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1em  HERBERT,, (–1648). Edward Herbert, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, soldier, diplomatist, historian, and religious philosopher, was born at Eyton in Shropshire in, and was descended from an ancient line of illustrious soldiers, to which the earls of Pembroke belonged. Sent to Oxford in his twelfth year, he married an heiress, his kinswoman, in his fifteenth, and returned to the university to prosecute his “beloved studies.” He was knighted soon after the accession of James I, and for a year or two fulfilled the functions of sheriff of his county. In 1608 he went abroad, at Paris gaining the esteem and love of the old Constable de Montmorency, and beginning an acquaintance with scholars like Casaubon, Gassendi, and Grotius. Next year he served as a volunteer in the Low Countries under the prince of Orange, whose intimate friend he became, and also took part in the cam- paigns of 1614 and 1615. Between the latter campaigns he visited Italy, and on his return was arrested in France for recruiting Huguenots for the service of the duke of Savoy. In 1618 he was sent as ambassador extraordinary to the court of France; and, though recalled fur a few months through the hostility of the French king’s favourite, he soon returnel to Paris as ordinary ambassador. In 1625 he cams back to England, where, with the exception of one or more short visits to Paris, he spent the rest of his life. Created Lord Herbert of Castle Island in 1625, he was raised by Charles I. to the English peerage in 1631 as Baron Herbert of Cherbury. In the civil war he sided at first with the court, and subsequently declared for the par- liament, but the part he played was not a prominent one. His castle of Montgomery was, however, destroyed during the war, and he received an indemnity for his loss from the parliament. He died 20th August 1648. “Tt is impossible to draw his picture well who hath several countenances,” Herbert says of Henry VIII; Horace Walpole made a bold attempt to sketch Herbert’s character by declaring that in his case “the history of Don Quixote was the hfe of Plato.” To his contemporaries Herbert was mainly known as a high-spirited man of the world, of great knightly and courtier-like accomplishments, who, though stiff and stately, was on the smallest actual provocation ready and able to defend his honour with his sword. He maintained the character of ambassador with dignity, but his diplomacy was not attended by much success. Itisas author that Herbert is chiefly remembered. And though in 1633 the De Veritate received the official imprimatur of the bishop of London’s chaplain, on the strength of the same work the writer was soon after held up to abhorrence as an atheist. As a resolute opponent of empiricism in philosophy, he is unquestionably entitled to rank as one of the heralds of the philosophy of Reid ané the Scottish metaphysicians. In the thevlugical sphere he is justly claimed as the father of English deism, and doubt- less exercised a strong influence on the religious thought of England. His views were not so novelas he thought them to be, but he was an original and very independent thinker; and, as his chief work was published Lut a few years after the Vouum Oryanum, aud many years before any of the works of Descartes or Hobbes, Herbert deserves a marked place in the van of modern speculation.

