HERBERT, Edward, LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY, Autobiography of. The (Auto biography' of Lord Herbert of Cherbury is one of the most remarkable in the whole range of self-narrative. In point of time it was among the first important autobiographies in the Eng lish language, and it continues to hold its place as one of the most interesting and self-reveal ing — as one that cannot be passed over by a student who is in any way vitally interested in biography as a clue to man's nature or as a commentary upon the age in which it was written. It is worth while to know that a work which has afforded so much pleasure to the world lay in obscurity for many years, and was well-nigh lost. It appears that two copies were made, one of which was preserved at Lymore in Montgomeryshire; the other, after more than a century of drifting, was about 1737 handed over to Henry Arthur Herbert, Earl of Powis. Several pages of the Lymore manuscript were torn away or so stained as to be illegible, a loss which the second fortunately supplied. The Earl of Powis presented the originals to Horace Walpole by whom the narrative was first printed at Strawberry Hill in 1764. The is chiefly valuable as the record of an important representative of a distinguished family, told with a strict regard for truth, with a humble desire to be of service, and with a naive frankness that attracts while it amuses. The first paragraph is sufficient evidence of what has just been said, and is enough to convince a reader that the entire narrative is worthy of careful attention. Lord Herbert begins by lamenting that his own an cestors had not "set down their lives in writing and left them to posterity" that "their heirs might have benefited themselves by them more than by any else." He wrote with a definite in tention of serving his descendants. "I have thought fit," he continues, "to relate to my posterity those passages of my life which I con ceive may best declare me and be most useful to them. In the delivery of which I profess to write with all truth and sincerity as scorning ever to deceive or speak false of any: and therefore detesting it much more where I am under obligation of speaking to those near me: and if this be one reason for taking my pen in hand at this time, so as my age is now past three score, it will be fit to recollect my former actions, and examine what has been done well or ill, to the intent that I may reform that which was amiss, and so make my peace with God, as also comfort myself in those things which through God's great grace and favor have been done according to the rules of con science, virtue, and honor." We may agree
with the words of the advertisement to the first printing: °Foibles, passions, perhaps some vanity, surely some wrong-headedness; these he scorned to conceal, for he sought truth, wrote on truth, was truth: he honestly told when he had missed or mistaken it. His descendants, not blind to his faults, but through them conducting the reader to his virtues, de sire the world to make this candid observation with them, 'That there must have been a wonderful fund of internal virtue, of strong resolution and manly philosophy, which in an age of such mistaken and barbarous gallantry, of such absurd usages and false glory, could enable Lord Herbert to seek fame better founded, and could make him reflect that there might be a more desirable kind of glory than that of a romantic duelist.) Lord Herbert brings his narrative down to the publication of De Veritate, in 1624, and then abruptly closes. The style, considering the age in which it was 'written, is straightforward and not unpleasing. Now and then occurs a passage of singular beauty, such as the account of Lord Herbert's observation upon the similitude between birth and death. In addition to the manner in which the work reveals the individuality of the author, it throws much valuable light upon the customs and spirit of the age. As a reader puts the book aside he will feel that Horace Walpole spoke the truth when he called it "perhaps the most extraordinary account that ever was given seriously by a wise man of The 'Autobiography) should be consulted in the edition of Saunders and Otley (London 1E26), and particularly in that of Sidney Lee (lb. 1886).