.- X?!' 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR3513.M82 
 
 Robert Herrick; a biographical and critic 
 
 3 1924 013 185 891 
 
M\\\ Cornell University 
 WE Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013185891 
 
ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL 
 AND CRITICAL STUDV 
 
ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL 
 AND CRITICAL STUDY 
 
 BY 
 
 F. W. MOORMAN, B.A., PH.D. 
 
 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS 
 
 THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, Ltd. 
 
 LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK 
 
First published igio 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT 
 THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS 
 
TO 
 
 MY WIFE 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The charm of Herrick's personality, quite apart from 
 his high standing as a lyric poet, calls for a biography. 
 Thirty-four years have passed since there appeared, 
 almost simultaneously, Mr Edmund Gosse's brilliant 
 essay on the poet in the Cornhill Magazine, and Dr 
 Grosart's edition of the Hesperides, with its scholarly 
 Memorial-Introduction. The many editions of Herrick's 
 poems which have since been published furnish abundant 
 evidence of the fact that the poet's faith in the immor- 
 tality of his verses was no idle dream. Some of his 
 editors — ^in particular, Mr W. C. Hazlitt and Mr A. W. 
 Pollard — ^have thrown fresh hght upon his career and hi? 
 scholarship, and I gladly avail myself of this opportunity 
 of acknowledging the help which I have received from 
 their labours. An examination of State Papers in the 
 Record Office, and of the letters and accoimt-books of the 
 poet's uncle. Sir William Herrick, at Beaumanor, has not 
 been altogether fruitless, but the story which is told 
 in the following pages owes most of all to the record — 
 often, it is true, tangled and inconclusive — which is set 
 forth by Herrick himself in his verses. He is the most 
 ingenuous and self-revealing of poets ; and though the 
 order in which the poems are placed in the first edition 
 of Hesperides is anything but chronological, it is not 
 difficult to trace him in his progress through life, and to 
 see the working of his mind. 
 
 I have followed Dr Grosart in detaching the story of 
 the poet's life from the criticism of his verses. The place 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 which the Hesperides poems occupy in the history of the 
 English IjTric is a peculiarly interesting one, and this 
 must be my excuse for the length of the first chapter in 
 Part II., in which I have attempted to review briefly 
 the development of the lyric of the English Renaissance 
 down to the time of Herrick. 
 
 In conclusion, I desire to offer sincere thanks to all who 
 have helped me in my work. Among these I may men- 
 tion, in particular, Mrs Perry Herrick, who kindly allowed 
 me to examine the Herrick papers at Beaumanor, the 
 Rev. C. J. Perry-Keene, vicar of Dean Prior, and Sir 
 Walter S. Prideaux, the clerk of the Goldsmiths' Company, 
 who generously undertook to examine, on my behalf, some 
 of the company's records at Goldsmiths' Hall. My thanks 
 are also due to the Rev. Canon Egerton Leigh, who allowed 
 me to copy a hitherto unpublished letter of the poet which 
 is in his possession. Finally, I acknowledge with special 
 gratitude my debt to Mr A. H. Bullen, and to my friend 
 and colleague. Professor Charles Vaughan, both of whom 
 rendered me conspicuous service by reading the following 
 pages in manuscript : the book has gained much by their 
 searching criticism and wise suggestions. 
 
 F. W. MOORMAN. 
 
 The University of Leeds, 
 February 1910. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I— THE LIFE 
 
 I. Early Years - 13 
 
 II. At Cambridge 30 
 
 III. " Sealed of the Tribe of Ben " . . . 49 
 
 IV. Dean Prior -75 
 
 V. Last Years ........ 105 
 
 PART II— THE WORKS 
 
 I. The Lyric of the English Renaissance . 119 
 
 II. The Lyrical Poems of the " Hesperides " 153 
 
 III. The Non-Lyrical Poems of the " Hes- 
 
 perides" 198 
 
 IV. The "Noble Numbers" 223 
 
 Appendix I. Herrick's Indenture of Appren- 
 ticeship 249 
 
 Appendix II. The Dirge of Eric Blood-axe . 251 
 
 (2.489) u. ia 
 
PART I 
 THE LIFE 
 
ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 EARLY YEARS 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, writing of Swift's mother in his 
 memoir of the Dean of St Patrick's, declares that her 
 " ancient genealogy was her principal dowry." The 
 lady in question was Abigail Ericke, descended from one 
 of the branches of the Leicestershire family of Erickes, 
 He5nicks or Herricks, to which also belonged the author 
 of the Hesperides. The family tradition of the Herricks 
 is that they owe their origin to a certain Eric the Forester, 
 who raised an army to oppose Wilham the Conqueror, 
 and who, being defeated, was employed as a commander 
 in the Conqueror's army. In his old age this Eric is said 
 to have retired to his home in Leicestershire — the county 
 with which the Herricks have ever since been closely 
 associated.^ 
 
 This tradition, unlike many such family traditions, 
 does not seem to err through ambition. The probabihty 
 is, indeed, that the Herricks are of royal descent. The 
 name Herrick, the spelling of which with the initial 
 aspirate was not common until late in the sixteenth 
 century, and, as we see from the name of Swift's mother, 
 was not even then adopted by all the branches of the 
 
 i See Deane Swift, Essa^ on the Life of Dr. Jonathan Swift, Appendix, 
 p. 37, and Nichols' History of the County of Leicester, vol. il. p. 579. 
 167 13 
 
14 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 family, is undoubtedly Scandinavian in origin. Under 
 the forms Eirikr and Eirekr it appears as the name tof at 
 least one Swedish and one Danish king, and it is found 
 in EngUsh history as early as the middle of the tenth 
 century. The first English Eric of whom historic legend 
 teUs was the famous Viking, Eric Blood-axe — Eirekr 
 Blodax — of whom Norse saga and English chronicle 
 have much to relate. He was the son of the Norwegian 
 king, Harold Fairhair, and was bom in Norway early 
 in the tenth century. Driven from his home by his kins- 
 folk, he settled among the Anglian and Danish peoples 
 of Northumbria, who, in the year 952, at a time of revolu- 
 tion, made him their king. For two years he reigned 
 at York, and then was driven from his throne, and after- 
 wards slain by Anlaf , cm under-king of Eadred of Wessex. 
 This Eric Blood-axe, by virtue of his deeds of daring and 
 his adventurous career, appealed to the imagination of 
 the gleeinen, and in his honour was written the famous 
 Eiriks-Mal or Dirge of Eric, the earliest of all Scandi- 
 navian VaUialla-songs.^ There was, too, another Eric — 
 Eric Hakonsson — ^who occupies a distinguished place in 
 Dano-English history, and is celebrated in song no less 
 than Eric Blood-axe. This was the Eric who married 
 the daughter of King Sveinn, and joined with that king 
 in the Danish conquest of Wessex. He Uved into the 
 reign of Cnut, by whom he was made Earl of Northumber- 
 land, and as " Dux Ericus " his name is found in old 
 EngUsh charters down to the year 1023. ^ 
 
 Under the stem rule of Willam the Conqueror the 
 Erics, as the family tradition already referred to relates, 
 found it prudent to retire to their Leicestershire estates, 
 within the old Danelaw, where we find them leading a 
 peaceful, law-abiding existence in the centuries which 
 follow. There is still extant a letter sent by Henry III. 
 to a certain Ivo de Herric, and more than a century 
 later we hear of another Ivo de Herric, or Eyrick, who was 
 living at Great Stretton in Leicestershire. The first of 
 1 See Appendix II. ^ gee Corpus Boreale, ii. 98. 
 
EARLY YEARS 15 
 
 these two Ivos may be the Eyrick of Stretton, temp. 
 Henry III., to whom the Herrick pedigrees refer,\and 
 from whom was descended Sir William Eyrick, the 
 progenitor of the Houghton branch of the family, to 
 which the author of the Hesperides belonged. Another 
 member of the famUy was Robert Eyrick, who was the 
 first Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and died Bishop 
 of Lichfield in 1385. 
 
 At Houghton, a village six miles from Leicester, the 
 descendants of Sir WUliam Eyrick increased in number 
 tiU the ancestral home was unable to contain them all ; 
 and one of the family, Thomas Ericke, gentleman, accord- 
 ingly migrated to the neighbouring town of Leicester, 
 about the end of the fifteenth century. His name 
 appears on the Corporation Books of Leicester in 1511, 
 and he was the first of the line of Herricks to be inti- 
 mately connected with the civic life of the county-town. 
 This Thomas Ericke was the great-grandfather of the 
 poet. His son John, who married Mary Bond, the 
 daughter of a Warwickshire gentleman, remained at 
 Leicester, of which town he was twice the Mayor, and 
 brought up a family of five sons and seven daughters. 
 And now once again the growth of the family called for 
 a fresh migration. Just as the Leicestershire village was 
 found too small to provide sustenance for the numerous 
 members of the Herrick family of an earlier generation, 
 so now the county-town could not support the twelve 
 children of John and Mary Eyrick. The eldest son, 
 Robert, remained at home, built up a considerable fortune 
 as an ironmonger, was three times elected Mayor, and 
 represented the borough in Parliament. The second 
 son, Nicholas, the poet's father, decided to seek his 
 fortune elsewhere. In, or before, the year 1556 he was 
 apprenticed to a goldsmith in Cheapside, London, and 
 on the expiration of his apprenticeship, started business 
 on his own accoimt in the same locality. 
 
 Thanks to the preservation at Beaumanor Park, 
 Leicestershire, of a number of papers bearing on the 
 
i6 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Herrick family, we are able to gather a good deal of 
 information concerning the poet's father. Among these 
 papers are certain letters written to him by his father in 
 Leicester, and extending from April i6, 1556, to August 28, 
 1584. They represented the Cheapside goldsmith as an 
 excellent son, doing aU in his power to provide for his 
 brothers and sisters. Some time between 1556 and 
 1575 his eldest sister, Ursula, had followed him to London, 
 and had found a husband there. Another sister, Mary, 
 had also 'joined the London household, and in 1575 was 
 keeping house for her brother. Some years later she 
 married Sir John Bennett, and in 1603 rode in state to 
 the Guildhall as Lady Mayoress. In providing for his 
 sisters, Nicholas Herrick was not forgetful of his brothers. 
 About the year 1574 his youngest brother, WUliam, of 
 whom we shall hear more presently, was sent to London 
 to enter Nicholas's house and business. After 1575 
 there are several letters to prentice William from his 
 father and mother, while from the last of John Eyrick's 
 letters, dated August 28, 1584, we learn that yet another 
 brother, John, had come up to London and received 
 help from Nicholas. 
 
 In 1582 Nicholas Herrick ^ married Julian or Juliana 
 Stone, daughter of William Stone of London, gentleman. 
 In the Allegations for Marriage Licences, issued by the 
 Bishop of London,^ there is the following entry : " De- 
 cember 8, 1582, Nicholas Herycke, Goldsmith, and 
 JuUana Stone, Spinster, of City of London ; at St 
 Leonard's, Bromley, Middlesex." Of the poet's mother 
 not very much is known, and her son refers to her only 
 once in the Hesperides. Like her husband, she came 
 of a good family. The Stones sprang originally from 
 Worcestershire, but the branch of the family to which 
 the poet's mother belonged had been settled for some 
 generations in London. Her father is spoken of in the 
 
 1 Contrary to his father's custom, he usually spells his name with the 
 initial aspirate — ^perhaps in deference to cockney pronunciation. 
 
 2 Edited by G. J. Armytage (Harleian Society PubUcations, vol. xxv.). 
 
EARLY YEARS 17 
 
 Visitations of London as William Stone of London, 
 gentleman, and in another place as William Stone of 
 Se37no (Segenhoe), in the county of Bedford. Certain 
 compHmentary poems among the Hespendes show that 
 their author stood on very friendly terms with various 
 members of his mother's family. Anne Stone, a sister 
 of Juliana, was the wife of Sir Stephen Soame, a member 
 of a stUl more prominent London family of the time ; 
 and another sister, who gave shelter to JuUana Herrick 
 and her children after Nicholas Herrick's death, married 
 Henry Campion, a member of another family of some 
 distinction in the city of London and the county of Kent. 
 
 The members of the Herrick family in London were 
 doubtless present at Nicholas's wedding, but age and 
 infirmities prevented old John and Mary Eyrick from 
 making the journey from Leicester in the inclement 
 month of December. John Eyrick's letter to his son 
 on this occasion has been preserved, and deserves inclu- 
 sion here : 
 
 " Sonne Nicholas Ejnrick ; your mother and I have 
 us commended unto your bedfeUowe and you ; for I 
 trust now that ye be a married man ; for I hard by your 
 brother Stanford that youe weir appointed to marry 
 on Monday the tenth of December ; and if youe be 
 maryed, we pray God to sende youe bothe muche joye 
 and comfort together, and to aU hir friends and yours. 
 I pray you have us commended to your wive's parents 
 and frends not as yet knowne or acqua5mted with us ; 
 but I trust hereafter we shall, if God send us l3^e togethar. 
 We wysshe ourselffs that we had bene with youe at your 
 weddyng ; but the tyme of the year is so, that it hade 
 bene paineful for your moder and me to have ridden 
 suche a jomay : the dais being so short, and way so 
 foule, cheffeley being so olde and onweldy as we be both ; 
 and specyally your mother hath such paine in one of her 
 knebones that she cannot goe many tyms about the 
 hows without a staff in her hand ; and I myselffe have 
 had for the spase of allmost of this halffe yeare mych 
 
i8 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 paine of my right sholder, that I cannot get on my gowne 
 without help. Age bringeth infyrmytes with it ; God 
 hath so ordayned. ... I trust we shall see your wiffe 
 and you at Leicester this next summer to make mery 
 with us, and lykewise your brother Haws and his wiffe, 
 your brother Holden and his wiffe, with some other of 
 your trends. Your mother and I doe gyve harty thanks 
 for your good tokyns youe sente to us of late, and for 
 all your other good tok3nis youe have sent us ; and we 
 be sorry that you have benne at such charge, and we 
 to send you but seldom anny thing that good is, and 
 sometyme marr'd in the carredge. 
 
 " Your mother and I have sent your wiffe and youe, 
 to make mery withaU in Christmas, two sholdir of brawne 
 and two ronds, and one rond for your brother and sister 
 Haws, and one rond for your brother Holden and his 
 wiffe, and one rond to Thomas Chapman agenst the 
 great cond5d:h in Chepe. Every body's pesse hath their 
 names written on them. . . . My wiffe hath sent to 
 your sistar Mary three yards of cloth to make hir a smock. 
 Thus I bid you hartely f arweU. At Leicester, on Sonday 
 morning, being the xv day of December, 1582. By your 
 loving father to his power, John Eyrick." ^ 
 
 Other letters from Leicester follow, and inform us that 
 William and Mary Herrick continued to live with their 
 brother after his marriage, and that Nicholas prospered 
 in business, but suffered much from ague. 
 
 Nicholas Herrick's church was St Vedast's in Foster 
 Lane, the register of which escaped the great fire, and 
 contains the entries of his children's births. From it 
 we learn that three sons, William, Thomas, and Nicholas, 
 and two daughters, Martha and Anne, were bom between 
 1585 and 1590, and then comes the following entry : 
 " Roberte Herricke, sonne to Nicholas Herricke, was 
 baptized the xxiiii* day of Auguste, 1591." 
 
 It is not without significance that, in respect of the 
 time at which he was bom, Herrick stands midway 
 
 i From Nichols' History of the County of Leicester, vol. ii. pp. 633-3. 
 
EARLY YEARS 19 
 
 between the early school of English lyrists — ^represented 
 by Peele (bom 1558 ?), Lodge (1558 ?), Greene (1560 ?), 
 Shakespeare (1564), Campion (1567), Jonson (1573), 
 Donne (1573), Bamfield (1574), and John Fletcher 
 (1579) — 3,nd the later school of Caroline lyrists, of which 
 Carew (1598 ?), Crashaw (1613), Lovelace (1618), and 
 Vaughan (1622) are the most distinguished members. 
 Nearest to him of English poets stand Quarles (1592), 
 George Herbert (1593), and Shirley (1596). 
 
 The place of the poet's birth can be determined fairly 
 exactly. One of the letters of Mary Eyrick of Leicester, 
 the poet's grandmother, to her son William bears the 
 following endorsement : "To her lovynge sonne William 
 Heryck in London, dwelling with Nicholas Heryck in 
 Cheip, give theis." Another letter from the same source 
 indicates the birthplace still more exactly : it is directed 
 to " M' William Heireyck, at the Rowes in the Gouls- 
 meth Rowe in Cheap." From this we gather that the 
 poet was bom in Goldsmiths' Row, Cheapside, in the 
 heart of the city, and in close proximity to that house in 
 Bread Street where, seventeen years later, Milton first 
 saw the light. 
 
 The first year of the poet's Ufe was spent in the busi- 
 ness-house in Cheapside, but scarcely had he entered on 
 his second year when a dark tragedy fell upon the family. 
 Early in the November of 1592, Nicholas Herrick, the 
 prosperous goldsmith, fell from an upper window in his 
 Cheapside house and sustained injuries which proved 
 fatal. On November 7 he made his wUl, and three days 
 later he was buried in the church of St Vedast's. 
 
 For the widow and the orphaned children this was 
 sad enough, but the circumstances of his death made 
 it sadder. Suspicions were aroused that the fall was 
 intentional, and in accordance with the laws of the time, 
 the case was investigated by the Queen's High Almoner, 
 Dr Richard Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol, the father of the 
 dramatist and uncle of Giles and Phineas Fletcher. 
 The Draconian severity of the law was such that, if a 
 
26 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 person was found guilty of suicide, his property reverted 
 to the Crown. The statement of the case, as made out 
 by the High Ahnoner, reads as follows : 
 
 " And where one Nich'as Herrick late citezeine and 
 Goldsmythe of London about the Nyneth daye of this 
 instant moneth of November (as is supposed) did throwe 
 himself forthe of a garret window in London aforesaide 
 whereby he did kill and destroye himself. By reason 
 whereof all such goodes chatteUs and debtes as were the 
 said Nich'as Herrickes at the tjmie of his deathe or 
 ought any waies to apperteyne or belonge vnto him do 
 nowe belonge apperteyne and are forfe3rted vnto o^ said 
 sou'aigne Lady the quene by force of her P'rogatyve 
 royall and nowe are in the only order and disposicon of 
 me the saide bushopp Almoner in augmentacon of her 
 moste gracious almes by force and vertue of the said 
 I'res patentes to me made and graunted as aforesaide 
 (if the saide Nich'as Herrick be or shalbe founde felon 
 of himselfe)." ^ 
 
 It would be hard to exaggerate the terrible plight in 
 which the widow, Julian .Herrick, was placed during 
 those dark days of November 1592. The mother of five 
 children, and of a sixth not yet bom, she had lost her 
 husband under peculiarly distressing circumstances, and 
 was now threatened with the forfeiture of all his hard- 
 won possessions. Fortunately she was surrounded by 
 influential relations, both on her own and her husband's 
 side, and we may well believe that it was owing largely 
 to their instrumentality that, before the month was out, 
 the Bishop of Bristol gave up all claim to the dead man's 
 goods. 
 
 Nicholas Herrick could have been little more than a 
 name to his gifted son, but the poet does honoiu: to his 
 memory in the poem entitled To the Reverend Shade of 
 his Religious Father,^ written about 1627 ; in it he 
 
 1 Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ed. J. J. Howard, Second Series, 
 vol. i. p. 41. 
 
 2 Hesperides, ed. Pollard, No. 82. 
 
EARLY YEARS 21 
 
 craves his father's forgiveness for neglecting for so long 
 to pay a visit to his tomb. His excuse is that he did 
 not know where his bones had been interred — 
 
 Forgive, forgive me, since I did not know 
 Whether thy bones had here their rest or no. 
 
 In his will Nicholas Herrick estimated his property 
 at the value of £3,000, and bequeathed one- third of this 
 sum to his " loveinge wife JuMan," and the other two- 
 thirds in equal shares to his six children. His two sons, 
 Thomas and Nicholas, and his brothers, Robert and 
 WiUiam, were appointed executors. Papers preserved 
 at Beaumanor show that the value of Nicholas Herrick's 
 estate was not £3,000 but £5,068, and also that, in addi- 
 tion to this, two London merchants, Edmund Pyggott 
 and Richard Coxe, were in possession of a considerable 
 sum of money — ^probably the proceeds of some charitable 
 fund— placed at the disposEd of the widow and her 
 children. We read of disbursements of £600 in 1597 and 
 £200 in 1598, together with smaller sums on subsequent 
 occasions. 
 
 Soon after her husband's death Juhan Herrick left 
 London with her children, and took up her abode at 
 Hampton, in Middlesex, in the house of her sister, Anne 
 Campion. The boy Robert, therefore, though city- 
 bom, was coimtry-bred, and we may thiiik of his child- 
 hood as having been spent in the dehghtful village 
 which lies on the north side of the great river which he 
 grew to love so weU, and close to the palace which 
 Wolsey had built, and which, after that minister's fall 
 and death, had become a favourite residence of the 
 Tudor monarchs. The Hampton scenery is of that 
 quiet sylvan and pastoral character which accords weU 
 with the prevailing mood of the Hesperides. The royal 
 parks, the river with the willow trees growing on its 
 banks and on the numerous eyots which at this point 
 lie in its channel, the broad stretches of rich meadow- 
 land, and in the distance the chalk-hiUs of Surrey, must 
 
22 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 have formed a landscape of peculiar attractiveness to one 
 of Herrick's temperament. And if the scenery was 
 somewhat wanting in features which appealed to the 
 boy's imagination, these were supphed by the royal 
 palace close at hand. The villagers of Hampton must 
 have had many thriUing stories to teU of bygone doings 
 at Hampton Court. Many still alive could remember 
 the building and princely equipment of the palace by the 
 great Lord Cardinal, and could tell of the haughty state 
 he kept there. Others could relate stories of how 
 Henry VIII. had paid court to the hapless Anne Boleyn 
 in its stately gardens, or chill the blood in the boy's 
 veins by tales of the shrieking ghost of Queen Catherine 
 Howard that passed by night through the " Haunted 
 Gallery." Nor was it only with stories of the past that 
 the boy's imagination could be fed. Queen Elizabeth 
 kept Christmas there in 1592 and 1593, and in the 
 SeptembOT of 1599 she was tiiere again, riding in state 
 to the palace from her Surrey home at Nonsuch, and 
 returning after a sojourn of three or foiu: days. The boy 
 of eight may have caught sight of the old queen as she 
 rode over Kngston Bridge, and perhaps saw something 
 of the characteristic incident recorded by Lord Semple 
 of Beltreis, the Scottish ambassador, on this occasion : 
 " At her Majesty's returning from Hampton Court, the 
 day being passing foul, she would (as was her custom) 
 go on horseback, although she is scarce able to sit up- 
 right, and my Lord Hunsdon said, ' It was not meet 
 for one of her Majesty's years to ride in such a storm.' 
 She answered in great anger, ' My years ! Maids, to yoxu: 
 horses quickly ; ' and so rode all the way, not vouch- 
 safing any gracious countenance to him for two days." ^ 
 
 With the accession of James I., Hampton Court 
 became the scene of splendid pageants, the lustre of 
 which must to some degree have extended to the adjoin- 
 ing village. The King kept his first Christmas there 
 amid rounds of festivities such as had never before been 
 
 1 E. Law's History of Hampton Court Palace in Tudor Times, p. 337. 
 
EARLY YEARS 23 
 
 witnessed. Amongst others, the King's Company of 
 Comedians, with Shakespeare in their number, was there, 
 and in the course of the Christmas festival performed 
 no less than six plays before the monarch and his court. 
 Samuel Daniel was also present, engaged in the prepara- 
 tion of his masque. The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, 
 which was performed in the Great Hall of the palace 
 on the night of January 8, 1604, and in which the Queen 
 and some of the most distinguished nobles in the land 
 took part. And scarcely were the gates of Hampton 
 Court closed upon noble masquers and the King's 
 players, when they opened to dignitaries of the Church 
 and Puritan divines, summoned thither by the King to 
 deliberate on the form of Protestant rehgion which 
 was to be observed in England, and to hear the British 
 Solomon utter his famous dictum, " No bishop, no 
 king." 
 
 Of the doings within the Great Hall of Hampton 
 Court the boy Robert could have seen nothing ; but of 
 the outside bustle, the comings and goings of ambassadors 
 and bishops, the hunting of the stag in the Hampton 
 parks, and all the activity which prevails when royalty 
 holds high festival, he doubtless saw and heard a good 
 deal. Such an impression, too, does he give us in his 
 poems of his love of gay colours and gorgeous ceremonial, 
 that we can well believe that he took the keenest interest 
 in aU this royal pomp. And if the glories of the King's 
 court were familiar to him in these early years, so, we 
 may imagine, were the civic festivities of the city, fifteen 
 nules away. Having so many relations, both on his 
 father's and his mother's side, prominently associated 
 with the Ufe of the capital, he could not have grown up 
 altogether ignorant of London affairs. He could hardly 
 have missed a visit with his mother to the city and 
 Cheapside in 1598, when his aunt, Anne, Lady Soame, 
 rode with her husband in state to the Guildhall as Lady 
 Mayoress ; nor again in 1603, when the same honour 
 fell to the lot of another of his aunts, the Mary Herrick 
 
24 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 that had spent many years under his father's roof, and 
 was now the wife of Sir John Bennett. 
 
 But court festivities and Lord Mayor's shows, were, 
 after all, only the dazzling delights of hours of exceptional 
 splendour. For the common round of Uf e the boy had 
 only the simple pleasures and interests afforded by a small 
 riverside village and the comradeship of his three brothers 
 and two sisters. The Thames, with its richly caparisoned 
 barges passing up and down the stream, must have 
 proved an endless source of interest, and rambles along 
 its banks, or through the parks of Hampton, may weU 
 have occupied many an idle hour. It could not have 
 been a dull hfe, and there is no UkeUhood that the Herrick 
 children, orphans as they were, felt the pinch of poverty. 
 The means at their disposal were necessarily more slender 
 than those of their many city cousins, but their inherit- 
 ance from their father, and the money placed at the 
 disposal of their mother and their uncle William for their 
 support by the London merchants, Edmund Pyggott and 
 Richard Coxe, was sufficient for the ordinary needs of hfe. 
 
 No information has as yet come to light as to the 
 school at which Robert Herrick received his education. 
 Walford and Grosart assumed that he was educated at 
 the famous Westminster School, the headmasters of 
 which during his school years were William Camden the 
 antiquary (1593-1599), and Richard Ireland (1599- 
 1610). But the foundations on which the assumption 
 rests are not capable of bearing much weight ; they are 
 to be found in the poem, His Tears to Thamasis (1028) ^ ; 
 
 I send, I send here my supremest kiss 
 To thee, my silver-footed Thamasis. 
 No more snail I reiterate thy Strand, 
 Whereon so many stately slructures stand : 
 Nor in the summer's sweeter evenings go 
 To bathe in thee, as thousand others do ; 
 
 1 The numbers here and elsewhere refer to Mr Pollard's numbering of 
 Henick's poems in the Muses' Library Herrick. 
 
EARLY YEARS 25 
 
 No" more shall I along thy crystal gUde, 
 
 In barge, with boughs and rushes beautified, 
 
 With smooth-soft virgins, for our chaste disport. 
 
 To Richmond, Kingston, and to Hampton Court. 
 
 Never again shall I with finny oar 
 
 Put from, or draw unto the faithful shore. 
 
 And landing here, or safely landing there, 
 
 Make way to my beloved Westminster. . . . 
 
 To assume, with Walford and Grosart, that Herrick's 
 reference to his " beloved Westminster " is necessarily 
 to the school there, and ihat he went thither by boat 
 from Hampton via Kingston and Richmond, is mani- 
 festly imsafe ; or, if the assumption be made, we may 
 well share Mr Alfred PoUard's wonder as to what William 
 Camden had to say to the " smooth-soft virgins, for our 
 chaste disport " that kept him company. The truth is 
 that this poem recalls inany of the poet's memories of the 
 river Thames — memories which extended from infancy 
 to manhood. The fact that his uncle William had a house 
 at Westminster when the poet was a boy may well 
 account for early visits there, and it is probable that 
 the neighbourhood was familiar enough to him after he 
 left Cambridge. His connection with Westminster is also 
 assured by the fact that he spent some time in lodgings 
 there in 1640, and retired thither in 1647, when ejected 
 from his Dean Prior vicarage. In the absence, there- 
 fore, of fuller evidence, we have no right to assume that 
 he was educated at the school which Jonson, Dryden, 
 Locke, Prior, Cowper, and other men of letters, have 
 rendered famous. Two of his cousins, sons of Wilham 
 Herrick, were educated at the Merchant Taylors' School, 
 but the register of its alumni makes no mention of the 
 poet. He may, of course, have received his instruction 
 at one of the great London schools, but it is also possible 
 that he was educated nearer home. Hampton Grammar 
 School dates from 1557, while a little farther away, and 
 across the river, was the larger grammar school of the 
 royal borough of Kingston. Wherever educated. Her- 
 
26 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 rick undoubtedly received during his school years sound 
 instruction in the Latin language and literature. As we 
 shall see presently, one of the most Horatian of his 
 poems, that entitled A Country Life : To his Brother, 
 Mr Thomas Herrick (io6), was almost certainly written 
 before he went to Cambridge, and the frequent quota- 
 tions from Ovid, Seneca, Horace, and other Roman 
 authors which we meet with in his poems point rather to 
 his school reading than to the severely logical and theo- 
 logical training, which formed the main element in his 
 university course of study. 
 
 While Robert was stiU at school, his elder brothers, 
 their school-days over, were being settled in business in 
 London. The eldest, Thomas, senior to Robert by three 
 years, was placed, doubtless by his guardian imcle 
 William, with a certain Mr Massam, a London merchant, 
 and the second son, Nicholas, junior to Thomas by a 
 year, was also apprenticed to a London merchant, and 
 later in hfe seems to have been engaged in trade with the 
 Levant. 
 
 With the close of the summer of 1607 Robert's school- 
 days were also over. He was now entering upon his 
 seventeenth year, and the question of his future career 
 was engaging the thoughts of himself, his mother, and 
 his guardian uncle William. It is probable that it was the 
 boy's wish to proceed forthwith to one of the imiversities, 
 but for the present it was not to be. On September 25, 
 1607, the future poet was apprenticed to his uncle 
 William, now Sir WUUam Herrick, goldsmith, of the city 
 of London. The indenture of apprenticeship is pre- 
 served at Beaumanor, and will be found in the appendix 
 to this volume. From it we learn that the term of 
 apprenticeship was to be ten years. The business-house 
 wluch he entered was one of the most substantial in the 
 City of London. His imcle William had prospered 
 greatly since the time when he had been summoned to 
 London by his brother Nicholas to enter the goldsmith's 
 shop in Cheapside. After his brother's death he had 
 
EARLY YEARS 27 
 
 removed to the neighbouring Wood Street, and here he 
 amassed a large fortune as goldsmith and banker. In 
 1595 he purchased from the agents of the Earl of Essex 
 the seat of Beaumanor in Leicestershire ; in 1601 he was 
 elected member of Parliament for Leicester, and in 1605 
 the honour of knighthood was conferred upon him. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott has given us in his Fortunes of Nigel 
 a delightful picture of the household of Master George 
 Heriot, " jingling Geordie," who shared with Sir WiUiam 
 Herrick the honour of being jeweller to his Majesty ; 
 by means of it we are able to realize something of the 
 Hfe which Robert Herrick was now leading beneath his 
 imcle's roof in Cheapside. The dignity of Sir WiUiam's 
 station would perhaps excuse the apprentice the duty of 
 standing before the shop-door and accosting passers-by 
 with the familiar cry, " What d'ye lack, Sir ? What 
 d'ye lack. Madam ? Rings, bracelets, carcanets, what 
 d'ye lack ? " His time would rather be spent within 
 the house, practising the dehcate craft of the jeweUer and 
 lapidary which had brought the honour of knighthood 
 to his uncle WiUiam. At sunset his labours for the 
 day were over, for a strict injunction of the wardens 
 of the Goldsmiths' Company forbade buying and seUing 
 by candle-light ; he was accordingly free to wander 
 forth into the streets and visit his brothers, Thomas and 
 Nicholas, or join with other apprentices in some hght- 
 hearted mirth. 
 
 The " honest and high-spirited prentices of London," 
 as Thomas Heywood calls them, formed at this time an 
 important section of the body poUtic, as playwrights, 
 actors, watermen, and the Dogberrys of the city wards 
 knew to their cost. Their cudgelhngs in the streets, 
 their tourneys on the river, and their outspoken com- 
 ments on the plays which, as two-penny groundhngs, 
 they watched from the pits of Bankside theatres, were a 
 matter of common reproach among the grave livers of 
 London society. But to what extent Herrick shared in 
 these riotous joys is unknown. His poems are mainly 
 
28 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 concerned with the doings of later years, and no letters 
 from this period have been preserved. Haunting of 
 taverns was expressly forbidden by the terms of his 
 indenture, but we are probably right in supposing that 
 visits to the theatres were reckoned among the golden 
 hours of these prentice days. Did he, we wonder, see 
 the performance of that stupendous play by Thomas 
 Heywood, The Four Prentices of London,^ which was 
 written with the express purpose of glorif5dng the London 
 apprentices ? The play enacted the thrilling adventures 
 of four representatives of that class, who leave their 
 shops in the city to join Robert of Normandy in the 
 First Crusade. Their ship being wrecked, the four 
 apprentices are washed ashore on the coasts of France, 
 Italy, Ireland, and the earldom of Boidogne respectively, 
 where they perform wondrous deeds, and are at last re- 
 imited at Jerusalem in time to defeat the Sultan of 
 Babylon and the Sophy of Persia ! If he was present at 
 this performance — ^and what apprentice could have missed 
 such a compliment ? — ^he may also have seen Beaumont 
 and Fletcher's travesty of the play in The Knight of the 
 Burning Pestle, and laughed at the heroic adventurings of 
 Ralph, the London grocer's apprentice. 
 
 If Herrick had possessed a genuine interest in a com- 
 mercial career, it is doubtful whether any trade could 
 have suited his temper better than that of a goldsmith 
 and jeweller — unless, indeed, it were that of a per- 
 fumer ! Many of his verses show just that delicate pohsh, 
 and that dainty enamelling of thoughts with the gay 
 colours of poetic fancy, which, if apphed to the jeweller's 
 craft, might have won him knighthood and a fortune. 
 His poems, too, are full of references to the wares -which 
 he handled and poUshed in his first youth. He sends his 
 Juha a carcanet or necklace of jet to " enthral " the 
 ivory of her neck, and she bestows upon him in return 
 a bracelet of beads filled with sweet-scented pomander- 
 balls. The lips of the same mistress are rocks of rubies, 
 1 Published in 1615, but written and acted some years earlier. 
 
EARLY YEARS 29 
 
 her teeth quarries of pearls ; elsewhere we read of 
 " jimmal rings " and true love-knots, of bracelets of 
 pearl and beads. Surely, too, the young apprentice 
 must have found pleasure in engraving posies for the 
 rings which gay courtiers were presenting to their ladies. 
 Some of his epigrams read like posies, and may even have 
 been written for this purpose in his prentice years. 
 Professor Arber has reprinted in his English Garner 
 several of these collections of EUzabethian posies, but 
 none of them contains a more delicately fashioned thought 
 than this from the Hesperides (29) : 
 
 Love is a circle that doth restless move 
 In the same sweet eternity of love. 
 
 Whatever were the attractions of the goldsmith's craft, 
 and however great the prospects of mercantile greatness, 
 they were insufficient to keep the future poet behind 
 the counter for the whole term of his apprenticeship. 
 In 1613, six years after entering his uncle's business, he 
 broke loose from his Wood Street moorings, and ex- 
 changed the apprentice's jerkin for the student's cap and 
 gown. It is hard to believe that his uncle. Sir William, 
 looked with favourable eye upon this change of front. 
 Robert's elder brother, Thomas, who had been ap- 
 prenticed by Sir WiUiam to Mr Massam, a London 
 merchant, in 1605, had, in similar fashion, turned his 
 back upon the counting-house in 1610, and started 
 farming in the country. This change of calling, as we 
 shall presently see, had not proved a success ; and now, 
 three years later. Sir William saw another nephew, for 
 whose future welfare he had made careful provision, 
 defeating his weU-laid plans. But the future poet, having 
 now reached the age of twenty-two, was to some extent 
 his own master, and his uncle, however reluctantly, was 
 forced to acquiesce in the change of career. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 AT CAMBRIDGE 
 
 Before following Herrick to the University of Cam- 
 bridge, which he entered some time in 1613, it is well to 
 consider whether any of the Hesperides poems belong 
 to the years of his apprenticeship. The chronological 
 ordering of those poems is a desperate task for the most 
 intrepid editor to engage in. Poems extending over a 
 period of about forty years are here placed with almost 
 complete indifference as to subject and order of com- 
 position. Yet internal evidence, carefully considered, 
 goes a certain way to indicate the date at which certain 
 poems were written, and warrants us in allotting at least 
 two of them to the period which is now under considera- 
 tion. One of these is the poem. To my dearest Sister, 
 Mistress Mercy Herrick (818), which must have been 
 written not later than 1612 ; for some time before that 
 year, as Metcalfe's Visitation of Suffolk (1612) informs us, 
 she had married a certain John Wingfield, son and heir of 
 Humphrey Wingfield, Esq., of Brantham, Suffolk. 
 
 The other poem of this period is of a much more sus- 
 tained and ambitious character, and is entitled A Country 
 Life : to his Brother, Mr Thomas Herrick (106). The open- 
 ing verses of this poem indicate clearly that the poet's 
 brother had recently exchanged a city for a country life : 
 
 Thrice and above blest, my soul's half, art thou. 
 
 In thy both last and better vow ; 
 Could'st leave the city, for exchange, to see 
 
 The country's sweet simplicity. 
 
AT CAMBRIDGE 31 
 
 The reference is to the important step in his career 
 which Thomas Herrick took about the year 16 10, when 
 he left the business house in London of Mr Massam and 
 settled himself on a coimtry farm. Moreover, the poem 
 is eloquent of the great content which Thomas and his 
 newly married wife are finding in their rural sanctuary. 
 But this content, however real it may have been during 
 the first few months, was very short-Uved. By the year 
 1613 the farm was anything but the Elysium which the 
 poet sp>;aks of. On May 12 of that year Thomas Herrick, 
 writing- to his uncle. Sir WilUam, for help, says that he is 
 " at present destitute of a convenient stay for myself and 
 wife," and he begs to be appointed the tenant of one of his 
 uncle's Leicestershire farms. Nor was the knowledge of 
 his brother's sore straits withheld from Robert, the first of 
 whose letters to his uncle from Cambridge was written 
 with the express purpose of begging money for his brother. 
 From all this it may be inferred that the poem in 
 question was written some time between 1610 and 1613, 
 though in the form in which it appears in the Hesperides 
 it has doubtless benefited by those careful repolishings 
 upon which Herrick spent so much time during the long 
 winter evenings at Dean Prior. Another, and probably 
 earUer, version of the poem is, in fact, extant in Ashmole 
 MS. 38, and has been carefully compared with the printed 
 copy by Dr Grosart in his Memorial Introduction to 
 Herrick's works.^ But the poem, however altered, is of 
 exceptional interest by virtue of the fight which it throws 
 upon the temper of the poet's mind and the direction and 
 extent of his reading. It is obviously suggested by the 
 second of Horace's Epodes, the famous Beatus ille, 
 written — ^may we say, ironically ? — in praise of a country 
 Ufe. But while the idea of the poem comes from Horace, 
 there is nowhere any trace of servile imitation, and the 
 pleasures of a country fife which Herrick points out to his 
 brother are rarely out of harmony with the surroimdings 
 of an English homestead. 
 
 1 pp. cU,-cUv. 
 
32 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Interesting in its disclosure of the young poet's feeKng 
 for nature and a coiintry life, the poem is no less interest- 
 ing in the light which it throws upon his reading. Echoes 
 of classical authors abound, and the borrowings are in 
 almost every case honourably acknowledged in Herrick's 
 accustomed manner by the use of italics. Horace is 
 clearly his first love, and in addition to the Beatus ille 
 Epode, we trace reminiscences of more than one of the 
 Odes. Thus he finds a place for those lines from the 
 third song of the first book, — 
 
 Illi robur et aes triplex 
 Circa pectus erat qui fragilem truci 
 
 Commisit pelago ratem 
 Primus — 
 
 which Horace in his turn had drawn from the Prometheus 
 of Aeschylus ; and he shows the terseness of his style 
 by expressing the thought within the compass of a 
 single distich : 
 
 A heart thrice walled with oak and brass that man 
 Had, first durst plough the ocean. 
 
 There is, too, much sententious moralizing in the poem, 
 and for this Herrick had recourse to Martial, Juvenal, and 
 Aristotle's Ethics.^ What is no less interesting is the 
 echo of Renaissance poetry. Shakespeare's " To thine 
 own self be true," seems to have been in the young 
 poet's mind when he wrote the couplet, — 
 
 But to live round, and close, and wisely true 
 To thine own self, and known to few ; — 
 
 and there is abundant evidence that, in addition to 
 Horace's Epode, Herrick had in mind, when writing the 
 poem, Jonson's praise of a coxmtry Ufe expressed in his 
 verses " To Sir Robert Wroth." Jonson is describing 
 the life of a coimtry gentleman, Herrick that of a simple 
 1 See Mr Pollard's note to tiiis poem, i. pp. 263-C, 
 
AT CAMBRIDGE 33 
 
 farmer ; but there is a similarity of idea and style 
 throughout the two poems, and, what is even more 
 important, the verse of the address " To Sir Robert 
 Wroth " is imitated by the younger poet. 
 
 From all this it is clear that Herrick was conversant 
 with the poetry of his own time, and also that, having 
 received a fairly sound classical education while at school, 
 he had found time for reading classic authors during the 
 hours which were not claimed by the shop and the 
 counting-house. In its wealth of classical allusion 
 the poem compares well with that of Jonson, and 
 shows, in particular, that intimacy with Roman hfe 
 and ceremonial, and that frank transference of all this 
 to English soil, which characterize much of his later 
 pwetry. 
 
 It was probably in the siammer of 1613 that Herrick 
 went up to Cambridge, and enrolled himself a member 
 of St John's College. His mature age — ^he was nearly 
 twenty-two — ^made him unwilling to register himself as an 
 ordinary imdergraduate, and he accordingly entered his 
 coUege as a feUow-commoner. In so doing, he sub- 
 jected himself to a heavy burden of expenditure, and, 
 as his Cambridge letters show, an eternal lack of pence 
 was his never-ending complaint during the whole of his 
 stay at the University. His guardian-uncle, as we learn 
 from his account-books preserved at Beaumanor, had 
 doled out to his nephew certain sums of money during 
 his apprenticeship. Under the date February 9, 1612, 
 we find the entry, " Lent to Robarte Hericke more at 
 his request £10," and a little later, " Pd to him the 
 5 March 1612 the sum of £42, los. od." From certain 
 reckonings on the margin of the page on which these and 
 other entries are made, we infer that these sums were 
 deducted from a sum of ^^424, 8s. od. which had been 
 left to Robert by his father, that he had drawn out 
 £74, 8s. od., and that £350 were still in hand. On 
 entering St John's College as a fellow-commoner, he was 
 to receive £10 a quarter to cover the cost of board, 
 
34 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 clothes, and tuition : extraordinary items of expenditure 
 were met by extraordinary grants.^ 
 
 St John's College was at this time under the rule of 
 the Welshman, Owen Gwyn, who, after some intriguing, 
 had been appointed Master in the May of 1612. Gwyn 
 was a cousinvof the famous John Williams, a fellow of the 
 college, and subsequently Lord Keeper and Bishop of 
 Lincoln. St John's had somewhat fallen from the 
 high estate which it had enjoyed in the preceding century, 
 when Roger Ascham and Sir John Cheke weire reckoned 
 among its members ; but it was stUl, with Trinity and 
 King's, one of the leading colleges of the University, 
 and had on its roU during the first half of the seven- 
 teenth century the distinguished names of Thomas 
 We'ntworth, Earl of Strafford, John Williams, the Lord 
 Keeper, and Thomas Fairfax, the great Lord-General of 
 the Civil War. The doyen of its fellows was Andrew 
 Downes, Regius Professor of Greek in the University, 
 and a worthy successor to the great humanists of a 
 former generation. Earlier irimates of the University, 
 in whom perhaps the authorities took no special pride, 
 but who would have found a genial comrade in 
 Robert Herrick, were Robert Greene and Thomas Nash, 
 the latter of whom left behind him, as a sobriquet 
 for subsequent wassailers, 1;he phrase, " a very Nash." 
 
 Among the Herrick Papers at Beaumanor are fourteen 
 letters — -the residue apparently of a once larger collection 
 — ^written by Herrick to his tmcle during his residence 
 at Cambridge, and to these we naturally turn for informa- 
 tion concerning the character of his college life. But in 
 
 1 In Sir William's Account Books at Beaumanor we meet with the 
 following entries : " July 1613, to Mr Miller for a College Pot, £5," 
 and "4 Oct. 1615, Paid to Mr Woolley for Robins Gown and Hose, 
 £2, I2S. od." The College-pot was the silver goblet of 10 oz., which, 
 according to a decree at St John's College, every feUow-commoner 
 must present to his college on admission. See Baker-Mayor, History 
 of St John's College, Cambridge, p. 548. The date, July 1613, is of 
 importance as indicating the time at which Herrick went up to the 
 University. 
 
AT CAMBRIDGE 35 
 
 many ways these letters are most disappointing. They 
 tell us nothing of the part which he took in the life of the 
 University, nothing of college friendships, nothing of 
 poetic activity. Their persistent burden, or, as Herrick 
 himself expresses it, their " plainsong," is the request 
 for money — " mitie pecuniam." As already stated, the 
 agreement between nephew and uncle was that the 
 former should receive a pa57ment of £10 quarterly to 
 meet all ordinary expenses. The ex-apprentice had not 
 been long at the University before he discovered that 
 £40 a year was a quite inadequate sum to meet his needs. 
 His college was an expensive one, and he had entered 
 it as a fellow-commoner. When Mr, afterwards Sir 
 Simonds, D'Ewes entered the same college as a feUow- 
 commoner in 1618, he tells us of the allowance made to 
 him by his father : " The utmost I desired was but £60, 
 my father conceived £50 to be sufficient ; which I was 
 wiUing to accept, being able to obtain no more, rather 
 than to be at his allowance ; because I easily foresaw 
 how many sad differences I was likely to meet with 
 upon every reckoning. I cannot deny but as this short 
 allowance brought me one way much want and dis- 
 content, so another way it made me avoid unnecessary 
 acquaintance, idle visits and many unnecessary ex- 
 penses." ^ If D'Ewes experienced want and discontent 
 on £50 a year, the want and discontent of Herrick must 
 have been proportionably greater on £40. What was 
 worse was that even this small sum was remitted only 
 with great reluctance and after considerable delay. In 
 one of these letters, written from " Cambridg : St John's," 
 he makes the following complaint : "I have not as 
 hitherto acquainted you with the chardg I Uve in, but 
 your self can judg by my often (as now at this time) 
 writing for mony, which when I doe, it is for no imperti- 
 nent expens, but for constraind necessitie : for be your self 
 the judg, when above twentie pounds will not suf&ce the 
 
 1 Autobiography of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, ed. Halliwell- Phillips, vol. i. 
 p. 119. 
 
36 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 house, not reckening with it commoditie for my self (I 
 meane apparell nor other complements) nor tuition mony 
 nor other sundrie occasions for chardges, this but con- 
 sidered, their is no reasonable soule but wiU kindly and 
 indulgently censure of my lyfe and me. Had I but a 
 competent estate to majmtayne my self to my title, I 
 could presimie of as soone atayning to y^ end of the 
 efficient cause — ^my coming — as he that hath stronger 
 cause and fortune : S^', I know you understand me, and 
 did you but know how disfumished I came to Cambridg, 
 without bedding (which I yet want) and other necessaries, 
 you would (as I now trust you will) better your thoughts 
 towards me, considering of my forct expence. S', I 
 entreat you to furnish me with ten pounds this quarter ; 
 for the last mony which I receavd came not till the last 
 quarter had almost spent it self, which now constraines 
 me so suddenly to write for more. Good S^, forbeare to 
 censure me as prodigaU, for I endevour rather to strengthen 
 (then debihtate) my feeble famiUe fortune." From other 
 letters we learn that the feUow-commoner has been com- 
 pelled " to runne somewhat deepe into my Tailours debt," 
 and that he needs money for books and his tutor's fees. 
 
 The following letter, the original of which I discovered 
 among a collection of autographs in the possession of 
 Canon Egerton Leigh of Richmond, Yorkshire, belongs 
 to the same period, and is written in the same strain as 
 that quoted above : 
 
 Cambridg, Sx John's. 
 
 S', the first place testifies my deutie, the second only 
 reiterats the former letter of which (as I may justly 
 wonder) I heard no answeare, neither concerning the 
 payment or receat of the letter, (it is best knowne to your 
 self). Upon which ignorance I have sent this oratour 
 entreating you to paye to M' Adrian Marius, bookseller 
 of the blackfryers, the sum of lo U, from whome so 
 soone as it is payd, I shall receave a dew acknowledgment. 
 I shall not need to amplyfy my sense, for this warrants 
 
AT CAMBRIDGE 37 
 
 sufficiencie. I expect your countenance and your 
 futherance to my well beeing who hath power to command 
 my service to etemitie. Heaven be your guide to direct 
 you to perfection which is the end of mans endeavour. 
 I expect an answeare from M^ Adrian, concerning the 
 
 ^ ■ Robin Hearick, 
 
 obliged to your virtue eternally. 
 
 [Endorsement] 
 
 " The right wor" his loving 
 uncle, S^ WiUiam Hearick, 
 dweUing at London in 
 great Wood-Street, this.^ 
 
 The humble and obsequious tone in which Herrick 
 addresses his uncle in these letters would seem to indi- 
 cate that his college expenses came out of the knightly 
 goldsmith's own pocket, but references in them to his 
 " feebly ebbing estate " place it beyond doubt that such 
 was not the case. A curious entry in Sir WiUiam's 
 account books also discloses the fact that while the 
 impecunious student was finding infinite difficulty in 
 obtaining his quarterly allowance of £10, the wealthy 
 imcle was borrowing hundreds of pounds from the 
 nephew. The entry in question is as foUows : " My 
 Nephew, Robert Hericke of Cambridge, the 25th March 
 1614, I owe him upon a Bond to be paid at my House 
 at 3 Months 300 li." Dr Grosart in his Memorial Intro- 
 duction has emptied the vials of his wrath upon the head 
 of " the close-fisted old knight " with such zeal and 
 copiousness that subsequent biographers are for aU time 
 relieved of a similar obhgation. Yet one may be allowed 
 to express the opinion that Sir WiUiam was making a 
 churUsh repayment to the orphan son for the generous 
 
 ' This letter was presented to Canon Leigh's grandmother, Lady Sit- 
 well of Rempstone, Derbyshire, by a former proprietor of Beamnanor, 
 early in the nineteenth century ; its discovery raises the question 
 whether other letters of the poet's are hidden away somewhere in pri- 
 vate autograph collections. 
 
38 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 treatment which he, when a raw apprentice, had received 
 from the father. The foundation of Sir William's princely 
 fortune was laid in Nicholas Herrick's shop in the Gold- 
 smiths' Row, Cheapside, and this fact ought not to have 
 been forgotten when, thirty years later, Nicholas's son was 
 struggling with poverty at Canibridge. 
 
 It is imfortunate that Herrick's Cambridge letters tell 
 us nothing of college friendships. The verses in the 
 Hesperides addressed to " peculiar friends " are many in 
 number, and some of the friendships which he formed 
 were of long standing. As he was six years older than 
 the average freshman when he entered the University, 
 it would be natural for him to look for acquaintances 
 among the senior members and fellows of the University ; 
 and, as a matter of fact, it was with a fellow of his own 
 college that one of his most lasting friendships was 
 formed. On March 26, 1613, a certain John Weekes of 
 Devonshire was admitted a fellow of St John's.^ This 
 Weekes seems to have been the son of Simon and Mary 
 Weekes of Broadwood Kelly in the county of Devon,^ 
 and though senior to Herrick in academic standing, he 
 was probably about the same age. To this " peculiar 
 friend " three of the Hesperides poems are addressed, 
 and they show clearly that the ties of friendship were of 
 the closest. The careers of the two men run a curiously 
 parallel course, and we shall meet with Weekes in the 
 company of Herrick on more than one occasion in this 
 biographical sketch. Another intimate friend of after 
 years. Whose acquaintance the poet must have made at 
 Cambridge, was Clipseby, afterwards Sir Clipseby, Crew, 
 the eldest son of Sir Ranulphe Crew, who was Speaker 
 of the House of Commons in 1614 and Lord Chief Justice 
 in 1625. We learn from the Baker Memoirs * that CUpseby 
 Crew was a student at St John's College, Cambridge ; 
 
 1 See Register of Fellows admitted to St John's College. Bakei- 
 Mayor, p. 393. 
 
 2 Vivian, Visitation of Devon, 1620. 
 8 p. 492- 
 
AT CAMBRIDGE 39 
 
 and as he was bom in 1599, ^^^ residence at the Univer- 
 sity must have extended over almost the same period 
 that Herrick spent there. To this friend several of the 
 Hesfierides poems are addressed, and the verses show 
 that their author found in the son of the Lord Chief 
 Justice a true friend and patron. He celebrated his 
 marriage, which took place in 1625, with the most 
 beautiful of all his epithalamia, and in later poems he 
 mourned the death of his wife and his daughter. Other 
 verses to Sir CUpseby represent that knight as a sharer 
 in some of the poet's bacchanalian joys, and the poem 
 entitled A Hymn to Sir CUpseby Crew (427), written 
 apparently after a quarrel had for a time estranged the 
 two friends, shows the warmth of the poet's affection. 
 
 It is not difficult to follow Herrick in his course of 
 study at the University. Seventeenth-century Cam- 
 bridge still clung somewhat tenaciously to much of that 
 outworn medieval curriculum which made logic and 
 rhetoric the chief studies of the quadriennium or four 
 years' course leading to the bachelor's degree. During 
 his freshman's year he must have devoted himself chiefly 
 to rhetoric, acqmring a knowledge of that subject by the 
 aid of Quintilian's Institutes, Cicero's Orations and 
 the rhetorical works of Hermogenes the Greek. During 
 the two succeeding years, as junior and senior sophister, 
 he read mainly logic. For this the writings of Aristotle 
 stUl formed the chief theme of study, though the sub- 
 versive Dialectica of Peter Ramus had by this time got a 
 furm hold of the EngUsh universities, and appeared among 
 the text-books of the Cambridge undergraduates.^ 
 
 Of humanistic teaching proper, as far as a student's 
 preparation for his degree went, there was very little ; 
 though Herrick may very weU have attended the pubUc 
 lectures of the Regius Professor of Greek, Andrew Downes, 
 and Ustened to his exposition of Demosthenes or Thu- 
 cydides. We may also be sure that he did not neglect the 
 Roman poets, whose acquaintance he first made in his 
 1 MuUinger, The University of Cambridge, vol. ii., p. 404 f. 
 
40 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 school days, and who have left so clear an impress upon his 
 poetry. Horace, Catullus, and the Roman elegists were, 
 doubtless, a part of his daily fare. 
 
 Sir Simonds D'Ewes; who, as we have seen, entered 
 St John's in 1618, tells us a good deal in his autobiography 
 concerning his course of studies at the University. We 
 learn that he attended Divinity Acts, Problems, and 
 Commonplaces in the Public Schools, Ustened to George 
 Herbert's public lecttures on rhetoric, and to those of 
 Dr Downes on Demosthenes' De Corona: also that he 
 read Aristotle's Physics, Politics, and Ethics, Florus's 
 Roman History, and studied his logic in various manuals. 
 For Ughter moments he had GeUius's Attic Nights and 
 Macrobius's Saturnals. These last two works, which 
 supply in an informal manner much antiquarian know- 
 ledge of Greek and Roman life, may very well have been 
 included among Herrick's store of books, and Jiave fur- 
 nished him with that acquaintance with Soman social Ufe 
 and ceremonial which is so often at his service as a poet, 
 and gives to his verses their classical and pagan flavour. 
 
 The period during which Herrick was pursuing his 
 studies at Cambridge was not remarkable for the exem- 
 plary behaviour of the students. Mr Mullinger, indeed, 
 informs us that at no period do we find their conduct more 
 unfavourably represented. They were engaged in peren- 
 nial conflicts with the townsmen and the watch, and, 
 contrary to aU regulations, they attended cock-fights 
 and bull-baitings, diced and drank, armed themselves 
 with swords and rapiers, and wore apparel of velvet and 
 silk ; a few desperate ones even bathed in the river ! 
 D'Ewes, again, who was something, of a prig, confesses 
 that "swearing, drinking, rioting, and hatred of aU 
 piety and virtue under false and adulterate names did 
 abound there [St John's] and generally in aU the Uni- 
 versity." It may readily be granted that Herrick, with 
 the hot blood of Norse ancestors tingling in his veins, par- 
 took of as much of the " cakes and ale " of university 
 hfe as proctorial vigilance and a slender purse would 
 
AT CAMBRIDGE 4t 
 
 admit. The author of the Welcome to Sack — was it 
 perhaps an effusion of these Cambridge days ? — was no pre- 
 cisian, and could ruffle it with the best of the " high sons of 
 pith " who met together in the taverns of Cambridge. 
 
 It is difficult, if not impossible, to say what poems of 
 Herrick belong to these university days. None of those 
 published in the Hesperides contain, as far as I have 
 been able to discover, any direct allusions to this im- 
 portant period in his career, but it is hard to believe that 
 his muse, which had vouchsafed The Country Life in his 
 prentice years, could have been altogether silent now. 
 One is tempted to associate the love-lyrics and drinking- 
 songs chiefly with the succeeding period, which Herrick 
 spent in London at the feet of Ben Jonson, but some of 
 these may very well have been written at Cambridge. 
 
 It was Herrick's lot, during the first half of his life, 
 to be an eye-witness of pageants of more than ordinary 
 splendour. These had begun in the days of his childhood 
 when Lord Mayor uncles and Lady Mayoress aunts were 
 borne in state to the Guildhall, and when, nearer home, 
 he beheld the royal processions entering the palace of 
 Hampton Court. As apprentice to the goldsmith-uncle, 
 whose business took him frequently to court, he must 
 again have seen a good deal of the life of the Stuart 
 courtiers, and now that he had left London for the Uni- 
 versity, he was destined to behold scenes of festive 
 splendour which might compare even with the pageantry 
 of Whitehall. Early in the winter of 1614-15, an inti- 
 mation reached Cambridge that the King and his court 
 would honour the University with a visit in the following 
 March. The news must have caused a flutter of pleasur- 
 able expectancy throughout the colleges, and prepara- 
 tions were at once made to give the visitors a sumptuous 
 reception. St John's College, in accordance with its 
 status in the University, took, with Trinity, a leading 
 part in these preparations, and Herrick, though only an 
 impecunious fellow-commoner, must have shared in the 
 general excitement. Tlie news of the royal visit spread 
 
42 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 to Oxford, and we find William Herrick, the eldest son 
 of Sir William, and a feUow-commoner of St John's 
 College, writing to his Cambridge cousin and proposing 
 to share his lodgings with him on the occasion of the 
 King's visit. His tutor, however, Mr Christopher Wren, 
 in a letter to Lady Herrick, disapproves of this plan and 
 begs, " yf it soe like your Ladiship, that I might have 
 him with me inseparablye, both on the way and there 
 too." 1 
 
 The University authorities at Cambridge, having in 
 mind the seemly behaviour of the students on so im- 
 portant an occasion as a royal visit, passed special 
 ordinances. Having regard to "the fearfuU enormitye 
 and excesse of apparell scene in all degrees " of students, 
 they expressly forbade the wearing of " vast bands, huge 
 cuffs, shoe-roses, tufts, locks and topps of hare, un- 
 beseeminge that modesty and carr;idge of students in so 
 renowned an Universitye," * and threatened with instant 
 expulsion the undergraduate who should offend the 
 author of the Counterblast by " taking tobacco " in 
 either St Mary's Church or Trinity College Hall. 
 
 The King lodged in Trinity College, but the Chancellor 
 of the University, the Earl of Suffolk, kept house at St 
 John's, at the rate of £i,ooo and five tuns of wine a day.* 
 To entertain James during his four days' sojourn at the 
 University, elaborate Latin comedies, together with Acts 
 or Disputations, had been devised, ike Disputation, 
 that ejdiibition of mental gladiatorship which was an heir- 
 loom of the Middle Ages, and to which the universities still 
 clung, was a form of entertainment peculiarly attractive 
 to a monarch who loved hot debate as much as he feared 
 cold steel. Several Disputations were held, but the 
 subject which attracted chief attention, and which inter- 
 
 1 Nichols, History of County of Leicester, iii. p. 163. 
 
 2 Nichols, Progresses of James I., iii. 44 ; MuUinger, The University of 
 Cambridge,'^, si 6. 
 
 s Letter of Mr Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, quoted by Nichols, 
 Progresses of James I., vol. iii, p. 48. 
 
AT CAMBRIDGE 43 
 
 ested the King most of all, was one which concerned the 
 reasoning powers of dogs. " Can dogs syllogize ? " was 
 the form in which the question was worded, and the 
 disputants were two learned divines, Matthew Wren, 
 afterwards Bishop of Ely, and John Preston, the puritan, 
 soon to be elected Master of Emmanuel. The arguments 
 of the latter, who maintained the affirmative, were 
 ingenious. " The major proposition, present in the mind 
 of a harrier," he declared, " is this : The hare has gone 
 either this way or that way.' With his nose he smells out 
 the minor. ' She has not gone that way ; ' and he then 
 arrives at the conclusion : ' Ergo, this way,' with open 
 mouth." Thereupon followed the usual logic-chopping. 
 Did the dog possess sapience, or was it only sagacity ? — 
 until at last the royal Ustener clenched the argument 
 in favour of Preston by relating an incident from his 
 own hunting experiences.^ 
 
 Following upon the Disputations, came the Comedies. 
 The St. John's men had a play of their own, Aemilia, 
 which they performed on the first night of the King's 
 visit, but the piece de resistance was the comedy of 
 Ignoramus, which was performed on the evening of March 
 8th. The author of this play was George Ruggle, 
 formerly a pensioner of St John's, but now a fellow of 
 Clare Hall, where the play was acted. As a fellow- 
 commoner of the University, Herrick was entitled to a 
 seat at the back of the hall during the performance, and 
 we may be sure that he did not fail to be present. The 
 comedy, we are told, proved an amazing success ; the 
 King followed the development of the plot and shared 
 in the laughter called forth by the satiric hits at the 
 lawyers and the ridicule of their debased law-Latin. 
 
 The fun which was pointed at the legal profession in 
 the comedy of Ignoramus was, perhaps, not too weU 
 received by Herrick himself ; for about this time his 
 thoughts were turning towards the law as a profession. 
 He was still an undergraduate, but the sense of advancing 
 1 Mullinger, dp. cit., ii. 520. 
 
44 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 years and a slowly ebbing patrimony made him anxious 
 for the future. There is nothing to indicate what projects 
 had been formed as to his future career at the time 
 when he entered the University in 1613, but after a 
 residence there of three years, he had made up his mind 
 to enter the legal profession. With this purpose in view, 
 he determined to leave St John's College and become a 
 member of Trinity Hall, which was specially devoted to 
 the study of the law. In making this change, he also 
 had in view the retrenchment of his expenses. He 
 announces his intention to his uncle in a letter which 
 belongs to the year 1616 : 
 
 " After my abundant thanks for your last great love 
 (worthie Sir), proud of your favoure and kindness shewne 
 by my Ladie to my unworthy selfe, thus I laye open my 
 selfe ; that for as much as my continuance wUl not long 
 consist in the spheaxe where I now move, I make known my 
 thoughts, and modestly crave your counsell, whether it 
 were better for me to direct my study towards the 
 lawe or not ; which if I should (as it will not be imperti- 
 nent), I can with faciUtie laboure my self into another 
 colledg appointed for the Uke end and studyes, where 
 I assure myself the charge will not be so great as where 
 I now exist ; I make bold freely to acquaint you with 
 my thoughts ; and I entreat you answeare me : this being 
 most which checks me, that my time (I trust) beeing 
 short, it may be to a lesser end and smaller purpose; 
 but that shalbe as you shall lend direction. ..." 
 
 Sir William Herrick had apparently no objection to 
 his nephew becoming a lawyer, and was certainly not 
 the man to frustrate any project which made for economy ; 
 and so the next letter which reached him from Cambridge 
 is headed " Trinitie Hall." Herrick's connection with 
 Trinity Hall is interesting, for when the HaU was founded 
 in the fourteenth century, its first niaster was a collateral 
 ancestor and namesake of the poet, Robert Eyrick, who 
 had died Bishop of Lichfield in 1385. When Herrick 
 
AT CAMBRIDGE 45 
 
 entered the Hall, its master was Dr Clement Corbett, 
 and the number of its members amounted to only about 
 sixty. The letter in which he informs his uncle of the 
 change which he has made is not written in the best of 
 spirits : 
 
 Trinitie Hall, Camb. 
 
 S"*, — ^The confidence I have of your bothe virtuous 
 and generous disposition makes me (though with some 
 honest reluctation) the seldomer to solicite you ; for I 
 have so incorporated beleef into me, that I cannot 
 chuse but perswade my self that (though absent) I stand 
 imprinted in your memorie ; and the remembrance of 
 my last beeing at London servd for an earnest motive 
 (which I trust lives yet unperisht) to the effectuating of 
 my desire, which is not but in modesty ambitious, and 
 consequently virtuous ; but, where freeness is evident, 
 there needs no feare for forwardness ; and I doubt not 
 (because fayth gives boldness) but that Heaven, to- 
 geither with your self, will bring my ebbing estate to an 
 indifferent tyde ; meanewhOe I hopp I have (as I pre- 
 sume you know) changd my coUedg for one where the 
 quantitie of expence wilbe shortned, by reason of the 
 privacie of the house, where I propose to live recluse, 
 till Time contract me to some other calling, striving now 
 with myself (reta5ming upright thoughts) both sparingly 
 to live, and thereby to shun the current of expence." 
 Then follows the usual request for £io. 
 
 Before Time could contract him to another calling, 
 it was necessary for him to take the degree of bachelor. 
 Owing to the expenses incumbent on graduation, his 
 removal to a college where the cost of Uving was less 
 had not reheved him of the burden of impecuniosity. 
 In his failure to secure a sufficient competence from lus 
 imcle, he realizes that he " must crie with the afflicted 
 ' usquequo, usquequo, Domine,' " and hopes against hope 
 that his imcle will remember him " like a trew Maecenas." 
 In January 1617 he underwent the ordeal of the various 
 
46 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Acts which were required for the passing of the examina- 
 tion, and in the same month his name, " Robertus 
 Hearick," appears on the register of bachelors of arts. 
 The successful passing of his " Commencement " is 
 announced to his uncle as follows : 
 
 Camb. 
 
 Sir, that which makes my letter to be abortive and 
 borne before maturitie, is and hath been my Commence- 
 ment, which I have now overgonn, though I confess 
 with many a throe and pinches of the purse ; but it was 
 necessarie, and the prize was worthie the hazarde ; which 
 makes me less sensible of the expence, by reason of a 
 titular prerogative — et bonum est prodire in bono. 
 The essence of my writing is (as heretofore) to entreat you 
 to paye for my use to M^ Arthour Johnson, bookseller in 
 Paules church yard the ordinarie summe of tenn pounds, 
 and that with as much sceleritie as you maye, though 
 I could wish chardges had leaden wings and Tortice feet 
 to come upon me ; sed votis puerilibus opto. S^, I fix 
 my hopes on Time and you ; still gazing for an happie 
 flight of birdes, and the refreshing blast of a second winde. 
 Doubtfull as yet of either Fortunes, I live, hoarding up 
 provision against the assault of either. Thus I salute your 
 
 ^ — Hopeful R. Hearick. 
 
 The young graduate's better spirits are manifest in his 
 style as well as his signature. The " titular prerogative " 
 has been won, and with a boldness bom of success, he 
 even ventures to send his quarterly request for ten 
 pounds before the proper time.^ The future is still un- 
 certain, but there has been enough of despondency^ and 
 now, in the first flush of academic honours, he finds it 
 possible to fix his hopes on so barren a prospect as the 
 generosity of his imcle. Sir William Herrick. 
 
 1 This I take to be the meaning of the phrase, " abortive and borne 
 before maturitie," as applied to the letter which he is writing. 
 
AT CAMBRIDGE 47 
 
 With his graduation in 1617, Herrick's residence at 
 the University in all probability came to an end. Dr 
 Grosart and others have assumed that he repiained 
 there until 1620, when he proceeded M.A., but! under 
 the circumstances, nothing is more unlikely. For some 
 time past residence for the degree of master had ceased 
 to be compulsory, and, as a result, the resident graduates 
 of the University formed only " a small minority com- 
 posed almost exclusively of clerical fellows of | colleges, 
 whose time was mainly given to the all-absorljing con- 
 troversial theology of the day, and to the coniposition 
 of ' commonplaces ' to be dehvered in the college chapel." ^ 
 Now Herrick was never a fellow of his college, and it 
 is by no means certain that, at the time when he 
 graduated, his wish was to enter the Church. A year 
 before, as we have seen, his thoughts were directed to the 
 law. Moreover, his ripe age and his lack of money 
 indicate that he would not remain at the University 
 longer than was necessary, and the termination of the 
 letters to his uncle at this time also gives colour to the 
 view that he quitted Cambridge in 1617. Since residence 
 was no longer compulsory, the course of study for the 
 mastership had become quite insignificant. It consisted 
 only in the keeping of one or two " acts," and the com- 
 position of a single declamation. This probably presented 
 httle difficulty to Herrick when, three years later, he 
 took the higher degree, and was enrolled as a master of 
 arts at the registry. 
 
 In 1617, then, Herrick packed up his few personal 
 belongings, took " Hobson's choice," and bade farewell 
 to the University. He left behind him a small circle of 
 friends, including Weekes and Crew, and a rather heavy 
 burden of debts. In the second report of the Historical 
 Manuscripts Commission {1870), Mr H. T. Riley pub- 
 lished certain documents preserved at Trinity Hall, in- 
 cluded among which are entries in the Steward's Book 
 of debts owing to the college by " Robert Herricke." 
 1 Mullmger, op. cit., vol. ii. p. 414. 
 
48 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 The entries are for the years 1623 and 1630, and the 
 sums owed are £3, 17s. 7d. for the former year, and 
 £10, i6s. gd. for the latter. Dr Grosart attempted to 
 father these debts upon another Robert Herrick, the 
 poet's cousin, and second son of Sir William Herrick. 
 But there is nothing to show that this youth, who passed 
 through Christ Chxirch, Oxford, and Lincoln's Inn, was 
 ever a member of Trinity HaU, or, indeed, of the Univer- 
 sity of Cambridge. The probabihty is, therefore, that 
 Mr Riley was right in his identification, and what we 
 know of the poet's impecuniosity at the University sup- 
 ports this view. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 " SEALED OF THE TRIBE OF BEN ' 
 
 The twelve yeaxs which elapse between Herrick's gradua- 
 tion at Cambridge in 1617, and his induction as vicar 
 of Dean Prior in 1629, form one of the most obscure 
 periods in his long life. This obscurity enjoins wary 
 walking on the part of a biographer. At no other point 
 in the story is the temptation to lay undue weight upon 
 a slender thread of evidence so great. In attempting to 
 unravel the tangled thread of these all-important years, 
 almost our only clue is that afforded by the poet himself, 
 ahdi as a single instance will show, Herrick plays fast and 
 loose with the would-be chroniclers of his life. Because 
 he writes an epitaph on a person — ^to wit. Prudence 
 Baldwin, the faithful housekeeper of Dean Prior days — 
 and lays her in her " little urn," it must not for a moment 
 be assumed that she is dead ; the parish register at Dean 
 Prior records that she lived at least thirty years after her 
 epitaph was written, saw her octogenaria;n master put 
 into his little um, and his pulpit occupied by his successor. 
 The reader, therefore, in following the story of the poet's 
 life during these obscure years,, must be prepared to find, 
 instead of the record of estabUshed facts, a long series 
 of more or less plausible suppositions. He will frequently 
 encounter the words " probable " and " not impossible," 
 and must rest content with these until firmer ground is 
 reached. 
 
 When Herrick left the University in 1617, it is natural 
 49 
 
50 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 to suppose that he made his way back to London. His 
 Cambridge letters tell of visits paid to the capital in 
 undergraduate days, and it was there that most of his 
 friends and relations were settled. It is uncertain 
 whether his mother was still living at Hampton. Some 
 time before 1629, the year of her death, she had left that 
 home, and had gone to reside with her married daughter 
 at Brantham in Suffolk.^ His brother Nicholas, how- 
 ever, was residing in London with his wife and family, 
 and several of Herrick's poems point to a dose friendship 
 between the brothers. Sir WiUiam Herrick, too, probably 
 passed a certain portion of the year at his business house 
 in Wood Street, but there is nothing to indicate that his 
 nephew spent much time in his society. With the poet's 
 departure from Cambridge, Sir William Herrick dis- 
 appears from our view. He hved at Beaumanor until 
 1653, but we note, without surprise, that he finds no 
 place in the poet's " white temple of my heroes," the 
 " eternal calendar " which promises immortality to so 
 many persons bearing the poet's name. Various relations 
 on his mother's side — ^the families of Stone and Soame, 
 of whom we shall hear more presently — ^were also either 
 residing in London, or in some way connected with it. 
 
 As we saw in the preceding chapter, it seems to have 
 been Herrick's purpose during the latter portion of his 
 stay at Cambridge to take up a legal career as soon as he 
 had finished with the University. How far he carried this 
 project is uncertain ; his name does not appear on the 
 register of the Inner or Middle Temple, Gray's Inn, or 
 Lincoln's Inn, though some of the poems in the Hesperides 
 show that he numbered amongst his friends several persons 
 intimately associated with the law. In any case, he had, 
 by the year 1627 at the latest, abandoned the law for 
 the Church. We have no knowledge of the date of his 
 ordination, and it is particularly unfortunate that in 
 Dr M. Hutton's Extracts from the Registers of the Bishop 
 of London, preserved in the Manuscript Room at the 
 1 Metcalfe, Visitation of Suffolk in 1612. 
 
"SEALED OF THE TRIBE OF BEN" 51 
 
 British Museum (Harleian MSS., 6955-6), and giving a 
 list of clergymen ordained within the London diocese, 
 there is an hiatus for the years 1620-7. It is probable, 
 however, that his ordination did not take place long 
 before 1627, when he was appointed chaplain to the 
 Duke of Buckingham on his military expedition to the 
 Isle of Rh^. We have, accordingly, a period of no less 
 than ten years, during which we learn nothing of Herrick 
 except what he chooses to tell us in his poems. These 
 make it clear that he moved freely at this time in some of 
 the most important circles of London hfe, was intimate 
 with city fathers and their wives, with noblemen and 
 noblewomen, with musicians, men of letters, and men of 
 law ; but, in spite of his many friendships, his name has 
 as yet been sought in vain among the printed and un- 
 printed records of the period. T^ere is no mention of 
 him prior to 1629 in any of the State Papers, or in any 
 of the valuable collections of records published by the 
 Historical Manuscripts Commission, with the exception 
 of that reference to his debts at Trinity Hall, already 
 alluded to. The letter-writers of the time are also 
 silent concerning him. James HoweU, who, when in 
 London, moved in the same circles as Herrick, and, like 
 him, was able to subscribe himself " son and servitor " 
 to Ben Jonson, never mentions his name in his Familiar 
 Letters. 
 
 It would also be interesting to know how the im- 
 pectmious Cambridge student of former years managed 
 to meet the expenses of fashionable London hfe during 
 the whole of this period. We know that he had patrons 
 like Endymion Porter, MUdmay Fane, Earl of W^tmor- 
 land, and the princely Philip, Earl of Pembroke, who 
 supplied him with what he happily calls " the oil of 
 maintenance " ; but at what period in his career he first 
 won their patronage is imcertain. But whether he ob- 
 tained some lucrative appointment at Court or elsewhere, 
 or was dependent for has sustenance on patrons and rich 
 relations, or whether he had learnt Mrs Rawdon Crawley's 
 
52 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 art of living well on nothing a year, one thing is certain : 
 there is throughout his poems, which tell us so much 
 of his state of mind and body, no mention of poverty 
 until we reach the time of his ejection from Dean Prior 
 in 1647. He has left us no " Compleynt to his Purse," 
 and even hastens to assure his readers in his Farewell 
 unto Poetry} which was almost certainly written in 
 1629, th^t it is not lack of money which leads him to the 
 priesthood. Apostrophizing the muse of poetry as the 
 almighty nature that gives 
 
 Food, 
 White fame and resurrection to the good, 
 
 he earnestly bids her turn from him at this crisis in his 
 career : 
 
 But unto me be only hoarse, since now 
 (Heaven and my soul bear record of my vow) 
 I my desires screw from thee, and direct 
 Them and my thoughts to that sublim'd respect 
 And conscience unto priesthood ; 'tis not need 
 (The scarecrow unto mankind) that doth breed 
 Wiser conclusions in me, since I know 
 I've more to bear my charge than way to go ; 
 Or had I not, I'd stop the spreading itch 
 Of craving more, so in conceit be rich. 
 But 'tis the God of Nature who intends 
 And shapes my function for more glorious ends.' 
 
 The story of Herrick's London years, as far as we 
 can piece it together by the help of his poems, is the 
 story of his friendships. His friends were many, and 
 thanks to the geniality of his nature, to which his poems 
 bear abundant testimony, he moved freely in circles some- 
 what widely separated from each other. The circle which 
 he would most naturally enter when he first came up from 
 Cambridge was that of his own family — ^the circle of 
 prosperous city merchants, alderman uncles, and lady 
 
 1 Poems not included in the Hesperides, Pollard, ii. 263. ' ii. 263. 
 
"SEALED OF THE TRIBE OF BEN" 53 
 
 mayoress aunts. On his mother 's side were the " honoured 
 kinsmen " to whom some of the Hesperides poems are 
 addressed — Sir William Soame, his brother Sir Thomas, 
 who at a later period held the posts of Sheriff of London 
 and Middlesex, Lord Mayor of London, and M.P. for the 
 city; also Mr Stephen Soame, the son of either Sir 
 William or Sir Thomas, and Sir Richard Stone. On his 
 father's side there were, in addition to his merchant 
 brother Nicholas, his wife and family — to whom, accord- 
 ing to Nichols' History of Leicestershire, no less than seven 
 poems are addressed ^ — ^the various branches of the 
 family of Wheeler, one member of which, John Wheeler 
 the goldsmith, had married a daughter of Mr Robert 
 Herrick of Leicester, the poet's uncle. Towards one of 
 the Wheelers he seems to have felt something deeper 
 than kinship. This was Ehzabeth Wheeler, who may, 
 perhaps, be identified with the Elizabeth, daughter of 
 Edmund Wheeler, that was baptized in St Vedast's 
 Church, Foster Lane, on July 20, 1589. He celebrates 
 her beauty in three of his most graceful poems (Nos. 130, 
 263, 1068), wooing her, somewhat after the manner of the 
 pastoralists, under the name of Amaryllis. 
 
 If Herrick was free of the society of city merchants, 
 their wives and pretty daughters, he also had access to 
 the literary circles of the time, and forgathered with 
 poets and wits in the London taverns. His open sesame 
 to this society was, of course, his poetry, which was now 
 poured forth in no stinting measure. Of the delight 
 which he foimd in this tavern life, and of his willingness 
 to " let the canakin cUnk," there can be no question. 
 His bacchanalian verses and his anacreontics in praise 
 of a life of boon fellowship are many and whole-hearted, 
 while his Ode for Ben Jonson (911) is an eloquent tribute 
 
 1 These are the following : To his Brother, Nicholas Herrick (iioo) ; To 
 his Sister-in-law, Susanna Herrick [g77) ; Upon his Kinswoman, Mistress 
 Elizabeth Herrick (376) ; To his Kinsman, Thomas Herrick (983) ; To his 
 Kinswoman, Mistress Susanna Herrick (522) ; Upon his Kinswoman, 
 Mistress Bridget Herrick (564) ; To his Nephew to be prosperous in 
 Painting (384). 
 
54 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 of his devotion to the " father " who presided over his 
 " sons and servitors " at those 
 
 Ljnic feasts. 
 Made at the Sun, 
 The Dog, the Triple Tun. 
 
 Many of the most distinguished men of the age were 
 included among the frequenters of these taverns. Of 
 poets and dramatists, in addition to Jonson and Herrick, 
 there were Field, Brome, Cartwright, Randolph, Suckling, 
 and Waller ; statesmanship and diplomacy were repre- 
 sented by Lord Falkland, Edward Hyde, and Sir Kenelm 
 Digby ; the Church sent George Morley, the future 
 Bishop of Winchester, and Richard Corbet, the future 
 Bishop of Oxford and Norwich. From the Leges Con- 
 viviales, which were engraved in letters of gold upon black 
 marble above the chimney-piece in the Apollo Chamber 
 in the tavern of The Devil and St. Dunstan, Temple Bar, 
 we learn that ladies were not excluded from the revels, — 
 
 " Nee lectae foeminaB repudiantor " — 
 
 but the doors were shut fast against the dullard, the 
 lewd fop, and the whey-faced precisian : 
 
 " Idiota, insulsus, tristis, turpis abesto." 
 
 In this congenial society Herrick's muse was not idle. 
 We learn from one of his poems. His Lachrymae (371), 
 written years afterwards at Dean Prior, that he was 
 known to his comrades of these London days as " the 
 music of a feast " ; and it is likely enough that many 
 of his bacchanalian and anacreontic verses, including the 
 magnificent lines. To Live Merrily and trust to Good Verses 
 (201), were specially indited for the ears of the chosen 
 comrades who met in the Apollo Chamber, or at the 
 Sun, the Dog, or the Triple Tun. Towards Ben Jonson 
 himself his feeUngs were ever loyal and devout. When 
 the " Master " died in 1637, Herrick did not contribute 
 anything to the volume of memorial verses, entitled 
 
"SEALED OF THE TRIBE OF BEN" 55 
 
 Jonsonus Virbius, which was edited by Bishop Duppa 
 in 1638, and which consisted of tributes paid to the dead 
 poet's memory by a vast number of members of the 
 " tribe." But the Devonshire vicar was by no means 
 silent on that occasion. His Ode for Ben Jonson, already 
 referred to, and his epigram upon him, beginning " After 
 the rare arch-poet, Jonson, died " (382), equal in the 
 expression of admiration, as they surpass in poetic 
 worth, any of the poems included in Jonsonus Virbius. 
 The truth is — and it is one to which we shall have to 
 rettim later — ^that Herrick recognized himself as the 
 " arch-poet's " son in a very special manner ; Jonson was 
 his father as head of the tribe of which he had been sealed 
 a member, but he was also his poetic father, to whom he 
 looked for guidance in the composition of his verses. It 
 is in this spirit of discipleship that one of the airiest of 
 his lyrics, his Prayer to Ben Jonson, is written (604) : 
 
 When I a verse shall make. 
 
 Know I have pray'd thee. 
 For old religipn's sake. 
 
 Saint Ben, to aid me. 
 
 Make the way smooth for me, 
 
 When I, thy Herrick, 
 Honouring thee, on my knee 
 
 Offer my lyric. 
 
 Candles I'll give to thee. 
 
 And a new altar. 
 And thou. Saint Ben, shalt be 
 
 Writ in my Psalter. 
 
 Herrick's devotion to Jonson was apparently of an 
 exclusive nature ; of the other members of the tribe, 
 and of contemporary men of letters outside of it, he 
 tells us very little. He contributed a commendatory 
 poem to the 1647 edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's 
 works, but there is nothing to indicate that he was 
 acquainted with either of these dramatists. He honoured 
 Selden, Denham, and Charles Cotton with verses, and 
 
56 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 seems to have been on intimate terms with the last 
 named ; but of Suckling, Carew, Randolph, and the 
 other stars in the Caroline firmament, there is no mention. 
 
 Apart from Jonson, it would seem as though Herrick 
 hved on more intimate terms with the musicians of 
 Charles's court than with the courtier-poets and other 
 men of letters. This was largely due to the fact that 
 several of the l3nics in the Hesperides and Noble Numbers 
 were written with the express purpose of being set to 
 music and sung before the King in Whitehall. This 
 brought him into touch with both William and Henry 
 Lawes, and also with other leading musicians of the 
 time, Robert Ramsay and Nicholas Laniere. To each of 
 the two brothers, William and Heiury Lawes, Herrick 
 devotes a poem (No. 907 and 851), and the language in 
 which he addresses them is full of cordiality. 
 
 A study of the pubhshed song-books of the seventeenth 
 century discloses the fact that about a dozen of the songs 
 of the Hesperides were set to music by Henry or William 
 Lawes. In Henry Lawes's three books of Ayres and 
 Dialogues, pubUshed from 1653 onwards, we find the 
 following : — " To a Gentlewoman objecting to his Gray 
 Hairs" (164), "The Primrose" (580), " Leander's 
 Obsequies " (119), " The Bag of the Bee " (92), and the 
 dialogue-poem entitled " The Kiss " (329). Most of these 
 reappear in John Playford's Treasury of Music, pub- 
 hshed in 1669, together with the following : " To EHza- 
 beth Wheeler, under the name of the Lost Shepherdess " 
 (263), " The WiUow Garland " (425), and the famous 
 song " To Anthea — Bid me to Live " (267). The com- 
 poser of the music in the case of each of the above Ij/rics 
 was Heiury Lawes. His brother WiUiam set to music 
 " To the Virgins to make much of Time " (208), better 
 known as " Gather ye Rosebuds," and the two dialogue- 
 poems, " Charon and Philomel " (730) and " The New 
 Charon " (ii. p. 270) ; these also find a place in Playford's 
 collection, together with the lyric, " How Lihes came 
 White (190)," set to music by Nicholas Laniere. 
 
"SEALED OF THE TRIBE OF BEN" 57 
 
 Very little reference has so far been made to Herrick's 
 love-poems, and it is now time to turn our attention to 
 the " lovely mistresses," the " fresh and fragrant mis- 
 tresses," to whom these are addressed, or whose freshness 
 and fragrance they celebrate. The gift of verse, which 
 opened to him the doors of the Apollo Chamber at 
 Temple Bar, also made him a persona grata with some 
 of the Stuart beauties. One of these, " Mistress Kathe- 
 rine Bradshaw, the lovely," seems on one occasion to have 
 placed a laurel wreath upon his brow, and to have won 
 for herself thereby that amaranthine wreath which the* 
 poet promises to all who are enshrined in his verses. ^ 
 His " mistresses," as the most casual reader of his poems 
 must be aware, are many. Here are some of them : 
 
 Upon the Loss of his Mistresses (39) 
 
 I have lost, and lately, these 
 Many dainty mistresses : 
 Stately Julia, prime of all : 
 Sappho next, a principal : 
 Smooth Anthea, for a skin 
 White, and heaven-Uke crystalline : 
 Sweet Electra, and the choice 
 Mjnrha, for the lute and voice : 
 Next Corinna, for her wit. 
 And the graceful use of it : 
 With Perilla : all are gone ; 
 Only Herrick's left alone 
 For to number sorrow by 
 Their departures hence, and die. 
 
 The list is extensive, but by no means complete. 
 Elsewhere we meet with Lucia, with whom he plays at 
 stool-ball for sugar-cakes and wine ; Dianeme, from 
 whose finger he sucks the sting of a " fretful bee," moral- 
 izing as he does it ; Biancha, whom, when he is blind, he 
 wiU be able to follow by her perfumes ; Perenna, who is 
 invited to dress his tomb with smallage," cypress-twigs, 
 
 1 To Mistress Katherme Bradshaw, the lovely, that crowned him with 
 Laurel (224). 2 Water parsley. 
 
58 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 and tears ; Phillis, whom he invites to share the sweets 
 of a country life with him ; Silvia, the patient saint, and 
 Oenone. To these, finally, must be added the ladies with 
 real names to whom he professes love — Mistress Elizabeth 
 Wheeler, his kinswoman ; Mistress Dorothy Parsons, the 
 daughter of the organist at Westminster Abbey ; Mistress 
 Amy Potter, the daughter of his predecessor in the living 
 at Dean Prior; and Mistress' Dorothy Keneday. Some 
 of Herrick's critics, placing charity above truth, would 
 have us believe that these mistress-poems belong ex- 
 clusively to the poet's " wild, unhallowed times," before 
 he took orders, but there is surprisingly little to adduce in 
 proof of such a theory ; it is, indeed, almost certain that 
 some of them are to be associated with his life in Devon- 
 shire. The references in these poems to grey hairs, advanc- 
 ing years, and the approach of death, do not, of course, 
 count for much in determining their date ; l3rric poets from 
 Anacreon onwards have at all times loved to dwell on 
 such things. But there is one poem, obviously written 
 only a few years before the publication of Hesperides, 
 which sufficiently refutes the idea that Julia, Anthea, 
 Corinna, and all the other "dainty mistresses," belong 
 exclusively to the London years. The poem is entitled 
 The Bad Season makes the Poet Sad (612) and reads as 
 follows : 
 
 Dull to myself, and almost dead to these 
 My many fresh and fragrant mistresses : 
 Lost to all music now, since every thing 
 Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing. 
 Sick is the land to the heart, and doth endure 
 More dangerous faintings by her desp'rate cure. 
 But if that golden age would come again. 
 And Charles here rule, as he before did reign ; 
 If smooth and unperplexed the seasons were. 
 As when the sweet Maria Uved here ; 
 I should delight to have my curls half drown' d 
 In T3rrian dews, and head with roses crown' d ; 
 And once more yet, ere I am laid out dead. 
 Knock at a star with my exalted head. 
 
"SEALED OF THE TRIBE OF BEN" 59 
 
 This poem evidently belongs to the period of the Civil 
 War, when Queen Henrietta Maria was abroad, and the 
 power of Charles was tottering to its fall. It is hard, too, 
 to believe that the most beautiful of all his mistress- 
 poems, Corinna's going a-Maying (178), could have been 
 written amid London associations. The atmosphere of 
 
 the-^eem is that of the rvnnnfrY, anrl ^hf^hrim ^'"^^ whrrh " 
 Ahf pnpt hag irivpsfpd TiTT" desrriptinn nf flip ]Aay-r\ay 
 festival a ccords with the Ufa of Dean Prior rather than 
 with that of Westminster or the taverns of the City. 
 
 A more difficult point to determine is that of the 
 reality, or unreality, of these many mistresses. Are they 
 real women whom Herrick knew and paid court to, or 
 are they dream-children, created by a poet's fancy, and 
 calling no man father ? Mr Edmimd Gosse has dis- 
 cussed this matter at some length in his essay on Herrick 
 in Seventeenth Century Studies, but most of the poet's 
 editors have refrained from expressing any very definite 
 opinion. Mr Gosse refuses to believe in Perilla, Silvia, 
 ^thea, and the deae minores, but has a very real faith 
 in Julia of the " Black eyes, double chin, and strawberry- 
 cream complexion." ^ He thinks that she belonged to 
 the poet's Cambridge years,^ and that she died before 
 1629. He even hints at a serious liaison between the 
 poet and Julia, and regards her as the mother of the girl 
 to whom is addressed the poem entitled Mr Herrick : His 
 Daughter's Dowry.^ Julia is certainly the mistress who 
 produces on our minds the greatest impression of reality, 
 and we may therefore consider her first. If she elude 
 our grasp, we may dismiss the remaining mistresses of 
 classic name as airy nothings, without further comment. 
 The poet mentions Julia in some sixty poems of the 
 Hesperides, and confesses that of his " many dainty 
 mistresses " she is " prime of all." From her he takes 
 
 ^ Seventeenth Century Studies, p. 123. 
 
 3 Mr Ltosse, wn ting in 1B72, Delieved that Herrick remained at Cam- 
 bridge until appointed vicar of Dean Prior. 
 8 " Poems not included in Hesperides," Pollard, ii. 260. 
 
6o ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 affectionate leave before starting on his voyage ' — ^the 
 voyage was probably that to the Isle of Rhe in 1627 ; 
 he bids her bum his poems if he shaU at his death leave 
 them imperfected,^ and upon her he lays other -solemn 
 charges, if she shall outHve him. 
 
 Yet with all this sincerity of utterance and semblance 
 of reality, it is not at all certain that Julia is anything 
 more than a poetic fiction. Though she is celebrated 
 in poem after poem, she leaves upon the mind a very 
 shadowy impression. We hear much of the ruby redness 
 of her Ups, the " candour " of her teeth, the perfumes she 
 exhales, and the clothes she wears ; but when we try to 
 form a conception of her as a real woman we fail. There 
 are, too, strange inconsistencies in what the poet tells us 
 of her. Often enough she appears as a light o' love, and 
 is addressed in language which is grossly sensual ; but 
 in the curious poem, Julia's Churching, or Purification 
 (898), she comes before us as a chaste matron, making 
 her way to church with her monthly nurse ! But what 
 strikes us most in the love-poems to Juha and her rivals 
 is the complete absence of an3^hing hke incident or 
 drama. There is no development in the poet's amours, 
 no inrush of hot jealousy, no satiety, no quarrelling, no 
 reconciliation, llie poet, in spite of his fourteen mis- 
 tresses, has no rivals who seek to rob him of his love. 
 We have, indeed, only to compare, in this respect, 
 Herrick's mistress-poems with those of other poets in 
 whose case we know that the love and the loved ones are 
 real, in order to appreciate this difference. Catullus's 
 love for Lesbia can be traced exactly through its different 
 stages — ^passionate yearning, full fruition, disillusionment 
 and jealousy, ending in bitter loathing — and something 
 hke this dramatic development is found in some of the 
 love-poetry of Elizabethan poets — for instance, in the 
 love-elegies of Donne. Is it not, too, the presence of 
 this dramatic development which makes the love-story 
 
 1 His Sailing from Julia (35). 
 * His Request to Julia (59). 
 
"SEALED OF THE TRIBE OF BEN" 6i 
 
 of Shakespeare's Sonnets seem so real ? But of all this 
 there is nothing in the Hesperides. The poet loves and 
 is loved. His placid, passionless mistresses accept his 
 gallant advances in silence and appear to him in his 
 dreams ; they fall sick and recover ; they object to his 
 grey hairs, but crown his head with roses ; they find 
 him growing old and infirm, but love him none the less. 
 And all this appUes to Julia just as much as to any of the 
 other mistresses. He entreats her to close his eyes when 
 death overtakes him, and foUow him with tears to the 
 grave ; but he asks Perilla to perform the same service 
 for him, and forgets that the presence of two such rivals 
 at a clergyman's bedside and tomb might be a cause of 
 scandal. 
 
 Again, do not these fanciful classical names of Her- 
 rick's mistresses, when set over against the real names 
 of Elizabeth Wheeler, Dorothy Keneday, and Amy 
 Potter, to whom also the poet protests his love, suggest 
 the fictitious character of those who bear them ? We 
 have no reason to doubt the genuineness of his affection 
 for the latter, though its ardour does not seem to have 
 been lasting. There is, indeed, a fervoiu: in the poem 
 entitled His Parting from Mistress Dorothy Keneday (122), 
 which is rarely met with in the verses addressed to Julia. 
 
 I cannot follow Mr Gosse in his statement that the 
 poems to JuUa belong exclusively to the period before the 
 poet's ordination. I beUeve, on the contrary, that they 
 extend over the whole period of his manhood up to 1648, 
 and that some of them — for instance. His Charge to 
 Julia at his Death (627) — ^were probably written not 
 long before the publication of Hesperides. Still less 
 can I agree with him in thinking that Julia was the 
 mother of the girl addressed in His Daughter's Dowry?- 
 There is absolutely no statement to this effect in the 
 poem itself, and, knowing as we do the poet's love of 
 make-believe, we have a right to question the very 
 existence of this supposed daughter. The poem is not 
 1 See Pollard, ii. 260. 
 
62 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 included in the Hesperides, but has been introduced by 
 modem editors into the collective works of Herrick frorri 
 Ashmole MS. 38, in the Bodleian.'- It bears at the dose 
 of it the poet's signature — " Robt. Hericke," and its 
 style, above all the prevalence of run-on verses, suggests 
 that it is of early date. In casting doubt upon the 
 reality of this daughter, it must be remembered how 
 fond the poet was of setting up lay-figures in order to 
 clothe them with the draperies of his abundant fancy. 
 Among the Hesperides is a poem entitled The Parting 
 Verse, or Charge to his Supposed Wife when he Travelled 
 (465), in which he sets forth in detail the course of life 
 which this lady is to follow during his absence. From 
 first to last the poem is a tissue of pure fantasy. 
 
 There seems to be, therefore, no sufficient reason for 
 supposing that Julia had any more real existence than 
 Corinna, Anthea, or any of the other classically named 
 mistresses to whom the poet makes love. And Herrick, 
 if I read him aright, comes 'very near to making on one 
 occasion a confession of the counterfeit nature of the 
 poems addressed to her and her rivals : 
 
 To His Book (194) 
 
 Like to a bride, come forth, my book, at last. 
 With all thy richest jewels overcast ; 
 Say, if there be, 'mongst many gems here, one 
 , Deserveless of the name of paragon : 
 Blush not for that, for we have set 
 Some pearls on queens that have been counterfeit. 
 
 We have tarried long over the poet's mistresses, and 
 it is time to hasten on. The Hesperides poems maJce it 
 clear that, in addition to men of letters and musicians, 
 Herrick also numbered amongst his friends certain country 
 knights, courtiers, and court-ofiicials ; that promiaent 
 members of the nobility were his patrons, and that some 
 of his lyrics were sung in the royal presence at Whitehall. 
 1 See PoUard, ii. 260. 
 
"SEALED OF THE TRIBE OF BEN" 63 
 
 The poem entitled A New Year's Gift to Sir Simon 
 Steward (319), was probably written in the December of 
 1623 ; ^ it is a poetical epistle, apparently written from 
 somewhere in the country to Sir Simon who is in town. 
 The poet, instead of sending his friend poUtical news and 
 discussion of state policy, informs him of 
 
 Winter's tales and mirth. 
 That milkmaids make about the hearth — 
 
 of Christmas sports and Twelfth-tide feasts, and all the 
 other festivities which belong to a Yuletide in the country. 
 At the same time, he is anxious that he shall not be for- 
 gotten by his London friends in his absence. 
 
 Another associate of these years was Sir Lewis Pem- 
 berton, a Northamptonshire knight, with a seat at 
 Rushden in that county. Herrick seems to have paid a 
 visit to this country house, and gives us in his Panegyric 
 to Sir Lewis Pemherton (377) a glowing picture of the 
 hospitable board of a country knight in the seventeenth 
 century. The contemporary character-writers, who draw 
 their bows at a venture, are fond of ridiculing the country 
 gentleman " whose travel is seldom farther than the 
 next market-town," who is awkward and out of place in 
 town, and " must home again, being like a dor that ends 
 his flight in a dunghill." ^ But Herrick, while glancing 
 at the churlishness of certain members of the class, pa}^ 
 a warm tribute to the hospitahty and inborn kindUness 
 of Sir Lewis. 
 
 Of Herrick's friends at Court notice may first of all 
 be taken of Edward Norgate, Clerk of the Signet to 
 Charles I., John Crofts, Cupbearer to the King, and 
 Sir John Mennes, the Commander of the Navy, and a 
 minor poet of some fame in his day. To each of these 
 Herrick addresses verses. 
 
 Reference has already been made to the noblemen 
 
 1 See Pollard's Note to this poem. 
 
 * Sir Thomas Overbury's Characters : " The Country Gentleman." 
 
64 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 and Court favourites whom Herrick reckoned among his 
 patrons — Philip, Earl of Pembroke, Mildmay Fane, Earl 
 of Westmorland, Robert Pierrepont, Viscount Newark, 
 and Mr Endymion Porter, Groom of His Majesty's 
 Bedchamber. Of these the most important was the 
 last, who seems to have been to Herrick what the im- 
 pecunious undergraduate had vainly desired his uncle. 
 Sir WiUiam, to be — " a true Maecenas." Porter was, 
 after Buckingham, one of the most influential of the 
 King's courtiers. Bom in 1587, he had been educated 
 in Spain, and had served for a time in the household of 
 Olivares. Returning to England, he had entered the 
 service of the royal favourite, Buckingham, and his for- 
 tunes had advanced concurrently with those of his 
 master. Through Buckingham's influence he was made 
 Gentleman of the King's Bedchamber about 1620, and 
 when the Spanish marriage scheme was afoot, his know- 
 ledge of Spain led to his being sent thither in 1622 to 
 prepare for the arrival of the princely wooer. He re- 
 turned to England, but in the following year accompanied 
 Prince Charles and Buckingham to Madrid. After the 
 new king's accession, End57mion Porter attained to still 
 higher power and influence. The State Papers have 
 much to relate of the part he took in the affairs of Court 
 and State, and of the princely gifts bestowed upon him 
 by the King. In later years he shared in the misfortimes 
 of his party. After sitting in the Long Parliament as 
 member for Droitwich, he was expelled from that body 
 in 1643 on account of his supposed connection with a 
 popish plot. A little later we find him with Queen 
 Henrietta in Holland ; shortly before the King's death 
 he returned to England, and is supposed to have died 
 obscurely at London in the August of 1649.^ 
 
 It was Porter's ambition, when in the heyday of his 
 fortune, to shine as the patron of men of letters. To 
 
 1 See State Papers, Domestic, of the reigns of James I. and Charles I., 
 passim, and Dorothea Townshend, The Life and Letters of Endymion 
 eorter ; also E. B. de Fonblanque, Lives of the Lords Stransford. 
 
"SEALED OF THE TRIBE OF BEN" 65 
 
 him Dekker dedicated his Dream in the year 1620, and 
 Davenant his play, The Wits, in 1634. Thomas May, 
 Edmund Bolton and Gervase Warmestry were amongst 
 his friends, and the last-named, dedicating to him his 
 England's Wound and its Cure in 1628, speaks of him 
 as beloved by two kings : " by James for bis admirable 
 wit, and by Charles for his general learning, brave style, 
 sweet temper, great experience, travels, and modem 
 languages." That, in addition to these qualities, he was 
 an accomplished connoisseur is attested by the tact that 
 he was one of the agents employed by Charles I. in 
 forming his famous collection of pictures. 
 
 The friendship between Porter and Herrick seems to 
 have been close and honourable. There is no trace of 
 servihty in the poet's reference to the wealthy patron 
 at whose porch he finds a " state of poets " attending upon 
 him.^ He confesses that Porter has given him " the 
 oil of maintenance," just as Horace owns the gifts of 
 the Sabine farm from Maecenas ; but in acknowledging 
 this bounty, he neither flatters nor fawns. The most 
 beautiful of the poems that bring Porter before us is the 
 Eclogue, or Pastoral between Endymion Porter and Lycidas 
 Herrick (492), which is written in the lightest and most 
 graceful manner of the Spenserian school. In it the 
 poet declares himself jealous of the time which his patron 
 and friend is spending at Court, and entreats him to 
 leave those pleasures and distractions for Latmos and the 
 society of Florabell, handsome-handed DrosomeU, and 
 dainty AmaryUis. 
 
 The mention of Endymion Porter brings us back to 
 Herrick's earlier friend, John Weekes, sometime Fellow 
 of St John's College, Cambridge. It is uncertain which 
 of the two men left the University first, but it is probable 
 that they spent some years in London together, and met 
 under Porter's roof. Weekes was for some time Porter's 
 chaplain, and it is possible that it was Herrick who 
 obtained for him this congenial post. In a letter to 
 1 See To the Honoured Master, Endymion Porter (1071). 
 
66 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Porter,^ dated July 5, 1629, Weekes addresses him as 
 " My deare Patrone ; " and in a second letter, written 
 on October 3, 1633, when Weekes, like Herrick, was a 
 parson in Devonshire, he subscribes himself, " Your 
 epicene chaplaine, both hee and shee, Joh. Weekes and 
 littel b." The jest which lurks in the words " epicene " 
 and " littel b " is lost to us now, but the tone of the 
 letter enables us to see in Weekes the humorist whose 
 reputation for joviality is recorded by Anthony k 
 Wood. 
 
 It was probably through the instrumentality of Porter 
 that Herrick came under the notice of Porter's patrons, 
 the Duke of Buckingham and the King. It has been 
 suggested by Mr Carew Hazlitt that the poet " had some 
 employment of a subordinate character at the chapel 
 in Whitehall, and we should assign to this period and 
 circumstance the composition of those pieces among the 
 Noble Numbers which bear a relation to that institution." ^ 
 The pieces in question are the Christmas Carols and 
 Songs for the Circumcision, which are described as " sung 
 before the King, in the Presence at Whitehall." Mr 
 HazUtt's theory also receives some support from the 
 words of the following distich in the Noble Numbers 
 (62): 
 
 God and the King 
 
 How am I bound to two ! God, who doth give 
 The mind ; the King, the means whereby I live. 
 
 On the other hand, it may be argued that if Herrick 
 had held a post at court, we might expect to find some 
 reference to it, and some mention of the salary paid to 
 him, among the State Papers of the period. We meet 
 with frequent references of this character in the case 
 of Laniere, Ramsay, William and Henry Lawes, and 
 " other gentlemen of the chapel," but there is nowhere 
 
 1 See Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1639-1631, p. 5, 
 * Introduction to Herrick's Works, p. xv. 
 
"SEALED OF THE TRIBE OF BEN" 67 
 
 any mention of Herrick. But whatever be the relation- 
 ship in which the poet stood to the court, it is certain 
 that Charles was acquainted with him and his verses, 
 and that some of his lyrics, including poems of a secular 
 as well as of a sacred nature, were sung to him, after 
 being set to music by the royal musicians. Nor did 
 Herrick allow himself to be entirely forgotten by his 
 monarch when residence in his Devonshire parish severed 
 him from the court. He celebrated the births of the 
 princes, Charles and James, in 1630 and 1633 respectively, 
 addressed verses to the King during the civil wars, and 
 welcomed him with a song when, in 1647, he came to 
 reside, under the protection of Cromwell's army, in the 
 royal palace at Hampton Court. 
 
 In the list of Herrick's patrons must also be placed 
 the powerful Duke of Buckingham, though the verses 
 addressed To the high and noble Prince George, Duke, 
 Marquis, and Earl of Buckingham (245) show reverent 
 regard rather than intimacy.^ But for some months 
 of the year 1627 it was the poet's lot to spend much 
 time in the duke's company. Early in that year the King 
 had decided to send an expedition to the Isle of Rhe in 
 defence of the French Huguenots, and to Buckingham 
 had been entrusted the leadership. Encountering numer- 
 ous difficulties, the ill-starred expedition did not set out 
 until June 27, when some hundred sail, carrying six 
 thousand foot and a hundred horse, left Stokes Bay 
 for the French island. Herrick, who was now probably 
 entrusting his fortunes to the waves for the first time 
 in his life, seems to have regarded the step he was taking 
 with some concern, and we are probably right in ascribing 
 to this occasion the composition of the poems, His Sailing 
 from Julia (35), The Parting Verse, or Charge to his Sup- 
 posed Wife when he Travelled (465), and, perhaps, his 
 Short Hymn to Neptune (325). The first of these reads as 
 follows : 
 
 1 Some time after Buckingham's death in i6a8, he addresses a poem 
 to the duke's niece, the Lady Mary Villiers ; see No. 341. 
 
68 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 When that day comes, whose evening says I'm gone 
 
 Unto that watery desolation. 
 
 Devoutly to thy closet-gods then pray 
 
 That my wing'd ship may meet no remora.' 
 
 Those deities which circum-walk the seas. 
 
 And look upon our dreadful passages. 
 
 Will from all dangers re-deUver me 
 
 For one drink-offering poured out by thee. 
 
 Mercy and truth live with thee ! and forbear. 
 
 In my short absence, to unsluice a tear ; 
 
 But yet for love's sake let thy lips do this. 
 
 Give my dead picture one engendering Idss : 
 
 Work that to life, and let me ever dwell 
 
 In thy remembrance, JuHa. So farewell. 
 
 In other poems he begs his supposed wife to be a 
 Penelope in his absence from her, and promises that if 
 " the great blue ruler of the seas " will prove propitious, 
 he will return before many " full-faced moons shall wane." 
 To Neptune he promises a tunny-fish as thank-offering, if 
 he wiU speed him safely to his destination. 
 
 The various English and French accounts of the ill- 
 fated expedition to the Isle of Rhe which I have seen 
 make no mention of the duke's chaplain. On the French 
 side we hear much of the " vrais dogues d'Angleterre 
 qui devorent leurs semblables," and of their leader 
 " Bouquincan " whose name the GalHc wit of the besieged 
 soldiers anagrammatizes into " coquin bani." * The 
 English State Papers, and the late Professor S. R. Gar- 
 diner 3 furnish us with a detailed account of the siege, 
 of the shortage in men and troops, of the delay in sending 
 reinforcements, and of the ignominious return of the 
 English fleet in the following November. The duke's 
 chaplain doubtless saw a good deal of the military opera- 
 tions, and if the poem entitled A Vow to Mars (386) is to 
 
 1 " Remora, the sea lamprey, or suckstone, believed to check the course 
 of ships by clinging to their keels " (Pollard). 
 
 2 See " Lettre du Baron de Sainct Surin k un sien amy dans I'armfe 
 du Roy. Ecritte de la Citadelle S. Martin de Re ce lo Septembre (1627)." 
 
 ^History of England, 1603-1642, vol. vi. p. 167. 
 
"SEALED OF THE TRIBE OF BEN" 69 
 
 be regarded seriously, actually took part in them on one 
 occasion. 
 
 Herrick's military chaplaincy indicates that, in the year 
 1627 ^t the latest, he had tinally decided to enter the 
 service of the Church. On his return from the Isle of 
 Rhe — " or, as some call it, the Isle of Rue, for the bitter 
 success we had there " ^ — ^he was within measurable 
 distance of his " banishment " to the " loathed West," 
 but before we follow him there, it will be well to form 
 a conception of his personality during these years of 
 London life. The naive self-portraiture of Herrick in his 
 verses atones to some extent for the meagreness of 
 external evidence as to his Ufe and character. Those 
 verses help us to follow the poet along his primrose path 
 of dalliance, enjoying to the fuU the pleasures of London 
 society, and taking no thought for the morrow : 
 
 I fear no earthly powers, 
 But care for crowns of flowers ; 
 And love to have my beard 
 With wine and oil besmeared. 
 This day I'll drown all sorrow ; 
 Who knows to live to-morrow ? ^ 
 
 This is the cry of the anacreontic l5nist all the world over, 
 and in Herrick's case, at least, there is no reason to 
 doubt that, during these London years, the sentiment 
 was genuine and spontaneous. The same thoughts and 
 feelings recur in the ode entitled " His Age, dedicated to 
 his peculiar friend, Mr John Wickes (Weekes), under the 
 name of Posthumus " {336). Here there is wistful regret 
 for the years that are no more, and a foreboding that 
 worse times are to follow ; but the poet refuses to give 
 way to gloomy thoughts, and, so far from experiencing 
 sorrow's crown of sorrow, feasts rapturously on past 
 memories, washed down with copious draughts of " brave 
 Burgundian wine " : 
 
 1 Howell, Familiar Letters, ed. Jacobs, I. 250. 
 2 No. 170. 
 
70 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Crown we our heads with roses then. 
 And 'noint with Tyrian balm ; for when 
 
 We two are dead. 
 The world with us is buried. 
 
 Then Uve we free 
 As is the air, and let us be 
 Our own fair wind, cind mark each one 
 Day with the white and lucky stone. 
 
 As a picture of the poet's manner of life at the time 
 when it was written, and of the golden days that had 
 gone before, the poem is of great v^ue. It is the Herrick 
 of the taverns that is revealed, the " music of a feast," 
 whose lyrics win the applause of Jonson himself and of 
 every other member of the tribe. Elsewhere he stands 
 before us as the squire of dames ; he is many times 
 entertained by " the most virtuous Mistress Pot," and, as 
 is his wont, rewards her with a poem and a declaration 
 that she is the " lamp eternal to my poetry " ; ^ to 
 another of his ladies he sends not only a string of verses 
 but also "a pipkin of jelly," which inspires the verses.^ 
 His mistress-poems are full of all sorts of gallantry, and, 
 as the verses to the Countess of CarUsle (169) — ^the heroine 
 of Browning's Strafford — show, he could pay a compli- 
 ment to a lugh-bom noblewoman with the fine grace of 
 the consummate cavalier : 
 
 I saw about her spotless wrist 
 Of blackest silk, a curious twist. 
 Which, circumvolving gently, there 
 Enthrall' d her arm as prisoner. 
 Dark was the gaol, but as if light 
 Had met t' engender with the night ; 
 Or so as darkness made a star. 
 To show at once both night aiid day. 
 One fancy more ! but if there be 
 Such freedom in captivity, 
 I beg of Love that ever I 
 May in like chains of darkness lie.' 
 
 1 To Mistress Pot (226). " A Ternary of Littles (733). 
 
 s Upon a black twist rounding the arm of the Countess of Carlisle (169). 
 
"SEALED OF THE TRIBE OF BEN" 71 
 
 The year 1629 brought with it a great change in the 
 poet's circumstances and manner of life. The essenced 
 cavaUer, the sealed member of the tribe of Ben, became 
 the coimtry parson, and exchanged the gay society of 
 London and the Court for a vicarage and ninety-three 
 acres of glebe. Late in the summer of that year he lost 
 his mother, who had been spending the last years of her 
 life in the comfortable home of her daughter, Mercy 
 Wingfield, at Brantham in Suffolk. Of the poet's relations 
 with her we know nothing, and speculation on such a 
 matter is particularly undesirable. She left him in her 
 wiU a ring of the value of twenty shillings, a hke gift 
 being made to her son Nicholas and her daughter-in-law, 
 the wife of William Herrick. To her son Thomas, whose 
 financial difficulties as a farmer have already been 
 mentioned, she left nothing ; he may have died before 
 1629. She bequeathed £100 to her son William, but 
 most of her property went to the daughter in whose 
 house she died. Her various legacies to friends and ser- 
 vants, and to the poor of Brantham, show that she was 
 possessed of fairly ample means at the time of her death.^ 
 
 Very soon after his mother's funeral, Herrick set 
 out for Devonshire. A docquet, preserved among the 
 domestic series of State Papers in the PubUc Record 
 Office, and endorsed September 30, 1629, furnishes us with 
 the following information : 
 
 " A presentaeon to the vicarige of Deane-Prior in the 
 dioces of Exeter for Robert Hearick, Gierke, and M^ of 
 Arts, the same being void by the promo&)n of the last 
 Incumbent to the Bishoprick of CarlUe. Subscf upon 
 significacon of his Ma*^ pleasure by the Lord Viscount 
 Dorchester, and procured by his Lo". 
 
 p. Gall." 
 
 The Uving of Dean Prior was in the hands of Sir 
 Edward Giles,- the lord of the manor there, but as Dr 
 
 1 The will is transcribed verbatim in Grosart's Memorial Introduction, 
 p. ixxxiv. 
 
72 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Potter had been promoted to a bishopric, the right of 
 presenting a successor reverted to the King ; the inference 
 therefore is that Herrick owed his living to Charles . There 
 was apparently some sUght delay in the negotiations, 
 for among the State Papers we meet with the following, 
 which is in Herrick's own neat handwriting, and which 
 furnishes us with the valuable information as to the 
 poet's service under Buckingham in the Isle of Rhe : 
 
 " To the Kinges most excellent Majesty : The humble 
 peticon of Robert Hericke, Chaplajme to the late Duke 
 of Buckingham' in the Isle of Reis. Whereas yt was yo' 
 Ma*^ especiall favour to bestow on y" petiGoer the vica- 
 ridge of Deane, by y° remoovaU of Doctor Potter to y' 
 B^^ of Carlyle. It may now please yo' most sacred 
 Ma*^ (the Commenda granted to him by yo' Ma'^ being 
 expired this present Michas) that yo' sov'aigne command 
 may goe forth to the signature for the dispatch of the 
 petiCoer, who shall ever pray for yo' Ma*^ longe and 
 happie raigne. 
 
 — Coetera mando Deo." 
 
 A further confirmation of Herrick's appointment to 
 the Devonshire living is found in the nineteenth volume 
 of Rymer's Fcedera where, in a Ust of preferments for the 
 year 1629, we read : 
 
 " Robertus Hearick, Clericus, A.M., habet consimUes 
 Literas Patentes de presentatione ad Vicariam de Dearie 
 Prior, Diocesis Exoniensis, jam legittime et de jure 
 vacantem." 
 
 If one of Herrick's poems is to be believed — and 
 there is in it an accent of sincerity and real emotion 
 which is rarely met with elsewhere — it is manifest that 
 he reahzed to the fuU the seriousness of the step which 
 he was now taking, and the lofty duties of the services 
 to which he was dedicating his Ufe and his powers. It 
 was one thing to be chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham ; 
 another, and a very different thing, to be the spiritual 
 
"SEALED OF THE TRIBE OF BEN" 73 
 
 guide and pastor of a village community. In the Ash- 
 mole MS. 38, which contains several of Herrick's poems, 
 is a copy of verses entitled Mr Robert Herrick : His 
 Farewell unto Poetry,^ and it was Dr Grosart who first 
 pointed out the importance of these verses in their 
 bearing on the poet's life and character, and drew atten- 
 tion to the fact that they were written when he was 
 leaving London for Dean Prior. Some of the verses 
 of this poem have already been quoted (see p. 52) as evi- 
 dence of the poet's freedom from poverty during his 
 London years ; but it behoves us now to consider the 
 poem as a whole more closely. The underlying idea of 
 it is that Herrick feels it his duty, now that he is taking 
 upon him the cure of souls, to bid farewell to poetry, 
 save only in as far as it can be apphed to the noble 
 numbers of sacred song. The parting is hard, for the muse 
 of poetry has been the yoke-fellow of his Ufe, filling him 
 with rapture and mystic frenzy : 
 
 Even such are we, and in our parting do 
 
 No otherwise than as those former two 
 
 Natures like ours ; we who have spent our time 
 
 Both from the morning to the evening chime. 
 
 Nay, till the bellman of the night had tolled 
 
 Past noon of night — yet were the hours not old 
 
 Nor duUed with iron sleep — but have outworn 
 
 The fresh and fairest flourish of the mom 
 
 With flame and rapture ; drinking to the odd 
 
 Number of nine, which makes us full with God. 
 
 And in that mystic frenzy we have hurled. 
 
 As with a tempest, nature through the world, 
 
 And in a whirlwind twirl' d her home, aghast 
 
 At that which in her ecstasy had passed ; 
 
 Thus crowned with rosebuds, sack, thou mad'st me fly. 
 
 Like fire-drakes, yet didst me no harm thereby.* 
 
 But now he turns from poetry and bids her be hoarse 
 to him. The God of Nature is now shaping his powers 
 
 1 There is another copy of the same poem, with a few variants, in the 
 British Museum, Add. MS. 22, 603. 
 > Poems not included in Hesperides ; Pollard ii, 264, 
 
 {i,m 3 a 
 
74 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 for more glorious ends, and he is entering a higher sphere 
 of service than that of the muses of Helicon. He casts 
 upon his mistress the wistful eyes of Orpheus as he 
 turned to look upon his Eurydice, or those of Demos- 
 thenes and Cicero as they fixed their gaze upon the 
 fatherland from which they were banished ; and then, 
 with tears starting from his eyes, bids her farewell : 
 
 Then part in name of peace, and softly on 
 With numerous • feet to hoofy Helicon ; 
 And when thou art upon that forked hill 
 Amongst the thrice three sacred virgins, fill 
 A fuU-brimm'd bowl of fury and of rage. 
 And quaff it to the poets of our age . . . 
 Thus with a Idss of warmth and love I part. 
 Not so,, but that some relic in my heart 
 Shall stand for ever, though I do address 
 Chiefly myself to what I must profess. 
 Know yet, rare soul, when my diviner muse 
 Shall want a handmaid, as she oft will use. 
 Be ready, thou for me, to wait upon her. 
 Though as a servant, yet a maid of honour. 
 The crown of duty is our duty : well 
 Doing's the fruit of doing weU. Farewell. 
 
 1 Numerous=moving in rhythmic numbers. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 DEAN PRIOR 
 
 Dean Prior, to which Herrick was " banished " in the 
 autumn of 1629, is a parish of about four thousand acres, 
 situated on the south-eastern slopes of Dartmoor. The 
 high-road from Exeter to Pl3miouth passes through the 
 scattered village, and within a five miles' radius of 
 Herrick's church he the ancient townships of Totnes 
 and Ashburton. Modem civilization, as represented by 
 railways and factories, has laid the lightest of fingers upon 
 Dean Prior, and to this day the village, though somewhat 
 shrunk in size and importance, presents to the visitor 
 very much the same appearance that it did to Herrick on 
 his arrival there in 1629. Many of the cottages still 
 retain their thatched roofs and penthouses, their open 
 hearths and massive chimneys ; and though the manor- 
 houses have been shorn of much of their former splendour, 
 they have at any rate been spared the hand of the modern 
 renovator. Age, so far from withering their pristine 
 beauty, has enhanced it by the mellowed colours of stone 
 and woodwork. Ivy, roses, and honeysuckle creep over 
 the cottages, and the little roadside gardens are still gay 
 with the flowers which we meet with in the Hesperides 
 — daffodils, primroses, violets, and wallflowers, the 
 crimson pseony, and the stately white Uly. In the valley 
 are water-meadows, each meadow irrigated in the 
 characteristic Devonian manner by " leats " which bring 
 fertility from the Dartmoor streams ; and above these, 
 
 76 
 
76 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 climbing upwards towards the heather moors, are the 
 cornfields, the bright red earth of which glows in the 
 early spring smishine. 
 
 But the chief beauty of the village Ues in its apple 
 orchards, which creep close to the church and the cottages 
 and follow the devious windings of Dean Bum. For six 
 months of the year the trees are grey with ragged lichen, 
 but in the first warm days of May, the greyness is hidden 
 beneath sheets of rosy " blooth," to be followed, as 
 spring and summer merge into autumn, by clusters of 
 golden fruit. There is no more characteristic feature of 
 the combes of South Devon than these apple orchards, 
 and they must at the same time have recalled to Herrick's 
 mind the 
 
 uda 
 Mobilibus pomaria rivis 
 
 of Horace's Tibur, and thus have led him to compare 
 his Devonshire glelae with the Sabine farm of the famous 
 Roman lyrist. 
 
 Dean Burn, to which Herrick has given enduring 
 obloquy, is a typical Dartmoor stream. Taking its rise 
 on the moors to the west of the village, it makes its way 
 first of all through a rocky gorge where buzzard and 
 carrion-crow find a resting place, only to lose itself later 
 among thick coppices of scrub-oak and hazel. Even 
 when the combe widens and the waters of the bum grow 
 more placid, it still preserves something of its " warty 
 incivihty " : 
 
 Thy rocky bottom, that doth tear thy streams 
 And makes them frantic even to all extremes. 
 To my content I never should behold. 
 Were thy streams silver, or thy rocks all gold ! ' 
 
 The stream divides the parish of Dean Prior from that 
 of Buckfastleigh, and at last pours its waters into those 
 of the Dart, not far from the walls of the old Cistercian 
 abbey of Buckfast. 
 
 1 To Dean Bum (86). 
 
DEAN PRIOR 77 
 
 The background to this picture of cornfields and 
 watered meadows, orchards and woodlands, is formed 
 by great stretches of moorland, the soft contours of 
 which are now and again broken by rugged granite tors. 
 As one stands in Dean Prior churchyard, and looks 
 northward across the valley of the Dart, a wide stretch 
 of this moorland scenery skirts the horizon and adds 
 an element of grandeur and vastness to the idyllic beauty 
 which lies at one's feet. But for the glories of Dartmoor 
 Herrick cared as little as that other Devonshire poet 
 of the seventeenth century, William Browne, who, with 
 all his love for the rich scenery of the Tavy valley, was 
 content to leave the adjoining moorlands unsung. 
 
 The church and parsonage of Dean Prior now stand 
 close to the high-road, but in the seventeenth century 
 the road passed nearer to the moors, and the chrurch was 
 reached by a lane between high hedgerows. Herrick's 
 church is a somewhat spacious building, chiefly in the 
 Perpendicular style, with nave, north and south aisles, 
 and a western battlemented tower. The vicarage has 
 been altered and enlarged, but some of the older parts 
 of the building, now used as of&ces, are probably not later 
 in date than the seventeenth century, and may well 
 have been the parlour, haU, kitchen, and buttery for 
 which the poet offers his^ymn of thanksgiving to God. 
 
 Herrick's parishioners were doubtless to a large extent 
 husbandmen, engaged in the cultivation of com and 
 fruit, and in the rearing of cattle and sheep. Some of 
 them, however, were probably occupied in the weaving 
 trade, which the monks of Buckfast had introduced into 
 the Dart valley centuries before, and which to this day 
 remains one of the staple industries of the district. 
 The vUlage of Dean stiU preserves a tradition of a weaver 
 whose ghost used to appear at his loom until laid to rest 
 by the vicar, and Westcote, in his View of Devonshire, 
 published in 1630, makes special mention of a coarse 
 cloth, called narrow-pin-whites, which was produced in the 
 neighbourhood of Totnes. The population of the village 
 
^8 Uomtit HERRICK 
 
 in 1901 was 259, but the church register gives evideric^ 
 that it was somewhat larger in the seventeenth century. 
 
 The lord of the manor of Dean, and Herrick's most 
 distinguished parishioner, was Sir Edward Giles, who 
 lived at Dean Court, within half a mile of the church 
 and vicarage. In 1629 the knight was about fifty years 
 of age and a man of standing in the county. In his 
 youth he had travelled, and fought for Queen and country 
 in the Netherlands ; returning to England in 1603, he 
 had been knighted by James I., and after his father's 
 death, he had, in the words of Prince, " the whole power 
 of the county put into his hands. "^ He represented 
 Totnes Borough in several of the parliaments of James I. 
 and Charles I. Connected by marriage with Sir Edward 
 Giles, were the families of Yard, Lowman, and North- 
 leigh, members of which were settled at Dean Prior in 
 Herrick's time, and are celebrated by him in his poems. 
 
 Of Herrick's manner of hfe at Dean Prior, and of his 
 relationships with his parishioners, we learn a good deal 
 from the Hesperides and Noble Numbers ; but it is not 
 easy to determine exactly how far he appreciated his 
 Devonshire home, and how far it seemed to him a place of 
 bitter exile. In considering this matter, it is important 
 to remember that he was a poet of moods, and that in 
 a period of eighteen years (1629-1647) spent at Dean 
 Prior, he experienced many moods and regarded his life 
 there in different ways. We have already seen with 
 what " sublim'd respect and conscience unto priesthood " 
 he entered upon his holy calling ; we have now to consider 
 the character of his life as vicar. Scattered through the 
 Hesperides are some six poems which express with clearest 
 utterance his " discontents in Devonshire." There is first 
 of all his poem To Dean Burn (86), whose bed, he declares, 
 is as rocky as the hearts of the men who live by it — 
 
 A people currish, churlish as the seas. 
 And rude almost as rudest savages. 
 
 1 Worthies of Devon, p. 42a. 
 
DEAN PRIOR 79 
 
 Following upon this, is the poem To his Household Gods 
 (278), which ends with the stinging couplet — 
 
 Search worlds of ice, and rather there 
 Dwell than in loathed Devonshire. 
 
 Similar repugnance is expressed in the Unes Upon 
 Himself (456), and His Return to London (713), in which 
 he welcomes, with something like rapture, the change 
 of fortune which led to his departure from his country 
 vicarage. 
 
 The loathing for the West Country which these poems 
 express is uncompromising enough. Were we forced to 
 form a judgment on these alone, it would be possible 
 to compare Herrick's exile at Dean Prior with that of 
 Ovid at Tomi. But if we look at them more closely, we 
 see that, instead of being spread over the whole of the 
 poet's life in Devonshire, they all belong to about the year 
 1647, the year of his ejection from Dean Prior. Now we 
 do not know with any certainty to what extent the 
 poet's parishioners sjmipathized with the Puritan party 
 during the years of the Civil War, or with what feelings 
 they regarded the dismissal of their vicar and the induction 
 of his Puritan successor, John S5mis. But we can realize 
 that in Dean Prior, as throughout the country, those 
 years of strife must have sorely tried the better feelings of 
 many an Enghsh home. It was a time when household 
 was divided against household and village against village, 
 when homes were ruined and precious blood shed in the 
 defence of creed and party. At such a time, too, the 
 village parson, so far from being able to allay the strife, 
 must himself have been the very centre of the feud, and 
 the butt of insult and calumny. Herrick could not have 
 escaped from all this, and the bitterness of his feehngs 
 finds utterance in his verse. At such a time, and amid 
 such surroundings, the memory of the old London life 
 stirred strange yearnings within him ; the paternal 
 country where much of his youth and early manhood 
 had been spent called him with persistent summons, and 
 
8o ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 when at last the release came, it was welcomed with 
 rapture. Yet it is evident from one short poem that 
 this feeling of rapture was tempered even at the time 
 by a sense of regret. His parishioners may have grown 
 churlish and currish, but the vicarage with its associations 
 was still dear to him : 
 
 To Lar (333) 
 
 No more shall I, since I am driven hence. 
 Devote to thee my grains of frankincense ; 
 No more shall I from mantle-trees hang down. 
 To honour thee, my little parsley crown ; 
 No more shall I (I fear me) to thee bring 
 My chives of garlic for an offering ; 
 No more shall I from henceforth hear a choir 
 Of merry crickets by my country fire. 
 Go where I will, thou lucky Lar stay here. 
 Warm by a gUtt'ring chimney all the year. 
 
 There remain for consideration two other poems in 
 which Herrick expresses his dislike to Devonshire, and 
 in which there is no indication that they were written 
 at the time of his ejection. These are His Lachrymae 
 (371) and Discontents in Devon (51). The former is 
 written in a mood of deep dejection : 
 
 Call me no more. 
 
 As- heretofore. 
 The music of a feast ; 
 
 Since now, alas ! 
 
 The mirth that was 
 In me is dead or ceas'd. 
 
 Before I went 
 
 To banishment 
 Into the loathed West, 
 
 I could rehearse 
 
 A lyric verse, 
 And speak it with the best. 
 
DEAN PRIOR 8i 
 
 But time, ay me ! 
 
 Has laid, I see. 
 My organ fast asleep ; 
 
 And tuned my voice 
 
 Into the noise 
 Of them that sit and weep. 
 
 If we did not know that Herrick was here giving 
 utterance to a passing mood of despondency, we might 
 assume that his muse entirely deserted him in Devonshire ; 
 we have, of course, abundant evidence that this was not 
 the case, and we need only turn to the Discontents in 
 Devon to find such an assumption plainly falsified : 
 
 More discontents I never had 
 
 Since I was born than here. 
 Where I have been, and still am sad. 
 
 In this dull Devonshire ; 
 Yet, justly too, I must confess 
 
 I ne'er invented such 
 Ennobled numbers for the press. 
 
 Than where I loathed so much. 
 
 What, then, do Herrick's strictures on Devonshire and 
 Dean Prior amount to ? They show plainly enough that 
 during the last months — perhaps the last years — of his 
 residence there, he found his surroundings often distaste- 
 ful and his parishioners churlish and insolent ; they show, 
 too, that at other times he experienced moods of despon- 
 dency in which his present life stood out in drab contrast 
 to the glittering shows of earUer days. There must, 
 indeed, have been many occasions when the poet in his 
 lonely vicarage longed for the song and festive cheer 
 of the Apollo Chamber, the society of courtier friends 
 and the fleshpots of Whitehall, and on a few of these 
 occasions the sense of what he had lost moves him to 
 elegiac lament, or to malediction. But to suppose that 
 this was a prevailing state of mind, and that the whole of 
 his eighteen years' residence in Devonshire was merely 
 a time of bitter exile, is a distortion of the statements 
 recorded by Herrick himself in his poems. Over sigainst 
 
82 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 such verses as those To Dean Burn or Discontents in 
 Devon, may be set His Content in the Country (552) which 
 belongs to the Dean Prior period and bears witness to 
 the quiet joy which he and his housekeeper, Prudence 
 Baldwin, experienced in the country vicarage. What is 
 uppermost in his mind at the time when he wrote these 
 verses is a pleasant sense of independence and freedom 
 from care. It was a much more frugal Ufe than that 
 which he had spent in London at. the tables of the rich ; 
 but he had come to realize that frugality, combined with 
 independence, was better than luxury supported by the 
 "oil of maintenance," bestowed upon him by wealthy 
 patrons. Another poem, conceived in the same spirit 
 of simple contentment, and entitled His Grange, or Private 
 Wealth (724), brings the poet's Devonshire life before us 
 with singular vividiiess and charm : 
 
 Though clock. 
 To tell how night draws hence, I've none, 
 
 A cock 
 I have to sing how day draws on. 
 
 I have 
 A maid, my Prew, by good luck sent 
 
 To save 
 That little Fates me gave or lent. 
 
 A hen 
 I keep, which creeking day by day. 
 
 Tells when 
 She goes her long white egg to lay. 
 
 A goose 
 I have, which with a jealous ear 
 
 Lets loose 
 , Her tongue to tell that danger's near. 
 
 A lamb 
 I keep, tame, with my morsels fed. 
 
 Whose dam 
 An orphan left him, lately dead. 
 
 A cat 
 I keep that plays about my house. 
 
 Grown fat 
 With eating many a miching mouse. 
 
£)£aN prior 83 
 
 To these 
 A Tracy * I do keep whereby 
 
 I please 
 The more my rural privacy ; 
 
 Which are 
 But toys to give my heart some ease ; 
 
 Where care 
 None is, slight things do lightly please. 
 
 But the poem which brings the Devonshire parson 
 most clearly before us is one contained in the Noble 
 Numbers, and entitled A Thanksgiving to God for his 
 House (47). It is too long, and perhaps too familiar, 
 to quote, but some reference to it may be made, if only 
 to show how completely it refutes the idea that its author 
 was habitually discontented with his surroundings. We 
 see the pa rson seated in the chimne y-fnmpr nf his " cell ," 
 eating his belove d bppt anri Hrinirj^g his spiced wa ssail 
 bowls, while Prue Baldwin i s in the dairy making Devon- 
 .shire rrpRm- O r we toUow him t o his acres of glebe,' 
 where the romfields are ripe to harve pr, and rh^pastnrps 
 wpjl stnrlfpd with thp r ed Devon ca.ttle. The gratitude of 
 
 •iho p-mVh pripgt ig rliipfly fnr "rrpafi^ re comforts " and the 
 
 pictHre^whioh"he''p aiTTty~' ii irr mld bfl^rp-i7f44«^^ =<Dleased-l he 
 Sabine Horace than Herrick's contemporary,_tlie,aHthor'*" 
 of The Priest to the Temple. Yet we are madeaware 
 gf the parson ' s simple generosity, a nd we see thejEreshOld_. 
 ^hhis house wor n a way by the fooEstepsM th e poor.^ 
 
 When we attempt to realize tne snarp contrast which 
 his manner of Ufe at Dean- Prior presented to that of the 
 London years which preceded it, our surprise is not that 
 Herrick sometimes gave voice to feelings of discontent 
 and to wistful yearnings after what had passed away, 
 but that he should, on the whole, have adapted himself 
 so well to the new conditions. That he did so is due 
 in no small measure to the phancy of his temper and the 
 breadth of his tastes and sympathies. His finely sensuous 
 
 1 Tracy is the name of his spaniel, as the poet himself informs us in a 
 note to the original edition of Hesperides. 
 
84 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 nature responded to varying, nay, conflicting appeals. 
 He is alike the poet of the town and the country, of the 
 Court and the cottage, go dolightointhcartifirial grfirps. 
 
 the Stndjpfl rffi"PTnPii±ii-^a.«..^n1+nrP anfl pqnqntr;»-«f-thg 
 town, but also in village C 1 1St " m° ^"'^ "npnTrtitmns , and . 
 
 j^e_ain ple pleasures of rustic jife^ He sings " of balm, 
 nfj^fll^ splcp. and qiphprgris/' but also ^" Ol May-poles. 
 
 Tiock-car ts, wajssails, -wakps. " ; hp ran takp dp.light injhhe 
 riband that supports Julia's ppt tiroat a.nd the odourS- 
 
 JlL. " rampTiirP ctriroY^ cpiV-pnorrl^ jT'jIhQnnm " that arp 
 
 breathed forth when she unlaces herself. J jut a lso in the 
 . qolour and grace of tVip Haffnrlil mid thr prrfnrnr nf th~ 
 _violet . Settled in his Devonshire home, the Anacreon of 
 the Devil Tavern, the courtier-l57rist, the poet of per- 
 fumes and miUinery, seeks amid his new surroundings new 
 J jiemes for poetic handling, and finds them close at hand . 
 jn the- Tustic sports, lunk et mgs and sii p erstitions of his 
 ^ parishioners. 
 
 It IS impossible to determine the dates at which 
 Herrick's poems on May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, and 
 wakes were written, but it is only natural to assume that 
 the majority of them belong to the Dean Prior period. 
 And if his taste for these tMngs was already developed 
 before he reached the west country, it is doubtful whether 
 he could have been " banished " to a more congenial 
 neighbourhood. To this day Dartmoor and the villages 
 that skirt it are richer in folk and fairy lore, and more 
 tenacious of old-world customs, superstitions, and cere- 
 monies, than almost any other district in England. Dart- 
 moor farmers still declare themselves pixy-led when they 
 lose their way on the moor in returning from market, 
 and imtil quite recently the wassailing of apple-trees by 
 means of shot, fired into the branches on Twelfth Night,^ 
 and the custom of passing young children suffering 
 
 1 For a reference to this custom see the Twenty-second Report of the 
 Committee on Devonshire Folk-lore, edited by P. F. S. Amery, 1905. For 
 an interesting account of Devonsliire folk-lore of a hundred years ago, 
 see Mrs. Bray's Description of the part of Devonshife bordering on the 
 Tamar and the Tavy. 
 
DEAN PRIOR 85 
 
 from rupture through the spUt trunk of a young ash- 
 tree, were everjrwhere in vogue. Herrick's fairy-poems 
 are based rather on literary models than on popular local 
 legend ; there is no mention in them of the Dartmoor 
 pixies, and, as we shall see later, they were probably 
 written before he set foot in Devonshire ; but his folk- 
 lore poems, his charms and his descriptions of rustic cere- 
 monies, have, in part at least, a distinct local colour, and 
 were probably written at Dean Prior. 
 
 It is not easy to determine exactly the kind of rela- 
 tionship which existed between Herrick and his par- 
 ishioners. Certain of the Hesperides poems indicate that 
 he stood on good terms with the gentlefolks of his parish, 
 and that his muse was at their service on more than one 
 occasion. But references to the humbler villagers, and a 
 few stinging epigrams written at the expense of some 
 of them, give, if taken alone, the impression that he 
 found the Devonshire peasant rude and boorish. As a 
 matter of fact, however, the scurrilous epigrams which 
 can be definitely connected with his parishioners are 
 few in number. A search through the Dean Prior register 
 shows that the unsavoury epigrams on Scobble, Mudge, 
 Dundridge and Coone were probably hurled at par- 
 ishioners, but that these are aU. On the other side we 
 have the assured fact that some of his poems became the 
 treasured possessions of the parish, and that during the 
 long years when his name was entirely forgotten by the 
 cultured society of London, it was still held in esteem in 
 the Devonshire village. Our evidence for this is to be 
 found in the very remarkable account of a visit paid to Dean 
 Prior in 1809 by Barron Field and published by him in 
 the Quarterly Review (August, 1810). " Being in Devon- 
 shire during the last summer," writes Barron Field, " we 
 took an opportunity of visiting Dean Prior, for the 
 purpose of making some inquiries concerning Herrick, 
 who, from the circumstance of having been vicar of that 
 parish (where he is still talked of as a poet, a wit, and a 
 hater of the county) for twenty years, might be supposed 
 
86 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 to have left some unrecorded memorials of his existence 
 behind him. 
 
 " We found many persons in the village who could 
 repeat some of his lines, and none who were not ac- 
 quainted with his ' Farewell to Dean Bourn,' which, 
 they said, he uttered as he crossed the brook, upon being 
 ejected by Cromwell from the vicarage to which he had 
 been presented by Charles I. ' But,' they added with a 
 smile of innocent triumph, ' he did see it again ' ; as was 
 the fact, after the Restoration. . . . 
 
 " The person, however, who knows more of Herrick 
 than all the rest of the neighbourhood, we found to be 
 a poor woman in the ninety-ninth year of her age, named 
 Dorothy King. She repeated to us, with great exactness, 
 five of his NoUe Numbers, among which was the beautiful 
 Litany quoted above. These she had learnt from her 
 mother, who was apprenticed to Herrick's successor in 
 the vicarage. She called them her prayers, which, she 
 said, she was in the habit of putting up in bed, whenever 
 she could not sleep ; and she therefore began the Litany 
 at the second stanza. 
 
 When I lie within my bed, etc. 
 
 Another of her midnight orisons was the poem beginning 
 
 Every night thou dost me fright. 
 
 She had no idea that these poems had ever been printed, 
 and could not have read them if she had seen them. 
 She is in possession of few traditions as to the person, 
 manners, and habits of life of the poet ; but in return, 
 she has a whole budget of anecdotes respecting his 
 ghost ; and these she details with a careless but serene 
 gravity, which one would not willingly discompose by any 
 hints at a remote possibility of their not being exactly 
 true. Herrick, she says, was a bachelor, and kept a 
 maid-servant, as his poems, indeed, discover ; but she 
 adds, what they do not discover, that he also kept a pet 
 
DEAN PRIOR 87 
 
 pig, which he taught to drink out of a tankard. And this 
 important circumstance, together with a tradition that he 
 one day threw his sermon at the congregation, with a 
 curse for their inattention, forms almost the sum total 
 of what we could collect of the poet's life." The state- 
 ments of Dorothy King, and her ability to quote from the 
 Hesperides and Noble Numbers, furnish us with a remark- 
 able testimony to the interest which the Dean Prior 
 villagers of the seventeenth century took in the poetry 
 of their distinguished vicar. Of how many English poets 
 can it be said that some of their poems have been handed 
 down, for a period of a hundred and fifty years, by oral 
 tradition, in the places where they lived ? Such a 
 record, as far as England is concerned, is almost unique, 
 and it bears witness, as no other evidence could do, 
 to the popularity which Herrick enjoyed amongst his 
 parishioners. 
 
 There is one more piece of evidence as to the poet's 
 celebrity in the county of his adoption. On the title- 
 page of most of the extant copies of the original edition 
 of Herrick's works stand the following words : " London. 
 Printed for John WUliams and Francis Eglesfield, and 
 are to be sold at the Crown and Marygold in St Pauls 
 Churchyard, 1648." But in some of the copies — that 
 in the show-case at the British Museum is one of these — 
 there occurs the following variant : " And are to be sold 
 by Tho. Hunt, Bookseller in Exon." The meaning of 
 this is that a certain number of the copies were sent 
 direct from the printer's to the shop of the Exeter book- 
 seller. Thomas Hunt knew well enough the popularity 
 of Herrick as a local poet, and accordingly, without 
 waiting for the arrival of the volumes in the usual way, 
 he sent his order to the publishers before they had passed 
 through the press, and thus secured the appearance of his 
 name upon the title-page of the copies purchased by him. 
 We have thus the twofold evidence of Herrick's celebrity 
 as a poet both in his parish and in the county of Devon, 
 during his lifetime and after his death. 
 
8^ ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 The record of Herrick's life at Dean Prior, as far as it 
 can be traced at all, is to be sought in his poems. For- 
 tunately for us, the vow to abandon poetry, which he 
 made when he took upon him the sacred duties of a 
 parish priest and wrote his Farewell to Poetry, was not 
 kept. Some of the choicest poems of the Hesperides, 
 and probably most of the Noble Numbers, were written 
 after 1629. It is, however, likely that the character of 
 his poetry underwent a partial change when he left 
 London — a change which is perhaps indicated by what 
 he tells us in his Lachrymae (see page 80). In these 
 Devon years the drinking songs and love songs, which 
 had been inspired by his associations with Jonson at 
 " the Sun, the Dog, the Triple Tun," and which had won 
 for him the proud title, " the music of a feast," were 
 probably fewer, the half-lyric and half-descriptive poems 
 of country life more numerous. 
 
 In bidding farewell to London, Herrick determined 
 not to let himself be forgotten either by the Court or his 
 numerous city acquaintances. Reference has already 
 been made to the poems in which he celebrates the birth 
 of royal princes, and to these Dean Prior years also belong 
 many of the verses addressed to his various patrons. 
 The ode to Endymion Porter, Upon his Brother's Death 
 (185), may be referred, with tolerable certainty, to the 
 year 1637, when that courtier lost his brother, Captain 
 Thomas Porter.^ The verses to MUdmay Fane, Earl of 
 Westmorland, also belong to this period {112) ; ^ he looks 
 to Westmorland and to Robert Pierrepont, Viscount 
 Newark, as the foster-fathers who shall protect his 
 verses when their author is in his grave. 
 
 1 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1637, p. 435. 
 
 " Mildmay Fane did not become Earl of Westmorland until 1629, and 
 in one or two of the poems to the earl he is addressed as Westmorland, 
 not only in the title, but in the poems themselves, e.g., 
 
 When my date's done, and my grey hair must die, 
 Nurse up, great lord, this my posterity ; 
 Weak though it be, long may it grow and stand, 
 Shored up by you, brave Eeirl of Westmorland, 
 
DEAN PRIOR 89 
 
 The year 1637, which saw the death of Captain Thomas 
 Porter, is also the year in which a very near friend of 
 the poet's died. Ben Jonson, who had been failing in 
 health for some years, breathed his last on August 6th, 
 and three days later he was buried in Westminster Abbey, 
 with the words, " O rare Ben Jonson," inscribed on his 
 tomb. The poems which Herrick wrote on the death of 
 the great literary dictator have already been referred to 
 (see pp. 54-55), and the sincerity of their utterance is 
 a sufficient indication of the sense of loss which their 
 author experienced when the father of the " tribe " had 
 been for ever removed. 
 
 While death was robbing him of old friends of the 
 London period, Herrick was forming new acquaintances 
 in Devonshire. Among these were Sir Thomas Hele of 
 Flete, whom he addresses in one of his poems as " his 
 honoured friend," and Sir George Parry, who was Chan- 
 cellor of the diocese of Exeter. Yet another poem is 
 addressed to his bishop, the famous Joseph HaU, who in 
 his youth had claimed to be the first of English satirists, 
 the first 
 
 To tread the steps of perilous despite, 
 
 and in his old age had come under the flail of Milton's 
 anti-prelatical pamphlets. It must also be remembered 
 that an old friend with whom the poet had long stood on 
 intimate terms was now residing in Devonshire, though 
 in a remote comer of the shire. This was John Weekes, 
 who had been appointed Vicar of SherweU, near Barn- 
 staple, about the same time that Herrick had gone to 
 Dean Prior. 
 
 In the eyes of the Church, Weekes was a more im- 
 portant person than the vicar of Dean, for in 1633, while 
 still retaining his Devonshire living, he was elected to a 
 prebend's stall in Bristol Cathedral ; a little later he 
 became a Doctor of Divinity and a Licenser of Printed 
 Books, with authority to " gnaw out the choicest periods 
 of exquisitest books, and to commit a treacherous fraud 
 
90 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 against the orphan remainders of worthiest men after 
 death." 
 
 The tenor of the poet's Ufe within his parish must have 
 been, at least during his first years there, singularly 
 tmeventful ; and probably the chief subjects which pre- 
 sented themselves for poetic treatment there were the 
 rustic festivities of his parishioners. In the festooning 
 of May-poles, the ceremonious home-bringing of the 
 hock-cart, the Christmas wakes and mummings, and all 
 the pagan ritual of Twelfth Night and Shrovetide, he must 
 have taken a very keen interest, and endeared himself 
 to the hearts of his parishioners by finding in such 
 festivities the inspiration for matthless song. The simple 
 annals of the parish are faithfully recorded by him in 
 verse ; and though he has left us no Parish Register, 
 after the manner of Crabbe at Aldborough, he found, 
 during his term of incumbency, events which made a 
 demand upon his poetic genius. In 1637, Sir Edward 
 Giles of Dean Court died. Herrick apparently wrote no 
 poem on the knight's death, but after he had been 
 followed to the grave by his wife, he honoured the dead 
 lord and lady of the manor with the most beautiful of all 
 his epitaphs, which the visitor to Dean Church may still 
 read on the wall of the south aisle. 
 
 As Sir Edward Giles died childless, Dean Court passed, 
 after his widow's death, into the hands of the Yarde 
 family, who were related to the Giles' by marriage. 
 Members of this family had long been residing at Dean 
 Prior, as the parish register plainly shows. The Yardes, 
 too, were distantly related to Herrick. The poet's first 
 cousin, Tobias Herrick, rector of Market Harborough, 
 and son of the poet's uncle, Robert Herrick of Leicester, 
 married Elizabeth Yarde, who, like the Dean Prior 
 Yardes, was descended from the Yardes of Bradley in 
 Devonshire. When, therefore, on 5th September 1639, 
 Lettice, the twenty-year-old daughter of Edward Yarde, 
 was married in Herrick's church to Mr Henry Northleigh, 
 or Northly, the poet, who had written epithalamiums in 
 
DEAN PRIOR 91 
 
 earlier days for other friends, was called upon to celebrate 
 in like manner the wedding of his kinswoman in her own 
 parish. In two short poems, The Entertainment or Porch 
 Verse (313) and The Good-night or Blessing (314), he 
 wishes, in the frank nianner of the age, all married bUss 
 to the bride and bridegroom. The Northleighs settled 
 at Dean Prior after their marriage, and in the parish 
 register we find the entries of their children's births. 
 
 Another poem of a festive character, which throws 
 pleasant Ught upon Herrick's life .at Dean Prior, is that 
 entitled The Meadow Verse, or Anniversary, to Mistress 
 Bridget Lowman (354). The Lowmans, Uke the Yardes, 
 were the vicar-poet's parishioners, and were also relatives 
 of Sir Edward Giles. GUes Lowman had married early 
 in 1642 Welthian Austjm of Totnes, but his wife had 
 died in the following year, and it was probably after her 
 death that he had invited his sister Bridget to come and 
 live with him. The Meadow Verse which, honouring one 
 of the many rural ceremonies of the village, celebrates 
 Bridget Lowman as " the meadow's deity " and " princess 
 of the feast," is full of gay compliment ; but in the 
 Parting Verse which follows (355), and which was recited 
 when the feast was ended, a note of melancholy is heard ; 
 and the poet, mindful of his griefs and his grey hairs, 
 wonders whether, when next year's anniversary comes 
 round, he wiU be alive to sing another meadow-verse in 
 Bridget Lowman's honour. 
 
 The hfe of the country vicar in his cell has often been 
 represented as a life of solitude, broken only by the 
 faithful ministrations of his housekeeper. Prudence 
 Baldwin. Such a representation, however, though based 
 on the evidence of certain of the poet's own statements, 
 is only partially true. Quite apart from Herrick's share 
 in the life of the village, we have evidence that he both 
 visited, and received visits from, friends at a distance, 
 and also that for some length of time one of his sisters- 
 in-law was living with. him. The reader need scarcely 
 be reminded that Herrick was by temperament no hermit, 
 
92 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 and that, if he practised at times the cloistral virtues, 
 it was from compulsion and not from choice. The 
 poem, entitled To his Maid, Prew (387), tells us that 
 during the pleasant summer months the vicarage was not 
 without guests. Who they were we know not, but it is 
 pleasant to imagine that the poet gathered around his 
 simple board at Dean Prior some of the old comrades 
 of the " tribe of Ben," and renewed, amid wassail bowls, 
 spiced to the brim, the memories of by-gone years. 
 When the guests have departed, the vicarage seems lonely, 
 and the poet seizes the occasion to do honour to the 
 faithful housekeeper who does not quit his side. 
 
 When Herrick bade farewell to his many London 
 friends and relations in 1629, many entreaties must 
 have been made that he should soon return ; " the 
 music of a feast " could ill be spared from the festive 
 board of the Apollo chamber at Temple Bar. We do not 
 know to what extent the poet was able to comply with 
 such entreaties, but there is evidence that he paid a 
 visit to the old scenes in 1640. There is a curious poem 
 in Musarum Delicics, published in 1655, the author of 
 which was either Herrick's old friend Sir John Mennes, 
 or James Smith. It is entitled To Dr Weekes : an 
 Invitation to London, and from it we quote the following 
 verses : 
 
 How now, my John, what, is't the care 
 
 Of thy small flock that keeps thee there ? 
 
 Or hath the bishop, in a rage. 
 
 Forbid thy coming on our stage ? 
 
 Or want'st thou coin, or want'st thou steed ? 
 
 These are impediments indeed. 
 
 But, for thy flock, thy sexton may 
 
 In due time ring, and let them pray. 
 
 A bishop, with an ofiering. 
 
 May be brought unto any thing. 
 
 For want of steed, I oft see Vic 
 
 Trudge up to town with hazel stick ; 
 
 For coin, two sermons by the way 
 
 Will host, hostess and tapster pay. 
 
DEAN PRIOR 93 
 
 A willing mind pawns wedding-ring. 
 
 Wife, gown, books, children, anything ; 
 
 No way neglected, nought too dear. 
 
 To see such friends as fiiou hast here. . . . 
 
 Ships lately from the islands came 
 
 With wines thou never heard' st their name : 
 
 Montefiasco, Frontiniac, 
 
 Viatico, and that old Sack 
 
 Young Herric took to entertain 
 
 The muses in a sprightly vein. . . . 
 
 A London goal, with friends and drink. 
 
 Is worth your vicarage, I think. 
 
 This amusing address to the vicar of Sherwell, with 
 its pointed allusion to Weekes' friend, the author of the 
 Welcome and Farewell to Sack, gives us shrewd insight 
 into the temptations which beset the country vicar who 
 had said farewell to the revelry of London. It can 
 scarcely be doubted that the vicar of Dean Prior was 
 favoured with similar invitations, in verse or in prose, 
 from the same circle of friends, and on one occasion at 
 any rate the invitation was accepted. In a State Paper, 
 undated, but belonging to the year 1640, we come upon 
 the following disconcerting statement : 
 
 Thomson Parsons hath had a Bastard lately ; shee was 
 brought to bedd at Greenw'=''. 
 
 Mr Herricque a Minister possest of a very good Living in 
 Devonshire hath not resided there haveing noe Lycence for 
 his non-residence and not being Chapline to any Noble man 
 or man quaUfyed by Law as I heare, his Lodging is at West- 
 minster in the little Amrie at Nicholas Wilkes his house where 
 the said Thomsen Parsons lives. 
 
 The endorsement of the letter is as follows : 
 
 Mr DeUes man abt Mr Henrique [sic] a minister. 
 
 The statement, and the apparent insinuation of Mr 
 Dell's man, call for notice. WilUam Dell was secretary 
 to Archbishop Laud, and among the State Papers are 
 
94 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 several references to him in the discharge of his duties. 
 It was apparently his oii&ce to inquire into any breaches 
 of canonical law, and any delinquencies on the part of 
 clergymen who came under his special jurisdiction. In 
 the discharge of these duties he doubtless had a number 
 of men in his employ, and the writer of the above letter 
 was one of these. It can hardly be doubted that " Mr 
 Herricque," though the spelling in the endorsement is 
 apparently " Henrique," is the author of the Hesperides. 
 But who was Thomsen Parsons ? Among the Hesperides 
 we meet with the following : 
 
 On Thomasin Parsons (979) 
 
 Grow up in beauty, as thou dost begin. 
 And be of all admired, Thomasin. 
 
 Also this : 
 
 To Mistress Dorothy Parsons (500) 
 
 If thou ask me, dear, wherefore 
 I do write of thee no more, 
 I must answer, sweet, thy part 
 Less is here than in my heart. 
 
 Mr A. W. Pollard is able to inform us who Thomasin 
 and Dorothy Parsons were. They were the daughters 
 of one of Herrick's musical acquaintances, Mr John 
 Parsons, who was organist and master of the choristers 
 at Westminster Abbey in the reign of James I., and 
 died in 1623.^ There is no need to accept the insinua- 
 tion of Mr DeU's man that Herrick was concerned with 
 Thomasin Parsons' child. There is no record among 
 the State Papers of any further steps being taken in 
 the matter by either the archbishop's secretary or his 
 master. It may be that Laud was too busy with other 
 matters in 1640 to inquire into the suggestion of mis- 
 conduct brought against a clergyman from Devonshire, 
 or it may be that on examination he found Herrick 
 
 1 See Pollard's edition of Herrick, i. 318. 
 
DEAN PRIOR 95 
 
 innocent. We all know the couplet which rounds off the 
 Hesperides : 
 
 To his book's end this last line he'd have placed : 
 Jocund Ms muse was, but his life was chaste — 
 
 But the importance which we attach to this statement is 
 somewhat lessened by the fact that it is a quotation from 
 Ovid: 
 
 Vita verecunda est, niusa jocosa, mihi.i 
 
 The same declaration, however, is made, with some 
 display of earnestness, in the poem To his Tombmaker 
 (546), and those who have leamt to recognize the candour 
 of Herrick in the Hesperides will be disposed to accept 
 his claim to purity of life, in spite of " Mr Dell's 
 man " : 
 
 Go I must ; when I am gone. 
 
 Write but this upon my stone ; 
 
 Chaste I liv'd, without a wife ; 
 
 That's the story of my life. 
 
 Strewings need none, every flower 
 
 Is in this word bachelor. 
 
 Leaving the matter as it stands, it is interesting to 
 find that Herrick while in London was residing in his 
 " beloved Westminster," in one of the houses in the 
 little Aumry close to the Abbey. During his stay there 
 he must have seen a good deal of old friends and kinsfolk, 
 and it is probable that some of the poems to the Soames 
 and Stones — ^his relations on his mother's side — and to 
 the family of his brother Nicholas, the London merchant, 
 were written at this time. > 
 
 It seems likely that what brought the poet to town 
 in 1640 was the importunate demand of his verses for 
 printer's ink. Herrick, acting in accordance with the 
 fashion set by Sidney and some other Elizabethan poets, 
 had up to now neglected to pubUsh any of his verses. 
 They had circulated freely in manuscript, as the poems 
 1 Tristia, ii. 354. 
 
96 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 in the Ashmole, Rawlinson, and Harleian collections 
 show, and as is also evident from statements made in 
 many of the poems themselves. But the thought of 
 printing his effusions had been distasteful to him. In a 
 couplet, entitled Posting to Printing (1022), he says. 
 
 Let others to the printing press run fast ; 
 Since after death comes glory, I'll not haste. 
 
 But the march of years, bringing with it the death 
 of friends in whose keeping his poetic fame chiefly rested, 
 had led him to change his mind. It was all very well 
 to invite noble Westmorland and gallant Newark to be 
 the foster-fathers of his verses when their begetter was 
 no more ; but in them " nature's copy's not eteme," 
 and Herrick clung to the faith in the immortality of 
 his fame with a tenacity which has never been equalled. 
 If this immortality was to be won, printing was necessary. 
 As yet only one of his poems had been pubUshed. This 
 was a truncated portion of Oberon's Feast, which had 
 appeared in 1635, in a small volume bearing the following 
 title-page : 
 
 A I Description | of the King and Queene of | Fayries, 
 
 their habit, fare, their | abode, pompe and state. | 
 
 Beeing very delightfull to the sense, and | full of mirth. 
 
 I [Woodcut.] I London | Printed for Richard Harper, 
 
 and are to be sold | at his shop, at the Hospital! gate, 
 
 1635- 
 
 The place of honour in this collection of poems is 
 awarded to Herrick's friend Sir Simon Steward, who 
 contributes a poem, entitled A Description of the King 
 of Faery's Clothes, which is declared to have been written 
 as early as 1626. Next follows Herrick's poem, which 
 is here entitled A Description of his Diet. Three other 
 poems, Orpheus, The Fairies Fegaries, and The Melancholy 
 Lover's Song from Fletcher's Nice Valour, bring the 
 volume to a close. It is unknown whether Herrick had 
 any knowledge of, or share in, the publication of this 
 volume of fairy poems. 
 
DEAN PRIOR 97 
 
 Four years later we meet with the following entry in 
 the Stationers' Register : 
 
 " 4 Nov. 1639. Entred for his Copie under the hands 
 of doctor Wykes and Master Featherston, warden, An 
 Addicion of some excellent Poems to Shakespeare's Poems 
 by other gentlemen, vizt.. His Mistris drawne and his 
 mind by Benjamin Jonson. An 'Epistle to B. J. by 
 Francis Beaumont. His Mistris Shade by R. Herrick, 
 etc. vi. d." 
 
 This volume was printed in the following year, and the 
 poem here described as His Mistris Shade proves to be 
 another version, with numerous variants, of the poem 
 in the Hesperides, entitled The Apparition of his Mistress 
 calling him to Elysium (575). On this occasion Herrick 
 appears in noble company, and it may be that the 
 inclusion of his poem in a volume containing verses by 
 Shakespeare, Jonson, and Beaumont, was due to the 
 tribute of esteem which His Mistris Shade brought to 
 the memory of the last two poets. Mention is made 
 of Shakespeare in this poem, and his mistress finds the 
 authors of Evadne and Every Man in his Humour 
 walking in the Elysian fields in the company of Homer, 
 Anacreon, Virgil, Horace, " witty Ovid " and " soft 
 Catullus." 
 
 The poem is one of the most sustained of the Hesperides, 
 and suffers nothing by comparison with those of the 
 mighty ones with which it is associated. The publisher 
 of the volume was John Benson, and the licencer who 
 is referred to as " doctor Wykes " was the poet's tried 
 friend, the vicar of Sherwell. 
 
 To be associated as a poet with Shakespeare, Jonson, 
 and Beaumont was no small honour for one who until 
 now had to seek his reputation mainly among the circle 
 of friends in which his manuscripts had circulated, and 
 Herrick's last scruples as to pubUshing his poems were 
 now swept away. Five months after the above entry 
 in the Stationers' Register we meet with the following : 
 
98 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 " 29 Ap. 1640. Entred for his Copie under the hands 
 of Master Haiiley, and Master Bourne, warden, The 
 Sever all Poems, written by Master Robert Herrick. vj . d. " 
 
 The publisher who appUed for this hcence was Andrew 
 Crooke. Of this volume nothing is known ; no copy 
 has been traced, and it is uncertain whether the poems 
 ever passed through the press. Did the poet, whose 
 fastidious taste is expressed in his request to Julia to 
 bum his poems rather than let them go forth unper- 
 fected, stay the printer's hand at the last moment, or 
 did some one else step in and counsel delay ? We can 
 only conjecture. 
 
 It may well have been with some reluctance that 
 Herrick returned to his remote Devonshire parsonage 
 after this visit to London. Although not yet fifty, he 
 had begun to feel old, and with this sense of aging years, 
 his interest in country activities probably lessened, while 
 his appreciation of the comforts and good-fellowship of 
 the town grew stronger. He is fond of telling us in his 
 poems of his grey hairs and the approach of old age, but 
 the following poem, written in the year 1640-1, reiterates 
 the theme with new earnestness : 
 
 A wearied pilgrim, I have wandered here 
 Twice five-and-twenty, bate me but one year ; 
 Long I have lasted in this world, 'tis true. 
 But yet those years that I have lived, but few. 
 Who by his grey hairs doth his lusters tell. 
 Lives not those years, but he that hves them well. 
 One man has reached his sixty years, but he. 
 Of all those threescore, has not lived half three. 
 He lives who hves to virtue ; men who cast 
 Their ends for pleasure, do not live, but last.^ 
 
 It is possible that, when he made the journey back 
 to Dean Prior, he was not alone. In the verses, entitled 
 No Spouse but a Sister (31), he declares with considerable 
 emphasis that he will spend, his days as a bachelor : 
 
 1 On Himself (1088). 
 
DEAN PRIOR 99 
 
 And never take a wife 
 To crucify my life, — 
 
 but will keep house with a sister. The promise which 
 he here makes seems to have been kept ; for in the 
 list of burials in the register at Dean Prior mention is 
 made of " Mrs Elizabeth Hearicke," who was buried 
 on April ii, 1643. EUzabeth Herrick was his sister-in- 
 law, and he wrote an epitaph on her death — No. 72 in the 
 Hesperides. She was the wife of his brother William, 
 who died between 1629 — the date of JuUan Herrick's 
 will, in which he is mentioned — and 1632, when his will 
 was proved. She may have come to Hve with her 
 brother-in-law immediately after her husband's death, 
 or, as just indicated, she may have accompanied him 
 there after his visit to London in 1640. 
 
 The death of his sister-in-law, taking place as it did 
 under his roof and at a time when civil war was raging 
 in the land, must have brought sad and serious thoughts 
 to the poet's mind. It is tempting to think of Herrick 
 as the poet of eternal youthfulness, the maker of love- 
 posies and the braider of garlands, the idle singer of an 
 empty day. And it is probable that had he died in 1635, 
 or even in 1640, such a conception would need little 
 adjustment. But, scattered amid the lighter and gayer 
 fancies of the Hesperides, are a number of poems whidi tell 
 of sorrow, old age, decay of faculties, and approaching 
 death. It is natural to connect these with the closing 
 years of his stay at Dean Prior, though some of them 
 may have been written in transient moods of despon- 
 dency at an earlier period. References to old age and 
 death are found in poems of varied character, but they 
 are most frequent in the verses which he addresses to his 
 mistresses or to himself. The moods in which he faces 
 the inevitable are very varied. Often enough he con- 
 templates death in a half-playful and half-pathetic 
 manner — the pathos being of the lightest — ^as in the 
 fanciful Divination by a Daffodil (107) or the address To 
 Robin Redbreast (50). At other times he is more serious. 
 
100 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 as for instance when he writes the poem entitled His Wind- 
 in^sheet (515), or His last Request to Julia (1095). 
 
 To private bereavement, and the sense of advancing 
 old age, there was added, during these last years at Dean 
 Prior, the anxiety caused by the trend of public affairs, 
 and the consciousness of bemg on the side of the losing 
 party. Herrick was by temperament and associations a 
 Royalist, and though some members of his family sided 
 with the Parliamentary cause, his allegiance to the King 
 remained unshaken. It is not q^uite easy to determine 
 his political tenets from the sentiments expressed in his 
 verses. The great controversy which ended in the Civil 
 War called forth from him a number of gnomic utterances, 
 expressed for the most part in epigrammatic couplets. 
 In some of these he appears as the exponent of extreme 
 monarchical ideas. What, for instance, could be more 
 in keeping with Stuart pretensions than the following ? 
 
 'Twixt Kings and subjects there's tliis mighty odds : 
 Subjects are taught by men ; kings, by the gods.' 
 
 The gods to kings the judgment give to sway ; 
 The subjects' only glory to obey!" 
 
 On the other hand, the arbitrary conduct of Charles I. 
 in the matter of taxation calls forth from him a mild pro- 
 test in Moderation (780), and a more energetic one in 
 Bad Princes Pill the People (826) : — 
 
 Like those infernal deities which eat 
 
 The best of all the sacrificed meat, 
 
 And leave their servants but the smoke and sweat ; 
 
 So many kings, and primates too, there are, 
 Who claim the fat and fleshy for their share, 
 And leave their subjects but the starved ware. 
 
 1 The Difference between Kings and Subjects (25). 
 3 Obedience in Subjects (z6g). 
 
DEAN PRIOR fot 
 
 The protest is couched in general terms, but it can 
 hardly be doubted that the reference is to Charles I. and 
 Laud. 
 
 But though Herrick, Uke many another Royalist, 
 may have chafed under arbitrary taxation, he was 
 absolutely loyal to the King as soon as matters passed 
 out of the bounds of parliamentary controversj^ into those 
 of civil war. Included among the Hesperides are a 
 number of poems which introduce us to that great con- 
 flict. Early in 1642, impending hostiUties forced Charles 
 and Henrietta apart. The latter left England for 
 Holland, where she proceeded to purchase munitions 
 of war for the campaign, while her husband went north- 
 wards to coUect troops. The separation of husband and 
 wife moved Herrick to write his verses To the King and 
 Queen upon their Unhappy Distances (79). 
 
 Here he is full of hope, and prophesies with gladness 
 of heart a speedy reunion of husband and wife. But as 
 the war proceeded, and the Royalist cause experienced 
 defeat after defeat, his heart sank within him. In his 
 poems, The Bad Season makes the Poet Sad (612) and 
 Upon the Troublous Times (596), he writes in a mood of 
 deep depression, though stiU hoping against hope that 
 things will right themselves and " Charles here rule as 
 he before did reign." 
 
 O times most bad. 
 Without the scope 
 Of hope 
 Of better to be had ! 
 
 Where shall I go, 
 Or whither run 
 To shun 
 This public overthrow ? 
 
 No places are, 
 This I am sure, 
 Secure 
 In this our wasting war. 
 
102 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Some storms we've past. 
 Yet we must all 
 Down fall. 
 And perish at the last. 
 
 The sentiment of these verses is not very heroic, but the 
 poet's fighting days, if they ever existed, were long since 
 over. 
 
 In the early stages of the war Devonshire was in the 
 hands of the Parliamentarians, but the victories of Lord 
 Hopton at Stratton in Cornwall, in May 1643, had wrought 
 a great change in the West. Herrick congratulated 
 Hopton on his success,^ and the latter replied in prac- 
 tical fashion by advancing on Devonshire and winning 
 over the greater portion of it to the King's side.* With 
 the summer of 1644, the war approached very near 
 to Herrick's vicarage. Queen Henrietta Maria was at 
 Exeter, and on June 16 gave birth to the Princess 
 Henrietta there. Then, making her way stealthily to 
 the Cornish coast, she embarked on July 14 for France. 
 A fortnight later, Charles himself was at Exeter, while 
 a section of the Parliamentary army, imder Essex, was at 
 Tavistock, still nearer to Dean Prior. Herrick seized the 
 occasion of the King's proximity to address to him a poem, 
 To the King upon his Coming with his Army into the West 
 (77), as loyal in feeling as it is beautiful in expression : 
 
 Welcome, most welcome, to our vows and us. 
 Most great and universal genius ! 
 The drooping West, which hitherto has stood 
 As one in long-lamented widowhood. 
 Looks like a bride now, or a bed of flowers 
 Newly refreshed both by the sun and showers. 
 War, which before was horrid, now appears 
 Lovely in you, brave prince of cavaliers. 
 A deal of courage in each bosom springs 
 By your access, O you, the best of kings ! 
 Ride on with all white omens ; so that where 
 Your standard's up, we fix a conquest there. 
 
 1 See the poem, To the Lord Hopton on his Fight in Cornwall (looz). 
 » See S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, i. 162. 
 
DEAN PRIOR 103 
 
 The hopefulness wfaidi warmed the poet's drooping spirits 
 was, IsjT the time at least, well sustained, and to Giarles 
 the verses of the Royalist vicar must have seemed of 
 fair angary. The two armies met at Lostwithid in 
 Comwafi, at the end of Angnst, and the battle resulted 
 in a complete victory for the King. 
 
 Eaiiy in the following year, the last of the western 
 campaigns took place. Fairfax, " the rider of the white 
 horse," as the Yorkshire people called him, was be^eg- 
 ing Exeter and making raids up and down the coonty. 
 On January i8th he carried Dartmouth by storm, and 
 a day or two later he was at Totnes, five miles from Dean. 
 While there, he called for a thousand recruits, and three 
 times that number flocked to his standard. Nothing 
 could show more plainly the diange in temper of the 
 people of South Devon towards the two contending 
 parties. " We are come," said Cromwell to the new 
 recruits, "to set yon, if possible, at liberty from your 
 taskmasters," and his word was believed.* This change 
 in temper must have weighted heavily npon the vicar of 
 Dean Prior, and doubtless inspired him to write his 
 peevi^ outbursts upon the " rocky generation, cnrri^ 
 churli^ as the seas," amongst whom he must still 
 continue to Uve. He smnmons up courage to address 
 a spirited poem to Sir John Berkeley,* who was bravd^ 
 holding Exeter against the besi^ers, and hails with glad- 
 ness the arrival of Prince Charles at Exeter in the fol- 
 lowing August : 
 
 Meanwhile thy prophets watch by watch shall pray. 
 While yomig (Carles fights, and fighting wins vse day : 
 That done, our smooth-foced poems all shall be 
 Sung in the high doxoiogy of thee * 
 
 But the poet's prevailing mood is best expressed by his 
 poems Upon the Troubhus Times and The Bad Season 
 
 1 Gardmer, The Great Civil War, ii, 431. 
 
 '"To Sir John Berkeley, Gosemor cf Exeter " (745). 
 
 ' To Prince CharUt upon his Coming to Exeter ^56^. 
 
104 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 makes the Poet Sad, already referred to, or by his beauti- 
 ful dirge upon the death of Lord Bernard Stuart, slain 
 at Rowton Heath on September 24, 1646.^ Reduced 
 to inactivity himself, he could but sit gloomily over his 
 hearth with his " familiar Lar," and nurse his wrath to 
 keep it warm ; or, in serener moments, seek to draw com- 
 fort from those Good Thoughts in Bad Times which the 
 genial optimist, Thomas Fuller, had just published at 
 Exeter. 
 
 The ejection of those clergymen who had refused to 
 subscribe to the Solemn League and Covenant had 
 begun as early as 1643, but Herrick's call did not come 
 yet. For four years after that date he brooded in his 
 vicarage, or took his soUtary walks through the village, 
 where there was neither maypole nor hock-cart to 
 cheer his sight ; and then at last, in 1647, the summons 
 came. Witii an elation of spirits that would have done 
 credit to a schoolboy, he left .his parishioners to the spir- 
 itual ministrations of Mr John Syms, and set out for 
 London, " blest place of my nativity," registering his 
 solemn vow, as he crossed the rocky bed of Dean Bum, 
 that never again would he endure the warty incivility 
 of itself or its people : 
 
 With whom I did, and may re-soiourn, when 
 Rocks turn to rivers, rivers turn to men. 
 
 1 No. zig. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 LAST YEARS 
 
 When Herrick crossed Dean Bum and took the high road 
 to Exeter, his intention seems to have been, not to pro- 
 ceed direct to London, but to pay a visit first of all to 
 his friend Weekes, at Sherwell, near Barnstaple. Weekes, 
 according to Anthony a Wood, " suffered much for the 
 Royal Cause," but it is uncertain whether he was dis- 
 possessed of his Devonshire living at this time.^ He 
 was, at any rate, still in possession when the notice to 
 quit was served upon his friend. The last of Herrick's 
 poems to his peculiar friend John Weekes, written upon 
 his ejection from Dean Prior, is a characteristic effusion 
 of humour, bonhomie, and independence of spirit : 
 
 Since shed or cottage I have none, 
 I sing the more that thou hast one, 
 To whose glad threshold and free door 
 I may a poet come, though poor. 
 And eat with thee a savoury bit. 
 Paying but common thanks for it. . . ? 
 
 We do not know how long Herrick stayed with his 
 friend, but the fact that he bore in his wallet the little 
 volume of poems which was to win him his long-coveted 
 immortality, must have made him impatient to reach 
 
 1 See Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy, p. 392. 
 > No. 1056. 
 («.489) 105 4 a 
 
lo6 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 London and secure for his treasure the permanence of 
 print. The joy which was his when at last the metropohs^ 
 was reached is recorded in his memorablfe Return to London 
 (713). The curious tangle of truth and error which goes 
 to make up Wood's account of Herrick in the Athenae 
 furnishes us with the information that during a part of 
 the time which elapsed between 1647 and 1662, the poet 
 was residing in St Anne's Parish, Westminster. John 
 Walker, who, though a Devonian, knew very little about 
 Herrick, says in his Sufferings of the Clergy, that " after 
 his ejectment he returned to London, and, having no 
 fifths paid him, was subsisted by charity until the 
 Restoration." ^ It is Ukely enough that both statements 
 are correct as far as they go. Nothing is more probable 
 than that the ejected vicar should take up his residence 
 in his " beloved Westminster," where, as we have seen, 
 he was living in 1640 ; nor need we take offence at 
 Walker's phrase that " he subsisted by charity," pro- 
 vided that we understand by it simply that, having no 
 income of his own, he was dependent upon the hospitality 
 of relations and friends. 
 
 It can hardly be that Herrick suffered from poverty 
 during his exile. The presence in London of wealthy 
 relations, including his own brother Nicholas,* and the 
 families of Soame and Stone, with whom he stood, as his 
 poems show, on terms of intimacy, makes such an idea 
 incredible. We learn from what he says in The Plunder 
 (460) that he left Dean Prior bereft of everything, but we 
 can well believe that in 1647, as in 1629, he found among 
 his numerous relations and friends plenty " to bear my 
 charges." It is true that of his old patrons some were 
 dead, and others, including Endymion Porter, in sore 
 straits. But Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland, was 
 
 1 Sufferings of the Clergy, p. 263. 
 
 ' Nicholas Herrick was living in Goodman's Fields, in the parish of 
 St Mary Matfelon, county of Middlesex, where he died, May 23, 1665. 
 See Smith's Obituary (Camden Society) and Miscellanea Genealogica et 
 HeraUica, Second Series, i. 98. 
 
LAST YEARS 107 
 
 at hand, and busied, like Herrick himself, with the pub- 
 Ucation of his verses.^ Another friend of distinction 
 was Henry Pierrepont, eldest son of Viscount Newark, 
 one of the " foster-fathers " of the poet's verses, who 
 was created Marquess of Dorchester in 1644, and to whom 
 is addressed the Ultimus Heroum (962). 
 
 Herrick's poetic activity continued right up to the time 
 of pubhcation. When Charles I. came to reside at 
 Hampton Court on August 24, 1647, under the protec- 
 tion of the Parliamentary army, the poet, loyal to his 
 sovereign to the end, welcomed his arrival tiiere with 
 glowing verses which, like the lyrics of earlier days, were 
 set to music and sung in the royal presence. To some 
 of those who listened to the song there must have seemed 
 grim irony in the strains of the chorus : 
 
 Long live the King ! and, to accomplish this. 
 We'll from our own add far more years to his.^ 
 
 And now at last the time, long foreseen and long 
 delayed, had arrived when the poet was to secure for his 
 minstrelsy that safe-conduct to fame which he had 
 coveted with no ordinary avidity. His book of poems 
 had, he teUs us, been passing freely from hand to hand 
 in these London days,* and with each meed of praise 
 that was bestowed upon it, the desire to publish must have 
 grown stronger. He found publishers in John WUliams 
 and Francis Eglesfield of St Paul's Churchyard, and the 
 printing of the manuscript began. It seems that his 
 first intention was to publish the Noble Numbers before 
 the Hesperides. In the original edition of 1648 his sacred 
 verses, though they stand last, have a separate title- 
 page, which bears the date 1647, whereas the Hesperides 
 axe dated in the following year. This intention, however, 
 of keeping his best wine until the end of the feast was 
 
 1 They appeared under the title, Otia Sacra, in the same year as the 
 Hesperides. 
 " To the King (961). 
 » To his Book (3). 
 
io8 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 subsequently abandoned, and all subsequent editors 
 have followed the order of the original e(htion. There 
 is some difference of view as to Herrick's share in the 
 ordering of the poems as they stand in the printed volume. 
 It was the opinion of Grosart that " the poet himself had 
 nothing to do with the arrangement or disarrangement " 
 of the poems, and this opinion is shared by some later 
 editors. It rests mainly upon the total disregard of 
 dironological order, and indeed of any other order, in 
 the Hesperides, which makes it impossible, in the case 
 of the majority of the verses, to say when they were 
 written. But it is by no means certain that this disorder 
 was not intentional on the poet's part. It is clear that he 
 exercised some supervision over the printer. He prefixed 
 to the volume a number of corrections of printer's errors, 
 together with the following apology for their occurrence : 
 
 For these transgressions, which thou here dost see. 
 Condemn the printer, reader, and not me. 
 Who gave them forth good grain, though he mistook 
 The seed ; so sowed these tares throughout my book. 
 
 Had the printer, in addition to making typographical 
 errors, wantonly disarranged the order of the poems, 
 Herrick, we may readily believe, would have drawn 
 attention to the fact ; nay, more, would he not have 
 seared the miscreant with an epigram, white-hot from 
 the cauldron of his wrath, and enshrined it within the 
 covers of his book ! The disorderliness of the collection 
 is cdso not quite so complete as it seems. We may not 
 go as far as Henry Morley and recognize the poet's 
 " design to use poems as foils and settings to one another," 
 but the same editor is certainly right in drawing attention 
 to the careful opening and close of the book."^ The 
 first eight poems in the Hesperides are clearly introduc- 
 tory. They give the " argument," tell us something of 
 the manner of composition and of the poet's misgivings 
 as to publication ; they indicate " when he would have 
 1 Introduction to Hesperides in Motley's Universal Library. 
 
LAST YEARS 109 
 
 his verses read," and include an admonition " to the sour 
 reader." In like manner, the last seven poems are an 
 obvious farewell, in which he reiterates his hopes of 
 poetic immortality, dismisses his Ariel from his service, 
 and commits his poems to the safe keeping of kindly 
 spirits — or the fire : 
 
 Go thou forth, my book ; though late 
 
 Yet be timely fortunate. 
 
 It may chance good luck may send 
 
 Thee a kinsman, or a friend. 
 
 That may harbour thee, when I 
 
 With my fates neglected lie. 
 
 If thou know'st not where to dwell. 
 
 See, the fire's by : farewell .' 
 
 It must also be borne in mind that, in placing side by 
 side a lyric of exquisite beauty and a coarse epigram, 
 Herrick had, in some measure, the high warrant of his 
 friend and master, Ben Jonson. In that poet's Under- 
 woods we find a love song of great beauty, and almost 
 immediately before it an " Epigram to the Smallpox." 
 A similar disorder also appears in the Carmina of Catullus, 
 which were also among the most prized possessions of 
 Herrick. In the absence, therefore, of all proof to the 
 contrary, it is natural to assume that the arrangement 
 of the Hesperides was in accordance with the poet's 
 wishes. Another theory advanced by Dr Grosart is 
 that " the verse celebrations addressed to friends and 
 eminent contemporaries were evidently designed to form 
 a separate work." ^ The matter is not one of importance, 
 seeing that such a work, if it ever existed in manuscript, 
 was never published. The theory has been carefully 
 examined by Dr E. E. Hale in his dissertation. Die 
 chronologische Anordnung der Dichtungen Robert Herricks, 
 and with his refutation of it I am disposed to agree. 
 
 The volume was dedicated to the " most illustrious 
 
 1 To his Book (1125). 
 
 2 Grosart, Memorial Introduction to Hesperides, p. oxiv. , 
 
no ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 and most hopeful Prince, Charles, Prince of Wales," who 
 is addressed in verses which f uUy come up to the standard 
 of adulation which the occasion, and the age, demanded. 
 Eighteen years before he had sung the birth of the 
 prince, and in 1645 he had welcomed him with a psean of 
 exultation on his coming to Exeter. The title-page 
 deserves more careful consideration. It reads as follows : 
 " Hesperides : or the Works, both Humane and Divine, 
 of Robert Herrick, Esq." There are here three points 
 to notice. First, the title Hesperides, including as it 
 does the " humane and divine " poems, is clearly meant 
 to be a general title, covering both the Hesperides proper 
 and the Nohle Numbers. In the second place, the addi- 
 tion of the word " esquire " to Herrick's name suggests 
 that on his ejection from Dean Prior he had assumed 
 lajonan's dress, and as a layman desired to appear before 
 the public. Again, the beautiful title, Hesperides, is 
 significant. It can hardly be doubted that in adopting 
 it, he intended his readers to understand that it was as 
 " children of the West Country " that he wished his 
 poems to be regarded. Some of them, as we know, were 
 written elsewhere ; but the title, read in the light of what 
 he tells us in his poem, To his Muse {2) makes it probable 
 that the majority of them belong to the Dean Prior 
 period. 
 
 The design of the frontispiece, with the bust of the 
 poet on a pedestal, was the work of the engraver WilUam 
 Marshall, who had, earlier in his career, engraved por- 
 traits of Bacon, Donne, and Milton. This, our only 
 portrait of Herrick, is worse than nothing at all, for it 
 can be little better than a caricature. We may, perhaps, 
 accept the lustrous eye, the thick, tight curls, and the 
 curious beak-like nose which calls to mind the busts of 
 the Emperor Vespasian ; but the fat stolidity of the rest 
 of the face, together with the grotesque neck, leave us 
 incredulous, or indignant. 
 
 It is to be feared that the reception accorded to Her- 
 rick's volume of poems by the reading public fell far short 
 
LAST YEARS iii 
 
 of his hopes and expectations. Thomas Hunt of Exeter 
 may have quickly disposed of his copies of the work among 
 the poet's friends and admirers in Devonshire, but it is 
 doubtful whether the same can be said of the London 
 firm of publishers. No second edition appeared until 
 more than a hundred and fifty years afterwards. The 
 immortality of fame which the poet had promised 
 himself and those in whose honour he indited his verses 
 must have seemed' to him a delusive will-o'-the-wisp. 
 That immortality is now at last assured, but it is doubtful 
 whether even Herrick, with all his buoyancy and assur- 
 ance of poetic power, could have strained his gaze as 
 far forward as the nineteenth century, which redeemed 
 him from obUvion and set him amongst his peers. It is 
 to be feared that to the sadness which must have fallen 
 on Herrick in the long years of Puritan rule, there was 
 added the sense of failure in the hopes which had been 
 so long and so fervently cherished. The small esteem 
 which was set upon the poems at the time of their appear- 
 ance has been attributed to the untowardness of the 
 times. "Herrick," says Mr Edmund Gosse, "brought 
 out the Hesperides a few months before the King was 
 beheaded, and people were invited to Hsten to little 
 madrigals upon Julia's stomacher at the singularly in- 
 opportune moment when the eyes of the whole nation 
 were bent on the unprecedented phenomenon of the 
 proclamation of an English republic." ^ It would be 
 idle to deny that there is truth in Mr Gosse's words, yet 
 it is doubtful whether the year 1648 was more inoppor- 
 tune for the publication of a volume of poems than the 
 years which immediately preceded or those which im- 
 mediately followed it. In this connection, too, it must be 
 borne in mind that, within the years 1645-51, a large 
 amount of poetry passed through the press, some of it 
 being received with an appreciation which was not greatly 
 lessened by the troubled state of national affairs. In 
 1645, the year of Naseby and Rowton Heath, appeared 
 ' Seventeenth-Century Studies, p. 115. 
 
112 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 the poems of Milton and Waller — the former received 
 with comparative silence, the latter with rapturous 
 applause. In 1646 Crashaw's Steps to the Temple was 
 published, and both Vaughan and Shirley saw through 
 the press a volume of poems. In 1647 Abraham Cowley 
 added to his already over-topping reputation by the 
 publication of the Mistress. The year 1648 belongs 
 almost exclusively to Herrick among poets of note, but 
 the following year brought to light the epodes, odes, 
 sonnets, and songs which Lovelace linked to the name of 
 Lucasta, and Thomas Stanley's volume of Translations 
 from Latin lyrists. In 1650 Vaughan published the first 
 part of Silex Scintillans, and in 1651 appeared Davenant's 
 Gondibert, Vaughan's Olor Iscanus, the original poems of 
 Stanley, and tiie collected works — poems and plays — 
 of William Cartwright. 
 
 In the face of evidence such as this, the reasons for 
 the neglect of Herrick, in his own and succeeding genera- 
 tions, must be sought, in part at least, elsewhere. They 
 are to be found in the fact that for his most delicate and 
 imperishable things the age was out of tune. When the 
 wit of Cowley and Waller was in the ascendant, the 
 imagination of Herrick was at its nadir. To the con- 
 temporaries of Samuel Pepys, the fairy-poems, the de- 
 scriptions^of May-poles, hock-carts, wassEols, wakes, and 
 lyrics like " The Mad Maid's Song " or " Corinna's going 
 a-Maying," must have seemed, like the Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, insipid and ridiculous. 
 
 With the publication of the Hesperides in 1648, Her- 
 rick's work as a poet was practically over. The only 
 known poem of his which belongs to a later date is The 
 New Charon,^ written on the death of the young Lord 
 Hastings in 1649 ; hke other lyrics of happier days it was 
 set to music by the friend of Herrick and Milton, Mr 
 Henry Lawes. The poem is in eclogue form, the speakers 
 being Charon and Eucosmia ; the latter was the daughter 
 of Sir Theodore Mayeme, the. physician, to whom 
 
 1 Pollard, ii. 270. 
 
LAST YEARS 113 
 
 Hastings was betrothed. It is not without delicate fancy, 
 but the fact that the general idea of the poem is drawn 
 from the earlier Charon and Philomel (730) is a sign of 
 the author's waning power. Perhaps the chief interest 
 in it is its inclusion in the volume of memorial verses, 
 entitled Lachrymae Musaruni, alongside of similar poems 
 by Denham, Marvell, Dryden, and others. So placed, 
 it associates Herrick with the master-poet of the Restora- 
 tion in the same way that the verses, entitled His Mistress' 
 Shade, pubUshed in 1640, had associated him with Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 Of Herrick's life under the Commonwealth and Pro- 
 tectorate we know absolutely nothing. We may surmise 
 that it was spent chiefly in London in the society of his 
 relations, friends, and other " outed " clergymen : a 
 visit to his sister, Mercy Wingfield, and her family at 
 Brantham in Suffolk was also doubtless paid. There 
 must have been some small excitement for him in 1651, 
 when his cousin, Richard Herrick, third son of Sir 
 WUliam, and Warden of the CoUegiate Church of Man- 
 chester, was imprisoned in the Tower on a charge of 
 high treason. There is no evidence of friendship be- 
 tween the poet and any of Sir William's sons since the time 
 when the eldest of them, William, then an Oxford student, 
 had proposed to pay a visit to Cambridge and lodge with 
 Robert at the time of the royal visitation of 1615. 
 Political sympathies had forced the cousins farther 
 apart, for the family of Sir William had sided with the 
 ParUament and shown strong Puritan leanings. Richard 
 Herrick had, like his cousin, entered the Church, and in 
 1635 had been appointed to the important and lucrative 
 post of Warden of the Collegiate Church of Manchester. 
 He took an active part in the struggle of the succeeding 
 years, published in 1641 three sermons in duodecimo, and 
 dedicated them to the House of Commons. Amid the 
 checkered fortunes of the CivU War, Richard Herrick, 
 endowed as he -was with some of his father's qualities 
 for achieving material success, managed to hold his own ; 
 
114 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 but in 1651 he was imprudent enough to join a party 
 of discontented Presbyterians in what was known as 
 the London Conspiracy, with the intention of over- 
 throwing the republican form of government. On June 
 II, 165 1, he was thrown into the Tower, and remained 
 there in close custody for several months. On October 
 4, however, an order for his discharge was signed, and he 
 was bound over to keep the peace on a bond of £400 and 
 two sureties of £200 each, " if he can procure them." ^ 
 
 The restoration of Charles II. to the throne of his fathers 
 could have been desired by no one more heartily than the 
 poet who had simg his birth and dedicated to him his 
 most prized possession. He witnessed, we may be sure, 
 the King's triumphal entry into London on May 29, 1660, 
 and his coronation in Westminster Abbey eleven months 
 later. We may well believe, too, that old as he now was — 
 he was in his seventieth year when Charles was crowned — 
 he looked to the King for promotion and for putting an 
 end to the long period of inactivity, during which he had 
 been dependent on others for the means of subsistence. 
 Even before the King returned from his " travels," Samuel 
 Pepys makes the following entry in his Diary : " May 21, 
 1660. At Court I find that aU things grow high. The 
 old clergy talk as being sure of their lands again, and 
 laugh at the Presbytery ; and it is beheved that the sales 
 of the King's and Bishops' lands will never be confirmed 
 by Parliament, there being nothing now in any man's 
 power to hinder them and the King from doing what 
 they had a mind, but everybody wiling to submit to 
 anything." But the restoration of the ejected clergymen 
 to their Uvings did not proceed with the rapidity which 
 was expected. UntU the passing of the Act of Uni- 
 formity, most of the Presbyterian ministers, including 
 John Syms of Dean Prior, were safe. On May 31, 1662, 
 we meet with ctnother significant entry in Pepys' Diary : 
 
 1 See Calendar of State Papers, 1651, pp. 247, 401, 457, 465, 466 ; 
 also Grosart's Metnorial Introduction, p. cclxxx., and Dictionary 0/ 
 National Biography. 
 
LAST YEARS 115 
 
 " The Act for Uniformity is lately printed, which, it is 
 thought, will make mad work among the Presbyterian 
 ministers. People of all sides are very much discon- 
 tented ; some thinking themselves used, contrary to 
 promise, too hardly ; and the other that they are not 
 rewarded so much as they expected by the King." It 
 would be pleasant to gain some inkling of Herrick's 
 feelings at this time of clerical expectation. Did he hope 
 for promotion to some prebend's stall such as his friend 
 Weekes had enjoyed at Bristol under Charles I., or did 
 he desire a living which would have allowed him to spend 
 the remaining years of his life in the " blest place of his 
 nativity " ? If such were his hopes, they met with dis- 
 appointment. He was not passed over, but restored to 
 the old living in " dull Devonshire," which he had 
 promised to revisit only when 
 
 Rocks turn to rivers, rivers turn to men. 
 
 John Syms, the Presbyterian, refused to subscribe to 
 the. Act of Uniformity, even as his pi;edecessor had refused 
 the Solemn League and Covenant. He was ejected on 
 August 24, and then the parishioners of Dean Prior 
 prepared to welcome back to their midst their former 
 vicar. 
 
 The home-coming of Herrick to Dean Prior in 1662 
 is a subject worth,y of the painter's canvas. Arriving 
 as he did in the autumn of the year, when the hock-cart 
 was bringing in the last sheaves of the harvest, his return 
 must have seemed to many a simple soul in the parish 
 like the return — the re-incarnation — of some genial 
 woodland divinity who, after long years of absence, had 
 come back to dwell amongst them once more, to restore 
 to them their wakes and may-poles, and to " wassail " 
 their apple-trees against the ravages of the foul fiend. 
 Flibbertigibbet. Tliey had turned from him and reviled 
 him in the dark days of the forties, and he had retorted 
 with stinging epigrams ; but when he had left them, 
 with the solemn vow never to return, they thought of the 
 
Ii6 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 part which he had played in the rustic festivals that were 
 now taken from them ; and when they lay awake in 
 bed, they remembered how he had taught them to repeat 
 his Litany to the Holy Spirit until slimiber overtook them. 
 And now at last he had come back again in spite of his 
 vow, and all was to be as before. There were to be 
 Christmas mummings again, and the burning of brands 
 on Candlemas day ; charms might once more be pro- 
 noimced at bread-making, and " the hag that rides the 
 mare " be scared away at the sight of the hooks and shears 
 suspended in the stables ; above all, there was to be a 
 blessed restoration of cakes and ale, and of " ginger hot 
 i' the mouth." We can imagine the smile of amusement 
 that played on the faces of priest and parishioners, as the 
 former crossed the waters of the once execrated Dean 
 Bum and entered the village. But it was not a " rocky 
 generation " which conducted the vicar along the half- 
 mile of Devonshire lanes which led to, the church and 
 the vicarage, where the faithful Prudence Baldwin, rein- 
 stated like her master, was waiting to receive him. On 
 both sides there was something to forget, but also much 
 to remember that was tender and true. 
 
 For twelve years he remained amongst his people, 
 and then, in the October of the year 1674, a few months 
 after John Milton, he passed away. No tombstone re- 
 mains to mark the spot where he hes in the little church- 
 yard that fronts the moor, but in the parish register we 
 meet with the following entry : 
 
 Robert Herrick, Vicker, was buried y« 15* day of 
 October, 1674. 
 
 Four years later, in the same register, another entry 
 stands : 
 
 Prue Balden [i.e. Baldwin] was buried y' 6"" day of 
 January, 1678. 
 
PART II 
 THE WORKS 
 
 117 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 
 
 To appreciate aright the qualities of the Hesperides, it 
 is necessary first of all to determine the relation in which 
 those poems stand to contemporary poetry and to the 
 poetry of the preceding age. Herrick, though much of 
 his Ufe was lived in seclusion, never outgrew the influences 
 which moulded his youth ; from first to last his poetry 
 bears upon it the impress of the late Jacobean and early 
 Caroline age. Ben Jonson, aUve or dead, was still his 
 master, and no poet paid the dues of discipleship more 
 loyally. Again, the relation of Herrick to Jonson and 
 other seventeenth-century lyrists opens up a larger field 
 of inquiry. In what position, we ask, does this Jacobean 
 and Carohne lyric stand to the Elizabethan ? Are the 
 verses of Carew, Herrick, and Suckling in the direct line 
 of succession from that great outburst of Ehzabethan 
 song, the preluding strains of which are heard in the 
 lyrics of Wyatt and Surrey ? And if so, what differences 
 of form and temper can be observed as we pass from the 
 sixteenth to the seventeenth century ? In reply to 
 questions such as these, it may at once be said that there 
 is a general tendency to regard Enghsh lyric poetry from 
 the begiiming of Elizabeth's reign onwards to the Res- 
 toration as possessed of a certain imity. It is the lyric of 
 the English Renaissance, cind as such, it falls into hne with 
 the drama of the Renaissance, the evolution of which 
 fedls, roughly speaking, within the same period. If the 
 spirit of the Renaissance is breathed into the sonnets of 
 
 us 
 
120 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Sidney or Spenser, so is it also into the songs of Milton's 
 Comus and Arcades. 
 
 But if there is general agreement as to the period 
 over which this Renaissance lyric extends, there is the 
 widest divergence of opinion as to the relationship which 
 the lyric poetry of the seventeenth century bears to that 
 of the sixteenth. On the one hand, we are told that the 
 Jacobean and Caroline Ij^ric shows the gradual dying 
 away of the splendid harmonies of Elizabethan song; 
 on the other, that this later l5nric, so far from exhibiting 
 signs of decay, marks the triumphant consummation of 
 all that has gone before. The former view is that taken 
 by certain distinguished American students of our lyric 
 poetry. Thus Professor Schelling assures us that, when 
 we reach the days of the Stuart kings, " the golden 
 summer of the Enghsh lyric is on the wane ; " ^ while 
 Professor Barrett Wendell, tracing the changes in the 
 temper of the English people during the seventeenth 
 century, bids us see the process of disintegration at work 
 in the CaroUne lyric as surely as in the Caroline drama. ^ 
 The opposite view is held by the most distinguished 
 master of lyric poetry in our own generation, Mr Swin- 
 burne. " It is singular," he writes, " that the first great 
 age of English lyric poetry should have been also the one 
 great age of EngUsh dramatic poetry : but it is hardly 
 less singular that the lyric school should have advanced 
 as steadily as the dramatic school declined from the 
 promise of its dawn. Bom with Marlowe, the drama 
 rose at once with Shakespeare to heights inaccessible 
 before and since and for ever, to sink through bright 
 gradations of glorious decline to its final and beautiful 
 sunset in Shirley : but the lyrical record that begins with 
 the author of Euphues and Endymion grows fuller if not 
 brighter through a whole chain of constellations till it 
 culminates in the crowning star of Herrick." ' 
 
 1 A Book of Elizabethan Lyrics, p. xxxiii. 
 
 " The Seventeenth Century in English Literature. 
 
 ' Preface to Heitick's Poems (Muses' Library edition). 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 121 
 
 The contemporaneous expression of views so divergent 
 as these calls for a close examination of the lyric of the 
 EngUsh Renaissance, and a judicious weighing of the 
 evidence for and against the theory of decadence. In 
 making such an examination, it will be convenient to 
 ignore for the time being the work of Herrick himself ; 
 the relation which his poems bear to the general poetic 
 tendencies of the age will be the theme of a subsequent 
 chapter. 
 
 During the first thirty years of EUzabeth's reign the ! 
 form of lyric most in vogue was the popular song. This 
 was an heirloom of the fast vanishing Middle Ages, and 
 it is no easy matter to discover whence it came. In its 
 dancing rhythm, in its artlessness and spontaneity, in 
 its fondness for a refrain and for repetitions, some of 
 which take the form of meaningless interjections like 
 " Hey, nonny, nonny ! " it recalls, in no uncertain way, 
 the communal folk-song of a primitive age. But with ; 
 this element of folk-song are mingled strains of a less j 
 remote ancestry. Among these we may discover the 
 convivial drinking-songs of medieval scholares vagantes, : 
 with Walter Map as tiieir Coryphaeus ; also Christmas 
 carols of Norman origin, acclaiming with joyous cries of 
 Noel ! Noel ! the birth of the infant Christ, or, in lighter i 
 mood, welcoming the entrance into the baronial hall of 
 the festive boar's head of Yuletide : 
 
 Caput apri refero 
 Resonans laudes domino. 
 
 With these, too, are mingled the religious and didactic 
 songs, and the semi-religious lullabies, which sprang to ; 
 life under the shadow of church and minster, and which 
 had withstood the Reformation ; likewise, the popular '• 
 love-songs of medieval minstrelsy, the pedlar-songs and 
 hunting-songs ; and, finally, all the store of lyric mirth 
 which ushered in, and gave a ceremonial character to, ' 
 the great festivals of May-day, Harvest-Home and 1 
 Christmas. 
 
122 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Until the influence of the Italian Renaissance was felt 
 in England, this popvilar song was truly national in 
 character ; its strains were heard at the monarch's court 
 as well as in the market-place or the furrow. In Wynkyn 
 de Worde's Song-Book,^ pubUshed in 1530, and intended 
 to serve the needs of Henry VIII. ■ and his courtiers, 
 appear such popular songs as " Mynyon, go trym," 
 " We Maydins berth the bell-a," and " Beware my l3^yl 
 fynger." Nearly half a century later, too, when Queen 
 Elizabeth was at Kenilworth, we find that Leicester 
 summoned to his aid the versatile " Captain Cox," a 
 mason of Coventry, who, among other forms of enter- 
 tainment, produced " a bunch of ballets and songs, all 
 ancient," with which to delight the queen's ears ; and 
 included amongst these we find " Bonny lass upon a 
 green," " By a bank as I lay," " Over a whinny, Meg," 
 and other songs of a distinctly popular character. * 
 
 A few years later, however, the popular song in Eng- 
 land received a blow from which it has never entirely 
 recovered. In 1588, Nicholas Yonge published his 
 Musica Transalpina, a collection of madrigals and can- 
 zonets, translated from such Italian authors as Petrarch 
 and Ariosto, and set to music by Orlando di Lasso, 
 Alfonzo Ferrabosco, and other Italian musicians of the 
 period. Now the madrigal, with its contrapuntal music, 
 its single strophe, its Italian grace and Petrarchan 
 sentiment, was directly opposed to the homely words 
 and simple recurring melody, with attendant refrain, 
 of the popular song ; and, at a time when everjrthing 
 Italian was welcomed with open arms by English courtiers, 
 it is easy to see that, in the conflict which arose between 
 the two classes of song-l5aic, the madrigal must win the 
 victory. The FitzwiUiam Virginal Book shows that one 
 or two of the early madrigahsts, hke Wilham Byrd and 
 Thomas Morley, were still ready to supply musical set- 
 
 1 Edited by R. Imelmann (Shakespeare Jahrbuch, xxxiz., p. 121). 
 'Captain Cox, his Ballads and Books, ed. F. J. FumivaU (Ballad 
 Society Publications), 1871. 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 123 
 
 tings to such a popular song as, " The Carman's Whistle," 
 but their main energies were directed towards the 
 furtherance of the Itcdian song-ljn:ic. Between twenty 
 and thirty collections of madrigals and canzonets were 
 published in England between 1588 and the close of the 
 century, and in the production of these the leading 
 English composers of the time, Morley, Weelkes, Wilbye, 
 Farmer, and others, were directly engaged. The 
 literary quality of these madrigals is "for the most part 
 poor ; and only in a smaU number of instances do we 
 know who wrote the words, which throughout, and 
 contrary to the practice in the popular song, are sub- 
 servient to the music. A recent historian of English 
 music, Mr E. Walker, speaking of the old madrigal books, 
 says : " The words are printed in so casual and incom- 
 plete a fashion as to suggest that even when they were 
 sung, the singer was allowed a very free hand." ^ A 
 few of the madrigals and canzonets have a strain of 
 homehness in them, and touch on popular themes almost 
 after the manner of the folk-song. Such is the case, 
 for instance, with the twentieth canzonet in Thomas 
 Morley's collection bf 1593, in which a rustic wedding is 
 presented in the following idyllic manner : 
 
 List, hark yon Minstrells, how fine they firck it. 
 
 And how the maids irck it. 
 
 With Kate and Will, 
 
 Tom and Gill. 
 
 Now a skip. 
 
 Then a trip. 
 
 Finely fat aloft, 
 
 Ther againe as oft. 
 
 AU for Daphnes wedding day ! 
 
 Hey ho, fine brave holiday ! * 
 
 But for the most part they are artificial, and foreign, 
 both in sentiment and expression, to the genius of 
 
 1 History of Music in England, 1907, p. 60. 
 
 2 Bolle, Die gedruckten englischen Liederbiicher (Palaestra, vol. xxix., 
 p. 65). 
 
124 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 ] English folk-song. The prevailing theme is love, which 
 I is treated in the conventional fashion famUiar to us in 
 most of the sonnet-sequences of the same period, and the 
 mood of the poet-lover is one of wistful melancholy. An 
 air of unreality pervades the madrigals, and only very 
 occasionally do they attain the unstudied grace and 
 golden cadence of the best Miscellany-lyrics, or of the 
 Airs which were destined to replace them after the turn 
 of the century. The following madrigal, taken from 
 John Wilbye's collection, pubhshed in 1598, is typical 
 of the general style and average attainment of this 
 form of lyric. From a musical standpoint Wilbye's 
 work ranks very high : — 
 
 Alas, what a wretched life is this ! 
 Nay, what a death, where tyrant Love commandeth. 
 My flowering days are in their prime declining. 
 All my proud hopes quite fallen, and life untwining. 
 My joys, each after other, in haste are flying. 
 
 And leave me dying 
 
 For her that scorns my crying. 
 
 she from hence departs, my love refraining. 
 From whom, all heartless, alas, I die complaining. * 
 
 The swift descent of the popular song from the banquet- 
 ing-hall to the ale-house, as soon as tJie Italian song-lyric 
 gained a footing in the land, is clearly indicated by 
 George Puttenham. In his Arte of English Poesie, 
 pubhshed only one year after the appearance of Yonge's 
 Musica Transalpina, he speaks of the popular song in 
 the following contemptuous manner : " Tlie over busie 
 and too speedy retume of one maner of tune [doth] too 
 much annoy and as it were glut the eare, unlesse it be in 
 small and popular Musickes, song by these Cantabanqui 
 upon benches and barrels heads, where they have none 
 other audience then boys or countrey fellowes that passe 
 by them in the streete ; . . . also they be used in 
 Carols and rounds and such light or lascivious Poemes, 
 which are commonly more commodiously uttered by 
 
 1 A. H. Bullen, Some Shorter Elizabethan Lyrics, 1903, p. 150. 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 125 
 
 these buffons or vices in playes then by any other 
 person." ^ 
 
 Puttenham's reference to the " buffons or vices in 
 playes " brings us in the next place to consider the 
 lyrics scattered, often with lavish hand, through the 
 dramas of the Ehzabethan stage. Lyric poetry, in the 
 form of the popular song, had found a place already in 
 the Mystery and Morality plays of the medieval period ; 
 and when, early in Elizabeth's reign, we reach the be- 
 ginnings of true comedy in England, we find that the 
 value of the lyric as furnishing relief from the dramatic 
 tension is fully recognised. Songs are frequent in 
 Ralph Roister Doister and Gammer Gurton's Needle, and it 
 would be hard to find lyrics which cleave more closely 
 to the popular tradition than " I mun be maried a 
 Sunday," of the former, or " Backe and syde go bare, 
 go bare," of the latter. Lyly in his Court Comedies 
 replaced the folk-songs by lyrics of a more cultured and 
 artificial nature, but most of the dramas written for the 
 public stage remain, until the close of the century, true 
 to the artless speech and simple melodies of the popular 
 song. Nothing, indeed, indicates the essentially popular 
 character of the Ehzabethan drama of this period more 
 faithfuUy than the tenacity with which it clung to this 
 form of lyric, at a time when madrigal, canzonet and 
 ballet were in the noontide of their power. And of all 
 the dramatists of the time Shakespeare remained through- 
 out his career the most loyal to the native tradition. In 
 his early venture. Love's Labour's Lost, he introduces art- 
 lyrics, in the form of sonnets, side by side with such a 
 simple song as " When daisies pied and violets blue ; " 
 but the experiment is not repeated, and in his later 
 dramas he keeps very close to the popular melodies. 
 Shakespeare, too, is the only dramatist of the time who 
 attempted to do for the folk-songs of England what 
 Bums did, on a far larger scale, for the folk-songs of 
 Scotland, that is, remodel them and endue them with 
 1 Ed. Arber, p. 96. 
 
126 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 new life. We know for a certainty that he did this 
 in the case of Desdemona's willow-song, and it is probable 
 that the same remodelling has taken place in the case 
 of the jester's song at the end of Twelfth Night. And 
 even where his songs are obviously new creations, and 
 where they admit neither of refrain nor of recurring 
 phrases, they still possess the simplicity of manner and 
 the tunefulness of the folk-song. 
 
 When we turn from the lyric which was written to be 
 sung, to the lyric which was written to be read, we are 
 at once confronted with the sonnet-sequences and the 
 lyrics of the Miscellanies. The vogue of the sonnet in 
 Elizabethan England synchronizes almost exactly with 
 that of the madrigal. Introduced into our Uterature by 
 Wyatt and Surrey, it made little progress until the last 
 decade of the century ; then, after the pubUcation of 
 Sidney's Astrophel and Stella in 1591, it claimed the 
 services of almost aU the poets of the day, and, in spite 
 of occasional protests, enjoyed an extraordinary vogue 
 right up to the close of the century. It is unnecessary, 
 after all that has been written about the Renaissance 
 sonnet, to dweU long upon it here. In England, as in 
 Italy and France, it is an essentially romantic and 
 idealistic form of Ij^ric. Of Provengal origin, it retains 
 from first to last the spirit of medieval chivalry, the 
 spirit of worship and service. To render the homage of 
 pure adoration to her whose beauty has him in thrall, 
 and to serve her with a loyalty which asks for no reward, 
 is the paramount quest of the sonneteer from Dante to 
 Spenser. With tins spirit of medieval chivalry had 
 mingled, from the time of Petrarch onwards, the ethereal 
 aura of Platonic ideaUsm, imparting to the lyric love a 
 mystic rapture, and removing it yet further from sensuous 
 passion and the touch of reality. In virginal purity, 
 innate nobility, and soaring exaltation, there is no love 
 lyric in the world which equals the best of the Renais- 
 sance sonnets. Yet it was this very idealism, and this 
 aloofness from the world of sense, which, when the 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 127 
 
 sonnet became the fashion of the hour, brought about 
 its fall. It was easy for a Galahad soul like that of 
 Edmimd Spenser to scale the heights of chivalrous 
 ideaUsm, and to join with Plato in mystic communion 
 with that Aphrodite Urania, who is 
 
 heavenly borne and cannot die. 
 Being a parcell of the purest skie. 
 
 But sonneteers of less ethereal temper, striving to soar 
 with Petrarch or Spenser, and feigning a love which they 
 did not feel, were only too often carried away, " ten 
 thousand leagues awry," into the arid regions of false 
 sentiment and rhetoric. The edicts of fashion made 
 sonnet-writing a literary convention, and then the 
 prostrate humility and despairing sighs of the poet-lover 
 strike us chill, and we lose all sense of the individuality 
 of himself and of the mistress whom he celebrates. From 
 the first, the artificiality of the sonnet had been discerned 
 and censured. Sir PhiUp Sidney, who set the fashion 
 in England, and whose sonnets have more of the sense 
 of reality in them than most of those which followed, 
 was, curiously enough, the first to point out its unreality. 
 Speaking in his Apologie of " that LyricaU kind of Songs 
 and Sonnets," he says : " But truely many of such writ- 
 ings, as come under the banner of unresistable love, if I 
 were a Mistres, would never perswade mee they were in 
 love ; so coldely they apply fiery speeches, as men that 
 had rather red Lovers writings, and so caught up cer- 
 taine swelling phrases, which hang together, like a man 
 which once told mee, the winde was at North West and 
 by South, because he would be sure to name windes 
 enowe, — ^than that in truth they feele those passions : 
 which easily (as I think) may, be bewrayed by that same 
 forcibleness or Energia (as the Greekes cal it) of the 
 writer." ^ A few years later we find the witty yoimg 
 Templar, Sir John Davies, subjecting the practice of 
 I Apologie, ed, Shuckburgh, p. 57. 
 
128 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 sonneteering to wholesome parody in his Gulling Sonnets ; 
 and when the end of the century is reached, we see how 
 the fashion is passing swiftly away. 
 
 The lyrics of the Elizabethan misceUanies lack the 
 definiteness of form, or even of theme, found in the 
 lyrics of the madrigal-books and the sonnet cycles. They 
 • are anthologies, formed by enterprising publishers at a 
 time when poets set httle store by the fortunes of their 
 writings, and gathered from the romances, the sonnet- 
 sequences, the song-books, and from whatever manu- 
 script collections were accessible. There is, accordingly, 
 ! great variety in the character and quality of these 
 , miscellany-lyrics, and in such a collection as England's 
 I Helicon {1600), we come upon many of the choicest 
 ; flowers of Elizabethan lyric poetry. Dehghtfully simple 
 J and spontaneous, too, as many of these 150105 are, they 
 are in the main art-lyrics, and have little in common with 
 1 the folk-song. The miscellanies were compiled for cul- 
 tured and courtly circles of readers, and it is worthy 
 of note that, while the compilers often cast their net very 
 wide, they set no store by the matchless song-ljoics of the 
 dramas which follow the tradition of the popular melodies. 
 Thus the anthology, entitled The Passionate Pilgrim, 
 which the pirate publisher, WiUiam Jaggard, compiled 
 in 1599, and fathered upon Shakespeare, contains the 
 three sonnets of Love's Labour's Lost, but none of the 
 snatches of song scattered through that and through 
 Shakespeare's other eatly comedies. The ban of vulgarity 
 which rested upon the autochthonous song-lyric during the 
 closing years of the sixteenth century was not to be 
 Kfted by publishers, eager at all costs to fall in with 
 the prevalUng fashions. But if these lyrics of the 
 miscellanies are a little artificial as compared with the 
 wood-notes wild of Shakespeare and Dekker, they seem 
 artlessness itself when set by the side of most of the 
 sonnet-sequences and most of the collections of madri- 
 gals. In buoyancy and verbal melody, in the absence of 
 intellectual strain and the perfect subjugation of thought 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 129 
 
 to feeling, the best l5nics of Marlowe, Breton, and Lodge 
 have never been surpassed. 
 
 These lyrics are less dominated by foreign literary 
 influences than the sonnet and the madrigal ; yet, as we 
 read them, we feel the presence of the Italy of the Re- 
 naissance. This manifests itself in the glow of romantic 
 idealism with which they are suffused, in the pleasant 
 garb of pastoraHsm which they assume, and in a certain 
 iimocent hedonism, which seems a Httle foreign to our 
 sober English temper- even in the heyday of the Renais- 
 sance. Varied in character as these lyrics are, the 
 quaUty which is common to almost all of them is that of 
 youthfulness. We have here the lyric of a nation in the 
 first glory of adolescence, whose movements have an 
 indefinable rhythmic grace, and whose outlook upon the 
 world is untroubled by care or misgiving. It is a lyric 
 which recreates for us the golden age long dreamed of 
 by the poets of antiquity. 
 
 Come live with me and be my love. 
 And we -will aE the pleasures prove. 
 That valleys, groves, hills and fields. 
 Woods, or steepy mountains, yields. 
 
 Thus sings Christopher Marlowe in the exuberance of 
 youthful ardour, and the strain is taken up by a whole 
 chorus of poets, who sing because they must. 
 
 It is indicative of this quahty of youthfulness in the 
 l3nics of the misceUanies that the note of intensity is 
 rarely heard in them. Occupied as they are with the 
 all-absorbing theme of love, we look in vain for the 
 poignancy and passion which appear, a few years later, 
 in the lyrics of Dorme. The Ij^ric love is the creation of 
 the poetic imagination, which never comes into touch 
 with the hard facts of Ufe, and finds utterance only in 
 the golden world of Arcadian fancy. The proffered love 
 may not find acceptance, but denial brings with it no 
 sense of disUlusioiunent, nor does the youSiful idealism 
 which inspires the lyrics to Phillida or Amaryllis ever 
 
 (2,488) 5 
 
130 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 stoop to mere gallantry. And with this lack of intensity 
 goes also a lack of self -revelation. The poems of the 
 miscellanies are lyrical by virtue of their tunefulness rather 
 than by their power of disclosing the inmost recesses of 
 the poet's soul. Seventeenth century lyrists, like Crashaw, 
 Vaughan, Suckling, or Herrick, whether their poetry be 
 intense or not, stand revealed to us in what they write, 
 but how little information do we gather as to the per- 
 sonality of Breton, Lodge, or Bamfield from their snatches 
 of song scattered through the miscellanies ! 
 
 We have now briefly reviewed the leading forms of 
 l5aic poetry in England during the reign of Elizabeth, 
 and have marked the decline of the popular song, with its 
 simple melody and homely realism, and the rise of the 
 art-lyric in the form of madrigal, sonnet, and miscellany 
 lyric. In noticing these changes, we have seen how 
 England has come under the influence of Italy, and have 
 witnessed the triumph of a love lyric, somewhat diffuse 
 in expression, fraught with pastoral fancies, essentially 
 romantic and visionary, and, in its attitude towards 
 womanhood, wholly loyal to the ideals of chivalry and 
 the teaching of Plato. It remains to be seen what changes 
 took place in the form and temper of English lyric poetry 
 after the death of EUzabeth, and to what extent the 
 influence of Renaissance Italy became subject to modi- 
 fication. 
 
 Even the most casual student of the social history 
 and the literature of England must be aware that a 
 change in the temper of the nation can be discerned soon 
 after the death of EUzabeth. We recognize a certain 
 coarsening in the fibre of the race, and a certain loss of 
 national solidarity. This is not the place to analyse this 
 change of temper, nor even, following the quaint methods 
 of the author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, to lay our 
 finger on its prognostics, symptoms, and causes. But 
 may not much of the inner meaning of the change be 
 summed up in the philosophy of Feste, the fool : " Youth's 
 a stuff will not endure " ? Youthfulness is the prime 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 131 
 
 characteristic not only of the lyric poetry, but of Eliza- 
 bethan literature as a whole. It is the secret of the 
 visionary power of that literature, and of that desire 
 to reach beyond 6ne's grasp, which finds characteristic 
 expression in the dramas of Christopher Marlowe. When 
 the seventeenth century opened, the Renaissance move- 
 ment had still far to run ; in some directions, indeed, the 
 power of the ancient world over life and Uterature was 
 only just beginning to be felt : but none the less we are 
 aware that a conscious sobering of the national temper 
 has taken place, and that the heyday of youth is 
 over. 
 
 It is only natural that this change should manifest 
 itself first of all in lyric poetry, for of all forms of literature 
 the lyric is that which furnishes the most perfect mirror 
 of even the most evanescent changes which come over a 
 nation's thoughts and emotions. In lyric poetry we 
 discern a change even before the end of the sixteenth 
 century is readied. Already in the sonnets of Shake- 
 speare we are aware that the power of ideahsm over 
 poetry is on the wane ; for his love sonnets are not like 
 those of Spenser, nor even like those of Sidney. The 
 wind of reaUsm sweeps across them, and brings with it 
 disillusionment and scepticism as to the worth and 
 dignity of womanhood. The " dark lady " of Sonnets 
 cxxvii.-clii. is no Madonna Laura, but a " woman 
 colour'd ill." The poet loves her with a feverish, tem- 
 pestuous love, which brings perjury of soul with it, and 
 the betrayal of his " nobler part " to his " gross body's 
 treason " : 
 
 My love is as a fever, longing still 
 For that which longer nurseth the disease ; 
 Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, 
 The uncertain sickly appetite to please. 
 My reason, the physician to my love, 
 Angry that his prescriptions are not kept. 
 Hath left me, and I desperate now approve 
 Desire is death, which physic did except. 
 
132 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Past cure I am, now reason is past care. 
 
 And frantic-mad with evermore unrest ; 
 
 My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are, 
 
 At random from the truth vainly express' d ; 
 
 For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright 
 Who art as black as hell, as dark as night. 
 
 As we read these burning lines, we feel that we have 
 travelled very far from the pallid romanticism of Daniel's 
 Delia or Drayton's Idea, or from the mystic idealism of 
 Spenser's Amoreiti. At the very time, too, that Shake- 
 speare was writing these love sonnets, a younger poet, 
 standing apart from the main body of Elizabethan 
 men of letters, and content to lead a life of intellectual 
 isolation, was deliberately making war upon both the 
 temper and the form of the Elizabethan lyric. Accord- 
 ing to Ben Jonson, Donne wrote " all his best pieces before 
 he was twenty-five," that is, before 1598 ; and this state- 
 ment has been accepted as substantially correct by 
 Donne's biographer, Mr Edmund Gosse, and his latest 
 editor, Mr E. K. Chambers. By his " best pieces," Jonson 
 probably means the so-called " Songs and Sonnets," 
 concerning which Mr Chambers writes as follows : "All 
 Donne's love-poems — and the majority of the ' Songs 
 and Sonnets ' are concerned with love — seem to me to 
 fall into two divisions. There is one, marked by cynicism, 
 ethical laxity, and a somewhat deliberate profession of 
 inconstancy. This I believe to be his earhest style, and 
 ascribe the poems marked by it to the period before 
 1596. About that date he became acquainted with 
 Anne More, whom he evidently loved devotedly and 
 sincerely ever after. And therefore, from 1596 onwards, 
 I place the second division, with its emphasis of the 
 spiritual, and deep insight into the real things of 
 love." 1 
 
 It is with the poems of the first division that we are 
 concerned at present, for it is in these that we chiefly see 
 the warfare which he waged with the cherished ideals 
 ' Poems of John Donne, vol. i. p. zao. 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 133 
 
 of the Petrarchan sdiool of lyrists. In the poem. 
 Love's Growth, he stubbornly refuses to rest c»ntent 
 with the contemplative love of those sonneteers who 
 wrote passionate centuries of love to an imagiaaiy 
 mistress: 
 
 Love's not so pore and abstract as they use 
 
 To say, which have no mistress but their muse ; 
 
 But as all else, bdng elemented too. 
 
 Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do ; * 
 
 and in his Love's Alchemy he avows the profonndest 
 scepticism of that hidden mystery of love, first adum- 
 brated by Plato : 
 
 Some that have deeper digg'd love's mine than I, 
 Say, where his centnc happiness doth he. 
 
 I have loved, and got, and told. 
 But should I love, get, tell, till I were old, 
 I should not find that hidden nqrstery. 
 
 O ! 'tis impostore all ; 
 And as no chemic vet th' elixir got. 
 
 But ^oiifies his pregnant pot. 
 
 If by the way to him befaU 
 Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal. 
 
 So lovers dream a ridi and long deUght, 
 
 But get a winter-seeming summer's night. 
 
 Our ease, our thrift, our honour, and our day. 
 Shall we for this vain bubble's shadow pay ? 
 
 Ends love in this, that my man 
 Can be as happy as I can, if he can 
 Endure the ^lort scorn of a brid^room's play ? 
 
 That loving wretch that swears 
 'Tis not the bodies marry, but the minds. 
 
 Which he in her angelic finds. 
 
 Would swear as justly, that he hears 
 In that day's rude, hoarse minstrelsy the spheres. 
 
 Hope not for mind in women ; at their best 
 
 Sweetness and wit they are ; but mummy, possess' d.' 
 
 1 Poems, ed. Chambeis, i. p. 34. 
 ss/Wi., i-p. 41- 
 
134 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 If love is without spiritual mystery, woman is without 
 constancy : 
 
 If thou be'st bom to strange sights, 
 
 Things invisible to see. 
 Ride ten thousand days and nights. 
 Till age show white hairs on thee ; 
 Thou, when thou return' st, wilt tell me. 
 All strange wonders that befell thee. 
 And swear. 
 No where 
 Lives a woman true and fair. 
 
 If thou find'st one let me know ; 
 Such a pilgrimage were sweet. 
 Yet do not, I would not go. 
 
 Though at next door we might meet. 
 Though she were true when you met her. 
 And last till you write your letter. 
 Yet she 
 Will be 
 False, ere I come, to two or three.' 
 
 And if he finds women inconstant, he makes no boast 
 of constancy in himself : 
 
 I can love both fair and brown ; 
 
 Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays ; 
 
 Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays ; 
 
 Her whom the country form'd and whom the town ; 
 
 Her who believes, and her who tries ; , 
 
 Her who still weeps with spongy eyes. 
 
 And her who is dry cork, and never cries. 
 
 I can love her, and her, and you, and you ; 
 
 I can love any, so she be not true.' 
 
 The tone of these verses is unmistakable ; the philo- 
 sophy of love is brought down from heaven to earth, and 
 the senses are glorified at the expense of the soul. In 
 many of his later poems Donne reveals a mystic tem- 
 perament and indulges in flights of transcendental fancy ; 
 but at this early stage realism is all in aU to him. His 
 
 1 Song, Ibid., i. p. 4. 
 
 2 The Indifferent, i. p. 9. 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 135 
 
 attitude towards love and woman is not that of the 
 cjmic, for he was too passionate to be cynical ; it is the 
 effrontery of youthful arrogance in a poet whose inde- 
 pendent nature made him intolerant of subjection to con- 
 ventional modes of thought. He saw the unreality of the 
 Petrarchan school of poetry, and he turned contemptu- 
 ously away from the pleasant fictions and mellifluous 
 verse of the pastoraUsts. Shepherds and shepherdesses 
 found no favour in his eyes, and his rebel genius refused 
 to fleet the time carelessly in the bowers of a dreamy 
 Arcadia. He took up arms, too, not only against the 
 spirit of Elizabethan poetry, but also against its forms 
 and modes of expression. Scorning the sonnet and aU 
 its kindred forms, he pours forth his emotion into moulds 
 of his own fashioning, the metrical lawlessness of which 
 has been the despair of most of his critics from Jonson 
 onwards. His imagery is not drawn from the time- 
 honoured stories of classic fable, but from the arts and 
 sciences and the prosaic realities of his own, generation. 
 The aubade, the dawn-song of the awakening lovers, with 
 its allusions to the lark and nightingale, was one of the 
 most beautiful, but also one of the most conventional, 
 forms of Provengal lyric, and is enshrined for ever in our 
 memories through the use which Shakespeare makes of 
 it in Romeo and Juliet. Donne also has his aubade : how 
 far it is like that of Shakespeare, or that of the medieval 
 troubadours, may be judged from the following verses : 
 
 Busy old fool, unruly Sun, 
 
 Why dost thou thus, 
 Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ? 
 Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ? 
 
 Saucy, pedantic wretch, go chide 
 
 Late school-boys and sour prentices. 
 Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride. 
 Call country ants to .harvest offices ; 
 Love, all ahke, no season knows nor clime. 
 Nor hours, days, months, which axe the rags of time.^ 
 
 1 The Sun-Rising, i. p. 7. 
 
136 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 The reactionary temper of Donne is seen again in the 
 stamp of individuality impressed upon his poems. As 
 we have already noticed, the impress of a salient, distinct 
 personality is rarely met with in the lyrics of the Eliza- 
 bethan miscellanies ; and the same is true of most, 
 though not aU, of the sonnet-sequence. Conformity to 
 type is the general rule, and the difference between one 
 lyrist and another is that of quality rather than of kind; 
 With Donne all this is changed. His forceful personality 
 is revealed in every line he writes ; so far from wrapping 
 himself in the robes of convention, he likes nothing better 
 than to stand naked and unabashed before his audi- 
 ence, displaying the working of every sinew, the flexure 
 of every joint. His thoughts and emotions, his diction 
 and his verse, are part of himself, and can never be mis- 
 taken for those of any other poet, either of his own or 
 of another day. 
 
 The intellectuality of Donne, which so profoundly 
 colours his style, and concerning which so much has been 
 written, is only another aspect of his individuality and 
 a further indication of his reactionary temper. The 
 EUzabethan lyric is rarely packed with thought, rarely 
 obscure. It often affects euphuistic phrases, but their 
 meaning and relation to the main body of thought are 
 generally apparent, and they have nothing^ common 
 with the ingenuity, the cramped and tortured style of 
 Donne, when he is, as Coleridge puts it, wreathing 
 " iron pokers into true-love-knots." The " wit " of 
 Donne, the love of paradox and hyperbole, and all the 
 discordia concors brought about by a perverse and restless 
 ingenuity, are the qualities of Donne's poetry which have 
 chiefly impressed both his disciples and his critics, and for 
 this very reason it is imnecessary to dwell upon them here. 
 
 To what extent, and in what directions, was the in- 
 fluence of Donne's Ijnic poetry felt by the next generation 
 of poets ? In attempting to answer this question, we 
 must first of all bear in mind the circumstances under 
 which his lyrics came to light. They were first pub- 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 137 
 
 lished in 1633, two years after his death, but we have 
 abundant evidence that they circulated widely in manu- 
 script copies during his lifetime.^ Jonson's conversa- 
 tions with Drummond in 1619, and Carew's Elegy on the 
 Death of Doctor Donne, assure us that Donne was a power 
 in the land long before he passed to his grave, in an odour 
 of austere sanctity, within the crypt of old St Paul's. 
 Of his influence as a styhst, of his leadership of the 
 " metaphysical " school of poets, it is unnecessary to add 
 anything to what Dr Johnson and many later critics 
 have said. Mr Gosse has traced the influence of this side 
 of his genius upon Henry King, Herbert, Crashaw, and 
 other poets of a later generation, and has characterized it 
 as " remarkably wide and deep, though almost entirely 
 malign." * But his influence reached far deeper than 
 points of style. The lyrists of the generation which fol- 
 lowed Donne differ from those of the Elizabethan era in 
 nothing so much as in the impress of personality which 
 is revealed in their writings. The Elizabethan lyric, as 
 already noticed, is curiously lacking in this personal 
 touch, but the contrary is true of that which foUowed. 
 The Caroline poets, whether they pay homage to the 
 sacred or the secular muse, are always individual. Carew, 
 Suckling and Lovelace, Herbert, Crashaw and Vaughan, 
 have aU left upon their verses the indeUble mark of their 
 own personality ; we touch these men to the quick when- 
 ever we read them. The gay dalliance of the courtiers, 
 their loves and their hates, and the spiritual struggles 
 and religious ecstasies of the churchmen, are never con- 
 cealed from view. And it was Donne who, breaking 
 away from Elizabethan conventions, first imparted to 
 the l3mc this note of individuality, this lyrical cry of an 
 intense and passion-swept soul. The influence of Donne 
 is seen again, though here it blends with another influence 
 soon to be considered, in the changed attitude of seven- 
 teenth century Ijmsts towards love and womanhood. ' 
 
 1 See Mr Gosse's Life of John Donne, vol. i. p. 79, vol. ii. p. 336. 
 
 2 Life of Donne, ii. 329. 
 
138 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 The Petrarchan ideals, it is true, died hard. The Spen- 
 serian school of poets remained, on the whole, true to 
 them ; they come to light again in the Castara lyrics of 
 Habington, and appear, chilled and sere, in the Mistress 
 poems of Cowley : but we look for them in vain in the 
 great body of cavalier-lyrics. When Suckling writes : 
 
 Out upon it, I have loved 
 
 Three whole days together ; 
 And am like to love three more. 
 
 If it prove fair weather ; 
 
 or when Wither asks : 
 
 Shall I, wEisting in despair. 
 
 Die because a woman's fair ? 
 Or make pale my cheeks with care 
 
 'Cause another's rosy are ? 
 
 we are at once reminded of the Songs and Sonnets of 
 Donne. Even the gentle-hearted Browne, with all his 
 loyalty to Spenser and the pastoral tradition, comes 
 under the influence of the new lyric in the following 
 verses : 
 
 Love who wiU, for I'll love none. 
 There's fools enough beside me ; 
 
 Yet if each woman have not one. 
 Come to me where I hide me ; 
 
 And if she can the place attain. 
 
 For once I'll be her fool again. 
 
 Potent and all-pervasive as the influence of Donne was 
 upon the lyrists of the seventeenth century, it was not 
 the only influence which made itself felt. Side by side 
 with it, we can trace another influence, sometimes blend- 
 ing with it, but more often opposed to it — ^that of Ben 
 Jonson, and through Ben Jonson, that of the l57rists of 
 Greece and Rome. 
 
 Until the end of the sixteenth century is reached, 
 the direct influence of the classical lyric upon English 
 poetry remained subordinate to that exerted by the 
 Italian ; and the Italian lyric, although it delighted ia 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 139 
 
 allusions to classic fable, and took on at times a certain 
 classic colouring, is in spirit and expression different from 
 that of Greece or Rome. The Italian lyric, at least as 
 far as it was understood and imitated in England, was 
 permeated with the spirit of Petrarch ; and between the 
 soneiti and canzoni of Petrarch and the carmina of 
 Catullus or the odes of Horace or Anacreon — to mention 
 by name the three lyrists whose influence was chiefly felt 
 in Renaissance England — there was very little in common. 
 And when, with Jonson, a lyric framed on classical 
 models arose ,in England, it was regarded, just as much as 
 the realistic lyric of Donne, as a protest against the Petrar- 
 chan school of poetry. Jonson, so Drummond tells us, 
 " cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to sonnets; which, he 
 said, were like that Tirrant's bed, where some who were 
 too short were racked ; others, too long, cut short." ^ 
 
 Until the advent of Jonson, the attempts to fashion a 
 lyric upon classical models had been fitful and uncertain ; 
 and some at least of the energy expended in this direction 
 might with advantage have been otherwise applied. At 
 a time when the study of the classics was leading to an 
 imitation of classic measures, we find attempts being made 
 to write Enghsh lyrics in sapphic or anacreontic verse, 
 wherein rhyme is ignored, and accent is made more or 
 less subservient to quantity. Thus Bamabe Barnes 
 includes in his ParthenophU and Parthenope (1593) two 
 lyrics, both without rhyme, and written, the one in 
 Sapphics, and the other in anacreontics. Another lyric 
 in sapphic verse appears in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody 
 (1602), and one or two more among the l5mc collections 
 of Campion. Campion, whose attack upon the " vulgar 
 and artificial custom of rhyming," in his Observations 
 in the Art of English Poesie, is weU known, is a singularly 
 interesting figure in the history of the English lyric. 
 His greatest triumphs are won in those songs in which he 
 keeps most closely to the romantic Elizabethan maimer ; 
 and in such lyrics as " There is a garden in her face," or 
 1 Conversations with Drummond, ed. Laing, p. 4. 
 
140 ROBERT HERRICR 
 
 the less known but almost equally beautiful, " Where 
 she her sacred bower adorns," we still seem very far away 
 from Donne or Jonson. Yet, side by side with these 
 lyrics, we find others in which the classic style and the 
 seventeenth century touch are unmistakable. And in 
 this connection it must be borne in mind that Campion 
 was a good classic scholar, and able to write Latin 
 epigrams and lyrics with ease and fluency. Among his 
 Books of Airs, too, appear free renderings of Horace's 
 Integer vita, and CatuUus's Vivamus, mea Lesbia, while 
 yet another lyric, " When the god of merry love," recalls 
 the manner of Anacreon. 
 
 It is a mark of Jonson's sanity of taste that, with all 
 his classical bias, he never succumbed to the heresy of 
 those who tried to substitute quantitative measures for 
 the native principles of accent ; nor did he ever attempt 
 to dispense with rhyme in lyric poetry. His conversa- 
 tions with Drummond inform us that, on this rhyming 
 controversy, he had written " a Discourse of Poesie both 
 against Campion and Daniel, especially this last, where 
 he proves couplets to be the bravest sort of verses, 
 especially when they are broken, like Hexameters." 
 One or two of his lyrics, it is true, have a certain formal 
 resemblance to those of classical poetry ; they keep, 
 however, strictly to the accentual principle and admit of 
 rhyme. Thus he furnishes us with an example, the first 
 of its kind in Enghsh, of the Pindaric Ode, which Cowley 
 would have done well to follow. It has the regular ar- 
 rangement of strophe, antistrophe, and epode, and was 
 written in memory of " that nolsle pair," Sir Lucius 
 Cary and Sir H. Morrison. Again, in the poem en- 
 titled Euipheme, he fashions a stanza which bears a certain 
 resemblance to the famous sapphic verse, and in his trans- 
 lations of some of Horace's Odes he keeps as near to the 
 rhythm of the originals as good sense and loyalty to native 
 metrical traditions will allow him. 
 
 But the classicism of Jonson strikes much deeper than 
 the metrical structure of verse ; it consists, first of all, 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 141 
 
 in imbuing his lyric verse with a certain classical colour, ' 
 and secondly, in maintaining, in opposition to the roman- 
 ticism of the earlier Elizabethans, a certain classical 
 restraint, and a purity and precision of style. The 
 classiccil colouring is most noticealDle in the Masques, j 
 where Olympian gods and goddesses, together with Pan > 
 and his attendant satyrs, occupy the stage, and pay i 
 graceful compliments to the British Solomon, his queen, | 
 and his courtiers. The popular song is here reserved j 
 for the comic anti-masque ; ^ the lyrics of the masque , 
 proper are invariably art-l3m;cs, full of allusions to i 
 ancient fable, and subject to the artistic canoils of j 
 antiquity. Such, for instance, are the songs of Nature , 
 and Prometheus in Mercury Vindicated, the song of 
 Pallas in The Golden Age Restored, the song of the Muses' 
 priests in Love freed from Folly, or the echo-song in The 
 Masque of Beauty, where the allusions to classic fable are, 
 after Jonson's somewhat pedantic fashion, carefuUy 
 explained in foot-notes. We miss in these lyrics the 
 charm of spontaneity and the simple melody of the 
 earher dramatic song, but we cannot overlook the subtle 
 effects of rhj'thm and the classic colour attained by the 
 lyrist in su(^ a song as the following : 
 
 Apollo. Prince of thy peace, see what it is to love 
 
 The powers above ! 
 Jove hath commanded me 
 
 To visit thee ; 
 And in thine honour with my music rear 
 
 A college here. 
 Of tuneful Augurs, whose divining skill 
 
 Shall wait thee still, 
 And be the heralds of his highest will. 
 
 I See the ballad of John Urson in the Masqtie of Augurs : 
 Though it may seem rude 
 For me to intrude, 
 
 With these my bears, by chance-a ; 
 'Twere sport for a king. 
 If they could sing 
 
 As well as they can dance-a. 
 
142 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 The work is done. 
 And I have made their president thy son ; 
 Great Mars, too, on these nights 
 Hath added Salian rites ; 
 Yond, yond afar. 
 They closed in their temples are. 
 And each one guided by a star. 
 Chorus. Haste, haste to meet them, and, as they advance, 
 'Twixt every dance. 
 Let us interpret their prophetic trance.' 
 
 A certain classic feeling is unmistakable, too, in Jon- 
 son's love-lyrics. There are not many of these, and in 
 the first of the Forest poems he furnishes us with his 
 reasons, " why I write not of love." But on the few 
 occasions where love is his theme — for instance, the two 
 songs to CeUa in the Forest and the ten Ijoic pieces, en- 
 titled, " A Celebration of Charis," in the Underwoods — 
 we recognize that he is breaking away from the romantic 
 pastoral manner of the Italian love-lyric, and drawing 
 very near to that of the Carmina of Catullus or the Odes 
 of Anacreon. The Celia songs, particularly the first and 
 most famous of them, " Come, my CeUa, let us prove," 
 is directly based on the Vivamus, mea Lesbia of Catullus, 
 and is a ssdient example of the change which came over 
 the love-lyric in the seventeenth century. The Petrarchan 
 sentiment, with its spiritual exaltation of womanhood, is 
 no more present here than in the lyrics of Donne : in its 
 stead we find, what Donne did not supply, the gallantry 
 of Rome. The Charis l3nics are in the Anacreontic manner, 
 but the general tone of the love-sentiment is the same : 
 
 For love's sake, kiss me once again ; 
 I long, and should not beg in vain ; 
 
 Here's none to spy or see. 
 
 Why do you doubt or stay ? 
 
 I'U taste as lightly as the bee. 
 That doth but touch his flower, and flies away.' 
 
 1 Song of Apollo in Masque of Augurs. 
 * " A Celebration of Charis," vii. 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 143 
 
 Jonson's classicism manifests itself, finally, in the 
 artistic structure of his Ijnics, and in the precision and 
 lucidity of his style. " What vexed Jonson in the writ- 
 ing of the earUer Elizabethans," says a Quarterly Review 
 essayist, " was its apparent amateurishness, its preference 
 of ornament to proportion, its sins against the canons of 
 antiquity." ^ He found the lyrics of the song-books and 
 miscellanies diffuse in utterance and often deficient in 
 organic unity, while the popular song, as practised by the 
 dramatists, seemed to him crude and lawless. The 
 abiding purpose of his lyric genius was to substitute for 
 this older lyric, whether popular or Italian in origin, a 
 new lyric, modelled on that of the ancients, fastidiously 
 piu:e in style, and true to the highest principles of 
 structural art. To illustrate the differences of style 
 and structure between the Ijrics of Jonson and those of 
 most of his predecessors, we need hardly do more than 
 quote the echo-song from Cynthia's Revels — ^probably 
 the first lyric that he ever wrote : 
 
 Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears ; 
 
 Yet slower, yet ; O faintly, gentle springs ; 
 List to the heavy part the music bears. 
 
 Woe weeps out her division when she sings. 
 Droop herbs and flowers ; 
 Fall grief in showers, 
 ' Our beauties are not ours : 
 O, I could still. 
 Like melting snow upon some craggy hiU, 
 
 Drop, drop, drop, drop. 
 Since nature's pride is now a withered dafiodil. 
 
 If we compare this with any of the songs of Shake- 
 speare, we must at once be conscious of the entire 
 , difference of aim on the part of the rival lyrists. Shake- 
 speare places his whole trust in the tunefulness and 
 spontaneity of utterance, and in the unmistakable wild-, 
 ing flavour, of the popular song, all of which Jonson is 
 willing to sacrifice to his artistic conscience, and for the 
 1 The EHiiabethan Lyric {Quarterly Review, October 1902). 
 
144 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 sake of formal excellence. The theme and the language 
 of his lyric are Eilike simple, but it is the simplicity of the 
 highest art — the art that conceals art. His song is a 
 masterpiece of rhythmic subtlety, and though the con- 
 ditions of the stage demanded that it should be sung, and 
 set to a musical accompaniment, we feel that it is com- 
 plete in itself, and that something of its verbal music 
 must have been lost in the setting. 
 
 Other qualities of his classic style appear in the page's 
 song from The Silent Woman : ^ 
 
 Still to be neat, still to be drest. 
 
 As you were going to a feast ; 
 
 Still to be powdered, still perfumed ; 
 
 Lady, it is to be presumed. 
 
 Though art's hid causes are not found, 
 
 All is not sweet, all is not sound. 
 
 Give me a look, give me a face, 
 That makes simplicity a grace ; 
 Robes loosely flowing, hair as free : 
 Such sweet neglect more taketh me 
 Than all the adulteries of art ; 
 They strike my eyes, but not my heart. 
 
 Here, in accordance with the theme, Jonson chooses a 
 
 less elaborate rhythm, yet the studied effects of art are 
 
 no less apparent The lucidity and precision of the 
 
 words, the perfect balance of the one stanza with the 
 
 other, and the epigrammatic close of the lyric, are all 
 
 qualities dear to the poet's heart, and in perfect accord 
 
 with his classical taste. In aU that pertains to lucidity 
 
 ) of style Jonson found himself opposed, not only to the 
 
 I Italianate ornamentation of the earlier art-lyric, but also 
 
 ij to the metaphysical wit of his contemporary, Donne. 
 
 I Drummond has preserved for us his views on Donne's 
 
 ' obscurity and his " not keeping of accent," and even 
 
 1 This lyric is, however, no more original than " Come, my Celia, let us 
 prove," or " Drink to me only with thine eyes ; " it is based upon a Latin 
 poem by the sixteenth-century French poet, Jean Bonnefons. 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 145 
 
 the harshest of Jonson's critics must allow that he fur- ' 
 nished in his Forest and ^Underwoods a wholesome 
 corrective to the lawlessness of the author of the Songs 
 and Sonnets. And as the century advances, it is interest- 
 ing to note the clash of these two influences. The 
 religious lyrists are, in the main, on the side of the 
 metaphysical Donne, while the secular lyrists, above aU 
 Herrick, are chiefly on the side of Jonson ; but Carew, 
 the greatest of these next to Herrick, is somewhat un- 
 certain in his allegiance. His best songs have the courtly 
 grace and perfect finish of Jonson, as, for instance, that 
 begiiming : 
 
 Ask me no more where Jove bestows. 
 When June is past, the fading rose ; 
 For in your beauty's orient deep, 
 These flowers, as in their causes, sleep. 
 
 But at other times the masterful sway of Donne seizes 
 hold of him, and it is a fitting homage to that great lyrist 
 that he comes nearest to his manner in the elegy with 
 which he laments his death. 
 
 In the end it was Jonson who trimnphed. The f 
 Restoration lyric — the songs of Sedley, Etherege, j 
 Rochester, and Dryden — is the final expression of those ' 
 principles of classicism which Jonson taught and prac- 
 tised. It is a l37ric painfully limited in its range, and i 
 devoid of the imaginative power and genuine emotion ; 
 which are essential elements in all great lyric poetry : 
 but in its sense of design, the evenness of its structure, \ 
 the avoidance of tortured phrase and harsh inversion, [ 
 and, finally, in the purity and precision of its vocabulary, \ 
 it remains true to the pattern set by that great contem- 
 porary of Shakespeare, who wrought the same revolution 
 in the temper and form of our Enghsh lyric that Malherbe 
 wrought in that of France. 
 
 It is unnecessary to carry this review of the Renaissance 
 lyric any farther into the seventeenth century. Carew, 
 Suckling, Lovelace, Cartwright, and their fellows, to- 
 gether with most of the religious lyrists, were junior to 
 
146 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Herrick in point of birth ; and if some of them saw their 
 works pass through the press before the appearance of 
 the Hesperides in 1648, they were not before him in their 
 courtship of the muse. Although akin to many of them 
 in sympathy of taste, and pursuing with them a like end 
 in poetry, he seems never to have come under their 
 direct influence, and there is indeed no evidence that 
 he knew either them or their works. In his lyrics he 
 renders, as we have seen, fuU and frequent homage to 
 Jonson, and writes a glowing eulogy on " Master Fletcher's 
 incomparable Playes " : at a later period, too, we find 
 him on friendly terms with the younger generation of 
 poets, including Denham, the younger Cotton, and John 
 HaU of Durham. But there is no mention of the CavaUer 
 lyrists of Charles I.'s time, and the silence is doubtless 
 to be explained by the fact that, from 1629 onwards, 
 Herrick, in the seclusion of his Devonshire parson- 
 age, was out of reach of the Court and the courtly 
 singers. 
 
 Before bringing this chapter to a close, it will be well 
 to retrace our steps a little, and take up again the history 
 of the various forms of song-lyric and reflective Is^ric 
 which we have followed as far as the end of the sixteenth 
 century. The popular song was, as we have seen, driven 
 from its last stronghold, the drama, by the reforming 
 spirit of Ben Jonson very early in the new century. In 
 the plays of Fletcher, Middleton, and Brome we occa- 
 sionally meet with songs which preserve the traditions 
 of the folk-song, but the great body of seventeenth-century 
 dramatists followed the example of Jonson, and sub- 
 stituted for it an art-lyric more or less classical in spirit 
 and style. Yet the seventeenth century had not pro- 
 ceeded very far before a revival of interest in the popular 
 song began. In 1609 Thomas Ravenscroft published 
 his Pammelia, a collection of rounds or catches, set to 
 music, and distinctly popular in character. Here, for 
 instance, we find such songs as " Joan, come kiss me now," 
 " The white hen she cackles," and " Blow thy horn, thou 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 14^ 
 
 jolly hunter." The collection was well received, and 
 was followed in the same year by another, entitled 
 Deuteromelia, and consisting of " pleasant Roundelaies, , 
 King Harry's mirth or freemen's songs and such delightf ull 
 catches." Two years later appeared Ravenscroft's third 
 collection, Melismata, described as " Musical! Phantasies, 
 fitting the Court, Citie and Countrey," and including such 
 popular airs as " There were three ravens sat on a tree," 
 and " The frog he would a-wooing ride." How far this 
 revival of interest in popular song proved creative, and 
 how far it remained merely antiquarian, is, on the evi- 
 dence before us, difficult to decide ; but the vast number 
 of songs, of a more or less popular character, contained 
 in the Pepys, Bagford and Roxburghe collections, bear 
 witness to the fact that the popular song regained in the 
 seventeenth century some of the popularity which it had 
 enjoyed before the coming to England of the Italian 
 song-lyric. 
 
 The EUzabethan madrigal, in spite of the presence of 
 a new rival, lived on into the seventeenth century and 
 retained a good deal of popularity for the space of nearly 
 forty years. Michael East's seven collections of madrigals 
 range between 1604 and 1638, and in literary quality 
 rank above most of the sixteenth-century collections. 
 But the classical taste of the age has left its influence 
 upon many of these seventeenth-century madrigals. 
 The Petrarchan mood gradually gives way to gallantry, or 
 to the note of rebellion heard in the Ijrrics of Donne : at 
 the same time we miss the Italianate graces of the 
 earlier madrigal ; instead of these we meet with a greater 
 directness of expression and a growing taste for epigram. 
 This fondness for epigrammatic point is the extreme 
 expression of that concision of style which is a feature of 
 the Renaissance l5ndc from the time of Jonson onwards ; 
 and it calls to mind the fact that many of the lyrists of 
 the time — Sir John Davies, Ben Jonson, Herrick and 
 others — ^were also writers of epigrams. The following 
 madrigals will serve as illustrations of the new manner : 
 
148 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Your shining eyes and golden hair. 
 Your hly-rosdd lips so fair ; 
 Your various beauties which excel. 
 Men cannot choose but like them well : 
 But when for them they say they'll die, 
 Beheve them not, — ^they do but lie.^ 
 
 Crowned with flowers I saw fair Amaryllis 
 
 By Th3nrsis sit, hard by a fount of crystal. 
 And with her hand, more white than siiow or hhes. 
 On sand she wrote : My faith shall be immortal ; 
 And suddenly a storm of wind and weather 
 Blew all her faith and sand away together .^ 
 
 Madrigals of this sort have much more in common 
 with some of the epigrammatic verses of the Greek 
 anthologists than with the kind of madrigal which 
 William Byrd was setting to music twenty years earlier ; 
 and we are therefore scarcely surprised to find in Orlando 
 Gibbons's. First Set of Madrigals (1612) the following 
 adaptation of the famous dedicatory epigram from the 
 Anthologia GrcBca, formerly attributed to Plato : 
 
 Lais, now old, that erst all-tempting lass. 
 To Goddess Venus consecrates her glass ; 
 For she herself hath now no use of one. 
 No dimpled cheeks hath she to gaze upon : 
 She cannot see her springtide damask grace. 
 Nor dare she look upon her winter face. 
 
 The approximation of the madrigal to the manner of the 
 Greek and Roman epigram may possibly be due to the 
 fact that, as a pure Ijaic, it had to submit, during the 
 later period of its existence, to the rivalry of the air or 
 solo-song, which reached England from Italy just before 
 the end of the sixteenth century. The air differed from 
 the madrigal in several respects : the music was no 
 longer polj^phonic, but introduced a definite melody ; 
 
 1 From Thomas Bateson's First Set of English Madrigals, 1604 ; 
 quoted by BuUen, Lyrics from Elizabethan Song-Books, p. 45. 
 
 2 From William Byrd's Psalms, Songs and Semnets, 1611 ; ibid., p. 73. 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 149 
 
 this, in its turn, led to the division of the theme into I 
 stanzas, the melody being repeated with each stanza 
 after the manner of the popular song ; finally, the song 
 was accompanied by music, the favourite instrument 
 being the lute. This musical change brought with it a 
 change in the character of the words set to music ; > 
 these no longer remained of secondary interest, but 
 became once more, in Pindar's phrase, " lords of the 
 Ijnre " — or the lute. The sole object of these composers 
 of solo-songs, writes Sir Hubert Parry, " seems to have 
 been to supply a kind of music which would enable people 
 with no voices worth considering to recite poems in a 
 melodious semi-recitative, spaced out into- periods in 
 conformity with the length of the lines or the literary 
 phrases."^ The first collection of lute-accompanied 
 songs was that of John Dowland, published in 1597. 
 Many beautiful lyrics are found in this collection, 
 including the familiar " His golden locks Time hath to 
 silver turned," and their literary quality is fully on a level 
 with that of the miscellany-lyrics of the same date. 
 Three years later, with the appearance of the First Book 
 of Airs of Thomas Campion and Phihp Rossiter, and 
 Robert Jones's First Book of Songs and Airs, the solo- 
 song won for itself an assured place in the musical world 
 of the time. Books of " Songs and Airs " appeared in 
 rapid succession during the succeeding years, and the 
 popularity of the solo-song was no doubt enhanced by 
 the fact that it found a place in the masques of the 
 court. The masque-songs of Jonson, to which reference 
 has already been made, together with those of other 
 masque-writers, were almost invariably of this character, 
 and were sung to a musical accompaniment. As the 
 century advanced, the old composers — Campion, Dow- 
 land, Jones, Ferrabosco — passed away, but their places 
 were taken by a younger race, who followed in the main 
 the same traditions, and included among whom were 
 
 I The Music of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford History of Music), 
 p. 209. 
 
11 
 
 ISO ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Henry and William Lawes, Nicholas Laniere, John 
 Wilson, John Gamble, and John Playford. This later 
 generation of composers turned naturally to the songs 
 of the Cavalier lyrists in their search for words to which 
 to set their melodies. The extent to which the songs of 
 Herrick received a musical setting has been indicated 
 in an earlier chapter ; and, side by side with l5Tics from 
 the Hesperides, we find, in the song-books of the period, 
 frequent borrowings from the published works of Carew, 
 Lovelace, Waller, Cartwright, Davenant, Randolph, 
 Thomas Stanley, Katherine Phillips, "the matchless 
 Orinda," and even Francis Quarles. The Cavalier lyrist 
 who was most fortunate in securing a musical' setting for 
 his songs was Thomas Stanley. In 1656, John Gamble, 
 the composer, pubhshed a collection of songs, entitled 
 " Ayres and Dialogues to be sung to the Theorbo-Lute 
 or Base-Viol " ; this consisted of eighty-four songs and 
 two dialogues, the words of all of which were furnished 
 by Stanley. Mention has been made of these facts in 
 order to correct the statement, sometimes made by 
 historians of our lyric poetry, that the seventeenth- 
 century 15^10 was far less closely associated with music 
 than that of the EUzabethan age. It is true that the 
 Caroline era produced no Campion capable of setting 
 his own songs to music, but an examination of the song- 
 books of the two periods shows that the lyrics of Carew, 
 Lovelace, Herrick or Stanley stood as fair a chance of 
 being set to music as those of Marlowe, Breton, Greene 
 or Bamfield. 
 
 Turning, in the last place, to the \yncs which were 
 written to be read, we notice, before all else, the rapid 
 decline of the sonnet after the turn of the century. 
 This has already been alluded to, and attempts have 
 been made to explain the decUne ; the sonnet, alike in 
 its temper and its form, was out of harmony with the 
 spirit of the age, and it seems to have lacked the power 
 of altering its diaracter in the way that the madrigal 
 did. Sonnets, and even sonnet-sequences, were written 
 
LYRIC OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 151 
 
 in the seventeenth century, but with the exception of 
 those of Drummond of Hawthornden, who lived in a 
 country which the flood-tide of the Renaissance reached 
 very late, and those of Milton, which are a thing apart, 
 they were the productions of obscure poets, content to 
 keep to the backwaters of literary life. The last of the 
 Renaissance sonneteers was PhUip Ayres, who published 
 a volume of " Lyric Poems, made in imitation of the 
 ItaUans," as late as 1687. In his preface he finds it 
 necessary to apologize for writing such obsolete forms of 
 lyric poetry as sonnets, canzones, and madrigals ; he is 
 aware that " none of oiur great men, either Mr WaUer, 
 Mr Cowley or Mr Dryden, whom it was most proper to 
 have followed, have ever stoop'd to anjrthing of this 
 sort," and that the success of Spenser, Sidney, and 
 MUton as sonneteers is a thing which " cannot much be 
 boasted of " (!) ; but he has followed the old manner 
 because his genius has prompted him to do so.^ The 
 quality of this derehct collection of Petrarchan love- 
 IjTrics is, as may be supposed, not high. 
 
 With the decUne of the sonnet-sequences proceeded, 
 though in a less marked degree, that of the miscellanies. 
 This, however, furnishes us with no evidence whatever 
 of the decadence of this kind of lyric poetry. The poets ; 
 of the seventeenth century were less willing to cast 
 their verses to the winds than those of the preceding i 
 generation ; they preferred to keep them by them until 
 the harvest was large enough to induce them to court 
 pubhcity through the ordinary channels. And at the ' 
 same time it is a mistake to suppose that the production 
 of anthologies of lyrics by various poets ceased with the 
 appearance of Davison's Poetical Rhapsody in 1602. 
 Collections of l5nics and epigrams, haiUng from various 
 sources, appeared from time to time throughout the 
 seventeenth century; and among the most important 
 of these were Wit's Recreations {1640) and Musarum 
 DelicicB (1655), wTiich contained some of Herrick's 
 I Saintsbury, Caroline Poets, vol. u., p. 269. 
 
t52 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 jewelled lines, and the editing of which was in the hands 
 of such distinguished persons as Sir John Mennes, the 
 Commander of the King's Navy, and Dr James Smith, 
 the divine. 
 
 What conclusion, then, can be arrived at as to the 
 relation of the seventeenth-century lyric to that of the 
 Elizabethan age, and what reply can be made to those 
 who bring against the later lyric the charge of decadence ? 
 It is true that we have yet to consider the work of the 
 greatest and most versatile of Carohne lyrics, but we are, 
 nevertheless, in a position to state that the lyric of the 
 first half of the seventeenth century is not inferior to 
 that of the second half of the sixteenth, but different 
 from it. It is true that the later period has nothing 
 to show Uke the great Elizabethan sonnet-sequences, and 
 it is also true that, when we pass from Marlowe, Shake- 
 speare, Breton and Campion to the next generation of 
 lyrists, we find an undoubted falUng off in spontaneity 
 and pure songfulness. But in the seventeenth century 
 we have, instead of the sonnet, the great outburst of 
 reHgious lyric poetry associated with the names of 
 Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan and Traherne, and in no 
 way inferior to the sonnet in soaring exaltation or mystic 
 rapture, though the love which inspires these lyrics is 
 directed towards Heaven and not towards woman. And 
 if in the secular song there is a loss of spontaneity, 
 timefulness, and at times of idyllic beauty, there is an 
 immense gain in all that pertains to art. A sense of 
 form and of structure manifests itself ; and the IjTric, 
 sacrificing romantic charm, wins instead a certain classic 
 grace. Lastly, the seventeenth century brought to Ijn-ic 
 poetry the sense of individuality, the personal note, 
 the lyrical cry of a human soul amid its pleasures 
 and its pains, its hopes and its fears. This was a new 
 thing in our poetry, and it gives to the work of these 
 Carohne Ijrists a touch of modernity, a kinship with 
 ourselves, whidi the Elizabethan lyric rarely possesses. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE LYRICAL POEMS OF THE "HESPERIDES" 
 
 The preceding chapter has been concerned with the 
 main line of development taken by the secular 15010 in 
 England dxuring the period of the Renaissance ; and 
 before coming to a study of Herrick's individual poems, 
 it is necessary to determine the general relationship which 
 the poet bears to the tendencies of his age. We have 
 to ask ourselves, What was his attitude towards the 
 popular song, and towards the various forms of art-lyric 
 which flourished under Elizabeth ? To what extent did 
 he feel the spell exercised by the masterful genius of 
 Donne, and how far did he conform to the classical 
 traditions revived by Ben Jonson ? Sealed as he was of 
 the " tribe of Ben," we may well expect to find in his 
 verses some trace of that reform of lyric art begun by 
 Jonson, and continued by other members of the " tribe." 
 Nor are our expectations disappointed ; of aU Jonson's 
 disciples none accepted the lessons which he taught so 
 completely as Herrick. The classicism of Jonson, con- 
 sisting as it does in the expression of sound sense in pure 
 language, and also in the absorption of much of the 
 colour and atmosphere of Greek and Roman poetry, is 
 from first to last the classicism of Herrick. And though 
 the disciple was doubtless poorer than his master in the 
 wealth of classical scholarship, we nevertheless feel that 
 he moves among the great shadows of the ancient world, 
 and arrays himself in their apparel, with more ease and 
 grace. There is at times a touch of pedantry in Jonson, 
 
154 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 which suggests that he obtained his Roman citizenship with 
 a great sum, whereas Herrick was undoubtedly free-bom. 
 The classical qualities of Herrick's style must be 
 reserved for later consideration ; what we are concerned 
 with here is his indebtedness to Greek and Roman poets 
 for ideas and lyric themes, and the readiness with which 
 he enters into the spirit of classical poetry. And, at the 
 outset, it may be stated that his classicism is, in the 
 main, Roman and not Greek. He gives us, it is true, 
 in his Ijnric entitled The Cruel Maid (159) a free rendering 
 of a portion of Theocritus's twenty-third Idyll, and, as we 
 shall see presently, he shows an intimate acquaintance 
 with the Odes of Anacreon, and with some of the poems 
 of the Greek Anthology ; but he borrows much more 
 freely from Roman authors, and, what is stiU more 
 important, the classic colour in which his lyrics are so 
 often steeped, and the paganism which at times informs 
 his verses, is that of Rome, and not that of Athens or 
 Alexandria. The paganism of Herrick is one of his 
 peculiar qualities. Jonson loved beyond all things to 
 introduce into his lyrics some reference to ancient customs 
 and ceremonial, to talk of Lares and Penates, or to call to 
 mind some forgotten rite in the religious life of ancient 
 Rome ; yet we are never tempted to forget that he was 
 an Englishman' of the Elizabethan and Jacobean age, 
 who satirized beneath classic masks the humours of 
 London hfe, and engaged in wit-combats with Shake- 
 speare at the Mermaid Tavern in Bread Street. But with 
 Herrick the ca^e is different. We feel that there are 
 times when, poring over the pages of the Roman lyrists 
 and elegists in the seclusion of his Devonshire cell, he 
 shakes off the fetters of time and place, and stands before 
 us as a habitant of that city which clung for so long 
 to " the religion of Numa," and found a pecuhar grati- 
 fication in presenting its offerings of " holy meal and 
 spirting salt " before the images of its household Lares 
 and Penates. Herrick's allusions to these ceremonial 
 rites are so simple and so intimate that they give to his 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 155 
 
 verses something more than a merely antiquarian colom-. 
 His Hymns to the Lares (see Nos. 324, 333, 674) and To 
 the Genius of his House (723) do not read like literary 
 exercises, but like true expressions of his genuine faith. 
 Some of these poems, moreover, were written in his 
 graver moments, and at critical junctures in his Ufe. 
 When the call comes to him to leave Dean Prior, he 
 seizes the occasion to address a poem To Lar (333) : 
 
 No more shall I, since I am driven hence. 
 
 Devote to thee my grains of frankincense : 
 
 No more shall I from mantle-trees hang down. 
 
 To honour thee, my little parsley crown ; 
 
 No more shall I (I "fear me) to thee bring 
 
 My chives of garlic for an ofiering ; 
 
 No more shall I from henceforth hear a choir 
 
 Of merry crickets by my country fire. 
 
 Go where I will, thou lucky Lar, stay here. 
 
 Warm by a glitt'ring chimney all the year. 
 
 Again, it is impossible to doubt that the verses which 
 he wrote after paying a visit to his father's grave are 
 both reverent and sincere ; yet what other poet could, 
 with propriety, have introduced on such an occasion 
 the mortuary ceremonial of ancient Rome, in the way 
 that Herrick has done in the opening verses of this poem ? 
 
 That for seven lusters I did never come 
 To do the rites to thy religious tomb ; 
 That neither hair was cut, or true tears shed 
 By me, o'er thee, as justments to the dead. 
 Forgive, forgive me ; since I did not know 
 Whether thy bones had here their rest or no. 
 But now 'tis known, behold ! behold ! I bring 
 Unto thy ghost th' effused ofiering : 
 And look what smallage, night-shade, cypress, yew. 
 Unto the shades have been, or now are due. 
 Here I devote. ' 
 
 Poems such as these bring home to us the conviction 
 that there was in Herrick a curious strain of paganism, 
 
 1 To the Reverend Shade of his Religious Father (82). 
 
156 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 which accords none too well with his duties as a Christian 
 priest, but which gives to his lyrics a classical flavour 
 not met with elsewhere in English poetry. 
 
 But it is time to pass from this, and to come, to a 
 consideration of his indebtedness to the great classic 
 masters of lyric poetry. Of the 13^10 poets of antiquity 
 none made a deeper impression upon Herrick than that 
 school of Alexandrian singers whose Odes are falsely 
 ascribed to the Teian poet, Anacreon. Reference has 
 already been made to the popularity with which the so- 
 called Odes of Anacreon were received by Elizabethan 
 madrigalists, by miscellany Ijnists, and by Ben Jonson 
 in those love-lyrics entitled A Celebration of Charis ; and 
 this popularity increased rather than diminished in the 
 Carohne age. It is uncertain whether Herrick read his 
 Anacreon in the original Greek, or in the Latin version 
 of the French humanist, Henri Estienne ; and except 
 that it would be interesting to know whether he had a 
 knowledge of Greek, the point is not of great importance. 
 But between the Anacreon of the Odes and the Caroline 
 poet in his lighter moods there was undoubtedly a remark- 
 able afifinity of temperament. The gaiety and frank 
 hedonism of Anacreon, his picturesque and dainty 
 fancifulness, and his fondness for self-portraiture, are 
 all qualities equally characteristic of Herriclc. There 
 are several references to Anacreon in the Hesperides, and 
 in the poem entitled The Apparition of his Mistress 
 calling him to Elysium (573), Herrick definitely recog- 
 nizes that between himself and the Greek l3ndst titiere was 
 a close bond of union : 
 
 And that done, 
 I'll bring thee, Herrick, to Anacreon, 
 Quaffing his full-crown' d bowls of burning wine. 
 And in his raptures speaking lines of thine. 
 Like to his subject ; and as his frantic 
 Looks show him truly BacchanaUan-like, 
 Besmear' d with grapes, welcome he shall thee thither, 
 Where both may rage, both drink and dance together. 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 157 
 
 The vision of an Elysium where Anacreon quotes 
 Herrick, and Herrick Anacreon, is one which it is pleasant 
 to linger over. 
 
 Among the Hesperides there are some six or seven 
 poems which are fairly close translations of Anacreon, ^ 
 together with others which, partly because of the mood 
 which they reveal, and partly because of the short 
 trochaic verse in which they are written, he entitles 
 " Anacreontic Verses." But the influence of the Greek 
 lyrist is by no means confined to these ; we feel it again 
 and again in his sensuous love-l5n:ics to Julia, Electra, 
 and his other mistresses, and in the voluptuous dream- 
 fancies, such as The Vision (142) and The Vision to 
 Electra (56), which are modelled on certain Odes of 
 Anacreon, similar in conception and expression. Still 
 keeping to lyrics of which love is the theme, we cannot 
 fail to recognize that such a poem as that entitled Upon 
 the Loss of his Mistresses (39), in which he tells the 
 number of those conquests of which Time has robbed him, 
 bears something more than an accidental resemblance 
 to the thirty-second Ode of Anacreon, in which that 
 lyrist relates what spoils he has won in the lists of love 
 at Athens, Corinth, and amongst Carian and Ionian 
 dames. Or again, if wine be his theme, it is still 
 Anacreon that inspires the strain ; his Hymn to Bacchus 
 (304) and his Canticle to Bacchus (415) recall, both by 
 their sentiment and their light trochaic verse, the 
 manner of the Greek : 
 
 To Bacchus : A Canticle 
 
 Whither dost thou whorry me, 
 Bacchus, being full of thee ? 
 This way, that way, that way, this. 
 Here and there a fresh love is. 
 
 1 See, in particular. The Cheat of Cupid (8i), The Wounded Cupid (139), 
 and those lines On Himself, beginning " Bom I was to meet with age " 
 (519). 
 
158 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 That doth like me, this doth please ; 
 Thus a thousand mistresses 
 I have now ; yet I alone, 
 Having all, enjoy not one. 
 
 Herrick delighted equally in that fanciful side of 
 Anacreon's genius which fashioned cameo-like pictures 
 of Cupid stung by a bee, or drawing his arrow upon the 
 poet who has given him warmth and shelter. Not only 
 did he translate these odes, but he contrived others similar 
 to them in manner, and rivalling them in the dainty grace 
 of the workmanship : 
 
 The Bag of the Bee 
 
 About the sweet bag of a bee 
 
 Two Cupids fell at odds. 
 And whose the pretty prize should be 
 
 They vow'd to ask the gods. 
 
 Which Venus hearing, thither came. 
 And for their boldness stripp'd them, 
 ' And taking thence from each his flame. 
 With rods of myrtle whipp'd them. 
 
 Which done, to still their wanton cries. 
 When quiet grown she'd seen them. 
 
 She kiss'd, and wip'd their dove-Uke eyes. 
 And gave the bag between them. ' 
 
 Finally, it seems to have been mainly from Anacreon, 
 though the practice reappears also in CatuUus, that 
 Herrick drew the idea of addressing poems " To Him- 
 self," in which, exactly in the manner of the Greek poet, 
 he lightly discourses of his hopes and fears, his sensuous 
 delight in the gay pleasures of Ufe, or his presentiment 
 of grey hairs and advancing years. How intensely 
 Anacreontic, for instance, is the following : 
 
 I fear no earthly powers, 
 
 But care for crowns of flowers ; 
 
 1 No. 92. 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 159 
 
 And love to have my beard 
 With, wine and oil besmear' d. 
 This day I'll drown all sorrow : 
 Who knows to Uve to-morrow ? ^ 
 
 But while recognizing the indebtedness of Herrick to 
 Anacreon, it is important not to exaggerate it. It is in 
 his shortest, hghtest, and most sensuous lyrics that this 
 influence is chiefly felt ; in his nobler and more sustained 
 flights of song, he soars to heights where the Greek lyrist 
 was unable to lend him guidance ; the truth is that the 
 whole of Anacreon is summed up in Herrick, but not the 
 whole of Herrick in Anacreon. 
 
 Of the Roman lyric poets, it is Catullus and Horace 
 that have left the deepest impression upon him ; he was 
 imdoubtedly familiar with their works, and translates 
 from both of them. Lowell has called Herrick " the most 
 Catullian of poets since Catullus," ^ and it is incumbent 
 on us to see what truth there is in the statement. In 
 that spirited poem. To Live Merrily and Trust to Good 
 Verses (201), he empties his goblet in honour of Catullus, 
 and refers to him as follows : 
 
 Then this immensive cup 
 
 Of aromatic wine, 
 Catullus, I quaff up 
 
 To that terse muse of thine. 
 
 His song To Anthea (74) is reminiscent in places of 
 the most passionate of Catullus's love lyrics to Lesbia, 
 Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus ; and his elegy 
 Upon the Death of his Sparrow (256), though different in 
 presentment, was undoubtedly suggested by the famiUar 
 Ltictus in Morte Passeris of the Veronese l3nist. But 
 the actual borrowings from Catullus are much slighter 
 than those from Martial, Ovid, Horace or Seneca, and 
 indicate Uttle more than that Herrick had read the 
 Carmina and remembered them. Yet the relationship 
 
 1 No. 170. 2 " Essay on Lessing." 
 
i6o ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 which the EngUsh poet bears to the Roman goes deeper 
 than mere reminiscence of phrase. In the first place, it 
 should be borne in mind that the Hesperides bear a strik- 
 ing superficial resemblance to the Carmina of CatuUus 
 in their apparently disorderly arrangement — an arrange- 
 ment which ignores chronological order, and brings the 
 loftiest strains of l3nic song into close proximity with 
 the coarsest epigrams. Penetrating beneath the surface, 
 we notice the striking sincerity of utterance which char- 
 acterizes either poet ; both of them lay bare their personal 
 tastes, their loves and their hatreds, with absolute 
 frankness. Herrick shares, too, Catullus's sympathetic 
 nature, and his tender regard for friends and relations ; 
 either poet is ready at aU times to devote his muse to 
 the service of his friends, and is keenly alive to the sense 
 of bereavement. Herrick's lament for the death of his 
 brother William (i86) falls, in passionate intensity, little 
 short of the immortal Unes in which Catullus bewails the 
 death of his brother in the Troad.^ There is, too, a 
 resemblance between their poems on the side of style. 
 Herrick shows his critical faculty in attaching to Catullus 
 the epithet " terse," and the terseness of the Carmina, 
 the directness of appeal, the avoidance of surplusage 
 and of mannerisms, find their counterpart in the Hes- 
 perides. 
 
 But it is as love poets that Catullus and Herrick have 
 usually been compared, and here, it must be confessed, 
 the difference between them is great. In his love-poems 
 to JuUa, Corinna, and the other mistresses,. Herrick only 
 on rare occasions glows with the same fiery passion 
 which enkindles the Veronese poet's songs to Lesbia. 
 The absence of passion on Herrick's part may be ac- 
 counted for by the belief that he is singing only of 
 imaginary mistresses, whereas we know that Catullus's 
 Lesbia was luridly real ; but, however explained, this lack 
 of the genuine fire of love makes Herrick's verses seem 
 very different from those of the Roman poet. We have 
 1 Carmina, Izviii. 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " i6i 
 
 only to compare the lines to Anthea with the fifth of the 
 Carmina, on which, as already stated, they are based, in 
 order to realize the difference between the love of the two 
 poets. Herrick reproduces the somewhat fanciful lines — 
 
 Da mi basia mille, deinde centum ; 
 Dein mille altera, dein secunda centum ; 
 Dein usque altera mille, deinde centum — 
 
 cleverly enough : 
 
 Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score ; 
 Then to that twenty add a hundred more ; 
 A thousand to that hundred ; so kiss on. 
 To make that thousand up a milUon. ' 
 
 But, unmoved by the passion and poignancy of the fore- 
 going verses — 
 
 Soles occidere et redire possunt : 
 Nobis, quum semel occidit brevis lux, 
 Nox est perpetua una dormienda— 
 
 he substitutes for them some of his grossest lines. 
 
 Peculiarly interesting is the attitude of Herrick to 
 Horace. What is probably the first poem he ever wrote, 
 A Country Life to Thomas Herrick, is singularly full of 
 Horatian echoes, and shows the same deUght in the 
 associations of country life which we meet with in the 
 Odes. A few years later, he translated the ninth Ode of 
 Book III. — the dialogue between Horace and Lydia — 
 and had it set to music. Throughout the Hesperides, 
 too, and especially in the poems of a sententious character, 
 we come upon passages, and sometimes short poems, 
 which are little more than free translations of Horace. 
 Thus he loves to round off poems by a passage taken 
 from the Roman master, and generally acknowledges the 
 debt by itaUcs. For instance, the bold figure of the last 
 line of The Bad Season makes the Poet Sad (612) : 
 
 And once more yet ere I am laid out dead, 
 Knock at a star with my exalted head— ^ 
 
 1 No. 74. 
 
 (2.489) 6 
 
i62 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 is an exact translation of the close of the first Ode of 
 Book I. : 
 
 Quodsi me lyricis vatibus inseres, 
 Sublimi feriam sidera vertice. 
 
 Similarly, the concluding couplet of the poem, To the 
 Earl of Westmorland {459) : 
 
 Virtue conceard, with Horace you'll confess, 
 Differs not much from drowsy slothfulness — 
 
 is an acknowledged translation of the following : 
 
 Paulum sepultae distat inertias 
 Celata virtus.' 
 
 It is worthy of notice that Herrick turns to Horace for 
 inspiration in his graver moments. The Hesperides bear 
 witness to the fact that their author knew his Horace too 
 well to fall into the common error that the Augustan 
 poet was a mere seeker after pleasure, the bard of love 
 and song and wine, who bids his readers enjoy the fleet- 
 ing hours of present existence, taking no thought for 
 the morrow. And it is significant that, when in the very 
 highest spirits he writes To Live Merrily and Trust to 
 Good Verses (201), and pledges in a bumper of wine the 
 memory of Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Catullus, Propertius, 
 and Tibullus, he makes no mention of Horace. In his 
 BacchanaUan l37rics he looks not to Horace, but to 
 Anacreon ; and when he celebrates in verse one of his 
 many mistresses, he has in mind, not the love-lyrics 
 which Horace devotes to his Lydia, or Glycera, but the 
 Lesbia poems of Catullus, the elegies of Ovid, or again, 
 the sensuous odes of Anacreon. To Horace he turns, as 
 also to Seneca, in his graver moods, to furnish him with 
 some sententious apophthegm, or to inculcate some of 
 the more practical lessons of philosophy — ^mastery of 
 self and a fife of moderation. Such poems as His Wish 
 (153), Purposes (615), or that entitled Men mind no State 
 in Sickness {696), are clearly reminiscent of Horace, as is 
 1 IV. Ode ix. 29. 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 163 
 
 also that entitled His Age, dedicated to his friend John 
 Weekes (336). In this last it is Horace's famous Eheu 
 fugaces that inspires the song, together with the allied in 
 spirit and equally famous Diffugere nives of Book IV. 
 Nor can it, I think, be doubted that the noble poem, 
 The Christian Militant (323), which is not unworthy of 
 comparison with Wordsworth's Happy Warrior, is in its 
 philosophy more nearly akin to the blended Stoicism and 
 Epicureanism that we meet with in the maturer poems 
 of Horace than to the ethics of Christianity. 
 
 If there was a kinship between Herrick and Horace 
 in respect of their philosophy of Kfe, there was also a kin- 
 ship of tastes. Horace on his Sabine farm, and Herrick 
 tilling his acres of glebe at Dean Prior, come near to one 
 another in their surroundings and habits of Ufe. Both 
 had known the life of the court and the city, and both 
 had followed up this Ufe by one of comparative seclusion 
 in the country, and had found in the activities and 
 recreations of rustic life, and in the ever-changing face of 
 Nature, matter for song. In the place of his seclusion 
 Horace was more fortunate than Herrick ; at such 
 times as he felt the monotony and tedium of the Sabine 
 farm steal over him, he could escape to Rome, or to fash- 
 ionable Tibur or Baise, and there mingle freely in the 
 society of the literati and the courtiers. But Herrick, 
 far away from London, and held fast by parochial duties, 
 could not so readily pass from the one life to the other, 
 and as a result of this we find, instead of the affectionate 
 terms in which Horace always refers to his country Ufe, 
 those occasional outbursts of spleen against Dean Prior, 
 of which we have already taken count. 
 
 But the point at which Horace and Herrick come 
 nearest to one another is in the feeUng that the work 
 which they are doing, the monument which they are 
 raising, is one which wU outUve them. This faith in the 
 immortality of poetry was, as literary historians have 
 shown, common to most of the poets of the Renaissance. 
 But it was in a very special sense the faith of Herrick, 
 
i64 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 a faith to which he clung with a tenacity which no neglect 
 could shake. The same faith was, of course, in Horace : 
 it is the theme of the proud ode which closes the second 
 book, and of the still prouder one at the end of the third. 
 In his sure beUef in the immortality of the Hesperides 
 Herrick had Horace in mind, and the thought of that 
 poet's fame, veiled for something hke a thousand years 
 beneath a cloud, and then effulgent in the stirring days 
 of the Renaissance, when the dead came to life again, 
 and old things were made new, may well have cheered 
 the Carohne lyrist amid his work. The very language in 
 which he assures himself of this immortality is a clear 
 echo of Horace's Non omnis moriar and Exegi monumentum 
 aere perennius : 
 
 Thou shalt not all die ; for, while love's fire shines 
 Upon his altar, men shall read thy Unes, 
 And learned musicians shall, to honour Herrick' s 
 Fame and his name, both set and sing his l3n:ics.' 
 
 Behold this living stone 
 
 I rear for me. 
 
 Ne'er to be thrown 
 Down, envious Time, by thee. 
 
 Pillars let some set up 
 
 If so they please : 
 
 Here is my hope 
 And my Pjnramides.' 
 
 Space does not permit us to investigate further the in- 
 debtedness of Herrick to the writers of the classic world. 
 A large number of lines taken direct from the works of 
 Ovid show his diUgent study of that poet, and here 
 and there we come upon verses which recall Virgil and 
 the great Roman elegists, Tibullus and Propertius. 
 There are, too, throughout the Hesperides, frequent remin- 
 iscences of both the tragedies and the prose works of 
 
 1 upon Himself {366). 
 
 2 His Poetry his Pillar (211). 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 165 
 
 Seneca, as well as of the historical writings of Tacitus. 
 Indeed, the more carefully the Hesperides are studied, 
 the more do they reveal the fact that Herrick carried 
 with him to his vicarage at Dean Prior the best works of 
 the great Roman authors, and that during the long 
 winter evenings which he spent there, he pored over their 
 writings with the eyes of a scholar and a lover. 
 
 His acquaintance with the lyric poetry of the Re- 
 naissance age was less profound. There is nothing to 
 show that he had any acquaintance with the Petrarchan 
 school of Itahan lyrists who had inspired the poets of 
 EUzabethan England. The reaction against the Petrarch- 
 ists, begun by Jonson and Donne, was continued by 
 Herrick. He has left us nothing in the nattire of sonnet 
 or canzone, nor is there much resemblance between his 
 love Ijnics and those of Renaissance Italy. Nor, again, 
 can we trace in his works the influence of French Ijrric 
 poetry ; the lustrous names of the poets of La Pleiade 
 seem to have been unknown to him. It would be 
 pleasant to think that he had read Remy Belleau, and that 
 the Petites Inventions, the lyncs and idyUs of La Bergerie 
 and Les Amours et Nouveaux Eschanges des Pierres Pre- 
 cieuses found a place on his shelves side by side with the 
 Odes of Anacreon. There was in fact much that was com- 
 mon to the two poets : both were lovers and imitators of 
 Anacreon, who inspired both of them to write of love and 
 of " times trans-slufting," and to weave delicate fancies 
 round the minute* creations of Nature. Herrick would 
 have found pure deUght in BeUeau's beautiful song, Avril : 
 
 Avril, rhoimeur et des bois, 
 
 Et des mois : 
 Avril, la douce esp6rance 
 Des fruicts qui spus le coton 
 
 Du bouton 
 Nourrissent leur jeune enfance. . . ' 
 
 And the poet who sang of the hock-cart would have 
 
 1 Belleau, (Euvres Poitiques, ed. Marty-Lavaux, i. p. zoi. 
 
i66 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 found a kindred soul in the author of Les Vendangeurs. 
 Herrick's Description of a Woman, again, is strikingly 
 like BeUeau's Portrait de sa Maistresse, but there is no 
 reason for suggesting imitation ; either poet found his 
 model in the twenty-eighth ode of Anacreon. 
 
 Herrick's attitude as a master of l5Tic poetry to the 
 lyrists of Elizabethan England and those of his own 
 generation is very interesting and calls for closest study. 
 His classical sympathies and his sturdy allegiance to 
 Ben Jonson made him turn aside from the dreamy 
 mysticism of the sonneteers, nor could his mundane 
 temperament appreciate the Platonic idealism of Spenser. 
 But there was an undoubted strain of romance in Herrick's 
 genius, while his long association with EngUsh rural hfe, 
 and his intense delight in all the pagan ritual of the 
 countryside, brought him into touch with the simple 
 idylUc poetry of England's Helicon, and, in spite of his 
 artistic tastes and classical bias, with the ruder min- 
 strelsy of the popular song. Among the Hesperides are 
 several songs of a distinctly popular character, and others 
 which, if savouring more of the artist, keep, nevertheless, 
 to the rhythm of popular song. 
 
 There were in the seventeenth century severed songs 
 which attained popularity, the hero of which was the 
 roving, mirth-loving tinker. A song, entitled " The 
 Jovial Tinker," is contained in the Pepys Collection, 
 and akin to it is that beginning — 
 
 There was a jovial tinker. 
 
 Dwelt in the land of Turvey — 
 
 preserved in the first part of Merry Drollery Complete 
 (1670). In the spirit of these songs Herrick wrote his 
 Tinker's Song (1051), the popular accent of which is 
 unmistakable : 
 
 Along, come along, 
 Let's meet in a throng 
 
 Here of tinkers : 
 And quafi up a bowl 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 167 
 
 As big as a cowl 
 
 To beer drinkers. 
 
 The pole of the hop 
 Place in the aleshop 
 
 To bethwack us. 
 If ever we think 
 So much as to drink 
 
 Unto Bacchus. 
 
 Who froUc will be 
 For little cost, he 
 
 Must not vary 
 From beer-broth at all, 
 So much as to call 
 
 For Canary. 
 
 The rhythm of this song, with its alternating iambs and 
 anapaests, recurs in a good number of the songs of the 
 Hesperides, most of which have a certain popular ring in 
 them. We meet with it, or something very like it, in 
 Up Tails All (727), which is also a version of another 
 extremely popular song of the time, in The Hag is 
 Astride (643), The Peter-Penny (762), Ceremonies for 
 Christmas (784), Draw-Gloves (243), The May-pole is up 
 (695), and in Twelfth-Night, or King and Queen (1035). 
 The use of this rhythm for popular airs is fairly common 
 in the seventeenth century, a good example being The 
 Encounter, published among the Rump-Songs in 1662. 
 
 Again, Herrick's charm-songs have a distinctly popular 
 flavour about them, and may be compared with those 
 primitive charm-songs, " Against Stitch," " Against a 
 Swarm of Bees," etc., which are among the earliest 
 pieces of verse in English literature. In his charms he 
 is content to ignore art, and to set forth the superstitions 
 which he gathered in the chimney-comers of Dean Prior 
 in the simplest possible manner : 
 
 If ye fear to be affrighted. 
 When ye are by chance benighted. 
 In your pocket for a trust. 
 Carry nothing but a crust ; 
 
i68 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 For that holy piece of bread 
 Charms the danger and the dread .1 
 
 This I'll teU ye by the way. 
 Maidens, when ye leavens lay ; 
 Cross your dough, and your dispatch 
 Will be better for your batch.' 
 
 Herrick never wrote anything quite like the songs with 
 recurring refrain which we meet with in the plays of 
 Shakespeare and Dekker, and which approximate so 
 closely to the manner of primitive folk-song ; but his 
 charms, his may-pole songs and wassail-songs, and his 
 lyrics for Christmas and Candlemas ceremonies, come 
 very near the folk-lore rhjmies of the English countryside, 
 and offer a pleasing contrast to those art-lyrics of his, in 
 which the chief inspiration is drawn from classic sources. 
 When we turn from the popular song, and its allies, 
 to the more formal art-lyric of the Elizabethan period, 
 it is not easy to say precisely at what points Herrick 
 came under the influence of the earlier masters. It 
 may be taken for granted that he was fairly well ac- 
 quainted with the collections of madrigals and mis- 
 cellany-lyrics ; and when the authors of these sing of 
 country life and country festivities, they come very near 
 to Herrick. But the more artificial kinds of art-l37ric, 
 above all the sonnet and its kindred forms, were foreign 
 to the taste of Ben Jonson's disciple, though the lyric 
 of pastoralism, especially if written in amcebean form, 
 was practised by him, as also by most of the secular 
 lyrists of the time. It is significant, too, that whereas 
 he makes frequent mention in his verses of the great 
 l)?rists of classical antiquity, and of Ben Jonson among 
 the modems, he does not once refer to Marlowe, Sidney, 
 Spenser, Greene, Breton, Campion, Shakespeare, or any 
 other of the Elizabethan masters of lyric song. Thus the 
 
 1 A Charm (1065). 
 2 A Charm (1063). 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 169 
 
 reaction against the Petrarchan tradition of lyric poetry 
 begun by Donne and Jonson, is fully maintained in the 
 Hesperides. Now and again, it is true, we overhear in 
 that collection of verses echoes of the older music. Like 
 many another lyrist of the time, he takes up the beauti- 
 ful strain of Marlowe's " Come live with me and be my 
 love " in his song. To Phyllis, to love and live with him 
 (521), and rivals the earlier master in the idyllic beauty 
 of the rustic associations which he recalls. Again, 
 Campion's matchless lyric, " There is a garden in her 
 face," with its refrain, " Till ' Cherry ripe ' themselves 
 do cry," is echoed in the familiar " Cherry Ripe " ; and 
 it is impossible to read Herrick's haunting " Mad Maid's 
 Song " without thinking of Opheha. There is, further, 
 a certain kinship between some of the lighter Ijmcs of 
 the Hesperides and some of the madrigal-songs, especially 
 those which break away from the Italian manner and set 
 forth homely themes in simple and homely words. Some 
 of Morley's canzonets and ballets on May-day rejoicings, 
 or on the rustic game of barley-break, come, in spirit and 
 expression, very near to Herrick's treatment of the 
 same themes,^ and what Js-Jregweatlv— regard ed as the 
 most perfect of aHnSisi d yllir. songs, Cnrinna's eoine' 
 a-Maying {17 6), seems to have owed its inspiration to 
 tne lollowing song from Thomas Bateson's First Set of 
 English Madrigals (1604) : 
 
 Sister, awake ! close not your eyes I 
 
 The day her Ught discloses. 
 And the bright morning doth arise 
 
 Out of her bed of roses. 
 
 See, the clear sun, the world's bright eye. 
 
 In at our window peeping : 
 Lo ! how he blusheth to espy 
 
 Us idle wenches sleeping. 
 
 1 Compare the barley-break song in Morley's Canzonets or Little Short 
 Aers (1597) (BoUe, p. 135), with Herrick's " Barley-Break " (loi). 
 (2,489) 6 a 
 
170 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Therefore awake ! make haste, I say. 
 
 And let us, without staying. 
 All in our gowns of green so gay 
 
 Into the park a-maying.'^ 
 
 It would be interesting to have heard Herrick's opinions 
 on the poetic genius of Donne, with whose lyrics he was 
 certainly acquainted, and concerning whom, we may 
 readily beUeve, he exchanged opinions with his master, 
 Ben Jonson, during their hours together in the London 
 tavern. The direct influence of Donne upon Herrick 
 may be hard to determine, and in many respects their 
 poetic tastes ran in opposite directions ; yet it must, 
 I think, be admitted that the ever-present personal note 
 of the author of the Hesperides, the individuaUty afid 
 direct manner of his lyrics, were aU qualities which 
 Donne had been the first to introduce into the Eliza- 
 bethan lyric, and that without the example of Donne 
 before him, Herrick would somehow have written dif- 
 ferently. In this quality of self-revelation the Hesperides 
 have much more in common with the Songs and Sonnets 
 of Donne than with the Forest or the Underwoods of 
 Jonson. At the same time, it is not easy to single out 
 poems of Herrick which directly recall those of Donne,^ 
 and it must be confessed that the qualities which are 
 most frequently regarded as characteristic of Donne's 
 genius — ^tus obscurity, his perverse ingenuity and meta- 
 physic wit, his cramped diction and harsh rhythms — are 
 directly opposed to the lucidity and fluid melody of the 
 vicar of Dean Prior. 
 
 Of Enghsh lyric poets, the only one that can be com- 
 pared with the great lyrists of antiquity, in respect of the 
 influence exerted upon the author of the Hesperides, was 
 the one whom he so often and so loyally acclaimed as 
 
 1 BuUen, Lyrics from Elizabethan Song-Books, p. 198. 
 
 " Exception must perhaps be made in the case of No Loathsomeness in 
 Ixme (21), which recalls Donne's The Indifferent ; it is also probable that 
 Herrick's Litany to the Holy Spirit (N.N. 41) was suggested by the Litany 
 of Donne. 
 
LYBICAL POElfS CfF THE " HESPESIDES " 171 
 
 w>a?feT — B^ Jccsan. We can "weS Deherc fhax it was 
 _l ^TiBcc 5 zr^.z^pz aaad example Thsi led Whu w3t: to dae 
 
 jaiady --I - ^ — — = -inp of xhe Gaeek asd lt«amain Inic. that 
 
 Aai HBTcrad "Hrm -wjdi xiis fasridiDiis serse of ammc 
 TT5H,-menT- TbecSasEkasm DiHemckisiiatfrfABacBenB, 
 Ca'mlhE- and HoEaoe^ "bin it is afeo xbai of JioiBan, who 
 UMjiOuLCur ixte Petianbaa trMliiiiiMK: aud Scpboed 'rtym 
 Itt mcse of ainiqi_ii_v . HDKeiw^ar, it "sras aWt^iaiirf to 
 t iosoli, Tsizi2rc3t!d_ 11 is tme, liy Mi!iii*jiJip ssjuly of gHMJij*^ , 
 ■B~iii ir^Ti Hsmcfc irsr irrtEi all tqe tJ^LJta t' aymnH-; rf 
 the lExiTasii: sdmd <if Fjig&A JTrisis -that -sras giwiMiig 
 -tn> sTDnndiniTL And in Sns Tsspen — e tobeai rtii' i Hrl lliat 
 ■B±ssi is sinost Henidk's cejt -mai'ini^i^m of style — a 
 .':-■" - — lavE o£ mvssirc — ss eae srtki ii-e ^aiES "srixh ids 
 masier. lla^y a chEzir^ |Jina»jap scaixered Trn-n nsrh tHp 
 H^erids is r?— zzis-en ^ iije FflViB^ die f7a&7aEeo&. 
 asd '^e Jfxs^is of Be& Tccsaii. ami ni''^ assd ^jain "we 
 
 •^1 ^ tea* ig^imlTiag ixif "^n^ar of Ids j'hi-*' XhlE Hie 
 iilM ^. jl<a» — ssd *JiiiWfe^lm^ TT^rrrp 'tn:rn "0^ il i v ilrm — -of mp 
 
 af'£feiatk''s mcsi pededt Iriics., liie 2\'4tz 'Tiszi io JtUrn 
 IGigl, M^atali^iBcafe liif Sons c?i the Paxnco in Gi^sia 
 Jnzsnr's scEig bgfiie as ioiknss : 
 
 y^ag* saEffy Ieq^bs i-ii»cin toil, 
 TiiE ^-L-r..!^ 11' tj6t««rii -on 5WE ; 
 
 A. ntDon of "hp^ n 
 
 _ii Qat uotE of m^ix. 
 
 Bet ^ycs i±s ^bsr-^pooa ^^sid tbse, 
 Aad "nj? dies afeo. 
 
 '^''^^TIS^ ^J^^ fT'^S SOWF 
 
 B£&E^K£ lias aksadv Iigqi made ^bb p^ge 32) to the 
 
172 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 to his Brother, M. Tho. Herrick (io6), bears to Jonson's 
 Epistle to Sir Robert Wroth, and there is an equally close 
 relationship between Herrick's Panegyric to Sir L. Pem- 
 herton (377) and Jonson's Penshurst. Both poems describe 
 the hospitality of a seventeenth-century country-house, 
 and many of the ideas introduced into the earlier poem 
 reappear in the later. It would be necessary to quote 
 the poems in full in order to bring out aU the points in 
 common, but a few verses will suffice to show the depen- 
 dence of the one poet upon the other. Jonson praises, 
 amongst other things, the generous table kept at Pens- 
 hurst : 
 
 Whose liberal board doth flow 
 With aU that hospitality doth know ; 
 Where comes no guest but is allow' d to eat. 
 Without his fear, and of thy lord's own meat : 
 Where the same beer and bread, and self-same wine 
 That is his lordship's, shall be also mine. 
 Here no man tells my cups, nor, standing by, 
 A waiter doth my gluttony envy : 
 But gives me what I call, and lets me eat ; 
 He Imows, below, he shall find plenty of meat. 
 
 Herrick takes up this thought and expands it at some 
 length : 
 
 The wholesome savour of thy mighty chines 
 
 Invites to supper him who dines ; 
 Where laden spits, warp'd with large ribs of beef. 
 
 Not represent but give reUef 
 To the lank stranger and the sour swain. 
 
 Where both may feed and come again : 
 For no black-bearded vigil from thy door 
 
 Beats with a button' d staff the poor . . . 
 Thus, Uke a Roman tribune, thou thy gate 
 
 Early sets ope to feast and late ; 
 Keeping no currish waiter to affright 
 
 With blasting eye the appetite. 
 Which fain would waste upon thy cates, but that 
 
 The trencher-creature marketh what 
 Best and more suppling piece he cuts, and by 
 
 Some private pinch teUs danger's nigh. 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 173 
 
 A hand too desp'rate, or a knife that bites 
 
 SHn-deep into the pork, or lights 
 Upon sonie part of kid, as if mistook. 
 
 When checked by the butler's look.' 
 
 Herrick's dependence upon his master is unmistakable, 
 but it is only fair to notice the greater vividness and 
 animation of his picture, and the way in which he has 
 allowed his humour to play upon the scene. 
 
 Again, we may observe the connection between Jonson's 
 famous song, " Still to be Neat," and Herrick's Delight 
 in Disorder (83), where the younger poet, taking to heart 
 the instructions of his elder, expresses his delight in 
 the " wild civility " and " sweet disorder " of women's 
 attire, and grows lyrical over tempestuous petticoats 
 and ribbons that flow confusedly. But the dependence 
 of Herrick upon Jonson is not to be pinned down to 
 particular poems : it finds expression not so much in 
 these as in the general tenor of his work. And when full 
 recognition is made of his debt to the earlier lyrist, it is 
 fair to add that at every point the disciple transcends 
 the master. His range is wider, his taste surer ; and 
 whereas in Jonson we feel that we are in the presence of 
 the intellectual artist and the verse-reformer, we invariably 
 recognize in Herrick a quality higher than these — the 
 genuine lyric gift of one who sings because he must. 
 Mr Swinburne, no mean admirer of Jonson's genius, has 
 expressed this superiority of the pupil to the teacher in 
 words which admit of no compromise : " As we turn 
 from Gray to Colhns, as we turn from Wordsworth to 
 Coleridge, as we turn from B5n:on to Shelley, so do we 
 turn from Jonson to Herrick ; and so do we recognize 
 the lyric poet as distinguished from the writer who 
 may or may not have every gift but one in higher 
 development of excellence and in fuller perfection of 
 power, but who is utterly and absolutely transcended 
 and shone down by his probably unconscious competitor 
 
 iThe inspiration of both Jonson's and Herrick's poem comes from 
 the fifty-eighth epigram of Martial's third Book. 
 
174 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 on the proper and peculiar ground of pure and simple 
 poetry." ^ 
 
 The secular lyrics of Herrick are mainly concerned 
 with what have been, in all stages of the world's history, 
 the most cherished themes of the lyre — ^love and song and 
 wine. In close association with these are his festival 
 lyrics, written to honour the marriage ceremonies of 
 some friend or patron, or in celebration of some village 
 revel. Lastly, there are his nature-lyrics, inspired by 
 the beauty and fragrance of flowers, or by the joy which 
 possesses him when the dark winter is over, and spring 
 returns to gladden the face of the earth. 
 
 Love is the supreme theme of the Hesperides, as of the 
 Cavalier lyric generally, and to its pleasures Herrick 
 devotes some of his most perfect songs. Love is the 
 theme of youth, but Herrick, if certain statements 
 made by hun in his verses are to be believed, remained 
 constant to the master-passion until grey hairs were his 
 portion and he had become a " dry, decrepit man." 
 Marriage, as he tells us more than once, was never his 
 goal, but in an age when gallantry was only too often 
 a cloak for C5micism, he remained singularly loyal to 
 womanhood. On rare occasions, and when governed 
 by a fit of spleen, he gibes at the sex, but his habitual 
 attitude is that which finds expression in the verses 
 entitled In Praise of Women (739) : — 
 
 O Jupiter, should I speak ill 
 Of woman-kind, first die I will ; 
 Since that I know, 'mong all the rest 
 Of creatures, woman is the best. 
 
 His loyalty and devotion, however, rarely attain to a 
 very exalted level, and love is only too often mere amorous 
 dalliance. If the tone of his love-lyrics is higher than that 
 of Suckling and Carew, it is generally lower than that of 
 Lovelace, whose songs are often inspired by a chivalrous 
 regard of which Herrick remained throughout his life 
 unconscious. 
 
 1 A Study of Ben Jonson, p. 98. 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 175 
 
 In his amours Herrick is a butterfly of not too fastidi- 
 ous taste. His mistresses are many, and he professes 
 the same ardour for them all, and woos them all in the 
 same language of Cavalier gallantry. Love, he declares, 
 dislikes nothing, and he elaborates this thought at some 
 length in a leash of triplet verses : 
 
 Whatsoever thing I see. 
 Rich or poor although it be, 
 'Tis a mistress unto me. 
 
 Be my girl or fair or brown. 
 Does she smile or does she frown. 
 Still I write a sweetheart down. 
 
 Be she rough or smooth of skin. 
 When I touch I then begin 
 For to let affection in. , 
 
 Be she bald, or does she wear 
 Locks incurl'd of other hair, 
 I shall find enchantment there. 
 
 Be she whole, or be she rent, 
 So my fancy be content, 
 She's to me most excellent. 
 
 Be she fat, or be she lean. 
 Be she sluttish, be she clean, 
 I'm the man for ev'ry scene.* 
 
 The universality of Herrick's affections carries its own 
 Nemesis with it : with all his protestations of love, he 
 remains heart-whole. Love, he confesses on one occasion, 
 has scorched his finger, but has spared the burning of his 
 heart. Thanks to the delicate grace of his sentiments, 
 the matchless lilt of his verses, and at times the idyllic 
 beauty which suffuses his lyrics, Herrick occupies an 
 exalted position among EngHsh love-poets ; but his 
 lack of genuine passion places him on an altogether lower 
 level than that of Bums. For the chivalry of Burns's 
 
 1 Love dislikes Nothing (750). 
 
176 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 " wert thou in the cauld blast," Herrick can offer only 
 gallantry, and for the desolating passion of " Ae Fond 
 Kiss," with its cadence of scalding tears — 
 
 Had we never loved sae kindly. 
 Had we never loved sae blindly. 
 Never met, or never parted. 
 We had ne'er been broken-hearted — 
 
 he can offer nothing at all. 
 
 Most of Herrick's love-poems are associated with the 
 names of his many mistresses, of whose fictitious nature 
 much has been said earlier in this book. Somewhat 
 vague and shadowy as the Julia, Anthea, Electra, 
 Perenna, and the rest of the galaxy are when considered 
 individually, they nevertheless conform to a type 
 which is distinct enough. The mistress of the poet's 
 imagination is a stately figure inclining to fulness, with 
 red lips, sloe-black eyes, a clear voice, easy manners, and 
 not too rigorous morals. She comes before us with her 
 loose ringlets of hair flowing in the wind ; there is a 
 " sweet disorder " in her dress, and, as she passes, she 
 leaves behind her a fragrance exhaled from all the per- 
 fumes of Arabia. The Herrick-mistress is Milton's DaJila, 
 bearing down upon us like a stately ship of Tarsus : 
 
 With all her bravery on, and tackle trim. 
 
 Sails filled, and streamers waving. 
 
 Courted by all the winds that hold them play ; 
 
 An amber scent of odorous perfume 
 
 Her harbinger, a damsel train behind. 
 
 The language in which he addresses his mistresses is 
 often frankly sensuous, and sometimes gross. But this 
 is by no means always the case ; there are occasions when, 
 p\u:ged of all grossness, it acquires a delicacy and refine- 
 ment rarely met with in the school of Cavalier lyrists. 
 In such poems as the familiar Cherry Ripe (53), or The 
 Parliament of Roses to Julia (11), or, again. The Rock of 
 Rubies and the Quarry of Pearls (75), we stUl feel our- 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 177 
 
 selves in the presence of the courtier, tendering the 
 homage of gallantry, but how infinitely gracious is the 
 tendering : 
 
 Some ask'd me where the rubies grew, 
 
 And nothing I did say : 
 But with my finger pointed to 
 
 The hps of JuUa. 
 Some ask'd how pearls did grow, and where ; 
 
 Then spoke I to my girl. 
 To part her hps and show them there 
 
 The quarrelets of pearl. 
 
 Gallantry, again, is the motive of the beautiful song 
 To the Western Wind (255), written in honour of Perenna, 
 no less than of that To the Rose (238), which associates 
 Herrick with Waller, as his Cherry Ripe hnks him to 
 Campion : 
 
 Go, happy rose, and interwove 
 With other flowers, bind my love. 
 Tell her, too, she must not be 
 Longer flowing, longer free. 
 That so oft has fetter' d me. 
 
 Say, if she's fretful, I have bands 
 Of pearl and gold to bind her hands. 
 TeU her, if she struggle still, 
 I have myrtle rods at will. 
 For to tame, though not to kill. 
 
 Take thou my blessing thus, and go 
 And teU her this, — ^but do not so ! — 
 Lest a handsome anger fly. 
 Like a Ughtning from her eye, 
 And bum thee up, as weU as I. 
 
 But there are occasions when gallantry, even of the 
 most refined and exalted nature, fails to satisfy the poet. 
 Once or twice in the course of the period during which 
 the Hesperides were written, the fire of love, no longer 
 content with scorching his finger, comes perilously near 
 his heart, and then there breaks from him no felicitous 
 
178 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 compliment, but the passionate utterance of true devo- 
 tion. In moments such as these he wrote his famous 
 song To Anthea (267), the last stanza of which strikes 
 deeper than anything else in Herrick : 
 
 Thou art my life, my love, my heart, 
 
 The very eyes of me ; 
 And hast command of every part, 
 
 To live and die for thee— 
 
 and the scarcely less perfect Night Piece, to Julia (619) : 
 
 Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee ; 
 The shooting stars attend thee ; 
 
 And the elves also, 
 
 Whose little eyes glow 
 Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee. 
 
 No WiU-o'-th'-Wisp mislight thee ; 
 Nor snake or slow-worm bite thee ; 
 
 But on, on thy way. 
 
 Not making a stay. 
 Since ghost there's none to affright thee. 
 
 Let not the dark thee cumber ; 
 What though the moon does slumber ? 
 
 The stars of the night 
 
 Shall lend thee their light, 
 Like tapers clear without number. 
 
 Then, JuUa, let me woo thee. 
 Thus, thus to come unto me. 
 
 And when I shall meet 
 
 Thy silvery feet, 
 My soul I'll pour into thee. 
 
 Not infrequently, too, and in poems which one is 
 disposed to associate with Dean Prior, he introduces 
 into his lyrics, somewhat in the manner of Spenser and 
 Campion, a certain idyUic element. He paints for us 
 pictures of country hfe, and places his mistresses against 
 a background of spring fio\yers and rustic merriment. 
 Most of his mistresses seem town-bred, frequenters of 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 179 
 
 the court or the city, but in these idyllic lyrics they 
 harmonize well with their surroundings, and appear 
 never to have strayed beyond the parish-bounds of 
 Dean Prior. The consummate example of this kind of 
 lyric, and one of the most perfect things in our literature, 
 is Corinna's going a-Maying (178), to which reference 
 will be made hereafter ; and something of the same 
 happy blending of lyric emotion and idyllic colour is 
 met with in The Wake, addressed to Anthea (761), and in 
 the Marlowesque To Phillis, to love and live with him 
 (521). This is too long to quote entirely, and the open- 
 ing verses will suffice to give an impression of the charm 
 and virginal purity which characterize it : 
 
 Live, live with me, and thou shalt see 
 The pleasures I'll prepare for thee. 
 What sweets the country can afford 
 Shall bless thy bed and bless thy board. 
 The soft, sweet moss shall be thy bed. 
 With crawling woodbine overspread ; 
 By which the silver-shedding streams 
 Shall gently melt thee into dreams. 
 Thy clothing, next, shall be a gown 
 Made of the fleece's purest down. 
 The tongues of kids shall be thy meat. 
 Their milk thy drink, and thou shalt eat 
 The paste of filberts for thy bread. 
 With cream of cowslips buttered. 
 Thy feasting-tables shall be hills 
 With daisies spread and daffodils. 
 Where thou shalt sit, and red-breast by. 
 For meat, shall give thee melody, 
 m give thee chains and carcanets 
 Of primroses and violets. 
 A bag and bottle thou shalt have. 
 That richly wrought, and this as brave ; 
 So that as either shall express 
 The wearer's no mean shepherdess. 
 
 The poems written by Raleigh and Donne on the 
 model of Marlowe's famous " Come Hve with me and 
 
i8o ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 be my love " have each a strain of disillusionment in 
 them ; but of this there is nothing in Herrick, who in 
 this lyric to Phillis reverts to the early EUzabethan 
 manner more completely than an5rwhere else in his 
 poems. The picture which he paints is undoubtedly 
 ideal, but it does not borrow its graces from an unreal 
 Arcadian landscape ; the scene in all its details is true 
 to an English country-side. 
 
 There is in Herrick scarcely a trace of the introspec- 
 tiveness and love-casuistry of the Elizabethan sonneteers 
 or the seventeenth-century romance-writers. He does 
 not reason with his love or diagnose it ; knowing nothing 
 of the carte du pays de Tendre, he never encounters in 
 all his voyagings the lake of Indifference, or finds him- 
 self stranded upon the reefs of Danger. AH is smooth 
 saihng in the wide ocean of his love, and it is death 
 alone that bids him cast anchor. The thought of death 
 frequently enters his mind when writing his love-poems, 
 and he mades no attempt to put it aside ; so far from 
 shrinking from the inevitable, he meets it Uke a volup- 
 tuary. He imprints his " supremest kiss " upon the 
 lips of Perilla, bids Julia embalm him with the m5mrh 
 and spikenard of her breath, calls on Anthea to bury 
 him beneath " the holy-oak or gospel- tree," and on 
 Perilla to let fall tears and primroses upon his grave. 
 He pursues these fancies even beyond death, and in his 
 verses. To his lovely Mistresses (634), he bids them aU 
 come, on the anniversary of his decease, to his graveside, 
 and pour forth their Hbations : 
 
 One night i' th' year, my dearest beauties, come 
 And bring those due drink-offerings to my tomb. 
 When thence ye see my reverend ghost to rise. 
 And there to lick th' effused sacrifice : 
 Though paleness be the livery that I wear. 
 Look ye not wan or colourless for fear. 
 Trust me, I wiU not hurt ye, or once show 
 The least grim look, or cast a frown on you : 
 Nor shall the tapers when I'm there bum blue. 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " i8i 
 
 This I may do, perhaps, as I glide by. 
 Cast on my girls a glance and loving eye. 
 Or fold mine arms and sigh, because I've lost 
 The world so soon, and in it you the most. 
 Than these, no fears more on your fancies fall, 
 Though then I smile and speak no words at all. 
 
 The bulk of Herrick's love-l3n:ics are of a personal 
 character, and, in his fondness for self-revelation, he 
 shows himself a true child of his age. But, scattered 
 through the Hesperides, are a few lyrics of an impersonal 
 nature, and one to which may be applied the term, 
 dramatic lyric. Following the fashion of the age, he 
 wrote several lyrics in dialogue form, and bedecked 
 them with the accepted graces of pastoralism. These 
 are scarcely his happiest or most characteristic effusions, 
 though they are superior to most of the amoebean verse 
 that came from the pens of the Cavalier lyrists, and 
 were set to music by Court musicians. The best of 
 them is one which was intended for the royal ear, and 
 in which the shepherds Montano, Silvio, and MirtiUb 
 lament the loss of the shepherdess, Amarillis : 
 
 Mirtillo. Thig way she came, and this way too, she went ; 
 How each thing smells divinely redolent ! 
 Like to a field of beans when newly blown. 
 Or like a meadow being lately mown. 
 
 Montano. A sweet-sad passion — 
 
 Mir. In dewy mornings, when she came this way. 
 Sweet bents would bow to give my love the day ; 
 And when at night she folded had her sheep. 
 Daisies would shut, and, closing, sigh and weep. 
 Besides (ay me !) since she went hence to dwell. 
 The voices' daughter ne'er spake syllable. 
 But she is gone. 
 
 Silvio. MirtiUo, tell us whither. 
 
 Mir. Where she and I shall never meet together.' 
 
 The pathetic fallacy of some of these lines is in keeping 
 with the general tenor of the pastoral dialogue, but the 
 beauty and the grace are Herrick's own. 
 
 1 A Pastoral sung to the King (421), 
 
i82 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 The finest example of the impersonal Ijnric in the 
 Hesperides is The Mad Maid's Song (412), and it illus- 
 trates, amongst other things, his unerring taste. The 
 mad maid had become an all too familiar figure in our 
 Uterature from the time when Shakespeare had shown 
 in his Ophelia the tragic pathos of such a character. 
 Even so great a master of pathos as Fletcher had failed, 
 in his conception of the mad gaoler's daughter in The 
 Two Noble Kinsmen, to exercise that restraint without 
 which the pathetic element in madness loses its dignity 
 and panders to a degraded comic taste. In Herrick's 
 verses we feel this restraint exercised throughout, and 
 the poem, in its limpid simplicity and subdued but 
 haunting tragic power, is the harbinger of Blake : 
 
 Good morrow to the day so fair ; 
 
 Good moi^row, sir,' to you ; 
 Good morrow to mine own torn hair. 
 
 Bedabbled with, the dew. 
 
 Good morrow to this primrose too ; 
 
 Good morrow to each maid ; 
 That will with flowers the tomb bestrew 
 
 Wherein my love is laid. 
 
 Ah ! woe is me, woe, woe is me. 
 
 Alack and well-a-day ! 
 For pity, sir, find out that bee 
 
 Which bore my love away. 
 
 I'll seek him in your bonnet brave, 
 
 I'll seek him in your eyes ; 
 Nay, now I think they've made his grave 
 
 I' th' bed of strawberries. 
 
 I'll seek him there ; I know, ere this 
 The cold, cold earth doth shake him ; 
 
 But I will go, or send a kiss 
 By you, sir, to awake him. 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 183 
 
 Pray, hurt him not ; though he be dead. 
 
 He knows well who do love him ; 
 And who with green turfe rear his head 
 
 And who do rudely move him. 
 
 He's soft and tender (pray take heed) ; 
 
 With bands of cowslips bind him. 
 And bring him home ; — ^but 'tis decreed. 
 
 That I shaU never find him. 
 
 Whether Herrick, if the circumstances of his hfe had 
 been different, would have achieved success as a drama- 
 tist, may be open to doubt, but the dramatic power of 
 this lyric is undeniable. 
 
 To the pleasures of the wine-cup, Herrick, " the 
 music of a feast," rendered, at one period of his hfe at 
 least, unstinted homage. Bacchanalian revelry, one 
 imagines, was not often his portion at Dean Prior, and 
 we are, therefore, probably right in associating his 
 Farewell and Welcome to Sack with his tavem-hfe in 
 London at the feet of Ben Jonson. His drinking-songs 
 are written with all the high spirits and abandon of 
 youth, and in his hnes. To live merrily and trust to good 
 verses (201), he makes us feel that the wine-god is a minisT 
 tering spirit to the muses. After drinking a health to 
 Homer, Virgil, and the Roman l5nists and elegists, he 
 bids his hearers put their trust in poetry as the one 
 power which shall outline the pyramids : 
 
 Trust to good verses, then ; 
 
 They only will aspire. 
 When men, as pjrramids. 
 
 Are lost i' th' funeral fire. 
 
 His drinking-songs rise from the level of the ale-house 
 catch to that of the ode. At one end of the scale we 
 meet with such a 15^0 as that entitled The Tinker's 
 Song (see page 166) ; at a higher elevation we come upon 
 those hymns and canticles to Bacchus inspired by Ana- 
 creon and the epigrammatists of the Greek Anthology, 
 of which the following is a good example : 
 
i84 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Bacchus, let me drink no more ; 
 Wild are seas that want a shore. 
 When our drinking ha,s no stint. 
 There is no one pleasure in't. 
 I have drank up, for to please 
 Thee, that great cup, Hercules. 
 Urge no more, and there shall be 
 Daffodils given up to thee.^ 
 
 Highest of all stand the great Farewell to Sack (128) 
 and Welcome to Sack (197), in which his genius takes a 
 bolder sweep of pinion and soars to the exalted regions 
 of the ode : 
 
 O thou, the drink of gods and angels ! wine. 
 That scatter' st spirit and lust, whose purest shine 
 More radiant than the summer's sunbeams shows ; 
 Each way illustrious, brave, and Uke to those 
 Comets we see by night, whose shagg'd portents 
 Foretell the coming of some dire events. 
 Or some full flame which with- a pride aspires. 
 Throwing about his wild and active fires ; 
 'Tis thou, above nectar, O divinest soul ! 
 Eternal in thyself, that canst control 
 That which subverts whole nature, grief and care. 
 Vexation of the mind, and damn'd despair. 
 'Tis thou alone who, with thy mystic fan, 
 Work'st more than wisdom, art, or nature can 
 To rouse the sacred madness and awake 
 The frost-bound blood and spirits, and to make 
 Them frantic with thy raptures, flashing through 
 The soul like hghtning, and as active too. 
 'Tis not Apollo can, or those thrice three 
 Castahan sisters, sing, if wanting thee. 
 Horace, Anacreon, both had lost their fame, 
 Hadst thou not flU'd them with thy fire and flame. 
 Phcebean splendour ! and thou, Thespian spring ! 
 Of which sweet swans must drink before they sing 
 Their true-pac'd numbers and their holy lays. 
 Which makes them worthy cedar and the bays." 
 
 There is nothing elsewhere in Herrick to surpass the 
 ' A Hymn to Bacchus (304) ^ Farewell to Sack (128). 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 185 
 
 sustained force and dithyrambic grandeur of this ode. 
 It is not the utterance of some reveUer, staggering 
 homewards at dawn from an Eastcheap tavern, but that 
 of a myrtle-garlanded priest of lacchus, son of Zeus and 
 Demeter, chanting his paean of praise in the solemn 
 Eleusinian mysteries. 
 
 That Herrick, whose ear for the harmonies of verse 
 was so acute, should feel and acknowledge the spell of 
 music is scarcely a matter for wonder. He wrote several 
 poems in praise of the art, and in extolling the charms 
 of his mistresses, he esteems the lute and voice of " choice 
 Myrrha " as highly as the wit of Corinna. He has little 
 sense of the elevating power of music ; it is for him 
 a " care-charming spell," which calms his fever,, and, 
 coming to him in the form of soft Lydian airs, eases his 
 heart of all pain. There is much beauty in his song. 
 To Music (254) : 
 
 Music, thou queen of heaven, care-charming spell. 
 
 That strik'st a stillness into hell : 
 Thou that tam'st tigers, and fierce storms that rise. 
 
 With thy soul-melting luUabies, 
 Fall down, down, down from, those thy chiming spheres. 
 To charm our souls, as thou enchant'st our ears ; 
 
 but the most perfect of his lyrics in praise of this " queen 
 of heaven " is that entitled To Music, to becalm his Fever 
 (227) : 
 
 Charm me asleep and melt me so 
 
 With thy delicious numbers. 
 That, being ravish' d, hence I go 
 Away in easy slumbers. 
 Ease my sick head 
 And make my bed. 
 Thou power that canst sever 
 From me this ill ; 
 And quickly stUl, 
 Though thou not kill, 
 My fever. 
 
i86 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Thou sweetly canst convert the same 
 
 From a consuming fire 
 Into a.gentle-licking flame, 
 And make it thus expire. 
 Then make me weep 
 My pains asleep ; 
 And give me such reposes 
 That I, poor I, 
 May think thereby 
 I Uve and die 
 
 'Mongst roses. 
 
 Fall on me like a silent dew. 
 
 Or like those maiden showers 
 Which, by the peep of day, do strew 
 A baptism o'er the flowers. 
 Melt, melt my pains 
 With thy soft strains. 
 That, having ease me given. 
 With full delight 
 I leave this light. 
 And take my flight 
 For heaven. 
 
 In Herrick's Argument of his Book (i), prefixed to the 
 Hesperides, the fair things of Nature and the associations 
 of a country life hold a distinguished place. He begins : 
 
 I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers. 
 
 Of April, May, of June and July flowers ; 
 
 I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, — 
 
 and proceeds to tell of dew and rains, groves and twi- 
 lights, and — 
 
 How roses first came red and lilies white. 
 
 The prominence given to such things in the " Argu- 
 ment " is borne out by the verses that follow. While 
 still a London apprentice, he had, in the lines addressed 
 to his brother Thomas, and entitled A Country Life 
 (io6), sung the praises of the " coimtry's sweet simplicity," 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 187 
 
 and drawn a picture of rural ease such as was in later 
 years to become his own portion : 
 
 The damask' d meadows and the pebbly streams 
 
 Sweeten and make soft your dreams ; 
 The purling springs, groves, birds and well-weav'd bowers, 
 
 With fields enamelled with flowers. 
 Present their shapes ; while fantasy discloses 
 
 Milhons of liUes mix'd with roses. 
 
 In painting this picture, Herrick has Horace's Sabine 
 farm before his mind, but there is no reason to doubt 
 the sincerity of his feelings ; and the charm which he 
 finds at this time in the contemplation of a life of rural 
 seclusion reappears again and again in the poems of 
 later years. Herrick, as we have already seen, had 
 his moods of petulance, when the life which he was 
 leading at Dean Prior provoked vexation of spirit and 
 he yearned with an exile's passionate longings after 
 those splendours of Whitehall which once lay within his 
 grasp. But the spirit of easy contentment which was 
 his daily wear, and the unaffected delight which the 
 quiet beauty of Nature and the festivities of the country- 
 side awakened within him, were in the main sufficient 
 to reconcile him for what he had lost. 
 
 His feeUng for Nature was strictly limited, but genuine 
 and even intense within its Umitations. There is, as 
 Mr Gosse has shown, no background, no sense of distance, 
 in his landscapes. " He is photographically minute in 
 giving us the features of the brook at our feet, the farm- 
 yard and its iimiates, the open fireplace and the chimney 
 comer, but there is no trace of anything beyond, and the 
 beautiful distances of Devonshire, the rocky tors, the 
 rugged Une of Dartmoor, the glens in the hiUs — of all 
 these there is not a trace. "^ One might even go farther 
 than this, and say that only very exceptionally does 
 Herrick give us landscapes at all. His usual plan is to 
 single out some one feature in the scene before him and 
 1 Seventeenth-Century Studies, Robert Herrick, p. 128. 
 
i88 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 concentrate all his attention upon that, steeping it in airy 
 sentiment and embroidering it with quaint poetic fancies. 
 And when, as in the poem entitled The Country Life 
 (662), addressed to his friend and patron, Endymion 
 Porter, he spreads a wide vista before us, his method 
 is to call up a succession of small pictures, instead of 
 resolving these into one large, well-ordered landscape. 
 This poem, which is among the most sustained he has 
 left us, deserves to be quoted at some length, partly 
 because of the resemblance which it bears to the con- 
 temporaneous L' Allegro of Milton, and ptirtly because 
 we find enumerated here most of the features of rustic 
 Ufe and scenery which made the strongest appeal to 
 Herrick's feelings : 
 
 When now the cock, the ploughman's horn. 
 
 Calls forth the lily-wristed mom. 
 
 Then to thy corn-fields thou dost go. 
 
 Which, though well-soil' d, yet thou dost know 
 
 That the best compost for the lands 
 
 Is the wise master's feet and hands. 
 
 There at the plough thou find'st thy team 
 
 With a hind whistling there to them ; 
 
 And cheer' st them up by singing how 
 
 The kingdom's portion is the plough. 
 
 This done, then to th' enamelled meads 
 
 Thou go'st, and as thy foot there treads. 
 
 Thou see'st a present God-Uke power 
 
 Imprinted in each herb and flower ; 
 
 And smell' st the breath of great-ey'd kine. 
 
 Sweet as the blossoms of the vine. 
 
 Here thou behold' st thy large sleek neat 
 
 Unto the dew-laps up in meat ; 
 
 And, as thou look'st, the wanton steer, 
 
 The heifer, cow and ox draw near 
 
 To make a pleasing pastime there. 
 
 These seen, thou go'st to view thy flocks 
 
 Of sheep, safe from the wolf and fox. 
 
 And find'st their bellies there as full 
 
 Of short sweet grass as backs with wool. 
 
 And leav'st them, as they feed and fill, 
 
 A shepherd piping on a Mil. 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 189 
 
 For sports, for pageantry and plays. 
 Thou hast thy eves and hoUdays ; 
 On which the young men and maids meet 
 To exercise their dancing feet ; 
 Tripping the comely country round. 
 With dafiodils and daisies crown' d. 
 Thy wakes, thy quintals here thou hast. 
 Thy May-poles, too, with garlands grac'd ; 
 Thy morris-dance, thy Whitsun ale. 
 Thy shearing-feast, which never fail ; 
 Thy harvest-home, thy wassail-bowl. 
 That's toss'd up after fox i' th' hole ; 
 Thy mummeries, thy Twelfth-tide kings 
 And queens, thy Christmas reveUings, 
 Thy nut-brown mirth, thy russet wit. 
 And no man pays too dear for it. 
 
 The shepherd piping on the hill, and the wolf preying 
 upon the flocks, are the aUoy of pastoralism ; but apart 
 from this the picture is faithful to EngUsh country Hfe 
 as Herrick saw it around him in Devonshire or elsewhere. 
 Like Homer, he looks upon the fields with the eyes of a 
 farmer as well as with those of an artist, and if the 
 couplet — 
 
 Thou see'st a present God-Uke power 
 Imprinted in each herb and flower — 
 
 is suggestive of Wordsworth and modem pantheistic 
 poetry, it is probable that what the poet had chiefly in 
 mind was the primitive classic faith in the spirits of field 
 and grove. Eminently characteristic of Herrick, too, 
 is the prominence given to sports and pageantry. May- 
 poles and morris dances, and all the swift succession of 
 holiday festivals without which the coimtry would have 
 seemed to him a dreary place. It is worthy of note that 
 this aspect of country Hfe finds no place in the Horatian 
 verses on the " country's sweet simplicity " which, early 
 in his poetic career, he had addressed to his brother ; 
 and it would be pleasant to think that it was at Dean 
 Prior that he was first initiated into the mjreteries of 
 
igo ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 may-pole dances, harvest-homes, and Christmas wassails. 
 But whether it was here or elsewhere, their hold upon his 
 affections was firm and enduring ; and Puritanism, to 
 him an accursed thing in all its shapes and semblances, 
 could never have appeared so maUgnant as in the warfare 
 which it waged with aU this pagan ritual of the viUagery. 
 He never tires of referring to these merry-makings in 
 his poems. In a nimiber of short verses he describes with 
 infinite zest the mystic ceremonies associated with Christ- 
 mas, Twelfth-Night, and Candlemas Day ; but it is the 
 spring and summer festivals, with their open-air deUghts, 
 which appeal to him most. The TUay-Hay rpjoiririgg are 
 celebrated in npe of the most h pantifnl of his lyrir.s^ 
 Corinna's going a-Maying (178), a poem too long and too 
 familiar to be quoted here in full, but from which the 
 following stanzas may be extracted : 
 
 Come, my Corinna, come ; and, coming, mark 
 How each field turns a street, each street a park. 
 
 Made green and trimm'd with trees ; see how 
 
 Devotion gives each house a bough 
 
 Or branch : each porch, each door ere this 
 
 An ark, a tabernacle is. 
 Made up of white-thorn neatly interwove ; 
 As if here were those cooler shades of love. 
 
 Can such delights be in the street 
 
 And open fields and we not see't ? 
 
 Come, we'U abroad ; and let's obey 
 
 The proclamation made for May : 
 And sin no more, as we have done by stajdng : 
 But, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying. 
 
 There's not a budding boy or girl this day 
 But is got up, and gone to bring in May. 
 
 A deal of youth, ere this is come 
 
 Back, and with white-thom laden home. 
 
 Some have despatched their cakes and cream. 
 
 Before that we have left to dream : 
 And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted troth. 
 And chose their priest, ere we can cast on sloth : 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 191 
 
 Many a green-gown has been given ; 
 
 Many a kiss, both odd and even : 
 
 Many a glance too has been sent 
 
 From out the eye, love's firmament ; 
 Many a jest told of the keys betraying 
 This night, and locks pick'd, yet we're not a-Ma3ring. 
 
 English poets from Chaucer onwards have loved to 
 " doon observaunce to the month of May," but none 
 has h rnnght t hp nnrp familiar scene SO vividly before us 
 
 as Herrick. The fpgtival ig prpgpntpn tn ii< ; in all its" 
 
 fresh grace and Tnerriment , atiH thp iv^, realizing the 
 charm of the actual picture, makes no attempt to bedeck 
 it with the false colours ot Arcadian nction. And when 
 the promise of May has realized itself in the fulfilment of 
 September, he paints for us, in his Hock-Cart or Harvest- 
 Home (250), a picture of equal charm and animation : 
 
 Come, sons of summer, by whose toil 
 
 We are the lords of wine and oil : 
 
 By whose tough labours and rough hands 
 
 We rip up first, then reap our lands. 
 
 Crown' d with the ears of corn, now come. 
 
 And to the pipe sing harvest home. 
 
 Come forth, my lord, and see the cart 
 
 Dress' d up with aU the country art : 
 
 See here a maukin, there a sheet. 
 
 As spotless pure as it is sweet : 
 
 The horses, mares, and frisking filUes, 
 
 Clad all in Unen white as liUes. 
 
 The harvest swains and wenches bound 
 
 For joy, to see the hock-cart crown'd. 
 
 About the cart, hear how the rout 
 
 Of rural younglings raise the shout ; 
 
 Pressing before, some coming after. 
 
 Those with a shout, and these with laughter 
 
 Some bless the cart, some kiss the sheaves. 
 
 Some prank them up with oaken leaves : 
 
 Some cross the fill-horse, some with great 
 
 Devotion stroke the home-borne wheat : 
 
 While other rustics, less attent 
 
 To prayers than to merriment. 
 
 Run after with their breeches rent. 
 
192 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 And then there follows a description of the evening 
 feast with its joints of meat, its dishes of custard and 
 frumenty, and its copious draughts of " stout beer," 
 pledging success to the farmer's life. The poem is 
 dedicated to Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland, and 
 seems to have been written when Herrick was on a 
 visit to one of the country seats of that nobleman. 
 
 When we turn from these scenes of rustic merriment 
 to the pictures of still life, we are again struck by the 
 quickness of his observation, and the charm with which 
 he invests the objects of the natural world in presenting 
 them to our notice. For the grandiose in Nature, the 
 sublimity of mountain, moor, or sea, he has, as we have 
 seen, no appreciation ; but he observes the " mites of 
 candied dew in moony nights," and the " frost-work 
 glittering on the snow," and is keenly alive to all the 
 sweet sounds and luscious scents of Nature, and to the 
 ever-changing effects produced by light and shade. 
 For him, as for most other poets of his age, winter is a 
 season of death and desolation ; his delight is aU in 
 what he calls " the succession of the four sweet months " 
 — April, May, June, and July — and he hails the return 
 of spring with the simple, heart-felt joy of the medieval 
 Minnesinger : 
 
 Fled are the frosts, and now the fields appear 
 Recloth'd in fresh and verdant diaper. 
 Thaw'd are the snows, and now the lusty spring 
 Gives to each mead a neat enamelling. 
 The palms put forth their gems, and every tree 
 Now swaggers in her leafy gallantry. 
 The while the Daulian minstrel sweetly sings. 
 With warbling notes, her Terean sufferings. 
 • What gentle winds perspire ! As if herp 
 Never had been the northern plunderer 
 To strip the trees and fields, to their distress. 
 Leaving them to a pitied nakedness.' 
 
 Herrick is, however, seldom content with fonnal descrip- 
 
 1 Farewell Frost (642). 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES" 193 
 
 tion. His instincts are not those of the descriptive 
 poet, but those of the Ijndst, and where he paints the 
 face of Nature for us, he charges the scene with personal 
 feehng and gives to it a human interest. Thus the two 
 poems, entitled To Meadows (274) and To Groves (449), 
 do not contain much in the way of natural description, 
 but his imagination peoples these places with processions 
 of fair virgins who have wandered forth into the meadows 
 to fill their wicker-baskets with cowslips, or, like the 
 lovers in Arden, to carve their names upon the bark, 
 and bind fillets about the branches of the trees. 
 
 At other times he draws a veil of sjnnbolism over the 
 objects of Nature, and bids us see in flower, tree, or rain- 
 bow, emblems of things spiritual. The laurel tree is for 
 him a sjnnbol of the eternity of his poetic fame, the willow 
 of love unrequited, while the yew and cypress point 
 towards the grave : 
 
 Both of you have 
 Relation to the grave : 
 And where 
 The funeral-trump sounds, you are there. 
 
 I shall be made, 
 Ere long a fleeting shade. 
 Pray, come. 
 And do some honour to my tomb. 
 
 Do not deny 
 My last request ; for T 
 Will be 
 Thankful to you, or friends, for me. ^ 
 
 Symbolism of this sort is but one particular form of that 
 larger veil of sentimentalism, without which Herrick 
 seldom cares to look upon the face of Nature, and which 
 becomes specially prominent in the many poems written 
 in honour of some particular flower. He loved flowers 
 with no ordinary love, partly because of the sentiment 
 
 1 To the Yew and Cypress to Grace his Funeral (280). 
 
194 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 attached to them, and partly because of the appeal 
 which they made to his love of gay colours and sweet 
 scents. Among the inducements which, in his poem. 
 To Phillis, to love and live with him, he offers to the 
 fair one are chains and carcanets of primroses and violets, 
 hills with daisies spread and daffodils, and honeysuckle 
 bowers overhanging the stream ; and among the joys 
 of Elysium which his sensuous imagination conjures up 
 is that of sitting on primrose banks, crowned with end- 
 less roses, while 
 
 Naked younglings, handsome striplings, run 
 Their goals for virgins' kisses^ 
 
 Even in his most riotous moments, when he drowns all 
 sorrow in the pleasures of the wine-cup, he cannot be 
 content unless his head is encircled with a chaplet of 
 flowers. 
 
 The most beautiful of his flower-poems are those in 
 which the note of Ijnc sentiment is uppermost, and in 
 which the delight in floral beauty is chequered by a 
 feeling of its transience. This is a familiar sentiment 
 with most lyric poets, but none have felt it so poignantly 
 as Herrick. He dwells upon this thought in a number 
 of poems : even the sight of a bed of tulips is suggestive 
 to him of mortality, he divines the end of aU things in 
 the drooping heads of the daffodils, and reads in the 
 spring primroses, filled with morning dew, this lesson of 
 sadness : 
 
 That things of greatest, so of meanest worth, 
 Conceiv'd with grief are, and with tears brought forth.' 
 
 The loveUest of his flower-songs is that To Daffodils 
 (316), and here again it is the thought of their transitori- 
 ness which fills his mind : 
 
 1 The Apparition of his Mistress calling him to Elysium (575). 
 * To Primroses filled with Morning Dew (357). 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 195 
 
 Fair daffodils, we weep to see 
 
 You haste away so soon ; 
 As yet the early-rising sun 
 Has not attain' d his noon. 
 Stay, stay, 
 Until the hasting day 
 
 Has run 
 But to the evensong ; 
 And, having pray'd together, we 
 Will go with you along. 
 
 We have short time to stay, as you. 
 
 We have as short a spring ; 
 As quick a growth to meet decay. 
 As you, or anything. 
 We die 
 As your hours do, and dry 
 
 Away, 
 Like to the summer's rain ; 
 Or as the pearls of morning's dew, 
 Ne'er to be found again. 
 
 Reference has already been made in the earlier portion 
 of this book to those odes of Herrick which were addressed 
 to such friends as Endymion Porter and Sir Clipseby 
 Crew, and there is no need to say more about them 
 here; but one or two of his festive odes, in particular 
 his Epithalamia, call for attention before this chapter 
 is brought to a close. The epithalamium is one of the 
 most characteristic forms of Renaissance lyrics, and one 
 which well suited the temper of Herrick's genius. Of 
 classic origin, it came into being, lived, and died with 
 the Renaissance, leaving behind a considerable body of 
 verse, ranging from the gross fescinnina locutio of many 
 of the Caroline l3nists to the spiritual ecstasy of Spenser's 
 self-appointed wedding-ode. Herrick's view of marriage, 
 it will readily be granted, was not that of the author 
 of the Hymns to Love and Beauty, and his epithalamia are 
 of the earth earthy. This, however, is partly explained 
 by the lowering of courtly taste since the death of Eliza- 
 beth, and it is fair to add that the verses in which he 
 
196 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 celebrates the marriage of Sir Thomas and Lady Southwell, 
 or that of Sir Clipseby and Lady Crew, are neither more 
 nor less sensuous than those of the official epithalamium 
 written by Donne in honour of the marriage of Fred- 
 erick, Count Palatine of the Rhine, and the Lady Ehza- 
 beth, daughter of James L The prototj^e of most of 
 the Renaissance epithalamia was Catullus's famous In 
 Nuptias Julice et Manlii, and in his Epithalamy to Sir 
 Thomas Southwell and his Lady (149) Herrick challenges 
 comparison with the great Veronese lyrist. He fails to 
 reproduce the rapture of the Roman poet's refrain : 
 
 lo Hymen H3rmensee io, 
 lo Hymen Hymenaee — 
 
 but he comes near him in the stately structure of his 
 lyric and in the grace of his imagery : 
 
 On, on devoutly, make no stay ; 
 While Domiduca leads the way. 
 
 And Genius, who attends 
 
 The bed for lucky ends. 
 
 With Juno goes the Hours 
 
 And Graces strewing flowers. 
 
 And the boys with sweet tunes sing : 
 
 Hymen, O Hymen, bring 
 Home the turtles ; Hymen, guide 
 To the bed the bashful bride. 
 
 Behold ! how Hymen's taper-Ught 
 Shows you how much is spent of night. 
 
 See, see the bridegroom's torch 
 
 Half wasted in the porch. 
 
 And now those tapers five. 
 
 That show the womb shall thrive. 
 
 Their silv'ry flames advance, 
 
 To tell all prosp'rous chance 
 Still shall crown the happy life 
 Of the goodman and the wife. 
 
 Move forward then your rosy feet. 
 
 And make whate'er they touch turn sweet. 
 
LYRICAL POEMS OP THE " HESPERIDES " 197 
 
 May all, like flowery meads. 
 
 Smell where your soft foot treads. 
 
 And everything assume 
 
 To it the like perfume. 
 
 As Zephyrus when he 'spires 
 
 Through woodbine and sweetbriars. 
 
 Then, away ; come. Hymen, guide 
 
 To the bed the bashful bride. 
 
 Like Catullus, too, he loves to dwell upon the mystic 
 ritual of the wedding ceremony — the anointing of the 
 door-posts, the Ufting of the bride over the threshold, 
 the blessing of the sack-posset, and the scramble for the 
 nuts scattered by the bridegroom — CatuUus's nee nuces 
 pueris negef. 
 
 Similar to this in general style, and excelling it in 
 beauty of imagery, is the nuptial song in honour of his 
 friend. Sir CUpseby Crew (283), the opening stanzas of 
 which have much of the splendour and sustained har- 
 mony of Spenser : — 
 
 What's that we see from far ? the spring of day 
 Bloom' d from the east, or fair enjewell'd May 
 Blown out of April, or some new 
 Star, filled with glory to our view. 
 Reaching at Heaven, 
 To add a nobler planet to the seven ? 
 
 Say, or do we not descry 
 Some goddess in a cloud of tiffany 
 To move, or rather the 
 Emergent Venus from the sea ? 
 
 'Tis she ! 'tis she ! or else some more divine 
 Enlighten' d substance, mark how from the shrine 
 Of holy saints she paces on. 
 Treading upon vermiUon 
 And amber : spic- 
 ing the chaft air with fumes of Paradise. 
 
 Then come on, come on and yield 
 A savour like unto a blessed field, 
 When the bedabbled morn 
 Washes the golden ears of com. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE NON-LYRICAL POEMS OF THE " HESPERIDES " 
 
 The line of division between the lyrical poems of the 
 Hesperides and those of a non-ljrrical character is ex- 
 ceedingly hard to draw. The term lydc is at best vague, 
 and, in the case of Herrick, the point at which the Is^ric 
 ceases and the descriptive poem or epigram begins is 
 often a vanishing point. Poems like The Hock-Cart — 
 which is more descriptive than lyrical — ^were brought 
 under consideration in the preceding chapter, because of 
 their close connection with poems the lyrical quality 
 of which is beyond dispute ; and, for the same reason, 
 other poems of the nature of lyrics find a place here. 
 In the case of yet other verses, it is a matter of taste 
 whether we regard them as lyrics or as epigrams ; they 
 are lyrical in that they express personal emotion, but 
 their extreme brevity and lack of song-quahty associate 
 them with the epigrams. 
 
 The animation, htmaan interest, and keen sense of 
 observation displayed in some of Herrick's greater lyrics 
 indicate that, had he cared, he might have won success 
 as a narrative poet ; but he chose otherwise, and among 
 the Hesperides he has included nothing in the nature of 
 pure narrative work. In preferring the lyric to the merely 
 descriptive poem, he certainly showed his wisdom ; for 
 mere description, without the thrill of lyric emotion, 
 only too often leaves us cold. At the same time, there is 
 in his collection of secular verse a small group of poems 
 
 198 
 
NON-LYRICAL POEMS OF " HESPERIDES " 199 
 
 mainly descriptive in character : these are his fairy- 
 poems, and to these our attention must now be turned. 
 There is no absolute certainty as to the period at which 
 Herrick's three chief fairy-poems — The Fairy Temple or 
 Oberon's Chapel, Oberon's Feast, and Oberon's Palace — 
 were written, but the probability is that they belong to 
 the years which preceded his settlement at Dean Prior. 
 An earlier and briefer version of the Feast was pub- 
 hshed in 1635, ™ ^ little volume of fairy-poems, entitled 
 " A Description of the King and Queen of Fairies. 
 Their habit, fare, their abode, pomp and state," and 
 would thus seem to have been the first of Herrick's 
 poems to pass through the printer's hands. This little 
 book of twelve pages also contained a poem entitled " A 
 Description of the King of Fairies' Clothes, brought to 
 him on New- Year's day in the morning, 1626 [N.s. 
 1627]," by that Cambridgeshire knight, Sir Simon 
 Steward, to whom Herrick on one occasion sent a string 
 of verses telling of Christmas sports and Twelfth-Night 
 mirth. Now this poem of Steward's is, in conception 
 and workmanship, singularly like the fairy-poems of 
 Herrick ; and without going as far as Mr W. C. Hazlitt, 
 who would have us regard Steward as the mere copyist 
 and Herrick as the author of the poem in question, we 
 may assume that Steward wrote these verses under his 
 friend's direction, or perhaps with his friend's poems 
 spread out before him. A couplet of Steward's poem — 
 
 About his neck a wreath of pearl 
 Dropped from the eyes of some poor girl — ■ 
 
 is almost certainly a reminiscence of the following verses 
 from Oberon's Palace (444) : 
 
 And, all behung with these, pure pearls 
 Dropp'd from the eyes of ravish' d girls ; 
 
 and throughout one may observe a deliberate, though 
 
200 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 skilful, imitation of Herrick's manner. Steward's poem, 
 then, which must have been written some time before 
 New- Year's day, 1627, helps us to determine the date 
 of Herrick's fairy-poems sufficiently exactly, and more 
 precise evidence is furnished by one of the poems them- 
 selves. Describing the religion of the fairies in The Fairy 
 Temple or Oberon's Chapel {223), he says — 
 
 They have their ash-pans and their brooms 
 
 To purge the chapel and the rooms ; 
 
 Their many mumbUng mass-priests here. 
 
 And many a dapper chorister. 
 
 Their ush'ring vergers, here Ukewise 
 
 Their canons and their chanteries 
 
 Of cloister-monks they have enow. 
 
 Aye, and their abbey-lubbers too ; 
 
 And if their legend do not he. 
 
 They much afEect the papacy. 
 
 And since the last is dead, there's hope 
 
 Elf Boniface shall next be pope. 
 
 The words which I have itaUcized seem to point to 
 an historic fact — the recent death of one of the Popes ; 
 and unless we refer the composition of this poem to so 
 late a date as 1644, when Urban VIII. died, the Pope in 
 question must be either Paul V., who died in 1621, or 
 his successor, Gregory XV., who died in 1623. 
 
 This question of date has been discussed at some 
 length, first because so few of Herrick's poems yield 
 any evidence of this sort, and second, because the 
 determination of a date between 1620 and 1630 connects 
 these fairy-poems of the Hesperides with a prevailing 
 fashion. Fairy-lore, as Joseph Ritson long since pointed 
 out, finds a place in English poetry already in medieval 
 times, but it was the Elizabethans, and above all Shake- 
 speare, who first fuUy reaUzed its romantic charm. The 
 fairies of Shakespeare differ from those of Herrick in many 
 ways, but especially in this, that although imbued with 
 the warm colours of poetic fancy, they remain true to 
 their popular origin, and are brought into intimate 
 
NON-LYRICAL I>OEMS OP " HESPERIDES " 201 
 
 relationship with human affairs. They are thejairies of 
 rustic superstition, diminutive beings who lurk in acorn- 
 cups and hazel-nuts, and who, loving mischief and 
 hating sluttery, gallop through the brains of sleeping 
 lovers, beguile old gossips and bean-fed horses, and pinch 
 as blue as bilberry the maids who have left their fires 
 unraked and their hearths unswept. Thus at every 
 point his fairy-world is made to converge upon that of 
 mortal men. The fairies of Jonson's masques have the 
 same intimate concern with human affairs and the same 
 dehght in mischief-making ; but he insists less upon their 
 diminutive stature, and, while keeping the background 
 of rustic superstition, also contrives to introduce a cer- 
 tain amount of classic colouring, and associates his native 
 elves with the fauns and satyrs of ancient mythology. 
 In the next generation this poetic handUng of fairy-lore 
 underwent further modification, and between the years 
 1620 and 1630 there airose a considerable mass of fairy- 
 poetry which, under the forms of epic, lyric, and descrip- 
 tive verse, attracted the attention not only of young men 
 Uke Herrick, but also of such a veteran as Michael 
 Drayton. Within this decade were written Drayton's 
 Nymphidia and A Fairy Wedding, the three fairy-poems 
 of Herrick, the detailed account of the fairies' feasts and 
 sports in the third book of William Browne's Britannia's 
 Pastorals, the contributions of Steward and other anony- 
 mous writers to the little fairy-volume of 1635, together 
 with various other verses of this sort, found among the 
 manuscripts of the period. The fairy-kingdom which 
 is revealed to us in all these poems is the pure creation 
 of ingenious wit, and its inhabitants are, in the words of 
 Mercutio, 
 
 the children of an idle dream, 
 Begot of nothing but pure fantasy. 
 
 The connection between these fairy-poems and popular 
 folk-lore is somewhat slender, and nowhere is the fairy- 
 world brought into touch with the lives of men and 
 
 (8.489) 7 a 
 
202 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 women. Drawing their inspiration from Shakespeare, 
 above all from Mercutio's description of Queen Mab in 
 Romeo and Juliet, the authors seized upon Shakespeare's 
 representation of the diminutive size of the fairies, and 
 taxed their ingenuity to the utmost in fashioning a fairy- 
 world on a Lilliputian scale, and in observing a nice 
 sense of proportion between the various parts. These 
 poems are almost entirely lacking in those finer elements 
 of romance with which Shakespeare has invested his 
 elves, and the complete detachment of this fairy-world 
 from the affairs of mortal men checks at its source the 
 outflow of that delicate humour which, in A Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, springs from the contemplation of human 
 life through the eyes of beings who live upon a different 
 plane from that of common mortality. Drayton, it is 
 true, atones, in his Nynvphidia, for this lack of humour 
 by the skilful use of the mock-heroic, but in this he 
 stands alone. These fairy-poems are, therefore, triumphs 
 of ingenious fancy, but little else. 
 
 It can readily be imagined that the production of 
 poems of this character proved a congenial task for a 
 man of Herrick's temper. The lightness of his touch 
 enabled him to tread easily along this gossamer track ; 
 and, keeping closely within the bounds of descriptive 
 verse, he threw off fairy-poems which exhibit nimbleness 
 of fancy, sharpness of outhne, and a nice sense of pro- 
 portion in miniature. At times, too, nobler qualities 
 reveal themselves, as when, for instance, describing the 
 grove of Oberon, he writes — 
 
 Sweet airs move here, and more divine. 
 Made by the breath of great-eyed kine. 
 Who, as they low, impearl with milk 
 The four-leaved grass, or moss like silk.^ 
 
 Or again, in his description of the altar in Oberon's 
 Chapel (223) — 
 
 I Oberon's Palace (444). 
 
NON-LYRICAL POEMS OF "HESPERIDES" 203 
 
 The fringe that circumbinds it, too. 
 Is spangle-work of trembhng dew ; 
 Which, gently gleaming, makes a show 
 Like frost-work gUtt'ring on the snow. 
 
 But full of charm as these Oberon verses are, we must 
 regard them as so many oblations to a passing literary 
 cult, rather than as transcripts of the poet's impressions 
 of rustic superstition and ceremonial. Scattered through 
 the Hesperides, however, are a number of other poeuis 
 dealing with fairy- and folk-lore, which bring us much 
 nearer to the life of the time and the imaginings of a rural 
 community. Thus the swift anapaestic verses in which 
 Herrick describes the night-hag stand out in bold contrast 
 to the thia-spun fancies of the fairy-poems : 
 
 The hag is astride 
 
 This night for to ride. 
 The devil and she together ; 
 
 Through thick and through thin 
 
 Now out and then in. 
 Though ne'er so foul be the weather. 
 
 A thorn or a burr 
 
 She takes for a spur. 
 With a lash of a bramble she rides now ; 
 
 Through brakes and through briars. 
 
 O'er ditches and mires. 
 She follows the spirit that guides now. 
 
 No beast for his food 
 
 Dare now range the wood. 
 But hush'd in his lair he lies lurking ; 
 
 While mischiefe, by these. 
 
 On land and on seas. 
 At noon of night are a-working. 
 
 The storm will arise 
 
 And trouble the skies ; 
 This night, and more for the wonder. 
 
 The ghost from the tomb 
 
 AflErighted shall come, 
 Call'd out by the clap of the thunder.' 
 
 I TU Hag (643). 
 
204 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Here we are face to face with the darker and more 
 malignant forces of the spirit-world, and Herrick makes 
 us realize the baneful influence of the night-hag, and her 
 league with the powers of darkness, as surely as Shake- 
 speare does in the portrayal of his weird sisters. 
 
 Herrick has left no poems which treat of the famous 
 fairy- or pixy-lore of the Dartmoor villages, but many of 
 his verses recording country superstitions and ceremonies 
 have a close coimection with Devonshire customs, and 
 belong, beyond a doubt, to the time of his residence at 
 Dean Prior. There, for instance, must have been written 
 his verses on the Christmas ceremony for the fertiliza- 
 tion of the fruit trees — 
 
 Wassail the trees that they may bear 
 You many a plum and many a pear : 
 For more or fess fruits they will bring 
 As you do give them wassailing. ^ 
 
 The ceremony here referred to, that of firing shot from 
 a gun into the branches of the fruit-trees at Christmas- 
 tide, has lingered on in the neighbourhood of Dean Prior 
 down to the present day. 
 
 Mingling freely with his Devonshire parishioners in all 
 the homely details of their Uves, Herrick finds an espe- 
 cial delight in the ceremonious ritual with which they 
 propitiated the occult powers of Nature, and has en- 
 shrmed much of this ritual in his verses. Through these 
 we learn much concerning the customs and ceremonies 
 which were observed on such high festivals as Christmas 
 and Candlemas-eve, Twelfth Ni^t and St Distaffs Day. 
 A certain direct homeliness characterizes all these cere- 
 monial verses, and they make us realize that the poet, 
 during his long residence in the west-country village, 
 had sent his roots deep down into the soil of rural England. 
 The following verses written for Saint Distaff's Day, or the 
 Morrow after Twelfth Day {1026) have something of the 
 radness of Bums's Hallowed en : 
 
 1 A Charm (787). 
 
NON-LYRICAL POEMS OF 'HESPERIDES" 205 
 
 Partly work and partly play 
 
 Ye must on S. Distaff's Day : 
 
 From the plough soon free "your teani, 
 
 Then come home and fodder them. 
 
 If the maids a-spinning go, 
 
 Bum the flax and fire the tow ; 
 
 Scorch their plackets, but beware 
 
 That ye singe no maidenhair. 
 
 Bring in pails of water, then. 
 
 Let tile maids bewasb the men. 
 
 Gi\-e S. Distaff all the right ; 
 
 Then bid Christmas sport good-night ; 
 
 And next morrow ever\- one 
 
 To his own vocation. 
 
 Akin to these ceremonial verses are the charm-poems 
 which lie scattered throiogh the pages of the Hespendes. 
 These not only serve to associate their author with the 
 simple faiths and superstitions of rural England, but, 
 as stated before, they connect him with one of the most 
 primiti\-e forms of &ighsh \-erse. His charms to allay 
 love (5S7), to make the bread rise (1063), to bring in the 
 witch (890), or to secure stables against the mahce of the 
 night-hag (891), are all of this character, and show that 
 Enghsh folk-lore and pagan ritual appealed to him no 
 less strongly than the ceremonial customs of ancient 
 Rome. 
 
 It is the custom to regard Herrick's epigrams as 
 obnoxious tares sown by him in unguarded moments 
 among the good red wheat of his garden ; and Mr Pollard, 
 in his edition of tlie HesperiJes, has seen fit to root up 
 these tares and cast them into an appendix by themselves. 
 If by an epigram is meant simply a distich of scurrilous 
 verse, concei\-ed in the worst manner of Martial, and 
 directed against some hapless wTetch who has goaded 
 the poet to sting, it would be desirable to pass by the 
 epigrams of the Hesperides in silence. But if we use the 
 word in the Greek rather than the Roman sense, and 
 consider an epigram as a terse, highly compressed and 
 deUcately finked poem which does not necessarily aim 
 
2o6 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 at satiric point, then, so far from dismissing Herrick's 
 epigrams as garbage, we must regard him as one of the 
 greatest masters of the epigrammatic art, and as the 
 only English poet who can bear comparison with the 
 epigrammatists of the Greek Anthology. 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that Herrick himself used 
 the word epigram in the Roman and modem sense, or 
 that he would have accepted Boileau's definition of it as 
 " un bon mot de deux rimes om6," or, again, that of the 
 English wit who wrote the following : 
 
 The qualities rare in a bee that we meet 
 
 In an epigram never should fail ; 
 The body should always be little and sweet. 
 
 And a sting should be left in its tail. 
 
 To the titles of many of those verses of his which 
 come under this definition he adds himself the word 
 " epigram," ^ and fails to add it to those epigrammes d. 
 la grecque which, in number as in poetic quaUty, far 
 exceed the satiric verses directed against some offending 
 person at Dean Prior or elsewhere. But this should not 
 prevent us from applying the term to those exquisite 
 cameos of verse — epitaphs, gnomic verses, short compli- 
 mentary poems, prayers and dedications to pagan deities 
 — ^which are too brief to be called l5aics, and which, as 
 already stated, conform so closely to the manner of the 
 Greek epigram. 
 
 Before coming to a study of these, it is necessary to 
 say something about epigram-writing in England in the 
 preceding age. The epigram, like many another hterary 
 form, sprang into being through the contact of the modem 
 with the ancient world at the time of the Renaissance. 
 Then it was that the Roman epigrammatists, in particular 
 the greatest of them. Martial, came to be read and 
 imitated ; and with them the Greek epigrammatists, 
 whose poems were made accessible through the pubhcation 
 
 1 Two instances out of many are Upon Adam Peapes : Epig. (835), 
 and Upon Hauch a Schoolmaster : Epig. (842). 
 
NON-LYRICAL POEMS OF "HESPERIDES" 207 
 
 of the Planudean Anthology. This anthology, which had 
 been compiled from the earher anthology of Cephalas by 
 Maximus Planudes as late as the fourteenth century, 
 was printed at Florence in 1484 by the Greek scholar, 
 Janus Lascaris, and many other editions followed. ^ 
 The composition of Latin epigrams, either after the 
 Greek or the Roman model, thenceforward became the 
 delight of humanists aU over Western Europe, the 
 Scotsman, George Buchanan, and the Englishman, Sir 
 Thomas More, being among those who practised the 
 art. The first collection of English epigrams is that of 
 John Heywood, pubUshed in black letter in 1562.* 
 He wrote six huncfred epigrams in aJl, but they are such 
 rather in name than in character. A large proportion of 
 them are simply expansions of homely proverbs ; and of 
 the rest, many are nothing more than anecdotes in verse. 
 Scarcely any of them are personal, and although Heywood 
 was, as his translation of Seneca's tragedies shows, a 
 classical scholar, his epigrams give httle evidence of 
 the study of Roman models. The epigram is recognized 
 by Puttenham in his Arte of English Poesie (1589), who 
 defines it as a form of poetry " in which every mery 
 conceited man might, without any long studie or tedious 
 ambage, make his frend sport and anger his foe, and give 
 a prettie nip, or shew a sharpe conceit in few verses," * 
 and it is interesting to find that, instead of limiting the 
 epigram to purposes of satire, he includes both epitaphs 
 and posies imder this term. 
 
 The true satiric epigram in the Roman sense arose in 
 England just at the end of the sixteenth century, and 
 at the same time as the satire proper. In 1598 Thomas 
 Bastard published his Chresioleros,* consisting of nearly 
 three hundred epigrams, arranged in seven books ; and 
 
 1 See J. W. Mackail, Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology, pp. 
 21-23. 
 
 2 Republished by the Spenser Society, 
 s Ed. Arber, p. 68. 
 
 * Re-edited by E. V. Utterson, 1842. 
 
2o8 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 about the same time were written the better known 
 epigrams of Sir John Davies.^ Da vies claims to be the 
 direct successor and also the eclipser of Heywood : 
 
 Heywood that did in epigrams excel 
 
 Is now put down since my light muse arose ; 
 
 As buckets are put down into a weU, 
 
 Or as a schoolboy putteth down his hose.^ 
 
 His epigrams are all conceived in the manner of Martial, 
 and are always satiric, and frequently foul-mouthed. 
 In 1599 appeared John Weever's Epigrammes in the 
 oldest cut and newest fashion, and with the turn of the 
 century epigram- writing became the fashion in England. 
 There are epigrams among the collected poems of Raleigh, 
 and Donne practised this form of verse both in Latin 
 and in English. In 1610 appeared John Heath's Two 
 Centuries of Epigrammes, and the following year saw the 
 publication of John Davies of Hereford's Scourge of Folly 
 — a collection of two hundred and ninety-three epigrams, 
 all satiric in character. In 1613 were pubhshed no less 
 than three collections of epigrams, namely those of 
 Sir John Harington, many of which were merely trans- 
 lations from Martial, Henry Parrott's Laquei Ridiculosi, 
 or Springes for Wood-cocks, and William Gamage's Linsi- 
 Woolsie or two Centuries of Epigrammes ; these were 
 succeeded in 1614 by a collection, entitled Rubbe and a 
 Great Caste, by Thomas Freeman, and in 1616 appeared 
 Ben Jonson's Epigrams in the folio edition of his works. 
 Side by side with these collections of epigrams in the 
 vernacular, others, written in Latin verse, were passing 
 through the press. Campion had published a series of 
 Latin epigrams as early as 1595, but the most famous 
 of Latin epigrammatists was the Welsh schoolmaster, 
 John Owen, whose verses won a European fame and 
 were translated into several languages. His first three 
 
 1 Published in Dyce's edition of the Works of Christopher Marlowe. 
 2 Epigram zzix. 
 
NON-LYRICAL POEMS OF "HESPERIDES" 209 
 
 books of epigrams appeared in 1612, and were followed 
 by others a little later. 
 
 The epigrams of Ben Jonson, which, in the letter to 
 the Earl of Pembroke, he calls " the ripest of my studies," 
 are by no means entirely satiric. Many of them are, and 
 their grossness, which provoked Sir Walter Scott to 
 say that their author enjoyed "using the language of 
 scavengers and night-walkers," equals and even exceeds 
 the grossness of Herrick. But mingled with these are 
 epigrams of a very diSerent character. There are, for 
 instance, generous tributes of friendship to men hke 
 Donne, Camden, Francis Beaumont, and Edward Alleyn, 
 and complimentary verses to great nobles ; included 
 amongst them, too, are the touching epitaphs on " My 
 first Daughter," " My first Son," and that on Salathiel 
 Pavy, the chorister. Finally, there are gnomic verses 
 " On Death " and " On Life and Death," and epigrams 
 in which the poet himself is the theme — " To my Book," 
 " To my Muse." In aU this, however, he does not depart 
 far from the Roman manner. Complimentary verses, 
 tributes to friends, epitaphs, gnomic verses, and lines ad- 
 dressed to himself and his book, may all be foimd among 
 the epigrams of Martial, though their number is small in 
 comparison with the satiric verses. Yet, when compared 
 with earher Enghsh epigrammatists, Jonson must be 
 credited with having widened the range of the epigram, 
 and with having relieved the strain of scurrilous abuse 
 by verses which appeal to the nobler side of man's nature. 
 
 Meanwhile, a knowledge and appreciation of the Greek 
 form of epigram was growing in England. Salmasius's 
 discovery of the famous Palatine Anthology at Heidel- 
 berg, in 1606, led to the circulation in manuscript of those 
 epigrams not contained in the Planudean Anthology, and 
 in 1629 the classical scholar and friend of Ben Jonson. 
 Thomas Famaby, pubhshed in London a collection of 
 epigrams from the anthologies, to which he also added 
 a Latin translation. Eight years later, Abraham Wright, 
 by the publication of his Dditiae Delitiarum, familianzed 
 
310 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 classical students in England with the Latin epigrams, 
 written after the Greek manner, by Italian, French, and 
 English humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 
 And although most of the seventeenth-century collections 
 of EngUsh epigrams remained faithful to Martial and the 
 satiric Roman manner, we nevertheless find, scattered 
 through the works of some of the finer spirits of the age, 
 a number of epigrams which recall the great anthologies 
 of ancient Greece. One of the first poets to write epigrams 
 in conformity with the Greek pattern was Drummond of 
 Hawthomden. Among his collected poems, published 
 in 1656, after his death, is a section entitled " Madrigals 
 and Epigrams," the composition of which in all proba- 
 biMty belonged to his youth. The title of the section is 
 significant. As we have already seen, the seventeenth- 
 century madrigal aimed at the terseness of the epigram, 
 and in these verses of Drummond it is impossible to say, 
 judging from their literary quality, which are madrigals, 
 and which are epigrams. There is a certain epigram- 
 matic finish in almost all of them, but it is the epigrams 
 of the Greek Anthology, not those of Martial, which serve 
 as model. These verses of Drummond are not personal, 
 and, as a consequence, they do not seek after satiric 
 point ; they may be described as short fanciful poems, 
 which, both in matter and in style, conform to the manner 
 of the countr5Tnen of Meleager and CaUimachus. Their 
 literary quality is not high, but, as furnishing a contrast 
 to the satiric epigram of the period, they are of some 
 interest. The following will perhaps best illustrate 
 Drummond's workmanship : 
 
 Proxeus of Marble 
 
 This is no work of stone. 
 Though it seems breathless, cold, and sense hath none. 
 
 But that false god which keeps 
 The monstrous people of the raging deeps. 
 Now that he doth not change his shape this while. 
 It is thus constant more you to beguile. 
 
NON-LYRICAL POEMS OF "HESPERIDES" 211 
 
 Love Vagabonding 
 
 Sweet nymphs, if as ye stray, 
 
 Ye find the froth-born goddess of the sea, 
 
 All blubber' d, pale, undone. 
 
 Who seeks her giddy son, 
 
 That little god of Jove, 
 Whose golden shafts your chastest bosoms prove, 
 Who, leaving all the heavens, hath run away ; 
 If aught to him who finds him she'll impart, ' 
 Tell her he nightly lodgeth in my heart. 
 
 r 
 
 In approaching the epigrams of Herrick, we may 
 dismiss with a very few words those of a satiric character. 
 There is Uttle wit in them to relieve the coarseness, and, 
 strewn as they often are among the daintiest of his 
 lyrics, they leave just the same unpleasant taste in the 
 mouth which is produced by the satiric epigrams with 
 which Catullus befouls the pages of his Carmina. The 
 most that can be said for them is that they are neither 
 more witless nor more foul than those written by many 
 another epigrammatist of the Renaissance. It would 
 seem, indeed, that coarse scurrility was at this time 
 looked upon as an essential element in the making of a 
 satiric epigram, and in reference to this it is interesting 
 to notice that Campion introduces into his Observations 
 on the Art of English Poesie epigrams quite as coarse as 
 those of Jonson or Herrick, simply as Uterary exercises, 
 and in order to illustrate the fitness of trochaic verse for 
 this form of poetry. 
 
 The satiric epigrams of Herrick have much in common 
 with those of Martial, but it is only fair to add that the 
 influence of the Roman epigrammatist is by no means 
 limited to verses of this character. There is abundant 
 evidence that the author of the Hesperides had read 
 Martial with the greatest care, and that, whUe he repro- 
 duced much of his indelicacy, he also had an eye for his 
 terse mother-wit and vivacious fancy. One or two of his 
 gnomic epigrams are literal translations from Martial, and 
 
212 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 he likes nothing better than to introduce one of his 
 felicitous phrases into his verses/ or to round off a couplet 
 with some sententious maxim borrowed from the Roman. 
 His epigram On Virtue (298) will illustrate the practice 
 as well as any : 
 
 Each must in virtue strive for to excel ; 
 
 That man lives twice that lives the first life well — 
 
 where the second Une is a translation of the following 
 words : 
 
 hoc est 
 Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui. ' 
 
 On other occasions he plays upon the fanciful idea of 
 Martial's epigram, On a Bee enclosed in Amber ; ^ imitates, 
 in his Upon Julia washing herself in the River (939), the 
 twenty-second epigram of Martial's fourth Book ; and 
 transfers the elaborate fancy of the epigram Ad Diadu- 
 menum (iii. 65) to a graceful compUmentary poem addressed 
 to his kinswoman, The most fair and lovely Mistress Anne 
 Soame (375). One of the neatest of Henick's epigrams is 
 that entitled His Wish {938) : 
 
 Fat be my hind ; unlearned be my wife ; 
 Peaceful my night, my day devoid of strife : 
 To these a comely offspring I desire. 
 Singing about my everlasting fire. 
 
 Here, again, the suggestion comes from Martial's famous 
 epigram to- Quintilian (ii. 90), and as already noticed, 
 many of the ideas of the Panegyric on Sir Lewis Pem- 
 berton (zyy) may be traced back, through Jonson's 
 Penshurst, to Martial's description of the country-house 
 of Faustinus (iii. 58). 
 
 1 e.g. : 'Tis sin to throttle wine " (502), a translation of Martial's 
 Scelus est jugulare Falernum (Book i. 9). 
 
 ' Epigrammata, x. 23. 
 
 ' Epigrammata, iv. 32, and compare Herrick, The Amber Bead (817) 
 and Upon a Fly (497). 
 
NON-LYRICAL POEMS OF " HESPERIDES '' 213 
 
 But it is in those clear-cut epigrams in which his 
 theme is the fate of his book of poems that Herrick 
 comes nearest to Martial. He enters whole-heartedly 
 into that half-serious and half-humorous mood in which 
 Martial expresses his hopes of winning for himself a fair 
 competence in this life and fame to all eternity. More 
 than once in his epigrams To his Book he is trans- 
 lating the Roman literally, and on many other occasions 
 he is drawing suggestions from him. He reproduces the 
 shrewd humour of Martial in the following epigram : 
 
 To read my book the virgin shy 
 
 May blush while Brutus standeth by ; 
 
 But when he's gone, read through what's writ, 
 
 And never stain a cheek for it.' 
 
 and glances both at him and at Catullus in writing this : 
 
 Make haste away, and let one be 
 
 A friendly patron unto thee : 
 
 Lest, rapt from hence, I see thee he 
 
 Torn for the use of pastery : 
 
 Or see thy injur' d leaves serve well 
 
 To make loose gowns for mackerel : 
 
 Or see the grocers in a trice 
 
 Make hoods of thee to serve out spice. ^ 
 
 But a large proportion of Heirick's epigrams have no 
 connection with Martial, and are not conceived in the 
 Roman manner at all ; in theme and in style they recall 
 the Greek Anthology. The extent of Herrick's acquaint- 
 ance with the epigrams of that anthology, either in the 
 original Greek or in Latin translations, is hard to deter- 
 mine. Mr Pollard has traced two or three of the epigrams 
 to Greek originals,* but there is very httle of that trans- 
 ference of some fortunate idea or phrase from the antho- 
 
 1 To his Booh (4) ; cf. Martial, Epigrammata, xi. i6. 
 ' To his Book (844) ; cf. Martial, iii. 2, and Catullus, Carmina, xcv. 
 ' See his notes to the following poems of the Hesperides, Nos. 121, 
 213, 271. 
 
214 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 legists into the verses of the Hesperides, which we meet 
 with in the case of Martial. The most, perhaps, that 
 can be said is that the manner of the Greek anthologists 
 was in the air, that it makes itself felt in the poems of 
 Drummond and the later madrigalists, and that it 
 reappears again and again in the epigrams of the Hes- 
 perides. Whether he is writing on erotic or on gnomic 
 themes, addressing complimentary verses to the living, 
 or writing epitaphs for the dead, Herrick acquires some- 
 thing of tiie Greek style. This is especially the case, too, 
 with those prayers and dedicatory vows which he offers 
 up to pagan gods and goddesses. These lack, of course, 
 the element of sincerity which we meet with in similar 
 epigrams of the Anthology, but it is surprising with 
 what success Herrick feigns an accent of genuine feeling 
 in such verses as the following : 
 
 Mighty Neptune, may it please 
 Thee, the rector of the seas, 
 That my barque may safely run 
 Through the watery region. 
 And a tunny fish shall be 
 Offered up with thanks, to thee.* 
 
 Stately goddess, do thou please. 
 Who art chief at marriages. 
 But to dress the bridal bed 
 When my love and I shall wed. 
 And a peacock proud shall be 
 Offered up by us to thee. * 
 
 i Hymn to Neptune (325). With this we may compare the following 
 epigram from the Palatine Anthology (vi. 251) : " Phoebus who holdest 
 the sheer steep of Leucas, far seen of mariners and washed by the Ionian 
 sea, receive of sailors this mess of hand-kneaded barley bread and a 
 libation mingled in a Uttle cup, and the gleam of a brief-shining lamp, 
 that drinks with half-saturate mouth from a sparing oil-flask ; in 
 recompense whereof be gracious, and send on their sails a favourable 
 wind to run with them to the harbours of Actium." (Translated by 
 J. W. Mackail, Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology, p. 126.) 
 
 " Hymn to Juno (360). 
 
NON-LYRICAL POEMS OF " HESPERIDES " 213 
 
 Occasionally Herrick's humour peeps out in these 
 prayers to classic deities : 
 
 Thy sooty godhead I desire 
 Still to be ready with thy fire ; 
 That, should my book despised be. 
 Acceptance it might find of thee.' 
 
 But in his Hymn to the Muses (657) he grows IjTrical in 
 the warmth of his ardour : 
 
 O you, the virgins nine. 
 That do our souls incline 
 To noble discipline. 
 Nod to this vow of mine. 
 Come then, and now inspire 
 My viol and my lyre 
 With your eternal fire. 
 And make me one entire 
 Composer in your choir. 
 Then I'll your altars strew 
 With roses sweet and new ; 
 And ever Uve a true 
 Acknowledger of you. 
 
 The epigrams on the theme of love are inferior in 
 quality to his love-lyrics, but through them he often 
 conveys to his many mistresses a well-turned compli- 
 ment. In The Rosary (45) it is Julia that is the recipient 
 of the compliment : 
 
 One ask'd me where the roses grew, 
 
 I bade him not go seek. 
 But forthwith bade my Julia show 
 
 A bud in either cheek. 
 
 In the following it is Electra : 
 
 When out of bed my love doth spring, 
 
 'Tis but as day a-kindUng : 
 But when she's up and fially dress' d 
 'Tis then broad day throughout the east.' 
 
 I To Viikan (613). 2 upon Electm (404). 
 
2i6 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 The pleasure which he finds in the sunshine of Sappho's 
 smiles is implied in the following : 
 
 Sappho, I will choose to go 
 Where the northern winds do blow 
 Endless ice and endless snow, 
 Rather than I once would see 
 But a winter's face in thee, 
 To benumb my hopes and me. ' 
 
 And in these lines to Anthea he recalls the fancifulness 
 of the sonneteers : 
 
 Sick is Anthea, sickly is the spring. 
 
 The primrose sick, and sickly everything ; 
 
 The while my dear Anthea does but droop. 
 
 The tulips, luies, daffodils do stoop : 
 
 But when again she's got her healthful hour, 
 
 Each, bending then, will rise a proper flower.* 
 
 Some of his epigrams are concerned with Nature, 
 though there is far less real insight into the forms of 
 natural life shown in his epigrams than in his lyrics. 
 He prefers, instead, to let his fancy play, and to inform 
 us how lihes came white " (190), " how roses came 
 red " (706), or " how violets came blue " (260). But 
 his epigram on the daffodil, though inferior to the lyric on 
 the same flower (see page 195), deserves to be quoted 
 here : 
 
 When a daffodil I see. 
 Hanging down his head towards me, 
 Guess I may what I must be : 
 First, I shall decline my head ; 
 Secondly, I shall be dead : 
 Lastly, safely buried.' 
 
 One is not often disposed to turn to Herrick in one's 
 search for a philosophy of life, though it must be re- 
 
 » To Sappho (803). a To Anthea (10J4). 
 
 3 DiviniUion by a Daffodil (107). 
 
NON-LYRICAL POEMS OF " HESPERIDES " 217 
 
 membered that he loved to assume the rSle of feruled 
 preceptor and inculcate some practical lessons of conduct 
 by means of gnomic epigrams. But, except where he is 
 borrowing a thought from Seneca or some other Roman 
 moralist, his philosophy is not much more profound than 
 that of Shakespeare's Corin, who knew that " the property 
 of rain is to wet, and of fire to burn, and that a great 
 cause of the night is lack of the sun." He gravely in- 
 forms us that " all things decay with time," that health 
 and a gentle disposition are among man's most prized 
 possessions, that work must precede wages, and that 
 victory is possible only after conflict. The faith by which 
 he lived was not unUke that happy blend of Stoicism and 
 Epicureanism which we meet with in the odes of Horace. 
 He enjoys to the full the fleshpots of Egypt while they 
 are within his reach, but his easy mind can also rest con- 
 tent with the manna of the wilderness — the pulse and 
 beans of Dean Prior. Estimating an equal mind and 
 mastery over self at their true worth, he places " con- 
 tent " above " cates " : 
 
 'Tis not the food, but the content 
 That makes the table's merriment. 
 Where trouble serves the board, we eat 
 The platters there, as soon as meat. 
 A little pipldn with a bit 
 Of mutton or of veal in it. 
 Set on my table, trouble-free. 
 More than a feast contenteth me.* 
 
 There is scarcely a trace of distinctively Christian 
 ethics among these gnomic verses. When he feels par- 
 ticularly snug in his Devonshire home, he offers up a 
 hymn of thanksgiving to his Lares, his 
 
 Chimney-keepers, 
 (I dare not call ye chimney-sweepers)— 
 
 1 ConterU, not Cates (312). 
 
2i8 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 and bedecks their idol brows with crowns of green parsley 
 and garlic chives.^ His purpose is to make the most 
 of this lifp, uncertain what may foUow : 
 
 Let us now take time and play. 
 Love and live here while we may : 
 Drink rich wine, and make good cheer. 
 While we have our being here ; 
 For once dead and laid i' the grave. 
 No return from thence we have.' 
 
 Even in the noblest of his gnomic epigrams, that 
 entitled The Christian Militant (323), there is, as already 
 observed, more of the classic Stoicism — in utrumque 
 paratus — than of the Sermon on the Mount : 
 
 A man prepar'd against all ills to come. 
 
 That dares to dead the fire of martyrdom ; 
 
 That sleeps at home, and saiUng there at ease. 
 
 Fears not the fierce sedition of the seas ; 
 
 That's counter-proof against the farm's mishaps, 
 
 Undreadful too of courtly^ thunderclaps ; 
 
 That wears one face, like heaven, and never shows 
 
 A change when fortune either conies or goes ; 
 
 That keeps his own strong guard in the despite 
 
 Of what can hurt by day or harm by night ; 
 
 That takes and re-dehvers every stroke 
 
 Of chance (as made up all of rock and oak) ; 
 
 That sighs at others' death, smiles at his own 
 
 Most dire and horrid crucifixion. 
 
 Who for true glory suflEers thus, we grant 
 
 Him to be here our Christian militant. 
 
 No poet has ever been more ready than Herrick to place 
 his muse at the service of his friends ; having little silver 
 or gold to bestow, he leaves lyrics and epigrams for 
 legacies, and promises the immortality of reflected fame 
 to all whose names are enshrined in his verses. In these 
 occasional poems, most of which are short and epi- 
 
 1 Hymn to the Lares (674). 2 To Sappho (691). 
 
NON-LYRICAL POEMS OF " HESPERIDES " 219 
 
 grammatic, we find him ever prepared to rejoice with 
 those that rejoice, and to weep with those that weep : 
 he is the attendant spirit at christenings and funerals, 
 offering in his graceful, affectionate, but never very pro- 
 found way, felicitation or condolence. He is the " music 
 of a feast," and the domiduca of home-coming brides ; 
 he pays compUments to high-bom ladies with the easy 
 grace of the practised cavalier, and to the memory of 
 his many friends, kinsmen, and kinswomen, he builds 
 a " college," a " white temple of my heroes," where, 
 immortalized in verse, they shall dwell to all eternity.^ 
 So many of these complimentary epigrams have been 
 quoted in the first part of this volume, with the object 
 of throwing light upon the poet's friendships, that it is 
 unnecessary to refer to them again ; but space must be 
 found for some study of his epitaphs. The epitaph was 
 regarded as a form of epigram already by Puttenham,* 
 and epitaph-writing was the fashion of Elizabethan 
 England from Turberville to Jonson. Herrick was a 
 master of the art, and many of his epitaphs are, in their 
 simple beauty and exquisite pathos, equal to the best 
 epitaphs of the Alexandrian anthologists. Except in 
 his verses on his dying brother William (No. 186), his 
 grief has little real intensity, and those epitaphs are 
 accordingly the best where the situation calls for gentle 
 pity rather than the tearless grief of pent-up passion. 
 He wrote epitaphs on men and women who passed away 
 fuU of years, and on mothers d5dng in childbed ; but 
 his touch is surest where it is lightest — in his epitaphs 
 on little children, or on maidens taken hence in the first 
 bloom of womanhood : 
 
 Here she lies, a pretty bud. 
 Lately made of flesh and blood. 
 Who as soon fell fast asleep. 
 As her little eyes did peep. 
 
 1 See the poem, To his honoured kinsman. Sir Richard Stone (496), 
 2 Arte of English Poesie, chap, xxviii. 
 
220 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Give her strewings, but not stir 
 The earth that Ughtly covers her.i 
 
 Here a solemn fast we keep ; 
 While all beauty Ues asleep 
 Hush'd be all things — ^no noise here, 
 But the toning of a tear : 
 Or a sigh of such as bring 
 Cowshps for her covering.' 
 
 It is characteristic of Herrick that he should write 
 epitaphs on himself. His address To Robin Redbreast (50) 
 reveals that delicate fancy and sureness of artistic touch 
 which are the secret of so many of his best verses : 
 
 Laid out for dead, let thy last kindness be 
 With leaves and moss-work for to cover me ♦ 
 And while the wood-nymphs my cold corpse inter. 
 Sing thou my dirge, sweet warbling chorister ! 
 For epitaph, in foliage, next write this : 
 Here, here the tomb of Robin Herrick is. 
 
 In a rather more serious mood he writes His Own 
 Epitaph (617) : 
 
 As wearied pilgrims, once possest 
 Of long'd-for lodging, go to rest, 
 So I, now having rid my way. 
 Fix here my button' d staff and stay. 
 Youth, I confess, hath me misled ; 
 But age hath brought me safe to bed. 
 
 From these epitaphs on his own decease we pass, in 
 the last place, to those epigrams — some of them not 
 exceeding the single distich — " On Himself." It was 
 the practice of the Anacreontic poets and of Catullus to 
 write epigrams of this character, but they are seldom 
 met with in English poetry outside of the pages of the 
 Hesperides. Herrick's epigrams " On Himself " display 
 
 ' Upon a Child that died (310). 
 ^ An Epitaph upon a Virgin (450). 
 
NON-LYRICAL POEMS OF " HESPERIDES " 221 
 
 the personal touch of his verses in its purest form. 
 Occasionally there is a certain element of quiet humour 
 in these poems, as for instance in the following, written 
 after completing the Hesperides : 
 
 The work is done ; young men and maidens set. 
 
 Upon my curls the myrtle coronet, 
 
 Wash'd with sweet ointments : thus at last I come 
 
 To suffer in the Myses' martyrdom ; 
 
 But this with comfort, if my blood be shed. 
 
 The Muses will wear blacks when I am dead.' ' 
 
 But more often the note is one of wistfulness — regret for 
 the years that have sUpped from his grasp, or for the loss 
 of the treasured gift of song : 
 
 Ask me why I do not sing 
 
 To the tension of the string, 
 
 As I did not long ago. 
 
 When my members fuU did flow ? 
 
 Grief, ay me ! hath struck my lute 
 
 And my tongue, at one time, mute.' 
 
 A wearied pilgrim, I have wandered here ■ 
 Twice five-and-twenty, bate me but one year ; 
 Long I have lasted in this world, 'tis true. 
 But yet those years that I have hved, but few. 
 Who by his grey hairs doth his lusters tell, 
 Lives not those years, but he that Uves them well. 
 One man has reach' d. his sixty years, but he 
 Of all those threescore, has not liv'd half three. 
 He hves, who hves to virtue ; men who cast 
 Their ends for pleasure, do not Uve, but last.' 
 
 The epigrams of the Hesperides wiU never win from the 
 reader the same recognition that the l37rics have won, 
 for they are inferior to them in variety of rhythmic effect, 
 
 ^ On Himself {1128). 
 2 On Himself (333). 
 1 0n Himself (1088). 
 
222 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 in warmth of emotion, and in sustained power. But as 
 master of an art rarely practised in England with much 
 success, Herrick has acquired a new title to fame. And 
 at the same time these epigrams, by virtue of the resem- 
 blance which they bear to those of Greek literature in 
 the Alexandrian period, deepen our sense of the classical 
 qualities of their author's genius. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE " NOBLE NUMBERS " 
 
 It is sometimes stated that the secular poems, in par- 
 ticular the love-ljrrics, belong to Herrick's early years, 
 and the Noble Numbers to the time when he was a priest 
 in orders. We have already seen that the first half of 
 this statement is not entirely correct, but exception can 
 scarcely be taken to the second half of it. It is possible 
 that some of the religious carols which find a place in 
 the Noble Numbers, and which were set to music and sung 
 before the King at Whitehall, were composed while 
 Herrick still lived in the neighbourhood of the Court, 
 but the bulk of his religious verses were in all probability 
 written at Dean Prior. In his Farewell to Poetry, written 
 to all appearance at the time when he took orders, he teUs 
 us that his mind is now fUled with " sublime respect and 
 conscience unto priesithood," and that henceforth he must 
 part company with' that Muse of Helicon with whom 
 he has 
 
 outworn 
 
 The fresh and fairest flourish of the mom 
 
 With flame and rapture ; 
 
 but he goes on to say — 
 
 when my diviner muse 
 Shall want a handmaid (as she oft will use). 
 Be ready, thou for me, to wait upon her, 
 Though as a servant, yet a maid of honour .^^ 
 
 1 " Poems not included in the Hesperides," ed. Pollard, ii. 367. 
 
224 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 As we have already seen, the vow to part company 
 with the Muse of Helicon was not kept, but there can be 
 Uttle doubt that we owe the Nohle Numbers chiefly to 
 the fact that Herrick was by profession a clergyman. 
 In seeking the help of his diviner muse, whose habitation 
 is not Mount Helicon, but " the secret place of Oreb or of 
 Sinai," he was also faUing into hne with the practice of 
 many other poets of the day. The reUgious lyric of the 
 seventeenth century is in its way as unique a creation 
 as the sonnet-sequences of the Elizabethan age ; in- 
 timately associated with the High Church movement of 
 the Carohne age, its nearest parallel is to be found in the 
 reUgious l5mc of the High Church movement of the early 
 Victorian era. The religious l3nic in the age of EUza- 
 beth is of small accoimt. The composition of metrical 
 versions of the Psalms was then in vogue, and among 
 the early Elizabethan song-books — for example, William 
 Byrd's Psalms, Sonets, arid Songs of Sadness and Pietie ^ 
 (1587), and John Mundy's Songs and Psalmes * (1594) — 
 we find a number of the Psalms set to madrigal music, 
 and arranged for part-singing. We also know that in 
 England, as weU as in France, the sonnet came to be 
 used for the expression of reUgious sentiment. In 1591^ 
 Henry Constable pubUshed his Spiritual Sonnettes to the 
 Honour of God and His Sayntes ; * in 1593, appeared 
 the Divine Centurie of Spirituall Sonnets by Bamabe 
 Barnes, and in 1597, Henry Lok's Sundrie Sonnets of 
 Christian Passions. A year or two later, Gervase Mark- 
 ham pubUshed two collections of religious lyrics, written 
 in a six-Une stanza and entitled Tears of the Beloved 
 (1600) and Mary Magdalen's Tears (1601) respectively. 
 But the Uterary quality of these collections of reUgious 
 verses is exceedingly low, and the only l3nics of a reU- 
 gious character in the EUzabethan age which have the 
 breath of true poetic Ufe in them are those of the Jesuit 
 
 1 See Bolle, Die gedruckten englischen Liederbiicher bis 1600, p. a. 
 
 s Ibid., p. 77. 
 
 s Ed. W. C. HazUtt. 
 
THE "NOBLE NOIBERS " 225 
 
 Fathi^, Robert Southwell, idio stands far apart from tiie 
 main tendencies of the age m wbidi he fived. 
 
 The seventeenth century saw a rapid growth of this 
 kind of lyric poetry. Jonson's Poems of Devotion are too 
 few in number to be taken into account here, but 
 reference may be made to the Divine and Moral Songs 
 of Campion, which appeared side by ^de with his 
 madrigals and csazanets in 1613. In his reiig^knis, as 
 in his secolax, work, Camj«m is a tran^tional figure. 
 Some of his ^vine s(Hig> are in the maimer of the old 
 psalm-lyrics of Byrd or Mnndy, but in the following, 
 and in otheis like it, we discern the first begimdn^ of a 
 rehgioos iync, touched with that p^sonal feding ^vhidi 
 a few years later was to rise to intensest fervoor : 
 
 Mew me. Lord, a wcvk of Thine. 
 
 Shall I then Ue drown'd in ni^tt ? 
 Mi^tt Thy grace in me bat sMne, 
 
 I sbould seem made all of light. 
 
 Bat my sonl still zvxiais so 
 
 On tiie poiscm'd baits of ma. 
 That I strange and n^y grow ; 
 
 AD. is dark and fool within. 
 
 Cleanse me. Lord, fliat I may kneel 
 At TUne attar, pure and -widte ; 
 
 They that once Tmr mercies fed 
 Coze no more on earth's deS0it. 
 
 Worldly joys, like shadows, fade. 
 When the ieavesiY Ught appears ; 
 
 But the covenants Tnoa hast made. 
 Endless, know not days nor years. 
 
 In Thy Word, Lord, is my tmst. 
 
 To Tly merdes fast I f^ ; 
 Tbou^ I am but day and dnst. 
 
 Yet Thy grace can hit me fai^ 
 fee© 8 
 
226 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 But the true founder of the seventeenth-century 
 reHgious lyric was Donne, some of whose Divine Poems, 
 though not published until 1633, were written before 
 1607. Donne's influence upon the Caroline religious 
 lyrists — Herbert, Crashaw, and Vaughan — ^in respect 
 of style has often been alluded to, but it is less generally 
 recognized that he is their master in the art of infusing 
 personal lyric emotion into religious poetry. There is 
 nothing of the metrical psalm in the Holy Sonnets or the 
 Litany of Donne ; running through these poems is the 
 note of poignant individuaUty, and as we read them, we 
 feel ourselves brought face to face with a human soul in 
 the throes of contrition, or, again, rising to a mood of 
 seraphic exaltation. We hear the voice of a repentant 
 sinner, lamenting his wasted youth, in his Hymn to God, 
 the Father : 
 
 Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun, 
 
 Which was my sin, though it were done before ? 
 Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run. 
 And do run still, though still I do deplore ? 
 When Thou hast done. Thou hast not done. 
 For I have more. 
 
 Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won 
 Others to sin, and made my sin their door ? 
 Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun 
 A year or two, but wallowed in a score ? 
 When Thou hast done. Thou hast not done. 
 For I have more. 
 
 I have a sin of fear that when I have spun 
 
 My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ; 
 But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son 
 Shall shine as He shines now, and heretofore ; 
 And having done that. Thou hast done ; 
 I fear no more. ■ 
 
 Nor is Donne content with mere emotion in his reli- 
 gious Ijnrics. Here, as in his secular verse, he loves to 
 
 1 Donne's Poems, ed. E. K. Chambers, i. Z13. 
 
THE "NOBLE NUMBERS" 227 
 
 pack the lines with profound and original thoughts, aiming 
 rather at compression than clearness of utterance. His 
 most sustained religious lyric is his Litany, the following 
 stanzas of which well illustrate this quality of his 
 verse : 
 
 From being anxious, i or secure. 
 Dead clods of sadness, or light squibs of mirth, 
 
 From thinking that great courts immure 
 All, or no happiness, or that this earth 
 
 Is only for our prison framed. 
 Or that Thou'rt covetous 
 To them whom Thou lov'st, or that they're maim'd 
 From reaching this world's sweet who seek Thee thus. 
 With aU their nught, good Lord, deliver us. 
 
 From needing danger to be good. 
 From owing Thee yesterday's tears to-day. 
 
 From trusting so much to Thy blood. 
 That in that hope we wound our soul away. 
 
 From bribing Thee with alms, to excuse 
 Some sin more burdenous. 
 From hght affecting, in rehgion, news. 
 From thinking us sdl soul, neglecting thus 
 Our mutual duties. Lord, deUver us. • 
 
 From Donne's Divine Poems to George Herbert's 
 Temple (1633), and thence to Crashaw's Steps to the Temple 
 {1646) and the religious lyrics of Vaughan and Traheme, 
 is but an easy step, and with these later publications we 
 reach the fuU florescence of the seventeenth-century 
 religious lyric. 
 
 Herrick's NoUe Numbers have far less in common with 
 the Caroline reUgious lyric than his secular lyrics have 
 with those of the Cavalier singers, though it must be 
 allowed that, with the publication of the Hesperides in 
 1648, these two forms of lyric poetry meet and mingle. 
 Of the spiritual wrestlings which are revealed in Her- 
 bert's Temple, of the rapt ecstasy of Crashaw, or the 
 
 1 Poems, i. 181. 
 
228 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 mystic soarings of Traheme or Vaughan, Herrick knew 
 nothing at aU. Among his Noble Numbers are many 
 poems of unquestioiiable orthodoxy, in which he sets 
 forth the attributes of God, or depicts the warfare of soul 
 with sense ; and there are others in which he shows his 
 acquaintance with the writings of the great Church 
 Fathers — St Augustine, St Ambrose, St Bernard, 
 " learned Basil," and " learned Aquinas." But these 
 orthodox verses disclose very little of the man's rare 
 personality, and show no trace of religious emotion. 
 And no sooner does his true character appear than his 
 orthodoxy falls from him like a mask, and the pagan 
 Flamen stands revealed to our gaze. His Thanksgiving 
 to God for his House (see page 83) is almost identical 
 in spirit with his hymns to the Lares ; and his famous 
 Litany to the Holy Spirit (41), beautiful as it is, is wholly 
 unlike that of Donne, and is distinguished more for its 
 naive himiour than for its piety : 
 
 When the artless doctor sees 
 No one hope, but of his fees. 
 And his sldll runs on the lees. 
 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me \ 
 
 When his potion and his piU 
 Has, or none, or little skill. 
 Meet for nothing but to kill. 
 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 
 
 When the passing bell doth toll. 
 And the furies in a shoal 
 Come to fright a parting soul. 
 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 
 
 When the tapers now bum blue. 
 And the comforters are few. 
 And that number more than true, 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 
 
THE "NOBLE NUMBERS" 229 
 
 When the priest his last hath prayed, 
 And I nod to what is said, 
 'Cause my speech is now decayed. 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 
 
 Nothing was further from Herrick's mind than ir- 
 reverence when he wrote verses such as these ; the truth 
 is that his conception of religion, in spite of his reading of 
 the Fathers, was scarcely more mature than that of a 
 child of eight. His God is neither the stem Taskmaster 
 of the Puritans, nor the ineffable King whom Laud 
 taught his followers to worship in " the beauty of holi- 
 ness." He is an amiable Being with whom the poet 
 stands on very intimate terms ; God has given him his 
 bin, his pipkin, his piggin, and his teeming hen, and for 
 these he renders the thanks that are due ; he even invites 
 Him to read his book of verses, assuring Him, with a 
 naivete that almost takes one's breath away, that He will 
 take no harm from their impurities ! 
 
 Pardon me, God, once more I Thee entreat. 
 That I have placed Thee in so mean a seat ; 
 Where round about Thou seest but all things vain, 
 Uncircumcis'd, unseason'd and profane. 
 But as Heaven's pubUc and immortal eye 
 Looks on the filth, but is not soil'd thereby. 
 So Thou, my God, may'st on this impure look. 
 But take no tincture from, my sinful book. ' 
 
 In another poem. To God (232), he entreats Him to 
 speak familiarly with him of love, promising, for his own 
 part, to reply 
 
 By way of Epithalamy ; 
 
 and we know what Herrick's epithalamies are like ! 
 The Christ whom he adores is the child of Bethlehem, 
 a " Twelfth-tide King " to be honoured with wassailings, 
 and to whom he bids a child bring childish presents — a. 
 1 To God (113). 
 
230 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 flower, a coral, and a whistle — after the manner of the 
 Secunda Pastorum of the Wakefield cycle of Mystery 
 Plays. Or, if he presents to us the Christ of Calvary, 
 it is under the figure of a tragic Roscius : 
 
 The Cross shall be Thy stage, and Thou shalt there 
 
 The spacious field have for Thy theatre. 
 
 Thou art that Roscius and that marked-out man 
 
 That must this day act the tragedian 
 
 To wonder and afhightment ; Thou art He 
 
 Whom all the flux of nations comes to see. 
 
 Not those poor thieves that act their parts with Thee.i 
 
 He is conscious of sin, and in one of his quaintest 
 poems he confesses that his heart is an Augean stable : 
 
 Lord, I confess that Thou alone art able 
 
 To purify this my Augean stable ; 
 
 Be the seas water, and the land all soap. 
 
 Yet if Thy blood not wash me, there's no hope.' 
 
 But this sense of sin does not disquiet him for long ; 
 he recognizes the place of a Saviour in the scheme of 
 redemption, and is as sure of salvation as any elect 
 Anabaptist. Hell, he informs us, is " the place where 
 whipping-cheer abounds," ' but it has no terrors for 
 him, and he intones his creed with imfaltering voice : — 
 
 I do believe that die I must, 
 I And be return' d from out my dust : 
 I do believe that when I rise, 
 Christ I shall see with these same eyes. 
 I do believe that I must come. 
 With others, to the dreadful doom. 
 I do believe the bad must go 
 From thence to everlasting woe ; 
 I do believe the good, and I, 
 Shall live with Him eternally. 
 
 1 Rex tragicus ; or, Christ going to His Cross (263). 
 
 2 To his Saviour (73). 
 
 3 Hell (120). 
 
THE "NOBLE NUMBERS" 231 
 
 I do believe I shall inherit 
 
 Heaven by Christ's mercies, not my merit. 
 
 I do beUeve the One in Three, 
 
 And Three in perfect unity : 
 
 Lastly, that Jesus is a deed j 
 
 Of gift from God : and here's my creed. 
 
 In one of his most beautiful Ij^rics he describes the 
 joys of that Heaven for which he is bound. The abode 
 of the blessed is a white island where immortal spirits 
 pursue immortal pleasures and where no monstrous 
 fancies intrude : 
 
 In this world, the isle of dreams. 
 
 While we sit by sorrow's streams. 
 
 Tears and terrors are our themes 
 
 Reciting : 
 
 But when once from hence we fly. 
 More and more approaching nigh 
 Unto young Eternity 
 Uniting : 
 
 In that whiter island, where 
 Things are evermore sincere ; 
 Candour here, and lustre there 
 Delighting : 
 
 There no monstrous fancies shall 
 Out of hell an horror call. 
 To create, or cause at all. 
 Affrighting : 
 
 There in calm and cooling sleep 
 We our eyes shall never steep. 
 But eternal watch shall keep. 
 Attending 
 
232 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Pleasures such as shall pursue 
 Me immortalized, and you ; 
 And fresh joys as never to 
 Have ending.^ 
 
 The childlike mind of Herrick, in all that pertains to 
 the Christian faith, is disclosed in poem after poem of the 
 Noble Numbers, and as we contemplate it we wonder 
 what the sermons were like which he preached to his 
 Devonshire parishioners. He turned this chUdHke mind 
 to good account in his " graces for children," the most 
 familiar of which might have come straight from A 
 Child's Garden of Verses. 
 
 Here a little child I stand, 
 
 Heaving up my either hand : 
 
 Cold as paddocks though they be. 
 
 Here I lift them up to thee. 
 
 For a benison to fall 
 
 On our meat and on us all. Amen.' 
 
 But in the following verses To God, which are not 
 placed on the lips of a child, it is hard to believe that 
 we are listening to a contemporary of George Herbert 
 or Bishop Hall : 
 
 Lord, do not beat me. 
 Since I do sob and cry. 
 And swoon away to me 
 Ere thou dost threat me. 
 Lord, do not scourge me 
 If I by lies and oatiis 
 Have soil'd myself or clothes. 
 But rather purge me.' 
 
 In the Noble Numbers the epigrams are much more 
 numerous than the lyrics, and many of them are confined 
 to a single distich. Most of them add nothing to Her- 
 rick's fame as a poet, but occasionally they convey some 
 
 ^ The White Island; or. Place of the Blest (xzS). ' 
 2 Another Grace for a Child (95). 
 8 To God (49). 
 
THE "NOBLE NUMBERS" 233 
 
 new thought, or some old thought set forth in a new 
 and striking way. The following may serve as ex- 
 amples : 
 
 God, when He takes my goods and chattels hence. 
 
 Gives me a portion, giving patience : 
 
 What is in God is God ; if so it be 
 
 He patience gives. He gives Himself to me.i 
 
 There is no evil that we do commit. 
 But hath th' extraction of some good from it : 
 As when we sin, God, the great Chemist, thence 
 Draws out th' elixir of true penitence.^ 
 
 The most sustained of the lyrics in the Noble Numbers 
 are the two dirges — The Dirge of Jephthah's Daughter 
 (83) and The Dirge of Dorcas (123). The beauty of the 
 latter is somewhat marred by the same kind of material- 
 ism which we find in the poet's " Thanksgiving to God 
 for his House," but the former is quite free from this. 
 It represents the Jewish maidens gathered about the 
 grave of the sacrificed virgin, shedding bitter tears for 
 the sister they have lost, and strewing daffodils and other 
 flowers about her tomb. There is at times a curious, 
 but not unseemly, aroma of the bridal-chamber in this 
 funeral dirge, but the tone of it is elegiac throughout, 
 and the concluding stanzas are imbued with all the 
 caressing fancy and exquisite pathos of Herrick's lyric 
 genius : 
 
 Sleep in thy peace, thy bed of spice. 
 
 And make tms place all paradise. 
 
 May sweets grow here, and smoke from hence 
 
 Fat frankincense : 
 Let balm and cassia send their scent 
 From out thy maiden-monument. 
 
 May no wolf howl, or screech-owl stir 
 A wing about thy sepulchre ! 
 
 1 Upon God (87). 2 Sin (196). 
 
234 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 No boisterous winds, or storms, come hither 
 
 To statve or wither 
 Thy soft sweet earth ! but, Uke a spring, 
 Love keep it ever flourishing. 
 
 May all shy maids, at wonted hours, 
 Come forth to strew thy tomb with flow'rs : 
 May virgins, when they come to mourn, 
 
 Male-incense burn 
 Upon thine altar ! then return. 
 And leave thee sleeping in thy urn. 
 
 Herrick'S supremacy over all his contemporaries in 
 the field of lyric poetry is partly due to the greater volume 
 and variety of his poems, partly also to the fact that he 
 was before all things a consummate artist. The mob 
 of gentlemen who, in these cavaliering days, spent idle 
 moments in tossing off verses of gallantry to their mis- 
 tresses, prided themselves upon nothing so much as the 
 ease and speed with which they wrote. One of the most 
 famous of them, " natural, easy Suckling," even brought 
 it as a reproach against Carew that — 
 
 the issue of 's brain 
 Was seldom brought forth but with trouble and pain.' 
 
 But Herrick, spending long years amid the seclusion of 
 his country vicarage, and treasuring his poems with 
 idolatrous affection, thought otherwise. The easy flow 
 of his lyrics gives, perhaps, the impression that they were 
 written in haste ; but if so, they were corrected at 
 leisure, and not given to the world until they had reached 
 that state of chiselled perfection which satisfied the 
 demands of a 'poet who was as fastidious as Gray : 
 
 Better 'twere my book were dead. 
 Than to Uve not perfected.'' 
 
 1 A Sessions of the Poets. 
 
 2 His Request to Julia (59). 
 
THE "NOBLE NUMBERS" 235 
 
 In addition to the authentic text of 1648, we possess, 
 as we have already seen, earlier printed versions of some 
 of the Hesperides poems ; moreover, there are to be 
 found among the Ashmole, Harley, Egerton, and Rawlin- 
 son MSS. earlier renderings of some of the most sustained 
 of Herrick's verses, including the Farewell and Welcome 
 to Sack, some of the fairy poems, and the Nuptial Song 
 on Sir Clipseby Crew. These versions have been care- 
 fully collated with those of the 1648 volume by Dr Grosart 
 and Mr Pollard, and furnish us with abundant evidence 
 of the author's unsparing use of the file. The twenty- 
 three stanzas of the Harleian MS. version of the 
 " Nuptial Song " are reduced in the Hesperides to six- 
 teen, though some of the rejected stanzas seem to 
 our less exacting taste almost faultless. Elsewhere we 
 find single lines, and sometimes whole stanzas, entirely 
 remodelled, and a single illustration will show how 
 much they gain by the process. The fourteenth stanza 
 of the epistle To Mr John Weekes (336) reads as follows 
 in the Egerton MS. : 
 
 When the high Helen her fair cheeks 
 Showed to the army of the Greeks. 
 
 At which I'll rise 
 (Blind though as midnight in my eyes). 
 
 And, hearing it. 
 Flutter and crow, and in a fit 
 Of young concupiscence, and feel 
 New flames within the aged steal. 
 
 In the Hesperides it is altered to the following : 
 
 When the fair Helen from her eyes 
 Shot forth her loving sorceries. 
 
 At which I'll rear 
 Mine aged Umbs above my chair. 
 
 And, hearing it. 
 Flutter and crow as in a fit 
 Of fresh concupiscence, and cry : 
 No lust there's like to poetry. 
 
^35 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 One of the most radical and most interesting changes 
 introduced by Herrick into the Hesperides is that which 
 we encounter in the poem, entitled The Apparition of 
 his Mistress calling him to Elysium (575). This was 
 first pubUshed in 1640, and contained the following 
 lintes describing the modem dramatists who sit with 
 Homer, Virgil, " soft Catullus," " sharp-fang'd Martial," 
 and other great classic poets in the green meadows 
 of Elysium : 
 
 Among which synod, crown' d with sacred bays 
 And flatt'ring ivy, we'll have, to recite their plays, 
 Shakespeare and Beaumont, swans to whom the spheres 
 Listen while they call back the former years 
 To teach the truth of scenes. 
 
 Eight years later, it seems that Herrick had come 
 round to the common opinion of the age that Fletcher 
 was a greater dramatist than Shakespeare, and so he 
 alters the verses as follows : 
 
 Among which glories, crown' d with sacred baj« 
 And flatt'ring ivy, to recite their plays — 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, swans to whom all ears 
 Listen, while they, Uke sirens in their spheres. 
 Sing their Evadne. 
 
 We may think what we like of the poet's dramatic 
 taste, but must acknowledge how much the later 
 rendering surpasses the earlier in respect of style and 
 rhjrthm. Illustrations of the emendations made by the 
 poet might be furnished to any extent, but they all tell 
 the same tale — gain in terseness and simplicity of utter- 
 ance, and, likewise, in purity and variety of rhythm. 
 
 The most obvious quality of Herrick's style is its 
 freedom from the fashionable mannerisms of his day. 
 There is at times a certain quaintness in his diction, 
 and, more rarely, a Jonsonian fondness for inversions. 
 Mr Courthope has also drawn attention to his occasional 
 
THE "NOBLE NUMBERS" 237 
 
 use of strange words like " carcanet " and " pannicle," 
 and to his fondness for diminutives like " cherrylet " and 
 " pipkinnet " ; but in the twelve hundred poems of the 
 Hesperides there is scarcely a trace of the strained conceits, 
 the violent comparisons, the recondite allusions, and 
 all the rest of the metaphysic wit of the fantastic school 
 of poetry then in vogue. To the allurements of this 
 seventeenth-century poetic diction even so sure an 
 artist as Milton fell a victim in the early portion of his 
 career, but Herrick, from first to last, kept himself free 
 from blemish. At the same time, he is free from the 
 affectations of the EUzabethans. He admits into his 
 verses neither the archaisms and provincialisms of 
 Spenser, nor the indirectness and over-subtlety of the 
 sonneteers ; and everything in the nature of word- 
 quibbling he regards with just abhorrence. In the Ash- 
 mole MS. version of A Country Life (106) there occurs the 
 following hne : 
 
 Vice is vice-gerent at the court. 
 
 Recognizing afterwards that his readers might accuse 
 him of punning, he recasts it thus : 
 
 Vice rules the most or all at court. 
 
 The secret of his art consists in the perfect adjustment 
 of the style to the theme. In lyrics like The May-pole 
 is up (695), The Hag is astride (643) or The Peter-Penny 
 (762), where he is imitating the rhythm of the popular 
 song, his diction is also extremely simple. Simplicity is 
 Ukewise sought in most of his song-l5nics, and the beauty 
 of the song To Anthea (267), The Night-Piece to Julia 
 (619), or The Mad Maid's Song (412), is largely due to the 
 magic effect produced by the homely words. In poems 
 of this nature he relies upon monosyllabic words to a 
 greater extent than any other EngUsh poet, and it is 
 not at all difficult to find among the Hesperides whole 
 
238 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 stanzas like the following, where nothing but mono- 
 syllables appear : 
 
 A heart as soft, a heart as kind, 
 
 A heart as sound and free 
 As in the whole world thou canst find. 
 
 That heart I'U give to thee.^ 
 
 Again, in the poem His Grange, or Private Wealth 
 (724), which contains one hundred and forty-five words, 
 only fifteen of them run to more than a single syllable. 
 Where, however, he departs most widely from the 
 manner of the song-l37ric, as, for instance, in his odes 
 and elegies, his style grows more elaborate. StiU pursu- 
 ing clearness and precision of utterance, and avoiding 
 everything in the nature of preciosity, he at the same 
 time manages to introduce high-soundrag latinized words, 
 enriches the verses with the treasures of classic story, 
 and makes a bold use of figures of speech. The result 
 is that his verses acquire a certain massiveness, a reson- 
 ance, and an august, imperial splendour, which place 
 them at a wide distance from the homely strains of his 
 songs. We meet with this heightened style in his Fare- 
 well and Welcome to Sack, and in the lines entitled The 
 Apparition of his Mistress calling him to Elysium (575). 
 His style as a whole is not particularly rich in metaphor, 
 but in some of his more sustained flights of song he 
 uses it with magnificent effect, and in such a stanza as 
 the following, we see him passing from one metaphor to 
 another with the ease and boldness of Shakespeare : 
 
 Alas ! for me, that I have lost 
 
 E'en all almost ; 
 Sunk is my sight, set is my sun, 
 And all the loom of life undone : 
 The staff, the elm, the prop, the shelf ring waU 
 
 Whereon my vine did crawl. 
 Now, now blown down ; needs must the old stock fall.' 
 
 1 To Anthea (267). 
 
 2 An Ode to Endytmon Porter upon his Brother's Death (185). 
 
THE "NOBLE NUMBERS" 239 
 
 A fondness for classical allusions is one of the marked 
 characteristics of his style, and gives to it much of its 
 classical colour. These are not the trite references which 
 we meet with in much of the poetry of the Renaissance ; 
 without being recondite or obscure, they bear witness 
 to his sound scholarship, and show, in particular, his 
 curious delight in ancient ritual. These allusions are 
 most noticeable in that early poem, A Country Life : 
 to his Brother, Thomas Herrick (106), and in His Age : 
 To Mr John Wickes (336) ; and again, in his impassioned 
 Farewell to Poetry, from which the following lines are 
 taken : 
 
 And in that mystic frenzy we have hurled. 
 
 As with a tempest, nature through the world. 
 
 And in a whirlwind twirl' d her home, aghast 
 
 At that which in her ecstasy had past. 
 
 Thus crown'd with rosebuds, sack, thou mad'st me fly 
 
 Like fire-drakes, yet didst me no harm thereby, 
 
 O thou almighty nature, who didst give 
 
 True heat wherewith humanity doth hve 
 
 Beyond its stinted circle, giving food. 
 
 While fame and resurrection to the good ; 
 
 Shoring them up 'bove ruin till the doom. 
 
 The general April of the world doth come. 
 
 That makes all equal. Many thousands should, 
 
 Were't not for thee, have crumbled into mould, 
 
 And with their sere-clothes rotted, not to show 
 
 Whether the world such spirits had or no ; 
 
 Whereas by thee those and a million since 
 
 Nor fate, nor enyy, can their fames convince. 
 
 Homer, Musseus, Ovid, Maro, more 
 
 Of those Godful prophets long before 
 
 Held their eternal fires, and ours of late 
 
 (Thy mercy helping) shall resist strong fate, 
 
 Nor stoop to the centre, but survive as long 
 
 As fame or rumour hath or trump or tongue.' 
 
 ■Mn<;t of the popms describinpf the rustic festival s of.., 
 -thft mnntqwiflff are ajTsiiiiplH n.t, li Jyr^taTng-HpJaiit pvp^ Tiprp , 
 
 1 " Poems not included in the Hesperides," Pollard, ii. 264. 
 
240 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 t h ere are -.: fenes when reminiscences of the ceremonial 
 rites of a. bygone a^e co m e back to hitn, ann tnpn hiT* 
 imagination glows with a rare incandesc enc e and his 
 ■Style takes on a riche r minnr Thus many 6f t^ p gtanyac 
 
 pf that Hmpif) p npnj y Cnrin'nn'f (jni'infi n Mnym[j (rnS)^ jJjp 
 
 — thcmo of which is peculiarly English, have dii mid u uU ted- 
 ^assicaaana, and the Jigurative opening lines m ight have 
 come straight from Ovid : 
 
 Get up, get up for shame, the blooming mom 
 Upon her wings presents the god unshorn. 
 See how Aurora throws her fair 
 Fresh-quilted colours through the air : 
 Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see 
 The dew bespangUng herb and tree. 
 
 The yrace and purity of Herrick's d iction are the 
 natural complement to tne grace and pufltV 6f hlS '^'^fS^ 
 
 "He lived in an age when Ivric poetry wa.s wn ndf-rfully 
 plgg+1^; injr espect of the m etric al moulds into wh ich it" 
 
 .flnwprl. TTTp Tyranny OT fhf> sntinpl-sl iiir[ iiit^ iajuu Al/fJiy 
 and no other rigid form of verse had arisen to take its 
 place. The seventeenth-century poet enjoyed perfect 
 freedom in regard to form, and there was nothing to 
 impede him in his desire to win for his lyric emotion that 
 form which suited it best. Occasionally we find the 
 freedom abused. I am not aware that any of the poets 
 of this age followed the precept and example of Putten- 
 ham who, in his Arte of English Poesie, devised poems 
 in the shape of triangles, cylinders, lozenges, and spheres,^ 
 and declared that though at first there " wil seeme 
 nothing pleasant to an English eare, time and usage wil 
 make them acceptable inough ; " bu,t George Herbert 
 carves his verses into the shape of altars and " Easter 
 wings," and even Herrick aspires to a pillar and a cross.^ 
 But these were only momentary aberrations, and do not 
 need to be taken into account here. 
 
 1 See chapter xi., " Of Proportion in Figure." 
 
 * See The Pillar of Fame (1129) and Tlie Cross {Noble Numbers, 368). 
 
THE "NOBLE NUMBERS" 241 
 
 Henick had at his command an immense host of lyric 
 measures, some of them of his own creation,, and aU of 
 them skilfully adapted to the Ijndc theme which is being 
 set forth. In his choice of metres, he shows once again 
 that between him and the Elizabethan lyrists there was 
 not much in common. He will have nothing to do with 
 the sonnet or canzone, nor do the slow-moving measures 
 of the early Ehzabethan lyric — ^Alexandrine, septenarius, 
 and poulter's measure — ^which still drag their weary 
 chains through some of the Ijnics of Ccunpion, find favour 
 with him. Verses of more than five beats are extremely 
 rare in the Hesperides, and a striking feature of Herrick's 
 metric art is his fondness for a short line in iamhjr m - 
 trochaic. TP f'^siiJe.^^ Y g! ^ "^ foufT three, or two accenS~ 
 are extremely common, a nd in his poem. Upon Ms 
 Departure Hence (475), he keeps throughout to a line of 
 a single accent. In his use of the heroic couplet, he 
 seems to have followed the tendency of his age, which 
 was slowly hammering the Augustan distich out of the 
 flowing heroic verse of Chaucer ; the structure of his 
 earhest verses in this measure — e.g., the Farewell to Sack 
 — is stiU free, but in his later poems, such as The Christian 
 Militant, the pause at the end of the couplet is rarely 
 missed, and there is a nicer balance of parts. 
 
 The dehcacy of his ear and the fineness of his work- 
 manship are best displayed in his strophic poems. Like 
 most of the poets of the time, he keeps chiefly to iambic 
 and trochaic measures. Dactyls are rarely met with in 
 his poems,^ and anapaests are reserved almost entirely 
 for certain song-l37rics in which he is employing the 
 rhythms of popular airs ; ^ but by the use of feminine 
 rhymes, and by bringing in to proximity lines of different 
 
 1 His most effective use of the dactyl is in his poem To his Mistress (94) : 
 
 Choose me yom: valentine. 
 
 Next let us marry — 
 Love to the death will pine 
 
 If we long tarry. 
 
 ' Instances are Ceremonies for Christtnas (784), The hag is astride (643). 
 
242 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 thp rnmhinatinn of vp.rspg with fnnr ;^frf'ntc gnf^ i^'erses 
 writh turn irrpntc givp=; a Hpliglitfnl rhythm tr, |)fg r/ifliwfe- 
 
 giving to God /or his House {Noble Numbers. 47) : 
 
 Lord, thou hast given me a cell 
 Wherein to dwell ; 
 
 A little house, whose humble roof 
 Is weather-proof. 
 
 Under the spars of which I lie 
 
 Both soft and dry ; . . . 
 
 and equally happy is the union of verses of one, two, and 
 three accents in To keep a True Lent [Noble Numbers, 
 228): 
 
 Is this a fast, to keep 
 The larder lean ? 
 And clean 
 From fat of veals and sheep ? 
 
 Is it to quit the dish 
 
 Of flesh, yet still 
 To fill 
 The platter high with fish ? 
 
 No ; 'tis a fast to dole 
 
 Thy sheaf of wheat. 
 And meat. 
 Unto the hungry soul. 
 
 It is to fast from strife. 
 From old debate, 
 And hate ; 
 To circumcise thy Ufe. 
 
 To show a heart grief-rent ; 
 To starve thy sin. 
 Not bin ; 
 And that's to keep thy Lent. 
 
 A still more signal illustration of this device of metric 
 art is to be foimd, not imfittingly, in one of the several 
 
THE "NOBLE NUMBERS" 243 
 
 poems written in honour of Ben Jonson, from whom he 
 had learnt so much of the harmonies of verse. Here a 
 sweUing effect is produced by the gradual lengthening 
 of the line as the stanza advances, the rhythmic waves 
 increasing in volume like the breakers of an incoming 
 tide : 
 
 Ah Ben! 
 Say how or when 
 Shall we, thy guests, 
 Meet at those Ijrric feasts 
 
 Made at the Sun, 
 The Dog, the Triple Tun ? 
 Where we such clusters had 
 As made us nobly wild not mad ; 
 And yet each, verse of thine 
 Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.' 
 
 All his poems are in rhyme, but occasionally he intro- 
 duces, Kke Milton in Lycidas, a rhymeless verse into his 
 more highly-wrought stanzas. This is the case with the 
 first hne of His Recantation (246) : 
 
 Love, I recant. 
 And pardon crave 
 That lately I ofEended ; 
 But 'twas 
 Alas! 
 To make a brave. 
 But no disdain intended. 
 
 Nor is he afraid of placing verses which rhj^me together 
 at a great distance from one another, the delicacy of his 
 ear assuring him that the eifect of the rhyme will not be 
 lost. Thus in the poem, To Daffodils (316), the rhyme 
 of the first verse is not taken up till we reach the ninth, 
 and in To Primroses filled with Morning Dew {257), the 
 stanza of which is a masterpiece of the most cunning 
 craftsmanship, there is the same interval : 
 
 ' An Ode for Ben Jonson (911). 
 
244 ROBERT HERRICK 
 
 Why do ye weep, sweet babes ? Can tears 
 Speak grief in you. 
 Who were but bom 
 Just as the modest mom 
 Teem'd her refreshing dew ? 
 Alas ! you have not known that shower 
 That mars a flower. 
 Nor felt the unkind 
 Breath of a blasting wind ; 
 Nor are ye worn with years. 
 
 Or warp'd as we, 
 Who think it strange to see 
 Such pretty flowers, like to orphans young. 
 To speak by tears before ye have a tongue. 
 
 Thus does one attempt to bring Herrick's lyric raptures 
 to the disseclang table, and lay bare their intricate and 
 finely-wrought structure. But in so doing, it must be 
 remembered that it is the prerogative of all high art to 
 defy the last analysis ; we may codify Herrick's rhymes 
 and tabulate his rhythms, but the evanescent, and yet 
 ever-abiding, charm of his verse eludes our search. 
 
 When, finally, we turn from the contemplation of the 
 outward structure of Herrick's lyrics to the spirit which 
 informs them, we are at once impressed by the universality 
 of his genius in all that pertains to lyricism. His con- 
 sciousness of discipleship, while it attests the humility 
 of his nature, must not be allowed to obscure the fact 
 that he was the supreme master of the lyre in his own 
 generation, and the glorious consummator of Renaissance 
 song. All the most melodious notes in that loud chorus 
 which made of the England of the Renaissance " a nest 
 of singing-birds," are heard in the Hesperides. Herri ck 
 can attune his lyre to the strains of Marlowe and the 
 earliest melodists of Ehzabethan song, and, at the same 
 time, he can rival the courtly gallantries of his immediate 
 contemporaries, Carew and SuckUng. The varying ply 
 of his genius gives him also the right to sit down, in that 
 Elysium which his poetic fancy wrought, with Anacreon 
 on his right hand, and Catullus and Horace on his left. 
 
THE "NOBLE NUMBERS" 245 
 
 He is at once romantic and classic, learned and popular. 
 Nothing is too low for his genius, and nothing too high. 
 He can stoop to the ale-house catch, fashioning it into a 
 thing of beauty ; and he can rise to the full-voiced and 
 intricate harmonies of the classic ode, giving to it fresh 
 power and fresh enchantment. 
 
 In like manner, he is the bard of the town and of the 
 country, of the court and of the meadows. His songs are 
 sung in the thatched cottages of Dean Prior, in the taverns 
 of Temple Bar or Southwark, and beneath the fretted 
 roof of Inigo Jones's banqueting-house at Whitehall. 
 He can render the homage of matchless verse to court 
 ladies and princes of the blood, to aldermen and city 
 madams, to village youths bringing in the hock-cart, or to 
 maidens in sun-bonnets going a-Maying. He can write 
 epithalamies for wealthy knights, and charms for simple 
 housewives ; the Countess of Carlisle inspires his muse, 
 and so does Prudence Baldwin. He can weave poetry, 
 as fine as threads of gossamer, out of the fancies of an 
 esoteric fairy-lore, and at the same time he can touch 
 with beauty the crude superstitions of the country-side. 
 He is both Christian and pagan, and, almost in the same 
 breath, he will present his supphcation to God the Father, 
 and invite the protection of his " pecuhar Lar." 
 
 The comparison which is sometimes drawn between 
 Herrick and the lyrists of a later day — Burns, Shelley, 
 Heine — ^is of singiiarly little value, for it is like a com- 
 parison between youth and age. CiviUzation has moved 
 fopvard since the day on which Herrick published his 
 Hesperides, and advancing years have brought to l3^c 
 poetry deeper purposes, intenser emotions, and more 
 obstinate questionings as to the whence and whither, 
 the meaning and worth, of life. The Renaissance song 
 of Marlowe and Breton and Shakespeare and Dekker 
 and Herrick is the song of children in the eager air of a 
 spring morning. Life to them is a perpetual holiday 
 and the world is very new and very wonderful. They are 
 conscious at times that this joy cannot last for ever, and 
 
^4^ ROBEfeT iHERRlCK 
 
 that " youth's a stuff will not endure " ; but the resilience 
 of their natures soon lifts them out of their forebodings, 
 and the thriU of exultation comes back to them with 
 quickened pulse. They know nothing of the heartache 
 of modem l3aicism, and their philosophy of Ufe is but to 
 seize the day. With Bums and Shelley and Heine all 
 this is changed. In them lyric emotion is adult and self- 
 conscious. Their sweetest songs are only too often those 
 that teU of saddest thought, and about them there gathers 
 an intensity which is sometimes the child of hope, and 
 sometimes of disillusionment. The passion of Bums, 
 the alternating moods of hope and dejection which inform 
 the songs of Shelley, the bitter-sweet emotion of Heine — 
 these are almost unknown to Herrick and the other 
 masters of Renaissance song. Bums and Shelley and 
 Heine are of necessity more to us than Herrick can ever 
 be ; for they speak to us in our own language, offering 
 us hope and encouragement, rousing us to finer issues 
 and nobl^ aspirations, or confirming us in our fears and 
 misgivings. But there are times when, feeHng that the 
 world is too much with us, we try to free our minds from 
 the burden of modernity ; and then it is that, in hoUday 
 mood, we turn to the Hesperides, and find refreshment 
 of soul in the contemplation of an age that knew httle of 
 misgiving or disillusionment, and of a poet in whom, 
 beneath the garb of an Anglican clergyman, there beat 
 the heart of a votary of Apollo, " for ever piping songs 
 for ever new," and bidding us gather rosebuds while we 
 may in the bowered glades of Arcady. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 herrice's indenture of appeenxiceship 
 (September 25, 1607) * 
 
 This indentnre witnesseth that Robert Herick the sonne of 
 Nicholas Herick of London, Goldsmithe, doth pnt him selfe 
 apprentize to Sir Wm. Herick, knighte, citizen, and goldsmith 
 of London to leame his Arte. And with him {after the 
 manner of Apprentize) to serve from the feaste of St Bar- 
 tholomew the apostle last past before the date heereof onto 
 the full end and terme of Tenn yeres from thence next fol- 
 lowing to be full complete and ended. During which terme 
 the said Apprentize his said master :^thfaUy shall serve 
 his secrets keepe his lawfull commandements every where 
 gladly doe. He shall doe no damage to his said master, nor 
 see to be done of other (but that so his power shall lett, or 
 forthwith give warning id his master of tiie same. He shaU 
 not waste the goode of his said master nor lend them un- 
 lawfully to any p.son : He shall not commit fornication nor 
 contract matrimony 'within the said terme. He shall not 
 playe at the cardes, dice, tables or any other unlawfuU games 
 whereby his said master may have any losse with his own 
 goode or others during the said terme without Ucence of his 
 said master ; he shall neither beg nor stele ; he shall not 
 haunt Tavemes nor absent him seUe from his said master's 
 service daie nor nighte unlawfully. But in all tbinges as a 
 faithfull Apprentize he shaU behave him selfe towards his 
 said master and all his during the said terme. And the 
 said master his said Apprentize in the same Arte which he 
 nseth, by the best means he can, shall teach and instruct 
 with due correction, finding imto his said Apprentize meate, 
 drinke, Apparell, Lodging, and aU other necessaries accord- 
 
 1 From the Herrick Papers at Beaumaoor. 
 240 
 
250 APPENDIX 
 
 ing to the Custome of the Citty of London during the said 
 terme. And for the true performance of all and singuler the 
 said covenants and agreements either of the saide parties 
 bindeth him selfe unto the other by theis presents. In 
 witness whereof the parties above named to this Indenture 
 interchangably have put their hand and seales the xxv" 
 daie of September in tiie year of our Lord God 1607, and in 
 ffyfte yere of the Raigne of our Soveraigne Lord King James, 
 by the grace of God King of England Scotland fErance and 
 Ireland, defender of the ffaith etc. 
 
 (Signed) Robert Hericke. 
 
APPENDIX II 
 
 THE DIRGE OF ERIC BLOOD-AXE 
 
 It is a far cry from the publication of Hesperides back 
 through the centuries to the old Norse Eiriks-Mal, or Dirge 
 of Eric Blood-axe, the earliest of all Valhalla songs. But the 
 dirge is so audacious in conception, and so heroic in spirit, 
 that I cannot refrain from reproducing it here in the metre 
 of Morris's Sigurd. The paganism of Robert Herrick was 
 classic and not Teutonic, but he would, I think, have taken 
 pleasure in this story of the apotheosis of his far-distant 
 ancestor. The poem in the Hesperides, entitled The Appa- 
 rition of his Mistress calling him to Elysium, is, after its 
 kind, a treatment of the same theme which is set forth in the 
 following poem. Eric Blood-axe fell at the battle of Stain- 
 moor, in Westmorland, which was fought about the year 954, 
 and tradition informs us that the dirge was composed at the 
 command of his wife Gunhild. It is most unfortunate that 
 the poem is incomplete. The Old Norse text, with a transla- 
 tion into English prose, and fuller details as to the life of 
 Eric Blood-axe, will be found in the first volume of Mag- 
 nusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale, pp. 259-261. 
 
 Odin. O say, what of dreams is this ? Methought ere the 
 
 dawn I arose 
 Valhalla's dwellings to garnish for the warriors slain by 
 
 their foes. 
 From sleep I awoke the Champions, I bade them stir 
 
 their Umbs, 
 The benches with rushes to scatter, the beer-vats to fill 
 
 to the brims ; 
 Bade the Valk3?rie bear the wine, as though a king were 
 
 at hand. 
 Or of chieftains, to gladden my heart, a fair and goodly 
 
 band. 
 
 261 
 
253 APPENDIX 
 
 Bragi. What uproar is this that I hear ? 'Tis as if a thousand 
 men. 
 Or some great host of warriors, were moving hither again. 
 The boarded walls are creaking, as if to Odin's hall 
 Balder himself were returning, of the gods the fairest 
 of aU. 
 Odin. Of a truth thou speakest fondly, good Bragi, though 
 thou art wise, 
 'Tis for Eric Blood-axe it thunders, 'tis he who comes to 
 
 the skies. 
 Sigmund, and thou, SinfiotU, rise in haste the king to 
 
 greet. 
 Bid him in, if it fee Eric, give him welcome to this seat. 
 Sigmund. Why lookest thou more for this Eric than for kings 
 
 of other lands ? 
 Odin. Because over many a kingdom he has borne his blood- 
 stained brands. 
 Sigmund. Then why didst thou rob him of victory, if thou 
 
 thought' st him brave 'gainst all odds ? 
 Odin. Because who knows when the Grey Wolf shall threaten 
 
 the seats of the gods. 
 Sigmund {meeting Eric) All hail ! to thee, Eric the kingly, 
 thou art welcome within these wards. 
 But -what kings are these which follow from the clash of 
 the keen-edged swords ? 
 Eric. Kings are they five in number, I wUl teU thee all their 
 names. 
 And I myself am the sixth. . . . 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT 
 THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS