Edward Herbert, Baron: usually styled Lord Herbert of Cherbury; soldier, statesman, philosopher, and author; born of an ancient family at Eyton in Shropshire, in 1583; educated at University College, Oxford; served with renown in the Netherlands; became a gentleman of the court of James I.; was ambassador to France 1618–24; entered the Irish peerage in 1625, and the English in 1630. His deistical “Tractatus de Veritate” appear in 1624, and the “De Religione Gentilium” was added in 1645. His philosophical writings are somewhat obscure, but he maintained the existence of innate ideas and of a personal Deity, and taught that the mind of the devout seeker for truth may become illuminated by an inward light. The indistinctness of his expressions and the somewhat mystical subtlety of his notions have caused him to be little read or understood. Died in London, Aug. 20, 1648.

Personal

  Sir Edward Herbert, afterward lord Cherbery, etc., dyed at his house, in Queen street, in the parish of St. Giles in the fields, London, and lies interred in the chancell, under the lord Stanhope’s inscription. On a black marble grave-stone thus:

  He was a Person well studied in the Arts and Languages, a good Philosopher and Historian, and understood Men as well as Books, as it evidently appears in his Writings…. He surrendered up his last breath in his House in Queenstreet near London in sixteen hundred forty and eight, and was buried in the Chancel of S. Giles’s Church in the Fields. Over his Grave, which is under the South Wall, was laid a flat Marble Stone with this Inscription engraven thereon, Heic inhumatur corpus Edwardi Herbert, Equitis Balnei, Baronis de Cherbury &c Castle Island, auctaris libri cui titulus est De veritate. Reddor ut herbæ; vicesimo die Augusti anno Domini, 1648.

  As a soldier, he won the esteem of those great captains the Prince of Orange and the Constable de Montmorency; as a knight, his chivalry was drawn from the purest founts. Had he been ambitious, the beauty of his person would have carried him as far as any gentle knight can aspire to go. As a public minister, he supported the dignity of his country, even when its prince disgraced it; and that he was qualified to write its annals as well as to ennoble them, the history I have mentioned proves, and must make us lament that he did not complete, or that we have lost, the account he purposed to give of his embassy. These busy scenes were blended with, and terminated by, meditation and philosophic inquiries. Strip each period of its excesses and errors, and it will not be easy to trace out, or dispose the life of a man of quality into a succession of employments which would better become him. Valour and military activity in youth; business of state in the middle age; contemplation and labours for the information of posterity in the calmer scenes of closing life: this was Lord Herbert.

  Lord Herbert stands in the first rank of the public ministers, historians, and philosophers of his age. It is hard to say whether his person, his understanding, or his courage, was the most extraordinary; as the fair, the learned, and the brave, held him in equal admiration. But the same man was wise and capricious; redressed wrongs and quarrelled for punctilios; hated bigotry in religion, and was himself a bigot to philosophy. He exposed himself to such dangers, as other men of courage would have carefully declined; and called in question the fundamentals of religion which none had the hardiness to dispute beside himself.

  The life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written by himself, is one of the most curious works of the kind that has ever issued from the press. Who can read without delight a narrative, and such a narrative too, of the private foibles and most secret thoughts of the soldier, the statesman, the wit, and the philosopher. That he was truth itself is undoubted; and if his vanity sometimes occasions a smile, we must bear in mind the peculiar features of the period in which he lived. We must remember that chivalry was not then extinct, and that the smiles of beauty and the honours of battle were considered as indispensable in conferring not only reputation, but respect. Gifted by nature with wit, beauty, and talent, and possessing courage almost amounting to a fault, can we wonder, that in a martial and romantic age Lord Herbert should have engaged the hearts of women, almost as universally as he won for himself the respect of men. If he speaks somewhat ostentatiously of his own merits, at least with equal candour he lays open to us his faults.

  Lord Edward Herbert was one of the handsomest men of his day, of a beauty alike stately, chivalric and intellectual. His person and features were cultivated by all the disciplines of a time when courtly graces were not insignificant, because a monarch mind informed the court, nor warlike customs, rude or mechanical, for individual nature had free play in the field, except as restrained by the laws of courtesy and honor. The steel glove became his hand, and the spur his heel; neither can we fancy him out of his place, for any place he would have made his own. But all this grace and dignity of the man of the world was in him subordinated to that of the man, for in his eye, and in the brooding sense of all his countenance, was felt the life of one who, while he deemed that his present honour lay in playing well the part assigned him by destiny, never forgot that it was but a part, and fed steadily his forces on that within that passes show.

  Still less heroic, and much less great, was Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who, however, had more literary power than Selden, and was even more double-faced.

King Henry VIII., 1649

  Above all, Edward, Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, may be truly said to have written the life and reign of King Henry the Eight; having acquitted himself with the like reputation as the Lord-Chancellor Bacon gained by that of Henry the Seventh. For, in the politic and martial part of this honourable author has been admirably particular and exact, from the best records that were extant; though, as to the ecclesiastical, he seems to have looked upon it as a thing out of his province, and an undertaking more proper for men of another profession.

  His reign of Henry VIII. is allowed to be a masterpiece of historic biography.

  Has been ever esteemed one of the best histories in the English language: but there is not in it that perfect candour which one would wish, or expect to see, in so celebrated an historian.

  A book of good authority, relatively at least to any that preceded, and written in a manly and judicious spirit.

  Undoubtedly the best work of its kind before the Restoration: the English is a model of purity, and perhaps the very best prose, in the sense of being most comprehensible to modern ears, before Dryden’s; the periods are well constructed, though not quite so abundant in antithesis as those of Bacon.

  The “History” was intended to challenge comparison with Bacon’s “Henry VII.,” but all the labour of its author failed to secure for it anything like the spring and liveliness of Bacon’s narrative.

Autobiography

  Being written when Lord Herbert was past sixty, the work was probably never completed. The spelling is in general given as in the MS. but some obvious mistakes it was necessary to correct, and a few notes have been added, to point out the most remarkable persons mentioned in the text. The style is remarkably good for that age, which coming between the nervous and expressive manliness of the preceding century, and the purity of the present standard, partook of neither. His lordship’s observations are new and acute, some very shrewd; his discourse on the Reformation very wise…. Nothing is more marked than the air of veracity or persuasion which runs through the whole narrative. If he makes us wonder, and wonder makes us doubt, the charm of his ingenuous integrity dispels our hesitation. The whole relation throws singular light on the manners of the age, though the gleams are transient.

  In many passages the autobiography of Lord Herbert is of a style so charming, and of a manner and matter so singularly characteristic of his order, age, and nation, that one might easily believe it written by some skilful student of the period, with a tacit modern consciousness of the wonderful artistic success of the study. As you read, you cannot help thinking now and then that Thackeray himself could not have done it better, if he had been minded to portray a gentleman of the first James’s time. Yet this picture, so frank, so boldly colored, so full of the very life of a young English noble, is one of the most remarkable instances of self-portraiture in any language, in the absence of that consciousness which the momentarily bewildered sense attributes to it; its great value to the reader of our day is, that the author sits to himself as unconstrainedly as if posterity should never come to look over his shoulder, and all his attitudes and expressions are those of natural ease. A rare sincerity marks the whole memoir, and gives it the grace of an antique simplicity.

  It may be doubted whether there is any more astounding monument of coxcombry in literature. Herbert is sometimes cited as a model of a modern knight-errant, of an Amadis born too late. Certainly, according to his own account, all women loved and all men feared him; but for the former fact we have nothing but his own authority, and in regard to the latter we have counter evidence which renders it exceedingly doubtful. He was, according to his own account, a desperate duellist. But even by this account his duels had a curious habit of being interrupted in the immortal phrase of Mr. Winkle by “several police constables;” while in regard to actual war the exploits of his youth seem not to have been great, and those of his age were wholly discreditable, inasmuch as being by profession an ardent Royalist, he took the first opportunity to make, without striking a blow, a profitable composition with the Parliament. Nevertheless, despite the drawbacks of subject-matter, the autobiography is a very interesting piece of English prose.

  Herbert is best known to modern readers by his autobiography. Childlike vanity is the chief characteristic of the narrative. He represents himself mainly as a gay Lothario, the hero of innumerable duels, whose handsome face and world-wide reputation as a soldier gained for him the passionate adoration of all the ladies of his acquaintance and the respect of all men of distinction. He enters into minute details about his person and habits. He declares that he grew in height when nearly forty years old, that he had a pulse in his head, that he never felt cold in his life, and that he took to tobacco in his later years with good effect on his health. But Herbert’s veracity even on such points is disputable; his accounts of his literary friends and his mother are very incomplete, his dates are conflicting, and he does himself an injustice by omitting almost all mention of his serious studies, which give him an important place in the history of English philosophy and poetry. He only shows the serious side of his character in a long digression on education in the early part of his memoirs, where he recommends a year’s reading in philosophy and six months’ study of logic, although “I am confident,” he adds, “a man may have quickly more than he needs of these arts.” Botany he praises as “a fine study,” and “worthy of a gentleman,” and he has some sensible remarks on moral and physical training. At the end of his autobiography he states that he had written a work on truth, which he had shown to two great scholars, Tilenus and Grotius, who had exhorted him to print it, and that a miraculous sign to the same effect had been vouchsafed him from heaven in answer to a prayer.

  The “Life of Lord Herbert” is full of adventures and of encounters with great personages. The adventures are well told; there is seldom anything very striking in the descriptions of people. King Louis XIII. and the fair maid of an inn are described more particularly than the rest: the writer has little to say of Casaubon or Grotius, of Henry IV. or Queen Margaret. Spinola, though there is not much about him, is represented as a soldier and a gallant gentleman, whom Herbert offered to follow “if ever he did lead an army against the infidels.” The fortunes and the ideas of Herbert are generally sufficient for him: he is not much interested in other people. The story comes to an end in 1624; the writer did not go on to tell of his difficulty in understanding what the civil war of England was all about, and of the inconvenience which it caused him.

Poems

  I have no wish to rob Oblivion of its legitimate prey. Some of Lord Herbert’s poems are, I freely admit, not worth resuscitation, but many of them, or portions at least of many of them, seem to me authentic poetry. In almost all of them we find originality and vigour, however fantastic the conception, however rough the execution. But were their merits even less than they are, no cultivated man could regard them with indifference. The name of their writer would be a sufficient passport to indulgent attention…. In my estimate of Lord Herbert’s poems I have hitherto stood alone…. It is strange that in his “Autobiography” Lord Herbert makes no mention of his Poems, the existence of which seems not to have been suspected by any of his distinguished contemporaries. They were evidently jotted down in moments of leisure, as occasion offered. Some of them were the work of his youth, some of his middle age; the last was written four years before his death…. But Herbert’s greatest metrical triumph is that he was the first to discover the harmony of that stanza with which the most celebrated poet of our own day has familiarised us. The glory of having invented it belongs indeed to another, but the glory of having passed it almost perfect into Mr. Tennyson’s hands belongs unquestionably to Herbert. And it is due also to Herbert to say that he not only revealed its sweetness and beauty, but that he anticipated some of its most exquisite effects and variations…. The Latin poems of Herbert are scarcely likely to find favour in the eyes of modern scholars. Their diction is, as a rule, involved and obscure; they teem with forced and unclassical expressions. His hendecasyllabics are intolerably harsh, and violate almost every metrical canon. His Elegiacs are not more successful; indeed, the only tolerable copy among the poemata are the verses on a Dial, for the epigrams are below contempt.

  As a poet he was a disciple of Donne, and excelled his master in obscurity and ruggedness. Ben Jonson was impressed by his “obscureness.” His satires are very poor, but some of his lyrics have the true poetic ring, and at times suggest Herrick. He often employs the metre which was brought to perfection by Tennyson in “In Memoriam.” His Latin verses are scholarly, and chiefly deal with philosophic subjects.

General

  He was a most excellent Artist and rare Linguist, studied both in Books and Men, and himself the Author of two Works most remarkable, viz. “A Treatise of Truth,” written in French, so highly prized beyond the Seas, that (as I am told) it is extant at this day with great Honour in the Pope’s Vatican.

  His lordship seems to have been one of the first that formed Deism into a system, and asserted the sufficiency, universality, and absolute perfection of natural religion, with a view to discard all extraordinary revelation as useless and needless. He seems to assume to himself the glory of having accomplished it with great labour and a diligent inspection into all religions, and applauds himself for it as happier than any Archimedes.

  Too much space may seem to have been bestowed on a writer who cannot be ranked high among metaphysicians. But Lord Herbert was not only a distinguished name, but may claim the priority among those philosophers in England. If his treatise “De Veritate” is not, as an entire work, very successful, or founded always upon principles which have stood the test of severe reflection, it is still a monument of an original, independent thinker, without rhapsodies of imagination, without pedantic technicalities, and, above all, bearing witness to a sincere love of the truth he sought to apprehend. The ambitious expectation that the real essences of things might be discovered, if it were truly his, as Gassendi seems to suppose, could not be warranted by any thing, at least, within the knowledge of that age. But, from some expressions of Herbert, I should infer that he did not think our faculties competent to solve the whole problem of quiddity, as the logicians called it, or the real nature of any thing, at least, objectively without us. He is, indeed, so obscure, that I will not vouch for his entire consistency. It has been an additional motive to say as much as I have done concerning Lord Herbert, that I know not where any account of his treatise “De Veritate” will be found. Brucker is strangely silent about this writer, and Buhle has merely adverted to the letter of Gassendi. Descartes has spoken of Lord Herbert’s book with much respect, though several of their leading principles were far from the same.

  Vain and eccentric Lord Herbert…. His celebrated treatise “De Veritate, prout distinguitur a Revelatione, a Verisimili, a Possibili et a Falso,”—a book, as he says himself, “so different from anything which had been written before,” that he had not dared to publish it, till, in answer to his prayers, he had received a supernatural sign from heaven. He had circulated copies of the book among the continental thinkers, “without suffering it to be divulged to others;” but, satisfied with the result, he was now preparing a second edition to be published in London. When this edition appeared (1633,) it bore the “imprimatur” of Laud’s domestic chaplain, stating that nothing had been found in it “contrary to good morals or the truth of the Faith.” It is the custom now, however, to regard the book as the first English Deistical treatise, and the author as the first English Deist. It may be doubted whether this judgment is, in any respect, correct; nay, whether, if the conspicuous heads of that day were carefully counted, there might not be found among them one or two whose speculations passed the bounds of any form of Theism whatever.

  With Lord Herbert appeared a systematic deism.