GEORGE HERBERT was born at Montgomery Castle, Wales, in 1593. His brother was the celebrated Lord Herbert of Cherbury. From Westminster School, he was elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was, in 1619, chosen Orator of the University. Having subsequently entered into holy orders, he was appointed a prebend of Lincoln, and held the living of Bemerton, Wilts. He appears to have been the perfect model of a country clergyman,-" labouring," according to his own words, "to make the name of a Priest honourable by consecrating all his learning and all his poor abilities to advance the glory of the God who gave them." The whole tenor of his life and the sole employment of his pen were in keeping with this, his early resolution. He died at his parsonage, in 1632; having endured with fortitude and submission a lingering and painful illness. "He had too thoughtful a wit," says his excellent biographer Old Izaac, "a wit like a penknife in too narrow a sheathtoo sharp for his body."

Such of the Poems of Herbert as remain to us relate exclusively to the more serious duties and the graver realities of life. He probably destroyed the productions of his gayer days, when "he enjoyed his genteel humour for clothes and Court-like company, and seldom looked towards Cambridge, unless the king was there."

His principal production is "the Temple, or Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations"-a work of which, according to his Biographer, more than 10,000 copies were sold within a short period after his death. From this volume some extracts have been given. It consists of a number of short pieces, commemorating such topics as Good Friday, Baptism, Church Music, Church Monuments, &c. "To appreciate them," says Mr. Coleridge, "it is not enough that the reader possesses a cultivated judgment, classical taste, or even poetic sensibility, unless he be likewise a Christian, and both a zealous and an orthodox, both a devout and a devotional Christian." Less kindly critics have considered its chief merit to be the excellence of its design; but it little deserves the sarcasms of Mr. Ellis and Mr. Headley-the latter of whom describes it as "a compound of enthusiasm without sublimity, and conceit without either ingenuity or imagination." It is worthy of remark that the writer himself held his productions as of such small value, that he left them to his executor to be burnt or published, according to his estimate of their worth.

"The Temple" was not therefore printed until 1633-a year after Herbert's decease and "when the book was sent to Cambridge to be licensed for the press," the Vice-Chancellor refused to permit its publication unless these two most obnoxious but most unpoetical lines were erased :

"Religion stands on tiptoe in our Land

Ready to pass to the American strand."

The Vice-Chancellor and the Poet's executor were thus at issue; but at length the former yielded on the ground that "the world would not take Mr. Herbert to be an inspired prophet." Izaac Walton relates that Herbert's friend Dr. Donne presented to him a seal on which was "engraven the Body of Christ crucified on an anchor-the Emblem of Hope"-and of which the doctor would often say "CRUX MIHI ÂNCHORA." Herbert had written on this memorial of affection

"When winds and waves rise highest, I am sure

This ANCHOR keeps my FAITH, that me secure."

"His

Walton has drawn a pleasing portrait of the man as well as of the Christian. body was very straight, and so far from being cumbered with too much flesh, that he was lean to an extremity. His aspect was cheerful, and his speech and motion did both declare him a gentleman."

It is to be regretted that the Poems of Herbert are so full of faults-the weeds indeed so completely hide the flowers, that it is only by careful searching that the more valuable decorations of the moral garden can be found. There is scarcely one of his compositions undefaced by a coarse simile or vulgar expression. The simple dignity of sacred subjects is so frequently sacrificed to absurd conceits, that an effect is produced the very opposite to that which the excellent man and pious clergyman so fervently desired; for in some instances, Religion is absolutely tortured until it becomes repulsive.

I CANNOT ope mine eyes,
But thou art ready there to catch
My morning-soul and sacrifice:

Then we must needs for that day make a match.

My God, what is a heart?

Silver, or gold, or precious stone,
Or starre, or rainbow, or a part
Of all these things, or all of them in one?

My God, what is a heart,

That thou shouldst it so eye and woo,

Pouring upon it all thy art,

As if that thou hadst nothing else to do?

Indeed, man's whole estate

Amounts (and richly) to serve thee: He did not heaven and earth create, Yet studies them, not him by whom they be.

Teach me thy love to know;

That this new light, which now I see, May both the work and workman show: Then by a sunne-beam I will climbe to thee.

THE FLOWER.

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! ev'n as the flow'rs in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away like snow in May;

As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivel'd heart Could have recover'd greennesse ? It was gone Quite under ground, as flow'rs depart To see their mother-root, when they have blown; Where they, together, all the hard weather, Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

These are thy wonders, Lord of power! Killing, and quick'ning, bringing down to hell, And up to heaven, in an houre;

Making a chiming of a passing-bell.

We amisse "This, or that, is;" say Thy word is all; if we could spell.

Oh, that I once past changing were;

Fast in thy Paradise, where no flow'r can wither! Many a spring I shoot up fair,

Off'ring at heav'n, growing and groaning thither: Nor doth my flower want a spring-showre; My sins and I joyning together,

But, while I grow in a straight line, Still upwards bent, as if heav'n were mine own, Thy anger comes, and I decline.

What frost to that? What pole is not the zone
Where all things burn, when thou dost turn,
And the least frown of thine is shown?

And now in age I bud again:
After so many deaths I'live and write:
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. O my onely light,
It cannot be that I am he,

On whom thy tempests fell all night!

These are thy wonders, Lord of love!
To make us see we are but flow'rs that glide:
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide;

Who would be more, swelling through store, Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

VIRTUE.

SWEET day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridall of the earth and skie,
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;
For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hew angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy root is ever in its grave,

And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet dayes and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
Thy musick shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like season'd timber, never gives;

But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.

D D

JAMES SHIRLEY was born in London in September 1594, and received his early education at Merchant Taylors' School. He was entered at St. John's, Oxford, but subsequently removed to Cambridge-in consequence, it is said, of Dr. William Laud, the President of St. John's, objecting to his taking orders, because of a large mole upon his cheek, which much disfigured him, and gave him a forbidding aspect. His academical studies being finished, he was ordained and appointed to a living in Hertfordshire, either at or in the neighbourhood of St. Alban's. He held this but for a short time, when he declared himself a convert to the Church of Rome. Subsequently he became a teacher in the Grammar School of St. Alban's; and for two years occupied himself in the drudgery of tuition; "which employment also," says Wood, "finding uneasy to him, he retired to the metropolis, lived in Gray's Inn, and set up for a play maker." During the civil wars, he took the side of the Crown, and followed to the field his patron, the Earl of Newcastle.

He was twice married, and had several children. "Love Tricks, or the School of Compliment," was his earliest dramatic production. He states in the Prologue

But so little had

"This play is

The first-fruits of a Muse, that before this,

Never saluted audience."

he looked into futurity, or anticipated his own destiny, that he added--he did not

"mean

To swear himself a factor for the scene."

It was performed in 1624-5, and printed in 1631. Shirley continued to write for the stage until 1642, when the first ordinance of both Houses of Parliament for the suppression of stage plays was issued; then, unable to live by his talents as a dramatist, he resumed his former occupation as a teacher; and "not only gained a comfortable subsistence, but educated many ingenious youths, who afterwards proved most eminent in divers faculties."

In this capacity, he was also a writer: "for the greater benefit and delight of young beginners," he published several elementary works. "At length," according to Wood, "he, with his second wife, Frances, were driven by the dismal conflagration that happened in London in 1666, from their habitation near to Fleet-street, into the parish of St. Giles's in the Fields, in Middlesex; where, being in a manner overcome with affrightments, disconsolations, and other miseries, occasioned by that fire, and their losses, they both died within the compass of a natural day." Garrick, in a Prologue to one of Shirley's Plays, says-

"He painted English manners, English men,

And formed his taste on Shakespeare and old Ben."

And this brief criticism judiciously characterises one of the best of our dramatic writers the author of thirty-nine plays; the greater number of which were to the highest degree popular in his own time, although they have long since ceased to retain possession of the stage.

In 1646, Shirley published a volume of poems, from which three of our extracts have been made. They are little known; and, we believe, have never been reprinted. From one of his plays we have selected the most perfect of his shorter compositions"Death's Final Conquest;" that, entitled "Victorious Men of Earth," is taken from Cupid and Death," a masque printed in 1653.

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His poems consist exclusively of short pieces, with the exception of one which records the Story of Narcissus. They are not of a high order; but among them may be found many of considerable beauty. He wrote in an easy and graceful style; but his lyrics seem to be the produce of hours devoted to amusement and relaxation rather than to serious thought. The poet enjoyed the esteem of his contemporaries, and appears to have led a blameless life. The productions of his pen, indeed, carry with them ample proof that his principles were enlisted on the side of virtue; and although he occasionally dwells upon themes unworthy of the Muse, he is rarely coarse, and never indecent: from the vice of his age he was, at least, comparatively free. His dramatic works have been within the last few years, collected and republished with notes, by Mr. Gifford and the Rev. Alexander Dyce.