Literatura y crítica

Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury

garciala - 09 de noviembre de 2015 - 08:20 - Literatura y crítica

lunes, 29 de septiembre de 2014

Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble.

HERBERT of Cherbury, Edward, Lord (1582-1648), elder brother of G. *Herbert, born at Eyton-on-Severn, Shropshire, into one of the foremost families of the Welsh border. In 1596, aged 14, he was enrolled as gentleman commoner at University College, Oxford. That year his father died, and Herbert became ward of Sir George Moore (later *Donne's father-in-law). At 16 he was married to his cousin Mary, daughter of Sir William Herbert of St Julians, five years Edward's senior and heiress to her father's estates in England, Wales and Ireland. By the time he was 21 the couple had had, he reports, 'divers children', of whom none survived him. He was created Knight of the Bath in 1603. His adventures are recounted by Herbert in his Life, a remarkable document, not least for its unabashed presentation of its author's martial valour, success with women, truthfulness, sweetness of breath, and other virtues. Herbert aspired to a career in public service and spent much of the time from 1608 to 1618 in France, getting to know the French aristocracy and court. He also travelled in Italy and the Low Countries, fighting at the siege of Juliers (1610).

In 1619 he became ambassador to France, on *Buckingham's recommendation. His most famous philosophical work, De Veritate, was published in Paris in 1624. He was recalled to London in 1624, where he unsuccessfully petitioned for high office. Although he joined Charles's council of war in 1629, becoming Baron Herbert of Cherbury, recognition still eluded him. To attract royal notice he wrote, in 1630, The Expedition to the Isle of Rhé, which tries to justify Buckingham's calamitous generalship, and in 1632 he began a detailed 'official' history of *Henry VIII's reign, assisted by Thomas Masters, which was published in 1649. At the outbreak of the Civil War he retired to Montgomery Castle and declined to become involved. The castle was threatened by Royalists in 1644, and he admitted a parliamentary garrison, under Sir Thomas Myddleton, in exchange for the return of his books, which had been seized. He moved to his London house in Queen Street, St Giles, and dedicated himself to philosophy, supplementing his De Veritate with De Causis Errorum and De Religione Laici, both published in 1645, and writing besides De Religione Gentilium and his autobiography (begun in 1643). In 1647 he visited Gassendi in Paris.

Herbert's De Veritate postulates that religion is common to all men and that, stripped of superfluous priestly accretions, it can be reduced to five universal innate ideas: that there is a God; that he should be worshipped; that virtue and piety are essential to worship; that man should repent of his sins; and that there are rewards and punishments after this life. It gained Herbert the title of father of English *Deism. It was widely read in the 17th cent., earning the attention and disagreement of Mersenne, Gassendi, *Descartes, and *Locke. Herbert also wrote poetry which is obscure and metrically contorted, evidently influence by his friend Donne, but he also wrote some tender and musical love lyrics. (See also METAPHYSICAL POETS.)

Life, ed. S. Lee (1886, rev. 1906), and ed. J. M. Shuttleworth (1976); Poems English and Latin, ed. G. C. Moore Smith (1923); De Veritate, ed. and trans. M. H. Carré (1937); De Religione Laici, ed. and trans. H. R. Hutcheson (1944); R. D. Bedford, The Defence of Truth (1979).

Deism (Wikipedia)

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George Herbert

garciala - 09 de noviembre de 2015 - 08:19 - Literatura y crítica

lunes, 29 de septiembre de 2014

George Herbert

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble:

Herbert, George (1593-1633), fifth son of Sir Richard and Magdalen Herbert and younger brother of Lord *Herbert of Cherbury, born in Montgomery into a prominent family. His father died when he was 3, and in 1608 his mother, the patron of Donne, remarried Sir John Danvers, who was 20 years her junior. Educated at Westminster School where he was named king's scholar, and Trinity College, Cambridge, George published his first poems (two sets of memorial verses in Latin) in a volume mourning Prince Henry's death in 1612. But he had already, according to his earliest biographer, I. *Walton, sent his mother at the start of 1610 a New Year's letter dedicating his poetic powers to God and enclosing two sonnets ('My God, where is that ancient heat towards thee?' and 'Sure, Lord, there is enough in thee to dry'). In 1616 he was elected a major fellow of Trinity, and in 1618 appointed reader in rhetoric. In 1620 he became public orator at the university (holding this distinguished position until his resignation in 1627). He seems at this period to have been rather pushing, keen on making the acquaintance of the great and conscious of his distinction of birth. F. *Bacon and Donne were among his friends, and the public oratorship introduced him to men of influence at court. Although he was obliged, by the terms of his fellowship, to take orders within seven years, he seems to have gravitated towards a secular career, leaving his university duties to be performed by proxies. In 1624, and again in 1625, he represented Montgomery in Parliament. This fairly brief experience of worldly ambition seems, however, to have disillusioned him. He was ordained deacon, probably before the end of 1624, and installed in 1616 as a canon of Lincoln Cathedral and prebendary of Leighton Bromswold in Huntingdonshire, near *Little Gidding, where *Ferrar, whom Herbert had known at Cambridge, had recently established a religious community. Once installed, Herbert set about restoring the the ruined church at Leighton. His mother died in 1627, and his Memoriae Matris Sacrum waas published in the volume containing Donne's commemoration sermon. In March 1629 Herbert married his stepfather's cousin, Jane Danvers, and they adopted two orphaned nieces of Herbert's. He became rector of Bemerton, near Salisbury, in April 1630, being ordained priest the following September. In his short priesthood he gained a reputation for humility, energy, and charity. He was also a keen musician, and would go twice a week to hear the singing in Salisbury Cathedral which was, he said, 'Heaven upon earth'. He died of consumption shortly before his 40th birthday. When he realized he was dying he sent his English poems to his friend Ferrar with instructions to publish them, if he though they might 'turn to the advantage of any dejected soul', and otherwise to burn them. The Temple, containing nearly all his surviving English poems, was published in 1633. Outlandish Proverbs (a collection of foreign proverbs in translation) in 1640, and Herbert's prose picture of the model country parson, A Priest to the Temple, in 1652, as part of Herbert's Remains. His translation of Luigi Cornaro's Trattato de la vita sobria appeared in 1634, and his 'Brief Notes' on Juan de Valdes's Hundred and Ten Considerations in 1638. He told Ferrar that his poems represented 'a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul'. They were much admired in the 17th cent. and 13 editions of The Temple came out between 1633 and 1679. In the 18th cent. Herbert went out of fashion, though J. *Wesley adapted some of his poems. The Romantic age saw a revival, and the appreciative note in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria (1817) enhanced Herbert's reputation. Modern critics have noted the subtlety rather than the simplicity of his poems, seeing them as an attempt to express the ultimately ineffable complications of the spiritual life. The precise nature of Herbert's relationship to Calvinism has also generated debate. See Works (ed. F. E. Hutchinson, 1941); Amy M. Charles, Life (1977).