from sense, alight from the book, the picture or the statue once again to
live and walk among us.

The resemblances which have induced us to bring together our sacred
triumvirate of poets, are the common period in which they lived, their
similar training in youth, a congenial bond of learning, a certain
generous family condition, the inspiration of the old mother church out of
which they sprung, the familiar discipline of sorrow, the early years in
which they severally wrote.

A brief glance at their respective lives may indicate still further these
similarities and point a moral which needs not many words to
express--which seems to us almost too sacred to be loudly or long dwelt
upon.

* * * * *

Herbert was the oldest of the band, having been born near the close of the
sixteenth century, in the days of James, who was an intelligent patron of
the family. The poet's brother, the learned Lord Herbert of Cherbury,
whose "Autobiography" breathes the fresh manly spirit of the best days of
chivalry, was the king's ambassador to France. George Herbert, too, was in
a fair way to this court patronage, when his hopes were checked by the
death of the monarch. It is a circumstance, this court favor, worth
considering in the poet's life, as the antecedent to his manifold spirit
of piety. Nothing is more noticeable than the wide, liberal culture of the
old English poets; they were first, men, often skilled in affairs, with
ample experience in life, and then--poets.

Herbert's education was all that care and affection could devise. "He
spent," says his amiable biographer, Izaak Walton, "much of his childhood
in a sweet content under the eye and care of his prudent mother, and the
tuition of a chaplain or tutor to him and two of his brothers in her own
family." At Cambridge he became orator to the University, gained the
applause of the court by his Latin orations, and what is more, secured the
friendship of such men as Bishop Andrews, Dr. Donne, and the model
diplomatist of his age, Sir Henry Wotton. The completion of his studies
and the failure of court expectations were followed by a passage of rural
retirement--a first pause of the soul previous to the deeper conflicts of
life. His solitariness was increased by sickness, a period of meditation
and devotional feeling, assisted by the intimations of a keen spirit in a
feeble body--and out of the furnace came forth Herbert the priest and
saint. Al