HERBERT, GEORGE, born April 3, 1593, was the fifth brother of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. He was educated at Westminster, and elected thence to Trinity College, Cambridge, about the year 1608.
In 1615 he became Fellow of the college, and in 1619 was elected to the office of public orator, a post in those times of considerably more importance than at present. While at Cambridge he made the ecquaintanco of Lord Bacon, but the pleasures of the court and some hopes of preferment led him to spend much of his time away from that seat of learning. His expectations however failing on the death of James I., he turned his attention to divinity, of which he had before been a laborious student, and took holy orders. He was made pre bendary of Leighton Bromswold, or Layton Ecclosia, in 1626. Ho married in 1630, and in the same year accepted the rectory of Berner ton; but the effects of a quotidian ague, which had attacked him the year before, soon made themselves again apparent, and ho died in 1632.
His poetical works are well and deservedly known. Under a quaint
guise they convey sometimes profound and very often beautiful thoughts. They belong to the same school with those of Donna, Quarles, and Herrick, and remind us forcibly of certain poems which some years ago appeared at Oxford under the title of The Christian Year,' and the same analogy may be traced betwecu that school of divines to whom these poems are owing and our author ; there is the same zeal and energy in pastoral duties, the same love of paradox in language, the same reverence for and for the ceremonies of the Church.
Herbert's chief prose work is The Priest to the Temple,' a sequel to his work called ' The Temple : Sacred Poems and Private Ejacula tions.' It lays down rules, and very good rules, for the life which a country clergyman ought to lead. He also wrote a translation of Corner° 'On Temperance,' and seine Latin poems.
(Izaak Walton, Life of Herbert.)