brilliant in Europe, thronged as it was with notables like Drake, Raleigh, and the great scientist and philosopher Francis Bacon. The world seemed for the time being to have renewed its youth after the turmoil of the Reformation, and men, their imaginations stirred by the wonders of the age, dared once more to dream great dreams and to bring them to fulfilment. Into such a world George Herbert was born at Montgomery Castle, in Wales, in the year 1593, the same that saw the publication of Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis." His father, Sir Richard Herbert, saw that he had an education befitting a gentleman by sending him as a boy to Westminster School. Here, according to Izaak Walton, "the beauties of his pretty behaviour and wit shined and became so eminent and lovely in this his innocent age, that he seemed to be marked out, for piety, and to become the care of Heaven, and of a particular good angel to guard and guide him. And thus he continued in that School, till he came to be perfect in the learned languages, and especially in the Greek tongue, in which he afterward proved an excellent critic.' He At the age of fifteen he was elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, and took his B.A. degree the year after the publication of the Authorized Version of the Bible. proceeded to the M.A. degree three years later, and in 1620 was appointed public orator of his University. This important post brought him into touch with Court life to a certain extent, and it is certain that he secured the favorable notice of James I more than once; but the deaths of his chief friends at Court, the Duke of Richmond and the Marquis of Hamilton, put an end for good and all to his hopes of a brilliant career as a courtier. A few years later (1630) he took Holy Orders and was duly inducted into the rectory of Bemerton. Here he spent the whole of his brief ministry of three years, performing the duties of his office with unflagging zeal, and died, worn out with consumption, at the early age of forty. His published works are few in number, and of these the most important are the "parentalia," a collection of Greek and Latin verses in memory of his mother; "The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations," and the collection of short essays entitled "A Priest to the Temple," in which he outlines his ideal of a parish priest. Of the first of these works it is sufficient to quote the criticism of his biographer, Barnabas Oley." The many Latin and Greek verses, the obsequious 'Parentalia,' which he made and printed in his mother's memory, though they be good, very good-they be dull and dead in comparison of his Temple Poems." It is, in fact, the poems collected in "The Temple" that have won for Herbert an honourable and enduring place in the ranks of English poets. Here he strikes, for the first time in English verse, the note sounded by Cowper the following century in the "Olney Hymns" and in parts of "The Task," and prolonged by Keble in the nineteenth century. While still a lad of seventeen he had resolved to dedicate his poetic talent to the glory of God. "My God, where is that ancient heat towards Thee, The lines clearly indicate the course he had already mapped out for himself. His poetry throughout is essentially religious, and in its course sounds both the heights of ecstacy and the depths of despair. In fact, the comparison with Cowper is almost inevitable, for Herbert, by Cowper's own confession, exercised a great influence upon him. Speaking of one of his terrible fits of depression, Cowper writes, "I met with Herbert's poems, and Gothic and uncouth as they were, I yet found in them a strain of piety which I could not but admire. This was the only author I had any delight in reading. I pored over him all the day long." In both we find that the consciousness of man's sin and ingratitude towards God is strong. Thus the earlier poet sings, Lord, let the Angels praise Thy name, His house still burns, and yet he still doth sing. 'Man is but grasse, He knows it, fill the glasse;' and farther on, "But Man doth know The spring, whence all things flow: And yet as though he knew it not, His knowledge winks, and lets his humours reign; They make his life a constant blot, And all the bloud of God to run in vain. Ah wretch! what verse Can thy strange ways rehearse?" In another poem we read, "I have deserved that an Egyptian night But I am frailtie, and already dust." Herbert, however, seems never to have descended to the terrible depths of despair in which Cowper was plunged during his periods of insanity. He has penned no such lines as the despairing "Hatred and vengeance-my eternal portion Scarce can endure delay of execution, Wait with impatient readiness to seize my Soul in a moment. Damned below Judas; more abhorr'd than he was, Deems the profanest." Perhaps nowhere in the whole stream of English poetry has a sadder, more tragic note been sounded than in these verses. It would not be natural, however, for their religion to be a thing of unrelieved gloom. Again and again we come across outbursts of praise and confidence in the Divine mercy and justice. Thus Cowper, in a noble passage of "The Task," says, "I was a stricken deer that left the herd Long since; with many an arrow deep infix'd With gentle force soliciting the darts He drew them forth, and heal'd and bade me live." This passage also, breathing throughout of thanksgiving, occurs in the "Olney Hymns." "I will praise Thee every day, Now Thine anger's turned away: While I live, my pleasant song." When one sets side by side with these two extracts the following lines from Herbert, one sees at a glance the similarity of their religious attitude to their Maker, in spite of the differences in expressing themselves due to the ages in which they lived. "King of Gloria, King of Peace, I will love Thee: And that love may never cease, Sev'n whole days, not one in seven, In my heart, though not in heaven, Small it is, in this poore sort To enroll Thee; Ev'n eternitie is too short To extoll Thee." |