The sermons were reprinted even in the dark days of the suppression of the Church, and the Conference, republished four times in the seventeenth century, became the authoritative statement of the position of Anglicanism in opposition to the Roman claims. . . For the oblivion into which Laud's pulpit discourses have fallen many reasons might be assigned. They are probably not even typical of his style. He was a constant, and, from the demand, apparently an admired preacher. He preached as willingly and as often in little country churches as in London or at Court. But he seems to have intentionally avoided all ostentation and as far as possible all record of his pulpit ministry. Not until comparatively late in his career did he notice in his Diary even his most important discourses; and he never suffered any of his sermons to be printed except by direct royal command. In his

will he left the publication entirely in the hands of his executors.-HUTTON, WILLIAM HOLDEN, 1895, William Laud, p. 138.

The "Conference with Fisher" is marked throughout by a reasonableness and masculine good sense which might not be expected by those who know Laud only. through the partisan pages of certain popular historians. Laud was learned, but he was no mere "bookman," to use a word of his own; and in this controversy he does not suffer from being a man of the world, accustomed to observe, to consider, and to judge the facts of life and history. But, it seems to me, the chief interest that now attaches to the "Conference," is the light that it throws on the general attitude of mind, and particular beliefs, of the most prominent high-churchman of his day. DoWDEN, JOHN, 1897, Outlines of the History of the Theological Literature of The Church of England, p. 115.

PERSONAL

He received the honour of Knighthood from K. Jam. I. at Theobalds; at which time this our Author (who lived at Highgate near London) was esteem'd a most compleat and learned Person: the benefit of which he reaped in his old Age, when his considerable Estate, was, thro' suretiship, very much impaired. In 1620 he was High Sheriff of Oxfordshire, being then Lord of Middle Aston, and of other Lands therein, and, if I mistake not, a Justice of the Peace. He was a Person tall and comely, of a good disposition and admirable discourse, religious, and well read in various Faculties, especially in Div. and Hist. as it may appear by these Books following, which he mostly composed when he was forced to fly for shelter to his Studies and Devotions.-WOOD, ANTHONY, 1691-1721, Athena Oxonienses, vol. II, f. 72.

GENERAL

"Chronicle of the Kings of England from the time of the Roman Government,

unto the death of K. Jam." &c. Lond. 1641. &c. fol. Which Chronicle, as the Author saith, was collected with so great care and diligence, that if all other of our Chronicles were lost, this only would be sufficient to inform posterity of all passages memorable or worthy to be known, &c. However the Reader must know, that it being reduced to method, and not according to time, purposely to please Gentlemen and Novices, many chief things. to be observed therein, as name, time, &c. are egregiously false, and consequently breed a great deal of confusion in the Peruser, especially if he be curious or critical.-WOOD, ANTHONY, 1691 1721, Athena Oxonienses, vol. II, f. 72.

My friend Sir Roger de Coverley told me t'other night, that he had been reading my paper upon Westminster-abbey, in which, says he, there are a great many ingenious fancies. He told me at the same time, that he observed I had promised another paper upon the tombs, and that he should be glad to go and see them with

me, not having visited them since he had read history. I could not imagine how this came into the knight's head, till I recollected that he had been very busy all last summer upon Baker's "Chronicle," which he has quoted several times in his disputes with Sir Andrew Freeport since his last coming to town. Accordingly I promised to call upon him the next morning, that we might go together to the abbey. The glorious names of Henry the Fifth and queen Elizabeth gave the knight great opportunities of shining, and of doing justice to Sir Richard Baker, who, as our knight observed with some surprise, had a great many kings in him, whose monuments he had not seen in the abbey.-ADDISON, JOSEPH, 1711-12, The Spectator, No. 329.

He wrote "Meditations and Disquisitions on the Lord's Prayer," and on several of the Psalms, "Apology for a Layman's writing Divinity," and a poem called "Cato's Moral Distiches." His chief work, however, and the only one by which he is at all known, is "Chronicle of the Kings of England." . . . About the only history that Englishmen had until the publication of Rapin. The critics denounced it as unscholarly and inaccurate. But it was written in a pleasant, entertaining style, and it continued for a long time to be published and read, holding its place in the old-fashioned chimney-corners, on the same shelf with the Family Bible and Fox's Book of Martyrs.--HART, JOHN S., 1872, A Manual of English Literature, p. 106.

Baker's name, though not his fame, has been kept alive by his connection with Sir Roger de Coverley in the "Spectator:" Addison, ridiculing the simple ignorance. of the Tory squires in the person of Sir Roger, makes him quote Sir Richard Baker as a great authority. Poor Sir Richard is visited quite as bitterly as his rustic admirer: The glorious names of Henry the Fifth and Queen Elizabeth gave the Knight great opportunities of shining, and doing justice to Sir Richard Baker, who, as our Knight observed with some surprise, had a great many kings in him whose monuments he had not seen in the Abbey." Baker's popularity with country gentlemen was probably due to his style, which is praised by such an authority as Sir Henry Wotton "full of sweet raptures and researching conceits, nothing borrowed, nothing vulgar, and yet all glowing with a certain equal facility."-MINTO, WILLIAM, 1872-80, Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 256.

Its reputation with the learned never stood very high. Thomas Blount published at Oxford in 1672 “Animadversions upon S' Richard Baker's 'Chronicle,' and its continuation," where eighty-two errors are noticed, but many of these are mere typographical mistakes. The serious errors imputed to the volume are enough, however, to prove that Baker was little of an historical scholar, and depended on very suspicious authorities.-LEE, SIDNEY, 1885, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. III, p. 16.

GENERAL

A writer in the Reign of Charles the First, who we may reckon amongst Poets of the Third-rate; and One who was pretty much respected by the Poets of those Times; Mr. Richard Brome, and Mr. Robert

Chamberlain, (before mention'd) having publickly profest themselves his Friends; and Sir John Suckling being his Patron.LANGBAINE, GERARD, 1691, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, p. 379.

A Writer in the reign of Charles I,

to go. As a public minister, he supported the dignity of his country, even when its prince disgraced it; and that he was qualified to write its annals as well as to ennoble them, the history I have mentioned proves, and must make us lament that he did not complete, or that we have lost, the account he purposed to give of his embassy. These busy scenes were blended with, and terminated by, meditation and philosophic inquiries. Strip each period of its excesses and errors, and it will not be easy to trace out, or dispose the life of a man of quality into a succession of employments which would better become him. Valour and military activity in youth; business of state in the middle age; contemplation and labours for the information of posterity in the calmer scenes of closing life: this was Lord Herbert. WALPOLE, HORACE, 1764, ed., Autobiography of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Advertisement.

Lord Herbert stands in the first rank of the public ministers, historians, and philosophers of his age. It is hard to say whether his person, his understanding, or his courage, was the most extraordinary; as the fair, the learned, and the brave, held him in equal admiration. But the same man was wise and capricious; redressed wrongs and quarrelled for punctilios; hated bigotry in religion, and was himself a bigot to philosophy. He exposed himself to such dangers, as other men of courage would have carefully declined; and called in question the fundamentals of religion which none had the hardiness to dispute beside himself.GRANGER, JAMES, 1769-1824, Biographical History of England, vol. II, p. 319.

The life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written by himself, is one of the most curious works of the kind that has ever issued from the press. Who can read without delight a narrative, and such a narrative too, of the private foibles and most secret thoughts of the soldier, the statesman, the wit, and the philosopher. That he was truth itself is undoubted; and if his vanity sometimes occasions a smile, we must bear in mind the peculiar features of the period in which he lived. We must remember that chivalry was not then extinct, and that the smiles of beauty and the honours of battle were considered as indispensable in conferring not only

reputation, but respect. Gifted by nature with wit, beauty, and talent, and possessing courage almost amounting to a fault, can we wonder, that in a martial and romantic age Lord Herbert should have engaged the hearts of women, almost as universally as he won for himself the respect of men. spect of men. If he speaks somewhat ostentatiously of his own merits, at least with equal candour he lays open to us his faults. JESSE, JOHN HENEAGE, 1839-57, Memoirs of the Court of England during the Reign of the Stuarts, Including the Protectorate, vol. I, p. 299.

Lord Edward Herbert was one of the handsomest men of his day, of a beauty alike stately, chivalric and intellectual. His person and features were cultivated by all the disciplines of a time when courtly graces were not insignificant, because a monarch mind informed the court, nor warlike customs, rude or mechanical, for individual nature had free play in the field, except as restrained by the laws of courtesy and honor. The steel glove became his hand, and the spur his heel; neither can we fancy him out of his place, for any place he would have made his own. But all this grace and dignity of the man of the world was in him subordinated to that of the man, for in his eye, and in the brooding sense of all his countenance, was felt the life of one who, while he deemed that his present honour lay in playing well the part assigned him by destiny, never forgot that it was but a part, and fed steadily his forces on that within that passes show.OSSOLI, MARGARET FULLER, 1846, Papers on Literature and Art.

Still less heroic, and much less great, was Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who, however, had more literary power than Selden, and was even more double-faced.SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1895, Social England, ed. Traill, vol. IV, p. 98.

KING HENRY VIII.

1649

Above all, Edward, Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, may be truly said to have written the life and reign of King Henry the Eight; having acquitted himself with the like reputation as the Lord-Chancellor Bacon gained by that of Henry the Seventh. For, in the politic and martial part of this honourable author has been

admirably particular and exact, from the best records that were extant; though, as to the ecclesiastical, he seems to have looked upon it as a thing out of his province, and an undertaking more proper for men of another profession.--NICOLSON, WILLIAM, 1696-1714, English Historical Library.

His reign of Henry VIII. is allowed to be a masterpiece of historic biography. WALPOLE, HORACE, 1764, ed., Autobiography of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Advertisement.

Has been ever esteemed one of the best histories in the English language: but there is not in it that perfect candour which one would wish, or expect to see, in so celebrated an historian.—GRANGER, JAMES, 1769-1824, Biographical History of England, vol. III, p. 145.

A book of good authority, relatively at least to any that preceded, and written in a manly and judicious spirit.-HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. iii, ch. ix, par. 36.

Undoubtedly the best work of its kind before the Restoration: the English is a model of purity, and perhaps the very best prose, in the sense of being most comprehensible to modern ears, before Dryden's; the periods are well constructed, though not quite so abundant in antithesis as those of Bacon.-FLETCHER, C. R. L., 1881, The Development of English Prose Siyle, p. 11.

The "History" was intended to challenge comparison with Bacon's "Henry VII.," but all the labour of its author failed to secure for it anything like the spring and liveliness of Bacon's narrative. -KER, W. P., 1893, English Prose, ed. Craik, vol. II, p. 175.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Being written when Lord Herbert was past sixty, the work was probably never completed. The spelling is in general given as in the MS. but some obvious mistakes it was necessary to correct, and a few notes have been added, to point out the most remarkable persons mentioned in the text. The style is remarkably good for that age, which coming between the nervous and expressive manliness of the preceding century, and the purity of the present standard, partook of neither. His lordship's observations are new and acute,

some very shrewd; his discourse on the Reformation very wise. . . . Nothing is more marked than the air of veracity or persuasion which runs through the whole narrative. If he makes us wonder, and wonder makes us doubt, the charm of his ingenuous integrity dispels our hesitation. The whole relation throws singular light on the manners of the age, though the gleams are transient.-WALPOLE, HORACE, 1764, ed., Autobiography of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Advertisement.

In many passages the autobiography of Lord Herbert is of a style so charming, and of a manner and matter so singularly characteristic of his order, age, and nation, that one might easily believe it written by some skilful student of the period, with a tacit modern consciousness of the wonderful artistic success of the study. As you read, you cannot help thinking now and then that Thackeray himself could not have done it better, if he had been minded to portray a gentleman of the first James's time. Yet this picture, so frank, so boldly colored, so full of the very life of a young English noble, is one of the most remarkable instances of self-portraiture in any language, in the absence of that consciousness which the momentarily bewildered sense attributes to it; its great value to the reader of our day is, that the author sits to himself as unconstrainedly as if posterity should never come to look over his shoulder, and all his attitudes and expressions are those of natural ease. A rare sincerity marks. the whole memoir, and gives it the grace of an antique simplicity.-HOWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN, 1877, ed., Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, p. 1.

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