his vicarage, where he died, it is not known in what year. His only production, other than the Hesperides, was a poem called Charon, contributed to a work published in 1650, entitled Lachrymæ Musarum, expressed in elegies upon the death of Henry Lord Hastings.

FRANCIS QUARLES.

(1592-1644.)

It is the fate of many to receive from posterity that commendation which, though deserved, they missed during their lives; others, on the contrary, take their full complement of praise from their contemporaries, and gain nothing from their successors; a double payment is rarely the lot of any one. In every nation, few indeed are they who, allied, as it were, to immortality, can boast of a reputation sufficiently bulky and well-founded to catch, and to detain, the eye of each succeeding generation as it rises. The revolutions of opinion, gradual improvement, and new discoveries will shake, if not demolish, the finest fabrics of the human intellect. Fame, like virtue, is seldom stationary; if it ceases to advance, it inevitably goes backward; and speedy are the steps of its receding, when compared with those of its advances.

Writers who do not belong to the first class, yet of distinguished merit, should rest contented with the scanty praise of the few for the present, and trust with confidence to posterity. He who writes well, leaves an imperishable name behind him: the partial and veering gales of favour, though silent perhaps for one century, are sure to rise in gusts in the next. Truth, however tardy, is infallibly progressive, and with her walks justice. Let this console deserted genius; those honours which, through envy or accident, are withheld in one age, are sure to be repaid, with interest, by taste and gratitude in another. These reflections are more immediately suggested by the memory of Quarles, which has been branded with more than common abuse, and who seems often to have been censured from the want of being read. If his poetry failed to gain him friends and readers, his piety should at least have secured him peace and good-will. He too often, no doubt, mistook the enthusiasm of devotion for the inspiration of fancy; to mix the waters of Jordan and Helicon in the same cup was reserved for the hand of Milton; and for him, and him only, to find the bays of Mount Olivet equally verdant with those of Parnassus. Yet, as the effusions of a real poetical mind, however thwarted by untowardness of subject, will be seldom rendered totally abortive,

From an illuminated Ms. in the British Museum.

we find in Quarles original imagery, striking sentiment, fertility of expression, and happy combinations, together with a compression of style that merits the observation of the writers of verse. Gross deficiencies of judgment, and the infelicity of his subjects, concurred in ruining him. His Enchiridion (1658), consisting of select brief observations, moral and political, is a work of great merit. Had this little piece been written at Athens or at Rome, its author would have been classed with the wise men of his country. Our author was cupbearer to the Queen of Bohemia, secretary to the Primate of Ireland, and chronologer to the city of London; in the mention of which latter office, his widow, in her life of him, says, "which place he held to his death, and would have given that city (and the world) a testimony that he was their faithful servant, if it had pleased God to blesse him with life to perfect what he had begun." His sufferings, both in mind and estate, during the civil wars, were considerable. Winstanley tells us he was plundered of his books, and some rare manuscripts which he intended for the press. Walpole and Granger have asserted that he had a pension from Charles I., though they produce no authority; it is not improbable, as the king had taste to discover merit and generosity to reward it. Wood, in mentioning a publication of Dr. Burges, which was abused by an anonymous author, in a pamphlet called A Whip, and answered by Quarles, styles our author "an old puritanical poet, the sometimes darling of our plebeian judgments." Phillips says of his works that "they have been ever, and still are, in wonderful veneration among the vulgar." He was born at Stewards, in the parish of Rumford in Essex, in 1592; and died, the father of eighteen children, in September 1644. He was buried in St. Leonard's, Foster Lane. His death was lamented in a copy of alcaics by Dr. Duport, subjoined to A Relation of the Life and Death of Mr. Francis Quarles, by Ursula Quarles, his widow. In an obscure book of epigrams, by Thomas Bancroft, there is one addressed to Quarles, in which he intimates that he had been pre-occupied in a subject by our poet. He wrote a comedy called The Virgin Widow, printed in 1649, and several poems, chiefly of the religious kind. Mr. Langbaine says, "he was a poet that mixed religion and fancy together; and was very careful in all his writings not to entrench upon good manners by any scurrility in his works, or any ways offending against his duty to God, his neighbour, and himself." Thus, according to Langbaine, and others have given the same testimonial, he was a very good man.

GEORGE HERBERT.*

(Born 1593.)

George Herbert, a member of the great family of that name, was born 3d April, 1593, near Montgomery. At the age of twelve he was sent to Westminster school, whence, in 1608, he was, as a King's scholar, elected to Trinity College, Cambridge. By his twenty-second year, his great cultivation of learning, and his excellent conduct, had honourably brought him to the degree of M.A., his greatest diversion from his study being the practice of music, in which he became a great master; and of which he would say, that it did relieve his drooping spirits, compose his distracted thoughts, and raised his weary soul so far above earth, that it gave him an earnest of the joys of heaven before he possessed them. In 1619 he was chosen orator for the University.

The first notable occasion of showing his fitness for this employment was manifested in a letter to King James, upon the occasion of his sending that University his Basilicon Doron.

This letter was written in such excellent Latin, and all the expressions so suited to the genius of the king, that he inquired the orator's name, and then asked William Earl of Pembroke if he knew him, whose answer was, that he knew him very well, and that he was his kinsman; but he loved him more for his learning and virtue than for that he was of his name and family. At which answer the king smiled, and asked the earl leave that he might love him too, for he took him to be the jewel of that University.

Well disposed to profit by this royal encouragement, he learned the Italian, Spanish, and French tongues, with a view to a secretaryship of state, and attended the king wheresoever the court was, who, after a time, gave him a sinecure of 1207. per annum. With this, and his annuity, and the advantage of his college and of his oratorship, he enjoyed his genteel humour for clothes and courtlike company, and seldom looked towards Cambridge, unless the king was there; but then he never failed, and at other times left the manage of his orator's place to his learned friend Mr. Herbert Thorndike.

He had often designed to leave the University, and decline all study, which he thought impaired his health, already weak. But his mother would not consent, and he was too dutiful a son to oppose her wishes.

With the death of James, died also Herbert's court-hopes; so he presently betook himself to a friend in Kent, where he lived very privately. At last God inclined him to put on a resolution to serve at

* Abridged from Walton.