transparent sincerity, and reflects the beautiful character of “holy George Herbert.”
Nicholas Ferrar’s translation (Oxford, 1638) of the Hundred and Ten Considerations ... of Juan de Valdes contained a letter and notes by Herbert. In 1652 appeared Herbert’s Remains; or, Sundry Pieces of that Sweet Singer of the Temple, Mr George Herbert. This included A Priest to the Temple; or, The Country Parson, his Character, and Rule of Holy Life, in prose; Jacula prudentum, a collection of proverbs with a separate title-page dated 1651, which had appeared in a shorter form as Outlandish Proverbs in 1640; and some miscellaneous matter. The completest edition of his works is that by Dr A. B. Grosart in 1874, this edition of the Poetical works being reproduced in the “Aldine edition” in 1876. The English Works of George Herbert ... (3 vols., 1905) were edited in much detail by G. H. Palmer. A contemporary account of Herbert’s life by Barnabas Oley was prefixed to the Remains of 1652, but the classic authority is Izaak Walton’s Life of Mr George Herbert, published in 1670, with some letters from Herbert to his mother. See also A. G. Hyde, George Herbert and his Times (1907), and the “Oxford” edition of his poems by A. Waugh (1908).
HERBERT, HENRY WILLIAM [”Frank Forester”] (1807–1858), English novelist and writer on sport, son of the Hon. and Rev. William Herbert, dean of Manchester, a son of the first earl of Carnarvon, was born in London on the 3rd of April 1807. He was educated at Eton and at Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1830. Having become involved in debt, he emigrated to America, and from 1831 to 1839 was teacher of Greek in a private school in New York. In 1833 he started the American Monthly Magazine, which he edited, in conjunction with A. D. Patterson, till 1835. In 1834 he published his first novel, The Brothers: a Tale of the Fronde, which was followed by a number of others which obtained a certain degree of popularity. He also wrote a series of historical studies, including The Cavaliers of England (1852), The Knights of England, France and Scotland (1852), The Chevaliers of France (1853), and The Captains of the Old World (1851); but he is best known for his works on sport, published under the pseudonym of “Frank Forester.” These include The Field Sports of the United States and British Provinces (1849), Frank Forester and his Friends (1849), The Fish and Fishing of the United States (1850), The Young Sportsman’s Complete Manual (1852), and The Horse and Horsemanship in the United States and British Provinces of North America (1858). He also translated many of the novels of Eugene Sue and Alexandre Dumas. Herbert was a man of varied accomplishments, but of somewhat dissipated habits. He died by his own hand in New York on the 17th of May 1858.
HERBERT, SIR THOMAS (1606–1682), English traveller
and author, was born at York in 1606. Several of his ancestors
were aldermen and merchants in that city—e.g. his grandfather
and benefactor, Alderman Herbert (d. 1614)—and they traced
a connexion with the earls of Pembroke. Thomas became a
commoner of Jesus College, Oxford, in 1621, but afterwards
removed to Cambridge, through the influence of his uncle
Dr Ambrose Akroyd. In 1627 the earl of Pembroke procured
his appointment in the suite of Sir Dodmore Cotton, then
starting as ambassador for Persia with Sir Robert Shirley.
Sailing in March they visited the Cape, Madagascar, Goa and
Surat; landing at Gambrun (10th of January 1627–1628),
they travelled inland to Ashraf and thence to Kazvin, where
both Cotton and Shirley died, and whence Herbert made extensive
travels in the Persian Hinterland, visiting Kashan, Bagdad,
&c. On his return voyage he touched at Ceylon, the Coromandel
coast, Mauritius and St Helena. He reached England in 1629,
travelled in Europe in 1630–1631, married in 1632 and retired
from court in 1634 (his prospects perhaps blighted by Pembroke’s
death in 1630); after this he resided on his Tintern estate and
elsewhere till the Civil War, siding with the parliament till his
appointment to attend on the king in 1646. Becoming a devoted
royalist, he was rewarded with a baronetcy at the Restoration
(1660). He resided mainly in York Street, Westminster, till
the Great Plague (1666), when he retired to York, where he died
(at Petergate House) on the 1st of March 1682.
Herbert’s chief work is the Description of the Persian Monarchy now beinge: the Orientall Indyes, Iles and other parts of the Greater Asia and Africk (1634), reissued with additions, &c., in 1638 as Some Yeares Travels into Africa and Asia the Great (al. into divers parts of Asia and Afrique); a third edition followed in 1664, and a fourth in 1677. This is one of the best records of 17th-century travel. Among its illustrations are remarkable sketches of the dodo, cuneiform inscriptions and Persepolis. Herbert’s Threnodia Carolina; or, Memoirs of the two last years of the reign of that unparallell’d prince of ever blessed memory King Charles I., was in great part printed at the author’s request in Wood’s Athenae Oxonienses; in full by Dr C. Goodall in his Collection of Tracts (1702, repr. G. & W. Nicol, 1813). Sir William Dugdale is understood to have received assistance from Herbert in the Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. iv.; see two of Herbert’s papers on St John’s, Beverley and Ripon collegiate church, now cathedral, in Drake’s Eboracum (appendix). Cf. also Robert Davies’ account of Herbert in The Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Journal, part iii., pp. 182-214 (1870), containing a facsimile of the inscription on Herbert’s tomb; Wood’s Athenae, iv. 15-41; and Fasti, ii. 26, 131, 138, 143-144, 150.
HERBERT OF CHERBURY, EDWARD HERBERT, Baron (1583–1648), English soldier, diplomatist, historian and religious philosopher, eldest son of Richard Herbert of Montgomery Castle (a member of a collateral branch of the family of the earls of Pembroke) and of Magdalen, daughter of Sir Richard Newport, was born at Eyton-on-Severn near Wroxeter on the 3rd of March 1583. After careful private tuition he matriculated at University College, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner, in May 1596. On the 28th of February 1599 he married his cousin Mary, daughter and heiress of Sir William Herbert (d. 1593). He returned to Oxford with his wife and mother, continued his studies, and obtained proficiency in modern languages as well as in music, riding and fencing. On the accession of James I. he presented himself at court and was created a knight of the Bath on the 24th of July 1603. In 1608 he went to Paris, enjoying the friendship and hospitality of the old constable de Montmorency, and being entertained by Henry IV. On his return, as he says himself with naïve vanity, he was “in great esteem both in court and city, many of the greatest desiring my company.” In 1610 he served as a volunteer in the Low Countries under the prince of Orange, whose intimate friend he became, and distinguished himself at the capture of Juliers from the emperor. He offered to decide the war by engaging in single combat with a champion chosen from among the enemy, but his challenge was declined. During an interval in the fighting he paid a visit to Spinola, in the Spanish camp near Wezel, and afterwards to the elector palatine at Heidelberg, subsequently travelling in Italy. At the instance of the duke of Savoy he led an expedition of 4000 Huguenots from Languedoc into Piedmont to help the Savoyards against Spain, but after nearly losing his life in the journey to Lyons he was imprisoned on his arrival there, and the enterprise came to nothing. Thence he returned to the Netherlands and the prince of Orange, arriving in England in 1617. In 1619 he was made by Buckingham ambassador at Paris, but a quarrel with de Luynes and a challenge sent by him to the latter occasioned his recall in 1621. After the death of de Luynes Herbert resumed his post in February 1622. He was very popular at the French court and showed considerable diplomatic ability, his chief objects being to accomplish the union between Charles and Henrietta Maria and secure the assistance of Louis XIII. for the unfortunate elector palatine. This latter advantage he could not obtain, and he was dismissed in April 1624. He returned home greatly in debt and received little reward for his services beyond the Irish peerage of Castle island in 1624 and the English barony of Cherbury, or Chirbury, on the 7th of May 1629. In 1632 he was appointed a member of the council of war. He attended the king at York in 1639, and in May 1642 was imprisoned by the parliament for urging the addition of the words “without cause” to the resolution that the king violated his oath by making war on parliament. He determined after this to take no further part in the struggle, retired to Montgomery Castle, and declined the king’s summons. On the 5th of September 1644 he surrendered the castle to the parliamentary forces, returned to London, submitted, and was granted a pension of £20 a week. In 1647 he paid a visit to Gassendi at Paris, and died in London on the 20th of August, 1648, being buried in the church of St Giles’s in the Fields.
