* * * * *

Herbert was the oldest of the band, having been born near the close of the sixteenth century, in the days of James, who was an intelligent patron of the family.  The poet’s brother, the learned Lord Herbert of Cherbury, whose “Autobiography” breathes the fresh manly spirit of the best days of chivalry, was the king’s ambassador to France.  George Herbert, too, was in a fair way to this court patronage, when his hopes were checked by the death of the monarch.  It is a circumstance, this court favor, worth considering in the poet’s life, as the antecedent to his manifold spirit of piety.  Nothing is more noticeable than the wide, liberal culture of the old English poets; they were first, men, often skilled in affairs, with ample experience in life, and then—­poets.

Herbert’s education was all that care and affection could devise.  “He spent,” says his amiable biographer, Izaak Walton, “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.”  At Cambridge he became orator to the University, gained the applause of the court by his Latin orations, and what is more, secured the friendship of such men as Bishop Andrews, Dr. Donne, and the model diplomatist of his age, Sir Henry Wotton.  The completion of his studies and the failure of court expectations were followed by a passage of rural retirement—­a first pause of the soul previous to the deeper conflicts of life.  His solitariness was increased by sickness, a period of meditation and devotional feeling, assisted by the intimations of a keen spirit in a feeble body—­and out of the furnace came forth Herbert the priest and saint.  All that knowledge can inspire, all that tenderness can endear, centres about that picture of the beauty of holiness, his brief pastoral career—­as we read it in his prose writings and his poems, and the pages of Walton—­at the little village of Bemerton.  He died at the age of thirty-nine—­his gentle spirit spared the approaching conflicts of his country, which pressed so heavily upon the Church which he loved.

The poems of Herbert are now read throughout the world; no longer confined to that Church which inspired them.  They are echoed at times in the pulpits of all denominations, while their practical lines are, if we remember rightly, scattered among the sage aphorisms of Poor Richard, and their wide philosophy commends itself to the genius of Emerson.

It is pleasant in these old poets to admire what has been admired by others—­to read the old verses with the indorsement of genius.  The name adds value to the bond.  Coleridge, for instance, whose “paper,” in a mercantile sense, would have been, on “change,” the worst in England, has given us many of these notable “securities.”  They live in his still echoing “Table-Talk,” and are sprinkled generously over his writings—­while what record is there of the “good,” the best financial names of the day?  One sonnet of Herbert was an especial favorite with Coleridge.  It was that heart-searching, sympathizing epitome of spiritual life, entitled