EDWARD,

FIRST LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY.

Of that anomaly of character, by the abundance and variety of which foreigners are pleased to tell us that our country is distinguished, we meet with few examples more striking than in the subject of this memoir-wise and unsteady; prudent and careless; a philosopher, with ungovernable and ridiculous prejudices; a good-humoured man, who ever sought occasions to shed the blood of his fellow creatures; a deist, with superstition too gross for the most secluded cloister. These observations are not founded on the report of others, but on the fragment which remains of his own sketch of his life, a piece of infinite curiosity, to which these pages will chiefly owe any degree of interest that they may be found to possess.

He was eldest son and heir of Richard Herbert, of Montgomery Castle, in North Wales, great-great-grandson of Sir Richard Herbert, of Colebrook, in Monmouthshire, who was next brother to William, first Earl of Pembroke. His mother was Magdalen, daughter and heir of Sir Richard Newport, of High Ercal, in Shropshire, and he was born in the year 1581, at Eyton in that county, a seat derived by his father from her family. At the age of twelve he was sent, with an ample stock of classical learning, to Oxford, and was entered a gentleman commoner of University College, where he studied with such determined assiduity that he would not suffer his marriage, which, through some prudential family considerations, took place with a kinswoman before he had

reached the age of sixteen, to interrupt the course of his education, and therefore brought his wife to reside in the town. He remained there till the year 1600, when he settled in London, and presented himself, without introduction, at the Court of Elizabeth, who, having with some difficulty discovered who he was, twice gave him her hand to kiss, and twice, to use his own words, "clapped him on the cheek, swearing her ordinary oath, and lamenting that he had been married so young." These, however, appear to have been the only favours that he received from her, but on the accession of James he attended his powerful kinsman, the Earl of Pembroke, to meet that Prince on his road from Scotland; was received by him with distinguishing grace; and presently after made a Knight of the Bath, the chivalrous ceremonies used on his reception into which order seem to have made an indelible impression on a mind not less romantic than honourable, and even to have influenced the whole conduct of his youth and middle age.

Unfit for and averse to the quietude of domestic life, he became now impatient to visit foreign countries, and proposed to accompany the Earl of Nottingham in his embassy to Madrid, but his relations, to detain him at home, contrived to have him placed in the office of Sheriff of the county of Montgomery; in 1608, however, he went to Paris, leaving his wife pregnant, and three young children. Here he became intimate with the brave old Constable Henry de Montmorency, on a short visit to whose country-house he quarrelled with and challenged a French cavalier, for refusing to restore a ribbon which he had jestingly snatched from the head of a little girl of ten years old; an absurdity for which he apologizes by declaring, with much solemnity, that he thought himself bound to commit it by the oath which he had taken, as a Knight of the Bath, "to defend maidens in their rights." During his stay in France, he perfected himself in the accomplishments of riding, fencing, and music, and improved his erudition in the conversation of the celebrated Isaac Casaubon, in whose house he seems to have dwelt. Having made a short visit rather to the

Court of London than to his family, he embarked in the spring of 1610 for the Netherlands, and served as a volunteer with the English troops commanded by the Prince of Orange at the siege of Juliers, where he distinguis hedhimself by the utmost extravagance of rashness and unnecessary valour, as well in incessant private quarrels as in military exploits; insomuch that even Balagny, at that time the most notorious and frequent duellist of the French Court and army, had discretion enough to decline his invitation to decide by combat on the merits of their respective imaginary mistresses. "On this refusal," says Herbert, “I went to M. Terant, a gentleman that belonged to the Duke of Montmorency, who, telling me he had a quarrel with another gentleman, I offered to be his second, but he saying that he was provided already, I rode thence to the English quarters, attending some fit occasion to send again to the Lord Walden," whom also he had challenged. He had, however, no sooner arrived there than he was wounded in a rencontre with another English officer of rank; and all this seems to have been the work of a single day. It is true that duelling was a prevailing fashion of that period, but it is not less true that Herbert must have had a strong predisposition to follow that fashion. Having visited the Imperial Court, he returned to London, where this misplaced bravery, as well as his uncommon talents and good breeding, rendered him a favourite in the highest society. The most eminent and accomplished men of the time courted his intimacy, and the women procured miniature copies of his picture, and wore them secretly about their persons: a compliment that had nearly cost him his life, for a Sir John Ayres, discovering such a one in his wife's possession, became furiously jealous, and, having waylaid him, with a party of men, in the street near Whitehall, left him covered with wounds, received in a defence of himself almost incredibly heroic. In 1614 he again volunteered in a campaign under the Prince of Orange; which ended, he made a hasty tour of Italy, passed his Christmas at Rome, and, returning by Turin, engaged with the Duke of Savoy to recruit his army with four thousand

French protestants. He went therefore into Languedoc, where he was met by an edict newly issued by the Queen Mother of France, prohibiting the enlistment of troops for the service of foreign powers; and, having challenged the Governor of Lyons for performing an act of public duty consequent on that edict, which he could scarcely have avoided, was corrected by the slightest possible show of imprisonment, and presently after embarked for England.

In 1616 he was nominated Ambassador to Louis the thirteenth, for the professed purpose of renewing the oath of alliance between James and the deceased Henry the fourth, but in fact to negotiate in favour of the protestants. He appears to have executed his mission with much sagacity and gravity; but its object was uniformly thwarted by the Duke de Luynes, a young man to whose government the King had implicitly surrendered himself, and who had determined to extirpate them by force of arms. To this nobleman, after long delays, the King referred him, when the extraordinary conference ensued which is here given nearly in Herbert's own words. On De Luynes dryly demanding of him, as soon as they were seated, the cause of his visit, he answered that he was commanded by the King, his master, to mediate a peace between the King of France and his protestant subjects. What," said the Duke, “hath the King, your master, to do with our actions? Why doth he meddle with our affairs?" "The King, my master," answered Herbert, "ought not to give an account of the reason that induced him hereunto, but if you ask me in more gentle terms, I will do my best to give you satisfaction." To this De Luynes replied simply with the word "bien," and Herbert went on to say that James, in conformity to his stipulation with Henry the fourth that the survivor of either should always endeavour to procure the tranquillity of the other's estate, had now sent him for that purpose; and that he hoped that when the present civil discord should be accommodated, Louis might be disposed to assist the Elector Palatine, the ancient friend and ally of the French crown. The Duke interrupted him by saying,