Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Weckherlin, Georg Rudolph
WECKHERLIN, GEORG RUDOLPH (1584–1653), under-secretary of state in England, was born at Stuttgart on 15 Sept. 1584. He studied jurisprudence at the university of Tübingen, where he made many distinguished acquaintances, as attested by the inscriptions in his album, lately extant but now lost. He appears to have entered the diplomatic service shortly after leaving the university, and to have discharged numerous missions in Germany and France. He also, at some date between 1607 and 1614, spent three consecutive years in England, which he probably visited in the train of the Würtemberg ambassador, Von Büwinckhausen. In 1614 he was again at Würtemberg, where he became private secretary to the duke, and continued there until some period between 1620 and 1624. This residence at home, however, was interrupted by a visit to England in 1616, when, on 13 Sept., he married Elizabeth, daughter of Francis Raworth of Dover. After April 1624 his correspondence, preserved in the state paper office, shows him to be discharging the duty of an under-secretary of state, and to have been regularly employed until 1641 in drafting, deciphering, and translating official correspondence. He accompanied Charles I in his expedition against the Scots, but continually complains of the unremunerativeness of his post, and upon the breaking out of the civil war he took part with the parliament. In February 1644 he was made ‘secretary for foreign tongues’ to the joint committee of the two kingdoms, with an annual salary of 288l. 13s. 6½d., equivalent to nearly 1,000l. at the present day. This position he held until 13 March 1649, when, upon the constitution of the council of state, he was displaced by Milton. No mention is made of him in the resolution of the council appointing Milton, and the cause of his removal or resignation was probably ill-health, as his death was reported in Germany, and his countryman Mylius shortly afterwards found him suffering from gout. On 11 March 1652 he was, notwithstanding, appointed, at a salary of 200l. a year, assistant to Milton, who was fast losing his sight. He was succeeded by Thurloe on 1 Dec. of the same year, and died on 13 Feb. 1653. By his wife, who died between 1641 and 1647, he had two children—Rodolph, born in 1617, who obtained an estate in Kent and died in 1667; and Elizabeth, born in 1618, who married William Trumbull of Easthampstead, and became the mother of Sir William Trumbull [q. v.], the friend of Pope.
Weckherlin was a voluminous writer in verse, and rendered considerable service to the literature of his fatherland by contributing to introduce the sonnet, the sestine, and other exotic forms. He attested his versatility by writing with equal facility in German, French, and English. His principal English poems are the Triumphal Shows set forth lately at Stutgart,' 1616; and a 'Panegyricke to Lord Hay, Viscount of Doncaster,' 1619, one copy of which, recorded to have been sold at an auction in 1845, is at present missing. A large proportion of his vernacular poems, chiefly published in 1641 and 1648, are imitated from the French or the English of Samuel Daniel, Sir Henry Wotton, and other writers personally known to him in England, or are translated from the Psalms. A considerable number, however, of his lyrics and epigrams are original, and on the strength of these he is pronounced by his German editor and biographer, Fischer, the most important national poet of his period prior to Opitz. The same authority considers that he would have gained a yet higher reputation but for his besetting incorrectness—'he wrote too much as a gentleman and too little as a scholar.' As a public servant he seems to have been efficient, though he did not escape charges of 'malicious barbarousness.' His poems have been published in two volumes by Hermann Fischer, Stuttgart, 1894–5. His portrait, painted when he was fifty by Mytens, was engraved by Faithorne after his death.
[Hermann Fischer, in his edition of Weckherlin and in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. xli.; Rye's England as seen by Foreigners, pp. cxxiv–cxxxii; Masson's Life of Milton, vol. iv. bk. i. chap. ii. bk. ii. chap. viii.; Calendars of State Papers from 1629; Conz, Nachrichten von dem Leben und den Schriften R. Weckherlin's, 1803; Bohm's Englands Einfluss auf Weckherlin, 1893.]