Quid vaticanam Bodleianamque objicis hospes! Unicus est nobis Bibliotheca Liber.
The excellence of its Latinity, and the complimentary allusions plentifully sprinkled through it, so pleased the vanity of the king, that he inquired of the Earl of Pembroke if he knew the learned scholar who penned the epistle. His answer was, “That he knew him very well, and that he was his kinsman; but that he loved him more for his learning and virtue, than that he was of his name and family.” At which answer the king smiled, and asked the earl leave that he might love him too, for he took him to be the jewel of that University.
The complimentary remark of the king, coming to the ears of Herbert, no doubt first turned his thoughts toward court preferment; for about this time we find him applying himself to the study of the Italian, French, and Spanish languages, in which he is said to have attained great proficiency; and by means of the attainment of which, to use his own language, “he hoped to secure the place of Secretary of State, as his predecessor, Sir Francis Nethersole had done.” This, and the love of court conversation, with the laudable ambition to be something more than he then was, drew him often from Cambridge to attend his majesty, King James.
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.