 
 Neale (or Neile) would have been dean as Walton 
 says ; but in either case he would have been placed 
 under the immediate care of Richard Ireland, the 
 head-master from 1599 to i6ia These things, 
 however, are hardly of great moment It is enough 
 to know that he entered Westminster School 1 
 early in the reign of James I., the erudite monarch 
 and theologian who was destined to become his 
 patron, and left it after a few years for a scholar- 
 ship at Trinity College, Cambridge — a marvel of 
 classical learning even for that age. 
 
 To the boy of twelve the school must have been 
 fiill of interests. The head-master, and the not 
 less laborious second master, with the aid of moni- 
 tors and what assistance the dean and the pre- 
 bendaries were able or mlling to give them, ruled 
 over not less than a hundred and twenty pujals, 
 probably over a good many more. These included 
 the King's scholars, the pensioners, per^prines and 
 oppidans, and the choristers, who sang in the 
 
 ' The poets Ben Jonson, Randolph and Cowley, and, at a 
 later date, the sensitive Cooper, were of the schooL William 
 Camden, the antiquary, was head-master Grom 1593 to 1399, and 
 the immortal Richard Busby from 1638 to 1693. 
 
SCHOOL AND UM^'ERSITY 31 
 
 Abbey services and attended lessons for two hours 
 every week-day in the schooL The pensioners, 
 some of whom may have been of superior social 
 position, boarded with the dean, the prebendaries 
 and the masters ; the per^rines were countr)* 
 boys, who boarded with relatives or friends, and 
 the opjadans were the sons of residents in or near 
 Westminster. The Kill's or Queen's scholars — 
 the scholars par excellence — were chosen from the 
 town boys of at least a year's standing in the schooL 
 R^prd was had to the candidate's " intellect, learn- 
 ing, character, and want of means ; " and the elec- 
 tion was unique at Uie time in bang determined, 
 partly, at least, by a competitive examination. 
 Rich men's sons were not excluded, nor were poor 
 boys unduly favoured ; but if interest was used 
 for George Herbert his brilliant scholarship alone 
 would doubtless have gained him the election. It 
 should be explained that this dection of a town boy 
 to a King's scholarship in his own school, for which 
 the aspirant was called a " minor candidate," was 
 quite different from his later election (if so for- 
 timate) to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, 
 or a scholardiip at Trinity CoU^je, Cambridge, 
 for both of which he was then as now styled a 
 " major candidate." These major elections, when 
 the succesfiil candidates, who were then chosen 
 only from the King's scholars, were " sped away " 
 
32 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 to one or the other of the Universities, were held 
 in Rogation Week, and formed a natural occasion 
 for dinners, declamations and epigrams. 
 
 At that time, as to-day, the buildings devoted to 
 the school stood on the south side of the ancient 
 Abbey Church, and were, comparatively speaking, 
 in the country. " The Abbot's public refectory 
 became the dining hall of the College, while the 
 granary was used as the dormitory and living room 
 of the Queen's [and later of the King's] scholars." 
 The ancient buttery became the head - master's 
 house ; and by Herbert's time the old dormitory 
 of the monks, with another apartment near it, had 
 become the library and school-room. If all were 
 of monastic origin, they were surely put to no 
 ignoble use. The solemn beauty of the over- 
 shadowing Abbey Church, in which on Sundays 
 the whole college attended morning and evening 
 prayer and the Communion, could hardly fail, 
 though perhaps insensibly, to affect the minds of 
 the youthful pupils ; and if some were repelled, 
 'George Herbert's, we may think, was not of the 
 number. 
 
 The daily life and studies of the school were 
 generally those of similar establishments of the 
 time, though the special prominence given to 
 Greek may have been one cause of the poet's 
 becoming " an excellent critic " in that tongue. 
 
s 
 
 H 
 
 w 
 
 H 
 
 O 
 J 
 
SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY 3S 
 
 To us, however, the existence both of masters and 
 pupils, with the monotony of its routine and the 
 few holidays they enjoyed, may seem little less 
 than a form of servitude. They faced its hard- 
 ships, nevertheless, at a courageously early hour. 
 At five o'clock the forty King's scholars in the 
 granary bedroom were aroused from their slum- 
 bers by the resounding cry of Surgite ! from the 
 dormitory monitors, and at once began their de- 
 votions. First, kneeling, the collect for grace — 
 of which they stood in present need — was repeated. 
 Then came : — 
 
 " In Nomine Patris and Pmnitentiam agite, the 
 General Confession, the Lord's Prayer, and the 
 suffrages, followed by the hymn Jam Lucis orto 
 sidere and Psalms vii,, xix, and xxiv. After a 
 first lesson from the Proverbs, the Te Deum was 
 said, and after a second lesson from the Sermon 
 on the Mount, the Benedictus. Then came the 
 Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer again, with 
 the suffrages, two collects and the prayer for the 
 Queen [or the King]. The service was concluded 
 with the collect for peace." ^ 
 
 This seems a tolerably long exercise for un- 
 breakfasted boys, especially in the darkness or 
 candle-light of a cold winter morning. Next, 
 after making their beds and sweeping under them, 
 
 ' Annals of Westminster School, Sargeaunt. 
 
34 
 
 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 they went in pairs to the cloisters to wash. Their 
 ablutions were of the scantiest, involving only 
 their hands, though possibly their faces also. If 
 the pump were frozen, we may suppose the cere- 
 mony omitted until a more genial season. At six 
 o'clock all the pupils, town boys as well as King's 
 scholars, met the second master in the school, and 
 engaged in further devotions. Then work began, 
 a scrutiny of hands, faces, and possibly of heads, 
 proceeding the while. The head-master came 
 at seven, still it will be observed before daylight 
 in the winter solstice. Something resembling 
 breakfast — bread and possibly small beer — may 
 have been partaken of, though when and where 
 is not certain. " At eight o'clock the head-master 
 set a proposition or passage in Latin to be trans- 
 lated by the fourth, varied or controverted by the 
 fifth, and versified by the sixth and seventh forms." 
 As the day began, so it continued. Dinner in the 
 great hall — the old abbot's refectory, warmed, 
 one is glad to know, by an open fire under a 
 louvre or chimney in the roof — was probably at 
 ten or eleven. Here, after more prayers and 
 thanksgivings for royal and other benefactors, the 
 King's scholars and the pensioners assembled, 
 and, " standing in two rows down either side, said 
 grace before dinner." The dean and other dig- 
 nitaries of the Abbey were present, at least on 
 

 
SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY S5 
 
 certain days, sitting about the high table at the 
 end of the hall. During the meal, the Scriptures 
 or some Latin manuscript was read by one of 
 the boys ; and the dignitaries of the high table 
 sometimes sent down " good remembrances " of 
 food from their own better fare, with themes for 
 extemporary epigrams. Another long grace con- 
 cluded the repast. 
 
 The afternoon brought some respite, but ap- 
 parently not much ; and work went on until the 
 six o'clock supper, like the dinner a well-graced, 
 if perhaps not a well-provided meal. Mercifully, 
 an hour's break in the interval appears to have 
 been allowed ; and twice a week an hour was 
 devoted to music with the choirmaster.^ At seven 
 studies were resumed, and after more prayers the 
 King's scholars and the pensioners adjourned to 
 the hall for a supper "of small beer only." At 
 eight, after evening prayers in the dormitory, and 
 a collect privately repeated, the King's scholars 
 went to bed. 
 
 This was the routine for four days in the week : 
 Friday and Saturday introduced a slight change. 
 On Sundays, as already mentioned, the school 
 attended morning and evening prayer and Com- 
 munion in the Abbey, where the prebendaries 
 preached in turn, as they did also on saints' days, 
 
 ' Games appear to have been hardly known at this time. 
 
36 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 the boys making notes of their sermons. Other- 
 wise, happily, the saints' days were " play " days 
 or holidays. A half-holiday appears to have been 
 allowed once a week, not, however, in addition 
 to the saints' days. To us, the greatest hardship 
 of the life must seem the absence of any genuine 
 breaking-up times, and periods of escape from the 
 tyranny of routine. Holidays, however, were at 
 that time of the briefest, and many of the boys 
 remained in the school, owing in some cases to 
 the long distance from their homes and the diffi- 
 culties of travel. 
 
 That it was literally a grammar school need 
 not be said : its end and aim, like that of similar 
 schools of the time, was to teach the budding boy 
 how to handle " his noun " and " his verb " in one 
 or both of the learned languages. And, like the 
 others, it did so largely by physical means. " From 
 the beginning the school was under the shadow 
 of the rod," and an abraded skin was considered 
 the best intellectual stimulant. Happily, the reign 
 of Nicholas Udal, " the greatest beater " of his 
 time, was an old memory when Herbert entered ; 
 but although Ireland may have been milder, he 
 doubtless did not wholly dispense with the birch. 
 The famous annual play, presented every Christ- 
 mas — by the school in Latin and by the choir 
 boys in English — had long been an important 
 
SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY 37 
 
 feature in the school life : Queen Elizabeth, it is 
 said, attended the play of 1563, and she contri- 
 buted to the expenses of the plays, both at West- 
 minster and at St. Paul's. 
 
 The close association of Herbert's life with the 
 great London Church, sometimes called the English 
 Valhalla, may again be pointed out. Even his 
 best admirers, who have paid their tribute at the 
 Bemerton shrine, forget in their visits to West- 
 minster Abbey how intimate this connection was. 
 Possibly if his cenotaph in the baptistery, the 
 " Deputy Poets' Comer," with that of his modern 
 successor, Keble, had been placed in the familiar 
 south transept, it might be otherwise. Yet the 
 child-scholar, in his four-square cap and long gown 
 — black like the ampler vestments of his peda- 
 gogues — must have joined in many a slow pro- 
 cession threading the minster aisles ; and if he did 
 not " love the high-embowed roof," the singing of 
 the young choristers might well have brought " all 
 Heaven " before his eyes. " Sweetest of sweets " 
 he calls Church music in his own poem so named ; 
 and his affection for the " full- voiced quire " might 
 easily have dated from his school-days. Their 
 machine-like regularity, with the Latin morning 
 hymn and the later mingling of studies with re- 
 current prayers and other religious offices, was 
 clearly not distasteful to him, and may have laid 
 
38 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 the foundation of that love of order, discipline and 
 rule shown in his writings as in his life. 
 
 If the Abbey fostered his liking for a dignified 
 ritual, his first years at Cambridge could hardly 
 have done so, as all records of the time point 
 to a good deal of laxity if not disorder in the ser- 
 vices of the college chapels and of the University 
 church. But if the master of his own founda- 
 tion, Trinity, though a staunch upholder of the 
 English Church, sympathised with the Calvinism 
 then dominant at both Universities, he was none 
 the less his friend and admirer. " It may be 
 noted," says Walton, "that from his first entrance 
 into the College the generous Dr. Nevil was a 
 cherisher of his studies, and such a lover of his 
 person, his behaviour, and the excellent endow- 
 ments of his mind, that he took him often into his 
 own company, by which he confirmed his native 
 gentleness ; and if during this time he expressed 
 any error it was that he kept himself too much 
 retired, and at too great a distance with his in- 
 feriors ; and his clothes seemed to prove that he 
 put too great a value on his parts and parentage." 
 
 George Herbert was elected to a scholarship at 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, probably in the week 
 after Rogation Sunday, 1608. He took his B.A. 
 degree in 161 3 (modern time), his M.A. degree in 
 1 616, and was elected a minor fellow in 1614, a 
 
SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY 89 
 
 maj orfellowin 1616, and ' ' sub lector quartce classis " 
 the year following. In 16 18 he was pre/ecior in 
 the rhetoric school. He became public orator 
 of the University in 1619, and held the office for 
 eight years, retiring in 1627. His fellowship was 
 vacated, probably because of his marriage, in 
 1628, or about five years before his death. It 
 will thus be seen that nearly his whole life was 
 connected, at least officially, with the University 
 which has long been proud to own him among its 
 most distinguished sons. 
 
 At the date of his matriculation that ancient 
 " incorporation in all and every of the liberal arts 
 and sciences" had, except in one or two fea- 
 tures, assumed its present form. Sprung, like 
 its friendly rival at Oxford, out of a dim and 
 misty past, its development had followed upon 
 generally similar lines. From the traditional barn 
 where, in mo, Joffred, Abbot of Crowland, and 
 his fellow-monks " made often profession of their 
 sciences," to the latest of what has been called 
 the mediaeval colleges, its growth had been con- 
 tinuous. The early lodging-house system, with 
 its extortion by the townspeople, had given place 
 to private hostels governed by the teachers and 
 students themselves ; and these in turn had been 
 supplanted by the colleges and halls, to which 
 the old jreligious houses, Augustinian, Franciscan. 
 
40 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Dominican and Carmelite, had given up their sites 
 and decayed buildings. By Herbert's time, indeed, 
 all the colleges and halls, save the modern founda- 
 tions of Downing and Selwyn, had been estab- 
 lished. Foreign travellers had praised their stately 
 and beautiful buildings without stint ; kings and 
 queens, nobles and ecclesiastics, had sought the 
 honour of recording their names as their founders 
 or benefactors ; and the long succession from Peter- 
 house to Sidney Sussex was without a parallel, 
 except at Oxford, in the scholastic world. 
 
 The University had felt the quickening breath 
 of the new learning and the new religion ; it had 
 furnished a large proportion of the Marian martyrs, 
 notably Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley ; and it had 
 long been the home of Protestantism, though also 
 a firm supporter of royalty. The famous statutes 
 of Queen Elizabeth, in 1570, had formulated strin- 
 gent rules for the government of its members, the 
 same stress being laid on the fashion of their dress 
 and hair as on the arrangement of lectures and 
 the standards of conduct ; but many of these en- 
 actments were now more frequently honoured in 
 the breach than in the observance. The current 
 routine might be called that of the contemporary 
 grammar school writ large ; though with the im- 
 portant addition of the public exercises in the 
 common centre of academic life known as the 
 
tM 
 
 THE GREAT GATE, TRINITY COLLEGE 
 
 FROM LE KEUX'S ENGUAVINt; 
 
SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY 41 
 
 Schools. Here, in the building now chiefly occu- 
 pied by the University Library, the students of all 
 the colleges attended the lectures of the professors 
 of Greek, logic, mathematics, philosophy and the 
 like, or met to hear or take part in the public dis- 
 putations of those students who were preparing 
 for their degrees. At this time, however, there is 
 good evidence that the public lectures, and the 
 once famous word-combats, in which the young 
 sophisters had crossed their wits over knotty points 
 in theology, medicine, or metaphysics, were much 
 neglected, or treated as a mere formality ; the 
 practical instruction of the students having been 
 largely taken over by the college tutors and 
 lecturers. The extreme youthfulness of the under- 
 graduates has often been commented on ; but as 
 the Earl of Essex entered at eleven. Lord Bacon 
 at thirteen, Herbert at fifteen and Milton at 
 seventeen, the range was obviously considerable. 
 Their comparative youth, however, explains the 
 use of corporal punishment at both Universities ; 
 for the schoolboys of the age certainly did not 
 escape the rod by matriculation at Oxford or Cam- 
 bridge. Until attaining the degree of B.A., they 
 were still non-adulti, and liable to the birch for 
 any infringement of discipline ; and other penalties, 
 including fines, impositions, and even expulsion, 
 were freely inflicted. The crimes most repugnant 
 
42 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TITLES 
 
 to authority included drunkenness, " the taking of 
 tobacco," brawling in public, and especially swim- 
 ming or bathing in " any river, pool, or other water 
 in the Coimty of Cambridge." The keeping rf 
 " fierce birds " was also prohibited, and attendance 
 at bull and bear baitings, boxing matches and 
 dancings severely denounced. On the other hand, 
 archery, tennis, football, and like " honest sports." 
 were allowed under restrictions ; and canls and 
 dice might be indulged in at Christmas, but 
 " openly and in moderation," 
 
 The tendency of the time was without doubt 
 towards liberty if not licence, the " greate n^lecte 
 of disputacions " in the schools being only one of 
 its symptoms. If contemporary critics, however, 
 give unhopeful accounts of the average youth in 
 statu pupUlari, some of diem throw valuable light 
 on their pleasures and pursuits. The lighter- 
 minded undergraduates of his time, says Henry 
 Peacham* of Trinity, writing about 1620, had 
 " no further thought of studie than to trim up their 
 studies with pictures, and place the fairest books in 
 openest view, which, poor lads, they scarce ever 
 opened . . . and what together with the sweetnesse 
 of libertie, variet)- of companie, and so many kinds 
 of recreations in towne and fields abroad, they 
 learned but little." The acting of plays in Latin 
 
 ' Author of TAe Country GeutUman. 
 
SCHOOL AND UM\'ERSITY 43 
 
 and English, in the college halls and elsewhere, 
 had long been a popular form of entertainment — 
 not inappropriately in a seat of learning which had 
 given Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Greene, and many 
 other distinguished dramatists, to the world. At 
 the visits of royalty and other important persons, 
 they invariably made part of the scheme of diver- 
 sion ; and although Milton has recorded his con- 
 tempt for both plays and actors, they seem, as a 
 rule, to have delighted their auditory. Another 
 favourite intellectual exercise was the manufacture 
 of verses on every occasion of public mourning or 
 joy, such as the death of the sovereign, and the 
 crowning of his or her successor. The Town and 
 Gown embroilments, which from time immemorial 
 had afforded a more or less hazardous sport to 
 both branches of the community, were also in high 
 favour with the more active of undergraduate 
 youth. 
 
 The leading studies of the day appear to have 
 been rhetoric and logic, though considerable atten- 
 tion was bestowed on the classics. Modern mathe- 
 matics and physical science awaited the master 
 minds of Newton and his successors of our own 
 time ; the rival philosophies of Bacon and Des- 
 cartes had not yet broken the leaden rule of 
 Aristotle, and the Cambridge Platonists were still 
 to come. The curriculum of the University, how- 
 
44 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 ever, was then as now a wide and perplexing 
 theme ; and it is perhaps enough to know that the 
 great literatures of Greece and Rome were to a 
 certain extent cultivated by its members, at least in 
 the intervals between their theological discussions. 
 The great collegiate institution of which Herbert 
 was a member demands a few words. Trinity 
 College was founded by Henry VI H. on the 19th 
 of December, 1 546, by the appropriation of the sites 
 and buildings of three older foundations — King's 
 Hall, Michael House and Physwick Hostel — the 
 corporate life of the first being continued without 
 essential break. The " King's Majesty's New 
 College," endowed with the revenues of its prede- 
 cessors, and royal grants largely derived from the 
 suppressed monasteries, quickly assumed the lead- 
 ing place it has ever since held. The original 
 scheme was enlarged by fresh statutes in 1560, 
 by which the society consisted of a Master, sixty 
 Fellows, sixty-two scholars and thirteen sizars, be- 
 sides chaplains, deans, bursars and other officers. 
 It is interesting to note that Fellows who were 
 of the degree of Master of Arts had unfurnished 
 rooms, free commons, and an allowance for 
 "livery," with a yearly stipend of ;^2 13s. 4d. 
 These things doubtless fell to Herbert's share on 
 obtaining his Fellowship ; and from what we 
 know of his tastes it is improbable that his rooms 
 
o 
 
 
SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY 45 
 
 were less pleasantly decorated than those of the 
 light - hearted fellow - commoners and pensioners 
 bemoaned by Peacham. 
 
 At this time the members of the college probably 
 exceeded four hundred, the largest number at any 
 one college in the University, and its roll of notable 
 men was already long. Archbishop Whitgift had 
 held the mastership from 1567 to 1577 ; Coke, 
 Bacon, and the Earl of Essex had been among 
 its students ; and the strenuous Puritan, Thomas 
 Cartwright, though deprived of his Fellowship, 
 had left a name of strength to his party. At 
 Herbert's election the famous Dr. Nevile, from 
 his princely liberality called the Magnificent, had 
 been head of the college for fifteen years. Ap- 
 pointed to the office by Queen Elizabeth, who 
 made him Dean of Canterbury as well, he had 
 already transformed its material fabric, having 
 completed the spacious First Court and advanced 
 ;^3,ooo "that a great Hall might be erected 
 answerable to the beauty of the new buildings," 
 while the central fountain was another part of his 
 design. At this time, also, he probably began 
 the admirable cloistered court which bears his 
 name. His hospitality was unbounded. Chief 
 Justice Coke was his friend and guest ; and he 
 could say with pride that the Lord Chancellor, the 
 two Archbishops, and many of the most eminent 
 
46 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 statesmen and ecclesiastics of the age, were mem- 
 bers of the great foundation over which he ruled. 
 Remaining unmarried through life, he was able to 
 leave the college what Fuller calls " a batch elor's 
 bounty ; " and, in the words of one of his pupils, 
 John Hackett,^ afterwards Bishop of Coventry and 
 Lichfield, " he never had his like for a splendid, 
 courteous, and bountiful gentleman." 
 
 Herbert's fellow-scholar at Westminster and Trinity. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 EARLY LIFE AND WRITINGS AT CAMBRIDGE 
 
 ATRS. HERBERT, who doubtless accom- 
 ^^■^ panied her son to the University, induced 
 Dr. Nevile "to take him into his particular care, 
 and provide him a tutor ; which he did most 
 gladly undertake ; for he knew the excellency of 
 his mother, and how to value such a friendship." 
 There is no reason why Walton's account of his 
 first years in this learned and brilliant society 
 should not be accepted. That he " consecrated the 
 first-fruits of his early age to virtue and a serious 
 study of learning," seems fully borne out by what 
 we know of his character and later achievements ; 
 in any case his change from the restrictions of 
 school life to the larger liberty of the University 
 did not abate his zeal. This had been foreseen by 
 Ireland, the head-master of his school, who gave 
 him and his fellow-scholar, the future Bishop 
 Hackett, a timely caution. When they were 
 "sped away" to the college he assured them 
 
 47 
 
48 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 " that he expected to have credit from them two 
 at the University, or would never hope for it 
 afterwards by any while he lived ; and added 
 withal that he need give them no counsel to follow 
 their books, but rather to study moderately and 
 use exercise, their parts being so good that if they 
 were careful not to impair their health with too 
 much study, they would not fail to arrive to the 
 top of learning in any art or profession." What 
 heed the two ambitious Westminster boys paid to 
 his kindly warning we do not know ; but if they 
 lightened their labours with archery, or with foot- 
 ball and tennis in the little green of the college, 
 they probably did not frequent the bear-baitings 
 and cock-fights of the town. It is to be feared, 
 however, that Herbert, to his later cost, neglected 
 the good advice. 
 
 Their lives, no doubt, were mainly spent in the 
 new buildings of the great court of the college, 
 the spacious quadrangle formed by Nevile's genius, 
 which we see and admire to-day. If rules were 
 enforced, their hours were even earlier than at 
 school ; for they were supposed to rise at half- 
 four instead of five, and to attend chapel at the 
 latter hour. The daily exercises of the public 
 schools, however perfunctory, may have been an 
 agreeable change ; and their mental and social 
 horizon was doubtless wider and more attractive. 
 
2 i 
 
EAULY LIFE AND WRITINGS 49 
 
 The college, indeed, under the magnificent Nevile, 
 was unquestionably a place of much state and show, 
 with many opportunities for seeing the great per- 
 sonages of the world ; and the quality of its public 
 cheer may be gathered from the saying of King 
 James, that he would like to "pray at King's, 
 dine at Trinity, and sleep at Jesus." The poet's 
 fondness for fine clothes, however it displayed 
 itself, must have been directly fostered by his new 
 surroundings ; and his personal graces and ac- 
 complishments no doubt made him a favourite 
 companion for those with whom he was willing to 
 associate. It is more than probable that the Master 
 of the college was glad to exhibit its well-born 
 scholar, whose skill in the verbal conceits of his 
 time was soon to delight the pedantic king ; and 
 at the visits of the chief justice and his other 
 friends he may have played a part in their enter- 
 tainment. Possibly his musical skill was also in de- 
 mand ; for Walton says explicitly that during this 
 time music was his chief if not his only recrea- 
 tion. He adds that he became "a great master" 
 of the art, and was wont to explain " That it did 
 relieve his drooping spirits, compose his distracted 
 thoughts, and raised his weary soul so far above 
 earth, that it gave him an earnest of the joys of 
 heaven before he possessed them." His assertion 
 that "as he grew older, so he grew in learning, 
 
 4 
 
jEsmamesR wiaam Asm ^s Tims 
 
 al» be 
 knnaB appaAatmrni hA:tiKie is evety leaesoa to 
 
 bc&jtc: ditf Hecbeit;, Danvewer greaft 
 
 aitire; msfiooR Aefics£ lafed 
 
 widi fTTl'am crf^ fais 
 
 >; faoi: k oSbrs ara o^lacBiiaB of acaqf of 
 Iks poem^ asd p et h a ^ fiawgliBS dbe fa^to his 
 tjradblod btt: prafilaliie G^enones of Ae He of 
 Ae^iobral isaa. 
 
 Wakn's cibtiaa of 
 part of a ktler — ia pcoof of his eailf 
 M° not asrstir, besi, b ceitaHlf anminmtmg. ft 
 Ssjuggtad^ hfonKser, that: M Ae afdeat ^paai^ ilaviw 
 faaddenFOled mace time to EugfiJt ireise aod kss 
 
 Ae eSofte of hB fast fcan ; as MlMm'^ eailf 
 pracfiDe ia die veraacsfar sftood him m goad stead 
 vdnt ciM m oBM g his gieat: q^ Bat i^ Bbe 
 Wari b wwlh, heaBaoaaoes hiagsdr "a deJEafted 
 jyjn^** aad sfaoms is hB veises a cinfiempK 
 eqoal to dntof the dworoe ikwimi a e Baritaai far 
 "•wsam arad am^tanoos* poetzy, his om onse is 
 gtie»qudy aft fanil ia ^ite of his devoA ia- 
 Tlie defeij^ of Ae 
 
/ 
 
 EARLY LIFE AND WRITINGS 61 
 
 are atoned for by the aflfectionate letter to his 
 mother, in which it was enclosed as a New Year's 
 gift. 
 
 "... But I fear," runs the fragment preserved, 
 "that the heat of my late ague hath dried up those 
 springs by which scholars say the Muses used to 
 take up. their habitations. However, I need not 
 their help to reprove the vanity of those many 
 love poems that are daily writ and consecrated to 
 Venus, nor to bewail that so few are writ that 
 look towards God and Heaven. For my own 
 part, my meaning, dear mother, is in these sonnets 
 to declare my resolution to be that my poor abili- 
 ties inw|p^try shall be a^ ajid ever consecrated to 
 God'-S'giory ; and I beg you to receive this as one 
 testimony : — 
 
 " My God, where is that ancient heat towards Thee, 
 Wherewith whole shoals of martyrs once did bum, 
 
 Besides their other flames ? Doth poetry 
 Wear Venus' livery ? — Only to serve her turn ? 
 
 Why are not sonnets made of Thee, and lays 
 Upon Thine altar burnt ? Cannot Thy love 
 
 Heighten a spirit to sound out Thy praise 
 As well as any she ? Cannot Thy dove 
 
 Outstrip their Cupid easily in flight ? 
 
 Or, since Thy ways are deep, and still the same, 
 Will not a verse run smooth that bears Thy name ? 
 
 Why doth that fire, which by Thy power and might 
 Bach breast does feel, no braver fuel choose 
 Than that which one day worms may chance refuse ? 
 
52 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 " Sure, Lord, there is enough in Thee to dry 
 
 Oceans of ink ; for, as the Deluge did 
 Cover the earth, so doth Thy majesty ; 
 
 Each cloud distills Thy praise, and doth forbid 
 Poets to turn it to another use. 
 
 Roses and lilies speak Thee ; and to make 
 A pair of cheeks of them is Thy abuse ; 
 
 Why should I women's eyes for crystal take ? 
 Such poor invention burns in their low mind. 
 
 Whose fire is wild, and doth not upward go 
 
 To praise, and on Thee, Lord, some ink bestow. 
 Open the bones, and you shall nothing find 
 
 In the best face but filth; when, Lord, in Thee 
 
 The beauty lies in the discovery. 
 
 "G. H." 
 
 There is no lack of force, and indeed of spiritual 
 fire, in the poem, in spite of its many instances 
 of defective taste and its frequent morbidness of 
 thought and feeling (the last due perhaps to the 
 ague from which he had just recovered) ; but it 
 foreshadows with singular fidelity the work of his 
 maturer years. If it shows the same mixture of 
 gold and dross, and as some may think in the 
 same relative proportion, such lines as these : — 
 
 Each cloud distills Thy praise, and doth forbid 
 Poets to turn it to another use. 
 Roses and lilies speak Thee 
 
 go far to redeem the others. Assuredly he was 
 no common poetaster if, as Walton says, he was 
 in his seventeenth year when he wrote them ; but 
 it is pleasant to know that the professed misogy- 
 
EARLY LIFE AND WRITINGS 53 
 
 nist of his teens lived to make a happy, if not 
 romantic, marriage in his thirties, and to find 
 human and Divine love not the incompatible 
 qualities he had supposed. 
 
 Most of Herbert's biographers have felt it in- 
 cumbent on themselves to discuss his youthful 
 wit combat with Andrew Melville, the bold but 
 injudicious Scot who attacked and ridiculed, in a 
 Latin poem, the government and usages of the 
 English Church. Much grief and some surprise 
 have been expressed that the future poet of The 
 Temple should have employed his pen in confuting 
 an adversary of so much learning and godliness, 
 who was, moreover, well advanced in years, and 
 perhaps at the time in prison for his temerity in 
 this and other things. Neither grief nor surprise 
 need be felt. It is of course regrettable that poets, 
 whether young or old, should fall out, especially in 
 Latin verse. But the poem being what it was, 
 little short of a lampoon on the Anglican Church, 
 and on the Universities for supporting its claims ; 
 and the youthful Westminster scholar having the 
 temper and intellectual ability of his race, with a 
 strong affection for his spiritual Mother, the col- 
 lision was natural and inevitable. Walton tells 
 the story with evident relish for the defeat of the 
 northern champion, from whose party, as he men- 
 tions elsewhere, he had himself suffered in the past. 
 
54 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 " There was one Andrew Melvin," he says, " a 
 minister of the Scotch Church and rector of St. 
 Andrews, who, by a long and constant converse 
 with a discontented part of that clergy which op- 
 posed episcopacy, became at last to be a chief 
 leader of that faction ; and had proudly appeared 
 to be so to King James, when he was but King 
 of that nation ; who the second year after his 
 coronation in England, convened a part of the 
 bishops and other learned divines of his Church, 
 to attend him at Hampton Court, in order to a 
 friendly conference with some dissenting brethren, 
 both of this and the Church of Scotland ; of which 
 Scotch party Andrew Melvin was one ; and being 
 a man of learning, and inclined to satirical poetry, 
 had scattered many malicious bitter verses against 
 our liturgy, our ceremonies, and our Church gov- 
 ernment : ^ which were by some of that party so 
 magnified for the wit, that they were therefore 
 brought into Westminster School, where Mr. 
 George Herbert then, and often after, made such 
 answers to them, and such reflections on him and 
 his kirk, as might unbeguile any man that was 
 not too deeply pre-engaged in such a quarrel." 
 
 In a former edition of the same Life, Walton 
 had described Melvin, or Melville, as the " master 
 
 ' " Our altars, our prayers, and our public worship of God," in 
 the first edition of the Lift. 
 
EARLY LIFE AND WRITINGS 55 
 
 of a great wit ; a wit full of knots and clenches ; a 
 wit sharp and satirical ; exceeded, I think, by 
 none of that nation, but their Buchanan." Here 
 he goes on to call him " a man of an unruly wit, 
 of a strange confidence, of so furious a zeal, and 
 of so ungoverned passions, that his insolence to 
 the King and others at this conference lost him 
 both his rectorship of St. Andrews and his liberty 
 too. For his former verses," he adds, " and his 
 present reproaches there used against the Church 
 and State, caused him to be committed prisoner 
 to the Tower of London, where he remained very 
 angry for three years." 
 
 He may well have felt enraged at this treatment 
 by his royal brother Scot, who had summoned him 
 to the conference, not, it should be said, the 
 famous Hampton Court conference of 1604, but a 
 somewhat similar gathering two years later. King 
 James, however, had an old score to settle with 
 his countryman. In 1596, when King of Scot- 
 land only, he had had a taste of his "ungoverned 
 passions," and also of his absolute fearlessness ; 
 for Melville, who headed a deputation of Scottish 
 ministers on a well-known occasion, had laid 
 violent hands on his person, or at least on his 
 sleeve ; calling him " God's silly vassal," and 
 " not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a mem- 
 ber " of the Church of Christ. Therefore^ when 
 
56 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 the explosive divine, rebelling against his usage in 
 the council chamber at Whitehall, shook the lawn 
 sleeves of Archbishop Bancroft, and in his presence 
 called them " Romish rags," with other railing 
 against the Anglican hierarchy, it is possible that 
 the memory of his former discomfiture may have 
 caused him to acquiesce more readily in his re- 
 fractory subject's punishment. 
 
 Turning to the substance of the poetical duel, 
 it must be owned that the young scholar shows 
 more moderation than his mature antagonist. 
 Melville's diatribe in its English rendering de- 
 scribes itself as " A Defence on Behalf of the 
 Petition of the Evangelical Ministers in England 
 to the most serene King, against the masked 
 Gorgon of the twin Universities ; or Anti-Tami- 
 Cami-Categoria." It is, however, much less a 
 defence of the Millenary Petition than a virulent 
 attack on the Anglican Church and its chief 
 rulers. Also, it is in no sense original in its 
 arguments, if such they are, and merely repeats 
 the already old and stock objections of the extreme 
 Puritans to the use of the cross in baptism and 
 the ring in marriage, to set forms of prayer, to 
 the rite of confirmation, the surplice, the churching 
 of women and other things which the Noncon- 
 formist conscience of the day regarded as Papistical 
 or profane, including the square cap worn by the 
 
EARLY LIFE AND WRITINGS 57 
 
 clergy and other members of the Universities, and 
 instrumental music in churches. That, however, 
 which mainly rouses his animosity is the order of 
 bishops : he is full of the swelling pride, the regal 
 luxury, the insolence and the avarice of prelates, 
 who, " twice dipt " in Tyrian dyes, gorge their 
 paunches in high banquets, outvie the revelry of 
 kings, and pollute the house of God with violent 
 and pitiless slaughter. The indictment is severe, 
 even for a time when " proud prelates " and 
 " gorbellied clergie " were popular phrases ; and 
 his comparison of the baptismal service to a magi- 
 cal incantation, repeated over the unknowing babe 
 like the screeching of an owl, may have been 
 equally familiar to the dissentients within and 
 without the English Church. The more utterly 
 to crush the priestly band, he hurls upon them 
 the names of the leading reformers at home and 
 abroad : Whitaker, Reynolds, Bucer, Peter Martyr, 
 " Beza hoar," " holy Sandeel," and Calvin — 
 
 Greatest of names that Europe boasts, 
 Grandest e'er led the Lord's own hosts. 
 
 But of the twin Gorgons of the Thames and the 
 Cam, who have furnished the title of his philippic, 
 he has after all not very much to say, the more 
 tempting themes of prelacy and ritual absorbing 
 his larger powers. 
 
68 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 These were the " malicious bitter verses " 
 which Walton says he scattered about him, but 
 which seem to have been in manuscript only, and 
 designed for a limited and strictly private circu- 
 lation. The same appears to be true of Herbert's 
 reply, or replies ; for the forty or more Latin epi- 
 grams defending his Church against its adversary's 
 calumnies were not printed until nearly thirty 
 years after his own death ; when James Duport, 
 Dean of Peterborough, prepared them for the 
 press, " as an honourable memorial of his friend, 
 Mr. George Herbert, and the cause he undertook." 
 Respecting the date, or dates, of their composition, 
 it is probable that Walton's surmise that they 
 were written while he was at Westminster School, 
 " and often after," may be right, though the 
 greater part were doubtless composed in the early 
 years of his Cambridge life. 
 
 In these " Epigrams in Defence of the Dis- 
 cipline of Our Church," he meets the onslaught 
 of his foe somewhat in the style of an adroit fencer, 
 who, with a lighter weapon, parries the thrusts of 
 a heavier but less skilfully handled blade. After 
 a dedication to King James, his son the Prince 
 of Wales, and the Bishop of Winchester (Lancelot 
 Andrewes), he takes up the charges one by one, 
 and without much difficulty disproves them, at 
 least so far as they admit of disproof. He con- 
 
EARLY LIFE AND WRITINGS 59 
 
 forms to what we may suppose are the rules of 
 epigram warfare ; regrets his youth, but hopes his 
 theme and his good sense will excuse him ; makes 
 fun of the title of his opponent's poem, and suggests 
 " Anti-Furi-Puri-Categoria," or " Anti-Pelvi-Melvi- 
 Categoria " instead ; and defines the limits of the 
 controversy to be the rites of the Church only — 
 upon the subjects of the Deity and the illustrious 
 Continental divines they are both agreed. It does 
 not seem necessary to follow him through the en- 
 tire list of things aspersed by his enemy — and by 
 him defended — the manual cross, the articles of 
 religion, the surplice, the marriage ring, the four- 
 square cap, and otjiers ; but it is significant that 
 his defence of legitimate ritual is exactly what 
 would be made, and in fact is made, to-day. He 
 points out that if ceremonies right in themselves 
 have been abused and tarnished in the past — 
 " poisoned by Papal breath," as he puts it — that 
 is no reason for discarding them : — 
 
 If all misused things were due to death, 
 'Tis time our souls and bodies were no more. 
 
 Again, it is of significance that he expresses no 
 dislike, but on the contrary admiration, for the 
 Continental reformers whom his adversary has 
 thrown at the heads of the Anglicans : " world- 
 famed Calvin," " Bucer erudite," Peter Martyr, 
 
60 (il':ORGJ'; HIOIIHKIIT AND HIS TIMKS 
 
 Beza and the rest ; but he asserts that their names 
 are wrongly employed, and that their owners were 
 not really opposed to the English Church, This 
 was doubtless the feeling of most of the English 
 Churchmen of his time. He goes on to point out 
 his own moderation as a controversialist, and to 
 compliment his adversary as a pf>et : — 
 
 I have not cali'd thee in my vcrnc 
 
 " Fierce," " ridic'lous," " ab»urd," or worse ; 
 
 I do not give thee back in taunt 
 
 " Screech-owls," " magic-circlen," " avaunt " : 
 
 Nay, with my praise I thee adorn, 
 
 Nor to place thee with Cassar ucorn : 
 
 Cassar sober found alone 
 
 In the Commonwealth o'crthrown. 
 
 And now thee alone I net, 
 
 Midst thy brutal company 
 
 That Mccks to wreck our Church august, 
 
 And hurl it prone unto the dust. 
 
 Thoroughly learned and poet, such 
 
 As words arc weak to praise too much.' 
 
 The sum of this greatly magnified encounter 
 may be said to be that George Herbert, true to 
 the chivalrous instincts of his house, took up arms 
 for his spiritual Mother, and defended her with 
 success ; as one of his duelling brothers might 
 have championed some injured lady's cause with 
 the arm of the flesh, 
 
 ■ Grosart's translation. 
 
EARLY UFE AND WRITINGS 61 
 
 In the early part of his academic life Herbert 
 also contributed to the collections of verse pub- 
 lished at Cambridge, a Latin poem on the death 
 of the queen of James I.. Anne of Denmark, and 
 two Latin poems on the death of Prince Henry 
 of Wales : and he doubdess supplied his quota of 
 the lachr\-mal and other effusions which it was 
 the custom of members of the University to pin to 
 the curtains at Great St. Mary's Church, and else- 
 where, on occasions of public mourning or the 
 reverse. His English poem addressed to the 
 Queen of Bohemia may also date from his early 
 years at Cambridge. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 ORATOR AND THEOLOGIAN 
 
 TO his connection with the University, as its 
 orator and official mouth-piece, the poet 
 owed his introduction to the notice of King 
 James, and his hopes of a larger public career. 
 The relations of the two Universities to the Crown 
 had always been close, the successive sovereigns 
 having jealously guarded their rights, though ex- 
 acting a strict homage and obedience in return. 
 With Queen Elizabeth and the first two Stuarts 
 this relationship became even more intimate. They 
 looked to Oxford and Cambridge for the instru- 
 ments necessary to carry out their schemes, — ^the 
 men who were to fill the higher offices of State 
 as judges, bishops, diplomatists and ministers in 
 all capacities. Not that they were unregardful of 
 "good science and learning;" but before all else 
 the two intellectual centres of the kingdom must 
 support their prerogative, so that it was a sound 
 piece of statecraft to win or bend them to their 
 side. Sharp and searching inquisitions, royally 
 
ORATOR AND THEOLOGIAN 63 
 
 ordered by archbishops, chancellors, and others, 
 had been common in the past. " Sirrah, Mr. 
 Vice-Chancellor ! What is this we hear ? Give an 
 account of yourself and your charge," had in effect 
 formed their purport ; and by James the First 
 there was no relaxation of vigilance. The canons 
 ecclesiastical of the year after his accession 
 ordered the "prescript form" of divine service 
 to be used in all the colleges, and students to wear 
 the surplice at the chapel services and to receive 
 the Communion four times a year ; also subscrip- 
 tion to the king's supremacy, the Book of Common 
 Prayer and the Thirty- Nine Articles was enjoined 
 on the clergy, with strict adherence to the rules of 
 " decency in apparel," which were set down with 
 the usual minuteness. Opposition by members of 
 the University to the doctrine or discipline of the 
 Church of England was forbidden, under severe 
 penalties. How far these ordinances were obeyed 
 at Cambridge is not wholly clear ; but if there was 
 much opposition at some of the colleges, at Trinity 
 the Master, despite his doctrinal Calvinism, prob- 
 ably enforced outward compliance with the Angli- 
 can ritual. 
 
 The University of Cambridge was the first to 
 institute the office of public orator. The date of 
 its creation was 1522, or possibly earlier, and its 
 duties were exhaustively set forth by statute. 
 
64 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 The new ofEcial, by this instrument, was required 
 to write letters on behalf of the learned corpora- 
 tion whenever desired by the chancellor and 
 proctors ; * he was also obliged to welcome in "a 
 learned and elaborate" Latin speech all princes 
 and other magnates, native or foreign, who might 
 pay them a visit. So important were his fimctions 
 held to be that, if compelled to be absent for more 
 than two or three days, he was required to appoint 
 a suitable deputy ; and he had inevitably to wear 
 a gown of a prescribed pattern, which was to be 
 of "ordinary" or "watered" silk. Certain privi- 
 l^es were assigned to him and his successors. 
 
 - Fuller gives the names and dates of election of the twenty- 
 three holders of the office from its institution to his own time ; 
 the first being Richard Croke or Crook, the Greek scholar and 
 epigrammatist who shortly after became a Fellow of St. John's 
 College — in 1523 or 1524. The demand for clerical services 
 similar to those which they performed appesurs to have existed 
 for some time. "True it is," he says, "'that before the solemn 
 founding of the Orator's office some were procured on occasion to 
 discharge the same. Thus we find one Cadus Aufaerinus, an 
 Italian (for that age indifferently learned), who (some twenty 
 years since) had twenty pence a-piece for every Latin letter he 
 wrote for the University. Henceforth we had one standing 
 Orator, whose place was assigned unto him next unto the Doctors 
 of Physic" As Fuller wrote more than a hundred years after 
 the post was established, the phrase " some tMrenty years since " 
 probably means that space of time before the election of its first 
 occupant ; but it was obviously a matter of satisfaction to him 
 that its duties were no longer left to casual and indifEerently 
 learned foreigners. 
 
OBATOR AND THEOlJOGIAN 65 
 
 Among them it was provided that the orator, if a 
 Master of Arts, should take precedence of all 
 other Masters of Arts, and rank immediately after 
 the Doctors of Law and of Medicine. In pro- 
 cesaons he was to walk alone ; and he enjoyed a 
 separate place of honour in aB other [Hiblic pro- 
 c«edii^% this and the other privileges mentioned 
 still bdonging to the office. The right of bdng 
 a "R^ent," namdy, a resident teacher in the 
 University, or a "non-R^ent" — one who had for- 
 merly been a member of the teaching body, but 
 had ceased to teach — lay also within the orator's 
 choice; and another prerogative was the right, often 
 exerdsed, of presenting noblemen or their sons 
 for the complete d^ree of Master of Arts, /ure 
 nafa/tum, and without examination. Regents and 
 non-Regents, however, are now obsolete terms ; and 
 the Univeraty CommissicHi of 1857 abolished the 
 latter invidious jMivilege, at the same time makii:^ 
 better provision for conferring titular and other 
 hcHiorary degrees on persons of distinction. 
 
 The ofiSce was not intended to be merely an 
 cwnamental one On the contrary, it was insti- 
 tuted as a practical means of s«niring the good- 
 will of influential persons in the outer world by 
 paying them compliments (in elegant Latin) when 
 they visited the University. The writing of letters, 
 in the same tongue, to obtain privileges for the 
 5 
 
66 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 academic body, or to defend or maintain its exist- 
 ing privil^es, was an especially important part 
 of the ofl5ce, together with convepng thanks for 
 services rendered by Secretaries of State and 
 others, and for gifts of all kinds. At the present 
 time, most of the official liters written by the 
 public orator are epistles of thanks for great bene- 
 factions, and of congratulations to other Universities 
 on their commemoration of jubilees or centenaries ; 
 while his strictly oratorical efforts are called forth 
 by royal and other distinguished \fisits, the con- 
 ferring of honorary degrees, and like public occa- 
 sions. 
 
 Such was the office, demanding the courtier's 
 gifts as well as the graces of scholarship, which 
 the future poet of the Church desired ardently 
 and sought with eagerness. The energy and 
 persistence with which, in its procurement, he 
 solicited the influence of his relatives and friends, 
 have been thought derogatory to his character : 
 but what we now know of the natural bent of his 
 mind must lead us to another conclusion. George 
 Herbert, like all his brothers, was ambitious and 
 aspiring ; sloth and idleness at all times moved 
 his severest censure ; and the office was one for 
 which his classical accomplishments had especially 
 fitted him. The first lines of his poem " Employ- 
 ment " — 
 
ORATOR AND THEOLOGIAN ' 67 
 
 He that is weary, let him sit, 
 
 My soul would stir 
 And trade in courtesies and wit. 
 
 Quitting the fur. 
 To cold Complexions needing it — 
 
 are a self-drawn portrait of his disposition ; and 
 it will be seen later that he did not think the duties 
 of the office opposed to his religious principles. 
 Doubtless he believed that his peculiar powers and 
 attainments would best be exercised by such a 
 post ; possibly even then he had in view the high 
 public places to which it had led others in the 
 past. Walton's account of this important step in 
 his career is marked by his usual simplicity and 
 directness. After describing his earlier life at 
 college, and his academic degrees, he writes : — 
 
 "In the year 1619 he was chosen Orator for 
 the University. His two precedent orators were 
 Sir Robert Naunton and Sir Francis Nethersole. 
 The first was not long after made Secretary of 
 State ; and Sir Francis, not very long after his 
 being orator, was made secretary to the Lady 
 Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia. In this place of 
 orator our George Herbert continued eight years, 
 and managed it with as becoming and grave a 
 gaiety as any had ever before or since his time. 
 For he had acquired great learning, and was 
 blest witb a high fancy, a civil and sharp wit, and 
 
68 GEORGE HERBERT AND fflS TIMES 
 
 with a natural elegance, both in his behaviour, his 
 tongue, and his pen." 
 
 Walton then goes on to relate three separate 
 instances of this happy facility : the first being 
 his effusive acknowledgment of King James's 
 Basilicon Doron, the second his reply to Andrew 
 Melville's " Anti-Tami-Cami-Categoria " (which 
 obviously had nothing to do with his oratorship, and 
 was probably written some time before), and the 
 third his skilful captivation of the erudite monarch 
 on his visits to Royston, Newmarket and Cam- 
 bridge. Here, however, it may be best to give 
 Herbert's letters at or near this period which have 
 been preserved, as they certainly surest a con- 
 fusion if not a direct contradiction of purposes. 
 The first in the order commonly printed is ad- 
 dressed to Sir John Dan vers, the youthful knight 
 who, as will be related in another place, had be- 
 come his mother's second husband and his own 
 generous friend. It is dated " Trinity College, 
 March 18, 1617," and refers to his theological 
 studies, the poet being then twenty-four years of 
 age :— 
 
 " Sir, — I dare no longer be silent, lest while I 
 think I am modest I wrong both myself and also 
 the confidence my friends have in me : wherefore 
 I will open my case unto you, which I think de- 
 serves the reading at least ; and it is this, I want 
 
ORATOR AND THEOLOGIAN 69 
 
 books extremely. You know, sir, how I am now 
 setting foot into divinity, to lay the platform of 
 my future life, and shall I then be fain always to 
 borrow books and build on another's foundation ? 
 What tradesman is there who will set up with- 
 out his tools ? Pardon my boldness, sir : it is a 
 most serious case ; nor can I write coldly in that 
 wherein consisteth the making good of my former 
 education, of obeying that Spirit which hath guided 
 me hitherto, and of achieving my (I dare say) holy 
 ends. This also is aggravated, in that I appre- 
 hend what my friends would have been forward 
 to say if I had taken to ill courses : ' FoUow your 
 book, and you shall want nothing.' You know, 
 sir, it is their ordinary speech, and now let them 
 make it good : for since I hope to have not de- 
 ceived their expectations, let them not deceive mine. 
 But perhaps they will say, ' You are sickly : you 
 must not study too hard.' It is true, God knows, 
 I am weak, yet not so but that every day I may 
 step one step towards my journey's end ; and I 
 love my friends so well, as that if all things proved 
 not well, I had rather the fault should lie on me 
 than on them. But they will object again : ' What 
 becomes of your annuity ? ' Sir, if there be any 
 truth in me, I find it litde enough to keep me in 
 health. You know I was sick last vacation, neither 
 am I yet recovered ; so that I am fain, ever and 
 
70 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 anon, to buy somewhat tending towards my health, 
 for infirmities are both painful and costly. Now 
 this Lent I am forbid utterly to eat any fish, so 
 that I am fain to diet in my chamber at mine own 
 cost ; for in our public halls, you know, is nothing 
 but fish and white meats ; out of Lent, also, twice 
 a week, on Fridays and Saturdays, I must do so, 
 which yet I sometimes fast. Sometimes also I 
 ride to Newmarket, and there lie a day or two for 
 fresh air ; all which tend to avoiding of costlier 
 matters if I should fall absolutely sick. I protest 
 and vow I even study thrift, and yet I am scarce 
 able with much ado to make one half-year's allow- 
 ance shake hands with the other ; and yet if a book 
 of four or five shillings come in my way, I buy it, 
 though I fast for it — yea, sometimes of ten shillings. 
 But, alas ! sir, what is that to those infinite volumes 
 of divinity, which yet every day swell and grow 
 bigger .-* Noble sir, pardon my boldness, and con- 
 sider but these three things. First, the bulk of 
 divinity ; secondly, the time when I desire this 
 (which is now, when I must lay the foundation of 
 my whole life) ; thirdly, what I desire, and to what 
 end, — not vain pleasures, nor to a vain end. If 
 then, sir, there be any course, either by engaging 
 my future annuity, or any other way, I desire you, 
 sir, to be my mediator to them in my behalf. 
 " Now I write to you, sir, because to you I have 
 
ORATOR AND THEOLOGIAN 71 
 
 ever opened my heart ; and have reason, by the 
 patents of your perpetual favour to do so still, for 
 I am sure you love your faithfuUest servant, 
 
 "George Herbert." 
 
 The urgency of the appeal, with the twice- 
 repeated motive, that he was laying the platform 
 or the foundation of his whole life, seems to 
 leave no room for doubt that his intention was 
 to take orders in the Church, though he does not 
 say so expressly. Yet his next letter, probably 
 written not more than a year or two later, finds 
 him anxiously seeking the orator's place and de- 
 scribing its attractions. Like the other, it is ad- 
 dressed to his step-father, but it bears no date : — 
 
 " Sir, — This week hath loaded me with your 
 favours : I wish I could have come in person to 
 thank you, but it is not possible. Presently after 
 Michaelmas I am to make an oration to the whole 
 University of an hour long in Latin, and my 
 Lincoln journey hath set me much behindhand ; 
 neither can I so much as go to Bugden and de- 
 liver your letter, yet I have sent it thither by a 
 faithful messenger this day. I beseech you all, 
 and my dear mother and sister, to pardon me, for 
 my Cambridge necessities are stronger to tie me 
 here than yours to London. If I could possibly 
 have come, none should have done my message 
 
72 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 to Sir Fr. Nethersole for me : he and I are 
 ancient acquaintance, and I have a strong opinion 
 of him, that if he can do me a courtesy he will 
 of himself ; yet your appearing in it affects me 
 strangely. I have sent you here enclosed a letter 
 from our Master on my behalf, which if you can 
 send to Sir Francis before his departure, it will do 
 well, for it expresseth the University's inclination 
 to me ; yet if you cannot send it with much con- 
 venience, it is no matter, for the gentleman needs 
 no incitation to love me. 
 
 " The Orator's place (that you may understand 
 what it is) is the finest place in the University, 
 though not the gciinftillest ; yet that will be about 
 thirty pounds per annum ; but the commodiousness 
 is beyond the revenue ; for the Orator writes all 
 the University letters, makes all the orations, be 
 it to king, prince, or whatever comes to the Uni- 
 versity. To requite these pains he takes place 
 next the doctors, is at all their assemblies and 
 meetings, and sits above the proctors, is regent 
 or non-regent at his pleasure, and such like gay- 
 nesses which will please a young man well. 
 
 " I long to hear from Sir Francis. I pray, sir, 
 send the letter you receive from him to me as soon 
 as you can, that I may work the heads to my 
 purpose. I hope I shall get this place without all 
 your London helps, of which I am very proud — 
 
ORATOR AND THEOLOGIAN 73 
 
 not but that I enjoy in your favours, but that you 
 may see that if all fail, yet I am able to stand on 
 mine own legs. Noble sir, I thank you for your 
 infinite favours ; I fear only that I have omitted 
 some fitting circumstance, yet you will pardon my 
 haste, which is very great, though never so but 
 that I have both time and work to be your ex- 
 treme servant, 
 
 "George Herbert." 
 
 Here evidently is a different frame of mind, 
 possibly due in part to an improved physical state ; 
 for he makes no references to ill-health and dietary 
 matters, or to enforced absences from Cambridge. 
 The long oration he is to deliver " to the whole 
 University " was perhaps intended to exhibit his 
 powers as a speaker ; or he may have been acting 
 as deputy to his predecessor, Sir Francis Nether- 
 sole. The " Master " from whom he encloses a 
 letter was of course the Master of Trinity, at the 
 date of his writing (probably 1618) John Richard- 
 son ; Dean Nevile having died in 161 5. A third 
 letter to his step-father from his college, this 
 time dated 19th January, 16 19, shows the election 
 to be near at hand, and is also noteworthy for its 
 affectionate reference to his ailing sister Elizabeth 
 (the wife of Sir Henry Jones), who died some 
 years later after a lingering and painful illness : — 
 
74 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 " Sir, — I have received the things you sent me 
 safe ; and now the only thing I long for is to hear 
 of my dear sick sister. First, how her health 
 fares ; next, whether my peace be yet made with 
 her concerning my unkind departure. Can I be 
 so happy as to hear of both these that they suc- 
 ceed well? Is it not too much for me? Good 
 sir, make it plain to her that I loved her even in 
 my departure, in looking to her son, and my 
 charge. I suppose she is not disposed to spend 
 her eyesight on a piece of paper, or else I had 
 wrote to her : when I shall understand that a letter 
 would be seasonable my pen is ready. Concern- 
 ing the orator's place, all goes well yet : the next 
 Friday it is tried, and accordingly you shall hear. 
 I have forty businesses in my hands ; your courtesy 
 will pardon the haste of your humblest servant, 
 
 "George Herbert." 
 
 A fourth letter dated from his college to Sir 
 John Danvers is that of the 6th of October, 1619, 
 though its tenor seems to show that it was written 
 before his final election to the oratorship. It is of 
 interest from its evidence that some of his friends 
 felt the same difficulty in reconciling his theological 
 studies with his new ambition that we feel our- 
 selves. Herbert's own view of the case, however, 
 is expressed with sufficient clearness : — 
 
ORATOR AND THEOLOGIAN 75 
 
 "Sm, — I understand by Sir Francis Nethersole's 
 letter that he fears I have not fully resolved of 
 the matter, since this place being civil may divert 
 me too much from divinity, at which, not without 
 cause, he thinks I aim ; but I have wrote him 
 back that this dignity hath no such earthiness in 
 it but it may very well be joined with heaven ; or 
 if it had to others, yet to me it should not, for 
 aught I yet know ; and therefore I desire him to 
 send me a direct answer in his next letter. I pray, 
 sir, therefore, cause this enclosed to be carried to 
 his brother's house of his own name (as I think), 
 at the sign of the Pedlar and the Pack on London 
 Bridge, for there he assigns me. I cannot yet 
 find leisure to write to my lord or Sir Benjamin 
 Ruddyard, but I hope I shall shortly, though for the 
 reckoning of your favours I shall never find time 
 and paper enough, yet I am your readiest servant, 
 
 " George Herbert. 
 
 " I remember my most humble duty to my 
 mother, who cannot think me lazy, since I rode 
 200 miles to see a sister, in a way I knew not, in 
 the midst of much business, and all in a fortnight, 
 not long since." 
 
 A fifth letter, " To the truly noble Sir John 
 Danvers," is undated, and, as it is chiefly concerned 
 with the purchase of books — presumably of theo- 
 
76 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 logy — may belong to the earlier time before the 
 fascinating vision of the oratorship had crossed 
 his sight. It is noteworthy for the following pas- 
 sage, in which his intention to take orders in the 
 Church seems to be distinctly expressed : " yet I 
 had rather fly to my old ward, that if any course 
 should be taken of doubling my annuity now, 
 upon condition that I should surcease from all 
 title to it after I entered into a benefice, I should 
 be most glad to entertain' it, and both pay for the 
 surplusage of these books, and forever after cease 
 my clamorous and greedy bookish requests. It 
 is high time now that I should be no more a 
 burden to you, since I can never answer what 
 I have already received." The annuity which, 
 if now doubled to meet his " greedy bookish " 
 desires, he proposes to forego after obtaining 
 ecclesiastical preferment, was no doubt the one 
 allowed him by his family ; the amount, according 
 to his brother Edward, was ;^30 per annum, this 
 sum having been apportioned to each of the 
 younger brothers of the house. So definite a pro- 
 posal can only mean that the poet, at the moment 
 of writing, intended to enter the Church as one 
 of its ministers at an early date after the comple- 
 tion of his theological studies ; for it can hardly 
 refer to the sinecure afterwards bestowed on him 
 by King James. 
 
INTERIOR OF CHAPKI., TRINITY COLLEGK 
 
 FKOM LF, KEUX'S ENG!iAVIN(; 
 
ORATOR AND THEOLOGIAN 77 
 
 Two further letters belonging to this crucial 
 period of his life may be given here. The one 
 to his younger brother Henry (the future master 
 of the revels), who was then in France, is marked 
 by the worldly wisdom and practical sense 
 shown in all his writings on strictly mundane 
 subjects : — 
 
 " Brother, — The disease which I am troubled 
 with now is the shortness of time, for it hath been 
 my fortune of late to have such sudden warning, 
 that I have not leisure to impart unto you some 
 of those observations which I have framed to 
 myself in conversation, and whereof I would not 
 have you ignorant. As I shall find occasion you 
 shall receive them by pieces ; and if there be any 
 such which you have found useful to yourself, com- 
 municate them to me. You live in a brave nation, 
 where, except you wink, you cannot but see many 
 brave examples. Be covetous, then, of all good 
 which you see in Frenchmen, whether it be in 
 knowledge, or in fashion, or in words ; for I would 
 have you, even in speeches, to observe so much, 
 as when you meet with a witty French speech, try 
 to speak the like in English ; so shall you play a 
 good merchant, by transporting French commodi- 
 ties to your own country. Let there be no kind of 
 excellency which it is possible for you to attain to 
 which you seek not, and have a good conceit of 
 
78 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 your wit ; mark what I say, have a good conceit 
 of your wit : that is, be proud, not with a foolish 
 vaunting of yourself when there is no cause, but 
 by setting a just price of your qualities ; and it is 
 the part of a poor spirit to undervalue himself and 
 blush. But I am out of my time ; when I have 
 more time you shall hear more ; and write you 
 freely to me in your letters, for I am your ever 
 loving brother, 
 
 "George Herbert. 
 
 " P.S. — My brother is somewhat of the same 
 temper, and perhaps a little more mild, but you 
 will hardly perceive it. 
 
 " To my dear brother, Mr. Henry Herbert, at 
 Paris." 
 
 The other letter, " For my dear sick sister," is 
 dated from Trinity College, 6th December, 1620, 
 in the year after his election as orator. Like 
 all his family correspondence which has been 
 preserved, it is marked by great affection and ten- 
 derness ; also it is clear that the pleasing " gay- 
 nesses" of his new official life had not as yet 
 affected the spiritual quality of his mind, if indeed 
 they ever did so : — 
 
 "Most Dear Sister, — Think not my silence 
 forgetfulness, or that my love is as dumb as my 
 papers ; though business may stop my hand, yet 
 
ORATOR AND THEOLOGIAN 79 
 
 my heart, a much better member, is always with 
 you ; and which is more, with our good and gra- 
 cious God, incessantly begging some ease of your 
 pains, with that earnestness that becomes your 
 griefs and my love. God, who knows and sees 
 this writing, knows also that my soliciting Him 
 has been much, and my tears many for you ; 
 judge me then by those waters, and not by my 
 ink, and then you shall justly value your most truly, 
 most heartily affectionate brother and servant, 
 
 " George Herbert." 
 
 With the grave gaiety and other qualities praised 
 by Walton, the poet discharged for eight years 
 the delicate duties of the oratorship, though in his 
 later absences from Cambridge turning them over 
 to his deputy, Herbert Thorndyke. If in obtain- 
 ing the office he had solicited the influence of his 
 kinsman, the Earl of Pembroke, Sir Benjamin 
 Ruddyard and others, as well as that of the retiring 
 orator. Sir Francis Nethersole, with a somewhat 
 persistent urgency, there is no doubt that he filled 
 it with distinction and success. To give at length, 
 either in Latin or in English translations, the 
 more noteworthy of his recorded official perfor- 
 mances, does not seem needful. He has been 
 accused of excessive adulation in his postal ad- 
 dresses to persons with whom he was anxious 
 
80 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 to ingratiate himself; but the charge does not 
 seem just. For one thing, it was an age of 
 notorious flattery in all formal letters and ad- 
 dresses — and in many that were not formal — 
 both to equals and to superiors ; for another, as 
 he explains in a letter of advice to his successor, 
 Robert Creichton, the public orator speaks not 
 for himself but for the University, Probably 
 that reverend body was as well pleased with the 
 effusions of its chosen mouthpiece as were those 
 to whom they were addressed, or whose virtues 
 they celebrated — at least there is no mention to 
 the contrary. 
 
 The public orations of George Herbert are 
 characteristic of plzice, time, and individual bias. 
 That on the " most auspicious " return of Prince 
 Charles from Madrid, after the breaking off of 
 the Spanish match, is an effort of great loyalty, 
 if its tone of exuberant joyfulness may seem to us 
 a little forced. Addressed to the " Venerable 
 Heads, Most Worshipful Sirs, and Most Select 
 Youth " ( Veranda Capita, Viri Gravissimi, Pubes 
 Lectissima) of his University, it begins with a 
 familiar classical instance, followed by many more. 
 When Polycrates, after throwing into the sea a 
 much-valued ring, found it again in the body of a 
 captured fish, he was deemed the most fortunate 
 of mortals. Even more fortunate are they, the 
 
ORATOR AND THEOLOGIAN 81 
 
 Muses' Crown {Corona Afusua), who, having com- 
 mitted their prince to the sea in the hope of es- 
 pousals, have received him back safely ; and with 
 him the marriage-ring {annulum conjngaleyti), now 
 once more their own, and to be disposed of afresh 
 anywhere in the world, according to the judgment 
 of a king most wise and experienced in human 
 and divine affairs. The orator dilates on the im- 
 portance of marriage in general, and especially 
 that of princes, since the higher their condition the 
 more care is required. He urges the necessity of 
 good mothers : '' When the foundation of the race 
 is not rightly laid, it must needs be that the off- 
 spring turn out badly." The journey having been 
 undertaken in the interests of peace — for peace 
 would have resulted from the Spanish marriage — 
 he r^rets as a patriot the failure of the expedition. 
 Incidentally he draws a startling picture of the 
 horrors of war ; but the strongest note of the com- 
 position is that of pleasure at the prince's safe 
 return. The oration, " when the Ambassadors 
 were made Masters of Arts " (27th February, 
 1622), is an example of high and somewhat flowery 
 compliment to distinguished foreign diplomatists ; 
 but as the orator probably did not have per- 
 sonal ends in view in flattering Don Carlos de 
 Coloma, ambassador of Spain, and Ferdinand, 
 Baron of Boyscot, ambassador of Isabella, Arch- 
 
82 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 duchess of Austria, his praise of those " most ex- 
 cellent and most magnificent lords " may be con- 
 sidered as merely perfunctory. Possibly, however, 
 his attributing to the Spanish king (Philip IV.) 
 an " exceeding glory equally round with the 
 world itself," and to his own sovereign the char- 
 acter of a protecting saint if not of a human deity, 
 may have exceeded the licence even of academic 
 eulogium. 
 
 His official letters are in the same strain of 
 ultra-laudation — doubtless no other style would 
 have been acceptable either to the University or 
 to the high personages to whom they were ad- 
 dressed. Several are letters of thanks {gratice de 
 fiuvid) to the Secretary of State, Sir Robert 
 Naunton, and to Fulke Greville, Bacon, and the 
 king himself, for preserving the Cam from sup- 
 posed injury by the draining of the Fens by certain 
 bold speculators. The "shores of Grantburg- 
 shire " were still washed, but not cleansed, by the 
 shallow inland sea that had borne the barge of 
 King Canute past the singing monks of Ely ; and 
 the residents of Cambridge, both town and gown, 
 believed that reclaiming the great morass which 
 most of it had now become would destroy their 
 chief means of communication with the sea and 
 the outer world. We know that the result was 
 otherwise ; and if the orator had gfuessed that his 
 
ORATOR AND THEOLOGIAN 83 
 
 continual agues were probably due to its vapours, 
 he might have qualified his gratitude. As it was 
 he feared that from want of water the colleges 
 would be abandoned, and the "beautiful dwellings 
 of the Muses" become "like worn-out widows or 
 sapless withered logs." His letters to the king, 
 on receiving his gift to the University already 
 mentioned of the Basilicon Doron, and his con- 
 gratulation of the royal favourite, Buckingham, 
 on his elevation to the marquisate, are cited as 
 the most fulsome of these courtly epistles ; and 
 they cannot be said to fall short of his orations 
 in this respect. The poet's ever-active invention 
 seems to have drained the resources of euphuism 
 in evolving high-flown metaphors in which to 
 dress the subjects of his praise ; but if he goes 
 so far as to tell the conceited monarch that his 
 " right hand alone quickens the globe with life and 
 action " (vestra solum dextra . . . vita et actione 
 orbem vegetal), the royal philosopher had himself 
 pointed out some years before the surprising re- 
 semblance of kingly to divine functions. The 
 letters to Bacon, in acknowledgment of his In- 
 stauratio, and to the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 on the London booksellers, with those to Thomas 
 Coventry, Sir Robert Heath, and others, are per- 
 haps less inflated in style ; but altogether these 
 Latin panegyrics cannot be regarded as of any 
 
miEs 
 
 saf^ "» a«oddcif sbfic;' 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 HERBERT AS A CX>TIRTIER 
 
 THE Strange being to whcnn tbe port owed his 
 introduction to the pleasures and perils of 
 a Court life was distinguished by an amtation 
 seldom recorded of ruling sovere^ns. Sir J<^m 
 Harii^fton, the witty if somewhat scurrilous trans- 
 lator trf" Orlando Furioso, tells us diat King 
 James in a private interview asked him with 
 much seriousness "whether a king ^ould not 
 be the best clerk in his own country, and if 
 this land did not entertain good ofHnicHi of his 
 learning and good wisdcxn ? " The author of no 
 small array of volumes, political, poetical, and 
 meditative — of the Demonology and the BasiUcon 
 Doron, the Counterblast to Tobacco^ the True Law 
 of Free Monarchies, and a Meditaiion, on the Lords 
 Prayer — the pacific monarch was at least a credit- 
 able clerk ; and the gatherings about his table, 
 dioi]^;h suggesting our ccHnpetitive examinations 
 for puUic posts, were doubtless agreeable. The 
 
 85 
 
86 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 testimony of Bishop Hackett, in his Life of Lord 
 Keeper Williams, is emphatic on this point : — 
 
 " That King's table," he says admiringly, " was 
 a trial of wits. The reading of some books before 
 him was frequent, while he was at his repast. 
 Otherwise [in other ways] he collected knowledge 
 by variety of questions. . . . Methought his hunt- 
 ing humour was not off so long as his courtiers, 
 I mean the learned, stood about his board. He 
 was ever in chase after some disputable doubts, 
 which he would wind and turn about with the most 
 stabbing objections that I ever heard ; and was so 
 pleasant and fellow-like in all those discourses as 
 with his huntsmen in the field. They that in many 
 such genial and convivial conferences were ripe 
 and weighty in their answers were indubiously 
 designed to some place of credit and profit." 
 
 If the University life of George Herbert gives 
 us some definite landmarks, we lose them almost 
 at once on approaching his life at Court. Here 
 Walton only can lead us ; but, on the whole, we 
 can trust his guidance, except possibly in the mat- 
 ter of dates, which, however, he prudently avoids 
 as a rule in this portion of his narrative. His 
 account of the poet's introduction to the king is 
 somewhat familiar. " The first notable occasion 
 of showing his fitness for this employment of 
 orator," he says, " was manifested in a letter to 
 
HERBERT AS A COURTIER 87 
 
 King James upon the occasion of his sending that 
 University his book, called Basilicon Doron ; and 
 their Orator was to acknowledge this great honour, 
 and return their gratitude to his Majesty for such 
 a condescension ; at the close of which letter he 
 writ : — 
 
 " Quid Vaticanam Bodleiumque objicis hospes ! 
 Unicus est nobis Bibliotheca Libert 
 
 The work in question, which Herbert acknow- 
 ledged in his public capacity on i8th May, 1620, 
 consisted of a series of pedagogic precepts in re- 
 ligion, morals, and the art of government, addressed 
 by James to "his dearest son, Henry the Prince." 
 He had written it twenty years before ; and in 
 view of its prevailingly dull and commonplace 
 character — except where the angry sovereign ful- 
 minates against the " false and unreverent writing 
 and speaking of malicious men " about himself and 
 his predecessors, and those whom he calls " Puri- 
 tans, very pests in the Church and commonweal " 
 — the orator's comparison of it to the libraries of 
 Rome and Oxford (" a single book is library to 
 us") would have been fulsorhe under ordinary 
 conditions. But the men of that age saw and 
 addressed their sovereign under conditions the 
 reverse of ordinary ; and the poet's letter, we are 
 told, was composed in such excellent Latin, and so 
 full of the conceits and expressions " suited to the 
 
88 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 genius of the King," that the delighted monarch 
 inquired the writer's name. Asking William, Earl 
 of Pembroke, if he knew him, that nobleman re- 
 plied, doubtless with the satisfaction we all feel at 
 the praise of our personal connections, " that he 
 knew him very well and that he was his kinsman ; 
 but he loved him more for his learning and virtue, 
 than for that he was of his name and family," At 
 which answer the king, no doubt in the fellow- 
 like manner admired by Bishop Hackett, smiled, 
 and desired of the earl " that he might love him 
 too ; for he took him to be the jewel of that Uni- 
 versity." 
 
 As already pointed out, Walton's next instance, 
 the Melville episode, does not seem proper to this 
 place ; but his third and last " observation " ex- 
 plains the orator's personal acquaintance with the 
 king:— 
 
 " About this time," he says, " King James came 
 very often to hunt at Newmarket and Royston, 
 and was almost as often invited to Cambridge, 
 where his entertainment was comedies suited to 
 his pleasant humour ; and where Mr. George 
 Herbert was to welcome him with gratulations 
 and the applauses of an orator, which he always 
 performed so well that he still grew more into the 
 King's favour, insomuch that he had a particular 
 appointment to attend his Majesty at Royston ; 
 
HERBERT AS A COURTIER 89 
 
 where, after a discourse with him, his Majesty 
 declared to his kinsman, the Earl of Pembroke, 
 ' That he found the Orator's learning and wisdom 
 much above his age or wit.' The year following^ 
 the King appointed to end his progress at Cam- 
 bridge, and to stay there certain days ; at which 
 time he was attended by the great secretary of 
 nature and all learning, Sir Francis Bacon (Lord 
 Verulam), and by the ever-memorable and learned 
 Dr. Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, both which 
 did at that time begin a desired friendship with 
 our Orator ; upon whom the first put such a value 
 on his judgment that he usually desired his appro- 
 bation before he would expose any of his books 
 to be printed, and thought him so worthy of his 
 friendship that, having translated many of the 
 prophet David's psalms into English verse, he 
 made George Herbert his patron by a public 
 dedication of them to him, as the best judge of 
 Divine poetry. And for the learned Bishop it is 
 observable that at that time there fell to be a 
 modest debate betwixt them two about predesti- 
 nation and sanctity of life : of both which the 
 Orator did, not long after, send the Bishop some 
 safe and useful aphorisms, in a long letter written 
 in Greek ; which letter was so remarkable for the 
 language and reason of it that, after reading it, the 
 
 * What year ? 
 
90 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Bishop put it into his bosom and did often show it 
 to many scholars, both of this and foreign nations ; 
 but did always return it back to the place where 
 he first lodged it, and continued it so near his 
 heart till the last day of his life."^ 
 
 This of course is a very full and not uncon- 
 vincing account of Herbert's first relations with 
 his royal patron, as well as of his meeting with 
 Bacon and Andrewes ; but as Walton gives no 
 dates we can only surmise that the events took 
 place somewhere between the poet's election to 
 the oratorship in 1619^ and the king's death, six 
 years later. James had long been in the habit of 
 hunting and otherwise disporting himself at Roy- 
 ston and Newmarket. He built houses for his 
 own and his followers' use at both places ; the 
 house at Newmarket existing at the present day 
 as a Congregational chapel, while the remains of 
 the Royston " palace " are still pointed out. In 
 his time coursing, hawking and hunting were the 
 favourite sports at the former place ; and at Roy- 
 ston the great cost of the royal maintenance was 
 strongly objected to by the country people, who, 
 in an anonymous message, fastened to the collar 
 
 * This letter has never been found ; but another letter from 
 Herbert to Andrewes, written in Latin, is preserved in the British 
 Museum (Sloan MS., ii8). 
 
 ^ i6ao by our time. 
 
HERBERT AS A COURTIER 91 
 
 of his hound Jowler, politely requested him to 
 return to London, as all their provisions were 
 spent and they were "not able to entertain him 
 longer." It is somewhat remarkable that, al- 
 though Newmarket was only thirteen and Roy- 
 ston six miles from Cambridge, the king did not 
 visit the University for over ten years, notwith- 
 standing, that he had already favoured the more 
 distant Oxford. On his journey from Edinburgh 
 to London, in 1603, he had stayed at Sir Oliver 
 Cromwell's house at Hinchinbrooke, where the 
 " Heads of the Universitie ... all clad in scarlet 
 gownes and corner cappes " had waited on him with 
 the inevitable Latin orations ; but his first recorded 
 entry into Cambridge was oh the 7th of March, 
 16 14- 1 5. This was five years before Herbert 
 obtained the Oratorship, and therefore cannot be 
 one of Walton's occasions when he welcomed his 
 sovereign with gratulations and applauses ; but 
 being the first glimpse of the royal person enjoyed 
 by the town and the colleges, it assumed the im- 
 portance of a national if not a cosmic event. It was 
 described at length by contemporary letter and 
 journal writers, and made the subject of a small 
 anthology of Latin and English verses, most of 
 them humorous or satirical. Herbert, who was 
 then a Minor Fellow of his college, doubtless saw 
 the king more than once, and possibly took some 
 
92 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 part in his entertainment ; but the official plaudits 
 of the University were delivered by his " precedent 
 Orator," Sir Francis Nethersole. 
 
 News of the coming event fluttered the academic 
 dovecotes many weeks in advance. In January 
 the corporation sent to Oxford at the expense of 
 forty shillings " to inquire after the manere of the 
 intertaynment of the King there ; " and elaborate 
 preparations were made to equal or outdo their 
 rival's performance. Cups, gloves, and other 
 articles "for the Kinge's Majesties better inter- 
 tayning " were ordered to be purchased ; and both 
 town and University issued strict rules for public 
 dress and behaviour in the august presence. The 
 aldermen were to appear in scarlet gowns and 
 velvet tippets, the bailiffs in murrey gowns and 
 caps, and others of the corporation in black burgess 
 suits, while the mayor was supplied with two 
 footmen in jackets and "other necessary attire." 
 The streets were freshly gravelled, many of the 
 colleges were painted, and the fronts of the old 
 parish churches swept clean of dust. The orders 
 of the vice-chancellor and heads to the members 
 of the University were minute and impressive. 
 All were to appear in their proper habits ; all 
 students were to attend regularly at their lectures 
 and the disputations in the schools ; none might 
 resort to any inn, tavern, ale-house, or tobacco- 
 
HERBERT AS A COURTIER 93 
 
 shop ; " nor presume to take tobacco in St. Maries 
 Church or in Trinity College Hall, upon payne of 
 final expellinge the Universitie." As usual, the 
 wearing of light or fantastic garments, such as 
 "strange pekadivelas, vast bands, huge cuffs, 
 shoe-roses," and the like, was sternly prohibited. 
 The old passion for picturesque shows, however, 
 asserted itself in the orders to the three proproc- 
 tors ; who were to marshal the graduates and 
 students in symmetrical ranks on the days of the 
 king's arrival and departure — doctors, bachelors, 
 non-regents, fellow-commoners, and B.A.'s, in due 
 succession, each in his proper dress and ready to 
 acclaim the sovereign as he passed. 
 
 This being the king's first visit, the preparations 
 were doubtless on an exceptional scale. James 
 and his son, Prince Charles, arrived on the 7th of 
 March, and were met at the borough boundaries 
 by the corporation ; the recorder welcoming them 
 in a speech equally exalting the royal pair and the 
 venerable body of which he was the spokesman. 
 As an example of lofty municipal eloquence, in 
 which history, mythology, and the flowers of rhe- 
 toric are bravely blended with local geography, the 
 effort can hardly ever have been surpassed in its 
 kind. A letter from John Chamberlain, the Horace 
 Walpole of his age, to Sir Dudley Carleton, at 
 Turin, gives some interesting particulars of the royal 
 
94 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 sojourn. " The weather was hard," he says, and 
 the ways foul, so that the splendour of the king's 
 entry was diminished. The queen was not with 
 him, owing to an error of the chancellor ; nor were 
 there any foreign ambassadors, which was reckoned 
 a fault. There were very few ladies, " but of the 
 Howards, or that alliance." The lord treasurer 
 lodged and kept his table — at a cost, it was said, 
 of ;^i,ooo a day — at St. John's College; while 
 the king and the prince lay at Trinity. Here, 
 in the great hall built by the master, Dean Nevile, 
 the plays were represented. The first night's en- 
 tertainment was a Latin comedy entitled Emilia, 
 by a member of St. John's College ; and on the 
 second night the celebrated Latin play called 
 " Ignoramus," by George Ruggle, a Fellow of 
 Clare Hall, was acted. This Chamberlain de- 
 scribes as " full of mirth and variety, with many 
 excellent actors . . . but more than half marred 
 with extreme length." The performance, how- 
 ever, despite its literary merits, greatly nettled the 
 lawyers, especially the lord chief justice. Sir 
 Edward Coke, who was supposed to have been 
 alluded to in some of its passages ; but the king, 
 although accused of falling asleep, enjoyed it so 
 much that he came a second time to Cambridge 
 to see it repeated. The third night he witnessed 
 an English comedy called " Albumazar," and on the 
 
INTERIOR OF HALL, TRINITY' C0I.L1':(;E 
 
 FROM LK KUEX's ENGRAVING 
 
HERBERT AS A COURTIER 95 
 
 last a Latin pastoral, " excellently written, and as 
 well acted, which gave great contentment, as well 
 to the king as the rest." The usual scholastic 
 acts and disputations were also attended by the 
 king and the prince, with more or less satis- 
 faction ; but the University orator, Sir Francis 
 Nethersole, appears to have seriously compro- 
 mised his character for Latinity. "Though he 
 be a proper man, and think well of himself," says 
 Chamberlain, "yet he is taxed for calling the 
 Prince Jacobissime Carole : and some will needs 
 add that he called hxm. Jacobule too ; which neither 
 pleased the King nor anybody else." Rendered 
 into English as " most Jacob Charles," the unlucky 
 conceit pointed a hundred puns and epigrams, 
 chiefly by Oxford wits, and the blunder was cer- 
 tainly never repeated by Herbert in his public 
 capacity. It is noteworthy that Lancelot Andrewes, 
 then Bishop of Ely, gave the performers in the 
 Philosophy Act twenty angels apiece ; though it is 
 not clear that he was present at the time. The 
 king, after visiting most of the colleges, commended 
 them "above Oxford," which did not please cer- 
 tain members of the sister University. Many de- 
 grees were conferred ; but the University appears 
 to have refused that of Doctor of Divinity in the 
 case of the poet Donne (" John Dun," Chamberlain 
 calls him), although the honour was commanded 
 
96 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 by the king. Eventually, as we know, the degree 
 was given. This truly noble entertainment was 
 the last ever provided at Trinity by the generous 
 Nevile, who was even then stricken with paralysis, 
 and died soon after. 
 
 The next visit of the king was in the May of 
 the same year, when the play of " Ignoramus " was 
 acted a second time by his command. It was on 
 this occasion that he complained that care had 
 not been taken to prevent the " tediosity " of 
 some of the proceedings. Altogether, and in 
 spite of Walton's intimation to the contrary, only 
 four visits of the king are officially recorded. 
 The first two were in 1614-15 ; the third was in 
 1622-23, shortly after Herbert became orator ; 
 and the fourth and last was in 1624, the year 
 before the king died. Of this final visit not very 
 much is said. The Prince of Wales, soon to be- 
 come king as Charles I., was one of the party; 
 and the treaty with France for his marriage with 
 the Princess Henrietta Maria was ratified in the 
 royal court (Trinity Lodge). The king, then 
 fifty-nine years of age, was disabled with gout ; but 
 the prince, the French ambassadors, and others, 
 were regaled with the usual " academical per- 
 formances." The third, or preceding visit, how- 
 ever (in 1623), was dwelt on at some length, and 
 appears to have been an occasion of much gaiety. 
 
HERBERT AS A COURTIER 97 
 
 This was while Herbert was orator ; and he is 
 expressly spoken of as making " a short farewell 
 Speech " to the king ; who thanked him among 
 others, and desired a copy of an epigram he had 
 made. The comedy acted on this occasion was 
 " Loiola," by John Hackett, the future bishop. The 
 same spectacular arrangement of scholars — " fresh- 
 men, sophmoors, and sophisters, all being in their 
 capps " — was observed ; and at the king's depar- 
 ture they all, with the non-regents, regents, and 
 others, " sayd with a loud voice : ' Vivat Rex ! 
 Vivat Rex ! ' " as they had also done at his 
 coming.^ 
 
 If, however, the king did not often go to Cam- 
 bridge, Walton may be right in saying that Herbert 
 often went to the king ; and his " particular ap- 
 pointment to attend his Majesty at Royston " is 
 within the possibilities. James, in fact, may be 
 said to have held court there as well as at New- 
 market ; and he doubtless found it easier for the 
 University, or its representatives, to come to him 
 than to face in person the " tediosity " of its 
 Latin orations and other scholastic exercises. In 
 March, 1616, the Cambridge scholars acted a play 
 
 ^ This visit of 1623-23 may have been the occasion mentioned by 
 Walton of Bishop Andrewes being at Cambridge, as he speaks of 
 him as Bishop of Winchester, which he did not become until 
 1618. He held the office until his death in 1626. 
 7 
 
98 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 at Royston at his request and charges ; and this 
 may have been one of many such performances. 
 Herbert's acquaintance with the king may have 
 dated from his official acknowledgment of the 
 Basilicon Doron in 1620 ; or even from his re- 
 markable lecture on one of the royal speeches two 
 years before. This has always been reckoned an 
 instance of gross flattery on his part ; but the story 
 has rarely been told in full. Bishop Hackett, in 
 his Life of Williams, giving an account of an 
 oration delivered by King James in 1628 before 
 both Houses of Parliament, records that "His 
 Majesty Feasted them with a Speech, then which 
 nothing could be apter to the subject, or more 
 Elegant for the matter. All the helps of that 
 Faculty were extreamly perfect in him, abound- 
 ing in Wit by Nature, in Art by Education, in 
 Wisdom by Experience. Mr. George Herbert 
 being Fraelector in the Rhetorique School in 
 Cambridge anno 161 8, pass'd by those fluent 
 Orators that Domineered in the Pulpits of Athens 
 and Rome, and insisted to Read upon an Oration 
 of King James, which he analysed, shewed the 
 concinnity of the Parts, the propriety of the Phrase, 
 the height and power of it to move the Affections, 
 the Style utterly unknown to the Ancients, who 
 could not conceive what Kingly eloquence was, in 
 respect of which those noted Demagogi werQ 
 
HERBERT AS A COURTIER 99 
 
 but Hirelings and Triobulary Rhetoricians. The 
 Speech which was then had at the Opening of this 
 Parliament, doth commend Mr. Herbert for his 
 Censure." The last sentence, which is commonly 
 omitted from the quotation, shows plainly what the 
 excellent though not unbiassed bishop thought of 
 the royal genius ; but if the king had ever heard 
 of the young lecturer's effusion, he was doubtless 
 predisposed in his favour. 
 
 If no record exists of Herbert's meeting with 
 the king, Lord Bacon, and Bishop Andrewes 
 together at Cambridge, there is abundant evidence 
 of his friendship with the two last named. Bacon 
 had not only been a member of his college, but 
 he also became high steward of the town in 
 1617, and took an active part in its affairs ; in re- 
 gard to which the orator, it will be remembered, 
 had written him a complimentary Latin letter, in 
 addition to his acknowledgment of the Instauratio. 
 Andrewes, besides his connection with the Uni- 
 versity through his old fellowship and mastership 
 at Pembroke Hall, was Bishop of Ely from 1609 
 to 161 8; and his affection for the whilom West- 
 minster scholar may have begun at this time. 
 Herbert's Court career, however, takes us far 
 beyond academic boundaries, and opens a wide 
 field of speculation as to his mode of life and ulti- 
 mate aims. It seems clear that the oratorship did 
 
100 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 not long satisfy his ambition ; but if he saw larger 
 possibilities in the courtly world, there is not the 
 slightest reason to suppose he was attracted by 
 the Bacchanalian revels described by Harington 
 and other contemporary writers. That he may 
 have witnessed them is likely enough ; the second 
 sin he condemns in The Church Porch is drunken- 
 ness ; but his place by right would have been at 
 the king's table, with the men of culture and 
 accomplishment who took part in his " genial and 
 convivial conferences," and were indubiously de- 
 signed for honourable posts. I f for the " Court " we 
 read the " Government " we shall better understand 
 the nature of his ambitions. Show, artifice, fashion- 
 able dress and modes of speech, together with 
 much venality and moral corruption, might char- 
 acterise the Court ; but nevertheless it stood for 
 the Government of the day, and whoever desired 
 the office of a bishop, a judge, or a foreign diplo- 
 matist, or wished to serve his country in any other 
 high capacity, must frequent its circles. Walton 
 leaves us no doubt as to the poet's aspirations in 
 this respect : — 
 
 " At this time of his being Orator," he says, " he 
 had learnt to understand the Italian, Spanish, and 
 French tongues very perfectly : hoping that, as 
 his predecessors, so he might in time attain the 
 place of Secretary of State, he being at that time 
 
HERBERT AS A COURTIER 101 
 
 very high in the King's favour, and not meanly- 
 valued and loved by the most eminent and most 
 powerful of the Court nobility. This and the 
 love of a Court conversation, mixed with a laud- 
 able ambition to be something more than he then 
 was, drew him often from Cambridge to attend 
 the King wheresoever the Court was, who then 
 gave him a sinecure, which fell to his Majesty's 
 disposal, I think by the death of the Bishop of St. 
 Asaph. ^ It was the same that Queen Elizabeth had 
 formerly given to her favourite Sir Philip Sidney, 
 and valued to be worth a hundred and twenty 
 pounds per annum. With this and his annuity, 
 and the advantage of his College and of his Ora- 
 torship, he enjoyed his genteel humour for clothes 
 and Court-like company, and seldom looked to- 
 ward Cambridge unless the King were there, but 
 then he never failed ; and at other times left the 
 manage of his Orator's place to his learned friend, 
 Mr. Herbert Thorndike, who is now prebendary 
 of Westminster." 
 
 All this is strictly in keeping with what we know 
 of Herbert's character, and the genius of his family 
 for public employments, especially for positions 
 requiring facility in langaiages. There was every 
 reason why he should feel himself justified in 
 
 ' The rectorship of Whitford, or Whyteford, Flintshire (Gro- 
 sart, i., xlix. seq.). 
 
102 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 following in the footsteps of his brothers, most of 
 whom were already engaged in the service of 
 the State. Edward, the eldest, who had been 
 knighted by James on his accession, was con- 
 stantly abroad on important embassies, and in 
 familiar correspondence with the king, Richard 
 and William, the two soldiers, were gaining re- 
 putation as well as honourable wounds in the 
 Low Countries and elsewhere. His next younger 
 brother, Henry, who was destined to become 
 master of the revels, had already been sworn 
 in as the king's " servant " ; and Thomas, the 
 youngest, as soldier and seaman, had distinguished 
 himself in several public capacities, among them 
 that of commander of the ship in which Prince 
 Charles returned from Spain. If, as it seems evi- 
 dent, George had definitely abandoned his purpose 
 of taking orders in the Church and entering " into 
 a benefice," he had doubtless convinced himself 
 that, like his oratorship, the high public office he 
 sought had no such " earthiness " that it might 
 not "be joined with Heaven." Of course he may 
 have been self-deceived. For another man — one 
 of his brothers, for instance — the desire for an 
 exalted and responsible civil post might have 
 been right ; but for one of his peculiar spiritual 
 history it may have been wrong. We can moralise 
 the theme endlessly, and prove to our own satis- 
 
HERBERT AS A COURTIER 103 
 
 faction that he was disobedient to the heavenly 
 vision, and his later travail of soul justly merited 
 by his refusal of a higher for a lower calling. But 
 the path that, with our perspective, seems clearly 
 marked, to him was doubtless otherwise. In any 
 case, to miss the right road, and fall into all 
 manner of entanglements and perplexities in con- 
 sequence, is, as all allegorists know, the common 
 discipline of a saint ; and but for the beguilement 
 of the Court we should not have had the George 
 Herbert of The Temple and The Country 
 Parson — the master of human as well as Divine 
 wisdom. Walton makes it plain that the lines of 
 his destiny were not easily resolved, and for more 
 causes than one. Among them his health seems 
 always to have been a factor to be reckoned on in 
 his scheme of life : — 
 
 " I may not omit to tell that he had often de- 
 signed to leave the University," says his biographer, 
 " and decline all study, which he thought did im- 
 pair his health ; for he had a body apt to a con- 
 sumption, and to fevers and other infirmities, which 
 he judged were increased by his studies ; for he 
 would often say, ' He had too thoughtful a wit ; 
 a wit like a penknife in too narrow a sheath, too 
 sharp for his body.' But his mother would by 
 no means allow him to leave the University or to 
 travel ; and though he inclined very much to both, 
 
104 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 yet he would by no means satisfy his own desires 
 at so dear a rate as to prove an undutiful son to 
 so affectionate a mother ; but did always submit to 
 her wisdom." 
 
 Here Walton quotes the latter half of one of his 
 poems entitled " Affliction," which, he says, " ap- 
 pears to be a pious reflection on God's providence, 
 and some passages of his life." The poem is 
 perhaps the best, as it is the longest, of the five 
 so named, and undoubtedly seems a record of 
 personal experience. The opening stanzas are 
 full of the joy of newly awakened spiritual life, 
 as they are also of that curious blending of the 
 homely with the fine which marks all his English 
 writings : — 
 
 When first Thou didst entice to Thee my heart, 
 
 I thought the service brave ; 
 So many joys I writ down for my part, 
 
 Besides what I might have 
 Out of my stock of natural delights, 
 Augmented by thy gracious benefits.^ 
 
 I looked on Thy furniture so fine, 
 
 And made it fine to me ; 
 Thy glorious household stuff did me entwine. 
 
 And 'tice me unto Thee. 
 Such stars I counted mine : both heaven and earth 
 Paid me my wages in a world of mirth. 
 
 But as the years peissed on, clouds began to 
 gather : — 
 
 ' " Augmented with thy Grace's perquisites " (Grosart). 
 
HERBERT AS A COURTIER 105 
 
 At first Thou gave me milk and sweetnesses ; 
 
 I had my wish and way : 
 My days were strewed with flowers and happiness : ' 
 
 There was no month but May. 
 But with my years sorrow didst twist and grow, 
 And made a party unawares for woe. 
 
 My flesh begun unto my soul in pain. 
 
 Sicknesses cleave my bones, 
 Consuming agues dwell in every vein. 
 
 And tune my breath to groans. 
 Sorrow was all my soul : I scarce believed, 
 Till grief did tell me roundly that I lived. 
 
 Walton begins his quotation at the seventh of 
 the eleven stanzas of the poem : — 
 
 Whereas my birth and spirit rather took 
 
 The way that takes the town : 
 Thou didst betray me to a ling'ring book. 
 
 And wrap me in a gown. 
 I was entangled in a world of strife,^ 
 Before I had the power to change my life. 
 
 It does not seem necessary to give the four re- 
 maining stanzas. The imprisoned scholar " threat- 
 ened oft to raise the siege ; " but was from time 
 to time partly reconciled to his lot by " academic 
 praise ; " he " could not go away, nor persevere ; " 
 and, dreading stagnation and unfruitfulness, desired 
 to be a tree, " for then sure I should grow." 
 Like Bunyan's pilgrim, he appears in his celestial 
 journey to have met with all manner of hurts and 
 
 ' happ'nesses. " " the world of strife " (Grosart). 
 
106 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 hindrances ; but the last stanza of his Miserere 
 has the true Herbert ring : — 
 
 Yet, though Thou troublest me, I must be meek, 
 
 In weakness must be stout, 
 Well, I will change my service, and go seek 
 
 Some other master out. 
 Ah my dear God, though I am clean forgot, 
 Let me not love Thee, if I love Thee not. 
 
 It must be owned that Herbert's life as a courtier 
 is involved in some obscurity. How long did it 
 continue, and how was it spent ? The date of his 
 first official meeting with King James is unknown 
 to us ; it could not have been before his election 
 to the oratorship in 1619, nor, it is superfluous to 
 say, after the king's death in 1625. Six years, 
 therefore, or from the age of twenty-six to thirty- 
 two, was the longest space during which he could 
 have basked in the sunshine of royal favour. For 
 some time, at least, his orator's duties, with those 
 belonging to his Fellowship and his lectureship 
 in the Rhetoric School (in one of his letters — to 
 Bishop Andrewes — he speaks of the last as an 
 appointment held for a year only), must have kept 
 him more or less at Cambridge ; and when he 
 began, whether from ill-health or the increasing 
 demands made upon him by his Court engage- 
 ments, to absent himself from the University, it is 
 not clear where he lived or what was the nature 
 of his occupations. There is no record of his 
 
HERBERT AS A COURTIER 107 
 
 becoming, like his brother Henry, a sworn servant 
 of the king, or of his holding any definite post at 
 the Court ; but however his time was spent it was 
 certainly not wasted. The acquirement of Italian, 
 Spanish, and French, which Walton says he had 
 learned while orator, must have taken him several 
 yeeirs, despite his fluency in language, and, with 
 his failing health, may have involved much pain 
 and labour. In view of his bodily ailments, even 
 his " laudable ambition " to obtain high office in 
 the State must at times have flagged ; and we 
 cannot wonder that he " often designed to leave 
 the University, and decline all study." His com- 
 plaint that his " wit was too sharp for his body " 
 suggests a mental and physical organisation more 
 common in our own neurotic age than in his ; and 
 we cannot avoid regret that his over-strict mother 
 refused to allow him to leave his college and 
 travel, although " he inclined very much to both." 
 To be deprived of the sweets of travel in foreign 
 lands, which his younger as well as his elder 
 brothers had long enjoyed, must have been a sore 
 trial to the accomplished and appreciative scholar ; 
 and it argues a high sense of filial duty on his part 
 that he did not rebel at the maternal mandate. 
 
 The shattering of his dreams of State employ- 
 ment came with what must have been to him a 
 startling suddenness. In that age of favouritism 
 
108 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 and personal influence, the good offices of friends 
 at Court were indispensable to advancement, and 
 their loss meant disaster. George Herbert was 
 deprived of his three most powerful patrons almost 
 at a blow. Lodowick Duke of Richmond and 
 James Marquis of Hamilton, whom Walton de- 
 scribes as " two of his most obliging and most 
 powerful friends," died respectively in 1623 and 
 1625 ; the death of King James himself following 
 a few days after that of the marquis. With them 
 died also the poet's hope of a public career. He 
 retired to private life in the country, and to a 
 solitude deemed by his contemporaries even more 
 injurious to his health than his studies had been. 
 
CIlAI'IIiK VII 
 
 'I'lllC l,AI)V MA(;i)A(,KN UICRUKKT 
 
 A1'"I'I';K r(:in;iiiiiii;4 twelve years ;i widow Mrs. 
 Ilerhert " The I. ;idy Magdalen Herbert," 
 as Donne calls her in the superscrijjtion of one of 
 his poe.inH— " Miarric:d happily to a noble gentle- 
 man, the broth(!r and heir of the Lord Danvers, 
 Ivarl of Danby, who did highly value both her 
 person and tin; most excellent endowments of her 
 mind." The noble suitor who, in the first year of 
 Georj^n; Herbert's residence at Cambridj^e (1608), 
 incliiced his mother to exchanjre her name for his 
 own, and accej)t by rijj^ht the title she had often 
 enjoyed by courtesy, was Sir John Danvers of 
 Danvers Mouse, Chelsea, you ii^rcr brother of the 
 Henry Danvers created Marl of I )anl)y by Charles 
 the l''irst in 1626. At the time of his marriaf>-e he 
 was little more than twenty years old, and his wife 
 mon; than twice his age. As a youn^ man, by the 
 account of his relativt;, the jj^ossipinjr Aubrey, he 
 " travelled Franco and Italy and made ^ood 
 
110 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 observations. He had in a fair body an har- 
 monicall mind. In youth his complexion was so 
 exceeding beautiful and fine, that . . . the people 
 would come after him in the street to admire him. 
 He had a very fine fancy, which lay chiefly for 
 gardens and architecture." According to Dr. 
 Donne, who was often helped in his pecuniary diffi- 
 culties by the generous pair, his birth, youth, and 
 interest at Court, with his heirship to large pos- 
 sessions, " might justly have promised him accept- 
 ance in what family soever, or upon what person 
 soever he had directed and placed his aSectiona" 
 Therefore it is another proof of Mrs. Herbert's 
 charms of person and intellect that he should have 
 preferred her to a younger and less encumbered 
 spouse. 
 
 Sir John proved a devoted husband, as he was 
 also a kind if not indulgent friend and guardian of 
 the younger members of the Herbert flock. The 
 letters to him already quoted, from the youthful 
 Trinity scholar in regard to his theological studies, 
 show the cordiality of their relations, however 
 formal the mode of expression may now seem. 
 As Lady Danvers — to give her new title — did 
 not die until 1627, this relationship probably con- 
 tinued for nearly twenty years, or until all the 
 younger Herberts had grown to manhood and 
 womanhood. An important result of the marriage 
 
THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT 111 
 
 was the removal of their mother's home, and per- 
 haps of theirs also, to the beautiful mansion at 
 Chelsea called Danvers House, which the "har- 
 monicall mind " of its owner had caused to be 
 furnished with curious elegance, while its fine 
 gardens were laid out in the Italian style. " 'Twas 
 Sir John Danvers who first taught us the way 
 of Italian gardens," says Aubrey ; and the noble 
 country-house, for such it then was, adjoining the 
 old home of Sir Thomas More, must have been 
 a delightful abode ; as well as a centre of culture, 
 and the meeting- place of many of the most eminent 
 scholars and personages of the day. The later 
 career of its master, whether determined by the 
 symmetry of his mental organism or by other 
 causes, seems grievously out of keeping with this 
 environment. Knighted by King James and made 
 a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, he became 
 associated with the famous Virginia Company, 
 and, not without reason, soon rebelled against the 
 claims and interference of royalty. He was twice 
 married after the death of his first wife ; and en- 
 gaged in further Italian gardening to his financial 
 hurt. When over fifty he entered Parliament and 
 received a colonel's command in the Roundhead 
 army ; later on he was appointed to the com- 
 mission by which King Charles was tried in 1649, 
 and capped the climax of his social and political 
 
112 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 revolt by signing the king's death warrant. That 
 the step-father of George Herbert should have 
 achieved the fame, or the infamy, of becoming a 
 regicide is a seriously incongruous fact ; and it 
 speaks volumes for Walton's artistic sense that, 
 although probably knowing the truth, he did not 
 allow so lurid a patch of colour to disfigure his 
 canvas. 
 
 The Herberts had changed their home several 
 times. From Montgomery they had removed to 
 Oxford ; and at a later date, perhaps in 1601 or 
 1602, they took up their abode in the metropolis. 
 " When I had attained the age betwixt eighteen 
 or nineteen years," says Edward Herbert, " my 
 mother, together with myself and wife, removed 
 up to London, where we took house, and kept a 
 greater family than became either my mother's 
 widow's estate, or such young beginners as we 
 were." It is probable that they remained in this 
 expensive residence, wherever it was, until George 
 had finished his studies at Westminster School ; 
 and as Mrs. Herbert's second marriage took place 
 in 1608, the year of his election to the Trinity 
 Scholarship, they may have removed to Danvers 
 House at that time. Wherever they were we 
 may be sure that the old Herbert hospitality was 
 maintained ; and to their friendly doors came no 
 greater guest — or so they and others doubtless 
 
THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT US 
 
 believed — than the brilliant and fascinating John 
 Donne, traveller and adventurer, linguist, poet, 
 and preacher, and latterly Dean of St Paxil's. To 
 attempt any just characterisation of this seven- 
 teenth century Browning — a Browning, no doubt, 
 with many differences — would be here out of place. 
 As dean of the cathedral church of the metro- 
 polis, the king's favourite doctor in divinity, and 
 the most popular preacher of his day, as well as 
 the admiration, and perhaps envy, of contem- 
 porary scholars and wits, his strange personality 
 requires separate and individual treatment. Like 
 the Herberts, he was partly of Welsh extraction : 
 he belonged to a family who adhered to what the 
 mUder Protestants of the time called "the Old 
 Religion," but became an Anglican, after a serious 
 survey of " the body of Divinity as it was then 
 controverted betwixt the Reformed and the Roman 
 Church." He studied both at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, but being then a Romanist took no degrees. 
 Coming into his paternal inheritance, he travelled 
 in Spain and Italy, and is believed, from his early 
 poems and other more or less credible evidences, 
 to have adopted for a time the morals of an Itali- 
 anate Englishman of the age. If he did so he 
 repented in a thousand sacred stanzas and a gal- 
 axy of magnificent sermons written in his heart's 
 blood. Clandestinely married to the daughter of 
 
114 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Sir George Moore, Lieutenant of the Tower, he 
 was cast into prison, but released and subsequently 
 pardoned. In 1 6 1 5, at the age of forty-two, he was 
 induced to take orders in the English Church ; he 
 became the king's chaplain in the same year and 
 Dean of St. Paul's in 162 1 ; holding that coveted 
 appointment with ever-increasing reputation until 
 his death ten years later. To Izaak Walton, his 
 churchwarden at St. Dunstan's in the West — the 
 living of which he also held — he seemed little less 
 than a seraph : St. Austin and St. Ambrose in 
 one, a Chrysostom reincarnated and preaching 
 with divine unction, "his own heart . . . possessed 
 with those very thoughts and joys that he laboured 
 to distil into others ; a preacher in earnest ; weep- 
 ing sometimes for his auditory, sometimes with 
 them ; always preaching to himself, like an Angel 
 from a cloud, but in none : carrying some, as St. 
 Paul was, to Heaven in holy raptures, and enticing 
 others by a sacred art and courtship to amend 
 their lives." Walton, indeed, in his memorial 
 verses on the dean's death, calls himself " his 
 convert ; " and his first essay in biography — for 
 his Life of Donne led the immortal series — ^grew 
 out of affection for his admired pastor and 
 friend. 
 
 There is something peculiarly attractive in the 
 relations of the Herberts to this dazzling Eliza- 
 
THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT 115 
 
 bethan, with his captivating manners, inspired 
 talk, and power of throwing off divine and other 
 verses of marvellous workmanship. To Walton, 
 the attachment between Mrs. Herbert and her 
 frequent guest and counsellor, appealed strongly. 
 " It was not an amity," he says, " that polluted 
 their souls, but an amity made up of a chain of 
 suitable incinations and virtues ; an amity like 
 that of St Chrysostom's to his dear and virtuous 
 Olimpias ; whom, in his letters, he calls his Saint : 
 or an amity, indeed, more like that of St Hierome 
 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." Their real friendship probably b^an 
 in 1607, when Mrs. Herbert was living in London, 
 and the poverty-stricken poet, with his ailing 
 family, was at Mitcham, a place in the country 
 near Camberwell — l|is " hospital at Mitcham," as 
 he calls it in one of his more distressful episties. 
 It was at this time he wrote, with his wife and 
 seven children down with various diseases, " that 
 if God should ease us with burials, I know not 
 how to perform even that," and the virtuous lady 
 "proved one of his most bountiful benefactors, 
 and he as grateful an acknowledger of it," repaying 
 her with the only currency then at his command, 
 
116 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 letters and verses of compliment. Several of the 
 letters were preserved by Walton, the best known 
 being that which accompanied a number of his 
 sacred poems, only one of which, however, can 
 now be identified as belonging to this time. Both 
 the letter and the poem in questi<ni are thus given 
 by his biographer : — 
 
 '■ Madam, — ^Your favours to me are everywhere : 
 I use them, and have them. I enjoy them at Lon- 
 don, and leave them there ; and yet find them at 
 Mitcham. Such riddles as these become things 
 inexpressible ; and such is your goodness. I was 
 almost sorry to find your servant here this day, 
 because I was loath to have any witness of my not 
 coming home last night, and indeed of my coming 
 this mor ning . But my not coming was excusable: 
 because earnest business detained me ; and my 
 coming this day is by the examjde of your St. 
 Mary Magdalen, who rose early upon Sunday to 
 seek that which she loved most : and so did I. 
 And from her and myself, I return such thanks as 
 are due to one to whom we owe all the good 
 opinion that they, whom we need most, have of 
 ua By this messenger, and on this good day, I 
 commit the inclosed holy Hymns and Sonnets — 
 which for the matter, not the workmanship, have 
 yet escaped the fire — to your judgment, and to 
 your protection too, if you think them worthy of 
 
THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT 117 
 
 it ; and I have appointed to this inclosed Sonnet 
 to usher them to your happy hand. 
 " Your unworthiest servant, 
 " Unless your accepting him to be so 
 
 " have mended him, 
 
 " Jo. Donne. 
 
 " Mitch AM, /M/y ii, 1607." 
 
 To the Ladv Magdalen Herbert : 
 Of St. Mary Magdalen. 
 
 Her of your name, whose fair inheritance 
 
 Bethina was, and jointure Magdalo, 
 An active faith so highly did advance, 
 
 That she once knew more than the Church did know. 
 The Resurrection ; so much good there is 
 
 Delivered of her, that some Fathers be 
 Loth to believe one woman could do this ; 
 
 But think these Magdalens were two or three. 
 Increase their number, Lady, and their fame ; 
 
 To their devotion, add your innocence ; 
 Take much of th' example, as of the name, 
 
 The latter half ; and in some recompense 
 That they did harbour Christ Himself a guest. 
 Harbour these Hymns, to His dear name addrest. 
 
 J. D. 
 
 The enclosing letter seems to be wrongly 
 dated as to day and month, though the year is 
 doubtless correct. It was preceded by two or 
 three others, which are of interest as specimens of 
 the direct and elaborate personal flattery of the 
 time, addressed to worthy as well as to unworthy 
 objects. The metaphysical poet, however, ex- 
 
118 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 plains that " nothing is flattery which the speaker 
 believes ; and of the grossest flattery there is this 
 good use, that they tell us what we should be" 
 — assuredly a plausible excuse for the practice of 
 himself and his contemporaries. The " Autumnal 
 Beauty," happier in its opening than in its later 
 lines, he addressed to the lady in her declining 
 years : — 
 
 No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace 
 
 As I have seen in one autumnal face . . . 
 
 If 'twere a shame to love, here 'twere no shame ; 
 
 Affections here take Reverence's name, 
 
 Were her first years the Golden Age ? That's true ; 
 
 But now they're gold oft tried, and ever new. 
 
 Charming, however, as the picture is, it may be 
 questioned if the benignant dame entirely relished 
 the poet's treatment of her time-marked if still 
 beautiful features : — 
 
 Call not these wrinkles, graves ; if graves they were, 
 They were Love's graves, for else he is nowhere. 
 Yet lies not Love dead here, but here doth sit, 
 Vow'd to this trench, like an anchorit. 
 And here, till hers, which must be his death, come. 
 He doth not dig a grave, but build a tomb. 
 
 Going on, he suggests that his benefactress has 
 grown plump as well as wrinkled ; but further quo- 
 tation is needless. These and other tributes only 
 prove the attractiveness of Magdalen Herbert — 
 for by that name she is best remembered — at all 
 
THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT 119 
 
 periods of her life, as her hospitality continued to 
 the end. In the plague of 1625, when 40,000 
 persons are said to have died in London, and his 
 own parish of St. Dunstan's in the West suffered 
 severely, the dean spent several months at her 
 husband's house in Chelsea. He is also thought 
 to have visited her at Montgomery Castle, then — 
 after transference by King James to another mem- 
 ber of the family — re-purchased by her son, Sir 
 Edward, Happily when dean he was able to 
 repay, by financial assistance to her husband, Sir 
 John Dan vers, the aid she had rendered him in 
 his former poverty ; and at her death, in 1627, 
 he preached, with the emotional power that ever 
 distinguished him, her funeral sermon, " in the 
 Parish Church of Chelsey near London," where, 
 as Walton says, with his gentle pathos, " she now 
 rests in her quiet grave." His own somewhat 
 dramatic exodus from the world took place four 
 years after. 
 
 A far truer testimony to her worth, and inci- 
 dentally to the character of its writer, is the long 
 missive from her son George, sent to her by the 
 hands of the benevolent London goldsmith, Arthur 
 Woodnot, in the severe illness that preceded her 
 last. It is dated, as will be seen, in 1622, and is 
 of importance as showing that the " fashionable 
 humanist" was not so completely absorbed by 
 
120 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 secular ambitions as some writers suppose. At 
 the time of its composition he had been orator of 
 his University for over two years, and had already 
 penned his much criticised letters of compliment 
 , to the king and the Marquis of Buckingham. 
 
 A Letter of Mr. George Herbert to his Mother 
 in her Sickness. 
 
 " Madam, — At my last parting from you, I was 
 better content, because I was in hope I should 
 myself carry all sickness out of your family ; but 
 since I know I did not, and that your share con- 
 tinues, or rather increaseth, I wish earnestly that 
 I were again with you ; and would quickly make 
 good my wish, but that my employment does fix 
 me here, being now but- a month to our Commence- 
 ment ; wherein my absence, by how much it 
 naturally augmenteth suspicion, by so much shall 
 it make my prayers the more constant and the 
 more earnest for you to the God of all consolation. 
 — In the meantime I beseech you to be cheerful, and 
 comfort yourself in the God of all comfort. Who 
 is not willing to behold- any sorrow but for sin. 
 What hath affliction grievous in it more than for a 
 moment ? or why should our afflictions here have 
 so much power or boldness as to oppose the hope 
 of our joys hereafter ? Madam, as the earth is but 
 a point in respect of the heavens, so are earthly 
 
THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT 131 
 
 troubles compared to heavenly joys ; therefore, if 
 either age or sickness lead you to those joys, con- 
 sider what advantage you have over youth and 
 health, who are now so near those true comforts. 
 Your last letter gave me an earthly preferment, 
 and I hope kept heavenly for yourself ; but would 
 you divide and choose too ? Our College customs 
 allow not that ; and I should account myself most 
 happy, if I might change with you ; for I have 
 always observed the thread of life to be like other 
 threads or skeins of silk, full of snarles and encum- 
 brances. Happy is he whose bottom is wound 
 up, and laid ready for work in the New Jerusalem. 
 — For myself, dear Mother, I always feared sick- 
 ness more than death, because sickness hath made 
 me unable to perform those offices for which I 
 came into the world, and must yet be kept in it ; 
 but you are freed from that fear, who have al- 
 ready abundantly discharged that part, having 
 both ordered your family, a.nd so brought up your 
 children, that they have attained to the years of 
 discretion and competent maintenance. So that 
 now, if they do not well, the fault cannot be 
 charged on you, whose example and care of them 
 will justify you both to the world and your own 
 conscience ; insomuch that, whether you turn your 
 thoughts on the life past, or on the joys that are 
 to come, you have strong preservatives against all 
 
122 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 disquiet. And for temporal afflictions, I beseech 
 you consider, all that can happen to you are either 
 afflictions of estate, or body, or mind. For those 
 of estate, of what poor regard ought they to be ? 
 since, if we had riches, we are commanded to give 
 them away ; so that the best use of them is, hav- 
 ing, not to have them. But perhaps, being above 
 the common people, our credit and estimation calls 
 on us to live in a more splendid fashion ; but, O 
 God ! how easily is that answered, when we con- 
 sider that the blessings in the Holy Scripture are 
 never given to the rich, but to the poor. I never 
 find ' Blessed be the rich,' or ' Blessed be the 
 noble' ; but, ' Blessed be the meek,' and ' Blessed 
 be the poor,' and ' Blessed be the mourners, for 
 they shall be comforted.' And yet, O God ! most 
 carry themselves so, as if they not only not de- 
 sired, but even feared to be blessed. — And for 
 afflictions of the body, dear Madam, 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 not like to continue long. I beseech you, 
 let such thoughts as these moderate your present 
 fear and sorrow ; and know that if any of yours 
 should prove a Goliah-like trouble, yet you may 
 
THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT 123 
 
 say with David, That God, who hath delivered 
 me out of the paws of the lion and bear, will also 
 deliver me out of the hands of this uncircumcised 
 Philistine. — Lastly, for those afflictions of the 
 soul ; consider that God intends that to be as a 
 sacred temple for Himself to dwell in, and will not 
 allow any room there for such an inmate as grief ; 
 or allow that any sadness shall be His competitor. 
 And above all, if any care of future things mo- 
 lest you, remember those admirable words of the 
 Psalmist : ' Cast thy care on the Lord, and He 
 shall nourish thee' (Psalm Iv. 22). To which join 
 that of St. Peter : ' Casting all your care on the 
 Lord, for He careth for you' (i Pet. v. 7), 
 What an admirable thing is this, that God puts 
 His shoulder to our burden, and entertains our 
 care for us, that we may the more quietly intend 
 His service ! — To conclude, let me commend 
 only one place more to you : Philipp, iv. 4, St. Paul 
 saith there : ' Rejoice in the Lord always ; and 
 again I say, rejoice.' He doubles it to take away 
 the scruple of those that might say : ' What, shall 
 we rejoice in afflictions ? ' Yes, I say again, re- 
 joice ; so that it is not left to us to rejoice, or not 
 rejoice ; but whatsoever befalls us, we must always, 
 at all times, rejoice in the Lord, Who taketh care 
 for us. And it follows in the next verse : ' Let 
 your moderation appear to all men : the Lord is 
 
124 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 at hand : be careful for nothing.' What can be 
 said more comfortably ? Trouble not yourselves ; 
 God is at hand to deliver us from all or in all. 
 Dear Madam, pardon my boldness, and accept 
 the good meaning of 
 
 " Your most obedient son, 
 
 " George Herbert, 
 
 " Trinity College, May z^th} i6zz." 
 
 To some it may appear that the would-be com- 
 forter strikes a note of too great assurance in 
 dealing with his mother's affliction ; but it cannot 
 be said that he was without an abundant ex- 
 perience himself of bodily suffering. The occa- 
 sional quaintness, and blending of deference with 
 affection, are characteristic of all Herbert's family 
 letters, or at least of those to the older members of 
 the household. Indeed, its apologetic tone, despite 
 the pulpit note of its closing exhortations, suggests 
 that Mrs. Herbert had kept her fifth son as well 
 as her first in a " moderate awe " of herself, though 
 obviously without impairing his regard. In any 
 case, it is always a relief to find George Herbert 
 speaking in his natural voice, which, notwithstand- 
 ing its filial piety and literary merits, cannot 
 certainly be said of his Parentalia. This is the 
 collection of nineteen longer or shorter poems in 
 
 ^ 29th (Grosart). 
 
THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT 125 
 
 Latin and Greek, devoted to the memory and 
 virtues of his mother, and first published at the 
 end of her funeral sermon, preached by Dr. Donne 
 shortly after her death. It is a common defect of 
 classical compositions dealing with English subjects 
 that they enshrine them in an alien atmosphere ; 
 and here the loyal son at once transforms his ad- 
 mirable British mother into a Roman matron, with 
 the devotional habits of an Early Christian saint. 
 Perhaps, with the literary media he chose and his 
 intellectual life-training, this was unavoidable ; but 
 through the haze of classical artifice we may get 
 glimpses of the true Magdalen Herbert in her 
 house with her children and her maids — Ann, Bet, 
 and Joan, as the latter may have been called in 
 the vernacular. Both the Latin and the Greek 
 divisions of the Parentalia have been Englished 
 in Dr. Grosart's exhaustive edition of Herbert's 
 writings, and the following is from the translation 
 of the first of the series by his poetical collaborator, 
 the Rev. Richard Wilton. After invoking the 
 tears of " Holy Cornelias and Sempronias grave," 
 the filial elegist goes on : — 
 
 The glory of women has perish'd : and men dread 
 
 Lest of each sex with her the dower has fled. 
 
 The fleeting suns she would not wear away 
 
 In vanity of dress and self display, 
 
 Piling proud structures in the morning hour 
 
 Upon her head, rear'd upwards like a tower ; 
 
126 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Then spending the long day in talk and laughter — 
 For tongues' confusion comes tower'd Babel after I — 
 But after modest braiding of her hair, 
 Such as becomes a matron wise and fair, 
 And a brief bath, her freshen'd mind she brought 
 To pious duties and heart-healing thought, 
 Addressing to the Almighty Father's throne 
 Such warm and earnest prayers as He will own. 
 
 Next she goes round her family, assigning 
 What each may need for garden, distaff, dining. 
 To everything its time and place are given ; 
 Then are call'd in the tasks at early even. 
 By a fixed plan her life and house go on. 
 By a wise daily calculation ; 
 
 Sweetness and grace through all her dwelling shine, 
 Of both first shining in her mind the sign. 
 But if at times a great occasion rise — 
 With visit of some noble — she likewise 
 Rises, and raises up herself, and vies 
 With the occasion, and the victory gains. 
 O, what a shower of courteous speech she rains ! 
 Grave pleasantry, grace mix'd with wit is heard ; 
 Fetters and chains she weaves with every word. 
 Or if some business for the hour should ask. 
 She glides through turns and windings of the task. 
 With her replies a match for wisest men. 
 Then what a mistress was she of the pen ! 
 What graceful writing hers ! Mark the fair shell, 
 Wherein a kernel fairer still may dwell. 
 The voice and sentiment agreeing well. 
 
 Add music, smoothing, soothing other gifts. 
 Which, for a moment, the rapt spirit lifts. 
 As with a prelude of heaven's harmony. 
 Then what a helper of the poor you see 
 In her ! A prop of languid folk and slow, 
 A roof for those who live forlorn and low, 
 
THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT 127 
 
 A common balm on throbbing bosoms shed, 
 While public blessings hover round her head. 
 
 But thou who thinkest these things not fitly done, 
 A mother's praise forbidding to a son, 
 Away with thy false, foolish modesty ! 
 Heartless and silent then shall only I 
 Be found, when her fine praise rings to the sky ? 
 My mother's urn, is't closed only to me — 
 Wither'd the herbs, and dry the rosemary ? 
 Owe I to her a tongue only to grieve ? 
 Away, thou foolish one and give me leave 
 Shame to forget while pious praise I weave. 
 Thou shalt be prais'd for ever, mother mine. 
 By me, thy sorrowing son ; for surely thine 
 This learning is, which I deriv'd from thee. 
 Which o'er the page now flows spontaneously. 
 Its highest fruit of labour seen to attain 
 In praising thee, though Folly may arraign. 
 
 So much seems the rightful due of the noble 
 and gifted mother of the Herberts, the "Worthiest 
 Lady, " as Donne addresses her in his letters — 
 surely one of the most attractive figures that have 
 ever brightened the pages of history or biography. 
 It is pleasant to know, from her son's eulogium, 
 that she did not indulge in the vanity of dress, nor 
 tire her head in the preposterous manner of the 
 age, and that, like her modern successors, she 
 made use of a brief bath before entering on the 
 day's duties. It is interesting, also, to have the 
 well-ordering of her house, and her wit, vivacity, 
 and letter-writing powers confirmed by one so inti- 
 
128 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 mately acquainted with them ; and if she is finally 
 consigned to a Roman urn instead of an Eng- 
 lish churchyard, we recognise the poet's necessity 
 of maintaining his atmosphere. But in spite of 
 the dean's ecstatic fervours, and her son's affec- 
 tionate painting, Walton remains the better artist, 
 and the pictures he has drawn of the devoted wife 
 and mother will probably live longer and more 
 vividly in our memories. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES 
 
 KING JAMES died on the 27th of March, 1625. 
 However great the shock may have been 
 to his academic protege, coming so soon after the 
 deaths of his two other most influential friends, 
 we cannot help feeling glad for his sake and our 
 own that his hopes of courtly preferment were de- 
 stroyed. It is impossible to think of George Her- 
 bert as a Minister of State, taking part against his 
 better judgment in the political and social intrigues 
 of the time ; or, like his friend. Sir Henry Wotton, 
 committed to the chartered mendacities of foreign 
 diplomacy. In his long letter of consolation to his 
 mother it will be remembered that he once speaks 
 of himself as a person with a mission in life : " I 
 always feared sickness more than death," he says, 
 " because sickness hath made me unable to per- 
 form those offices for which I came into the 
 world, and must yet be kept in it." The language 
 is almost identical with that used by Marcus 
 Aurelius in regard to his round of imperial 
 9 129 
 
130 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 duties ; but we feel instinctively that George Her- 
 bert's calling and election were to other things 
 than high civil posts. Walton himself had no 
 doubt on the subject. His hero had been divinely 
 trained and educated, and his soul kept in a frame 
 of peculiar holiness, " that he may, and ought to be 
 a pattern of virtue to all posterity, and especially 
 to his brethren of the Clergy." With this con- 
 viction he thus tells the story of his great disap- 
 pointment : — 
 
 " In this time of Mr. Herbert's attendance and 
 expectation of some good occasion to remove from 
 Cambridge to Court, God, in whom there is an 
 unseen chain of causes, did in a short time put 
 an end to the lives of two of his most obliging and 
 most powerful friends, Lodowick Duke of Rich- 
 mond, and James Marquis of Hamilton ; and not 
 long after him King James died also, and with 
 them all Mr. Herbert's Court hopes ; so that he 
 presently betook himself to a retreat from Lon- 
 don, to a friend in Kent, where he lived very 
 privately, and was such a lover of solitariness as 
 was judged to impair his health more 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 a study of Divinity, and enter 
 into Sacred Orders, to which his dear mother had 
 
FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES 131 
 
 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." 
 
 It was unquestionably time that he should no 
 longer halt between two opinions. With only 
 Walton's story to guide us, and the reference in 
 his seemingly autobiographical poem to his lack 
 of power to change his state, it is at least possible 
 that he could not make the decision until the death 
 of his royal master. There is difficulty in believ- 
 ing that a person of his family and attainments 
 should ever have been a mere hanger-on at Court ; 
 and in default of any evidence to the contrary the 
 surmise is allowable that he had duties there of 
 some kind, official or otherwise, and that the now 
 feeble monarch had made him promises of others. 
 Speculation on this head, however, is useless ; 
 and Walton is explicit in saying that the poet's 
 hopes died with the king. His retirement to 
 his friend's country-house appears to have taken 
 place almost at once ; for it is significant 
 that the king's funeral oration at Cambridge 
 was delivered by his deputy orator, Herbert 
 Thorndyke. Possibly, as his bodily ailments seem 
 to have increased with his years, ill-health may 
 
132 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 have been one cause of his absence. At the date 
 of the king's death he was thirty-two ; and the feel- 
 ing that, like Milton at a much earlier age, his 
 late spring showed no bud or blossom worthy of his 
 youthful promise, may have added to the poign- 
 ancy of his sufferings. It is true that many per- 
 sons of scholarly tastes and ambitions might have 
 envied him. He was Fellow of a famous and in- 
 fluential College ; he held an office in his University 
 which was then as now the hall-mark of distin- 
 guished classical culture ; and he had been the 
 friend and companion of the king and of the most 
 prominent personages of the day. But this was 
 not the true fruition of his earlier aspirations — his 
 resolve at seventeen to devote his poetical powers 
 to religious ends, and his fervid assurances to his 
 relatives at twenty-four that divinity was to be 
 the main business of his life. 
 
 Walton, himself a loyal cherisher of friends, and 
 indeed a lover of all men who did not attack and 
 vilify his Mother Church, lays great stress on his 
 hero's friendships. He is careful to give him a 
 complete setting in this necessary item of environ- 
 ment ; but from his saying that he was " not 
 meanly valued and loved by the most eminent 
 and most powerful of the Court nobility," we need 
 not infer that he was ever deep in their counsels. 
 It is plain that his intimacies admitted of degrees. 
 
FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES 138 
 
 The two noble patrons whose deaths, with that of 
 the king, shattered his worldly hopes, were doubt- 
 less acquaintances of the royal dining and con- 
 ference table, who were attracted by his wit and 
 personal charm. Both were of the king's Scot- 
 tish following. Lodowick (or Ludovick) Stuart, 
 second Duke of Lennox, after holding high 
 offices in Scotland, accompanied James into 
 England, and received a large part of Lord 
 Cobham's estates on his attainder. He filled 
 several posts of importance after his naturali- 
 sation in the southern realm, among them 
 that of ambassador to France, and was created 
 Earl of Newcastle and Duke of Richmond in 
 1623, but died soon after, at about the age of 
 fifty, cmd was interred with all magnificence 
 in Westminster Abbey. James Hamilton, 
 second Marquis of Hamilton and Earl of 
 Arran, was much younger, being only four years 
 older than Herbert himself. Like the duke, he 
 had held public positions in both countries, his 
 English honours including the offices of privy 
 councillor, gentleman of the bedchamber, and 
 others. An English peerage was given to him 
 in 1619 ; and he was one of the commissioners 
 for the treaty with Spain for the proposed mar- 
 riage of Prince Charles with the Infanta, but was 
 carried off by a malignant fever in 1625, the king 
 
134 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 exclaiming at the news of his death : "If the 
 branches be thus cut down, the stock cannot 
 continue long!" These now shadowy figures 
 may perhaps be taken as types of his merely 
 political or Court friends, of his relations with 
 whom nothing is known beyond Walton's brief 
 statement. 
 
 Yet another may have been the spectacular 
 Duke of Buckingham, the successor of the in- 
 famous Somerset in the affections of the king. 
 The son of a Leicestershire knight, this last and 
 most remarkable of the royal favourites made his 
 appearance at Court in 1615, and ascended the 
 ladder of rank, wealth and influence with a rapidity 
 never before known In 16 16, at the age of 
 twenty-four, he was knighted ; and eight years 
 afterwards, while at Madrid with the prince on 
 the matter of the Spanish match, he was created 
 Duke of Buckingham, and, in his complete ascen- 
 dency over the infatuated monarch, was address- 
 ing him in his familiar letters as " Dear Dad," 
 and subscribing himself " Thy servant and dog, 
 Steenie." His arrogance, venality, and other 
 notorious qualities, with the bad influence he 
 exerted over the youthful prince, have evoked 
 the strongest reprobation of historians ; but re- 
 cently milder judgments have prevailed ; perhaps 
 from their adoption of the theory of the imperial 
 
FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIP^S 186 
 
 stoic lately cited, that the wrongdoer acts from 
 the compulsion of his nature and circumstances, 
 and in a manner cannot help himself. By some 
 writers, indeed, the duke is credited with some- 
 thing like statesmanship ; and his refusal to wear 
 a shirt of mail under his doublet, notwithstanding 
 his fears of personal attack before his assassination, 
 may be counted to him as courage. But what- 
 ever redeeming features he may have possessed, 
 modesty of apparel was not one of them. He 
 was, in fact, the most outrageously bedizened 
 figure in the extravagant Court of his day, literally 
 encrusted with jewels even on common occasions. 
 " At any ordinary dancing " he was wont, it is 
 said, "to have his clothes trimmed with great 
 diamond buttons, and to have diamond hat-bands, 
 cockades and ear-rings , . . yoked with great and 
 manifold knots of pearl ; " while at his going to 
 Paris in 1625, to arrange the marriage between 
 Charles and the Princess Henrietta Maria, " He 
 had twenty-seven suits of clothes made, the richest 
 that embroidery, lace, silk, velvet, gold and gems 
 could contribute," one of them loaded with dia- 
 monds to the value of ;i^ 14,000, His most familiar 
 portrait, that by Miereveldt, shows a coarse and 
 unprepossessing face ; but earlier ones give a 
 somewhat more pleasing impression, and suggest 
 a weak rather than wicked character — if the terms 
 
136 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 are not synonymous. In 1626, by command of 
 King Charles, he was elected Chancellor of the 
 University of Cambridge, and during his short 
 term of office, ended abruptly by his " bloody 
 assassinate " in 1628, he conferred several benefits 
 upon it and projected many more. Herbert's 
 official letter of congratulation on his becoming 
 marquis has been mentioned, and his concep- 
 tion of him as the great dispenser of the royal 
 benevolence ("so thou dost diffuse the dignities 
 derived from our most excellent King over the 
 whole commonwealth ; through thee our James 
 shines upon us : thou dost display him to the 
 people ") shows the height of power he had 
 already attained ; but it is possible that no real 
 friendship ever existed between him and his con- 
 ventional adulator. 
 
 With Bacon, a far nobler though not less frail 
 member of the courtly circle, the poet's relations 
 were inevitably on a different and much higher 
 plane. The " great secretary of nature and all 
 learning" had been an undergraduate of Trinity 
 in his early youth ; but had left the University 
 with no good opinion of its studies, and especially 
 full of contempt for the all-dominant Aristotle. 
 His rise through the different degrees of titular and 
 other honours, from his appointment as Counsel 
 Extraordinary to Queen Elizabeth in 1590, to his 
 
FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES 187 
 
 final elevation, in 1619, to the Lord Chancellor- 
 ship, as Baron Verulam and Viscount St Albans, 
 had not equalled Buckingham's astounding pro- 
 gress ; but at the time of his acquaintance with 
 Herbert he held a sufficiently high place among 
 the king's counsellors, while his rank in the world 
 of intellect was supreme. As before noted, he had 
 become high steward of the town of Cambridge in 
 1 617, the year of Herbert's appointment as sub- 
 lector quartcB classis ; and a few years later the 
 poet, as orator of his University, had written to 
 him in his public capacity. Three of his letters in 
 1620 (namely, those acknowledging the Instau- 
 ratio, expressing " thanks for the river," and de- 
 siring his aid against the London booksellers' 
 monopoly of foreign works) have been preserved ; 
 the first being the most important and charac- 
 teristic. In this certainly appreciative effusion, the 
 orator welcomes the book in question, " not with 
 our bosom alone . . . but with both our arms and 
 with kisses ; " while he compares its author to the 
 discoverers of new lands, although to their dis- 
 paragement (" they have relied on the magnetic 
 needle ; thou on the more penetrating sharpness 
 of the intellect "). Yet more convincing than 
 these official raptures are his three Latin poems 
 on the same great work : one "To the Author 
 of the Instauratio Magna, Francis Bacon ; " 
 
138 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 another " To the Honour of the most illustri- 
 ous Francis, Baron Verulam," etc. . . . upon its 
 publication ; and a third instituting a comparison 
 between the Lord Chancellor's office and his in- 
 tellectual progeny. Another short Latin poem, 
 written probably in 1626 or soon after, " On the 
 Death of the Incomparable Francis, Viscount St. 
 Albans, Baron Verulam," is thus translated in Dr. 
 Grosart's large edition of Herbert's writings : — 
 
 While thou dost groan 'neath weight of sickness slow. 
 And wasting Life with doubtful step doth go, 
 What wise Fates sought I see at last fulfill'd : 
 Thou needs must die in April — so they will'd ; 
 That here the Flowers their tears might weep forlorn, 
 And there the Nightingale melodious mourn. 
 Such dirges only fitting for thy tongue, 
 Wherein all eloquence most surely hung. 
 
 If the lines do not escape the charge of arti- 
 ficiality, neither does the Parentalia, written in 
 commemoration of his own mother about a year 
 afterwards ; but there is no lack of evidence of 
 the reciprocal admiration between the philosopher 
 and the poet. Walton's statement, however, that 
 Bacon placed so great a value on his friend's 
 judgment that he usually desired his approval 
 of his works before submitting them to the press, 
 can hardly be accepted as applying to anything 
 more than his religious poems, and perhaps only 
 
FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES 189 
 
 to his translation of the Psalms, published in 1625, 
 shortly before his death. The dedication, " To 
 his very good friend, Mr. George Herbert," runs 
 thus : — 
 
 "The pains that it pleased you to take about 
 some of my writings I cannot forget, which did 
 put me in mind to dedicate to you this poor exer- 
 cise of my sickness. Besides, it being my manner 
 for dedications to choose those that I hold most 
 fit for the argument, I thought that in respect of 
 divinity and poesy met, whereof the one is the 
 matter, the other the style of this little writing, I 
 could not make better choice ; so with significa- 
 tion of my love and acknowledgment, I ever rest, 
 " Your affectionate friend, 
 
 " Fr. St. Albans." 
 
 The quality of the philosopher's religious verse 
 need not here concern us. There can be no 
 doubt, however, that Herbert's mind was power- 
 fully affected by that of Bacon ; whose works, 
 in common with every scholar of his time, he 
 cannot fail to have read, and who it may be 
 saved him from falling too completely under 
 the influence of Donne's brilliant but ill-balanced 
 genius. 
 
 His friendship with Andrewes keeps us still 
 
140 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 within the courtly group, though the gentle bishop 
 may be said to have been in the Court rather 
 than of it. The most learned English theologian 
 of his time, a prelate of rare qualifications, and a 
 preacher of such attractiveness that his admirers 
 called him " the very stella prcedicantium" and 
 " an angel in the pulpit," he was one of the earliest 
 of the Elizabethan advocates of the Divine origin 
 of episcopacy, and among the first to incur the 
 charge of " Arminianism " and of Papistical teach- 
 ing and practices. His influence over the poet 
 in things ecclesiastical could not have been other- 
 wise than great, and it is probable that to him far 
 more than to Laud he owed his conceptions of the 
 priestly office and its duties and responsibilities. 
 Just when and where their intimacy began is a 
 matter of small moment. It is possible that 
 Andrewes, while Dean of Westminster, may have 
 formed a personal acquaintance with Mrs. Her- 
 bert, who was then living in London, and received 
 her promising son as a boarder in the deanery 
 during his first year as a " Town boy ; " but it is 
 far more probable that their actual intimacy began 
 at Cambridge. It was there, Walton says, that 
 they engaged in their modest debate on the 
 vexed question of " Predestination and Sanctity 
 of Life ; " after which Herbert (somewhat pre- 
 sumptuously, it may appear to us, as he was 
 
oSee Sucr a Shudo-^Jrom thutjethng S^TNITE. 
 WTir/r ^!c^iou.i ccutfc through thts Hffnzon. runn 
 Left the dtmmjttcc cf aur dull JiemiQyk<xrc , 
 
 ^U cnc qrcatEyc, all drcrrn'd m one ^atJkni'c. 
 ^C'hul'c rare mduftncms Sndc led hujrft thcuiihr 
 Thrcu^h Lc&.mmgS Umvsrje, andi vaxnly jcu^ht 
 I\fcm/cr her SJcLci-mj Seifi tmdll at length 
 Sh£ f'crunJ yifayhc'mc'rvith an Iwly streri^tk. 
 
 cSfUitclit fterfd-f hence tcHeavn:filld a hn^kt ^Uce 
 Midsl rhol'c immcrtal Ftrej. and on the face 
 Of /lerCfn-alr MAKER/iXt aJLutitjuf eyti. 
 Where jldl s7t£ reads tnic.pure DxvtnitlC. 
 ^ind ncwy^raue ,4Ipcct h^ith dcum'd tcjfa-uiM^ 
 Intu duj IcJJl- afj'earanfL- . It ycu thinA^^^i 
 Tu hut J. dead fact: Art dc til h-cr hequeazk 
 Lcckm thr. foUmrin^ kmtcJ L.- Ice. him breath. . 
 
 BISHOP ANDREWES 
 
 FROM AN ENGRAVING IJV JOHN I'AYNE 
 
FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES 141 
 
 nearly forty years his junior) sent the saintly 
 bishop his prudential aphorisms in the Greek 
 letter already mentioned, which its grateful re- 
 cipient wore next to his heart till the day of his 
 death. Never yet recovered, a Latin letter from 
 the poet, written after his return from a visit to 
 his aged friend at Winchester, has been preserved, 
 and attests, in spite of its stilted phraseology, the 
 warmth and sincerity of their attachment. It is 
 also of interest as showing the pressure of Her- 
 bert's occupations ; for he describes himself as 
 "buried in academic affairs," and discharging 
 two important functions among his fellow-col- 
 legians, those of " Professor of Rhetoric for this 
 year, and of Orator for more years than one." Its 
 reference to his intermissions of writing suggests 
 that the letter is merely part of a considerable 
 correspondence. Besides these letters, it may be 
 remembered that Herbert addressed one of his 
 " Epigrams in Defence of the Discipline of Our 
 Church" (in the Anti-Tami-Cami-Categoria con- 
 troversy) to the Bishop of Winchester, by whom 
 Andrewes was probably meant, though the date 
 of the poem is uncertain. 
 
 These visits to his spiritual father, at Win- 
 chester (or Farnham) or at Ely, must have fami- 
 liarised Herbert with the ornate and dignified 
 services of the bishop's private chapels ; as it is 
 
142 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 improbable that so ardent a defender of Anglican 
 rites would have absented himself at such times. 
 Andrewes, it is well known, maintained in those 
 comparatively private places of worship the ritual 
 and adornments commonly stigmatised as Popish 
 by the more militant Puritans of the day, al- 
 though unlike Laud he did not force them on 
 others. The description by Prynne, in his Can- 
 terburie's Doom, of the two candlesticks and 
 tapers on the altar, the cushion for the service- 
 book, the credence table, and the basin and ewer 
 " for the polluted priests and prelates to wash in 
 before consecration, and a towel to wipe their 
 unhallowed fingers," together with the richly 
 engraved chalice, and other " Romish furniture," 
 doubtless helped to fan the flames which a genera- 
 tion later destroyed these and other relics of the 
 "old religion." Many, however, who personally 
 attended the services were much affected and 
 elevated, some so greatly "that they desired to 
 end their days in the Bishop of Ely's chapel." 
 Herbert's own enumeration of the requisites of a 
 country church is much less elaborate, perhaps 
 from his view of its humbler place in the ecclesi- 
 astical system ; but his insistence on the decency 
 and order of its material appointments at least 
 suggests the influence of his friend. 
 
 He could not fail, again, despite the original 
 
FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES 143 
 
 difference in their rank, to have been intimate 
 with his old schoolfellow at Westminster and 
 companion scholar at Trinity, John Hackett, the 
 London tailor's son, who afterwards became 
 Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. Also it is 
 probable that he saw much of Bishop Williams, 
 the witty and facile Lord Keeper, whose pregnant 
 replies to the king's questions at table won him 
 his civil and ecclesiastical advancement ; but with 
 Laud it is doubtful if he was ever well acquainted, 
 although later on it was he who, according to Wal- 
 ton, prevailed upon him to accept the Bemerton 
 living. 
 
 Both Donne and Wotton, with whom he enjoyed 
 — to use Walton's generous adjectives — a "long 
 and entire " friendship, were also of the Court, and 
 eminent if perhaps not powerful. The dean, his 
 elder by twenty years, had of course known him 
 as a boy or at least a youth in the Herbert house- 
 hold ; though he seems from his letters and other 
 evidences to have been more intimate with his 
 eldest brother, the future Lord Herbert of Cher- 
 bury ; yet there is no reason to doubt Walton's 
 word as to the duration and completeness of their 
 regard. Donne refers at least once to George 
 Herbert in his correspondence (in a letter written 
 to Sir Henry Goodyer from Dan vers House, 
 where he stayed through the severe plague of 
 
144 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 1625) as "being here" and conveying friendly 
 messages ; and shortly before his own death in 
 1 63 1 he sent him one of his famous anchor-seals, 
 which the poet acknowledged by the composition 
 of verses in Latin and English. Walton's ac- 
 count of the matter, in his Life of Herbert, is 
 as follows : — 
 
 " A little before his death he caused many seals 
 to be made, and in them to be engraven the figure 
 of Christ crucified on an anchor — the emblem of 
 Hope — and of which Dr. Donne would often say, 
 Crux mihi anchora. These seals he gave or sent 
 to most of those friends on which he put a value ; 
 and at Mr. Herbert's death these verses were 
 found wrapt up with that seal, which was by the 
 doctor given to him : — 
 
 When my dear friend could write no more, 
 He gave this Seal, and so gave o'er. 
 When winds and waves rose highest, I am sure. 
 This Anchor keeps my faith, that me, secure." 
 
 In the Life oi Donne himself, Walton quotes 
 a poem sent by the doctor to Herbert with this 
 memorial symbol, which he explains he has 
 adopted in place of the sheaf of snakes he had 
 formerly used, " which is the crest of my poor 
 family." Here their common biographer de- 
 scribes their friendship as " long and dear," and 
 " made up by such a sympathy of inclinations that 
 
ZTKis was forj'outh, Stfenqtfijfiirtn., and Tvrt thalTTme 
 -fMo'rl calufit their aoicfcn ^^ci but t'waf not thiric . 
 yjiinc was tnv later year a j, fo much, re find 
 J-rom -yeutar Dro/sc, JTiirtn, zr wit; as thy punr mind 
 JHought (flic the ^mqeis j nathina but tne J'rai, c, 
 0/ thy (reator, in the/d lalt, de^t (Dayes. 
 
 Ti'itncs this Boo^c^, (thif dmbfemc) ivhicn hceins 
 JUitn ^f-'e: but cndcr, wicH SianeftCr Jcares for lins ■ 
 
 WiUr.Varrh^njcutptit. 1 Z : \VA .' 
 
 JOHN DONNE, AS A YOUTH 
 
FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES 145 
 
 they coveted and joyed to be in each other's com- 
 pany," their affection being "still maintained by 
 many sacred endearments," of which the above 
 verses and gift were one testimony. This may 
 be held as sufficient proof of the warmth of their 
 friendship in their mature years ; but the question 
 of the elder poet's influence upon the work of the 
 younger is one of some difficulty. 
 
 Of his acquaintance with Sir Henry Wotton no 
 other record seems to exist than Walton's brief 
 statement in the Herbert Life ; his earlier pro- 
 mise to contract himself forbidding him to ex- 
 pand the theme. Courtier, traveller, diplomatist, 
 poet, and ultimately cleric and pedagogue, his 
 figure is one of the most romantic of the age, as 
 some of his poetry is certainly among the best. 
 His Life was the second of the series undertaken 
 by Walton ; and the story of his brilliant career, 
 beginning in 1568 at the seat of his ancestors, 
 " Bocton Hall,^ commonly called Bocton, or Bough- 
 ton Place or Palace, in the Parish of Bocton Mal- 
 herbe, in the fruitful country of Kent " (Walton 
 loved precision in these matters at least), and 
 
 ' The hall stands to-day on a high Kentish hill-top, looking 
 towards the Channel at Hastings ; " beautifying," as Walton says, 
 "and being beautified by the Parish Church," near at hand. The 
 mansion is now used as a farmhouse ; but the west front and a 
 handsome panelled room within, still show its ancient char- 
 acter as the home of the Wottons. 
 10 
 
146 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 ending in his seventy-second year, at Eton Col- 
 lege as its provost, is full of picturesque interest. 
 Its "circumference," says his biographer, first 
 touched at Winchester School, and then at Ox- 
 ford, " and after upon . . . many remarkable parts 
 and passages in Christendom ; " but the versatile 
 genius and man of the world will perhaps be 
 chiefly remembered for his two fine poems, the 
 courtly verses in praise of his royal mistress, Eliza- 
 beth, Queen of Bohemia (beginning " You meaner 
 beauties of the night"), and those in which, in the 
 strain of quietism noticeable in some of the most 
 active spirits of his time, he sums up what he 
 holds to be the elements of a desirable life : — 
 
 How happy is he born and taught 
 Who serveth not another's will ; 
 Whose armour is his honest thought 
 And simple truth his utmost skill I 
 
 Yet another title to our remembrance is his witty 
 but dangerous definition of a foreign ambassador 
 as " an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good 
 of his country ; " an apothegm which, at the time, 
 touched the edge of truth so nearly as to involve 
 its author in manifold embarrassments. 
 
 These are some of the courtly personages whom 
 Walton, with his accustomed skill, has grouped 
 about the subject of his memoir. They are in- 
 teresting figures, from the theological king who 
 
FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES 147 
 
 would be the best clerk in his dominions to the 
 philosophical diplomatist who, amidst the splen- 
 dours of foreign palaces, longed to entertain his 
 days in the quiet companionship of books and 
 friends. In comely ruffs, doublets, and long- 
 hose, gravely gowned or resplendent in satin, lace, 
 and jewels — the bishops in their much-abused 
 four-square caps and lawn sleeves — they look out 
 upon us from their portraits with human eyes, 
 blue, grey, black, and brown as the case may be, 
 for the most part seriously, as if aware of the 
 magnitude of the issues in which they dealt. They 
 are of their age, and express its faults as well as 
 its virtues. The corrupt, undignified Court, about 
 which they revolved more or less closely, did not 
 leave even the purest of them unstained ; and the 
 instances of the sudden disgrace of high officials 
 of State, the Lord Treasurer for public pecula- 
 tion, the Lord Keeper for bribe-taking, and the 
 Lord Chamberlain and Lord Privy Seal for sus- 
 pected connection with a murder, were merely 
 capital cases among many of less note. The 
 scandalous Essex divorce, with its tragic sequel, 
 may be considered merely as a magnified ex- 
 ample of the intrigues prevalent in the higher 
 (or lower) social life of the day ; and it drew 
 saints as well as sinners into its coils. James 
 himself (who certainly was no saint) might be 
 
148 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 called the prime mover in the business. It was 
 he who first brought about the marriage of the 
 Countess, then Lady Frances Howard and only 
 thirteen years old, with the young Earl of Essex, 
 who was not more than a year her senior. It 
 was he who, when that objectionable if ill-used 
 young woman placed her affections on his Scottish 
 favourite, Robert Carr, then Viscount Rochester, 
 pressed with equal urgency for her divorce and 
 re- marriage with his creature. And again, after 
 the pair had been convicted of poisoning Sir 
 Thomas Overbury, Carr's former friend and 
 amanuensis, because of his opposition to the 
 match, and his knowledge of facts which it would 
 have been inconvenient to have divulged, it was 
 the king who pardoned them both. Bacon, 
 Donne, and even Bishop Andrewes, were among 
 the many who played a regrettable part in the 
 earlier stages of the affair ; the bishop, it must 
 seem, in obedience to the fate which, as it has been 
 said, compelled every great Churchman of his day 
 to perform a base action at least once in his life. 
 But the divinity that hedged the doings as well as 
 the person of kings, and the glamour surrounding 
 high personages, joined to their ignorance of the 
 real truth of the case, may be reasonably urged in 
 their excuse. 
 
 Of another order of men, Herbert's poetical and 
 
FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES 149 
 
 dramatic coevals at Cambridge, his biographer has 
 little or nothing to say. It is, however, difficult to 
 connect him with contemporary names in literature 
 other than those already mentioned. Some have 
 suggested an acquaintance with Ben Jonson and 
 even with Shakespeare ; but while he may have 
 known the former, his acquaintance with the latter 
 is highly improbable. Unlike Milton, he has left 
 no mention, still less praise, of the superlative 
 dramatist in his writings ; and it is very likely he 
 would have considered him inferior to his classical 
 rival, and both infinitely below Donne. Possibly 
 he may have known his fellow-collegian, Giles 
 Fletcher, author of the remarkable religious 
 poem, " Christ's Death and Victory," who, like 
 himself, came from Westminster School to Trinity 
 as a scholar a few years before his own ad- 
 vent. Two other poets of greater or less renown 
 were certainly his contemporaries at Cambridge. 
 Francis Quarles, the well-known author of several 
 collections of religious poems, among them the 
 widely popular " Divine Emblems," was nearly of 
 his own age, and a student at Christ's College 
 during his undergraduateship ; while the frolic- 
 some Herrick, half Pagan and half Christian (some 
 would altogether deny the Christian element in his 
 composition), was absorbing Latin and Greek, 
 and doubtless many things besides, at St. John's 
 
160 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 College and later at Trinity Hall. Whether, how- 
 ever, the aristocratic Trinity scholar and Fellow 
 knew either of them must be left to surmise. 
 Spenser and Marlowe of course belonged to an 
 earlier time ; and Crashaw, his fellow-singer in 
 things divine, came after. Milton, whom he re- 
 sembled in several respects, although their destiny 
 threw them far apart, was at Christ's College during 
 the last years of his official connection with the 
 University ; but by 1 625, the year of Milton's matric- 
 ulation, Herbert, his senior by fifteen years, had 
 almost ceased to reside at Cambridge ; and as he 
 vacated his Oratorship in 1627, and his Fellowship 
 soon after, it is quite possible that they never met. 
 It is needless to say that Henry Vaughan, his pro- 
 fessed imitator, and in some things his equal if not 
 superior as a poet, belonged to a later generation 
 as well as to the sister University. 
 
 Turning from the poets, Nicholas Ferrar of 
 Little Gidding fame, his friend and literary exe- 
 cutor, is said by Walton to have been slightly 
 known to him at Cambridge, where the precocious 
 pietist became Fellow of his College (Clare Hall) 
 at the age of eighteen, the year after Herbert's 
 admission to Trinity. Another Fellow of Clare, 
 his later eulogist, Barnabas Oley, was also his 
 contemporary and possible friend ; but of both 
 more will have to be said at another place. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE REORDERING OF THE CHURCH 
 
 IN a former chapter an effort was made to 
 sketch in brief the leading characteristics of 
 the age in which George Herbert lived" and 
 worked out his fruitful destiny. In the presents- 
 some aspects of the upbuilding and conserving 
 movement by which the Church of England — ^^or 
 the Anglican Church, if its larger title be pre- 
 ferred — was saved from disintegration, and handed 
 down in something like organic unity to our own 
 day, will be more especially considered ; as this 
 seems desirable before carrying on the story of 
 the poet's life to its later development and close. 
 
 In the background of any picture of the move- 
 ments in religious or ecclesiastical affairs in Eng- 
 land during the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
 turies, must be found the figures of the great 
 Continental reformers, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli 
 and the rest. The English reformers grafted 
 shoots from their vigorous branches upon the 
 native tree planted by Wickliffe, a still living 
 
 151 
 
152 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 though far from flourishing stem ; and it was to 
 this powerful foreign influence that the renascent 
 Church in this island owed its basis of Calvinism. 
 Upon Calvin, Beza, Peter Martyr and others of 
 the Continental band, the religious Englishman of 
 the times of Elizabeth and James looked back 
 with profound veneration ; Herbert himself, it will 
 be remembered, expressly claimed their support 
 in his controversy with Melville over the Anglican 
 ceremonial. No one to-day would wish to under- 
 rate their services in the cause of intellectual and 
 spiritual progress, however the value of the sys- 
 tems they erected in place of the old ecclesiastical 
 order may now be called in question. We are 
 all dissolvents of existing systems, says Matthew 
 Arnold ; and perhaps ultimately our severest 
 criticism of their labours will be only that they 
 failed to act on his then unwritten counsel, not to 
 be acrid dissolvents. But even to this complaint 
 they would doubtless have ready the reply that 
 the triple-crowned monster against whom they 
 fought had grown so great and terrible that 
 smoother methods would not avail. 
 
 Certainly the politic queen under whose rule 
 both Calvinist and Anglican found protection — 
 the former, it is true, only when he conformed to 
 the outward observances of the Church — cannot 
 be accused of acridly dissolving the religious sys- 
 
THE REORDERING OF THE CHURCH 15S 
 
 tern of her ancestors. On the contrary, her love 
 for the older ceremonial is well known ; and it 
 was her resolve to change its details as little as 
 possible that caused the discontent of the more 
 ardent Protestants of her day. To her, indeed, 
 the charge must be laid of nursing the seeds which 
 were to bring forth fruit in the Papistical prac- 
 tices by which Andrewes and Laud scandalised a 
 later generation of Puritans ; but the small care she 
 had for merely theological questions, so long as 
 they did not give rise to political parties dangerous 
 to her throne, allowed the doctrines of Calvinism 
 to grow exceedingly in her reign. Thus it was 
 that men and women whose beliefs agreed with 
 what has been called the " Geneva platform" were 
 found worshipping under Anglican formularies, 
 though the more strenuous among them evaded 
 their requirements whenever possible. But it was 
 this half-acquiescent and continually repressed 
 Puritanism within the Church — for most of the 
 Puritans were Calvinistic in creed if not in their 
 theories of Church government — that, joined to 
 other causes, led to the great disruption of the 
 Civil War. 
 
 The changes made in the services of the English 
 Church in the reigns of Henry the Eighth and his 
 son Edward the Sixth, and confirmed or modified 
 by Queen Elizabeth, have been exhaustively dis- 
 
154. GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 cussed by later historians. Among many others, 
 It need not be said, was the substitution of the 
 Book of Common Prayer, in "a tongue under- 
 standed of the people," for the old Latin Liturgies 
 from which a large part of its contents had been 
 taken. Another was the abolition of certain 
 material adjuncts of worship which were deemed 
 of Popish origin ; and yet another was the ad- 
 ministering of the Communion in both kinds to the 
 laity — "The Supper of the Lord and the Holy 
 Communion, commonly called the Mass," as it was 
 described in the first prayer book of the boy king. 
 Probably the most striking change in the interior 
 of the Churches of the time was caused by the 
 destruction of the altar at the east end, and in 
 many cases the lowering of the chancel floor to 
 the level of the nave. Early in the reign of Eliza- 
 beth — the more advanced Puritans no longer be- 
 lieving in the sacrificial element in the Eucharist 
 — many altars in parish Churches were riotously 
 destroyed ; but by her injunctions the wooden 
 Communion tables which were substituted for them 
 should have been placed at the east end of the 
 chancel where the altar had stood, "so to stand 
 saving when the Communion of the Sacrament is 
 to be distributed ; at which time the same shall 
 be so placed within the chancel, as whereby the 
 minister may be more conveniently heard, and 
 
THE REORDERING OF THE CHURCH 155 
 
 the communicants also more conveniently and in 
 more number communicate." But, owing to the 
 trouble of moving them, they were usually allowed 
 to remain in one place, in many of the parish 
 Churches lengthwise in the middle of the chancel 
 or even in the nave, and in the royal chapels and 
 most of the cathedrals altarwise at the east end. 
 The frequent desecration of the Holy Table, by 
 thoughtless or purposely irreverent persons, when 
 kept in the more exposed position, doubtless led, 
 together with the revived sacrificial theory of the 
 Eucharist, to its return under the Laudian rule to 
 the eastern wall of the Church ; while the erection 
 of enclosing rails was due to the same precaution. 
 George Herbert, it may be said, was unquestion- 
 ably familiar with both arrangements, whatever 
 spiritual significance he may have attached to 
 them. Throughout his Westminster schooldays, 
 in the time of Neile as well as Andrewes, the altar 
 of the Abbey Church stood in its present " east- 
 ward " position, and was carefully tended ; the 
 great sum for those days of ;^58 being expended 
 on a large " backe Front of Cloathe of gold and 
 blue velvett " for its adornment, while another 
 altar cloth for daily use cost ;^22 ; and the beauti- 
 ful palls offered by James and his queen at their 
 coronation were applied to the same purpose. At 
 Westminster also the use of copes and wafer 
 
156 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 breads was maintained ; to the scandalising of 
 Parliament, whose members decided, in 1614, to 
 receive the Communion at St. Margaret's Church 
 instead of the Abbey, " for feare of copes and 
 wafer cakes." With these usages Herbert must 
 have been well acquainted in his boyhood ; but 
 at his college chapel (Trinity) a different order 
 prevailed. Here, during his whole connection of 
 nearly twenty years with the society, from 1609 to 
 1628, the Communion table appears to have stood 
 in the middle of the chapel in the lengthwise posi- 
 tion common in parish Churches ; and in view of 
 the at least doctrinal Calvinism of the Masters, 
 and the secular uses to which the college chapels 
 were often applied, it may not have been treated 
 with over-reverence. Not, indeed, until two years 
 after his death, and seven after giving up his 
 Fellowship, was it agreed (1635) "to set the 
 Communion Table in the Chappell ... at the upper 
 end, and the ground to be raysed, and that the 
 Chapel be adorned accordingly ; " the recent ele- 
 vation of Bishop Laud to the primacy possibly 
 affecting the views of the college authorities.^ It 
 
 'The Archbishop never made any formal visitation of the 
 Universities ; the foreshadowed troubles of the reign (that of 
 Charles the First) warning him of its danger in time. In anti- 
 cipation, however, of his coming to Cambridge, John Bastwick, 
 one of the pilloried (and mutilated) Puritan pamphleteers, thus 
 wrote to " The Vertuous and elect Lady, the Lady Walgrave " 
 
THE REORDERING OF THE CHURCH 157 
 
 may be worthy of note that Herbert himself, in 
 his chapter on "The Parson's Church" (in The 
 Country Parson), makes no mention of the posi- 
 tion of the Table, and merely directs that "the 
 Pulpit, and Desk, and Communion Table, and 
 Font, be as they ought for those great duties that 
 are performed in them." No doubt other marked 
 changes were to be seen in the Churches most 
 exposed to the rigours of Puritan zeal, such as 
 the absence of crosses, images, and windows con- 
 taining prayers for the dead, invocations to saints, 
 and the like ; but the great destruction in this kind 
 was not to come until the Civil Wars. 
 
 (after describing the pomp and grandeur of the Archbishop's pro- 
 gress to and from the Star Chamber) : — 
 
 " But how magnificent and glorious will this man be, think 
 you, good Madam, when he goeth in state and great power to 
 Cambridge and Oxford in his metropoliticall rogation and peram- 
 bulation, and with a rod in his hand in the schooles, to whip 
 those naughty scholars that will not learn well their lesson of 
 conformity; and those lewd and wicked boyes that will not be 
 reverend at devised service ; nor will not cringe to the Altar, 
 nor turne their faces to the East ; nor worship the communion 
 table, nor cap and crouch at the naming of the letters and sil- 
 lables of Jesus, and doe all other ecclesiastical and tumultuous 
 drudgeryes : I am persuaded there will be mighty state & crying 
 out ' roome for my Lord's grace I Gentlemen and scholars be un- 
 covered, put of \sic'\ your hats & caps and be hanged, my Lord's 
 grace is coming, my Lord's grace sees yee ! ' " 
 
 Deprivation of one's ears obviously does not tend to good 
 manners or temper ; but Laud's defence of his practice in Church 
 is at least cgasonable and dignified : " Shall I bow to man in each 
 House of Parliament, and shall I not bow to God in His House ? " 
 
158 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Very early, preaching had been insisted on by 
 the more ardent Protestants as one of the chief 
 duties of the clergy, if they did not universally 
 give it the first place. The bishop not less than 
 the parish priest must be a constant preacher ; 
 and Latimer's fierce denunciation of the unpreach- 
 ing prelates of his time, whom in his famous sermon 
 " On the Ploughers" he urged to learn diligence of 
 the devil, if they would not " learne of God and 
 good man," found its echo with the later reformers. 
 The " dumb dogs " of the Church, as well as the 
 scandalous and the Papistically inclined, were to 
 be cast out altogether. In the view of many, the 
 chief function of the Universities was to supply the 
 land with efficient preachers; and their failure, in 
 Queen Elizabeth's reign, to satisfy this popular 
 demand was doubtless one cause of the curious 
 development known as prophesying or exercises. 
 These remarkable gatherings, which might be 
 called local schools of oratory and Scripture ex- 
 position, may perhaps be best described in the 
 words of Bacon, who himself favoured them as a 
 practical training for the clergy in the preacher's 
 art : — 
 
 " The ministers within a precinct," he says, 
 "did meet upon a week day in some principal 
 town, where there was some ancient grave minister 
 that was president, and an auditory admitted of 
 
THE REORDERING OF THE CHURCH 159 
 
 gentlemen or other persons of leisure. Then 
 every minister successively, beginning with the 
 youngest, did handle one and the same part, of 
 Scripture, spending severally some quarter of an 
 hour or better, and in the whole some two hours ; 
 and so, the exercise being begun and concluded 
 with prayer, and the president giving a text for 
 the next meeting, the assembly was dissolved. And 
 this was, as I take it, a fortnight's exercise. ..." 
 Though often long, Fuller declares that the 
 prophesyings were seldom tedious, the attention 
 of the audience being "entertained with much 
 variety." But it requires no great knowledge of 
 the age to see that the dialectical fluency thus 
 gendered might not always be confined to pa- 
 rochial or even theological subjects ; and in the 
 end they were prohibited by the queen, although 
 Archbishop Grindal supported them manfully to 
 his own undoing. Fuller himself urges the objec- 
 tions to them with some force. " Many modest 
 ministers," he says, " and these profitable preachers 
 in their private parishes, were loath to appear in 
 this public way ; which made them undeservedly 
 slighted and neglected . . . ; " while " many 
 young men, of more boldness than learning, 
 readiness than solidity, carried away the credit." 
 Besides this and the jarring of personal reflec- 
 tions, " many would make impertinent excursions 
 
160 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 from their text, to inveigh against the present 
 discipline and government of the Church." The 
 strongest argument against them, however, was 
 the discredit they threw on the regular Church 
 services : " These Prophesyings, being accounted 
 the fairs for spiritual merchandises, made the 
 weekly markets for the same holy commodities, 
 on the Lord's Day, to be less respected." The 
 " bold bad men " of ready conception and fluent 
 oratory, who thus exalted themselves, were almost 
 without exception of the Puritan if not of the 
 Calvinistic party ; and they made little secret of 
 their contempt for the prescribed ritual of the 
 Church. Some, as it was said, " slubbered " over 
 the prayers and other appointed offices with inde- 
 cent haste ; and others stayed outside the Church 
 during the reading of the service,^ waiting with 
 impatience until their own more important func- 
 tions were required. In vain had the framers of 
 the Prayer Book laboured to supply an acceptable 
 manual of common worship ; these fathers of mili- 
 tant Protestantism, convinced of the all-sufficiency 
 of the Bible, and of themselves as its inspired in- 
 terpreters, were not to be bound in the swaddling- 
 clothes of established forms, however admirable 
 they might seem to their nominal superiors in 
 Church and State. They might be silenced for 
 
 ' Their congregations, it is said, often did so as well. 
 
THE REORDERING OF THE CHURCH 161 
 
 the time ; but time, as we know, brought its 
 revenge in the not far distant future. 
 
 An inevitable consequence of this slighting of 
 the services of the Church was the common 
 neglect of its material fabric ; though there were 
 many other contributing causes. The great re- 
 volution in religious things, which had lately 
 swept over the land, had left much disorder 
 in its train. In the former age, the dissolution 
 of the monasteries, and the appropriation of 
 their lands and revenues by greedy courtiers 
 and nobles, had set a bad precedent of sacri- 
 lege ; and Queen Elizabeth herself had not 
 scrupled to keep the sees of bishops vacant 
 that she might use their incomes for her own 
 ends. Hence it is small wonder that the parishes 
 were often ill served, or not served at all. The 
 later Visitation Articles of the time of Laud leave 
 no room to doubt the condition of many of the 
 parish Churches, especially in the smaller villages 
 and more remote rural districts. Many were in a 
 ruinous state ; some were used as granaries and 
 receptacles of other farm produce by local land- 
 owners ; some were grossly profaned by making 
 them resorts for popular amusements — in one re- 
 corded instance for cock-fighting. The keeping 
 of schools in their chancels seems to have been a 
 frequent though more venial practice ; and of any 
 
162 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 special regard for their sacredness as places of 
 worship there was seldom any trace. Neglect, 
 carelessness, and irreverence abounded in many 
 parishes. " Surplices were not worn, kneeling at 
 the reception of the Communion was not enforced. 
 The Holy Table standing in the middle of the 
 nave was used for ordinary business, or even as 
 a convenient seat. . . . Trainbands met in the 
 churchyards. Clergy openly attacked their pa- 
 rishioners by name from the pulpit. Church pro- 
 perty was stolen or wasted." So writes a modern 
 historian of the period,^ and of the conditions born 
 of ancient abuse, of opposed ideals as to the na- 
 ture of the Church, and of mere human laxity 
 and dulness of soul. Yet the higher and better 
 ideal was not dead, and required only the impulse 
 of a master mind and hand to fan it into life. But 
 the mind had great need to be sympathetic, and 
 the hand to be gentle as well as strong. 
 
 That the man who essayed the task of reform, 
 and, in spite of his apparent failure, is held to have 
 accomplished it, possessed this union of qualities, 
 even his best admirers do not pretend. But all 
 are agreed as to his strength. The virile and un- 
 compromising Archbishop, William Laud, stands 
 out among the figures of his age as the embodi- 
 ment of force and intellectual pertinacity. Thanks 
 
 ' H. O. Wakeraan, The Church and the Puritans, p. iz8, 
 
THE REORDERING OF THE CHURCH 163 
 
 to the labours of later and less prejudiced students, 
 the ogre of early Puritan writers has been re- 
 placed by a human being of religious life and 
 noble ambitions, though of narrow if clear vision, 
 and encumbered with a somewhat snappish 
 temper. To-day, Clarendon's description of him 
 is considered to be substantially true, that "he 
 was a man of great parts, and very exemplar 
 virtues, allayed and discredited by some unpopular 
 natural infirmities ; the greatest of which was, 
 besides a hasty, sharp way of expressing himself, 
 that he believed innocence of heart, and integrity 
 of manners, was a guard strong enough to secure 
 any man in his voyage through this world." The 
 main facts of his life are familiar. He was born 
 at Reading in 1573, his father being a prosperous 
 clothier of that town. Entering St. John's College, 
 Oxford, at the age of sixteen, he soon became a 
 Fellow ; and, after ordination and holding one or 
 two livings in the country, was elected its Presi- 
 dent in 161 1. Three years before, he had been 
 appointed chaplain to Dr. Neile, Bishop of Ro- 
 chester, by whom he was introduced to King 
 James ; who in turn made him his own chaplain, 
 and, after sundry other preferments. Bishop of 
 St. David's. He was the friend and confessor 
 of Buckingham. By King Charles, whose corona- 
 tion he 'arranged and declared to be "one of 
 
164 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 the most punctual coronations since the Con- 
 quest," he was promoted to the bishopric of Bath 
 and Wells, and two years later to that of London. 
 In 1633, the year of Herbert's death, he became 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, in succession to the 
 unlucky homicide, Abbot. His own views of 
 royal and ecclesiastical prerogative agreeing with 
 those of King Charles, he became his ally and 
 supporter in his opposition to Parliament and the 
 rising tide of popular liberty ; and like Strafford, 
 his secular aid in carrying out the king's schemes, 
 he was imprisoned, attainted of high treason, and 
 beheaded (January, 1644-45). Four years later 
 Charles himself suffered death. 
 
 Here, only his labours as a reformer of the 
 Church need be considered. At Oxford, he found 
 Calvinistic doctrines dominant, as they were also 
 at Cambridge, and stood forth at once as their 
 opponent. Calvinism, of course, is not to be 
 lightly dismissed as a mere system of Election, 
 Reprobation, and so on, or without reference to 
 St. Augustine and St. Paul ; but it is hardly the 
 whole substance of Christianity, and this the theo- 
 logians of the time evidently considered it to be. 
 "All the Calvinian rigors in matters of predestina- 
 tion, and the points depending thereupon," says 
 Peter Heylin, the lively Oxford historian and 
 controversialist, " were received as the established 
 
THE REORDERING OF THE CHURCH 165 
 
 doctrine of the Church of England. . .Episcopacy 
 maintained by halves . . . the Church of Rome 
 inveighed against as the ' whore of Babylon "... 
 the Pope as publicly maintained to be Antichrist, 
 or the Man of Sin, and that positively and magis- 
 terially as if it had been one of the chief articles 
 of the Christian faith ; and . . . the visibility of 
 the Church must be no otherwise maintained than 
 by looking for it in the scattered conventicles of the 
 Berengarians in Italy, the Albigenses in France, 
 the Hussites in Bohemia, and the Wickliffists 
 among ourselves. Nor was there any greater care 
 taken for the forms and orders of this Church : the 
 surplice so disused . . . and the Divine Service of the 
 Church so slubbered over in most of the colleges 
 that the prelates and clergy assembled in Convoca- 
 tion anew in 1603 were necessitated to pass two 
 canons to bring them back again to the ancient 
 practice." This probably is no fancy picture ; 
 and at the sister University the same influences 
 held sway, especially at Sidney and Emmanuel. 
 But other influences were at work, among them 
 the arguments of Hooker, and the eloquent per- 
 suasives of Andrewes ; and Laud, who may be 
 said to have put the principles of Andrewes into 
 practice, became an advocate of the views of 
 theology and Churchmanship known as Anglican, 
 or, from their supposed resemblance to those held 
 
166 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 by the party in Holland who revolted against the 
 severer doctrines of Calvin, more commonly as 
 Arminian. The bishop who ordained him said, 
 in words now familiar, that, " finding his study 
 raised above the systems and opinions of the age, 
 upon the noble foundations of the fathers, councils, 
 and ecclesiastical historians," he "early presaged 
 that he would be an instrument of restoring the 
 Church from the narrow and private principles of 
 modern times to the more enlarged, liberal, and 
 public sentiments of the apostolic and primitive 
 ages." 
 
 Unfortunately these enlarged and liberal senti- 
 ments, with him and other members of his party, 
 were commonly joined to ceremonial practices 
 believed by most Protestants of the day to be 
 Papistical and subversive of the Reformation : 
 hence his task of defending them from the attacks 
 of the Romanists on the one hand, and the 
 Puritans on the other, proved a formidable one. 
 Of his ably managed controversy with the Jesuit, 
 Fisher, which he undertook at the command 
 of King James, it is needless to speak ; nor can 
 his public and official acts be more than sum- 
 marised. Conscientious, sincere, and wholly de- 
 voted to the welfare of the Church he loved, he 
 took vigorously in hand, when raised to places 
 of power, the burden of its amendment, and spared 
 
THE REORDERING OF THE CHURCH 167 
 
 himself as little as he spared others in doing so. 
 Where Andrewes as a bishop had counselled, he 
 commanded ; and where Andrewes had used per- 
 suasion, he used force. The older and milder 
 prelate, in his visitation articles, had, it is true, 
 asked parishioners, " Doth your minister resort 
 to any taverns or alehouses ? . . . Doth he use any 
 base or servile labour, drinking, riot, dice, cards, 
 tables, or any unlawful games ? Is he contentious, 
 a hunter, hawker, swearer, dancer, usurer ? ... Is 
 he one that plieth not his study ? " with other strict 
 inquiries as to his character and efficiency ; but in 
 matters of ritual, although his own private practice 
 is well known, he is said to have been satisfied if 
 things were done with decency and reverence. 
 Laud went much farther than this. Backed by 
 the king, the Court of High Commission and the 
 odious Star Chamber — yet even more strongly by 
 the compelling logic of his mind, to which, if a 
 thing seemed right to do it was wrong not to 
 do it — he proceeded to the practical business of 
 reform. He drove Calvinistic preaching from 
 the pulpits; he obliged the "lecturers" — Puritan 
 preachers licensed by the bishops and supported 
 by corporations and by other means — to read the 
 Church service before beginning their sermons ; 
 he compelled bishops to reside in their sees, and 
 look to the manners and morals of their clergy; 
 
168 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 he caused the altars and Communion tables to be 
 replaced in their old positions, and railed in from 
 profane contamination ; and he required- com- 
 municants to kneel instead of sit when receiving 
 the Communion. Besides the parish churches, he 
 set in order the more delinquent cathedral chap- 
 ters, enforcing better care of their muniments 
 and properties, and improving their services so 
 much that people were said to flock to them in 
 large numbers, after the earlier services at church. 
 His implacable activity did not confine itself 
 to his own province, nor indeed to England. 
 He insisted that the chaplains on the king's 
 ships, in the English regiments abroad, and 
 even those in the service of English merchant 
 companies in foreign parts, should use the 
 Prayer Book ; and the influence he had brought 
 to bear on the Dutch Government made Holland 
 no longer a refuge for Nonconformists. In his 
 zeal for discipline, he spared neither high nor low. 
 If he suppressed humble conventicles, and forced 
 the Prayer Book on the Protestant refugees from 
 the Continent, he brought to account the wealthy 
 squires for their encroachments on glebe and 
 churchyard and other properties of the Church. 
 Not less by the laity than by the clergy his hand 
 was felt. Tradesmen must close their shops on 
 Sunday ; innkeepers must not serve their cus- 
 
THE REORDERING OF THE CHURCH 169 
 
 tomers during the Church service ; children must 
 be brought to the afternoon catechisings ; mothers 
 must be churched ; and all at the sacred offices must 
 bow at the name of Jesus. His part in the cruel 
 sentences passed on the Puritan libellers, Prynne, 
 Bastwick, and others, has been sufficiently con- 
 demned ; but in an age that still burned at the 
 stake scores of ignorant and in most cases harm- 
 less and merely weak-minded persons on the 
 charge of witchcraft, their severity was great only 
 by comparison. 
 
 It is impossible, however, to recount all the 
 acts by which the indomitable archbishop purged 
 the Church of its Puritan leaven, whether it took 
 the form of Presbyterianism or of Independency, 
 and brought it to something resembling uniformity 
 and order. By many, the reforms and the order 
 were gladly welcomed ; but their association with 
 a political cause justly held by the majority of 
 Englishmen to be opposed to their liberties made 
 them a part of the dangerous organisation against 
 which they were contending, and hastened the fall 
 of Church and king alike. If the earlier Pro- 
 testant reformers were acrid dissolvents of the 
 Roman rule, Laud was equally harsh in his at- 
 tempt to revive the Anglican system by crushing 
 the Puritans ; and with both reaction followed by 
 an inevitable law. Therefore his place in that 
 
170 GEORGE HERBERT ANB HIS TIMES 
 
 re-ordering of the English Church which began 
 with the Reformation and is far from completed 
 to-day — if continual evolution and adaptation are 
 not rather to be its true destiny — cannot be called 
 that of an ecclesiastical statesman. Yet the title 
 of one of its great reformers must be conceded to 
 him, though the house which he raised fell almost 
 at once in ruins. The grim order of the Commons, 
 in the January after his impeachment, that " com- 
 missions be sent into all counties for the defacing, 
 demolition, and quite taking away of all images, 
 altars or tables turned altarwise, crucifixes, super- 
 stitious pictures, monuments and relics of idolatry, 
 out of all churches or chapels" — an order, as 
 we know, carried out with infinite relish and 
 thoroughness — reads like the total undoing of his 
 life's work. Undone it certainly was for the time ; 
 and with it the work of Hooker and Andrewes, 
 and of the devoted band who with them had 
 laboured to rebuild the walls of Zion on their old 
 foundations. The small, alert, boyish-faced pri- 
 mate, despite his learning and virtues, his noble 
 benefactions, and his intense love for what he 
 called "the beauty of holiness" in outward things, 
 proved the very stormy petrel of his party ; and 
 the herald if not chief cause of the great storm 
 which, in Jeremy Taylor's words, " dashed the 
 vessel of the Church all in pieces." 
 
THE REORDERING OF THE CHURCH 171 
 
 Comparatively few persons in our time under- 
 stand how complete was the wreck. It was now 
 no mere purging the Church of superstitious 
 practices or ornaments — of the marriage ring, the 
 sign of the cross in baptism, the wearing of the 
 surplice, the eastward genuflection, and the rest ; 
 nor was it the disestablishment and disendowment 
 which is supposed, like the sword of Damocles, 
 to hang over its head to-day. These things 
 might have satisfied the more moderate Puritans 
 at an earlier stage : now they demanded, and 
 would have, a root and branch extermination. 
 If Laud had been "thorough," they were equally 
 so. The Church of the English as a visible cor- 
 porate body was utterly destroyed. With the 
 death of the Archbishop, the Prayer Book, as it 
 was said, died also ; and with the king the order 
 of bishops and its subordinate hierarchy. The 
 story of the wreckage of the interiors of cathedrals 
 and churches by the Parliamentary troops, who 
 at Peterborough and elsewhere "did miserably 
 havoc" their furniture and adornments, need 
 not be told here : it was part of the ordeal 
 of humiliation through which the Church, for the 
 follies as well as sins of its members, had to pass. 
 The forbidding of the use of the Prayer Book by 
 private as well as public assemblies marks the 
 zenith of Puritan tyranny ; but its very prohibi- 
 
172 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 tion showed its value as an instrument of spiritual 
 worship. The evicted clergymen who, like Bishop 
 Hackett, committed its contents to memory, and, 
 without divulging their source, repeated the prayers 
 with the entire acceptance of those who had rer 
 fused them when enforced by episcopal order, 
 afforded a far more convincing proof of their ef- 
 ficacy than all the treatises of the divines and 
 liturgists. And those who, like John Evelyn at 
 Sayes Court, Nicholas Ferrar at Little Gidding, 
 and their devout fellow-royalists in private houses 
 and in exile, maintained its use to their own 
 frequent danger, finding strength and comfort 
 in its offices, did more for the true upbuilding of 
 the overthrown Church than all the props of estab- 
 lishment which have been raised about it since the 
 social and political rebound of the Restoration. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 TRANSITIONAL 
 
 TT /"ITH the death of George Herbert's Court 
 ' ' hopes, his true life may be said to have 
 begun. If he had yet many severe conflicts to 
 endure, they were those that rightly belong to the 
 spiritual warfare, and tend to the fortifying of the 
 soul — no soldier of the Cross dare refuse them, 
 with the peaceable fruits they bring forth. How 
 long he remained in his penitential retirement 
 Walton does not say ; but the decision he had 
 framed there was not long kept secret : — 
 
 "He did at his return to London acquaint a 
 Court friend with his resolution to enter into 
 Sacred Orders, who persuaded him to alter it, as 
 too mean an employment, and too much below his 
 birth and the excellent abilities and endowments 
 of his mind. To whom he replied, ' It hath been 
 formerly adjudged that the domestic servants of 
 the King of Heaven should be of the noblest 
 families on earth ; and though the iniquity of the 
 late times have made Clergymen meanly valued, 
 
 173 
 
174 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 and the sacred name of Priest contemptible, yet I 
 will labour to make it honourable by consecrating 
 all my learning, and all my poor abilities, to ad- 
 vance the glory of that God that gave them ; 
 knowing that I can never do too much for Him 
 that hath done so much for me as to make me a 
 Christian. And I will labour to be like my 
 Saviour, by making humility lovely in the eyes 
 of all men, and by following the merciful and 
 meek example of my dear Jesus.'" 
 
 If there was ever any appearance of wavering 
 afterwards, it seems to have been due to a sense 
 of his own unworthiness for the priestly office 
 rather than a looking back on the gilded toys he had 
 renounced. Happily, the removal of his patrons 
 in some degree relieved him of the responsibility 
 of choice, and gave him the most practical of all 
 intimations of the Supreme Will, at least as to his 
 seeking a civil or a Court career. By the wise, 
 the course of events is accepted as the Divine 
 ruling ; and Herbert's prompt if painfully-reached 
 submission to his changed destiny seems to have 
 been followed by an immediate clearing of hi's 
 spiritual skies. Henceforward, thanks no doubt 
 in part to Walton's sympathetic sense of his new 
 conditions, we seem to enjoy with him a feeling of 
 disentanglement, and to walk in smoother paths 
 under brightening heavens, though his purposes 
 
TRANSITIONAL 175 
 
 are not less strong than before. The parson no 
 longer wears the ambiguous "tye-wig," but ap- 
 pears in his proper canonical habit, or at least sets 
 himself to the rightful work of his calling. We 
 hear no more now of his laudable ambition to 
 be something more than he then was, or of his 
 genteel humour for clothes and Court-like com- 
 pany ; but rather of church-building, marriage, 
 and other legitimate preparatives for the life of a 
 parish clergyman. 
 
 For his occupations and places of sojourn in the 
 five years (1625-30) between the death of King 
 James and his induction into his living at Bem- 
 erton, we have little besides the charming but 
 chronologically difficult narrative of his biographer 
 for our guidance. How they were spent must be 
 largely a matter of conjecture and inference ; but 
 probably he was seldom at Cambridge, and not 
 often, if at all, at Court. Also, it may be supposed 
 that he laid aside his studies in the Italian, 
 Spanish, and French tongues, and betook himself 
 to that serious study of divinity which he had 
 beg^n at an earlier age, and perhaps never wholly 
 abandoned. Walton gives us to understand that 
 he was ordained deacon immediately after the 
 king's death and his retirement into Kent : 
 " within that year," he says vaguely. His con- 
 clusion seems based on the fact that in the follow- 
 
176 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 ing year (on 15th July, 1626) the records of 
 Lincoln Cathedral showed that he was " made 
 prebendary of Layton Ecclesia, in the diocese of 
 Lincoln," by John Williams, the famous courtier- 
 bishop; but later writers do not consider the 
 evidence as conclusive, and surmise that he held 
 the prebend as a layman, as he already held 
 the sinecure rectorship of Whitford, given him 
 by King James. Whether he was then ordained 
 or not, he at once accepted the secular responsi- 
 bilities of his charge. The prebend carried 
 with it the patronage of Leighton Bromswold, 
 a small country parish in Huntingdonshire, the 
 Church of which, an ancient building dedicated 
 to " St. Mary the Blessed Virgin," was one of 
 those neglected and "nasty lying" sanctuaries 
 which Laud at his trial held to be largely ac- 
 countable for the decline of religion throughout 
 the land. The manner in which Herbert set 
 about its restoration is characteristic ; and the 
 story is told in Walton's best style : — 
 
 " This Layton Ecclesia," he says, using the 
 older spelling, "is a village near to Spalden, 
 in the County of Huntingdon, and the greatest 
 part of the Parish Church was fallen down, and 
 that of it which stood was so decayed, so little, 
 and so useless, that the parishioners could not 
 meet to perform their duty to God in public prayer 
 
u 
 
 P 
 
 u 
 
 a 
 ij 
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 o 
 o 
 
 H 
 K 
 
 2 
 3 
 
TRANSITIONAL 177 
 
 and praises ; and thus it had been for almost twenty 
 years, in which time there had been some faint 
 endeavours for a collection, to enable the parish- 
 ioners to rebuild it ; but with no success, till Mr. 
 Herbert undertook it ; and he, by his own and 
 the contributions of many of his kindred, and 
 other noble friends, undertook the re-edification 
 of it, and made it so much his whole business that 
 he became restless till he saw it finished as it now 
 stands ; being for the workmanship a costly mosaic; 
 for the form an exact cross ; and for the decency 
 and beauty, I am assured, it is the most remark- 
 able Parish Church that this nation affords. He 
 lived to see it so wainscoted as to be exceeded 
 by none ; and by his order the reading pew and 
 pulpit were a little distant from each other, and 
 both of an equal height ; for he would often 
 say, ' They should neither have a precedency or 
 priority of the other ; but that prayer and preach- 
 ing, being equally useful, might agree like brethren, 
 and have equal honour and estimation.' " 
 
 The account of his mother's opposition, and his 
 manner of overcoming it, is also familiar : — 
 
 "Being informed of his intentions to rebuild that 
 Church," Walton continues, " and apprehending 
 the great trouble and charge that he was likely to 
 draw upon himself, his relations, and friends, before 
 it could be finished [she] sent for him from London 
 
178 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 to Chelsea (where she then dwelt), and at his com- 
 ing said, ' George, I sent for you to persuade you 
 to commit simony, by giving your patron as good 
 a gift as he has given you : namely, that you give 
 him back his prebend : for, George, it is not for 
 your weak body and empty purse to undertake to 
 build Churches.' Of which he desired he might 
 have a day's time to consider, and then make her 
 an answer ; and at his return to her the next day, 
 when he had first desired her blessing, and she 
 had given it him, his next request was, ' That she 
 would, at the age of thirty-three years, allow him 
 to become an undutiful son ; for he had made a 
 vow to God that, if he were able, he would re- 
 build that Church.' And then showed her such 
 reasons for his resolution that she presently sub- 
 scribed to be one of his benefactors, and undertook 
 to solicit William Earl of Pembroke to become 
 another, who subscribed for fifty pounds ; and not 
 long after, by a witty and persuasive letter from 
 Mr. Herbert, made it fifty pounds more. And in 
 this nomination of some of his benefactors, James 
 Duke of Lennox, and his brother. Sir Henry 
 Herbert, ought to be remembered ; as also the 
 bounty of Mr. Nicholas Ferrar and Mr. Arthur 
 Woodnot." 
 
 It is peculiarly fitting that the first labour of 
 the poet of the Church, after definitely deciding 
 
TRANSITIONAL 179 
 
 to "enter into sacred orders," should have been 
 the repair of its visible fabric. If men and women 
 are to feel the inspiration of the Church music 
 that moved him so strongly, assigning him as he 
 says a dainty lodging in its pleasure-house, it 
 is desirable if not necessary that the material house 
 should first be erected. And if allegories and 
 symbolical teachings are to be derived from the 
 church floor : — 
 
 . . . that square and speckled stone 
 Which looks so firm and strong, 
 
 is Patience ; 
 And the other black and grave, wherewith each one 
 Is checkered all along, 
 
 Humility ; 
 
 a more palpable Cement than the abstractions of 
 " Love and Charity" is required for its secure 
 laying. Also church walls demand windows, pre- 
 ferably of pictured glass, otherwise the preacher's 
 message is of less effect : — 
 
 But when Thou dost anneal in glass Thy story, 
 
 Making Thy life to shine within 
 The holy preachers, then the light and glory 
 
 More reverend grows, and more doth win ; 
 
 Which else shows waterish, bleak, and thin. 
 
 The strong argument of beauty and decency in 
 public worship cannot be enforced in ruined and 
 defiled or in carelessly-kept buildings ; and George 
 Herbert's clear recognition of this truth, ignored 
 
180 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 or disbelieved by many of his contemporaries — 
 and by some of his successors in the not very 
 remote past — shows the practical bent of his 
 genius ^ot less than his religious zeal. 
 
 The re-edification of Leighton Bromswold 
 Church is one of the chief links connecting the 
 name of George Herbert with that of his friend 
 and literary executor, Nicholas Ferrar, founder 
 of the remarkable religious household at Little 
 Gidding. Barnabas Oley, the royalist divine and 
 Ferrar's fellow collegian at Clare Hall, Cambridge 
 (at one time its tutor and president), seems 
 to have been the only person of his time be- 
 sides Walton who attempted anything like a 
 biography of the poet ; and in his somewhat 
 rhapsodical and wandering commentary on his life 
 and writings, prefixed to the original edition (1652) 
 of The Country Parson, he has much to say of 
 the relations between his two more famous con- 
 temporaries. From his story, it appears that 
 Herbert, on receiving the prebend of Leighton, 
 wished to transfer it to Ferrar, who was then a 
 deacon : — 
 
 "... which I think, because he lived far from, 
 and so could not attend the duty of that place, he 
 would faine have resigned to Master Ferrar, and 
 often earnestly sued him to discharge him of it ; 
 but Master F. wholly refused, and diverted or 
 
TRANSITIONAL 181 
 
 directed his charity, as I take it, to the re-edifying 
 of the ruined Church of Leighton, where the corps 
 of the Prebend lay. So that the Church of Eng- 
 land owes to him, besides what good may come 
 by this book \^The Country Parson] towards the 
 repair of us Churchmen in point of morals, the 
 reparation of a Church materiall and erection of 
 that costly piece of Mosaick or Solomonick work. 
 The Temple, which flourishes and stands inviolate 
 when our other magnificences are desolate and 
 despised." ^ 
 
 John Ferrar, the elder brother of Nicholas and 
 his appreciative biographer, agrees with Walton as 
 to the ruinous condition of the Church ; it was, he 
 says, "fallen down a long time in the dust, the 
 Vicar and parish fain to use my Lord Duke's ^ 
 great Hall for their prayers and preaching ; " and 
 he confirms Oley's account of Ferrar's urgent 
 appeal to his Cambridge friend to attempt its 
 repair. He " very earnestly hereupon assaults his 
 brother Herbert to set to work and to try what he 
 could do amongst his friends . . . promising all 
 the assistance he could in that kind ; he would 
 undertake his brother John Ferrar should very 
 carefully prosecute the business, if once begun, by 
 
 ' Grosart, iii., 230. 
 
 2 James, 4th Duke of Lennox, nephew of Herbert's deceased 
 patron. 
 
182 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 three times a week attending the workmen and 
 providing all materials." In the end, he continues, 
 "a handsome and uniform and (as the country 
 termed it) a fine neat Church was erected, inside 
 and outside finished, not only to the parishioners' 
 own much comfort and joy, but to the admiration 
 of all men. . . . Only the steeple could not be 
 compassed, which afterwards the most noble, re- 
 ligious, worthy, good Duke of Lennox did per- 
 form at his own proper cost and charges, to the 
 memorial of his honour." 
 
 In connection with Leighton Church, John 
 Ferrar, in the memoir of his brother just quoted, 
 gives two letters from Herbert to his friend ; the 
 longer of which, as the poet's English letters 
 are all too few, may here be transcribed. The omis- 
 sion of architectural details is made by John 
 Ferrar himself, as he probably considered them 
 trivial or irrelevant : — 
 
 " My Exceeding Dear Brother, 
 
 " Although you have a much better pay- 
 master than myself, even Him Whom we both 
 serve ; yet I shall ever put your care of Leighton 
 upon my account and give you myself for it, to be 
 yours for ever. God knows I have desired a long 
 time to do the place good, and have endeavoured 
 many ways to find a man for it. And now my 
 
o 
 
 s 
 
 H 
 H 
 X 
 
 ^ 
 a 
 
 
 O 
 O 
 
 o 
 
 O 
 
 o 
 
 H 
 O 
 
 E 
 
TRANSITIONAL 183 
 
 gracious Lord God is pleased to give me you 
 for the man I desired, for which I humbly thank 
 Him, and am so far from giving you cause to 
 apology about your counselling me herein, that I 
 take it exceeding kindly of you. I refuse not 
 advice from the meanest that creeps upon God's 
 earth, no, not though the advice step so far as to 
 be reproof; much less can I disesteem it from 
 you, whom I esteem to be God's faithful and dili- 
 gent servant, not considering you any other ways, 
 as neither I myself desire to be considered. Par- 
 ticularly, I like all your addresses, and, for ought 
 I see, they are ever to be liked. [So he goes on 
 in the discourse of the building the Church, in 
 such and such a form, as N. F. advised, and 
 letting N. F. know all he had, and would do, to 
 get moneys to proceed in it ; and concludes thus. J 
 You write very lovingly, that all your things are 
 mine. If so, let this of Leighton Church the care 
 be amongst the chiefest also ; so I have requested 
 Mr. W.^ for his part. Now God the Father of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ bless you more and more, 
 and so turn you all, in your several ways, one to 
 the other, that ye may be a heavenly comfort, to 
 His praise and the great joy of 
 
 "Yours, brother and servant in Christ Jesus, 
 
 "George Herbert. 
 
 '■ Woodnoth or Woodnot. 
 
184 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 " Postscript : — 
 
 "As I had written thus much, I received a 
 letter from my brother, Sir Henry H., of the 
 blessed success that God had given us, by mov- 
 ing the duchess's heart to an exceeding cheerful- 
 ness, in signing ;^ioo with her own hands, and 
 promising to get her son to do as much, with some 
 little apology that she had done nothing in it (as 
 my brother writes) hitherto. She referred it also 
 to my brother to name at first what the sum 
 should be ; but he told her Grace, that he would 
 by no means do so, urging that charity must be 
 free. She liked her book well, and has given 
 order to the tenants at Leighton to make payment 
 of it. God Almighty prosper the work. Amen." 
 
 The Church stands to-day, a monument to the 
 devotion not only of George Herbert, but of 
 Nicholas Ferrar as well ; and also of John Ferrar, 
 whose thrice-weekly visits and oversight of work- 
 men ensured the thorough performance of the 
 task. The village itself is a small hamlet about 
 ten miles west of the town of Huntingdon, far dis- 
 tant from railways, and in the pleasant and suffi- 
 ciently wooded part of the agricultural shire, which, 
 on its northern and eastern sides, merges into the 
 expansive plain of the Fens. Pastoral, quiet, and 
 even dull as the scenery may appear to some, 
 it is still untouched by the larger innovations of 
 
TRANSITIONAL 186 
 
 modern times, and doubtless reflects its former as- 
 pect of peace and remoteness from the haunts of 
 men. The building, despite Walton's high praises, 
 cannot be said to differ greatly from many other 
 well-preserved and carefully tended English par- 
 ish churches ; and the prosaic description of the 
 guide-books, " an ancient cruciform edifice of stone 
 in the Early English and Perpendicular styles, 
 consisting of chancel, nave, transepts, porches, and 
 an embattled western tower," might be paralleled 
 in a score of instances elsewhere. Within, how- 
 ever, the " reading pew " and the pulpit still 
 remain as Herbert left them, and are applied 
 to the same uses ; one being placed at each side 
 of the chancel arch, and "both of an equal 
 height," their appearance suggesting two pulpits 
 rather than the customary prayer-desk and rostrum 
 of Anglican worship. 
 
 In nothing is the change in the poet's purposes 
 and outlook on life more noticeable than in the 
 new friends who have taken the place of his 
 royal and noble patrons, and other persons of the 
 Court circle. They are for the most part mem- 
 bers of a group bound together by a similarity 
 of feelings, and a rejection of the ideals and 
 modes of living followed by many of their con- 
 temporaries. To describe them as moved by a 
 common impulse towards monasticism would 
 
186 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 doubtless be wrong ; but they agreed in desiring 
 to follow a form of religious life, which was op- 
 posed to the lives of the more lax Churchmen of 
 the day, not less than to those of the more stren- 
 uous Puritans. Of this new group, the Arthur 
 Woodnot, or Woodnoth, already mentioned may 
 be taken as a type. A relative of the Ferrars, 
 who were themselves of the merchant class, 
 and formerly a goldsmith in Foster Lane, Lon- 
 don, " He was," says Walton, "a man that had 
 considered overgrown estates do often require 
 more care and watchfulness to preserve than get 
 them, and considered that there be many dis- 
 contents that riches cure not ; and did therefore 
 set limits to himself, as to desire of wealth. And 
 having attained so much as to be able to show 
 some mercy to the poor, and preserve a com- 
 petence for himself, he dedicated the remaining 
 part of his life to the service of God, and to be 
 useful to his friends ; and he proved to be so to 
 Mr. Herbert ; for beside his own boimty, he col- 
 lected and returned most of the money that was 
 paid for the rebuilding of that church ; he kept all 
 the account of the charges, and would often go 
 down to state them, and see all the workmen 
 paid." Before this, he had proved a useful friend 
 to Herbert's father and mother ; and it was he, 
 according to Walton, who carried his long letter 
 
TRANSITIONAL 187 
 
 of consolation to his ailing mother, some years 
 previously. From this time onward he seems to 
 be constantly visiting and assisting the poet : he 
 became the sole executor of his worldly estate ; 
 and he was one of the small group who attended 
 him in his last illness, and closed his eyes after 
 death. 
 
 It may be well to pass somewhat quickly over 
 the other recorded events of Herbert's life before 
 his acceptance of the Bemerton living. The noti 
 of breaking away from old pursuits and ambitions 
 is constantly struck, and also the note of passing 
 mortality : Bishop Andrewes, his beloved exem- 
 plar and friend, died in the same year with the 
 king. Bacon died the year after, and his mother 
 in the year following. Her funeral sermon, as 
 already mentioned, was preached (ist July, 1627) 
 by the fluent Donne, then Dean of St. Paul's, in 
 the parish church of Chelsea ; on which occasion 
 Walton tells us he wept, as he well might in view 
 of her noble benefactions to himself and his family. 
 The sermon was published with Herbert's Paren- 
 talia added, and in spite of its frequent quaint- 
 ness of style, forms an interesting confirmation of 
 Walton's picture of her charm and worth. His 
 references to the qualities which endeared her to 
 her youthful second husband. Sir John Dan vers, 
 may be quoted. " As the well-tuning of an instru- 
 
188 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 ment makes higher and lower strings of one 
 sound, so the inequality of their years was thus re- 
 duced to an evenness — that she had a cheerfulness 
 agreeable to his youth, and he had a sober staid- 
 ness conformable to her more advanced years. . . . 
 God gave her such a comeliness as, though she 
 were not proud of it, yet she was so content with 
 it as not to go about to mend it by art. . . . And 
 for her attire, which is another personal circum- 
 stance, it was never sumptuous, never sordid, but al- 
 ways agreeable to her company, such as she might, 
 and such as others such as she was did wear." 
 The management of her home and its hospitalities 
 could not escape his praise. " As her house was a 
 court, in the conversation of the best, and an alms- 
 house, in feeding the poor, so was it also an 
 hospital, in ministering relief to the sick. And 
 truly the love of doing good in this kind . . . was 
 the honey that was spread all over her bread : 
 the air, the perfume that breathed over all her 
 house." There is no reason to think that his tears 
 were not real as he recounted the virtues of the 
 lady whose house had sheltered him from the 
 plague, and whose hands had relieved his distress. 
 Indeed, the sermon seems less artificial than Her- 
 bert's memorial in Latin and Greek verse ; for 
 even his ardent admirer, Barnabas Oley, con- 
 fesses that the lines of "the obsequious Parenialta 
 
TRANSITIONAL 189 
 
 ... be dull or dead in comparison of his Temple 
 poems." 
 
 At the close of the year in which his mother 
 died (1627), Herbert resigned his Oratorship at 
 Cambridge, the duties of which had long been 
 performed by his deputy, Herbert Thorndyke. 
 The lively Latin letter to his successor in the 
 office, Robert Creichton, in which he gives him 
 some playful and characteristic advice as to its 
 management, has been preserved ; but like the 
 Parentalia it seems to belong to the academic life 
 that has already fallen from him. Unfortunately, 
 however, his ill-health was not thrown aside with 
 his courtly ambitions : — 
 
 "About the year 1629, and the thirty-fourth 
 of his age," says Walton (though the date was 
 probably earlier, and the poet's age is wrongly 
 given), " Mr. Herbert was seized with a sharp 
 quotidian ague, and thought to remove it by the 
 change of air ; to which end he went to Woodford 
 in Essex, but thither more chiefly to enjoy the 
 company of his beloved brother, Sir Henry Her- 
 bert, and the other friends then of that family. In 
 his house he remained about twelve months, and 
 there became his own physician, and cured him- 
 self of his ague by forbearing drink, and not eating 
 any meat, no not mutton, nor a hen or pigeon, 
 unless they were salted ; and by such a constant 
 
190 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 diet he removed his ague, but with inconveniences 
 that were worse ; for he brought upon himself a 
 disposition to rheums, and other weaknesses, and 
 a supposed consumption. And it is to be noted 
 that, in the sharpest of his extreme fits he would 
 often say, ' Lord, abate my great affliction, or in- 
 crease my patience ; but, Lord, I repine not ; I 
 am dumb. Lord, before Thee, because Thou dost 
 it.' By which, and a sanctified submission to the 
 will of God, he showed he was inclinable to bear 
 the sweet yoke of Christian discipline, both then 
 and in the latter part of his life, of which there 
 will be many true testimonies." 
 
 The malarial complaint which, in his early 
 college days, had caused him to ride frequently 
 from Cambridge to Newmarket for fresh air, 
 seems never to have left him, or only to have 
 disappeared before a worse disease ; but the 
 picture of his continual sufferings is from this 
 time brightened by his sojourn in pleasant places, 
 in the company of sympathetic relatives or 
 friends. At Woodford, a pretty and retired 
 spot about nine miles from London, within 
 the borders of Epping Forest, he enjoyed the 
 care and society of his younger brother Henry, 
 with whom he seems to have been especially 
 intimate. Already knighted, and busy with the 
 curious duties of his post as Master of the 
 
TRANSITIONAL 191 
 
 Revels — which included, at least at a later date, 
 the licensing of exhibitions of elephants, bea- 
 vers, and dromedaries, and the performances of 
 quack doctors — Sir Henry Herbert bears no small 
 resemblance to his eldest brother, the meteoric 
 Lord of Cherbury ; but there is better evidence 
 of his regard and care for the poet. From Wood- 
 ford, after a year's stay, the apparent consumptive 
 departed in search of an air suited for the cure of 
 his new complaint ; and found it seemingly, to- 
 gether with a wife, in a more congenial western 
 county. Walton's story must again be followed, 
 with such confirmation as occasional dates and 
 records supply. "His remove," he says, "was to 
 Dauntsey in Wiltshire, a noble house which stands 
 in a choice air ; the owner of it then was the Lord 
 Danvers, Earl of Danby, who loved Mr. Herbert 
 so very much that he allowed him such an apart- 
 ment in it as might best suit with his accommoda- 
 tion and liking. And in this place, by a spare diet, 
 declining all perplexing studies, moderate exercise, 
 and a cheerful conversation, his health was ap- 
 parently improved to a good degree of strength 
 and cheerfulness. And then he declared his re- 
 solution both to marry, and to enter into the sacred 
 orders of the Priesthood." 
 
 The romance of the union appealed strongly to 
 the poetic sense of his biographer, who was cer- 
 
192 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 tainly no sour celibate, having himself been twice 
 a widower ; and he makes it the occasion of de- 
 scribing for the first time the appearance of his 
 hero. "He was for his person of a stature 
 inclining towards tallness ; his body was very 
 straight, and so far from being cumbered with 
 too much flesh, that he was lean to an extremity. 
 His aspect was cheerful, and his speech and motion 
 did both declare him a gentleman ; for they were 
 all so meek and obliging that they purchased love 
 and respect from all that knew him." Another 
 writer, Aubrey, says that "he was of a very fine 
 complexion ; " and the existing portraits of him 
 testify to his spareness, if not emaciation. 
 
 Here it may be said that Dauntsey is a small 
 village near Malmesbury in the northern part of 
 Wiltshire ; the parish church containing an in- 
 teresting monument to Henry Danvers, the Lord 
 Danby just mentioned. He has already been 
 referred to as the elder brother of Herbert's step- 
 father. Sir John Danvers. The monument, which 
 records that he died full of "honours, woundes, 
 and dales," has a curious epitaph on the east side 
 composed by Herbert himself ; necessarily before 
 the earl's death, which did not take place until ten 
 or more years after his own. Lord Danby is chiefly 
 known as the founder of the Botanic Gardens at 
 Oxford, the entrance gateway of which he had 
 
TRANSITIONAL IDS 
 
 built from designs by Inigo Jones ; but his 
 shelter of George Herbert in his " noble house," 
 amidst the choice airs of the western county, 
 forms an equal if not better title to our remem- 
 brance. 
 
 To describe the poet's courtship and marriage 
 in any other than Walton's familiar words would 
 be little short of profanation, though doubt as to 
 the entire accuracy of his details may be allowed. 
 The charms of his hero's person and character, 
 he tells us, " begot him much love from a gentle- 
 man of a noble fortune, and a near kinsman to 
 his friend the Earl of Danby ; namely, from 
 Mr. Charles Danvers of Bainton, in the County 
 of Wilts, Esq. ; " Bainton, or Bayntun, being 
 situated in the western part of the shire, not 
 far from Westbury ; while the fortune-favoured 
 gentleman was of course a kinsman of his step- 
 father, Sir John Danvers, as well as of the earl. 
 Walton thus continues : — 
 
 " This Mr. Danvers having known him long 
 and familiarly, did so much affect him that he 
 often and publicly declared a desire that Mr. 
 Herbert would marry any of his nine daughters 
 — for he had so many — but rather his daughter 
 Jane than any other, because Jane was his be- 
 loved daughter. And he had often said the same 
 to Mr. Herbert himself ; and that if he could like 
 13 
 
194 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 her for a wife, and she him for a husband, Jane 
 should have a double blessing : and Mr. Danvers 
 had so often said the like to Jane, and so much 
 commended Mr. Herbert to her, that Jane became 
 so much a Platonic as to fall in love with Mr. 
 Herbert unseen. 
 
 " This was a fair preparation for a marriage ; 
 but, alas! her father died before Mr. Herbert's 
 retirement to Dauntsey ; yet some friends to both 
 parties procured their meeting ; at which time a 
 mutual affection entered into both their hearts, as 
 a conqueror enters into a surprised city ; and love 
 having got such possession, governed, and made 
 there such laws and resolutions as neither party 
 was able to resist ; insomuch that she changed 
 her name into Herbert the third day after this 
 first interview. 
 
 " This haste might in others be thought a love- 
 frenzy, or worse ; but it was not, for they had 
 wooed so like Princes as to have select proxies ; 
 such as were true friends to both parties, such as 
 well understood Mr. Herbert's and her temper of 
 mind, and also their estates, so well before this 
 interview, that the suddenness was justifiable by 
 the strictest rules of prudence ; and the more 
 because it proved so happy to both parties ; for 
 the eternal hover of mankind made them happy 
 in each other's mutual and equal affections and 
 
TRANSITIONAL 195 
 
 compKance : indeed, so happy that there never 
 was any opposition betwixt them, unless it were a 
 contest which should most incline to a compliance 
 with the other's desires. And though this begot, 
 and continued in them, such a mutual love, and 
 joy, and content, as was no way defective ; yet 
 this mutual content, and love, and joy, did receive 
 a daily avigmentation by such daily obligingness to 
 each other, as still added such new affluences to 
 the former fulness of these Divine souls as was 
 only improvable in Heaven, where they now en- 
 joy it." 
 
 The reason now urged against Walton's story 
 of the suddenness of the match is that the lady's 
 father was a near relative of Sir John Danvers, 
 Herbert's step-father ; and having, as Walton 
 asserts, known the poet "long and familiarly," 
 and often spoken to him as well as to his daughter 
 of each other's manifold perfections, it is some- 
 what improbable, though of course not impossible, 
 that they should not have met before. But the 
 length and manner of the courtship are of less 
 importance than the fact that the ascetic scholar 
 and theologian who, in his boyish verses, had 
 scorned the beauty of woman as an unholy thing — 
 
 Why should I women's eyes for crystal take ? — 
 
 was thus felicitously mated ; for his marriage to 
 
196 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Jane Danvers took place at Edington, a small 
 village near Bainton, on the 5th of March, 1628 
 (by our accounting 1629), a few weeks before 
 the completion of his thirty-sixth year. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 NICHOLAS FERRAR AND LITTLE GIDDING 
 
 *■ I "'O Nicholas Ferrar the world may be said 
 -^ to be indebted for the message of The 
 Temple ; the manuscript of this, the poet's most 
 vital and enduring work, having been sent to him 
 almost in his dying hour, to be published or 
 destroyed as he might think fit. Had anything 
 dimmed his perception of its poetical or spiritual 
 value, it is probable that George Herbert, the 
 once admired scholar, courtier, and wit, would 
 to-day be ta us little more than a name. Happily, 
 however, the task of literary executorship in his 
 case could not have fallen into better hands. 
 
 The founder of the famous household of Little 
 Gidding — for in all essentials it was a large family 
 living under one rule of religious discipline — was 
 bom in the same year as his friend, by our 
 modern reckoning on the 22nd of February, 1593. 
 His father, also named Nicholas, belonged to the 
 virile race of merchant adventurers to whom the 
 nation owed no small part of its prosperity in the 
 
 197 
 
198 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth. A gentleman by birth, 
 as his son John Ferrar tells us, he came of " the 
 family of the Ferrars in Yorkshire," and gained a 
 good reputation as a London merchant, " trading 
 to the East and West Indies, Spain, Flanders, 
 Germany, etc." His "good free table" was re- 
 sorted to by many lords, knights, and ladies, 
 among them such " men of eminency " as Sir 
 Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, and Sir 
 Walter Raleigh ; "all gallant seamen, with whom 
 he was an adventurer, evermore affecting the 
 planting of Christian religion in the new world 
 ... as well as his own lawful trading." His 
 desire to unite missionary with commercial enter- 
 prise is shown by the bequest in his will of ;^300 
 to the " Colledge in Virginia, to bee paid when 
 there shall be ten of the infidels' children placed 
 in it," and by other like legacies. Of his 
 mother, the same son gives a still more pleasing 
 account : she was of an old Cheshire family, the 
 Woodnoths of Shavington, who, he says, had 
 exercised lordship there for five hundred years. 
 By all testimonies she was hardly less remarkable 
 than the mother of George Herbert himself, 
 though of a more serious cast of mind. " There 
 were few women," her son affirms, "that ex- 
 ceeded her in comeliness of her body, excellent 
 beauty . . . fair, modest, and sober deportment ; 
 
NICHOLAS FERRAR AND LITTLE GIDDING 199 
 
 grave in her looks, humble in her carriage towards 
 all people, superlative in discretion ... of few 
 words." Yet, like Magdalen Herbert, she pos- 
 sessed the graces of speech, and could use them 
 when occasion demanded. Dr. (afterwards Bis- 
 hop) Lindsell, Nicholas Ferrar's tutor at Clare 
 Hall, Cambridge, declared that he " knew no 
 woman that passed her in eloquency ; " while her 
 religious devotion, "her charity, her constant daily 
 reading Scripture, her singing psalms when she 
 sat at work with her children and maids about 
 her, and hearing them read chapters, and her 
 often reading in the Book of Martyrs," equally 
 excited his admiration. She regularly attended 
 the Church-prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays, 
 and was computed to have heard twelve thousand 
 sermons, being " addicted that way." Her hus- 
 band's testimony should not be omitted : "These 
 forty-five years we have lived together, I must 
 say of her, she never gave me cause to be angry 
 with her ; so wise and good she is. You all know 
 I was by nature (which God forgive) both quick 
 and choleric and hasty, which she also will for- 
 give." Again, like Herbert's mother, she was 
 beautiful in old age ; at eighty having the clear 
 eyes and fine complexion of eighteen. 
 
 Many characteristic stories are told of the child- 
 hood of Nicholas, their third son, whose career 
 
200 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 seems to have been foreshadowed almost from his 
 birth. Though inclined to " aguish distempers 
 from his infancy," he is described by his brother 
 John as "a lovely child, fair and of bright hair 
 like his mother ; " while another writer says that 
 he was " noted for an active nimble youth, and 
 graceful in all his motions." He loved books 
 from the first, especially the Bible, "the book in 
 the world to him dear and precious ; " his next 
 favourite was The Book of Martyrs, the account in 
 which of the burning of Robert Ferrar, Bishop of 
 St. David's, at Carmarthen in 1555, he learned by 
 heart, "as for his name's sake," though there ap- 
 pears to have been no relationship between them. 
 His memory was great : at six or eight years old 
 he had "got all the Psalms without book:" and 
 he then applied himself to the English Chronicle, 
 which, together with Foxe's tragic memorials, he 
 would read while his companions were at play, 
 often neglecting his meals and sleep to finish the 
 narrative on which he was engaged. Even then 
 he "fancied bein^a clergyman," and amused his 
 elders by a solemn request to his mother " that 
 whatever his brothers wore, he might wear no 
 lace, but only plain clean banns [bands], for he 
 was resolved to be a clergyman." At about the 
 age of five years he was confirmed by the Bishop 
 of London, and, by returning again with his other 
 
NICHOLAS FERRAR 
 
 FROM TFIE PAINTING IN MAGDALEN COLI.KGF: LODGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
NICHOLAS FERRAR AND LITTLE GIDDING 201 
 
 school companions, succeeded in twice receiving 
 the episcopal laying on of hands. To the sur- 
 prised question of his schoolmaster, "Why did 
 you so? " he replied cheerfully, " I did it because 
 it was a good thing to have the Bishop's prayers 
 and blessing twice, and I have got it." 
 
 Like most men who have founded religious 
 societies before and since his time, he had very 
 early his visions of sin, and his grievous and sore 
 temptations. One frosty night, beset with doubt 
 " Whether there was a God, and how to be 
 served," he rose from his bed, and, going down 
 to a grass-plot in the garden, threw himself on his 
 face on the ground ; where, says his brother John, 
 " with extreme perplexity of grief, sobs, sighs, and 
 abundance of tears," he earnestly entreated of God 
 that "He would put into his heart the true fear 
 and care of His Divine Majesty, and that this fear 
 and love of God might never depart out of his 
 mind, and that he might know how he must serve 
 Him." After this, and more bitter weeping, his 
 heart was eased and comforted ; he returned to 
 his bed, and, although he "could not sleep but 
 little, yet he found daily more and more confirma- 
 tion in his soul, and so had all his lifetime after a 
 more than ordinary fear of God in him, and His 
 presence, which continued in him to his dying 
 day." 
 
202 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 In his thirteenth year he was sent to the Uni- ^ 
 versity of Cambridge, and entered his college, 
 then known as Clare Hall, as a pensioner : " But 
 soon after the Fellows would needs have him 
 fellow commoner, that he might be their com- 
 panion ; " and in 1610, having performed his Acts 
 in scholis publicis with distinguished success, he 
 was made Bachelor of Arts, and in a short time 
 himself elected a Fellow of the College. Here his 
 great memory and abilities, his studious habits, his 
 attention to religious duties, and his practical wis- 
 dom in affairs, joined to attractive personal qualities, 
 won him high regard ; but like Herbert he suf- 
 fered from agues, and three years after (in 16 13) 
 was obliged by the state of his health to travel 
 abroad. A place was secured for him in the 
 household of the Princess Elizabeth, then lately 
 married to Frederick the Elector Palatine ; and on 
 the 23rd of April he sailed with the royal suite 
 from Margate, the poet Quarles being also one of 
 the company. In his study at college a remarkable 
 paper was found three days after his departure, 
 evidently written under a strong sense of the 
 possible dangers before him, and urging his parents 
 in the case of his death not to grieve unduly. The 
 postscript foreshadows his later love and care for 
 the members of his family. " My dearest brothers 
 and sisters," it runs, "if I live you shall find me a 
 
NICHOLAS FERRAR AND LITTLE GIDDING 
 
 faithful, loving brother unto you all ; if I die, I be- 
 seech you by the fear of God, by the duty to our 
 parents, by the bond of nature, by the love you bear 
 me, that you all agree in perfect love and amity." 
 He did not, however, remain long in the service of 
 the Princess ; giving up his post before her arrival 
 in the Palatinate, and thenceforward continuing 
 his travels alone. 
 
 For the next five years he lived abroad ; he 
 visited many of the large Continental cities, Rome 
 among them, studying at the Universities of 
 Leipsic and Padua, and acquiring the Dutch, 
 Italian, French and Spanish languages, and also 
 some of the Oriental tongues. In the year 1618, 
 at the age of twenty- five, he returned to England, 
 having learned that his father's affairs were in- 
 volved in serious difficulties, and proceeded at 
 once to their arrangement. Soon after his return 
 he became connected with the famous and his- 
 torical Virginia Company, of which his father was 
 a shareholder ; his brother John being a member of 
 the council, and his later friend. Sir Edwin Sandys, 
 the governor. The story of his services to that 
 great society for the colonisation, and — thanks to 
 the strong religious feelings of many of its members 
 — the Christianising of the new world, is too long 
 for narration. Almost at once the Company be- 
 came involved in a struggle with King James, 
 
204 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 who, with his inveterate habit of meddling with 
 things beyond his powers or comprehension, had 
 decided to take its affairs into his own hands. 
 This he did in 1624, with the announcement that 
 " he would make it one of his masterpieces ; " " But 
 God knows," says John Ferrar, with righteous 
 indignation, " these were but fair words, as the 
 event showed, for all was let loose to go to six 
 and seven, as the proverb is." Nicholas Ferrar 
 had become a member of Parliament (for Lyming- 
 ton) in that year, and vigorously exerted himself 
 to promote the interests of the Company, being 
 often chosen by its committee to make their report 
 to the House, "all of which he performed so well 
 and so pleasingly that there was great notice taken 
 of him." Nevertheless, "the Colony languished, 
 and the most flourishing plantation in the world 
 was almost blasted under new lords and new 
 laws." 
 
 The lives of Nicholas Ferrar and of George 
 Herbert show a curious parallel in the manner 
 in which their earlier religious purposes were 
 finally realised, after years of seeming abandon- 
 ment. Both were driven into "sacred orders" 
 by the frustration of secular though worthy am- 
 bitions : had the poet gained his coveted office 
 of Secretary of State, or had the energetic deputy 
 of the Virginia Company been allowed to see the 
 
NICHOLAS FERRAR AND LITTLE GIDDING 205 
 
 fruit of his labours in a prosperous Christian colony, 
 with himself as its head, or at least its guiding spirit, 
 their destinies might have been otherwise recorded. 
 Nicholas Ferrar, however, seems to have thrown 
 aside his political schemes without any of the in- 
 ward struggles that marked Herbert's relinquish- 
 ment of his Court career. His decision once 
 made was fixed unalterably : he refused a lecture- 
 ship at Gresham College, and the offer of a rich 
 wife, described as " a very agreeable person ; " 
 alleging in the one case "other intentions and 
 aims," and in the other his resolution not to 
 marry at all. 
 
 The immediate occasion if not cause of the 
 Ferrars' retirement into the country, seems to 
 have been the great Plague of 1625. It was a 
 time of profound depression and gloom ; in Lon- 
 don 4,000 deaths had taken place in a single 
 week ; and all who could were flying from the 
 pest-ridden city. Mrs. Ferrar, whose husband, 
 the elder Nicholas, had died five years before, 
 had lately purchased the "lordship " of an almost 
 depopulated parish in Huntingdonshire, so obscure 
 and unknown, says Dr. J ebb, another of Ferrar's 
 biographers, " it scarce had any name in our most 
 accurate maps, till the fame of the holy life he 
 lived in that place made the name of Little Gid- 
 ding sound high in England." The air was good ; 
 
206 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 but the large manor-house was scarcely habitable 
 ("no better than all ruinated"), and the whole 
 domain lay in pasture, cared for only by shep- 
 herds. To this remote "quarantine" Nicholas 
 Ferrar had sent his brother John, the remains of 
 whose broken estate he had been able to save as 
 well as their father's, to prepare it for the abode of 
 the household. Mrs. Ferrar and other members 
 of the family had found shelter at Bourne in 
 Cambridgeshire, in the house of her son-in-law, a 
 country gentleman by the name of Collett ; but, 
 longing to see her son Nicholas, who had remained 
 behind in the city to arrange their affairs, she re- 
 fused to wait till the danger of possible infection 
 had passed, and came on to Little Gidding to see 
 him. " Their greeting was like that of old Jacob 
 and his son Joseph, after his father had given him 
 over for lost." Her son " prayed her to enter the 
 rude house and to repose herself after her journey : 
 ' Not so,' said she, ' yonder I see the Church ; let 
 us first go thither, to give God thanks that He 
 has brought me to this good place and has restored 
 me to my son.' It was told her there was no 
 getting into it, for as yet there had not been time 
 to empty the hay that was in it, which was in- 
 tended shortly to be done." The Church, it 
 should be said, had been, turned into a "hay- 
 barn and a hog-sty : " " But this good woman had 
 
LITTLE GIDDING CHURCH: EXTEKIOR 
 
 PRESENT TIME ' 
 
NICHOLAS FERRAR AND LITTLE GIDDING 207 
 
 somewhat of Augustine's mother Monnica in her 
 devotion, of whom that Father affirms that ' if a 
 dragon stood between her and the altar, she would 
 have stepped through him to advance thither.' " 
 She thrust herself a little way into the defiled 
 sanctuary, and " kneeled and prayed and wept 
 there about^a quarter of an hour : " then, charging 
 her son "to send instantly for all the workmen 
 about the house," she " commanded them to fling 
 out all the hay at the Church windows, and to 
 cleanse it as well as they could for the present." 
 This was done ; and on the following day " orders 
 were given for the Church to be well washed and 
 swept, and workmen were presently employed in 
 its reparations." 
 
 Thus, in a time of stress and sorrow, the 
 foundations of the " Protestant Nunnery " of 
 Little Gidding were laid. Evidently Mrs. Ferrar 
 had no small share in its establishment. " A 
 month being overpast, and no danger appearing of 
 infection by her son's coming out of the fatal city, 
 she sent for her children and grandchildren and 
 other her dear relations from Bourne, that they 
 all might live and serve God together at this their 
 new purchase. Seating themselves there, it re- 
 quired much cost and time to repair the old crazy 
 house, and make it a convenient habitation for a 
 religious and numerous family (consisting of above 
 
208 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 forty persons), of whom above half were so de- 
 scended from the old gentlewoman that they 
 kneeled to her morning and evening for her bless- 
 ing. Then Mr. Nicholas Ferrar, who was as it 
 were the soul that inspirited the whole family 
 with piety, began to bring all their affairs both 
 spiritual and temporal into as good order as could 
 be expected, and as the sadness of the time did 
 either permit or exact of them ; the Church being 
 now made fit for use, and in those additions of 
 structure or ornament which were made to the 
 Church, there were none of the family that had 
 not a hand, and they that through absence could 
 not do it themselves, had a stone laid by some 
 other hands." 
 
 A part of his new ordering of their affairs was 
 the daily reading of the Litany in the repaired 
 Church ; the Bishop of the diocese (Williams of 
 Lincoln) having given him his licence, and con- 
 tinued it after the abatement of the Plague. The 
 vicar of the adjoining parish of Steeple Gidding 
 gladly assisted them, and, " like a true spiritual 
 guide, walked with his own flock after him to 
 officiate at that Church." "Thus they began al- 
 ready to taste the delicious fruits of peace and 
 quietness, and they found by this little experience 
 how much the pleasant solitariness of the place 
 (for their family was in a manner all the parish) 
 
NICHOLAS FERRAR AND LITTLE GIDDING 209 
 
 contributed to the serenity of their thoughts and 
 the piety of their devotions. At this rate they 
 spun out that part of the unhealthy summer, and 
 all the long winter at Gidding." 
 
 In due course Nicholas Ferrar came " to a full 
 determination of entering into that religious course 
 of life which he had so long and so ardently 
 thirsted after." On Trinity Sunday, the nth June, 
 1626, he was ordained deacon in Henry the 
 Seventh's Chapel at Westminster Abbey, by 
 Bishop Laud, whose joy " that he was to lay his 
 hands on so extraordinary a person" was un- 
 bounded. But above the order of deacon he 
 would not go, "for he protested he durst not ad- 
 vance one step higher." On returning, he read 
 to his mother a solemn vow, " written in vellum 
 and signed with his own hand," that "he would 
 now separate himself to serve God in this holy 
 calling, to be the Levite himself in his own 
 house, and to make his own relations, which 
 were many, his cure of souls ; " a resolution 
 greeted with joyfulness by all of his kindred 
 there assembled. 
 
 Declining several offers of preferment in the 
 Church, from which indeed his refusal of priest's 
 orders had debarred him, he continued the labours 
 of his cure. His mother, as at first, took a lead- 
 ing part in the work. Having arranged their 
 
210 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 affairs in London, and bidden a final farewell to 
 their friends of the great world, "they all re- 
 turned to their Little Gidding, where the first 
 thing old Mrs, Ferrar did was to beautify the 
 Church. ... So she contrived to have it wain- 
 scotted and the floor neatly boarded (as it still 
 continues) ; and this was done not only for cleanli- 
 ness but warmth, since they resolved to spend so 
 much of their time in it. She adorned the Com- 
 munion Table with carpets of blue silk em- 
 broidered with gold ; the pulpit and the reading- 
 desk were hung with fine cloth of the same colour, 
 richly laced and fringed with vallans [valance] 
 about each of them. She covered the floor upon 
 which the Altar was raised with sky-coloured silk, 
 the benches round the chancel with blue taffety ; 
 and all the rest was suitable and very noble. But 
 these were ornaments only for Sundays and holy 
 days ; there were carpets of tapestry and green 
 cloth for the week-days." A brass font was set 
 up, "and a large eagle of the same to hold a 
 fair Bible. She thought the house of God the 
 only place on which such costly furniture was 
 not ill-bestowed ; and in this her son not only 
 approved but animated her devotion." Although 
 once spoken of above as an altar, the Commu- 
 nion Table is elsewhere expressly described as 
 placed lengthwise in the chancel. 
 
LITTLE GIDDING CHURCH 
 
 PRESENT TIME 
 
 INTERIOR 
 
NICHOLAS FERRAR AND LITTLE GIDDING 211 
 
 The Church being ready and adorned, their 
 next care was to provide a school, for which they 
 " dispigeoned " an old dove-house on the premises ; 
 turning it into " a handsome school-house, where 
 not only their own children were trained up, but 
 those of other parishes upon the request of their 
 parents had liberty to come ; where they might 
 learn virtue as well as grammar, music, and arith- 
 metic, together with fair writing." Convenient 
 lodgings were provided for the scholars as well 
 as the " three several masters " engaged for their 
 instruction : his own (Nicholas Ferrar's) being 
 "so in the midst of the house that he could see 
 and hear good order observed." For all his 
 nieces and female relations, "according to their 
 ages and conditions," he provided "chambers, 
 closets, gardens, and walks of pleasure." He pro- 
 vided also an infirmary for the sick, as well as 
 rules and times for the family recreations, " with 
 places for running and vaulting, and shooting at 
 butts with bows and arrows." " The habit of the 
 young women, nine or ten or more of them, was 
 black stuff, all of one grave fashion always the 
 same, with comely veils on their heads. . . . They 
 were curious at their needles, and they made their 
 scissors to serve [either] the altar or the poor. 
 They were fine surgeons, and they kept by them 
 all manner of salves and oils and balsams : a 
 
212 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 room they had on purpose to lock up these and 
 cordial waters of their own distilling. None 
 of them were nice of dressing with their own 
 hands poor people's wounds, were they never so 
 offensive ; but as for prescribing physic, their 
 uncle understood it well himself, yet he never 
 practised it, and he forbid them to tamper or 
 meddle with it." With these material aids, the 
 wise virgins of the household were " expert and 
 ready to administer good counsels, prayers, and 
 comforts to their patients for their souls' health. 
 To take off the burden from his aged mother's 
 shoulders, her son ordered his four nieces to be 
 the managers, yet so as it might prove a burden 
 to none of them ... he contrived that every 
 sister should be sole governess but one month in 
 four, and then Mary's better part was not to be 
 taken away from her who acted the part of their 
 Martha." The rule of this temporary house- 
 keeper was absolute ; every farthing of the weekly 
 expenses was put down ; and at the end of the 
 month or year the books were carefully scrutinised. 
 " This made his nieces, several of whom resolved 
 to marry, not only perfect accountants but good 
 housewives too. The land was all let out in 
 parcels to their tenants, who by agreement were 
 to serve the house with some provisions at con- 
 stant rates. Their diet was neat and frugal, yet 
 
NICHOLAS FERRAR AND LITTLE GIDDING 21S 
 
 with variety enough accommodated to every one's 
 health and constitution." 
 
 The persons thus gathered together for good 
 works under the guidance of Nicholas Ferrar 
 appear to have consisted of his mother, old Mrs. 
 Ferrar ; his elder brother John and his wife, with 
 their son, yet another Nicholas ; and an infant 
 daughter born at Gidding and called Virginia, in 
 memory of their beloved American plantation ; 
 his sister, Susannah CoUett and her husband, Mr. 
 Collett of Bourne, with their sixteen children. 
 Mr. Collett, who, to say truth, seems to have been 
 completely under the dominance of his energetic 
 wife and her brother, does not figure largely in 
 the narrative. On the other hand, his children, 
 among them Ferrar Collett, who with his cousin, 
 the youngest Nicholas, followed closely in their 
 uncle's footsteps, and the two " maideri sisters," 
 Mary and Anna, with another daughter who 
 married a clergyman named Mapletoft, are of no 
 small importance. Their servants, in and about 
 the house, were doubtless considerable in number, 
 and ere long they had many occasional guests and 
 callers. 
 
 Turning to their daily life, all accounts agree 
 as to its carefully planned and scrupulously fol- 
 lowed routine. Their Sundays, naturally differed 
 from the week-days, "being the first and best 
 
214 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 day of the week ; " but they rose, as on other 
 days, at about five o'clock in winter, and four in 
 summer, old Mrs. Ferrar with them. Then, after 
 private thanksgivings in their rooms, which were 
 fitted " for that intent," " they resort into a large 
 great chamber fairly hung, where in winter before 
 that hour is a good warm fire made by a servant 
 . . . there they always found Nicholas Ferrar 
 ready to attend their coming." To him the 
 daughters and younger children repeated, as 
 they had also done on week-days, " such chapters 
 and psalms as each were to give an account of 
 without book. Then they retired themselves, and 
 this day made their selves all more comely in 
 their best attires, he persuading all sorts to be 
 decent, neat, cleanly in their apparel, as a thing 
 well-pleasing to God and man." 
 
 At nine o'clock the bell rang for prayers in the 
 Church, which stood about forty paces from the 
 house, at the end of the garden. The household 
 then reassembled in the great chamber, "there 
 was a hymn sung, and the organs played to it 
 . . . each person said some sentence of Scripture 
 . . . and so all went down to Church ... in 
 decent order, two and two together, the three 
 masters in gowns leading the way, and the young 
 youths in black gowns following them. Nicholas 
 Ferrar led his mother, his two brothers, John 
 
NICHOLAS FERRAR AND LITTLE GIDDING 215 
 
 Ferrar and Mr. Collett, going before her (after the 
 children), and then followed their sister Collett and 
 her daughters, and so all the servants, two by 
 two : each as they came into the Church making 
 low obeisance. . . . Nicholas Ferrar being in his 
 surplice and hood (for so in it he always went to 
 Church) stepped up into the reading-place, and 
 there said divine service, and responses were 
 made by all present, and the reading psalms were 
 done so." 
 
 Thus Morning Prayers were said. Afterwards, 
 in the summer " in a gallery, in winter in a room 
 where a good fire was," forty or fifty children 
 from the neighbouring parishes repeated " without 
 book their psalms," receiving a penny for each 
 psalm perfectly said ; some carrying away " groats 
 apiece or more " as well as an intimate knowledge 
 of the Psalter. At half-past ten all went again 
 to the Church, where, after Nicholas Ferrar had 
 read the second service, the minister of the next 
 parish preached a sermon. At noon the " psalm- 
 children " dined, standing at long movable trestles, 
 " the old gentlewoman setting the first dish upon 
 the table." Then the family dined in the great 
 dining-room ; the meal being preceded by a hymn 
 sung to the organs, and improved by Scripture 
 reading by the younger sort. After dinner there 
 was liberty for walking in orchard and garden, or 
 
216 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 retiring to private rooms : at two all went to a 
 sermon at the neighbouring Church of Steeple 
 Gidding ; then followed Psalm-saying in the great 
 chamber, and another stage of respite. At six in 
 winter and five in summer, supper was brought 
 into the great parlour, again to vocal and instru- 
 mental music : Bible-reading, followed by a story 
 from The Book of Martyrs, accompanied the re- 
 past ; and then there was liberty till the eight 
 o'clock bell summoned them to the great chamber, 
 to hymns, organs, and prayers, and to the beauti- 
 ful and patriarchal ceremony of blessing by the 
 mother and grandmother of the flock. "So all 
 bid each good night, and to their several apart- 
 ments each went, the younger sort to bed, and 
 the elder were in their chamber or closets till they 
 went to bed ; for it was an order that none must 
 after prayers go up and down, but keep in their 
 chambers." 
 
 Special care was taken to avoid unnecessary 
 work on Sundays, the preparing of meals being 
 arranged so as not to cause absences from Church ; 
 and at the monthly Communions, on the first 
 Sunday of each month, the servants stood at the 
 lower end of the table, and dined with the family. 
 
 The week-day life was equally strict, it might 
 seem equally Sabbatical ; there was the same 
 regularity of religious exercises, though they dif- 
 
NICHOLAS FERRAR AND LITTLE GIDDING 217 
 
 fered somewhat from the Sunday's routine ; but 
 now secular study and work were introduced and 
 followed diligently. After breakfast the young 
 children, and the youths with their masters, 
 retired to the school-room in the dispigeoned 
 dove-house ; and " others, as young or old, and 
 such as were too young to go to school," gath- 
 ered about old Mrs. Ferrar's chair, and sat there 
 in silence, " either at their book or otherwise ; 
 and the others, some to their needleworks, others 
 to learn what they were to say next day." Each 
 hour had its employment : "the making the ' Con- 
 cordance,' their singing, their playing on their in- 
 struments, their writing, ciphering ; and so never 
 idle. And for variety of employments, Nicholas 
 Ferrar entertained a bookbinder's daughter of 
 Cambridge, to learn of her the skill and art of 
 bookbinding and gilding, and grew very expert at 
 it, as the King, having received books of her 
 [their?] binding, said 'he never saw the like for 
 workmanship.' " Their meals on week-days were 
 enlivened by lighter secular readings ; it having 
 been agreed " that something delightful and easy, 
 as stories of sea-voyages, descriptions of foreign 
 countries and accounts of revolutions that hap- 
 pened in them, should be reserved for a time 
 when men do not willingly admit of any very 
 serious and deep speculations." 
 
218 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 The most noteworthy examples of their book- 
 binding were the Concordances or Harmonies of 
 the Gospels already mentioned, and other Con- 
 cordances to the Holy Scriptures ; the first of them, 
 a Harmony of the Four Gospels, having been pre- 
 pared under the direction of Nicholas Ferrar for 
 their own use, and so arranged that the four books 
 could be read separately or in one continuous 
 narrative, " the printed text being cut out and 
 pasted on large sheets of paper, and every page 
 illustrated with engravings." So "artificially" 
 was the work done that it resembled a new kind 
 of printing ; and the fame of it reaching the ears 
 of King Charles led to their preparing other 
 similar books — a second Harmony of the Gospels, 
 a Harmony of the Books of Kings and Chronicles, 
 and The Monotessaron, or the Four Evangelists 
 in English, Latin, French, and Italian — for him- 
 self and his son, Charles Prince of Wales, both of 
 whom eventually visited their house. These and 
 other specimens of their workmanship, all of them 
 remarkable for the exquisite neatness of the text 
 and the richness and beauty of the binding, are 
 still preserved in museums and private collections. 
 
 The first of these Harmonies, that designed for 
 their own use, was connected with the scheme of 
 daily worship observed by the family ; the differ- 
 ent members of which repeated the "heads" or 
 
NICHOLAS FERRAR AND LITTLE GIDDING 219 
 
 "chapters" hourly throughout the day, together 
 with some of the Psalms, largely it appears from 
 memory. By this plan, the whole of the Gospels 
 were said over once a month, or twelve times a, 
 year, and the whole Book of Psalms once every 
 day, or rather every day and night, for the system 
 by which the Psalms were recited, included a con- 
 siderable night vigil. The account of the Psalms 
 is not quite clear. John Ferrar affirms that 
 " each hour of the day had certain Psalms to be 
 said," as well as a portion of the Gospels, the 
 order of repetition beginning at six in the morn- 
 ing ; but he asserts again with equal clearness 
 that in the night watches or vigils, which lasted 
 from nine o'clock in the evening to an hour after 
 midnight, it was arranged that "the two that 
 watched should carefully and distinctly say all 
 David's Psalms over in those four hours' time 
 . . . having both a glass and the clocks to let 
 them know how the night passed away." This 
 would mean that some of the Psalms were re- 
 peated twice ; but Walton's statement, that in 
 the night vigil they said only "the Psalms that 
 had not been read in the day," may offer the true 
 explanation. The two watchers said the verses 
 alternately, antiphon-wise, kneeling the while ; 
 and at one o'clock they aroused Nicholas Ferrar, 
 who continued the vigil by "prayer and medita- 
 
220 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 tion," though not it appears by a formal order of 
 religious offices, until six o'clock. It seems to 
 have been this hourly, though not continuous, 
 round of services — these "promiscuous private 
 prayers all the night long by nightly turns, just 
 like as the English nuns at Saint Omers and other 
 Popish places " — that chiefly excited the anger of 
 the more bigoted Puritans of the day, and led to 
 the breaking up of the household in the Civil 
 War. 
 
 A religious retreat and oratory ; a school of 
 learning and manners, and of training in domestic 
 duties and manual crafts ; a hospital, dispensary, 
 and almshouse — above all a place of cheerfulness 
 and calm content, strictly ordered but adorned by 
 art and sweetened by music — Little Gidding has 
 always appealed strongly to the imagination of 
 the outside world ; moving some minds, like De 
 Quincey's, to admiration, and others, like Car- 
 lyle's, to contempt. Among its kind it was, and 
 perhaps ever will be, unique. No vows were re- 
 quired ; service was given voluntarily ; marriage 
 was encouraged rather than otherwise; and no 
 further austerities seem to have been exacted than 
 compliance with the daily round of devotional 
 offices and secular tasks — warm fires in winter 
 are repeatedly mentioned, and " baked puddings " 
 figured in the frugal but " neat " and varied 
 
NICHOLAS FERRAR AND LITTLE GIDDING 221 
 
 dietary. The story of Little Gidding, however, 
 from its dramatic foundation to the royal visits, 
 the plundering of the house and Church by the 
 Parliamentary soldiers, and the gradual thinning 
 and final dispersal of its inmates by death, re- 
 moval, and other causes, has been fully set forth 
 by many hands ; and here only the relations of its 
 founder with the subject of this memoir need be 
 considered. Each seems to have strongly in- 
 fluenced the other. George Herbert was one of 
 the " religious, grave, learned divines " who ad- 
 vised Nicholas Ferrar to adopt and continue his 
 daily circle of devotions ; and Ferrar, as we have 
 seen, persuaded Herbert to re-edify Leighton 
 Church ; while again, the poet so valued the 
 friendship of his spiritual brother that he wished 
 to exchange his parish at Bemerton for one near 
 Gidding, valuing " Mr. Ferrar's near neighbour- 
 hood more than any living." Ferrar also sub- 
 mitted his three translations of Valdesso, Lessius, 
 and Carbo to Herbert, who supplied a Preface 
 and Notes to the Divine Considerations of the 
 first-named writer ; while, finally, the poet when 
 dying entrusted his manuscript of The Temple 
 unreservedly to Ferrar's hands, to be published 
 or destroyed as he might think fit, his own pro- 
 found humility forbidding him to pass judgment 
 on its merits. 
 
222 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Among the many visitors to the " Protestant 
 Nunnery " ^ — zealous Puritans, scandalised by the 
 revival of monasticism in the purged and re- 
 generated England of their day, and thoughtful 
 students from Cambridge, attracted by its fame as 
 a quiet and ordered devotional retreat — was the 
 enthusiastic Crashaw, the religious poet of the 
 age who maybe regarded as the direct opposite 
 of Herbert in temperament. Himself a Fellow of 
 one of the Cambridge colleges (Peterhouse), much 
 of his time, as described in a familiar passage, was 
 spent in " St. Marie's Church near St. Peter's 
 College," where he " lodged under Tertullian's 
 roof of angels," and " like a primitive saint . . . 
 offered more prayers in the night than others in 
 the day ; " his admiration for Herbert's poems 
 suggesting, no doubt, the title of his own Steps 
 to the Temple. As already pointed out, he be- 
 longed to a later phase of the religious history of 
 the time ; and his ejectment from his Fellowship 
 by the Parliamentarians was followed by his re- 
 ception into the Roman Catholic Church, and by 
 his death as a Canon of Loretto in or about 1650. 
 At Little Gidding he could hardly fail to have 
 been a welcome guest. 
 
 ' One of the curious visitors to Gidding described the family 
 as " orthodox, regular, puritan protestants." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 BEMERTON : THE PARSON IN HIS CURE 
 
 ABOUT three months after the marriage of 
 George Herbert to Jane Danvers, Philip 
 Earl of Pembroke (William being lately dead) 
 requested King Charles to bestow the Rectory 
 of Fugglestone with Bemerton upon his gifted 
 kinsman, the king replying : " Most willingly to 
 Mr. Herbert, if it be worth his acceptance." But 
 the suddenness of the unsought presentation, 
 and a sense of the responsibility its acceptance 
 would involve, threw the hyper-sensitive poet 
 into an agony of doubt as to his fitness for the 
 vocation. He fasted, prayed, and considered for 
 a whole month, undecided whether to persevere 
 in his "resolution for the clergy," or to decline 
 both the priesthood and the living, suffering 
 meanwhile " such spiritual conflicts as none can 
 think, but only those that have endured them." 
 
 At this time he was visited at Bainton, where 
 he was staying with his wife's friends and relations, 
 by his old helper, the benevolent London gold- 
 
 833 
 
224 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 smith, Arthur Woodnot (or Woodnoth), who was 
 delighted to find him happily married and seem- 
 ingly restored to health. From Bainton, after 
 some days of rejoicing, they journeyed to the 
 seat of the Earl of Pembroke, at Wilton, near 
 Bemerton, in the same county ; King Charles, 
 with the earl and the whole Court, being there 
 or at Salisbury, a few miles distant. It was at 
 this time apparently that the poet made his final 
 decision, if, indeed, it was not made for him. In 
 thanking the earl, he explained his reasons for 
 hesitating to accept the gift ; but that night his 
 kinsman informed Bishop Laud, who was one of 
 the guests, of his disturbed state of mind, with the 
 result that the waverer was convinced that his 
 refusal of the living was sinful. A tailor was 
 summoned from Salisbury to take his measure : 
 and the next day, habited in his new canonical 
 clothes, he carried his presentation to the bishop 
 of the diocese, Dr. Davenant, who, as he was 
 already a deacon, gave him immediate institution, 
 and inducted him (26th April, 1630) "into the 
 good and more pleasant than healthful parsonage 
 of Bemerton, which is a mile from Salisbury." 
 
 Here it may be said that Laud, although only 
 Bishop of London at the time (he was not raised 
 to Canterbury until 1633, the year of Herbert's 
 death), was already high in the king's favour, and 
 
BEMERTON: THE PARSON IN HIS CURE 
 
 virtually primate of the realm. Dr, Davenant, a 
 Calvinist of King James's appointing, was Bishop 
 of Salisbury from 1621 to 1641. "A man in 
 whom piety and sound learning were united to 
 a degree perhaps rarely excelled," he was other- 
 wise distinguished as the uncle of the inimitable 
 Thomas Fuller, but less meritoriously as an unmar- 
 ried prelate whose " batchellor's bounty," unlike 
 Dean Nevile's, was chiefly bestowed in "dignities, 
 prebends, or livings " to his large kindred. 
 
 The story of Herbert's induction is well known. 
 Shut into the church to toll the bell, as required 
 by law on such occasions, he remained so long 
 that his friends, growing anxious, looked in at 
 the window, and saw him prostrate on the ground 
 before the altar, engaged as he afterwards told 
 them in framing rules for his life as a parish 
 priest. His decision now finally made, he spoke 
 freely of his past and of his future aims. The night 
 after his induction he said to Mr. Woodnot : — 
 
 " I now look back upon my aspiring thoughts, 
 and think myself more happy than if I had 
 attained what then I so ambitiously thirsted for : 
 and I can now behold the Court with an impartial 
 eye, and see plainly that it is made up of fraud, 
 and titles, and flattery, and many other such 
 empty, imaginary, painted pleasures — pleasures 
 that are so empty as not to satisfy when they 
 15 
 
226 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 are enjoyed. But in God and His service is a 
 fulness of all joy and pleasure, and no satiety. 
 And I will now use all my endeavours to bring 
 my relations and dependants to a love and re- 
 liance on Him who never fails those that trust 
 Him. But above all I will be sure to live well, 
 because the virtuous life of a clergyman is the 
 most powerful eloquence to persuade all that see 
 it to reverence and love, and at least to desire to 
 live like Him. And this I will do, because I 
 know that we live in an age that hath more need 
 of good examples than precepts. And I beseech 
 that God Who hath honoured me so much as to 
 call me to serve Him at His Altar, that as by 
 His special grace He hath put into my heart 
 these good desires and resolutions ; so He will 
 by His assisting grace g^ve me ghostly strength 
 to bring the same to good effect And I beseech 
 Him that my humble and charitable life may so 
 win upon others as to bring glory to my Jesus, 
 whom I have this day taken to be my Master 
 and Governor : and I am so proud of His service 
 that I will always observe, and obey, and do His 
 will, and always call Him 'Jesus, my Master;' 
 and I will always contemn my birth, or any title 
 or dignity that can be conferred upon me, when I 
 shall compare them with my title of being a Priest, 
 and serving at the Altar of Jesus my Master," 
 
BEMERTON : THE PARSON IN HIS CURE 227 
 
 Three days after this memorable ceremony, and 
 the change of " his sword and silk clothes into a 
 canonical coat," he returned thus attired with his 
 friend Mr. Woodnot to Bainton ; and having 
 saluted his wife, affectionately it is to be hoped, 
 said to her : " You are now a minister's wife, and 
 must now so far forget your father's house as not 
 to claim a precedence of any of your parishioners : 
 for you are to know that a Priest's wife can chal- 
 lenge no precedence or place but that which she 
 purchases by her obliging humility : and I am 
 sure places so purchased do best become them. 
 And let me tell you that 1 am so good a herald 
 as to assure you that this is truth." But his wife, 
 we are told, was so meek herself as to assure him 
 " it was no vexing news to her, and that he should 
 see her observe it with a cheerful willingness." 
 
 It is characteristic of the time that, as at Leigh- 
 ton and Little Gidding, the Church fabric and 
 properties had been grossly neglected and were 
 in a ruinous state ; owing partly no doubt to the 
 non-residence of the former rector. It is equally 
 characteristic of George Herbert that he at once 
 set himself to the task of repairing them. Leaving 
 his wife at Bainton, he soon returned to his parish, 
 " to view the Church and repair the chancel, and, 
 indeed, to rebuild almost three parts of his house, 
 which was fallen down or decayed." He also 
 
228 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 appears to have repaired the Church at Fuggle- 
 stone, about a mile distant ; this being properly 
 the Parish Church, to which Bemerton was merely 
 a chapel-of-ease. The ecclesiastical buildings — 
 both, as all pilgrims to the Herbert shrines know, 
 tiny structures on the high-road between Salis- 
 bury and Wilton — received his first care : the 
 parsonage, also "at his own great charge," was 
 then made ready for himself and his like-spirited 
 wife. " And having done this good work he 
 caused these verses to be writ upon, or engraved 
 in, the mantel of the chimney in his hall : — 
 
 To My Successor. 
 If thou chance for to find 
 A new house to thy mind, 
 
 And built without thy cost ; 
 Be good to the poor, 
 As God gives thee store. 
 
 And then my labour's not lost." 
 
 Having thus "fixed him at Bemerton," Walton 
 proceeds to give an account "of his behaviour 
 both to his parishioners and those many others 
 that knew and conversed with him." As yet, 
 however, he was only a deacon, " and, therefore, 
 longed for the next Ember Week, that he might 
 be ordained priest, and made capable of admin- 
 istering both the Sacraments. At which time the 
 Rev. Humphrey Henchman, now Lord Bishop of 
 London (who does not mention him but with 
 
BEMERTON : THE PARSON IN HIS CURE 229 
 
 some veneration for his life and excellent learn- 
 ing ?), tells me he laid his hand on Mr. Herbert's 
 head, and, alas ! within less than three years lent 
 his shoulder to carry his dear friend to his grave." 
 Apparently it was at this time, and in order to 
 " preserve those holy rules which such a priest as 
 he intended to be ought to observe," that Her- 
 bert composed what is probably, after The Temple, 
 his most important work in English — the "little 
 book called The Country Parson ; . . . a book so 
 full of plain, prudent, and useful rules," says Wal- 
 ton, "that that country parson that can spare 
 twelve pence and yet wants it is scarce excusable." 
 His life thenceforward was a faithful application 
 of the precepts he thus set down for the guidance 
 of himself and others. His first pulpit labours, as 
 might be expected in a neglected parish where 
 the Churches had been allowed to fall into decay, 
 were of the nature of instruction in the funda- 
 mentals of worship and religious life. "The text 
 of his first sermon was taken out of Solomon's 
 Proverbs, and the words were : ' Keep thy heart 
 with all diligence.' In which first sermon he gave 
 his parishioners many necessary, holy, safe rules 
 for the discharge of a good conscience both to 
 God and man, and delivered his sermon after a 
 most florid manner, both with great learning and 
 eloquence. But at the close of this sermon, told 
 
230 GEORGE HERBERT AXD HIS TIMES 
 
 them, 'That should not be his constant wav of 
 preaching ; for since Almighty God does not in- 
 tend to lead men ti^ heaven by hard questions, he 
 would not therefore fiU their heads with un- 
 necessary notions ; but that for their sakes his 
 language and his expressions should be more 
 plain and practical in his future sermons.' And 
 he then made it his humble request that thev 
 would be constant to the afternoon's service and 
 catechising, and showed them convincing reasons 
 why he desired it ; and his obliging example and 
 persuasions brought them to a willing conformity- 
 with his desirea" 
 
 It is clear that he at once abandoned the florid 
 manner — an echo, possibly, of Donne's elaborate 
 discourses to his London congregations, or of his 
 own flights as University Orator — for a much 
 simpler style. Indeed, he seems to have confined 
 himself to explaining the Prayer Book and Church 
 Sendee, and showing his rustic flock the sweet 
 reasonableness of the Anglican ritual "The 
 texts for all his future sermons (which God knows 
 were not many) were constandy taken out of the 
 Gospel for the day ; and he did as constandy 
 declare why the Church did appoint that portion 
 of Scripture to be that day read, and in what 
 manner the collect for ever}- Sunday does refer to 
 the Gospel or to the Episde then read to them : 
 
BEMERTON : THE PARSON IN HIS CURE 231 
 
 and, that they might pray with understanding, he 
 did usually take occasion to explain, not only the 
 collect for every particular Sunday, but the reasons 
 of all the other collects and responses in our 
 Church Service ; and made it appear to them that 
 the whole service of the Church was a reasonable 
 and therefore an acceptable sacrifice to God." 
 
 Thus, with minute thoroughness, he went over 
 the whole scheme of public worship as prescribed 
 by authority : prayers, creeds, and confessions, 
 versicles and responses, psalms, lauds, and thanks- 
 givings, with the various offices for different 
 occasions — in short, the whole sequence of daily, 
 weekly, and yearly devotion, as set forth in the 
 English formularies. He was himself a diligent 
 catechist on Sunday afternoons, "after his second 
 lesson, and in the pulpit," never exceeding half 
 an hour, and always "so happy as to have an 
 obedient and a full congregation." The Puritan 
 preachers who "slubbered" over the prayers in 
 their haste to begin their sermons, were sharply 
 rebuked by his practice as well as precepts. "If 
 he were at any time too zealous in his sermons, 
 it was in reproving the indecencies of the people's 
 behaviour in the time of Divine service, and of 
 those ministers that huddled up the Church prayers 
 without a visible reverence and affection, namely, 
 such as seemed to say the Lord's Prayer or collect 
 
232 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 in a breath ; but for himself, his custom was to 
 stop betwixt every collect, and give the people 
 time to consider what they had prayed, and to 
 force their desires affectionately to God before he 
 engaged them into new petitions." 
 
 Having urged a system of daily religious offices 
 upon his friend Ferrar, he was not slow, to adopt 
 one for his own household. It was his practice, 
 " strictly at the canonical hours of ten and four," 
 to appear with his wife and three nieces and his 
 servants at the Church prayers in the little chapel- 
 of-ease opposite the parsonage ; and the unwonted 
 custom soon attracted many of his parishioners 
 and gentlemen of the district. Also, "some of 
 the meaner sort of his parish did so love and 
 reverence Mr. Herbert that they would let their 
 plough rest when Mr. Herbert's saints' bell rung 
 to prayers, that they might also offer their devo- 
 tions to God with him, and would then return 
 back to their plough." These services at Church, 
 however, were not allowed to interfere with his 
 private devotions, or with the household worship, 
 the short prayers of which were always of a set 
 form, and concluded with the collect for the day 
 or week. 
 
 As at Cambridge, his principal recreation was 
 music. He is said to have composed hymns and 
 anthems, which he set to music and sang to his 
 
w 
 
 O 
 
 o 
 
 a 
 
 d 
 
 o 
 X 
 
 o 
 
BEMERTON: THE PARSON IN HIS CURE 233 
 
 lute or viol ; and in spite of his love of retirement, 
 he usually walked twice every week to the 
 Cathedral services at Salisbury, and also took 
 part there at "an appointed private music 
 meeting ; " for which innocent practices he ap- 
 pears to have thought it necessary to offer the 
 apology that " religion does not banish mirth, but 
 only moderates and sets rules to it." 
 
 If it be true that most of the Temple poems 
 were composed at this time, many of their images 
 or illustrations may have been suggested by the 
 quiet rural scenery through which he passed in 
 his walks between the retired parsonage and the 
 ancient Cathedral city. Every foot of the mile 
 or more of nearly level high-road, with its bor- 
 dering fields, flowers, and hedges, must have 
 become intimately known to him ; as his own 
 slender figure, in its dark clerical habit and white 
 bands, could not fail to grow familiar to all who 
 lived or went by the way. But it may be doubted 
 if most of his religious poems were composed at 
 Bemerton. Many of them seem to bear marks of 
 the time of spiritual stress preceding the compara- 
 tive peace of his beneficed days ; and in any case, 
 poetry is the business of a lifetime, and rarely 
 bound to the limits of time or place. 
 
 Many parochial adventures, if they may be so 
 called, befell him in these quiet foot journeys. 
 
234 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 He was instant in season and out with people of 
 all sorts and conditions, gentlemen and clergymen 
 of the neighbourhood, labourers, and others, most 
 of whom, as the result of their meeting, fell in 
 love with his person if not with his doctrines. 
 The incident of the poor man and his beast is 
 perhaps the most familiar of these encounters. 
 Seeing a carrier whose horse was sinking under 
 his burden, the immaculate parson threw off his 
 canonical coat, and helped him to unload and re- 
 load the suffering animal ; to the fouling of his 
 clothes and the scandalising of his musical friends 
 at Salisbury, who were shocked that " Mr. George 
 Herbert, who used to be so trim and clean, came 
 into that company so soiled and discomposed." 
 Upon his explaining the cause, and being rebuked 
 by one of the Pharisees of the Cathedral for his 
 " dirty employment," he replied that the omission 
 of his act would have wounded his conscience 
 every time he passed the place : " For if I be 
 bound to pray for all that be in distress," he 
 added, " I am sure I am bound, so far as it is 
 in my power, to practise what I pray for. And 
 though I do not wish for the like occasion every 
 day, yet let me tell you I would not willingly pass 
 one day of my life without comforting a sad soul, 
 or showing mercy ; and I praise God for this 
 occasion. And now let us tune our instruments." 
 
BEMERTON : THE PARSON IN HIS CURE 235 
 
 Another like incident, showing the firm resolve 
 of the courtier-parson to be the friend and helper 
 of the poorest of his flock, was that of the old 
 woman who applied to him at his first visit to 
 Bemerton. She came " with an intent to acquaint 
 him with her necessitous condition, as also with 
 some troubles of her mind : but after she had 
 spoke some few words to him, she was surprised 
 with a fear, and that begot a shortness of breath, 
 so that her spirits and speech failed her." Upon 
 perceiving this, the compassionate parson, after 
 many comfortable and heartening words, took her 
 by the hand, caused her to sit beside him, and, 
 finding that she was of his parish, " told her, ' He 
 would be acquainted with her, and take her into 
 his care.' And having with patience heard and 
 understood her wants (and it is some relief for a 
 poor body to be but heard with patience), he, like 
 a Christian clergyman, comforted her by his meek 
 behaviour and counsel : but because that cost him 
 nothing, he relieved her with money too, and so 
 sent her home with a cheerful heart, praising God 
 and praying for him." 
 
 These are pictures of an Arcadian parish ; and 
 it is to be feared that the country parson of to- 
 day finds himself obliged to be more circumspect 
 of his bounty if not of his comfortable speeches ; 
 but the newly beneficed priest, as we have seen 
 
236 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 before, was not always soft spoken. Yet he 
 was an adept, says Barnabas Oley, " in the 
 right managing of the fraternal duty of reproof." 
 " There was not a man in his way (be he of what 
 ranke he would) that spoke awry in order to God, 
 but he wiped his mouth with a modest, grave, and 
 Christian reproof ... his singular dexterity in 
 sweetening this art " being seen (as it certainly is 
 in The Country Parson) "in the garb and phrase 
 of his writings." 
 
 No picture of the Bemerton life would be com- 
 plete without the pleasing figure of Mistress Jane 
 Herbert, the " minister's wife," whose surprising 
 readiness to forego her privileges of birth, and to 
 claim no precedence in her husband's parish, ex- 
 cept what she might purchase " by her obliging 
 humility," has been mentioned. That she proved 
 an admirable helpmate to the devoted pastor need 
 not be doubted : she became the cheerful and 
 efficient almoner of his charities, a tenth penny of 
 his tithe and a tenth part of his corn and the like, 
 her benefactions usually taking the form of shoes 
 and blankets. The poet's own bounty was un- 
 limited : he would never turn his face from those 
 in want, and even sought out the deserving poor 
 of his flock and relieved them. To the friend 
 who advised him to be more frugal of his gifts, in 
 view of a possible increase of his family, he made 
 
BEMERTON: THE PARSON IN HIS CURE 237 
 
 the uncompromising answer : " Sir, my wife hath 
 a competent maintenance secured her after my 
 death, and, therefore, as this is my prayer, so this 
 my resolution shall, by God's grace, be unalter- 
 able." 
 
 Yet another glimpse of this happy and char- 
 itable home and parish life is afforded by Herbert 
 himself in a letter to his brother Henry. Al- 
 though undated, it was evidently written from 
 Bemerton, probably soon after he had settled in 
 the repaired parsonage with his wife and his two 
 motherless nieces — the daughters of his sister 
 Margaret, who, as mentioned in a former place, 
 had been married to John Vaughan of Llwydiart, 
 in Wales. At the time of the letter, the two 
 elder daughters, Dorothy and Magdalen, seem 
 to have been living with him ; and the " third 
 sister " to whom he refers— and who also came 
 into his household, perhaps, after the death 
 of Dorothy — was doubtless Katherine, the 
 youngest. It is always pleasant to read the 
 poet's own words : hence the letter, with its 
 touching note of solicitude for his sister's children, 
 may fitly close the present chapter : — 
 
 " Dear Brother, — That you did not only enter- 
 tain my proposals, but advance them, was lovingly 
 done, and like a good brother. Yet truly it was 
 none of my meaning, when I wrote, to put one of 
 
GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 our nieces into your hands, but barely [merely] 
 what I wrote I meant, and no more ; and am glad 
 that although you offer more, yet you will do, as 
 you write, that also. I was desirous to put a good 
 mind into the way of charity, and that was all I 
 intended. For concerning your offer of receiving 
 one, I will tell you what I wrote to our eldest 
 brother when he urged one upon me, and but one, 
 and that at my choice. I wrote to him that I 
 would have both or neither ; and upon this ground 
 — because they were to come into an unknown 
 country, tender in knowledge, sense, and age, and 
 knew none but one who could be no company to 
 them ; therefore I considered that if one only came, 
 the comfort intended would prove a discomfort. 
 Since that I have seen the fruit of my observa- 
 tion ; for they have lived so lovingly, lying, eating, 
 walking, praying, working still together, that I 
 take a comfort therein ; and would not have to 
 part them yet, till I take some opportunity to let 
 them know your love, for which both they shall 
 and I do thank you. It is true there is a third 
 sister, whom to receive were the greatest charity 
 of all, for she is youngest and least looked unto ; 
 having none to do it but her schoolmistress, and 
 you know what those mercenary creatures are. 
 Neither hath she any to repair unto at good times, 
 as Christmas, etc., which you know is the en- 
 
BEMERTON: THE PARSON IN HIS CURE 239 
 
 couragement of learning all the year after, except 
 my cousin Bett take pity of her, which yet at that 
 distance is some difficulty. If you could think of 
 taking her, as once you did, surely it were a great 
 good deed, and I would have her conveyed to 
 you. But I judge you not. Do that which God 
 shall put into your heart, and the Lord bless all 
 your purposes to His glory. Yet truly, if you 
 take her not, I am thinking to do it,^ even beyond 
 my strength ; especially at this time, being more 
 beggarly now than I have been these many years, 
 as having spent two hundred pounds in building ; 
 which to me that have nothing yet is very much. 
 But though I both consider this, and your obser- 
 vation also, of the unthankfulness of kindred bred 
 up (which generally is very true), yet I care not ; 
 I forget all things, so I may do them good who 
 want it. So I do my part to them, let them think 
 of me what they will or can. I have another 
 Judge, to Whom I stand or fall. If I should 
 regard such things, it were in another's power to 
 defeat my charity, and evil should be stronger 
 than good. But difficulties are so far from cooling 
 Christians, that they whet them. Truly it grieves 
 me to think of the child, how destitute she is, and 
 that in this necessary time of education. For the 
 time of breeding is the time of doing children 
 
 1 He appears finally to have done so (Grosart). 
 
240 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 good ; and not as many who think they have done 
 fairly if they leave them a good portion after their 
 decease. But take this rule, and it is an out- 
 landish one, which I commend to you as being 
 now a father, ' The best bred child hath the best 
 portion.' Well, the good God bless you more and 
 more, and all yours, and make your family a 
 houseful of God's servants ; so prays your ever- 
 loving brother, 
 
 "G. Herbert. 
 
 " My wife's and nieces' service. 
 
 " To my very dear brother, Sir Henry Herbert, 
 at Court." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 LAST DAYS 
 
 '"T^HE parsonage of Bemerton stands close to 
 -■- the tiny Chapel, only parted from it by the 
 narrow high-road. At the back, however, the 
 grounds stretch out to the low meadows through 
 which the river N adder flows on its sluggish way 
 to join the Wiltshire and Hampshire Avon, one 
 of the many less famous Avons of the kingdom. 
 From the "good garden and walkes" which 
 Aubrey, the gossiping antiquarian, says that 
 Herbert " made for the minister," a fair view is 
 had of Salisbury spire, the loftiest and most beau- 
 tiful iji the land ; and the music of its chimes — 
 
 Harmonious bells, raising the dead — 
 
 comes to the ear now as in his time. " More 
 pleasant than healthful," however, the position 
 may have hastened his end, though the seeds of 
 disease were sown elsewhere. Walton gives no 
 account of his loss of the comparative health he 
 had erijoyed at Bainton ; but the change was 
 
 i6 241 
 
242 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 doubtless gradual ; and the poet, from his refer- 
 ence to the provision made for his wife, was prob- 
 ably under no delusion as to his state. 
 
 In the last chapter some of "the excellencies of 
 the active part of his life " have been described ; 
 " aTfid thus," says his biographer, " he continued till 
 a consumption so weakened him as to confine him 
 to his house, or to the Chapel which does almost 
 join to it : in which he continued to read prayers 
 constantly twice every day, though he were very 
 weak ; in one of which times of his reading his 
 wife observed him to read in pain, and told him 
 so, and that it wasted his spirits and weakened 
 him ; and he confessed it did, but said his life 
 could not be better spent than in the service of his 
 Master Jesus, who had done and suffered so much 
 for him. ' But,' said he, ' I will not be wilful ; 
 for though my spirit be willing, yet I find my 
 flesh is weak ; and, therefore, Mr. Bostock shall 
 be appointed to read prayers for me to-morrow, 
 and I will now be only a hearer of them, till 
 this mortal shall put on immortality.' And Mr. 
 Bostock did the next day undertake and continue 
 this happy employment till Mr. Herbert's death. 
 This Mr. Bostock was a learned and virtuous 
 man, an old friend of Mr. Herbert's, and then his 
 curate to the Church of Fulston [Fugglestone], 
 which is a mile from Bemerton, to which Church 
 
a W 
 < 
 
 •■ 3 
 
 a » 
 
 S g 
 
 
 O 
 
LAST DAYS 
 
 Bemerton is but a chapel-of-ease. And this Mr. 
 Bostock did also constantly supply the Church 
 service for Mr. Herbert in that Chapel, when the 
 music meeting at Salisbury caused his absence 
 from it." 
 
 " About one month before his death, his friend 
 Mr. Ferrar . . . sent Mr. Edmund Duncon (who 
 is now Rector of Fryer Barnet, in the County of 
 Middlesex) from his house of Gidden Hall, which 
 is near to Huntingdon, to see Mr. Herbert, and to 
 assure him he wanted not his daily prayers for his 
 recovery ; and Mr. Duncon was to return back to 
 Gidden with an account of Mr. Herbert's condi- 
 tion. Mr. Duncon found him weak, and at that 
 time lying on his bed or on a pallet ; but at his 
 seeing Mr. Duncon he raised himself vigorously, 
 saluted him, and with some earnestness inquired 
 the health of his brother Ferrar, of which Mr. 
 Duncon satisfied him ; and after some discourse of 
 Mr. Ferrar's holy life, and the manner of his con- 
 stant serving God, he said to Mr. Duncon, ' Sir, I 
 see by your habit that you are a priest, and I 
 desire you to pray with me ; ' which being granted, 
 Mr. Duncon asked him, ' What prayers ? ' to 
 which Mr. Herbert's answer was, ' Oh, Sir, the 
 prayers of my Mother, the Church of England. 
 No other prayers are equal to them ! — but, at this 
 time, I beg of you to pray only the Litany, for I 
 
244 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 am weak and faint ; ' and Mr. Duncon did so. 
 After which, and some other discourse of Mr. 
 Ferrar, Mrs. Herbert provided Mr. Duncon a 
 plain supper and a clean lodging, and he betook 
 himself to rest. This Mr. Duncon tells me ; and 
 tells me that at his first view of Mr. Herbert, he 
 saw majesty and humility so reconciled in his 
 looks and behaviour, as begot in him an awful 
 reverence for his person, and says, ' his discourse 
 was so pious, and his motion so genteel and meek, 
 that after almost forty years, yet they remain still 
 fresh in his memory.' " 
 
 It is characteristic of Walton that he should 
 insist on the gentility of his hero even in the 
 article of death. Having, however, despatched 
 Mr. Duncon on a five days' journey to Bath, 
 he takes occasion to interpolate an account of 
 Nicholas Ferrar and Little Gidding ("Gidden" 
 as he calls it) promised by him at an earlier date. 
 In the main his story agrees with that of John 
 Ferrar, from which quotation has already been 
 made. He tells how the accomplished scholar, 
 traveller, and man of business, " having seen the 
 manners and vanities of the world, and found 
 them to be, as Mr. Herbert says, ' a nothing 
 between two dishes "... resolved to spend the 
 remainder of his life in mortifications, and in de- 
 votion and charity," and the manner in which his 
 
LAST DAYS 245 
 
 purpose was carried out. He explains that the 
 later intimacy between the two men was a re- 
 newal of a "slight acquaintance" formed when 
 they were together at Cambridge, and de- 
 scribes the submitting of Ferrar's translation of 
 Valdesso's Considerations to Herbert's criticism. 
 Then, having brought Mr. Duncon back from 
 Bath, he resumes his pathetic story of the poet's 
 last days. 
 
 On returning to Bemerton, the visitor "found 
 Mr. Herbert much weaker than he left him ; and 
 therefore their discourse could not be long ; but 
 at Mr. Duncon's parting with him, Mr. Herbert 
 spoke to this purpose : ' Sir, I pray you give my 
 brother Ferrar an account of the decaying con- 
 dition of my body, and tell him I beg him to 
 continue his daily prayers for me ; and let him 
 know that I have considered that God only is 
 what He would be ; and that I am, by His grace, 
 become now so like Him as to be pleased with 
 what pleaseth Him ; and tell him that I do not 
 repine, but am pleased with my want of health ; 
 and tell him my heart is fixed on that place where 
 true joy is only to be found ; and that I long to 
 be there, and do wait for my appointed change 
 with hope and patience.' Having said this, he 
 did, with so sweet a humility as seemed to exalt 
 him, bow down to Mr. Duncon, and, with a 
 
246 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 thoughtful and contented look, say to him : ' Sir, 
 I pray deliver this little book to my dear brother 
 Ferrar, and tell him he shall find in it a picture 
 of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed 
 betwixt God and my soul, before I could subject 
 mine to the will of Jesus my Master ; in whose 
 service I have now found perfect freedom : desire 
 him to read it ; and then, if he can think it may 
 turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul, 
 let it be made public : if not, let him burn it ; for 
 I and it are less than the least of God's mercies.' 
 Thus meanly did this humble man think of this 
 excellent book, which now bears the name of 
 The Temple, or Sacred Poems and Private 
 Ejaculations; of which Mr. Ferrar would say 
 there was in it the picture of a divine soul in 
 every page ; and that the whole book was such 
 a harmony of holy passions as would enrich the 
 world with pleasure and piety. And it appears 
 to have done so, for there have been more than 
 twenty thousand copies of them sold since the first 
 impression." 
 
 In another place an account will be given of 
 the licensing and publishing of the poems ; here, 
 however, it seems best to continue the story of 
 the poet's closing life without break. 
 
 About three weeks before his death Mr. Duncon 
 departed, and " his old and dear friend, Mr. 
 
LAST DAYS 247 
 
 Woodnot, came from London to Bemerton, and 
 never left him till he had seen him draw his last 
 breath, and closed his eyes on his death-bed. In 
 this time of his decay he was often visited and 
 prayed for by all the clergy that lived near to 
 him, especially by his friends the Bishop and 
 Prebendaries of the Cathedral Church in Salisbury, 
 but by none more devoutly than his wife, his three 
 nieces^ (then a part of his family), and Mr. Woodnot, 
 who were the sad witnesses of his daily decay, to 
 whom he would often speak to this purpose : ' I 
 now look back upon the pleasures of my life past, 
 and see the content I have taken in beauty, in 
 wit, and music, and pleasant conversation, are 
 now all past by me like a dream, or as a shadow 
 that returns not, and are now all become dead to 
 me, or I to them ; and I see that as my father 
 and generation hath done before me, so I also 
 shall now suddenly (with Job) make my bed also in 
 the dark ; and I praise God I am prepared for it ; 
 and I praise Him that I am not to learn patience 
 now I stand in such need of it ; and that I have 
 practised mortification, and endeavoured to die 
 daily that I might not die eternally ; and my hope 
 is that I shall shortly leave this valley of tears, 
 and be free from all fevers and pain ; and, which 
 will be a more happy condition, I shall be free 
 
 ' Only two, Dorothy, the eldest, having died before him. 
 
248 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 from sin, and all the temptations and anxieties 
 that attend it ; and this being past, I shall dwell 
 in the New Jerusalem — dwell there with men 
 made perfect ; dwell where these eyes shall see 
 my Master and Saviour, Jesus, and with Him see 
 my dear mother, and all my relations and friends.^ 
 But I must die, or not come to that happy place. 
 And this is my content, that I am going daily 
 towards it ; and that every day which I live hath 
 taken a part of my appointed time from me ; and 
 that I shall live the less time for having lived this 
 and the day past.' " 
 
 "These and the like expressions, which he uttered 
 often, may be said to be his enjoyment of heaven 
 before he enjoyed it. The Sunday before his 
 death he rose suddenly from his bed or couch, 
 called for one of his instruments, took it into his 
 hand, and said : — 
 
 My God, my God ! 
 
 My music shall find Thee, 
 
 And every string 
 Shall have his attribute to sing. 
 
 And having tuned it, he played and sung : — 
 
 ' Compare with a prayer of Laud, in his old age : " And after 
 this painful life ended, bring me, I beseech Thee, to Thy joys, 
 to Thy glory, to Thyself: that I and my parents, with all Thy 
 saints and servants departed this life, may meet in a blessed 
 resurrectiop, ever to sing praises and honour to Thee. ..." 
 
LAST DAYS M9 
 
 The Sundays of man's life, 
 
 Threaded together on Time's string, 
 
 Make bracelets to adorn the wife 
 Of the eternal glorious King : 
 
 On Sundays heaven's door stands ope : 
 Blessings are plentiful and rife. 
 
 More plentiful than hope. 
 
 " Thus he sung on earth such hymns and 
 anthems as the angels, and he and Mr. Ferrar 
 now sing in heaven." 
 
 Walton goes on to describe, perhaps with un- 
 necessary circumstance, the last moments of the 
 dying poet ; about whose bedside his sorrowful 
 wife and nieces, with the faithful Mr. Woodnot, 
 and his curate, Mr. Bostock, were grouped ; un- 
 willing "to lose sight of him whom they could 
 not hope to see much longer." Before this, on 
 expressing regret for the smallness of the meri- 
 torious deeds of his life, his friend had reminded 
 him of his re-edifying Leighton Church, and his 
 many charitable and merciful acts ; to whom he 
 had made the well-known reply : " They be good 
 works if they be sprinkled with the blood of 
 Christ, and not otherwise." Now, as they stood 
 about him, "his wife observed him to breathe 
 faintly, and with much trouble ; and observed 
 him to fall into a sudden agony, which so sur- 
 prised her, that she fell into a sudden passion, 
 and required of him to know how he did ; to 
 
250 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 which his answer was, ' That he had passed a 
 conflict with his last enemy, and had overcome 
 him by the merits of his Master, Jesus.' After 
 which answer, he looked up and saw his wife and 
 nieces weeping to an extremity, and charged 
 them : ' If they loved him, to withdraw into the 
 next room, and there pray every one alone for 
 him ; for nothing but their lamentations could 
 make his death uncomfortable.' To which re- 
 quest their sighs and tears would not suffer them 
 to make any reply, but they yielded a sad obe- 
 dience, leaving only with him Mr. Woodnot and 
 Mr. Bostock. Immediately after they had left 
 him, he said to Mr. Bostock : ' Pray, Sir, open 
 that door ; then look into that cabinet, in which 
 you may easily find my last will, and give it into 
 my hand ; ' which being done, Mr. Herbert de- 
 livered it into the hand of Mr. Woodnot, and 
 said : ' My old friend, I here deliver you my last 
 will, in which you will find that I have made you 
 my sole executor for the good of my wife and 
 nieces ; and I desire you to show kindness to 
 them, as they shall need it. I do not desire you 
 to be just, for I know you will be so for your own 
 sake ; but I charge you by the religion of our 
 friendship to be careful of them.' And having 
 obtained Mr. Woodnot's promise to be so, he 
 said : ' I am now ready to die.' After which 
 
LAST DAYS 251 
 
 words he said : ' Lord, forsake me not, now my 
 strength faileth me, but grant me mercy for the 
 merits of my Jesus. And now. Lord — Lord, now 
 receive my soul.' And with these words he 
 breathed forth his divine soul without any ap- 
 parent disturbance, Mr. Woodnot and Mr. Bostock 
 attending his last breath, and closing his eyes." 
 
 " Thus he lived, and thus he died like a saint, 
 unspotted of the world, full of alms-deeds, full of 
 humility, and all the examples of a virtuous life ; 
 which I cannot conclude better than with this 
 borrowed observation : — 
 
 . . . All must to their cold graves ; 
 But the religious actions of the just 
 Smell sweet in death, and blossom in the dust. 
 
 Mr. George Herbert's have done so to this, and 
 will doubtless do so to succeeding generations. 
 I have but this to say more of him, that if Andrew 
 Melvin died before him, then George Herbert 
 died without an enemy. I wish (if God shall be 
 so pleased) that I may be so happy as to die like 
 him. 
 
 " Iz. Wa." 
 
 Criticisms of these well-known passages would 
 be superfluous, if not impertinent. In much of 
 the language we recognise the phrases of religious 
 orthodoxy accepted and approved by a former 
 
252 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 generation, but now discarded ; as our own, if we 
 have any, will be discarded by the generations to 
 come. Yet the passion and elevation of Walton's 
 last tribute to the man whom, having but seen, 
 he loved, have rarely been surpassed, and rank 
 him among the best of those who have used the 
 English tongue as an instrument for expressing 
 the higher and nobler emotions of the soul. 
 
 George Herbert's funeral,, according to the 
 Bemerton registers, took place on the 3rd of 
 March, 1632, or by our present reckoning, 1633. 
 As he was born on the 3rd of April, 1593, his 
 age was a month short of forty years. He was 
 buried, says Walton, "in his own Church [of 
 Bemerton] under the altar, and covered with a 
 gravestone without any inscription." This agrees 
 with the account given by Aubrey : "He lies in 
 the chancel, under no large nor yet very good 
 marble gravestone, without any inscription, . . . 
 He was buried, according to his own desire, with 
 the singing service for the burial of the dead by 
 the singing men of Sarum. Dr. Sambroke (at- 
 torney) then assisted as a choir boy ; my uncle, 
 Th. Danvers, was at the funeral." His wife 
 long survived him. By his will he left her all 
 his "goods both within doors and without doors, 
 both monies and books and household stuff," 
 saving certain legacies to the poor, his servants, 
 
LAST DAYS 
 
 his executor (Mr. Woodnot), and others. The 
 story of her remaining life is briefly and some- 
 what quaintly told by Walton : — 
 
 " She continued his disconsolate widow about 
 six years, bemoaning herself, and complaining 
 that she had lost the delight of her eyes ; but 
 more, that she had lost the spiritual guide for her 
 poor soul ; and would often say, ' Oh, that I had, 
 like holy Mary, the mother of Jesus, treasured up 
 all his sayings in my heart ! but since I have not 
 been able to do that, I will labour to live like him, 
 that where he now is, I may be also.' And she 
 would often say (as the prophet David for his son 
 Absalom), ' O that I had died for him ! ' Thus 
 she continued mourning, till time and conversa- 
 tion had so moderated her sorrows that she 
 became the happy wife of Sir Robert Cook, of 
 Highnam, in the county of Gloucester, Knt. ; and 
 though he put a high value on the excellent ac- 
 complishments of her mind and body, and was so 
 like Mr. Herbert as not to govern like a master, 
 but as an affectionate husband ; yet she would, 
 even to him, often take occasion to mention the 
 name of Mr. George Herbert, and say, 'That 
 name must live in her memory till she put off 
 mortality.' " 
 
 " By Sir Robert she had only one child, a 
 daughter, whose parts and plentiful estate make 
 
254 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 her happy in this world, and her well using of 
 them gives a fair testimony that she will be so in 
 that which is to come." 
 
 " Mrs. Herbert was the wife of Sir Robert 
 eight years, and lived his widow about fifteen ; all 
 which time she took a pleasure in mentioning and 
 commending the excellencies of Mr. George Her- 
 bert. She died in the year 1663 [other writers 
 say 1656], and lies buried at Highnam. ..." 
 
 "This Lady Cook had preserved many of Mr. 
 Herbert's private writings, which she intended to 
 make public ; but they and Highnam House were 
 burnt together by the late rebels, and so lost to 
 posterity." In another and earlier edition of the 
 Life the words are added : " and by them was 
 also burnt or destroyed a choice library which Mr. 
 Herbert had fastened with chains in a fit room in 
 Montgomery Castle, being by him dedicated to 
 the succeeding Herberts that should become the 
 owners of it." 
 
 The last hours of George Herbert and Nicholas 
 Ferrar have much in common : both were strongly 
 moved by a feeling of revulsion against the vanity 
 and emptiness of the world, " the nothing between 
 two dishes," as Herbert pronounced its most de- 
 sired pleasures. Whether the dying really see life 
 in its true perspective may be doubted ; or rather 
 it is highly improbable that the moment of mor- 
 
LAST DAYS 255 
 
 tality gives any inspired vision of its worth and 
 meaning, and especially any power to appraise its 
 literature. Just before his end, Ferrar com- 
 manded that his lighter secular books, "three 
 great hampers," which had been locked up for 
 many years, of "comedies, tragedies, love-hymns, 
 heroical poems, novels, and the like," should be 
 burned on the place of his intended burial, a spot 
 seven feet from the west door of the church at 
 Little Gidding. The injunction was promptly 
 obeyed ; " the bonfire flaming out upon the hill 
 where the church and house stood," to the as- 
 tonishment and alarm of the adjacent country, 
 the more superstitious affirming that the papistical 
 deacon "could not die until he had burnt all his 
 conjuring-books." This holocaust of imaginative 
 works, "in several languages, which he in all 
 places had procured with great search, and at no 
 little cost," will of course be condemned by cul- 
 tured persons ; but the act is significant of a stage 
 in the moral history of peoples as of individuals. 
 Our more indulgent philosophers have long since 
 assured us — what, indeed, we never needed to be 
 told — that the imagination requires food not less 
 than other parts of our mental being ; and, happily 
 for ourselves, human genius, especially at certain 
 genial periods of man's development, has abun- 
 dantly supplied that need. But at times the in- 
 
256 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 sufficiency of this noble repast for satisfying the 
 soul's ultimate demands is forced upon us ; and 
 the loftiest products of the human intellect, which 
 we have as thoughtlessly as thanklessly enjoyed, 
 are rightly consigned to the flames, or at least to 
 the figurative fires necessary for our spiritual pur- 
 gation. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE TEMPLE 
 I. THE CHURCH PORCH 
 
 GEORGE HERBERT'S influence on the 
 Church and the world was exerted in a 
 threefold manner : by his rehgious poems, chiefly 
 those included in TAe Temple ; by his rules of 
 living for the parochial and other clergy set forth 
 in TAe Country Parson ; and by the far-spread 
 and almost incredible report of his holy life. Com- 
 pared with these, his merely academical exercises, 
 even the Epigrams in defence of his Church 
 against Melville and the "obsequious" Paren- 
 talia, with his renown as a witty and elegant 
 scholar and a virtuous member of a corrupt 
 Court, counted for little. The Temple poems 
 and the tale of his ascetic devotion went hand in 
 hand. Men read the gentle yet powerful exhorta- 
 tion to high thinking and right living in The 
 Church Porch with instant approval, and saw in 
 the shorter poems the whole range of their re- 
 ligious experiences faithfully reflected, but height- 
 17 257 
 
258 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 ened and harmonised ; while the rumour of his 
 charities, and his teaching, preaching, and lowly 
 service in his country cure, cast a halo about his 
 name long before Walton's narrative appeared. 
 This was doubtless magnified by the contrast 
 between his high birth and the humbleness of his 
 elected lot — there was something bordering on the 
 romantic in his laying aside the courtier's gay gar- 
 ments and sword for the sober habit of a country 
 parish priest. 
 
 The account of his delivery, with self-effacing 
 gestures, of this first collection of his English 
 poems to his visitor at Bemerton, Mr. Edmund 
 Duncon, with the request that he should submit 
 them to their common friend, Nicholas Ferrar, has 
 already been given. Walton thus continues the 
 history of the precious manuscript : — 
 
 " And this ought to be noted, that when Mr. 
 Ferrar sent this book to Cambridge to be licensed 
 for the press, the Vice-Chancellor would by no 
 means allow the two so much noted verses, 
 
 Religion stands a-tiptoe in our land, 
 Ready to pass to the American strand, 
 
 to be printed ; and Mr. Ferrar would by no means 
 allow the book to be printed and want them ; but 
 after some time, and some arguments for and 
 against their being made public, the Vice-Chan- 
 
THE TEMPLE 259 
 
 cellor said : ' I knew Mr. Herbert well, and know 
 that he had many heavenly speculations, and was 
 a divine poet ; but I hope the world will not take 
 him to be an inspired prophet, and therefore I 
 license the whole book.' So that it came to be 
 printed without the diminution or addition of a 
 syllable since it was delivered into the hands of 
 Mr. Duncon, save only that Mr. Ferrar hath 
 added that excellent preface that is printed before 
 it." 
 
 Thus, not without much official dubiety, as well 
 as hesitation on the part of its author, the little 
 book went forth to the world. It was issued by 
 the University Press, and bore the title : The 
 Temple. Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. 
 By Mr. George Herbert. Psal. 2g: In his Temple 
 doth every man speak of his honour. A second 
 edition of the same year added to the author's 
 name, " late Oratour of the Universitie of Cam- 
 bridge." It appears that an earlier undated 
 edition was printed about three weeks after his 
 death, probably by Ferrar himself at Little 
 Gidding, for private circulation only. After this, 
 editions multiplied apace. There were eight issues 
 before the year 1709; and Walton, in his first 
 edition of Herbert's Life (1674), asserted, as we 
 have seen, that more than twenty thousand copies 
 had then been sold. Later and modern editions 
 
260 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 have been many, and to-day no large anthology of 
 English sacred verse can be called complete with- 
 out a fair selection of The Temple poems ; while 
 the works of few writers of religious poetry have 
 received more able and appreciative criticism, or 
 more puzzled disparagement from a certain class 
 of minds. 
 
 How is this evident and long-continued popu- 
 larity to be accounted for ? What was there in 
 the seventy-seven stanzas of The Church Porch, 
 and in the hundred and sixty following poems, 
 that gave Nicholas Ferrar " the picture of a 
 divine soul in every page," and convinced him 
 that the book, -if published, "would enrich the 
 world with pleasure and piety " ? What tincture 
 of originality, what beauty of phrase or measure, 
 or what new insight into divine things, prompted 
 the fervour of his reverent introduction, concluded 
 with Herbert's own motto, " Less than the least 
 of God's mercies " ? And what vital quality, it 
 may be added, keeps it alive to-day ? The ques- 
 tions are easier to ask than to answer ; yet they 
 do not seem quite the insoluble enigmas which 
 they appear to have presented to some of the 
 poet's literary commentators in recent times. 
 
 It cannot be said that the novelty of the book 
 was its first claim to acceptance. There had been 
 religious poets in England before, and many who 
 

 15^ 
 
 
 T H F 
 
 TEMPLE. 
 
 SACREDPOEMS 
 
 AND 
 PRIVATE EIA- 
 
 CULATIONS, 
 
 " aj 
 
 ByMf.GeoRCE Herbirt. 
 
 iQtiw' 
 
 FSAL. 1^. 
 
 In his Temfle doth every 
 mmfpeak of his honour. 
 
 4^ 
 
 (S5- 
 
 
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 m 
 
 CAMBRIDGE; 
 Printed hy Thorn. Buck, 
 
 and Roger !);»»«/, printers 
 
 totheUnivtrfitie. 
 
 1633. 
 
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 Till'; FIRST HDI 'J IC N 
 
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 T E M P L E li 
 
 SACRED POEMS S 
 
 AND 
 
 TE E 
 
 L AT IONS. 
 
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 PRIVATE ETACU- ,'^,t^ 
 
 By Mf George Herbert, h^^mi 
 
 lateOralour ofthc UnLvirnAe |«€i52^ 
 
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 T^f yccoai Edirim.- 
 
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THE TEMPLE 261 
 
 were not distinctively religious had written sacred 
 verses. Almost every man in Herbert's age who 
 wrote in rhyme, and nearly every educated man 
 did so, had moments in which he composed devout 
 hymns or lyrics : even the popular dramatists did 
 so at times, when moved by the incidents of the 
 Gospel story, the seasons or offices of the Church, 
 or the more solemn occasions of human life. 
 Bacon, Sidney, Raleigh, Spenser, and Ben Jonson, 
 are a few examples among many. Besides these, 
 there was the notable band who were almost 
 exclusively concerned with religious verse in one 
 form or another. Donne's Divine Poems had long 
 been circulated in manuscript, and, it is said, were 
 published collectively in the year of Herbert's 
 death. George Wither's Hymns and Songs of 
 the Church had appeared ten years before, in 
 1623. Phineas Fletcher, of King's College, pub- 
 lished his curious anatomy of the soul and body 
 of man, The Purple Island, in the same year 
 with The Temple ; and his younger brother 
 Giles (like Herbert a Westminster scholar at 
 Trinity) had dedicated his Miltonic epic, Christ's 
 Death and Victory, to the Master, Dean Nevile, 
 several years before. There was, indeed, an 
 abundance of religious verse, some of it of great 
 merit, in the hands of the reading public ; but 
 the most popular religious poems of the time 
 
GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 were probably The Divine Emblems of Francis 
 Quarles, published in 1635. Following after his 
 Feast of Worms, his series of metrical composi- 
 tions on Bible subjects {Hadassa, Job Militant, 
 Sion's Elegies and Sion's Sonnets), and his History 
 of Samson and Divine Fancies, The Emblems 
 sought to interpret the Scripture text by an in- 
 genious allegorical system aided by pictures ; and 
 apparently did so with the success that often 
 attends even greatly inferior writings when thus 
 adorned. Crashaw and Vaughan may be con- 
 sidered the spiritual children of George Herbert, 
 as both wrote for a later generation and acknow- 
 ledged their indebtedness to The Tem-ple ; the 
 sombre and mystical Vaughan, indeed, was almost 
 a plagiarist in the closeness of his imitation. 
 Herrick's exquisite and genuine vein of religious 
 verse probably never appealed to a large public ; 
 but his Noble Numbers cannot be ignored as a 
 contribution to the sacred poetry of the age. 
 The Temple, therefore, was merely one of many 
 works of its kind, some of them of high poetic 
 value ; ' and its ready acceptance and continuing 
 
 ' The remarkable poems of Thomas Traherne, B.D. (1636 ?- 
 1674), with their striking resemblance to those of Vaughan and 
 Crashaw, and even stronger suggestion of William Blake, should 
 be added to the volume of seventeenth-century religious verse, 
 although most of them have only lately been rescued from manu- 
 script. 
 
THE TEMPLE 263 
 
 vogue must be explained by something else than 
 novelty of form or substance. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the directness of its 
 appeal to the heart and conscience, especially in 
 its long opening poem, The Church Porch, made 
 it especially welcome to the more serious minds of 
 the age. The concluding lines of the first stanza, 
 already quoted — 
 
 A verse may find him who a sermon flies, 
 And turn delight into a sacrifice — 
 
 Strike the keynote of the whole : the poem is y' 
 essentially a sermon in rhyme, and its frankly 
 didactic nature is not concealed, though it may be 
 sweetened, by the vfirser's art. It is, in fact, a 
 plain man's guide to godliness : and the plain man 
 of the time received it gladly. Dedicated to God, 
 with the shorter poems of the volume — 
 
 Lord, my first fruits present themselves to Thee — 
 
 it deals with the elements of moral conduct, and 
 its exhortations are almost platitudes : be chaste, 
 sober, reverent, truthful ; avoid idleness, extrava- 
 gance, greed ; do not play the fool, the jester, the 
 braggart, and so on. Its object might be said 
 to be, like that of Spenser's Faery Queen, " to 
 fashion a gentleman, or noble person, in virtue 
 and gentle discipline ; " and it concerns itself 
 mainly with fundamentals. But The Church 
 
264 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Porch has several merits which are not always 
 exhibited by the other Temple poems. Unlike y 
 most of them, it is singularly free from the verbal "^ 
 and intellectual conceits of the age, whether meta- 
 physical or otherwise ; it especially abounds in 
 homely and virile common-sense ; and it offers no 
 ambiguities for painful solution. Herbert's prac- 
 tical wisdom in affairs, and his strength in handling 
 the common elements of English speech, are here 
 seen at their best ; while no other poem of his 
 contains so much quoted and quotable matter. 
 Hardly a verse is without its familiar lines or 
 phrases. Take at random his plea for temper- 
 ance : — 
 
 Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame 
 
 When once it is within thee ; but before 
 
 Mayst rule it as thou list ; and pour the shame, 
 
 Which it would pour on thee, upon the floor. 
 It is most just to throw that on the ground 
 Which would throw me there, if I kept the round ; 
 
 or his argument against profanity : — 
 
 Take not His Name, Who made thy mouth, in vain : 
 It gets thee nothing, and hath no excuse. 
 Lust and wine plead a pleasure ; avarice gain ; 
 But the cheap swearer through his open sluice 
 
 Lets his soul run for nought, as little fearing : 
 
 Were I an epicure, I could bate swearing ; 
 
 or his well-known advice to those who repeat 
 stories of questionable taste or morality : — 
 
THE TEMPLE 265 
 
 When thou dost tell another's jest, therein 
 Omit the oaths, which true wit cannot need ; 
 Pick out of tales the mirth, but not the sin ; 
 He pares his apple that will cleanly feed. 
 
 Some of his utterances have the force and fire 
 of Marlowe or Shakespeare, as in his plea for 
 truthfulness : — 
 
 Lie not ; but let thy heart be true to God, 
 Thy mouth to it, thy actions to them both : 
 Cowards tell lies, and those that fear the rod ; 
 The stormy working soul spits lies and froth. 
 Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie : 
 A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby. 
 
 " The stormy working soul spits lies and froth " 
 is a line out of Shakespeare's own mint So too 
 is this : — 
 
 Some till their ground, but let weeds choke their son ; 
 
 and these : — 
 
 Chase brave employments with a naked sword 
 Throughout the world. Fool not ; for all may have, 
 If they dare try, a glorious life, or grave. 
 
 But they are equally George Herbert's, with 
 many more of his own coining and impress. Here, 
 in a single stanza, he gives a reasoned defence 
 of that order and method in living upon which he 
 never failed to insist : — 
 
 Slight those who say, amidst their sickly healths, 
 
 "Thou liVst by rule." What doth not so but man ? 
 
 Houses are built by rule, and commonwealths. 
 
 Entice the trusty sun, if that you can, 
 From his ecliptic line — beckon the sky. 
 Who lives by rule, then, keeps good company. 
 
266 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Here, again, is his familiar and wholesome 
 counsel to the much-companioned man or woman 
 in public or private life, expressed with even more 
 than his usual homeliness : — 
 
 By all means use sometimes to be alone. 
 
 Salute thyself : see what thy soul doth wear. 
 
 Dare to look in thy chest, for 'tis thine own. 
 
 And tumble up and down what thou find'st there. 
 Who cannot rest till he good fellows find, 
 He breaks up house, turns out of doors his mind. 
 
 " Never was scraper brave man," " in clothes 
 cheap handsomeness doth bear the bell," " play 
 not for gain, but sport," " laugh not too much : the 
 witty man laughs least," these, and many other 
 instances of his proverbial wisdom, savour as much 
 of the high-minded courtier as of the priest and 
 spiritual guide. They might have been composed 
 while the poet attended the king at Newmarket 
 or Royston ; waiting behind his chair — with 
 Bishop Andrewes perhaps — and observing the 
 motley and bedizened crowd of suitors for the 
 royal favour, as they acted their parts in his 
 presence. But there were brave and honest men 
 among them, whose bearing may have prompted 
 his best words of counsel to those who live and 
 move in the world of public affairs : — 
 
 Pitch thy behaviour low, thy projects high ; 
 So shalt thou humble and magnanimous be ; 
 Sink not in spirit : who aimeth at the sky 
 Shoots higher much than he that means a tree. 
 
THE TEMPLE 267 
 
 A grain of glory mixed with humbleness 
 Cures both a fever and lethargicness. 
 
 Ere long, however, the country parson speaks 
 in his true voice, and in lines not less familiar. If 
 the former ones may have been written at Court, 
 these bear plainly the stamp of Bemerton ; and 
 their deeper spiritual tone is at once noticeable : — 
 
 Sundays observe : think when the bells do chime, 
 'Tis angels' music ; therefore come not late. 
 
 That the poet of the Church should insist on 
 the importance of attending its regular services 
 is only fitting ; but his argument against separa- 
 tism, though ingenious and quaintly expressed, 
 is not perhaps of the soundest : — 
 
 Though private prayer be a brave design. 
 Yet public hath more promises, more love ; 
 And love's a weight to hearts, to eyes a sign. 
 We all are but cold suitors ; let us move 
 
 Where it is warmest. Leave thy six and seven ; 
 
 Pray with the most ; for where most pray is heaven. 
 
 At Leighton Bromswold the pulpit and reading 
 pew were of equal height : here, however, in what 
 are perhaps his best-known lines, prayer receives 
 the higher place : — 
 
 Resort to sermons, but to prayers most ; 
 
 Praying's the end of preaching. O, be drest ; 
 
 Stay not for the other pin ; why, thou hast lost 
 
 A joy for it worth worlds. Thus Hell doth jest 
 Away thy blessings, and extremely flout thee, 
 Thy clothes being fast, but thy soul loose about thee. 
 
268 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 What effect a reversal of the last-named con- 
 ditions might have had on a well-dressed congre- 
 gation of the time, he does not pause to consider ; 
 but his wise sayings : " Stay not for the other 
 pin," " Kneeling ne'er spoiled silk stockings," 
 " All equal are within the Church's gate," and 
 many others, have long since passed into pro- 
 verbs, together with his generous excuse for the 
 failings of some of his pulpit brethren. Do not 
 grudge, he says. 
 
 To pick out treasures from an earthen pot. 
 The worst speak something good ; if all want sense, 
 God takes the text, and preacheth patience ; 
 
 and he sums up the teachings of his lengthened 
 homily with the soldier's counsel of perfection : — 
 
 In brief, acquit thee bravely : play the man. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE TEMPLE 
 II. THE SHORTER POEMS 
 
 IF The Church Porch is comparatively free 
 from the metaphysical and other defects 
 commonly charged on the poet, the hundred and 
 sixty shorter pieces to which it serves as an intro- 
 duction show them in full measure, though per- 
 haps not to the degree that some of his critics 
 maintain. But with his ascent to a higher plane of 
 thought and experience he stumbles frequently, 
 and now and then falls — mountain summits have 
 their perils for sacred as well as other verse 
 writers. His theme is essentially that of Milton 
 and St. Paul : man's first disobedience and its 
 fruits, the Christian Sacrifice, and the elemental 
 travail of the human soul to which they gave 
 birth ; but his treatment, as might be expected, is 
 didactic rather than epic. The metaphor sug- 
 gested by his title is carried on ; the portico now 
 
 passed, the Temple itself is entered : — 
 
 269 
 
270 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Thou, whom the former precepts have 
 Sprinkled, and taught how to behave 
 Thyself in Church, approach, and taste 
 The Church's mystical repast. 
 Avoid profaneness ; ' come not here : 
 Nothing but holy, pure, and clear. 
 Or that which groaneth to be so. 
 May at his peril further go. 
 
 Though short individually, the poems taken 
 together form a considerable body of verse ; and 
 to say that their merit varies is to affirm what is 
 true of the work of almost every writer of force 
 and originality — only mediocrity seems capable 
 of maintaining a uniform level. That Herbert's 
 poetry is seriously marred by the taste of his age, 
 an age that took delight in over-strained metaV 
 phors, and an elaborate ingenuity of thought 
 rather than its more simple and obvious processes, 
 is apparent at once ; and whether he drew the 
 influence from its leading exponent, Donne, or 
 from the surrounding air, is hardly material, 
 though the fact is to be regretted. Had he been 
 as serenely impervious to the time-spirit in this 
 respect as his contemporary, Herrick, the world 
 would have seen a greater poet ; but on the other 
 hand, it might have lost its George Herbert, for 
 the Parable of the Tares is of wide application. 
 The line above quoted, from what might be called 
 
 ' " Avaunt, profaneness ! " (Grosart). 
 
THE TEMPLE 271 
 
 the inscription over the Church door : "Or that 
 which groaneth to be so," marks him off from the 
 majority of his fellow-singers even in sacred 
 things ; and if by any cause the intensity of his 
 aspiration for holiness had been abated, no mere 
 literary perfection would have atoned for the loss. 
 /-"The shorter Temple poems, within their general 
 scheme, cover a wide range of subjects. They 
 are by no means confined to the symbolism of the 
 Church precincts and furniture, or to its seasons 
 and spiritual offices ; on the contrary, the greater 
 number bear the names of abstract, if they may 
 not rather be called concrete, things : five are 
 entitled Affliction, three Praise., two Justice, two 
 Love, one Virtue, and so on. Many of the titles 
 give as little hint of their character as the names 
 of Ruskin's books : The Bag, The Collar, The 
 Pulley, The Size, and others, are examples. 
 Nearly all are composed in a vein of spiritual / 
 egotism, if it may be so called, and deal with 
 individual experience. The first person predom- 
 inates : chiefly it is man speaking with God ; but 
 once, in The Sacrifice, it is Christ who speaks to 
 man from the Cross ; and once, in the Dialogue, 
 Christ and man speak to each other alternately ; 
 while again elsewhere, men and angels converse 
 together antiphon-wise. In all the poems, how- 
 ever artificial the mechanism may be, the feeling 
 
272 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 is strong and genuine — dulness of mind or heart, 
 indeed, is the one thing Herbert abhors, and will 
 not forgive in himself or in others. Like most re- 
 ligious poets of the time, he is deeply moved by 
 the tragedy of the Crucifixion : it is the subject of 
 one of the earliest and longest of the Temple pieces 
 — The Sacrifice just mentioned — in which Christ 
 Himself is the speaker ; and it is treated with a 
 simplicity that suggests the old miracle plays, yet 
 with the profoundest feeling : — 
 
 O all ye who- pass by, whose eyes and mind 
 To worldly things are sharp, hut to me blind, — 
 To me, who took eyes that I might you find ; 
 
 Was ever grief like mine ? 
 
 The sixty-three stanzas, all but two ending with 
 the same refrain, recite in sad monody the story 
 of the betrayal, desertion, and other events of the 
 Passion, and are almost wholly free from conceits 
 and kindred blemishes. Unfortunately, in other 
 instances, the solemnity of his theme does not save 
 him from gross lapses of the kind. A species of 
 unpleasant materialism, for realism it cannot be 
 called, infected the theologians of the age, as it 
 infected many in later as well as in earlier times : 
 neither the mystery of the Incarnation nor of the 
 Eucharist was safe from what Wordsworth would 
 have called their fingering habits ; and even poets 
 
THE TEMPLE 273 
 
 fell into the snare. Herbert is not a sinner more 
 than others : he is, indeed, less culpable in this 
 respect than Crashaw ; but to our more fastidious, 
 if not better taste, his handling of such momentous 
 topics is often repellent, despite the earnestness of 
 his aim. 
 
 But the poetry of The Temple is not to be 
 expressed in negations ; and if it has everywhere 
 the note of suffering, it also overflows with joy. 
 Where there is music there is gladness ; and, with 
 all their defects, its lines are full of music : — 
 
 Let all the world in every corner sing. 
 My God and King. 
 
 The heavens are not too high, 
 
 His praise may thither fly ; 
 
 The earth is not too low, 
 
 His praises there may grow. 
 
 Let all the world in every corner sing, 
 My God and King. 
 
 It may be in the higher symmetry of his thoughts 
 that his music chiefly abounds ; for, according to 
 Sir Thomas Browne, music exists wherever there 
 is harmony, order, and proportion ; and these are 
 distinguishing qualities of Herbert's verse. In the 
 well-known Elixir, the magic draught which has 
 sweetened the hardest labours of house and 
 field for many generations, there is music of 
 both kinds, except perhaps in the second and 
 third stanzas : — 
 
 i8 
 
274 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Teach me, my God and King, 
 
 In all things Thee to see, 
 And what I do in anything. 
 
 To do it as for Thee. 
 
 Not rudely, as a beast. 
 
 To run into an action ; 
 But still to make Thee prepossessed. 
 
 And give it his perfection. 
 
 A man that looks on glass. 
 
 On it may stay his eye. 
 Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass. 
 
 And then the heav'n espy. 
 
 All may of Thee partake ; 
 
 Nothing can be so mean 
 Which with his tincture (for Thy sake) 
 
 Will not grow bright and clean. 
 
 A servant with this clause 
 
 Makes drudgery divine ; 
 Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws, 
 
 Makes that and th' action fine. 
 
 This is the famous stone 
 
 That turneth all to gold ; 
 For that which God doth touch and own 
 
 Cannot for less be told. 
 
 That, with his profound knowledge and ex- 
 perience of spiritual life, he should have dwelt 
 much on the insidious nature of evil, ever cloud- 
 ing the soul's best desires and purposes, and creep- 
 ing, serpent-like, through the barriers of moral 
 restraint, is entirely in keeping with his character. 
 Two of his shorter poems are entitled Sin ; and 
 the longer one is unique in its curious blending of 
 
THE TEMPLE 275 
 
 psychological truth with beauty and quaintness of 
 language : — 
 
 Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round 1 
 Parents first season us ; then schoolmasters 
 Deliver us to laws ; they send us bound 
 
 To rules of reason, holy messengers, 
 
 Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin, 
 Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes. 
 Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, 
 
 Bibles laid open, millions of surprises, 
 
 Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness. 
 The sound of glory ringing in our ears ; 
 Without, our shame ; within, our consciences ; 
 
 Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears. 
 
 Yet all these fences and their whole array 
 One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.' 
 
 It is this martial note, this " sound of glory " 
 ever in his ears, that makes Herbert's poetry so 
 inspiring. However lowly his theme, however 
 dark the Valley of Humiliation through which at 
 the time he walks, he hears the music of the celestial 
 host, and it stirs his soul like a trumpet. To quote, 
 either wholly or in part, his more familiar poems, 
 may seem superfluous ; but as a rule they are his 
 best and cannot well be omitted. It is interesting to 
 
 ' Coleridge, in his Biographia LiUraria, p. 193, describes this 
 poem as " equally admirable for the weight, number, and expres- 
 sion of the thoughts, and for the simple dignity of the language : " 
 adding, " unless, indeed, a fastidious taste should object to the 
 latter half of the sixth line " (viz., " anguish of all sizes "). 
 
276 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 observe how many are conceived in the spirit of the 
 Christian pilgrim : Herbert, in fact, anticipates 
 Bunyan's allegory ; and Vanity Fair, not less than 
 the Slough of Despond, is one of his temptations 
 by the way. He is especially beset with the 
 allurements of what may be called its popular 
 stalls, the delights of the eye and other gauds 
 captivating to the natural man. In the oddly- 
 named Quip, Beauty creeps into a rose, and 
 scornfully flouts him when he does not pluck the 
 flower ; Money jingles his full purse at his ear ; and 
 " brave Glory " puffs by in whistling silks ; but, 
 as might be supposed, his most dangerous tempters 
 are " quick Wit and Conversation," who plausibly 
 invite him to make a public speech — a reminis- 
 cence, doubtless, of his old academic office. In 
 The Pulley, justly ranked as one of his finest 
 poems, the desirable gifts thus personified, and 
 others, are freely granted to mankind, only rest 
 being withheld : — 
 
 When God at first made man. 
 Having a glass of blessings standing by, 
 Let us, said He, pour on him all we can ; 
 Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie, 
 
 Contract into a span. 
 
 So Strength first made a way ; 
 Then Beauty flowed, then Wisdom, Honour, Pleasure ; 
 When almost all was out, God made a stay, 
 Perceiving that alone of all His treasure 
 
 Rest at the bottom lay. 
 
THE TEMPLE 277 
 
 For if I should, said He, 
 Bestow this jewel also on My creature. 
 He would adore My gifts instead of Me, 
 And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature : 
 
 So both should losers be. 
 
 Yet let him keep the rest, 
 But keep them with repining restlessness ; 
 Let him be rich and weary, that at least. 
 If goodness lead him not, yet weariness 
 
 May toss him to My breast. 
 
 Profoundly philosophical as The Pulley is, its 
 seductive seventh line (" Then Beauty flowed, 
 then Wisdom, Honour, Pleasure ") classes it, 
 along with The Pearl ("I know the ways of 
 Learning," etc.), among what may be called 
 Herbert's Vanity Fair poems ; to which his 
 courtier days must have supplied valuable ma- 
 terials. More distinctively suggestive of Bunyan, 
 however, is his own Pilgrimage, a metaphysical 
 poem in the best sense, and, although not well 
 known, assuredly one of his best. It is in poems 
 like this, and a few others, that he enters the 
 mystic's peculiar domain, and approaches most 
 nearly to his own greatest disciple, Henry 
 Vaughan. Bunyan, whose only books while im- 
 prisoned in Bedford gaol are said to have been 
 the Bible and Foxe's Book of Martyrs, probably 
 never read his predecessor's lines, which were 
 published when he was about five years old ; but 
 
278 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 it is curious to see how closely he follows the 
 story, though not, it must be said, in its end- 
 ing :— 
 
 I travelled on, seeing the hill where lay 
 My expectation. 
 A long it was and weary way : 
 The gloomy cave of Desperation 
 I left on the one, and on the other side 
 The rock of Pride. 
 
 And so I came to Fancy's meadow, strowed 
 With many a flower : 
 Fain would I here have made abode, 
 But I was quickened by my hour. 
 So to Care's copse I came, and there got through 
 With much ado. 
 
 That led me to the wild of Passion, which 
 Some call the wold ; 
 A wasted place, but sometimes rich. 
 Here I was robbed of all my gold, 
 Save one good angel, which a friend had tied 
 Close to my side. 
 
 At length I got unto the gladsome hill, 
 Where lay my hope. 
 Where lay my heart ; and climbing still, 
 When I had gained the brow and top, 
 A lake of brackish waters on the ground 
 Was all I found. 
 
 With that, abashed and struck with many a sting 
 Of swarming fears, 
 I fell, and cried, " Alas, my King ! 
 Can both the way and end be tears ? " 
 Yet taking heart I rose, and then perceived 
 I was deceived. 
 
THE TEMPLE 279 
 
 My hill was farther ; so I flung away, 
 Yet heard a cry 
 Just as I went, — " None goes that way 
 And lives." " If that be all," said I, 
 " After so foul a journey death is fair, 
 
 And but a chair." (A rest.) 
 
 This is, indeed, the Enchanted Ground ; and 
 the interpretation of the allegory, or dream, if 
 such it be, is not for the gay pilgrims of the 
 Tabard Inn, who travel in large companies, and 
 repeat light tales by the way for each other's 
 entertainment. 
 
 With the exception of The Church Porch, the 
 Church fabric poems, if they may be so called, are 
 hardly equal to these. Yet there are lines in the 
 Church Monuments which, despite the common 
 defects of tombstone meditations, have all the 
 marks of the great style — the style of Shake- 
 speare and Wordsworth. Desiring his flesh to 
 
 . . . take acquaintance of this heap of dust, 
 To which the blast of Death's incessant motion, 
 Fed with the exhalation of our crimes. 
 Drives all at last, 
 
 the poet sends his body 
 
 ... to this school, that it may learn 
 To spell his elements, and find his birth 
 Written in dusty heraldry and lines, 
 
 as others have done, not always unprofitably. 
 The poem entitled Church Music (" Sweetest of 
 sweets, I thank you ! ") naturally strikes a cheer- 
 
280 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 fuller note ; the Church Lock and Key suggests 
 the sins that close the ears of Heaven to mortal 
 suppliants ; the materials of The Church Floor 
 symbolise certain moral virtues, though as else- 
 where, 
 
 Hither sometimes sin steals, and stains 
 The marble's neat and curious veins ; 
 
 but The Windows happily lets in purifying light. 
 The Altar belongs to the class of artificial poems 
 censured by Addison in his Papers on Wit, in 
 which the lines are made to conform to the shape 
 of material objects : in this case it is an altar or 
 a table, and the verse suffers from the forcing 
 process. 
 
 The seasons and offices of the Church should 
 naturally afford a wider scope ; but on the whole 
 it cannot be said that Herbert is at his best in 
 dealing with them in verse. His Sunday (" O 
 Day most calm, most bright ! ") probably deserves 
 the highest place. Easter begins with promise : 
 " Rise, heart, thy Lord is risen ; " but is marred 
 by flagrant conceits, though the last three stanzas 
 atone, if only by their music, for the fault : — 
 
 I got me flowers to strew Thy way ; 
 
 I got me boughs off many a tree ; 
 
 But Thou wast up by break of day, 
 
 And brought'st Thy sweets along with Thee. 
 
 Whit-Sunday supplies the critic with an egregious 
 metaphor and other faults ; Trinity Sunday and Lent 
 
THE TEMPLE 281 
 
 are somewhat conventional ; and Christmas is only 
 relieved by one of the poet's charming instances 
 of child-like realism — his meeting with his divine 
 Lord at an inn. Holy Baptism shows again the 
 vice of false ingenuity ; Holy Communion is subtle 
 and characteristic, but may be thought inferior to 
 The Banquet, a poem overflowing with conceits, 
 but of interest as showing Herbert's curiously 
 familiar and affectionate treatment of the Eucha- 
 rist. We are now told that such endearing 
 phrases are foreign to the genius of Englishmen, 
 and belong properly to the emotional races of the 
 South ; but the Englishman of that time was a 
 different being from his phlegmatic offspring of 
 to-day : — 
 
 Welcome, sweet and sacred cheer, 
 
 Welcome dear! 
 With me, in me, live and dwell ; 
 For Thy neatness passeth sight. 
 
 Thy delight 
 Passeth tongue to taste or tell. 
 
 O what sweetness from the bowl 
 
 Fills my soul, 
 Such as is, and makes divine ! 
 Is some star (fled from the sphere) 
 
 Melted there. 
 As we sugar melt in wine ? 
 
 Herrick or Crashaw might possibly have written 
 like this, though hardly Vaughan. The second 
 and last, however, of Herbert's poems entitled 
 
282 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Love, that closing The Temple series, appears to 
 refer to the same sacred Feast ; and if so it must 
 be considered by far the best of its kind which he 
 has left us. It is also the most characteristic ex- 
 ample of his child-like simplicity and tenderness in 
 dealing with his favourite theme, human unworthi- 
 ness and the Divine Benignity. 
 
 " Herbert's strength of poetical conception," 
 says Professor Courthope, " lies in vivid, and 
 often sublime, renderings of the spiritual aspects 
 of human nature ; " and to us this strength may 
 seem oftenest shown in his poems on what might 
 be called the larger philosophical abstractions. 
 Whatever their names, whether unambiguous 
 titles like Sin, Affliction, and Constancy, or such 
 cryptic designations as The Pulley or The Collar, 
 they appear to afford his imagination more of 
 kindling fire and sustained heat. His short and 
 exquisite Virtue, probably the best known of all 
 his verses, is one of this class ; though its beauti- 
 ful imagery makes us too often forget the moral 
 propounded at the close. To omit the poem 
 wholly would be unpardonable ; quotation in part 
 would only mar its symmetry ; therefore no course 
 remains but complete insertion, superfluous as this 
 may be for most of those who read. Perhaps it is 
 best introduced in the familiar setting of Walton's 
 piscatory discourse : — 
 
THE TEMPLE 283 
 
 " And now, scholar, my direction for fly- 
 fishing is ended with this shower, for it has done 
 raining ; and now look about you, and see how 
 pleasantly that meadow looks ; nay, and the earth 
 smells as sweetly too. Come, let rent tell you 
 what holy Mr. Herbert says of such days and 
 flowers as these ; and then we will thank God 
 that we enjoy them, and walk to the river and 
 sit down quietly, and try to catch the other brace 
 of trouts. 
 
 Sweet Day, bo cool, bo calm, so bright, 
 The bridal of the earth and sky. 
 The dew flhall weep thy fall to-night ; 
 For thou must die. 
 
 Sweet RoBe, whose hue, angry and brave, 
 Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye. 
 Thy root is ever in its grave, 
 
 And thou must die. 
 
 Sweet Spring, full of Hwect days and roses, 
 A box where sweets compacted lie. 
 My music shows ye have your closes. 
 And all must die. 
 
 Only a sweet and virtuous soul. 
 Like seaBoned timber, never gives ; 
 But though the whole world turn to coal. 
 Then chiefly lives." 
 
 It is of course an imperfect poem : some of the 
 conceits are distinctly unpoetical, and some of the 
 words and phrases now out of date ; but of its kind it 
 
284. GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 is an imperishable gem, alike above criticism and 
 praise. 
 
 For the reasons already given, the less familiar 
 but more important — indeed, the greatest — of 
 Herbert's poems, Man, cannot be left out, though 
 it must close this over-long list of poetical cita- 
 tions. The Miltonic character of the poem has 
 been often noted, as well as its apparent anticipa- 
 tion of modern scientific knowledge. Echoing the 
 amazed admiration of King David and Hamlet — 
 names sufficiently wide apart — for the supreme 
 handiwork of Creation, it implicitly recognises the 
 fact that man and his earthly house have been of 
 united growth : such at least seems to be its inci- 
 dental teaching. We are part and parcel of the 
 natural scheme of things : man is an animal, if a 
 rational one, with only reason and speech to lift 
 him above his humbler brethren. He is affected 
 by the months and seasons ; by reason of a com- 
 mon origin, the herbs of the field cure his body, 
 even those he tramples under foot. The centre ajid 
 summit of the world, he is its complete epitome, 
 an atom yet the sum of all : — 
 
 My God, I heard this day 
 That none doth build a stately habitation. 
 But he that means to dwell therein. 
 What house more stately hath there been. 
 Or can be, than is Man ? to whose creation 
 All things are in decay. 
 
THE TEMPLE 285 
 
 For Man is everything, 
 And more : he is a tree, yet bears no fruit ; 
 A beast, yet is or should be more : 
 Reason and speech we only bring. 
 Parrots may thank us, if they are not mute. 
 They go upon the score. 
 
 Man is all symmetry. 
 Full of proportions, one limb to another, 
 And all to all the world besides ; 
 Each part may call the farthest, brother ; 
 For head with foot hath private amity, 
 And both with moon and tides. 
 
 Nothing hath got so far, 
 But Man hath caught and kept it, as his prey. 
 His eyes dismount the highest star ; 
 He is in little all the sphere. 
 Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they 
 Find their acquaintance there. 
 
 For us the winds do blow ; 
 The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow. 
 Nothing we see but means our good ; 
 As our delight or as our treasure ; 
 The whole is either our cupboard of food, 
 Or cabinet of pleasure. 
 
 The stars have us tp bed ; 
 Night draws the curtain, which the sun withdraws : 
 Music and light attend our head. 
 All things unto our flesh are kind 
 In their descent and being ; to our mind 
 In their ascent and cause. 
 
 Each thing is full of duty : 
 Waters united are our navigation ; 
 Distinguished, our habitation ; 
 Below, our drink ; above, our meat : 
 Both are our cleanliness. Hath one such beauty ? 
 How then are all things neat ! 
 
286 GEORGE HERBERT AND fflS TIMES 
 
 More servants wait on Man 
 Than he'll take notice of; in every path 
 
 He treads down that which doth befriend him 
 When sickness makes him pale and wan. 
 O mighty love ! Man is one world, and hath 
 Another to attend him. 
 
 Since then, my God, Thou hast 
 So brave a palace built, O dwell in it. 
 That it may dwell with Thee at last ! 
 Till then afford us so much wit. 
 That, as the world serves us, we may serve Thee, 
 And both Thy servants be. 
 
 Here, even more than in The Pulley, are the 
 " weight, number, and expression of the thoughts " 
 admirable, as well as the " simple dignity " of the 
 language ; though again the faults incident to the 
 metaphysical and other verse of the age are ap- 
 parent — obscurity from over-compression, archa- 
 isms, and the like. The lapse, however, into the 
 Ptolemaic astronomy, in the fifth stanza (" For us 
 . . . the earth doth rest, heaven move," etc.), 
 may be regarded as merely rhetorical ; the Coper- 
 nican system having been well established by 
 Herbert's time. 
 
 Such explanation as is possible for the sudden 
 and lasting popularity of The Temple poems may 
 now, perhaps, be considered as offered. The 
 examples here given, it is hoped, show that they 
 appeal not merely to the plain man, and that the 
 qualities which may be said to have contributed 
 
THE TEMPLE 287 
 
 to the best and happiest hours of the best and 
 happiest people for nearly ten generations, place 
 them among the first of their kind in the language. 
 The common criticism, that their value as religious 
 verse is in excess of their purely literary merits, 
 seems to be easily dealt with. Of the eight score 
 and one poems, short or long, making up The 
 Temple, at least twelve are in the very front rank 
 of English poetical compositions, by reason of 
 their strength of invention, excellence of form, 
 and felicity of expression. To The Church Porch, 
 and to the shorter poems, Man, Virtue, Decay, 
 Sin, The Quip, The Pulley, Love Unknown, The 
 Pilgrimage, The Collar, The Elixir, and the 
 second poem called Love, no valid objection can 
 be made on the usual grounds — verbal conceits, 
 false taste, and so on ; while their positive merits 
 are beyond praise. Quite as many more — The 
 Sacrifice, The Agony (a great poem disfigured 
 at the end), Affliction, Constancy, The British 
 Church, The Holdfast, The Flower, Aaron, The 
 Banquet, the two Antiphones, Hope, and several 
 others — are only just below them ; while the list 
 of poems containing striking and effective passages 
 or lines might be extended almost indefinitely. 
 The question of "purely literary " value is always 
 a difficult one, and turns largely on individual 
 tastes and opinions ; but perhaps the saying of 
 
288 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Matthew Arnold, in his defence of Wordsworth, 
 that the Lake Poet excelled in " the application 
 of ideas to life," applies equally to Herbert. To 
 deal as a poet with the vital facts of life with power 
 and mastery is a great thing ; and Herbert so 
 deals with the facts of the spiritual life. If he is 
 not " simple and sensuous," and sometimes over- 
 loads his verses with weighty and trenchant matter, 
 to their poetical hurt, the practice has had its able 
 apologists. " Give me a manly, rough line, with 
 a deal of meaning in it," says Cowper, " rather 
 than a whole poem full of musical periods that 
 have nothing but their oily smoothness to recom- 
 mend them ; " and the world at large has persist- 
 ently made the same demand, and will continue 
 to make it. Yet Herbert's lines abound in music ; 
 and he rarely, like Donne, comes under Ben 
 Jonson's censure of deserving to be hanged " for 
 breaking of quantity." 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 THE COUNTRY PARSON AHiD OTHER WRITINGS 
 
 A PASTOR is the deputy of Christ, for the 
 reducing of man to the obedience of 
 God." 
 
 The opening sentence of Herbert's best-known 
 work in prose, A Priest to the Temple, or the 
 Country Parson, his Character and Rule of Holy 
 Life — to give its full title — strikes the same note 
 as the exordium of The Church Porch ; only here 
 the message is not specially addressed to the 
 sweet and hopeful youth, unless (an unlikely thing 
 in his own day) the youth happens to be in Holy 
 Orders, or intends to be so. As a matter of fact, 
 it was a manual of parochial duties, drawn up 
 chiefly for his own guidance in his Bemerton cure. 
 " Being desirous, through the mercy of God," he 
 says in his short introduction, " to please Him, for 
 Whom I am and live, and Who giveth me my 
 desires and performances ; and considering with 
 myself that the way to please Him is to feed my 
 flock diligently and faithfully, since our Saviour 
 hath made that the argument of a pastor's love, 
 
 ig 289 
 
290 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 I have resolved to set down the form and character 
 of a true pastor, that I may have a mark to aim 
 at ; which also I will set as high as I can, since he 
 shoots higher that threatens the moon than he that 
 aims at a tree." 
 
 Although dated 1632 by Herbert in his intro- 
 duction ("The Author to the Reader"), it was 
 not printed until 1652 ; when Barnabas Oley, his 
 devoted admirer and former fellow-student at 
 Cambridge, published it in London, together with 
 the poet's collection of proverbs, Jacula Pruden- 
 tum,^ and a short biographical notice by himself. 
 The general title given to the book was Herberts 
 Remains, and it was followed nearly twenty years 
 later (1671) by a second edition, with a further 
 preface by the same editor. Both of these pre- 
 faces by Oley are of interest. The former gives, 
 among other things, some valuable particulars as 
 to Herbert's family, which he calls "generous, 
 noble, and ancient ; " his birthplace, and his ac- 
 quaintance with Nicholas Ferrar. The poet and 
 his remarkable , friend, he affirms, " loved each 
 other most entirely . . . yet saw they not each 
 other in many years — I think scarce ever — but as 
 members of one Universitie, in their whole lives." 
 He also gives some details, referred to in a former 
 chapter, of their joint labours in the repair of 
 
 ^ First published in 1640, under the title Outlaniish Provti'bs.f 
 Selected by Mr. G. H, 
 
A PRIEST 
 
 To the 
 
 TEMPLE 
 
 OR, 
 TheCountrey Parson 
 
 CHARACTER, 
 
 AND 
 
 Rule of Holy Life. 
 
 The AuTHOuR, 
 
 Mg.K 
 
 * 
 
 LONDON, 
 
 Printed by T. Maxey for T. Garthvfm, at the 
 lictlc North door of S' Paul' t. i6fz. 
 
 THE ORIGINAL EDITION 
 
 (published with JACUL A PIlUOBNTUit, AND AN INTRODUC'I ION 
 BY BARNABAS OLEv) 
 
4m 
 
 HE^E'BS'S ^ 
 
 Remamsf 
 
 _ ^ 
 
 or, p 
 
 SUNDRY Ik 
 
 PIECES! 
 
 '^!^ 0/ that fwcet Singer 
 
 ;m ofthe TlMPlE, 
 
 
 -^ Af ' ^f cjr^e Herbert, ^ 
 
 4y§i Orator of the Univcrfity of 
 
 CAMBRIDG. ^i. 
 
 ■*^ . jKi" 
 
 M Nm exfofedtofublick li^ht. S^ 
 
 •?>3f — i^i- 
 
 ^^ LONDON, '•^i' 
 
 ^^' Printed for Timothy Garthvfait, ^ 
 ^>a? at the little North door of Saint ^^ 
 
 THE GENERAL TITLE UNDER WHICH THE COUNTRY PARSON 
 AND JACULA PRUDENTUM WEKE INCLUDED 
 
THE COUNTRY PARSON 291 
 
 Leighton Church, with his (entirely just) estimate 
 of the relative merits of the Parentalia and The 
 Temple poems. In his second preface, consisting 
 largely of counsels to his fellow-clergfymen to 
 follow the pattern of life set forth in the book, he 
 mentions Ferrar's friend, Mr. Edmund Duncon, 
 as " the good man that was possessor of the 
 manuscript," and caused it to be printed, for the 
 benefit of the clergy and the Church ; thus con- 
 firming, or anticipating, Walton's story of its 
 publication. It is also of interest as showing the 
 importance attached by his contemporaries to the 
 fact of Herbert's high birth ; though his editor, 
 an Archdeacon, is at pains to prove, by a long 
 list of noblemen, with their sons, brothers, and 
 other near relatives, who had taken Orders in the 
 English Church, that his case was not without 
 precedent He even instances Henry VIII., who, 
 before the death of his elder brother. Prince 
 Arthur, was intended by his father for the Arch- 
 bishopric of Canterbury. 
 
 If Herbert in his sermons carefully instructed 
 his flock in all matters relating to public worship, 
 especially their behaviour in Church, he is equally 
 minute in his directions, or rather exhortations, to 
 their spiritual guides. That he regarded the posi- 
 tion even of a country clergyman as one of high 
 responsibility, need not be said. The thirty-seven 
 
292 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 chapters of his manual treat his ofifice, or offices, 
 with a fulness little short of exhaustive ; and the 
 curate of souls who grudged the twelve pence 
 necessary for its purchase was certainly deserving 
 of blame. Beginning with a definition, as, ac- 
 cording to a Roman author, every rational dis- 
 course should do, the different chapters suggest 
 Bacon's essays in more ways than one : they are 
 short and full of sententious matter, homely, if not 
 home-spun in much of their diction, and also, 
 although in this hardly characteristic of Bacon, 
 sometimes amusing. They throw, too, a good 
 deal of light on Herbert's position as a Church- 
 man, a position not so easy to define as many 
 have assumed. Those of the Low Church party, 
 if such regrettable distinctions must be made, who 
 have claimed him for their own, are hardly sup- 
 ported by his first chapter. Here, as in his poem 
 entitled The Priesthood, he asserts without com- 
 promise the high prerogatives of his Order : " the 
 dignity, in that a priest may do that which Christ 
 did, and by His authority and as His viceregent ; 
 the duty, in that a priest is to do that which Christ 
 did, and after His manner, both for doctrine and 
 life." On the other hand, the High Churchmen 
 who, with more reason, have attached him to their 
 side, and proclaimed him a forerunner of the 
 Anglo-Catholic Priest of to-day, must admit that 
 
THE COUNTRY PARSON 293 
 
 in several important respects he differed from 
 their present ideals, as many of these would cer- 
 tainly have provoked his condemnation. 
 
 The interests of The Country Parson, however, 
 do not hinge on points of ritual or particular 
 doctrine ; and having defined the character of a 
 pastor in his first chapter, if chapter it may be 
 called, Herbert proceeds in his second to con- 
 sider the diversities of his kind. " The reverend 
 prelates of the Church," he modestly refrains from 
 instructing in their duties : of the others, " some," 
 he says, " live in the Universities, some in noble 
 houses, some in parishes, residing on their cures." 
 As might be supposed, he has something to say of 
 the academic species, with whom he had reason to 
 be familiar ; and especially of "those in a prepara- 
 tory way," whom he advises " not to think that 
 when they have read the Fathers or Schoolmen, 
 a minister is made, and the thing done ; " while 
 those who are domestic chaplains he counsels " not 
 to be over-submissive and base, but to keep up 
 with the lord and lady of the house, and to pre- 
 serve a boldness with them all, even so far as 
 reproof to their very faces when occasion calls, 
 but seasonably and discreetly." He is, however, 
 chiefly concerned with the rural Priest, and the 
 manner of his ministry. " The country Parson," 
 he says in his third discourse, " is exceeding exact 
 
294 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 in his life, being holy, just, prudent, temperate, 
 bold, grave, in all his ways." He is particularly 
 careful to avoid anything that may scandalise his 
 parish : covetousness, drunkenness, and the break- 
 ing of promises. " As for oaths and apparel," he 
 concludes, " the disorders thereof are also very 
 manifest. The Parson's yea is yea, and nay, nay ; 
 and his apparel plain, but reverend and clean, 
 without spots, or dust, or smell ; the purity of his 
 mind breaking out and dilating itself even to his 
 body, clothes, and habitation." Herbert's regard 
 for dress in his undergraduate days has been men- 
 tioned ; and he insists also on personal purity 
 in one of the quaintest stanzas of The Church 
 Porch : — 
 
 Affect in things about thee cleanliness. 
 That all may gladly board thee, as a flower. 
 Slovens take up their stock of noisomeness 
 Beforehand, and anticipate their last hour. 
 Let thy mind's sweetness have his operation 
 Upon thy body, clothes, and habitation. 
 
 The chapters dealing with the Pastor's intel- 
 lectual and spiritual equipment are of singular 
 interest. " The country Parson," says Herbert, 
 " is full of all knowledge," and " condescends even 
 to the knowledge of tillage and pasturage . . . 
 because people by what they understand are best 
 led to what they vmderstand not. But the chief 
 and top of his knowledge consists in the Book of 
 
THE COUNTRY PARSON 295 
 
 books, the storehouse and magazine of life and 
 comfort, — the Holy Scriptures. There he sucks 
 and lives." Yet, in an age that glorified the Bible 
 as the only and sufficient agent of human regener- 
 ation, he insists that " a holy life " is indispensable 
 to its right interpretation, and should go before its 
 study. Also, he asserts what savours curiously of 
 ultra-modern if not "higher" criticism, that there 
 have been other revelations ; " that God in all 
 ages hath had His servants, to whom He hath 
 revealed His truth . . . and that as one country 
 doth not bear all things, that there may be a 
 commerce, so neither hath God opened or will 
 open all to one, that there may be a traffic in 
 knowledge between the servants of God for the 
 planting both of love and humility." Here the 
 nascent Broad Churchman seems to speak ; but 
 his mind is sufficiently Catholic. " The country 
 Parson hath read the Fathers also," he says in the 
 chapter following, " and the Schoolmen and the 
 later writers, or a good proportion of all, out of all 
 which he hath compiled a book of divinity, which 
 is the storehouse of his sermons." To catechising 
 he gives special attention, as well as to cases of 
 conscience. The latter are an important part of 
 the priestly vocation ; "for every one," he ex- 
 plains, " hath not digested when it is a sin to take 
 something for money lent, or when not ; when it is 
 
296 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 a fault to discover another's fault, or when not ; 
 when the affections of the soul in desiring and 
 procuring increase of means or honour be a sin of 
 covetousness or ambition, and when not ; " with 
 many other difficult points of parochial casuistry. 
 
 The minute attention he gives, in his sixth, 
 seventh, and eighth chapters, to the clergyman's 
 method of conducting the service, and to the 
 congregation's demeanour under his ministrations, 
 points strongly to a widespread disorganisation of 
 public worship, and the general need of reform. 
 Altogether, indeed, the whole teaching and preach- 
 ing of the more able and learned divines of the 
 period — in fact, from the beginning of Queen 
 Elizabeth's reign to the Restoration, and even 
 for some time after — indicate the same conditions : 
 a decay of the devout sentiment and feeling gen- 
 erated under the old religious order, and the 
 necessity, more or less consciously recognised, of 
 laying their foundations afresh. The model priest, 
 by Herbert's injunctions, is as careful of his pulpit 
 manner as of his matter. In his public prayers, 
 he " composeth himself to all possible reverence, 
 lifting up his heart and hands and eyes, and using 
 all other gestures which may express a hearty and 
 unfeigned devotion." " His voice is humble, his 
 words treatable and slow, yet not so slow neither 
 . . . but with a grave liveliness, between fear and 
 
THE COUNTRY PARSON 297 
 
 zeal, pausing yet pressing, he performs his duty." 
 Nor is he less mindful of the carriage of his rural 
 flock, whom he has sedulously instructed in the 
 outward decencies. He " exacts of them all pos- 
 sible reverence,' by no means enduring either 
 talking, or sleeping, or gazing, or leaning, or 
 half kneeling, or any undutiful behaviour in them, 
 but causing them when they sit, or stand, or kneel, 
 to do all in a straight and steady posture, as 
 attending to what is done in the Church." Their 
 "Amens" and other responses also "are to be 
 done not in a huddling or slubbering fashion, 
 gaping, or scratching the head, or spitting even 
 in the midst of their answer, but gently and 
 pausably, thinking what they say." These are 
 fundamentals indeed ; but his oversight is not to 
 be confined to the humbler sheep of his fold. "If 
 there be any of the gentry or nobility of the parish, 
 who sometimes make it a piece of state not to 
 come at the beginning of service with their poor 
 neighbours, but at mid-prayers ... he by no 
 means suffers it, but after divers gentle admoni- 
 tions, if they persevere, he causes them to be 
 presented ; ^ or if his poor churchwardens be 
 affrighted with their greatness ... he presents 
 them himself." In the matter of preaching he is 
 at one with the Puritans, and will have no "dumb 
 
 1 Before the Ordinary — the Bishop, or some other Ecclesias- 
 tical Censor. 
 
298 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 dogs '' in the Church. " The country Parson," he 
 affirms, " preacheth constantly ; the pulpitis his joy 
 and his throne." He uses all the arts of oratory, 
 and draws no bow at a venture, aiming his exhorta- 
 tions specifically at the old or the young, the rich 
 or the poor, with : " This is for you, and this is for 
 you." At times he enlivens his discourse with 
 stories ; "for them also men heed and remember 
 better than exhortations," especially country people, 
 " which are thick and heavy, and hard to raise to 
 a point of zeal and fervency, and need a mountain 
 of fire to kindle them ; but stories and sayings 
 they will well remember." The length of, his 
 sermons, he directs, shall not exceed an hour in 
 preaching, " because all ages have thought that a 
 competency." His Sundays are filled with diver- 
 sified labours : in them he " seems to himself so as 
 a market man is when market day comes, or a 
 shopkeeper when customers use to come in." 
 
 Turning to his private condition of life, the 
 model Parson, "considering that virginity is a 
 higher state than matrimony," is preferably un- 
 married. " But yet ... as the temper of his parish 
 may be, where he may have occasion to converse 
 with women, and that among suspicious men . . . 
 he is rather married than unmarried." He chooses 
 his wife " rather by his ear than his eye ; his judg- 
 ment, not his affection ; " and while giving her 
 
THE COUNTRY PARSON 299 
 
 "half at least of the government of the house," he 
 periodically " looks how things go," and demands 
 an account of her stewardship, " the oftener or the 
 seldomer, according as he is satisfied of his wife's 
 discretion." His house he rules with the strictness 
 of a martinet ; his children with " more love than 
 terror," his servants with more "terror than love." 
 His furniture is " very plain, but clean, whole, and 
 sweet, as sweet as his garden can make ; for he 
 hath no money for such things." The household 
 dietary is " plain and common, but wholesome ; 
 what he hath is little, but. very good ; it consisteth 
 most of mutton, beef, and veal ; if he adds any- 
 thing for a great day or a stranger, his garden or 
 his orchard supplies it, or his barn or yard." His 
 fasts are kept in the spirit rather than the letter : 
 an unpleasant piece of dried flesh, he points out, 
 is more of the nature of a fast than a palatable 
 piece of fish. 
 
 His chapter entitled The Parson's Church may 
 be given with little abridgment, as showing the 
 modest minimum of adornment, and the like, 
 deemed necessary for the " beauty of holiness " by 
 a clergyman of the school of Andrewes and Laud 
 at that time, probably about the year 1632 : — 
 
 " The country Parson hath a special care of his 
 Church, that all things there be decent, and be- 
 fitting His name by which it is called. Therefore, 
 
300 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 first, he takes order that all things be in good 
 repair ; as walls plastered, windows glazed, floor 
 paved, seats whole, firm, and uniform, especially 
 that the pulpit, and desk, and Communion Table, 
 and font, be as they ought for those great duties 
 that are performed in them. Secondly, that the 
 Church be swept and kept clean, without dust or 
 cobwebs, and at great festivals strewed and stuck 
 with boughs, and perfumed with incense. Thirdly, 
 that there be fit and proper texts of Scripture 
 everywhere painted, and that all the painting be 
 grave and reverend, not with light colours or 
 foolish antics. Fourthly, that all the books ap- 
 pointed by authority be there, and those not torn 
 or fouled, but whole, and clean, and well bound ; 
 and that there be a fitting and sightly Communion 
 cloth of fine linen, with a handsome and seemly 
 carpet of good and costly stuff or cloth, and all 
 kept sweet and clean, in a strong and decent chest, 
 with a chalice and cover, and a stoup or flagon, 
 and a basin for alms and offerings ; besides which 
 he hath a poor man's box conveniently seated to 
 receive the charity of well-minded people, and to 
 lay up treasures for the sick and needy. And all 
 this he doth, not as out of necessity, or as putting 
 a holiness in the things, but as desiring to keep 
 the middle way between superstition and sloven- 
 liness, and as following the Apostle's two great 
 
THE COUNTRY PARSON 301 
 
 and admirable rules in things of this nature : the 
 first whereof is, ' Let all things be done decently 
 and in order ; ' the second, ' Let all things be 
 done to edification' (i Cor. xiv.)." 
 
 In The Parson in Sacraments, his acceptance 
 of the doctrine of the Real Presence is explicitly 
 stated : " Especially at Communion times he is in 
 great confusion, as being not only to receive God, 
 but to break and administer Him." Of the manner 
 of receiving, a much and fiercely debated question 
 of the time, he says : " The feast indeed requireth 
 sitting, because it is a feast ; but man's unpre- 
 paredness asks kneeling. He that comes to the 
 Sacraments hath the confidence of a guest, and he 
 that kneels confesseth himself an unworthy one, 
 and therefore differs from other feasters ; but he 
 that sits or lies puts up to an Apostle." He adds, 
 however, the just comment that "contentiousness 
 in a feast of charity is more scandal than any 
 posture." As to the frequency of the Com- 
 munion, he says " the Parson celebrates it, if not 
 duly once a month, yet at least five or six times 
 a year ; as at Easter, Christmas, Whitsuntide, 
 before and after harvest, and the beginning of 
 Lent." In baptising, "he willingly and cheer- 
 fully crosseth the child, and thinketh the cere- 
 mony not only innocent but reverend." He also 
 instructs godfathers and godmothers "that it is 
 
802 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 no complimental or light thing to sustain that 
 place." 
 
 The model Parson's relations to his flock, as 
 described by Herbert, might be called those of a 
 benevolent paternal despot. The Parson as a 
 Father is the title of one of his chapters, The 
 Parson in Gods Stead another ; while in that 
 entitled The Parson's Completeness the functions 
 of a lawyer and a physician are added to his paro- 
 chial obligations. That he should urge upon his 
 rural clergyman the cure of the bodies as well as 
 souls of his parishioners is in keeping with the 
 bent of his family. All the Herberts seem to have 
 been accomplished herbalists : Edward, it will be 
 remembered, considered it especially worthy of 
 a gentleman to be a " good botanic ; " and his 
 parson brother declares that in the knowledge of 
 simples " the manifold wisdom of God is wonder- 
 fully to be seen." The rural Priest's acquaintance 
 with agriculture must be extended to garden cura- 
 tives ; "for home-bred medicines are both more 
 easy for the Parson's purse, and more familiar for 
 all men's bodies." Therefore, for the apothecary's 
 rhubarb and bolearmena, he substitutes damask or 
 white roses, plantain, shepherd's-purse, knot-grass 
 and other home-grown remedies ; while at his 
 table he condemns foreign spices " for vanities, 
 and so shuts them out of his family, esteeming that 
 
THE COUNTRY PARSON 303 
 
 there is no spice comparable for herbs to rosemary, 
 thyme, savory, mints ; and for seeds to fennel and 
 caraway-seeds. Accordingly, for salves, his wife 
 seeks not the city, but prefers her garden and fields 
 before all outlandish gums." 
 
 Separate chapters are devoted to the Parson's 
 courtesy and charity, to his journeys, his library, 
 and the like. His offices as a friend, comforter, 
 and moral sentinel, and as an encourager of good 
 works, are also dwelt on, together with his func- 
 tions as a reprover and punisher of wrong-doers, a 
 composer of quarrels, and a promoter of brotherly 
 love. While, however, he is chiefly concerned 
 with the poorer part of his flock, he by no means 
 neglects those of higher station. Every one in his 
 parish must be employed ; and the gentry have 
 their special duties. On them he strongly urges 
 public offices, in particular that of "the commission 
 of peace." "No commonwealth in the world," 
 says George Herbert, " hath a braver institution 
 than that of justices of the peace . . . wherefore 
 it behoves all who are come to the gravity and 
 ripeness of judgment for so excellent a place, not 
 to refuse, but rather to procure it." The country 
 gentleman must frequent the sessions and assizes 
 in order to know the law of the land, " for," he 
 adds with his usual keenness, " our law is prac- 
 tice." Also, when there is a Parliament, " he is to 
 
304 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 endeavour by all means to be a knight or burgess 
 there, for there is no school to a Parliament." 
 With his brother Edward, he insists on martial 
 exercise : " every morning that he is at home he 
 must either ride the great horse or exercise some 
 of his military postures." To the younger brothers 
 whom the Parson finds not engaged in any pro- 
 fession by their parents, " whose neglect in this 
 point is intolerable," and who spend their time " in 
 dressing, complimenting, visiting, and sporting," 
 he commends the study of the civil law, and of 
 mathematics, " as the only wonder-working know- 
 ledge," especially navigation and fortification. But 
 the young gallants who think these courses "dull 
 and phlegmatic " are to be shipped off without ado 
 to the American plantations. 
 
 On the whole, George Herbert's ideal of a 
 country parish priest — or minister, for the terms 
 were then used interchangeably, as they are still 
 in the Prayer Book — is an admirable one, in spite 
 of his pragmatic zeal and amiable tyrannies. " A 
 cultivated gentleman in every parish " has long 
 been the desideratum for an Anglican diocese ; 
 and Herbert supplied his model for all time, at 
 the low price of a shilling. Whether, as Walton 
 intimates, and he himself implies in his introduc- 
 tion, the book was written before actually entering 
 upon his cure, or after some experience of its duties, 
 
THE COUNTRY PARSON 305 
 
 is not clear ; though its original date (1632) sug- 
 gests the latter possibility. The former supposi- 
 tion, however, seems the more probable ; as some 
 of his theories, especially that of enforcing love and 
 neighbourly feeling by law, might not have stood 
 the test of trial. But practical or not, their aim is 
 wholly benevolent : the country Parson is always 
 the poor man's friend and champion, though not 
 less the wise counsellor of the rich ; and his parish, 
 with its well-kept Church, and its mint, rose- 
 mary and thyme growing up side by side with 
 the Christian virtues, could hardly fail, if in any 
 measure realised, to have been a small paradise on 
 earth. 
 
 Several of Herbert's less-known writings have 
 already been mentioned — the Epigrams defending 
 the English Church, the Parentalia, the Cam- 
 bridge Orations, and others. The Church Mili- 
 tant, a poem of some length originally bound 
 with The Temple, is of interest from containing 
 the lines objected to by the Vice-Chancellor of 
 his University, to whom Ferrar had applied for 
 a license to publish the book. Doubtless, the 
 whole of the following passage was complained 
 of, as the suggested flight of Christianity to 
 the Separatists of New England would hardly 
 be relished by the ecclesiastical authorities at 
 home : — 
 
 20 
 
306 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 Religion stands on tiptoe in our land, 
 
 Ready to pass to the American strand. 
 
 When height of malice and prodigious lusts, 
 
 Impudent sinning, witchcrafts, and distrusts — 
 
 The marks of future bane — shall fill our cup 
 
 Unto the brim, and make our measure up ; 
 
 When Seine shall swallow Tiber, and the Thames, 
 
 By letting in them both, pollutes her streams ; 
 
 When Italy of us shall have her will, 
 
 And all her calendar of sins fulfil ; 
 
 Whereby one may foretell what sins next year 
 
 Shall both in France and England domineer ; 
 
 Then shall Religion to America flee ; 
 
 They have their times of Gospel, e'en as we. 
 
 But he is careful to say that religion shall not 
 escape from moral evil by emigration : — 
 
 Yet as the Church shall thither westward fly. 
 So Sin shall trace and dog her instantly. 
 
 Herbert's collection of proverbs, Jacula Pru- 
 dentum^ (republished with the 1652 edition of 
 The Country Parson), consists of over a thousand 
 short proverbs of more or less merit. If, as their 
 title implies, they were really selected by him, 
 they are on the whole typical of his genius, 
 which as we have seen always delighted in 
 pithy and sententious utterances. The Preface 
 and Notes supplied by him to Ferrar's transla- 
 tion of Valdesso's Divine Considerations (pub- 
 lished in 1638) are chiefly noteworthy for the 
 confidence of his theological judgments : they also 
 
 ' See ante, p. 290. 
 
Z OVTLJnt>lSH 
 
 t PROVERBS, 
 
 SbL ECT b i^ 
 
 
 
 •I*- 
 
 -8- 
 
 By M'. G.H. 
 
 LONDON, 
 
 
 
 ■^ Printed by T, P. for Humphrey .^ 
 
 
 "Bluitden-^ atthe Cafi/e in 
 Cern-btll. i 6 4 o. 
 
 «>}•• *■£* *^ 
 
 THE TITLE UNDER WHICH JACULA PRUDENTUM 
 WAS FIRST PUBLISHED 
 
THE COUNTRY PARSON 307 
 
 raise the question, suggested by his letter to his 
 mother in her sickness, not when he became a 
 completely furnished divine, but whether he was 
 ever anything else. The wonder he expresses to 
 his friend, " that God in the midst of Popery 
 should open the eyes of one to understand and 
 express so clearly and excellently the intent of 
 the Gospel," was doubtless shared by Ferrar him- 
 self, who, as a visitor to Gidding once reported, 
 strongly afifirmed his belief that the Pope was 
 really Anti-Christ. Again, Herbert's translation 
 from the Latin of A Treatise of Temperance and 
 Sobriety, written by Ludivico Cornaro, a noble 
 Venetian, and published by Ferrar in 1634, is also 
 in keeping with his character, as shown by the 
 attention given to matters of diet in his letters, 
 poems, and elsewhere. 
 
 Among Herbert's English poems is a small 
 collection of religious pieces lately discovered in 
 manuscript and now included in his Works, under 
 the title of Lilies of the Temple. A number of 
 metrical translations or renderings of the Psalms 
 are also attributed to him, with verses on Lord 
 Danvers and Sir John Danvers : he is credited as 
 well with a curious poem called A Paradox, and 
 one addressed, like Sir Henry Wotton's courtly 
 masterpiece, to the Queen of Bohemia. His 
 Classical poems, besides the much-discussed Re- 
 
308 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 sponsoriae (to Melville) and the Parentalia, in- 
 clude those referring to Lord Bacon, Donne, and 
 King James, an Epigram from Martial, and a 
 poem on the death of Queen Anne of Denmark, 
 with two others on the death of Prince Henry 
 of Wales. Two collections of Latin epigrams, 
 entitled Passio Discerpta and Lucus ; the former, 
 like his English poem, T&e Sacrifice, dealing 
 with the events of the Passion, the latter consist- 
 ing of secular and religious pieces intermingled, 
 have been rescued from manuscript and published. 
 The literary quality of his Classical compositions 
 need not be discussed here : by competent authori- 
 ties his Latin and Greek poems have been pro- 
 nounced " admirable, but not equal to Milton's." 
 His brother, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, con- 
 sidered his English works, though " rare in their 
 kind ... far short of expressing those perfections 
 he had in the Greek and Latin tongue : " time, 
 however, has reversed the verdict, and it is on his 
 English verse that his fame as a poet must now 
 rest. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 /^ EORGE HERBERT'S life and work have 
 ^^ appealed to his fellow men and women in 
 different times under many aspects. Some have 
 been attracted by the theologian, some by the 
 Churchman, some by the philosopher, some by 
 the poet — a few, possibly, by the affectionate son 
 and brother revealed in his family letters. To 
 others, his example as a religious courtier has 
 offeried a strong fascination ; this may be called 
 the genteel aspect of his message, with that of 
 Ferrar and his other associates. 
 
 " What seems to have been the peculiar mission 
 of Herbert and of his fellows," says Mr, Short- 
 house, in the Preface to his edition of The Temple, 
 " is that they showed the English people what a 
 fine gentleman, who was also a Christian and a 
 Churchman, might be. They set the tone of the 
 Church of England, and they revealed, with no 
 inefificient or temporary effect, to the uncultured 
 and unlearned the true refinement of worship. 
 
 309 
 
310 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 They united delicacy of taste in their choice of 
 ornament and of music with culture of expression 
 and reserve, and they showed that this was not 
 incompatible with devoted life and work." 
 
 To the author of John Inglesant this might 
 have seemed the great lesson which the well-bred 
 and cultured Anglicans of that day had to teach. 
 Undoubtedly, it was one of the lessons ; but so 
 far as Herbert himself is concerned it appears a 
 somewhat limited view of the truth. The "fine 
 gentleman " is the smallest if it is any part of the 
 George Herbert revealed in The Temple ; and it 
 was chiefly by The Temple that he impressed his 
 age. As we have seen, both Walton and Oley 
 were influenced by his high birth ; but the staunch 
 Nonconformist, Richard Baxter, who "next the 
 Scripture poems" found "none so savoury" as 
 Herbert's, was probably not affected by their 
 author's gentility ; nor, it may be conceived, were 
 the majority of their twenty thousand purchasers. 
 The true key to their popular success is to be 
 found in Walton's words, in which he describes 
 The Temple as a book in which its author, " by 
 declaring his own spiritual conflicts ... hath 
 comforted and raised many a dejected and dis- 
 composed soul, and charmed them into sweet and 
 quiet thoughts." It was the spiritual man rather 
 than the gentleman in The Temple poems which 
 
CONCLUSION 311 
 
 appealed to minds so widely sundered as those 
 of Crashaw and Cowper, Charles I. and Henry 
 Vaughan, Archbishop Leighton and S. T. Cole- 
 ridge, and which, in comparatively modern times, 
 has commended them to the wider English- 
 speaking world, with little regard to social or 
 sectarian differences. 
 
 The very catholicity of Herbert's message as a 
 poet, however, has led to no small confusion as to 
 his ecclesiastical position, a proof, perhaps, of the 
 real breath of genius. All ranks and grades of 
 the religious, from the most ardent Catholic within 
 the Anglican fold to the most ultra- Protestant 
 without, have, as it has been said, found him one 
 of themselves, by reason of various points of 
 spiritual likeness or affinity. The modern High 
 Churchman sees in his reverence for holy places, 
 and for holy offices and seasons, in his definite 
 pronouncements on the subject of the Priesthood, 
 and in his ordered life and devotions, the true 
 signs of a forerunner of the Oxford Movement. 
 The extreme Protestant, on the other hand, dis- 
 covers in the solitary soul, reasoning and even 
 wrestling with its Maker, in the clear vision of 
 the hatefulness of sin, and in the sensitive con- 
 science, ever engaged in its 
 
 cold dispute 
 Of what is fit and not, 
 
312 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 the faithful reflection of himself and his own 
 moral conflicts ; and he is not seldom surprised 
 by the further discovery that these attributes, 
 which should belong to a prophet of the desert, 
 clad in skins and living on locusts, are those of a 
 man in a canonical coat, who, if the truth were 
 told, is little better than one of the sacerdotalists. 
 Perhaps, therefore, we may say that Herbert's 
 true message was one of reconciliation, illustrating 
 the essential unity of all spiritual experience. 
 
 Yet, although no poet has ever pierced deeper 
 into the heart of spiritual things, or handled them 
 with greater boldness, he has been described as 
 recoiling from the more strenuous religious currents 
 of his age, and feeding his faith on the outward 
 symbols and ordinances of Catholicism, Even the 
 late J. R. Green speaks of him as starting back 
 from " the bare, intense spiritualism of the Puritan " 
 to nourish his religious instincts on the outer 
 associations of Catholic tradition ; but this is cer- 
 tainly not the Herbert disclosed in The Temple 
 and The Country Parson. In his poems, he is 
 much more concerned with the elemental fires that 
 try and refine the soul, than with material aids to 
 devotion. It is true that he has a profound rever- 
 ence for holy places ; but with him it is the spirit 
 that consecrates the place, and the place merely 
 reflects the consecrating spirit — indeed, he ex- 
 
CONCLUSION 313 
 
 pressly warns his country Priest against " putting 
 a holiness in the things." Bare, intense spirit- 
 ualism is his own distinguishing mark ; and the 
 whole effort of his being might be described as 
 the attempt to solve the two great mysteries of 
 the ages : — 
 
 Philosophers have measured mountains, 
 Fathomed the depth of seas, of states, and kings : 
 Walked with a staff to heaven, and traced fountains ; 
 
 But there are two vast, spacious things, 
 The which to measure it doth more behove : 
 Yet there are few that sound them, — Sin and Love. 
 
 His character, as presented by his more intimate 
 writings, is that of a man of strong intellect and 
 high ambitions, by no means unworldly or without 
 human passions, perfected and humanised by dis- 
 appointment, suffering, and self-subjection. With 
 him the note of conflict, of perpetual warfare 
 against natural bias and inclination, is everywhere 
 present : he is the most militant if not the most 
 combative of saints. And herein lies the seem- 
 ing paradox of the association of his name with 
 things of beauty, rest, and peace — with the quiet 
 of country churchyards, the freshness of summer 
 skies and mornings, the solemn stillness of the 
 chancel and the altar. It is, however, the familiar 
 paradox of the natural world. We do not per- 
 ceive or understand the price paid for the apparent 
 repose of Nature : that what seems to us an inert. 
 
314 GEORGE HERBERT AND HIS TIMES 
 
 effortless calm, is really the resultant of a thousand 
 active forces : that our dreaming planet moves in 
 a very whirlpool of dust and broken fragments of 
 the cosmos : and that the peace of our fields, in 
 more senses than one, is the outcome of " battles 
 long ago." 
 
 But, spiritual gladiator and severe moralist as 
 he is, Herbert is the most human and kindly of 
 ascetics, full of friendliness, neighbourliness, and 
 small courtesies. Who else could have written — 
 
 Be useful where thou livest, that they may 
 Both want and wish thy pleasing presence still. 
 Kindness, great parts, great places, are the way 
 To compass this. Find out men's wants and will, 
 
 And meet them there. All worldly joys go less 
 
 To the one joy of doing kindnesses ? 
 
 What poet, again, has ever drawn his images, 
 and the illustrations of his themes, from Nature 
 with a gentler or happier hand ? — 
 
 How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean 
 
 Are Thy returns ! ev'n as the flowers in Spring. 
 To which, besides their own demean, 
 The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring ; 
 Grief melts away 
 Like snow in May, 
 As if there were no such cold thing. 
 
 And who, again, has ever shown a more tender 
 love and concern for the members of his father's 
 household, as their counsellor and helper in worldly 
 affairs, not less than in suffering and bereavement ? 
 
CONCLUSION 316 
 
 Of his genius perhaps enough has been said. 
 The pen-knife "wit" in its narrow sheath, "too 
 thoughtful" and "too sharp for his body," he 
 evidently felt to be an uncomfortable possession, 
 and one which he could not always guide, despite 
 the fastidious correction of his verses shown by 
 his existing manuscripts. The common criticism, 
 however, that his genius greatly exceeded his 
 taste, can only be accepted with qualifications ; 
 for if many of his poems show a primitive force not 
 always ruled by art, a large proportion of them 
 disclose an essential mastery of the elements of 
 true poetry, of which taste in the choice of words, 
 images, and adornments, is assuredly one. His 
 defective pieces, of which the number is not small, 
 may be left to the enemy, who will make the most 
 of them in the future as he has in the past ; but 
 there are gems in some of the worst ; and as 
 Browning says of Wordsworth, we may safely 
 leave his work "to operate in the world as it 
 may, each recipient his own selector." 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbot, Archbishop, 164. 
 
 Addison, 84, 280 ; work mentioned : 
 Six Papers on Wit, 280. 
 
 JEmilia (Latin comedy), 94. 
 
 Albigenses, The, 165, 
 
 Albumazar (English comedy), 94. 
 
 " All must to their cold graves," 
 251. See also Shirley, James. 
 
 Altar. See Communion, and Com- 
 munion Table. 
 
 American Plantations, The, 304. 
 
 Andrewes, Bishop, 2, 4, 7, 29, 58, 89, 
 90. 95. 99. 106, 139-42, 148, 153, 
 155. 165, 167, 170, 187, 266, 299. 
 
 Anglican communities, 11. 
 
 Anne of Denmark, 61. 
 
 Anti-Tami-Cami-Categoria, The, 56- 
 60, 68, 141. 
 
 Aristotle, 43, 136. 
 
 " Arminianism," 4, 140, 165, 166. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 152, 288. 
 
 Assizes, The, 303, 
 
 Aubrey (the antiquarian), 109, iii, 
 241, 252. 
 
 Autobiography, The (Lord Her- 
 bert's), 15, 18-20, 24. 
 
 Autumnal Beauty, The, 118, 
 
 Bacon, Lord, 41, 43, 45, 82, 83, 89, 
 go, 99, 136-38, 148, 158, 187, 261, 
 292, 308 ; works mentioned : the 
 Instauratio Magna, 83, gg, 137, 
 138; Translation Of the Psalms, 
 »38, 139- 
 
 Bainton, 193, ig6, 223, 224, 227, 
 
 Z41. 
 Bancroft, Archbishop, 56. 
 Basilicon Doron, The, 68, 83, 84, 85, 
 
 87, g8. 
 Bastwick, John, 156, 157, i6g ; work 
 
 mentioned : Letter to Lady Wal- 
 
 grave, 156, 157. 
 Bath, 244, 245- 
 Baxter, Richard, 310. 
 Bedford Gaol, 277. 
 Bemerton, 10, 37, 171, 189, 223, 240, 
 
 242, 245, 247, 252, 258, 269, 289. 
 Berengarians, The, 165. 
 Beza, 57, 60, 152. 
 Bible, The, 8, 277, 295. 
 Biographia Literaria, The, 275. 
 Black Hall, 14, 15. 
 Blake, William, 262. 
 Bocton Hall, 145. 
 Book of Common Prayer. See 
 
 Prayer-book. 
 Book of Martyrs, Foxe's, 199, 216, 
 
 277. 
 Bostock, Mr., 242, 243, 249, 250, 
 
 251- 
 Bourne, 206, 207. 
 Brown, Sir John (brother-in-law of 
 
 the poet), 21. 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, 273. 
 Browning, 113, 315. 
 Bucer, 57, 59. 
 Buchanan, 55. 
 Buckingham, Duke of, 83, 84, 120, 
 
 134- 
 — Marquis of. See Duke of. 
 Bunyan, 7, 105, 276, 277. 
 Burton, Robert, g. 
 Busby, Richard, 30. 
 
 317 
 
318 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Calvin, 57, 59, 151, 152. 
 
 Calvinism, 4, 38, 152, 153, 156, 160, 
 164, 165, 166, 167, 225. 
 
 Cam, The, 82. 
 
 Camberwell, 115. 
 
 Cambridge, 30, 31, 38 ; origin and 
 development of the University, 38- 
 40; daily life, and discipline of, 
 41, 43 ; studies, 43, 44 ; Trinity 
 College, 44-46, 47-61, 62-84 ; 
 King James's visits, 88-97 ! 9^1 99> 
 loi, 103, 104, 106, 109, 113, 131, 
 136, 137, 140, 149, 150, 164, 175, 
 180, i8g, igo, igg, 202, 217, 222, 
 245, 258, 259, 290. 
 
 — Colleges, Clare, 150, 180, igg, 
 202 ; Christ's, 150 ; Downing, 40 ; 
 Pembroke, gg ; Peterhouse, 40, 
 222 ; St. John's, 94 ; Selwyn, 
 40 ; Sidney-Sussex, 40 ; Trinity 
 College, 30, 31, 38, 45, 46-48, 49, 
 68, 73, 78, 94, 96, 149, 150; Trinity 
 Hall, 150, 
 
 — County of, 42. 
 
 — PlatoHists, 43. 
 Camden, William, 30. 
 Canterburie's Doom, 142. 
 Canute, King, 82. 
 Carbo, 221. 
 
 Carleton, Sir Dudley, g3. 
 
 Carlyle, 220. 
 
 Carr, Robert. See Rochester, Vis- 
 count. 
 
 Cartwright, Thomas, 45. 
 
 Cavaliers, 6. 
 
 Chamberlain, John, g3, 94, gs. 
 
 Charles I., 5, log, in, 112, 136, 156, 
 163, 164, 217, 218, 223, 224, 311 ; 
 (as Prince of Wales), 80, 81, 93, 
 96, 102, 133, 135. 
 
 — II. (as Prince of Wales), 218. 
 Chelsea, log, iig. 
 
 Cherbury, Lord Herbert of, 15, 17, 
 18-20, 22, 23, 24-27, 28, 76, 102, 
 112, iig, 143, 191, 304, 308 ; works 
 mentioned: The Autobiography, 
 15, 18-20, 24 ; De Verifate, 24. 
 
 Christ Church, Oxford, 31. 
 
 Christ's Death and Victory, 149, 261. 
 Christian Year, The, 3. 
 Christianity, English, 3, 
 Church of England, 3, 4, 5, 9-11, 53, 
 
 54, 56-60, 63, 151-72, 186, 230-32, 
 
 243. 309, 3"- 
 
 — of Rome, 5, 59, 113, 154, 165, 
 166, 220, 222. 
 
 — Militant, The, 305. 
 
 — music, 179, 279. 
 
 — Porch, The, 257-68. 
 
 "— The Scotch." See Scotland, 
 Church of. 
 
 Churches, Desecration of, 161. 
 
 Civil Wars, The, 157, 220. 
 
 Clarendon, Earl of, 163. 
 
 Cobham, Lord, 133. 
 
 Coke, Sir Edward, Chief Justice of 
 England, 45, 94. 
 
 Coleridge,S.T., 275, 311; work men- 
 tioned : the Biographia Literaria, 
 275. 
 
 Collett, Anna, 213. 
 
 — Ferrar, 213. 
 
 — Mary, 213. 
 
 — Mr., 206, 213, 215. 
 
 — Susannah, 213. 
 Communion, The Communion Table, 
 
 154, 157, 162, 168, 210, 226, 280, 
 
 281, 300, 301. 
 Concordances, The, 218. 
 Cook, Sir Robert, 253, 254. 
 Cooke, Lady. See Herbert, Jane. 
 Copernican Astronomy, The, 286. 
 " Copes and Wafer Cakes," 156. 
 Cornaro, Ludivico, 307. 
 Costume. See Dress. 
 Counterblast to Tobacco, The, 85. 
 Country Parson, The, 5, 157, 229, 
 
 257, 289-305. 
 Court, The, 2, 100, loi, 103, 108, 147, 
 
 173, 174, 175, 185, 224, 225, 267. 
 Courthope, Professor, 282. 
 Coventry, Thomas, 83. 
 Cowley, the poet, 30. 
 Cowper, William, 30, 288, 311. 
 Cranmer, 40. 
 Crashaw, Richard, i, 150, 222, 262, 
 
 273, 281, 311; work mentioned: 
 
 Steps to the Temple, 222. 
 
INDEX 
 
 319 
 
 Creichton, Robert, 80, 189. 
 Cromwell, Sir Oliver, 91. 
 Crux mihi Anchora, 144. 
 
 Danby, Earl of, 109, 191, 193, 307. 
 Danvers, Charles, 193. 
 
 — House, log, in, 112, 143. 
 
 — Jane. See Herbert, Jane. 
 
 — Lady (Magdalen Herbert), Fune- 
 ral sermon on, 119, 125, 187. 
 
 — Lady. See Herbert, Magdalen. 
 
 — Lord. See Danby, Earl of. 
 
 — Sir John (stepfather of the poet), 
 68, 74. 75. 109, III, 112, 119, 187, 
 188, 192, 193, 195, 307. 
 
 — Thomas, 252. 
 Dauntsey, 191, 192, 194. 
 Davenant, Dr., 224, 225. 
 Demonology, The, 83. 
 De Quincey, 220. 
 Descartes, 43. 
 
 De Veritate, 24, 
 Dissolution, The, 9, 161. 
 Divine Considerations, The, 221, 
 306. 
 
 — Emblems, The (Quarles, F.), 149, 
 262. 
 
 — Fancies (Quarles, F.), 262. 
 
 — Poems (Donne's), 261. 
 Don Carlos de Coloma, 81. 
 Donne, John, 7, 23, 24, 95, no, 113- 
 
 19, 125, 127, 139, 143, 144, 148, 
 149, 187, 188, 230, 261, 270, 288, 
 308 ; works mentioned or quoted : 
 The Autumnal Beauty, 24, 118 ; 
 To the Lady Magdalen Herbert, 
 117 ; Funeral Sermon on Mrs. 
 Herbert (Lady Danvers), 119, 125, 
 187, 188 ; Divine Poems, 261. 
 
 Drake, Sir Francis, 198. 
 
 Dress, etc. : George Herbert's, 2 ; 
 of the period, 6 ; of the Cavaliers 
 and Roundheads, 6 ; of Hampden, 
 Strafford, Milton, Bunyan, Her- 
 bert, etc., 7 ; of Herbert in his 
 childhood 28 ; at Westminste;; 
 School, 37; at Trinity College, 
 
 38; of the University orator, 
 Cambridge, 64 ; Herbert's, as 
 orator, 84 ; of the Corporation of 
 Cambridge, 92; of members of 
 the University, 40, 92, 94 ; Mrs. 
 Herbert's, 125-27; of the Duke 
 of Buckingham, 135 ; of the 
 dignitaries of the age, 147; at 
 Little Gidding, 211, 214 ; " cheap 
 handsomeness," 266 ; at church, 
 268 ; the parson's apparel, 294. 
 
 Du Bartas, 8. 
 
 Duncan, Edmund, 243, 244, 245, 
 246, 258, 259, 291. 
 
 Duport, James, 58. 
 
 Edinburgh, 91. 
 Edington, ig6. 
 Education of a gentleman, 24, 25, 
 
 26, 27. 
 Edward IV., 17. 
 Edward VL, 133. 
 Elizabeth,* Queen of Bohemia, 61, 
 
 67, 146, 307. 
 Ely, 82, 141, 142. 
 England, Church of. See Church 
 
 of England. 
 Episcopacy, 165. 
 Epping Forest, 190. 
 Erasmus, 7. 
 
 Essex, Earl of, 3, 41, 45, 147, 148. 
 Essex Divorce, The, 147, 148. 
 Evelyn, John, 172. 
 
 Faery Queen, The, 263. 
 Fathers, The, 293-93. 
 Feast of Worms, 262. 
 Fens, The, 82. 
 
 Ferdinand, Baron, of Boyscot, 81. 
 Ferrar, John, 181, 182, 184, 198, 203, 
 204, 206, 213, 219, 244. 
 
 — Mrs., 203, 207, 210, 213, 214, 217. 
 
 — Nicholas, 7, 10, 130, 172, 178, 
 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 197-222, 
 
820 
 
 INDEX 
 
 2321 243. 244, 245, 246, 249, 2S4- 
 56, 258, 259, 260, 290, 291, 309; 
 works mentioned: translation of 
 Valdesso's Divine Considerations, 
 306; Concordances or Harmonies 
 of the Gospels, 217, 218 ; Harmony 
 of the Books of Kings and 
 Chronicles,2i8; The Monotessaron, 
 218; translations of works of 
 Lessius and Carbo, 221; Preface 
 to The Temple, 259. 
 Ferrar, Robert (Bishop of St. David's), 
 200. 
 
 — Virginia, 213. 
 Fisher, The Jesuit, 166. 
 Fletcher, Giles, 149, 261; work 
 
 mentioned: Christ's Death and 
 Victory, 149, 261. 
 
 — Phineas, 261 ; work mentioned : 
 The Purple Island, 261. 
 
 Foxe, The Book of Martyrs, 200. 
 France : Frenchmen, 77, 
 Frederick, Elector Palatine, Z02. 
 Fugglestone Church, 228, 242. 
 
 — Rectory, 223. 
 Fulke Greville, 82. 
 
 Fuller, Thomas, 14, 46, 64, 159, 160, 
 225. 
 
 " Geneva platform," The, 153. 
 
 Gesner, 8, 
 
 " Gidden Hall," 243. 
 
 Gidding. See Gidding, Little. 
 
 Gidding, Little, 10, 150, 172, 197- 
 222, 244, 255, 259, 307. 
 
 Gidding, Steeple, 208, 2i6. 
 
 Goodyer, Sir Henry, 143. 
 
 " Grantburgshire, Shores of," 82. 
 
 " Great Horse," Riding the, 304. 
 
 Great St. Mary's Church (Cam- 
 bridge), 61. 
 
 Greece, Literature of, 44. 
 
 Green, J. R., 312. 
 
 Greene, the dramatist, 43. 
 
 Grindal, Archbishop, 159. 
 
 Gros^t, Dr., 60, 125, 138, 181, 
 270. 
 
 H 
 
 Hackett, John (Bishop of Coventry 
 and Lichfield), 46, 47, 86, 88, 97, 
 98, 143, 172 ; works mentioned : 
 Life of Lord Keeper Williams, 86, 
 98 ; Loiola (a comedy), 97. 
 
 Hadassa, 262. 
 
 Hamilton, James, Marquis of, 133. 
 
 Hamlet, 284. 
 
 Hampden, 7. 
 
 Hampton Court Conference, 54, 55. 
 
 Harington, Sir John, 85, 100 ; work 
 mentioned: Translation of Or- 
 lando Furioso, 85. 
 
 Hawkins, Sir John, 198. 
 
 Heath, Sir Robert, 83. 
 
 Henchman, Humphrey (Bishop of 
 London), 228, 229. 
 
 Henrietta Maria, Princess, 96, 135. 
 
 Henry VHI., 44, 153, 291. 
 
 Henry, Prince of Wales, 58, 61, 87, 
 308. 
 
 Herbalists, The Herberts as, 26, 302. 
 
 Herbert, Edward (brother of the 
 poet). See Cherbury, Lord 
 Herbert of, 7. 
 
 — Edward, Knight (grandfather of 
 the poet), 17. 
 
 — Elizabeth (sister of the poet), 20, 
 21, 73. 
 
 — Frances (sister of the poet), 20, 
 21. 
 
 — George — Relation to his age, 
 i-ii ; place among contempor- 
 ary religious poets, i ; " holy 
 Mr. Herbert," 3 ; ideal as a 
 Churchman, 10, 11 ; birthplace, 
 family and childhood, 12-28 ; town 
 and castle of Montgomery, 12- 
 16; Herbert monuments (in the 
 church), 15 ; the " Miller's Daugh- 
 ter " ballad, 16 ; Walton's gene- 
 alogy, 17; Richard Herbert (father 
 of die poet), 15-17; Magdalen 
 Newport (mother of the poet), 17, 
 18, 20-24 ; Black Hall, 14, 13 ; 
 his brothers, 17-20 ; as duellists, 
 i8-20 ; his sisters, 21 ; Edward 
 Herbert's Autobiography, 18-20, 
 
INDEX 
 
 321 
 
 24; education of a gentleman of 
 the time, 24-27; eaily education 
 of the poet, 27, 28 ; Westminster 
 School, 39-38; Cambridge Uni- 
 versity, 38-44 ; Trinity College, 
 38, 42, 44-46 ; early life and writ- 
 ings at Cambridge, 47-61 ; con- 
 troversy with Andrew Melville, 
 53-60; the Anti-Tami-Cami-Cate- 
 goria, 56-60 ; University orator, 
 62-84 ! 3s 3 courtier of James I., 
 85-108 ; acknowledges the Basili- 
 con Doron, 87 ; makes a farewell 
 speech to the King as orator, 97 ; 
 lectures on the King's oration, 98, 
 99 ; receives the sinecure rector- 
 ship of Whitford, loi ; wishes to 
 leave the University, 103 ; retires 
 to the country on the death of the 
 King and his patrons, 108 ; writes 
 to his mother in her sickness, 120- 
 24 ; composes the Parentalia on 
 her death, 124-28 ; contempor- 
 aries and friends : Duke of Rich- 
 mond, Marquis of Hamilton, Duke 
 of Buckingham, Lord Bacon, 
 Bishop Andrewes, Donne, Wot- 
 ton, Ferrar, Oley, 129-50 ; con- 
 temporary poets at Cambridge : 
 Milton, Giles Fletcher, Quarles, 
 Herrick, 149, 150 ; resolves to 
 become a clergyman, 131 ; ac- 
 quaints his friends with his 
 resolution, 173, 174; prebendary 
 of Leighton Ecclesia, 176; restores 
 church (Leighton Bromswold), 
 177, 178, 180-85 ; new circle of 
 friends, 186 ; death of his mother, 
 187 ; resigns oratorship, 189 ; lives 
 with Sir Henry Herbert at Wood- 
 ford, Essex, 189-91 ; removes to 
 Dauntsey, Wiltshire, 191; per- 
 sonal appearance, 192 ; courtship 
 and marriage, 193-96 ; advises 
 Ferrar as to course of life at Little 
 Gidding, 221 ; at Bemerton, 223- 
 40 ; discards Court dress and 
 sword for canonical clothes, and 
 is inducted to parsonage, 224; 
 makes rules for his life, 226; 
 
 repairs church and rectory, 227, 
 228 ; ordained priest, 228, 229 ; 
 composes The Country Parson, 229 ; 
 sermons, directions to congrega- 
 tion , catechising, order of daily wor- 
 ship, " saints bell," 229-32 ; walks 
 to Salisbury, music meetings, and 
 adventures by the road, 232-35 ; 
 the "minister's wife," 236, 237; 
 letter to Sir Henry Herbert, 237- 
 40 ; last days and death, 241- 
 56 ; sends manuscript of The 
 Temple to Nicholas Ferrar, 246; 
 his will, 250-52 ; fiineral, 252 ; 
 widow, 253, 254 ; criticism of 
 writings, 257-308; The Church 
 Porch, 257-68 ; the shorter poems 
 of The Temple, 269-88; The 
 Country Parson and other writ- 
 ings, 289-308 ; estimate of charac- 
 ter and work, 309-15. 
 Herbert, George — 
 Ancestors, 16, 17. 
 Parents, Richard Herbert, Mag- 
 dalen Herbert, 15, 17. 
 Brothers, Edward (see Lord 
 Herbert of Cherbury), Richard, 
 William, Charles, Henry, 
 Thomas, 17-20, 
 Sisters, Elizabeth (also 73), 
 
 Margaret, Frances, 20, 21. 
 Brothers-in-law, Sir Henry Jones 
 (married Elizabeth), John 
 Vaughan (married Margaret), 
 Sir John Brown (married 
 Frances), 21. 
 Wife, Jane Herbert, 193-96, 236, 
 237, 244, 252-54. See also 
 Danvers (Jane), and Lady 
 Cooke. 
 Nieces, Dorothy Vaughan, Mag- 
 dalen Vaughan, Katherine 
 Vaughan, 237-40. 
 Letters (Latin) : — 
 Official, 82-84— 
 To the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, 83. 
 To Lord Bacon, 82, 83, 137. 
 To the Duke of Buckingham, 
 83- 
 
INDEX 
 
 Herbert, George (continued)— 
 Letters (Latin)— Official {cont.)— 
 
 To Thomas Coventry, 83. 
 
 To Fulke Greville, 82. 
 
 To Sir Robert Heath, 83. 
 
 To King James, 68, 83, 84, 87. 
 
 To Sir Robert Naunton, 8a. 
 Family and firiends — 
 
 To his Mother, 51, 52, 120- 
 24. 
 
 To Sir John Danvers, 68-71, 
 
 ^ 71-73, 74. 75. 76. 
 
 To Sir Henry Herbert, 77, 78, 
 237-40. 
 
 To his "dear sick sister," 78, 
 79- 
 
 To Nicholas Ferrar, 182-84. 
 Public Orations (Latin)— 
 "On the return of Prince 
 
 Charles from Madrid," 80, 81. 
 " When the Ambassadors were 
 
 made Masters of Arts," 81, 
 
 82. 
 Works: Prose — 
 
 The Country Parson, 5, 103, 
 
 157. 180, 181, 229, 233, 236, 
 
 289-305. 306, 312. 
 jfacula Prudentum, 290, 306. 
 Preface and Notes to Ferrar's 
 
 translation of Valdesso's 
 
 Divine Considerations, 221, 
 
 306. 
 Translation of Cornaro's Treat- 
 ise of Temperance and So- 
 briety, 307, 
 Verse — 
 
 The Temple, 3, 53, 103, r8i, 
 
 221, 229, 246, 2S7-88, 305, 
 
 309-12. 
 The Parentalia (Latin and 
 
 Greek), 124-28, 138, 187-89, 
 
 257. 291. 305. 307- 
 Epigrams in Defence of the 
 
 Discipline of Our Church 
 
 (Latin), 58-60, 257, 305, 307. 
 Lilies of the Temple, 307. 
 The Psalms (translations or 
 
 renderings), 307. 
 Passio Discerpta and Lucus 
 (Latin epigrams), 308. 
 
 Herbert, George (continued) — 
 Poems referred to or quoted — 
 "Aaron," 287. 
 " Affliction," 271, 282, 287. 
 "Agony, The," 287, 313. 
 "Altar, The," 280. 
 " Anchor Seals, On the," 144. 
 Antiphon, "Let all the 
 
 world," 273. 
 Antiphones (two), 287. 
 To Lord Bacon, on the In- 
 stauratio Magna (Latin), 
 137. 138, 308. 
 " On the Death of the Incom- 
 parable Francis, Viscount 
 St. Albans, Baron Veru- 
 1am," 138, 308. 
 " Bag, The," 271. 
 " Banquet, The," 281, 287. 
 " British Church, The "— " I 
 joy, dear mother," 4, 287. 
 "Christmas," 281. 
 "Church Floor, The," 179, 
 
 280. 
 "Church Lock and Key, 
 
 The," 280. 
 " Church Militant, The," 258, 
 
 305, 306. 
 " Church Monuments," 279. 
 " Church Music," 37, 279. 
 " Church Porch, The," 2, 100, 
 257-268, 269, 279, 287, 289, 
 294. 314- 
 "Church Windows, The," 
 
 179. 
 " CoUar, The," 271, 282, 287, 
 
 311. 
 " Constancy," 282, 287. 
 Danvers, Lord, and Sir John, 
 
 Verses on, 307. 
 " Decay," 287. 
 " Dialogue, The," 271. 
 " Easter," 280. 
 " Elixir, The," 273, 274, 287. 
 " Elizabeth, Queen of Bo- 
 hemia, To," 61, 307. 
 " Employment," 66, 67. 
 " Epigram from Martial " 
 
 (Latin), 308. 
 " Eucharist, The," 281. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Herbert, George {continued) — 
 Poems referred to or quoted(co»^) — 
 "Flower, The," 287, 314. 
 " Henry, Prince of Wales " 
 
 (two poems on the death 
 
 of), (Latin), 61, 308. 
 " Holdfast, The," 287. 
 " Holy Baptism," 281. 
 " Holy Communion," 281. 
 " Hope," 287. 
 " Justice," 271. 
 " Lent," 280. 
 " Love," 271. 
 " Love " (two poems), 287. 
 " Love Unknown," 287. 
 " Man," 284, 286, 287. 
 " Paradox, A," 307. 
 " Pearl, The," 277. 
 " Pilgrimage, The," 277, 279, 
 
 287. 
 " Praise," 271. 
 " Priesthood, The," 292. 
 " Pulley, The," 271, 276, 277, 
 
 282, 286, 287. 
 " Queen Anne of Denmark, 
 
 On the death of" (Latin), 
 
 61, 308. 
 " Quip, The," 276, 287. 
 "Sacrifice, The," 271, 272, 
 
 287, 308. 
 " Sin," 274, 275, 282, 287. 
 " Size, The," zjx. 
 Sonnet, " My God, where is 
 
 that ancient heat," 51, 52, 
 
 195. 
 To his Successor at Bemer- 
 
 ton, 228. 
 , " Sunday," 249, 280. 
 
 " Superliminare," — " Thou, 
 
 whom the former precepts 
 
 have," 270. 
 " Trinity Sunday," 280. 
 " Virtue," 271, 282, 284, 287. 
 "Whit-Sunday," 280. 
 " Windows, The." See Church 
 
 Windows. 
 
 — Sir Henry (brother of the poet), 
 19, 20, 77, 78, 102, 107, 178, 184, 
 189, igo, 191, 237-40. 
 
 — Jane (wife of the poet), 193-196, 
 223, 227, 236, 237, 244, 252-254. 
 
 Herbert, Magdalen (mother of the 
 poet), 17, 20-24, 29. 47. SI. 52. 
 103, 104, 107, 109-28, 140, 177, 
 178, 186-88, 198, 199. 
 
 — Margaret (sister of the poet), 20, 
 21, 237. 
 
 — Richard (father of the poet), 15, 
 
 17, 186. 
 
 (brother of the poet), 18, 20, 
 
 102. 
 Knight (great-grandfather of 
 
 the poet), 17. 
 
 — Sir Richard, Banneret, of Cole- 
 brook, 17. 
 
 — Thomas (the poet's brother), ig, 
 20, 102. 
 
 — William (brother of the poet), 
 
 18, 19, 20, 102. 
 
 — The Lady Magdalen, To (poem), 
 117. 
 
 Herrick, Robert, 1, 149, 262, 270, 
 281 ; works mentioned : Musce 
 Graviores, 1 ; Noble Numbers, 
 262. 
 
 Heylin, Peter, 164. 
 
 High Churchmen, 292, 311. 
 
 Highnam House, 254. 
 
 Hinchinbrooke, 91. 
 
 History of Samson, 262. 
 
 " Holy Mr. Herbert," 3. 
 
 " Home-bred medicines," 302. 
 
 Hooker, Richard, 4, I3, 165, 170, 
 184. 
 
 Howard, Lady Frances, 148. 
 
 Hussites, The, 165. 
 
 Hyde, Edward. See Clarendon, 
 Earl of. 
 
 Hymns and Songs of the Church, 261. 
 
 I 
 
 Iconoclasm, 170. 
 " Ignoramus " (Latin play), 94. 
 Incense (in Church), 300. 
 Independency, 169. 
 Infanta of Spain, The, 133. 
 Ireland, Richard, 29, 30, 36. 
 Isabella, Archduchess of Austria, 82. 
 Italian Gardens, in. 
 Instauratio, The, 83, gg, 137, 138. 
 
324 
 
 INDEX 
 
 yacula Prudentum, 306. 
 
 James I., 6, 20, 30, 49 ; opposed by 
 Andrew Melville, 34-56, 58, 76 ; 
 the Basilicon Doron, 85, 86, 87, 
 88 ; visits to Cambridge and enter- 
 tainment by the University, 88-97 ; 
 oration lectured on by Herbert in 
 Rhetoric School, g8, gg, loi, 102, 
 106; death, 108, in, iig, 129, 
 
 130, 133. 134, 136. 147. 148, 152, 
 155, 166, 175, 176, 203, 204, 225, 
 266, 308 ; works mentioned : 85 ; 
 the Basilicon Doron, Counterblast 
 to Tobacco, Demonology, Medita- 
 tion on the Lord's Prayer, True 
 Law of Free Monarchies. 
 
 James, Marquis of Hamilton, 108, 
 130. 
 
 Jebb, Dr., 205. 
 
 jfob Militant, 262. 
 
 Joffred, Abbot of Crowland, 39. 
 
 yohn Inglesant, 310. 
 
 Jones, Sir Henry (brother-in-law of 
 the poet), 21, 73. 
 
 Jones, Inigo, 193. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 30, 43, 149, 261, 288, 
 
 " Jowler " (a hound), 91. 
 
 Juliers, Siege of, 20. 
 
 Justices of the Peace, 303. 
 
 Keble, John, 3, 37; work men- 
 tioned : The Christian Year, 3. 
 
 Kent, 130, 145, 175. 
 
 " King's Scholars " (at Westminster 
 School), 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35. 
 
 King David, 284. 
 
 Latimer, 40, 158. 
 
 Laud, William, 2, 4, 140, 142, 143, 
 153 ; visitation of the Universi- 
 ties, 156, 157; as a reformer of 
 the Church, 162-70, 209 ; per- 
 
 suades Herbert to become a. 
 
 clergyman, 224, 248, 299. 
 Layton Ecclesia, 176. See also 
 
 Leighton Bromswold. 
 " Lecturers," The Puritan, 231. 
 Leighton, Archbishop, 311. 
 Leighton Bromswold Church, 176-78, 
 
 180-82, 184, 185, 221, 249, 267, 291. 
 Lely, 13. 
 
 Lennox, James, Duke of, 178-82. 
 Lessius, 221. 
 Lincoln Cathedral, 176. 
 Lindsell, Dr., 199. 
 Lodowick, Duke of Richmond, 108, 
 
 130, 133- 
 Loiola (a comedy), 97. 
 Loretto, 222. 
 Low Countries, 102. 
 Luther, 151. 
 
 M 
 
 Macdonald, George, 2. 
 
 Madrid, 80. 
 
 Mapletoft, Mr., 213. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, 129. 
 
 Marlowe, 43, 150, 265. 
 
 Martyr, Peter, 57, 59, 152. 
 
 Meditation on the Lord's Prayer, A, 
 85. 
 
 Melville, Andrew, 53, 54, 55, 56, 68, 
 88, 152, 251, 257, 307; work 
 mentioned: "A Defence on Be- 
 half of the Evangelical Ministers 
 in England to the most serene 
 King, against the masked Gorgon 
 of the twin Universities ; or AJati- 
 Tami-Cami-Categoria," 56-60. 
 
 Melvin, Andrew. See Melville, 
 Andrew. 
 
 Michael House, 44. 
 
 Miereveldt (the painter), 135. 
 
 " Miller's Daughter," The, 16. 
 
 Milton, John, i, 2, 7, 28, 43, 50, 132, 
 149, 150, 269, 308. 
 
 Mitcham, 116, 117. 
 
 Monastic Orders, The, 39, 40. 
 
 " Monnica" (mother of St. Augus- 
 tine), 207. 
 
INDEX 
 
 325 
 
 Montgomery, Town of, I2, 14, 22, 
 
 112. 
 
 Montgomery Castle, 12, 15, 16, 22, 
 119, 254. 
 
 — Church, 14. 
 Montgomeryshire, 14. 
 Moore, Sir George, 114. 
 More, Sir Thomas, in. 
 Musa Graviores, i. 
 Music, English, 7. 
 
 N 
 
 Nadder (the river), 241. 
 Naunton, Sir Robert, 67, 82. 
 Neale, Dr. See Neile, Dr. 
 Neile, Dr., 29, 30, 155, 163. 
 Nethersole, Sir Francis, 67, 72, 75, 
 
 79. 92, 95- 
 Nevile, Dean, 38, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 
 
 73. 94. 96, 225, 261. 
 New College, Oxford, ig. 
 
 — England, 305, 306. 
 Newmarket, 68,70, 88, go, gi, 97, 266. 
 Newport, Magdalen. See Herbert, 
 
 Magdalen. 
 
 — Lady, 22. 
 
 ■ — Sir Francis, 17. 
 
 — Sir Richard, 17. 
 Newton (Sir Isaac), 43. 
 Noble Numbers, 262. 
 
 Oley, Barnabas, 15, 150, 180, 188, 
 236, 2QO, 310 ; works mentioned : 
 Biographical notices of Herbert 
 prefaced to first and second edi- 
 tions of The Country Parson (1652- 
 71), 15, 180, 181, 290. 
 
 Orlando Furioso, 85. 
 
 Overbury, Sir Thomas, 148. 
 
 Oxford, 16, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 31, 39, 
 40, 41, 62, 87, 91, 92, 95, 112, 113, 
 146, 163, 164, 192. 
 
 — Colleges : New College, 19 ; 
 Queen's College, 22 ; University 
 College^ 22 ; Christ Church, 31 ; 
 St. John's College, 163. 
 
 — Movement, The, 311. 
 
 Papers on Wit, Addison's, 280. 
 Peacham, Henry, 42, 45. 
 Pembroke, Philip Earl of, 223, 224. 
 — WiUiam Earl of, 17, 79, 88, 89, 
 
 178. 
 Philip IV., King of Spain, 82. 
 Physwick Hostel, 44. 
 Plague, The (1625), 119, 205. 
 Polycrates, 80. 
 Pope, The, 165, 307. 
 " Porter, John," 8. 
 Powysland, Princes of, 17. 
 Prayer-book, The, 9, 63, 154, 160, 
 
 168, 171, 172, 230, 304. 
 Presbyterianism, 169. 
 Prince Arthur, 291. 
 Prince Henry. See Henry Prince of 
 
 Wales. 
 Princess Elizabeth, 202, 203. 
 Prophesyings, The, 158-61. 
 " Protestant Nunnery," The, 220. 
 Prynne, 142, 169. 
 Psalms, 'Translation of (Bacon's), 
 
 138. 139- 
 Ptolemaic astronomy. The, 286. 
 Public Orator, Office of, 63-66 ; 
 
 costume, 64, 72. 
 Puritans, Puritanism, 4, 5, 6, 7, g, 
 
 56, 37. 63. 87. 153. 154. 160, i6g, 
 
 171, 220, 221, 222, 231, 297, 312. 
 Purple Island, The, 261. 
 
 Quarles, Francis, i, 149, 202, 262 ; 
 works mentioned : Divine Em- 
 blems, 149, 262 ; Feast of Worms, 
 Hadassa, yob Militant, Sion's 
 Elegies, Sion's Sonnets, History of 
 Samson, Divine Frances, 262. 
 
 Queen of Bohemia. See Elizabeth, 
 Queen of Bohemia. 
 
 Queen's College, Oxford, 22. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth, 4, 5, 6, 20, 37, 40, 
 45, 62, loi, 137, 152, 153, 154, 158, 
 161, ig8, 2g6. 
 
 Quietism, g, 10, 11. 
 
326 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Raleigh, igS, 261. 
 
 Randolph (the poet), 30. 
 
 Reformation, The, 8, g, 40, 151-54, 
 161, 170, 296. 
 
 Regents and non-Regents, 65. 
 
 Restoration, The, 172, 296. 
 
 Reynolds (the divine), 57. 
 
 Richardson, John, 73. 
 
 Ridley, 40. 
 
 Rhetoric School, The, 106. 
 
 Rochester, Viscount, 148, 
 
 Rome, Literature of, 44. 
 
 — Libraries of, 87. 
 
 Roundheads, The, 6. 
 
 Royston, 68, 88, go, gi, g7, g8, z66. 
 
 Ruddyard, Sir Benjamin, 75, 7g. 
 
 Ruggle, George, g4 ; work men- 
 tioned : "Ignoramus " (Latin play), 
 94. 
 
 St. Albans, Viscount. See Bacon, 
 Lord. 
 
 St. Andrews, University of, 54, 55. 
 
 St. Asaph's, Bishop of, loi. 
 
 St. Dunstan's in the West, 114, 119. 
 
 St. John's College, Cambridge, 94. 
 
 St. Margaret's Church (West- 
 minster), 156. 
 
 " St. Marie's Church" (Cambridge), 
 
 93- 
 
 (the less), 222. 
 
 St. Paul's School, 37. 
 
 " Saints' Bell," Herbert's, 232. 
 
 Salisbury, 224, 225, 228-234, 241, 
 243, 247. 
 
 Sambroke, Dr., 252. 
 
 Sandeel, 57. 
 
 Sandys, Sir Edwin, 203. 
 
 " Sarum, The Singing Men of," 252. 
 
 Schoolmen, The, 293. 
 
 " Scotch Church, The." See Scot- 
 land, Church of. 
 
 Scotland, Church of, 54, 55. 
 
 Shakespeare, 6, 149, 265, 279. 
 
 Shirley, James, quotation, "All 
 must to their cold graves," 251. 
 
 Shorthouse, Mr., 3og ; work men- 
 tioned : yohn Inglesant, 3og. 
 
 Sidney, loi, 261. 
 
 Silex Scintilians, 17. 
 
 Sion's Elegies, 262. 
 
 Sion's Sonnets, 262. 
 
 Slough of Despond, The, 276. 
 
 Spanish Match, The, 80, 81. 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, 150, 261, 263 ; 
 work mentioned: The Faery 
 Queen, 263. 
 
 Star Chamber, The, 157, 167. 
 
 Steps to the Temple, 222. 
 
 " Steenie." See Buckingham, Duke 
 of. 
 
 Strafford, Earl of, 7, 164. 
 
 Tabard Inn, The, 279. 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 4. 
 
 Temperance and Sobriety, A Treatise 
 
 of, 307- 
 
 Temple, The. See under Herbert, 
 George — Works in Verse. 
 
 " TertuUian's roof of Angels," 222. 
 
 Thirty-nine Articles, The, 63. 
 
 Thorndyke, Herbert, 79, loi, 131, 
 189. 
 
 Tower of London, 55. 
 
 Traherne, Thomas, B.D., 262 n. 
 
 Trinity College, 30, 31, 38, 44-49, 
 63, 68, g4, 143. 
 
 Chapel, Position of com- 
 munion table, 156. 
 
 True Law of Free Monarchies, The, 
 85- 
 
 U 
 
 Udal, Nicholas, 36. 
 University College, Oxford, 22. 
 
 Valdesso, 221, 245, 306 ; work men- 
 tioned : Divine Considerations, 
 221, 245, 306. 
 
INDEX 
 
 327 
 
 Van Dyck, 13, 
 
 Vaughan, Dorothy (niece of the 
 poet), 237-47. 
 
 — Henry, i, 17, 150, 262, 277, 
 281, 311 ; work mentioned : Silex 
 Scintilians, 17. 
 
 — John, of Llwydiart (brother- 
 in-law of the poet), 21, 237. 
 
 — Katherine (niece of the poet), 
 
 837- 
 
 — Magdalen (niece of the poet), 
 237. 
 
 Vetulam, Baron. See Bacon, Lord. 
 " Virginia, The CoUedge in," 198. 
 Virginia Company, The, iii, 203, 
 
 204. 
 Visitation Articles, The, 161. 
 
 W 
 
 Walgrave, Lady, Letter to, 156, 157. 
 
 Walton, Izaak, as a biographer, 8, 
 12-14 ; as a devout angler, g ; his 
 literary art, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 23, 
 24, 27, 30, 38, 47, 49, 50, 52, S3. 
 54. 58. 67, 79, 86, 88, 90, 97, 100, 
 103, 104, 105, io8, 112, 114, 115, 
 116, 119, 128, 130, 131, 134, 138, 
 140, 143, 144, 146, 174, 175, 177, 
 183, 186, 187, 189, 191, 193, 19s, 
 241, 242, 244, 249, 252, 253, 238, 
 259, 282, 283, 291, 304, 310; 
 works : Compleat Angler, The, 9, 
 13, 14 ; Lives, 8, 13, 14, 54, 144, 
 191, 193, 242, 251, 259. 
 
 Westminster Abbey, 32, 35, 37, 133, 
 135, 156. 
 
 — School, 29-38, 54, 112, 143, 149. 
 Whitaker, 37. 
 
 Whitehall, 36. 
 
 Whitford, Rectorship of, loi, 176. 
 Whitgift, Archbishop, 45. 
 Wickliffe, 151. 
 " Wickliffists," The, 163. 
 Williams, Lord Keeper, 143, 176, 
 208. 
 
 Life, by Hackett, 86, g8. 
 
 Wilton (country seat), 224, 228. 
 
 — Rev. Richard, 125 ; work men- 
 tioned : Translations of Herbert's 
 Payentalia, 123. 
 
 Winchester, 141. 
 
 Wither, George, j., 261 ; work 
 
 mentioned : Hymns and Songs of 
 
 the Church, 261. 
 Woodford, i8g, igo, 191. 
 Woodnot, Arthur, 119, 178, 183, 
 
 186, 187, 224, 225, 227, 247, 249, 
 
 230, 231, 233. 
 Wordsworth, 13, 50, 272, 279, 288, 
 
 315- 
 Wotton, Sir Henry, 7, 13, 129, 143, 
 143, 146, 307 ; works mentioned : 
 To His Royal Mistress, Elizabeth 
 Queen of Bohemia, 146, 307 ; 
 character of a Happy Life (" How 
 happy is he born "), 146. 
 
 Zwingle, 151. 
 
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