Shortly after this the king visited Cambridge in state, and was received on behalf of the University by Herbert, in a most elegant oration in Latin, stuffed full, as the manner of the time then was, of most fulsome adulation. In his progress he was attended by the great Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, and by the learned Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Winchester; and Herbert, by his learning and suavity, soon captivated these distinguished men. Bacon seems afterward to have put such value upon his judgment, that he usually desired his approbation before he would expose any of his books to be printed, and thought him so worthy of his friendship, that having translated many of the Prophet David’s Psalms into English verse, he made George Herbert his Patron, by a public dedication of them to him as the “best judge of divine poetry.” In 1620, the king gave Herbert a sinecure, formerly conferred upon Sir Philip Sydney by Queen Elizabeth, worth some twelve hundred pounds per annum. His ambitious views of further court preferment seem never to have been realized. The character of his mind, perhaps, did not fit him for the responsible duties of a statesman, or he might have been deficient in those arts of the courtier, so necessary, and such ready aid to court preferment. It may be that he had too independent a spirit, and could not “crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, that thrift might follow fawning.” But be this as it may, we think, in the sentiment contained in some verses written by our poet about the period of his leaving the court and entering holy orders, we have a readier solution for the sudden relinquishment of his hopes of court preferment. These verses were written upon the famous saying of Cardinal Wolsey, uttered by that proud churchman when his spirit was crushed, and the fruits of his ambition had turned to ashes on his lips. “Oh, that I had served my God with half the zeal with which I have served my king, he would not thus, in my old age, have placed me in the power of mine enemies.” No doubt the wholesome reflections inspired by the contemplation of those touching words, awakened the sensitive mind of our poet to a full appreciation of the vanity of all earthly ambition. He discovered in time, that pleasures springing from honor and grandeur of condition, are soon faded; that the mind nauseates, and soon begins to feel their emptiness. In the words of one of England’s most gifted divines, “Those who are so fond of public honor while they pursue it, how little do they taste it when they have it? Like lightning it only flashes on the face, and it is well if it do not hurt the man.”