This witty and good-natured bishop was born in 1582. He was the son of
a gardener, who, however, had the honour to be known to and sung by Ben
Jonson. He was educated at Westminster and Oxford; and having received
orders, was made successively Bishop of Oxford and of Norwich. He was
a most facetious and rather too convivial person; and a collection of
anecdotes about him might be made, little inferior, in point of wit and
coarseness, to that famous one, once so popular in Scotland, relating to
the sayings and doings of George Buchanan. He is said, on one occasion,
to have aided an unfortunate ballad-singer in his professional duty by
arraying himself in his leathern jacket and vending the stock, being
possessed of a fine presence and a clear, full, ringing voice.
Occasionally doffing his clerical costume he adjourned with his chaplain,
Dr Lushington, to the wine-cellar, where care and ceremony were both
speedily drowned, the one of the pair exclaiming, 'Here's to thee,
Lushington,' and the other, 'Here's to thee, Corbet.' Men winked at
these irregularities, probably on the principle mentioned by Scott, in
reference to Prior Aymer, in 'Ivanhoe,'--'If Prior Aymer rode hard in
the chase, or remained late at the banquet, men only shrugged up their
shoulders by recollecting that the same irregularities were practised by
many of his brethren, who had no redeeming qualities whatsoever to atone
for them.' Corbet, on the other hand, was a kind as well as a convivial
--a warm-hearted as well as an eccentric man. He was tolerant to the
Puritans and sectaries; his attention to his duties was respectable; his
talents were of a high order, and he had in him a vein of genius of no
ordinary kind. He died in 1635, but his poems were not published till
1647. They are of various merit, and treat of various subjects. In his
'Journey to France,' you see the humorist, who, on one occasion, when the
country people were flocking to be confirmed, cried, 'Bear off there, or
I'll confirm ye with my staff.' In his lines to his son Vincent, we see,
notwithstanding all his foibles, the good man; and in his 'Farewell to
the Fairies' the fine and fanciful poet.