Herbert, GEORGE, an English poet, was born in Montgomery Castle, in Wales, on the 3d April 1593. His family was a younger branch of that of the Earls of Pembroke. His eldest brother was Lord Herbert (q.v.) of Cherbury, who says of him: 'My brother George was so excellent a scholar that he was made the public orator of the university of Cambridge, some of whose English works are extant, which, though they be rare in their kind, yet are far short of expressing those perfections he had in the Greek and Latin tongue, and all divine and human literature. His life was most holy and exemplary, in so much that about Salisbury, where he lived benefited for many (?) years, he was little less than sainted. He was not exempt from passion and cholera, being infirmities to which our race is subject; but, that excepted, without reproach in his actions.' George Herbert's mother was a Newport, of the old Shropshire family of the Newports of High Ercall. She was left a widow, and devoted herself to the education and training of her seven sons, in which effort she was singularly successful. Her memory has come down to us as one of those many mothers of the English race to whom it owes so much. Under her influence and that of Dr Neville, Dean of Canterbury and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, the foundations were laid of a character of almost perfect beauty. In 1614 George Herbert was elected Fellow of his college, and in 1619 promoted to the office of Public Orator, in which place he continued eight years, and, as Izaak Walton says, 'managed it with as becoming a grace and gaiety as any had ever before or since his time.' 'If during this time,' he continues, 'he expressed any error, it was that he kept himself too much retired, and at too great a distance from all his inferiors, and his clothes seemed to prove that he put too great a value on his parts and parentage.' The antecedents of his family, indeed, and his position at the university, naturally led him to expect advancement at court; but on the death of King James his thoughts became more decidedly drawn towards a distinctly religious life—a life which his mother had always wished him to follow. After a period of seclusion in the country, he finally decided to relinquish all expectation of court favours, and to devote himself entirely to the religious life. In 1626 he was made prebendary of Layton Ecclesia in the diocese of Lincoln, and in 1630, the year after his marriage to a kinswoman of the Earl of Danby and daughter of Mr Charles Danvers of Bainton, Wilts, he was presented, by the favour of his kinsman the Earl of Pembroke, to the vicarage of Bemerton, near Salisbury; Charles I. saying, when the earl solicited the presentation which had lapsed to the crown, 'Most willingly to Mr Herbert, if it be worth his acceptance.' He only enjoyed this vicarage for three years, being buried on 3d March 1633; yet in that short time he left a memory which still survives. No one who reads his Country Parson, a description of an ideal parson's life, which is doubtless to a considerable extent a picture of his own life and conduct, will be surprised at this fact. Walton says of him, '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.' He was naturally the intimate of the most cultured natures of his day, but the reality of religious life led him, as it has done others, to a perfect sympathy with the uncultured and the ignorant. He was an accomplished musician, who recognised in music not a science only, but a divine voice; and his poetry is the natural result of his training and of his life. It exhibits a singular combination of the attributes of a courtier, a gentleman, and a saint. It manifests a knowledge of life, and of the world, and a certain strength and force of thought and of expression which has made his verses the favourite reading of men who are not generally attracted to sacred and devotional poetry; and this quality will probably ensure for his poems a lasting, though perhaps limited, number of students and admirers.
See his Works in Prose and Verse, with Life by Walton, and notes by Coleridge (1846); editions by Nichol (1863) and Grosart (1876); the present writer's preface to The Temple (1882); and a new Life (S.P.C.K., 1893).