in which he had been checked by
a blunder, from the consequences of which he little expected that
he should so speedily and strangely emancipate himself. It was in a
beautiful villa on the lake of Geneva that he finally established
himself, and there for many years he employed himself in the
publication of a series of works which, whether they were poetry or
prose, imaginative or investigative, all tended to the same consistent
purpose, namely, the fearless and unqualified promulgation of those
opinions, on the adoption of which he sincerely believed the happiness
of mankind depended; and the opposite principles to which, in his own
case, had been productive of so much mortification and misery.
His works, which were published in England, were little read, and
universally decried. The critics were always hard at work, proving
that he was no poet, and demonstrating in the most logical manner
that he was quite incapable of reasoning on the commonest topic. In
addition to all this, his ignorance was self-evident; and though he
was very fond of quoting Greek, they doubted whether he was capable of
reading the original authors. The general impression of the English
public, after the lapse of some years, was, that Herbert was an
abandoned being, of profligate habits, opposed to all the institutions
of society that kept his infamy in check, and an avowed atheist; and
as scarcely any one but a sympathetic spirit ever read a line he
wrote, for indeed the very sight of his works was pollution, it is not
very wonderful that this opinion was so generally prevalent. A calm
inquirer might, perhaps, have suspected that abandoned profligacy is
not very compatible with severe study, and that an author is seldom
loose in his life, even if he be licentious in his writings. A calm
inquirer might, perhaps, have been of opinion that a solitary sage
may be the antagonist of a priesthood without absolutely denying the
existence of a God; but there never are calm inquirers. The world, on
every subject, however unequally, is divided into parties; and even in
the case of Herbert and his writings, those who admired his genius,
and the generosity of his soul, were not content without advocating,
principally out of pique to his adversaries, his extreme opinions on
every subject, moral, political, and religious.

Besides, it must be confessed, there was another circumstance which
was almost as fatal to Herbert's character in England as his loose and