Author: Herbert, William
Biography:
HERBERT, William (1778-1847: ODNB)
The third son and fifth child of Henry Herbert, first Earl of Carnarvon (1741-1811) and his wife Elizabeth Alicia Maria Wyndham (1752-1826), he was born at Highclere Castle in Hampshire on 12 Jan. 1778. He was a brother of Charles Herbert and an uncle of Henry John George Herbert (qq.v.). From Eton, where he edited a volume of Musae Etonenses (1795), he went to Oxford (matric. Christ Church 1795, BA Exeter 1798, MA Merton 1802, BCL and DCL 1808, BD 1840). He was for a short time an MP; he was also called to the bar in London. In 1814, however, he took orders and embarked on a career in the Church, serving as Rector of Spofford, Yorkshire (1814-40) and then as Dean of Manchester (1840-47). An outstanding classical scholar and linguist, he devoted much of his time throughout his life to literary endeavours. He also wrote reviews and articles anonymously for ER and made important contributions in natural history, especially botany. His first book was a volume of poems in Greek and Latin (1801). Besides the original narrative poetry in English listed here, he was respected as a translator from Icelandic, German, Danish, and Portuguese. Helga (1815), the best known of his works, had the benefit of a long though not entirely positive review in ER. His most ambitious epic poem was Attila, or, the Triumph of Christianity (1838); his final collection of poems, The Christian, appeared in 1846. In 1842 he was able to supervise a three-volume edition of all his writings apart from the work on natural history. In 1806 he married Letitia Emily Dorothea Allen (1784/5-1878), a plantation heiress and the daughter of a viscount; they had four children. Herbert died at their London home on 28 May 1847. (ODNB 12 May 2022; ER 25 [June 1815], 146-68; W. F. Kirby, “William Herbert and his Scandinavian Poetry,” Saga-Book 7 [1911-12], 206-19)