Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Herbert, Algernon
HERBERT, ALGERNON (1792–1855), antiquary, sixth and youngest son of Henry Herbert, first earl of Carnarvon, who died in 1811, by Elizabeth Alicia Maria, elder daughter of Charles Wyndham, second earl of Egremont, was born on 12 July 1792, and entered at Eton in 1805. He went thence to Christ Church, and was matriculated on 23 Oct. 1810. He afterwards removed to Exeter College, and graduated B.A. in 1813 and M.A. in 1825. He was elected a fellow of Merton College in 1814; became sub-warden in 1826, and dean in 1828. On 27 Nov. 1818 he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple. Herbert was the author of some remarkable works replete with abstruse learning. They are, however, discursive, and his arguments are inconclusive. He died at Ickleton, Cambridgeshire, on 11 June 1855. He married, on 2 Aug. 1830, Marianne, sixth daughter of Thomas Lempriere of La Motte, Jersey; she died on 7 Aug. 1870.
His works were: 1. ‘Nimrod, a Discourse upon Certain Passages of History and Fable,’ 1826; reprinted and remodelled in 2 vols., 1828, with a third volume in the same year, and vol. iv. in 1829-30. 2. An article on ‘Werewolves,’ by A. Herbert, pp. 1-45, in ‘The Ancient English Romance of William and the Werwolf’ (ed. F. Madden, Roxburghe Club, 1832). 3. ‘Britannia after the Romans,’ 1836-41, 2 vols. 4. ‘Nennius, the Irish version of the Historia Britonum. Introduction and Notes by A. Herbert,’ 1848. 5. ‘Cyclops Christianus, or the supposed Antiquity of Stonehenge,’ 1849. 6. ‘On the Poems of the Poor of Lyons,’ and three other articles in the Appendix to J. H. Todd's ‘Books of the Vaudois’ (1865), pp. 93, 126, 135, 172.
[Gent. Mag. December 1855, pp. 649-50; Brit. Mus. Cat.]