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.
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