"
The poet lifts our eyes to the beauties of external nature, educates us to
a keener participation in the sweet joys of affection, to the loveliness
and grace of woman, to the honor and strength of manhood. His ideal world
thus becomes an actual one, as the creations of imagination first borrowed
from sense, alight from the book, the picture or the statue once again to
live and walk among us.
The resemblances which have induced us to bring together our sacred
triumvirate of poets, are the common period in which they lived, their
similar training in youth, a congenial bond of learning, a certain
generous family condition, the inspiration of the old mother church out of
which they sprung, the familiar discipline of sorrow, the early years in
which they severally wrote.
A brief glance at their respective lives may indicate still further these
similarities and point a moral which needs not many words to
express--which seems to us almost too sacred to be loudly or long dwelt
upon.
* * * * *
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.
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