life ingloriously,
and indeed discreditably, during the troubles of the civil war, on the 20th
of August 1648. His earlier career is elaborately if not exactly truthfully
recorded in his _Autobiography_, and its details have been carefully
supplemented by his latest editor, Mr. Lee. His literary activity was
various and considerable. His greatest work--a treatise which has been
rashly called the foundation of English deism, but which rather expresses
the vague and not wholly unorthodox doubt expressed earlier by Montaigne,
and by contemporaries of Herbert's own, such as La Mothe le Vayer--was
written in Latin, and has never been translated into English. He was an
English verse writer of some merit, though inferior to his brother. His
ambitious and academic _History of Henry VIII._ is a regular and not
unsuccessful effort in English prose, prompted no doubt by the
thoroughgoing courtiership which ranks with his vanity and want of
stability on the most unfavourable aspect of Herbert's character. But
posterity has agreed to take him as an English writer chiefly on the
strength of the Autobiography, which remained in manuscript for a century
and more, and was published by Horace Walpole, rather against the will of
Lord Powis, its possessor and its author's representative. It is difficult
to say that Lord Powis was wrong, especially considering that Herbert never
published these memoirs, and seems to have written them as much as anything
else for his own private satisfaction. It may be doubted whether there is
any more astounding monument of coxcombry in literature. Herbert is
sometimes cited as a model of a modern knight-errant, of an Amadis born too
late. Certainly, according to his own account, all women loved and all men
feared him; but for the former fact we have nothing but his own authority,
and in regard to the latter we have counter evidence which renders it
exceedingly doubtful. He was, according to his own account, a desperate
duellist. But even by this account his duels had a curious habit of being
interrupted, in the immortal phrase of Mr. Winkle, by "several police
constables;" while in regard to actual war the exploits of his youth seem
not to have been great, and those of his age were wholly discreditable,
inasmuch as being by profession an ardent Royalist, he took the first
opportunity to make, without striking a blow, a profitable composition with
the Parliament. Nevertheless, despite the drawbacks of subject