Herbert of Cherbury. Born in 1583, the brother of George Herbert, the poet, Lord Herbert of Cherbury is best remembered for his curious and amusing autobiography (edited and published by Horace Walpole in 1764). Wealthy, beautiful, and, by his own account a desperate swordsman, Herbert was deaf in childhood, spoke late, and then asked his nurse how he had come into this world; for an answer to this problem "I could not imagine," and no wonder. He pursued his reflections on the theme of birth and death in Latin verse' and in prose. His soul, he averred, had developed faculties "almost useless for this life," hope, faith, love, and joy. They must therefore be destined to higher employment upon subjects not transitory, "the perfect, eternal, and infinite". But he was not orthodox, his "De Veritate," and "Religio Laici," both in Latin, are deemed heretical. He was privately educated till he went to University College, Oxford, where he preferred Greek to Latin composition. While he was a very young undergraduate his father died, and he was married. He was all accomplished; astrology and medicine, many languages and music were mastered by him, with fencing, of course: he dilates on the fencer's need of good feet and eyes, on the "lunge," and on equestrian duels. Having provided himself with a family, Herbert went abroad, distinguished himself at the siege of Juliers under the Prince of Orange, snubbed de Balagny, a great French duellist, behaved like a paladin, and writes of himself like a Bobadil. His triumphs with the sex are equally celebrated, and a husband who deemed himself to be, but was not "injured," lurked, to murder Herbert, in Scotland Yard, not now a favourite ambush for criminals. In the fight that followed of one man against five, Herbert, with a broken sword, fought in a manner to be described only by himself or Alexandre Dumas. If he fought like _le brave Bussy_, he was also favoured by a miracle like Colonel Gardiner, a miracle sanctioning the publication of his book, "De Veritate" (1624). In 1629 he became a peer of England: in later politics he deserted the cause of Charles I: finding himself at 60 (1643) extremely debilitated, and quite disinclined to draw his sword. He died in 1648: his "History of Henry VIII," much praised by Horace Walpole, was published in the following year. His verses, in which he uses the metre of "In Memoriam," were never so popular as his brother George's, but his autobiography is highly diverting in its exhibition of character. Browne.