Herbert quitted Oxford in his nineteenth year, yet inferior to
few that he left there, even among the most eminent, in classical
attainments, and with a mind naturally profound, practised in all the
arts of ratiocination. His general knowledge also was considerable,
and he was a proficient in those scientific pursuits which were then
rare. Notwithstanding his great fortune and position, his departure
from the university was not a signal with him for that abandonment to
the world, and that unbounded self-enjoyment naturally so tempting to
youth. On the contrary, Herbert shut himself up in his magnificent
castle, devoted to solitude and study. In his splendid library he
consulted the sages of antiquity, and conferred with them on the
nature of existence and of the social duties; while in his laboratory
or his dissecting-room he occasionally flattered himself he might
discover the great secret which had perplexed generations. The
consequence of a year passed in this severe discipline was
unfortunately a complete recurrence to those opinions that he had
early imbibed, and which now seemed fixed in his conviction beyond the
hope or chance of again faltering. In politics a violent republican,
and an advocate, certainly a disinterested one, of a complete equality
of property and conditions, utterly objecting to the very foundation
of our moral system, and especially a strenuous antagonist of
marriage, which he taught himself to esteem not only as an unnatural
tie, but as eminently unjust towards that softer sex, who had been
so long the victims of man; discarding as a mockery the received
revelation of the divine will; and, if no longer an atheist,
substituting merely for such an outrageous dogma a subtle and shadowy
Platonism; doctrines, however, which Herbert at least had acquired by
a profound study of the works of their great founder; the pupil of
Doctor Masham at length deemed himself qualified to enter that world
which he was resolved to regenerate; prepared for persecution, and
steeled even to martyrdom.
Pages:
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312