The subject of our sketch was born at Montgomery Castle, in Wales, April 3, 1593. He was educated at Westminster school, and being a king’s scholar, was elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, about the year 1608. He took both degrees in the Arts, and became a Fellow in the college. In 1619 he was chosen orator for the University, which post he held eight years. This office he is said to have filled with great honor to himself and to the University. And this was no wonder, for, to use the quaint language of his biographer, old Izaak Walton, “he had acquired great learning, and was blessed with a high fancy, a civil and sharp wit, and with a natural elegance both in his behaviour, his tongue, and his pew.” When that royal pedant, King James, published his “Basilicon Doron,” he sent a copy to the University of Cambridge. Herbert, in his capacity as orator, was called upon to acknowledge its receipt on behalf of the institution, which he did in a most elegant manner, by a letter written in Latin, closing with the following lines:
Quid vaticanam Bodleianamque objicis hospes!
Unicus est nobis Bibliotheca Liber.
The excellence of its Latinity, and the complimentary allusions plentifully sprinkled through it, so pleased the vanity of the king, that he inquired of the Earl of Pembroke if he knew the learned scholar who penned the epistle. His answer was, “That he knew him very well, and that he was his kinsman; but that he loved him more for his learning and virtue, than that he was of his name and family.” At which answer the king smiled, and asked the earl leave that he might love him too, for he took him to be the jewel of that University.
The complimentary remark of the king, coming to the ears of Herbert, no doubt first turned his thoughts toward court preferment; for about this time we find him applying himself to the study of the Italian, French, and Spanish languages, in which he is said to have attained great proficiency; and by means of the attainment of which, to use his own language, “he hoped to secure the place of Secretary of State, as his predecessor, Sir Francis Nethersole had done.” This, and the love of court conversation, with the laudable ambition to be something more than he then was, drew him often from Cambridge to attend his majesty, King James.
Shortly after this the king visited Cambridge in state, and was received on behalf of the University by Herbert, in a most elegant oration in Latin, stuffed full, as the manner of the time then was, of most fulsome adulation. In his progress he was attended by the great Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, and by the learned Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Winchester; and Herbert, by his learning and suavity, soon captivated these distinguished men. Bacon seems afterward to have put such value upon his judgment, that he usually desired his approbation 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.” In 1620, the king gave Herbert a sinecure, formerly conferred upon Sir Philip Sydney by Queen Elizabeth, worth some twelve hundred pounds per annum.
His ambitious views of further court preferment seem never to have been realized. The character of his mind, perhaps, did not fit him for the responsible duties of a statesman, or he might have been deficient in those arts of the courtier, so necessary, and such ready aid to court preferment. It may be that he had too independent a spirit, and could not “crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, that thrift might follow fawning.” But be this as it may, we think, in the sentiment contained in some verses written by our poet about the period of his leaving the court and entering holy orders, we have a readier solution for the sudden relinquishment of his hopes of court preferment. These verses were written upon the famous saying of Cardinal Wolsey, uttered by that proud churchman when his spirit was crushed, and the fruits of his ambition had turned to ashes on his lips. “Oh, that I had served my God with half the zeal with which I have served my king, he would not thus, in my old age, have placed me in the power of mine enemies.”
No doubt the wholesome reflections inspired by the contemplation of those touching words, awakened the sensitive mind of our poet to a full appreciation of the vanity of all earthly ambition. He discovered in time, that pleasures springing from honor and grandeur of condition, are soon faded; that the mind nauseates, and soon begins to feel their emptiness. In the words of one of England’s most gifted divines, “Those who are so fond of public honor while they pursue it, how little do they taste it when they have it? Like lightning it only flashes on the face, and it is well if it do not hurt the man.”
Without further speculating as to the reasons that induced our poet to fly from the court circles into the quiet retreat of the pastor’s life, most certain it is, about the year 1629, we find him renouncing the pomp and vanities of earthly ambition, and entering into holy orders. Previous to his induction, we find him using the following language in a letter to a friend: “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 now I can behold the court with an impartial eye, and see plainly that it is made up of graced titles, and flattery, and many other such empty imaginary painted pleasures—pleasures that are so empty as not to satisfy where they are enjoyed. But in God and his service is a fullness of all joy and pleasure, but no satiety.” Of the fervency of his piety we have a most beautiful exemplification in some of his poems published about this time, especially in that styled “The Odor,” in which he seems to rejoice in the thought of the word “Jesus,” and say that the adding of these words “my master,” to it “seemed to perfume his mind, and leave an oriental fragrance in his very breath.” Alluding, in another poem, to his “unforced choice to serve at God’s altar,” he says,
I know the ways of Learning; both the head and pipes