Welsh Journals

The Original Manuscripts of Herbert of Cherbury's Autobiography. Professor R. I. AARON. The Autobiography of Edward, first Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 1582-1648, the brother of the poet George Herbert, is one of the earliest autobiographies in the English language. It is also one of the liveliest. It gives an account of the first half of the author's life up to 1624, but was written in his old age, between 1642 and 1648. There is some ground for fixing its date as 1642-3. It was not published, however, until Horace Walpole dis- covered it a century later. He published it with the consent of the Earl of Powis in 1764, printing it privately at his own press at Strawberry Hill. A letter which he wrote to George Montagu (July 16, 1764) reveals very clearly his opinion of the work:- I want to send you something from the Strawberry Press nothing less than the most curious book that ever yet set its foot in the world. It is the Life of the great philosopher-well, read it-not the first forty pages of which you will be sick. I will not anticipate it-but I will tell you the history. I found it a year ago at Lady Hertford's, to whom Lady Powis had lent it. I took it up, and soon threw it down again, as the dullest thing I ever saw. She persuaded me to take it home. My Lady Waldegrave was here in all her grief- Gray and I read it to amuse her-we could not get on for laughing and scream- ing. I begged to have it to print-Lord Powis, sensible of the extravagance, refused. I insisted-he persisted. I told my Lady Hertford, it was no matter, I would print it, I was determined. I sat down and wrote a flattering dedication to Lord Powis, which I knew he would swallow; he did, and gave up his ancestor. But this was not enough. I was resolved the world should not think I admired it seriously (though there are really fine passages in it, and good sense too)-I drew up an equivocal preface, in which you will discover my opinion, and sent it with the dedication. The Earl gulped down the one under the palliative of the other-and here you will have all." Since Walpole's time the Autobiography has been frequently published in various editions and is now one of the classics of English literature. Walpole is right in saying that it is entertaining but it is still more valuable to-day as a revelation of the period of transition and change in which Herbert lived. He is modern in his philosophical and scientific interests, and yet he is quite as truly the knight errant of the age of chivalry. To Montgomeryshire