Born in 1593, notwithstanding his exquisite art, he could not escape being influenced by the faulty tendencies of his age, borne in upon his youth by the example of his mother's friend, Dr. Donne. A man must be a giant like Shakspere or Milton to cast off his age's faults. Indeed no man has more of the "quips and cranks and wanton wiles" of the poetic spirit of his time than George Herbert, but with this difference from the rest of Dr. Donne's school, that such is the indwelling potency that it causes even these to shine with a radiance such that we wish them still to burn and not be consumed. His muse is seldom other than graceful, even when her motions are grotesque, and he is always a gentleman, which cannot be said of his master. We could not bear to part with his most fantastic oddities, they are so interpenetrated with his genius as well as his art. In relation to the use he makes of these faulty forms, and to show that even herein he has exercised a refraining judgment, though indeed fancying he has quite discarded in only somewhat reforming it, I recommend the study of two poems, each of which he calls _Jordan_, though why I have not yet with certainty discovered. It is possible that not many of his readers have observed the following instances of the freakish in his rhyming art, which however result well. When I say so, I would not be supposed to approve of the freak, but only to acknowledge the success of the poet in his immediate intent. They are related to a certain tendency to mechanical contrivance not seldom associated with a love of art: it is art operating in the physical understanding. In the poem called _Home_, every stanza is perfectly finished till the last: in it, with an access of art or artfulness, he destroys the rhyme. I shall not quarrel with my reader if he calls it the latter, and regards it as art run to seed. And yet--and yet--I confess I have a latent liking for the trick. I shall give one or two stanzas out of the rather long poem, to lead up to the change in the last. Come, Lord; my head doth burn, my heart is sick, While thou dost ever, ever stay; Thy long deferrings wound me to the quick; My spirit gaspeth night and day. O show thyself to me, Or take me up to thee. Nothing but drought and dearth, but bush and brake, Which way soe'er I look I see: Some may dream merrily, but when they wake They dress themselves and come to thee. O show thyself to me, Or take me up to thee. Come, dearest Lord, pass not this holy season, My flesh and bones and joints do pray; And even my verse, when by the rhyme and reason The word is _stay_,[100] says ever _come_. O show thyself to me, Or take me up to thee. Balancing this, my second instance is of the converse. In all the stanzas but the last, the last line in each hangs unrhymed: in the last the rhyming is fulfilled. The poem is called _Denial_. I give only a part of it.