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OBERT HERRICK
A BIOGRAPHICAL AND
CRITICAL STUDY
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ROBERT HERRICK
A BIOGRAPHICAL
& CRITICAL STUDY
ROBERT HERRICK
A BIOGRAPHICAL & CRITICAL STUDY
BY F. W. MOORMAN, B.A., PH.D. Sfi
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY
OF LEEDS, WITH NINE FULL-PAGE
ILLUSTRATIONS INCLUDING A
FRONTISPIECE IN PHOTOGRAVURE
LONDON JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMX
Turnbidl ^ Spears, Printers, Edinburgh
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 immortality 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 light upon his career and his 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 account-books of the poet's uncle, Sir
William Herrick, at Beaumanor, has not been
altogether fruitless, but the story which is told
vii
Robert Herrick
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 which the Hesperides poems
occupy in the history of the English lyric 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 mention, 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 Gold-
Vlll
I
Preface
smiths' Hall, and who has allowed me to repro-
duce, from his " Memorials of the Goldsmiths'
Company," the engraving of Goldsmiths' Row,
Cheapside. 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 acknow-
ledge 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.
IX
CONTENTS
PART I— THE LIFE
CHAPTER I
sEarly Years
PAGE
vii
CHAPTER n
At Cambridge . . . .28
CHAPTER HI
"Sealed of the Tribe of Ben" . . -55
CHAPTER IV
Dean Prior ...... 92
CHAPTER V
Last Years . . . . . .134
PART II— THE WORKS
CHAPTER I
[E Lyric of the English Renaissance . • ^55
CHAPTER II
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides . . 204
xi
Robert Herrick
PAGE
CHAPTER III
The Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides . 265
CHAPTER IV
The Noble Numbers . . . .298
Appendix I. (Herrick's Indenture of Apprentice-
ship) ...... 331
Appendix II. The Dirge of Eric Bloodaxe . 333
Index . . . . . -337
Xll
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Robert Herrick (from Marshall's First Edition
oi Hesperides) .... Frontispiece
To face page
2. Goldsmiths' Row, Cheapside . . .28
3. Second Court, St John's College, Cambridge 56
4. The Library, Trinity Hall, Cambridge . 92
5. Facsimile of one of Herrick's Letters . 134
6. Dean Court, The Hall . . .156
7. Dean Prior Church .... 204
8. Dean Burn ..... 266
9. Title-Page to First Edition of Hesperides . 298
xiu
PART I
THE LIFE
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, Hey-
ricks or Herricks, to which also belonged the
author of the Hesperides, The family tradition
iHpf the Herricks is that they owe their origin to
a certain Eric the Forester, who raised an army
to oppose William the Conqueror, and who,
being defeated, was employed as a commander
n the Conqueror's army. In his old age this Eric
is said to have retired to his home in Leicester-
shire — the county with which the Herricks have
ever since been closely associated.^
This tradition, unlike many such family tradi-
tions, does not seem to err through ambition,
prhe probability is, indeed, that the Herricks are
^ See Deane Swift, Essay on the Life of Dr fonathan Swift,
Appendix, p. 37, and Nichols' History of the County of Leicester,
vol. ii. p. 579.
3
Robert Herrick
of royal descent. The name Herrick, the spell-
ing 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 family, is undoubtedly Scandinavian in origin.
Under the forms Eirikr and Eirekr it appears
as the name of at least one Swedish and one
Danish king, and it is found in English history
as early as the middle of the tenth century. The
first English Eric of whom historic legend tells
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 born in Norway early in the tenth century.
Driven from his home by his kinsfolk, he settled
among the Anglian and Danish peoples of
Northumbria, who, in the year 952, at a time
of revolution, made him their king. For two
years he reigned at York, and then was driven
from his throne, and afterwards slain by Anlaf,
an 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 gleemen, and in his honour was written the
famous Eiriks-Mal or Dirge of Eric, the earliest
of all Scandinavian Valhalla-songs.^ There was,
too, another Eric — Eric Hakonsson — who
^ See Appendix II.
4
P-:
Early Years
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 lived into the reign of Cnut, by whom he
was made Earl of Northumberland, and as **Dux
Ericus " his name is found in old English charters
down to the year 1023.^
Under the stern rule of William 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 these two Ivos may
be the Eyrick of Stretton, ^emp. Henry HL,
o 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 family was Robert
Eyrick, who was the first Master of Trinity
Hall, Cambridge, and died Bishop of Lichfield
in 1385.
^ See Corpus Boreale^ ii. 98.
5
Robert Herrick
At Houghton, a village six miles from Leicester,
the descendants of Sir William Eyrick increased
in number till the ancestral home was unable to
contain them all ; and one of the family, Thomas
Ericke, gentleman, accordingly migrated to the
neighbouring town of Leicester, about the end of
the fifteenth century. His name appears on the
Corporation Books of Leicester in 151 1, and he
was the first of the line of Herricks to be intimately
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 gentle-
man, 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 migra-
tion. 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
Early Years
apprenticeship, started business on his own
account in the same locality.
Thanks to the preservation at Beaumanor
Park, Leicestershire, of a number of papers
bearing on the 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 represent the Cheap-
side goldsmith as an excellent son, doing all 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.
PSome years later she married Sir John Bennett,
and in 1603 ^^^^ i^ 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, William, of whom we shall hear more
presently, was sent to London to'fenter 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.
7
I
Robert Herrick
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 :
*' December 8, 1582, Nicholas Herycke, Gold-
smith, and Juliana 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 Visitations of London
as William Stone of London, gentleman, and in an-
other place as William Stoneof Seyno(Segenhoe),
in the county of Bedford. Certain complimentary
poems among the Hesperides 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 still more prominent London family
of the time ; and another sister, who gave shelter
to Juliana Herrick and her children after Nicholas
^ 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 Publications,
vol. XXV.).
8
Early Years
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 inclusion here : —
" Sonne Nicholas Eyrick ; your mother and I
have us commended unto your bedfellowe 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
I^Kto sende youe bothe muche joye and comfort
'™ together, and to all hir friends and yours. I
pray you have us commended to your wive's
parents and frends not as yet knowne or ac-
quaynted with us ; but I trust hereafter we shall,
if God send us lyffe togethar. We wysshe our-
selffs 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 jornay : 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 kne-
bones that she cannot goe many tyms about the
9
I
Robert Herrick
hows without a staff in her hand ; and I myselffe
have had for the spase of allmost of this halffe
yeare mych 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 H olden and his wiffe,
with some other of your frends. Your mother
and I doe gyve harty thanks for your good
tokyns youe sente to us of late, and for all your
other good tokyns 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 withall in Christmas, two
sholdir of brawne and two ronds, and one rond
for your brother and sister Haws, and one rond
for your brother H olden and his wiffe, and one
rond to Thomas Chapman agenst the great
condyth 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
farwell. At Leicester, on Sonday morning,
being the xv day of December, 1582. By your
loving father to his power, John Eyrick." ^
* From Nichols' History of the County of Leicester^ vol. ii. pp. 622-3.
10
Early Years
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 born between
1585 and 1590, and then comes the following
entry : '' Roberte Herricke, sonne to Nicholas
Herricke, was baptized the xxiiii*^ day of
Auguste, 1 59 1."
It is not without significance that, in respect
of the time at which he was born, Herrick stands
midway between the early school of English
lyrists — represented by Peele (born 1558?),
Lodge (1558?), Greene (1560?), Shakespeare
(1564), Campion (1567), Jonson (1573), Donne
{1573), Barnfield(i574), and John Fletcher (1579)
— and the later school of Caroline lyrists, of which
Carew(i598?), Crashaw (161 3), 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
II
Robert Herrick
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 birth-place still more exactly : it is
directed to ** M*" William Heireyck, at the Rowes
in the Goulsmeth Rowe in Cheap." From this we
gather that the poet was born 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 life was spent in
the business-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 will, 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 investi-
gated by the Queen's High Almoner, Dr Richard
Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol, the father of the
dramatist and uncle of Giles and Phineas Fletcher.
12
I
i
Early Years
The Draconian severity of the law was such
that, if a person was found guilty of suicide, his
property reverted to the Crown. The statement
of the case, as made out by the High Almoner,
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 chattells and debtes as were the said
Nich'as Herrickes at the tyme of his deathe or
ought any waies to apperteyne or belonge vnto
him do nowe belonge apperteyne and are forfeyted
vnto o"" said sou'aigne Lady the queue 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 these dark days of November,
1592. The mother of five children, and of a
sixth not yet born, she had lost her husband
^ Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica^ ed. J. J. Howard,
Second Series, vol. i. p. 41.
13
Robert Herrick
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 in-
strumentality 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
honour to his memory in the poem entitled To
the Reverend Shade of his Religious Father^
written about 1627 ; in it he 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 ;^3000, and bequeathed
one-third of this sum to his *' loveinge wife Julian,"
and the other two-thirds in equal shares to his six
children. His two sons, Thomas and Nicholas, and
his brothers, Robert and William, were appointed
executors. Papers preserved at Beaumanor show
that the value of Nicholas Herrick' s estate was
* Hesperides^ ed. Pollard, No. 82.
14
m
t
Early Years
not ^3000 but ^5068, and also that, in addition
to this, two London^ merchants, Edmund Pyggott
and Richard Coxe, were in possession of a con-
siderable sum of money — probably the proceeds
of some charitable fund — placed at the disposal
of the widow and her children. We read of
disbursements of ;^6oo in 1597 and ;^200 in
1598, together with smaller sums on subsequent
occasions.
Soon after her husband's death Julian 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-born, was country-bred,
and we may think of his childhood as having
been spent in the delightful village which lies on
e north side of the great river which he grew
to love so well, and close to the palace which
Wolsey had built, and which, after that minister's
fall and death, had become a favourite residence
f the Tudor monarchs. The Hampton scenery
s of that quiet sylvan and pastoral character
which accords well 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-hills of Surrey, must
have formed a landscape of peculiar attractive-
ness to one of Herrick's temperament. And if
15
Robert Herrick
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
thrilling stories to tell of bygone doings at
Hampton Court. Many still alive could re-
member 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 VHI. 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 September
of 1599 she was there again, riding in state to
the palace from her Surrey home at Nonsuch,
and returning after a sojourn of three or four
days. The boy of eight may have caught sight
of the old queen as she rode over Kingston
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 upright, and my
16
Early Years
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 your horses quickly ' ; and so rode all the way,
not vouchsafing 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 adjoining village. The King kept his first
Christmas there amid rounds of festivities such as
had never before been witnessed. Amongst others,
the King's Company of Comedians, with Shake-
speare 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 preparation
of his masque, TAe Vision of the Twelve Goddesses,
which was performed in the Great Hall of the
palace on the night of January 8, 1604, ^^id in
which the Queen and some of the most dis-
dnguished 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
ind Puritan divines, summoned thither by the
King to deliberate on the form of Protestant
religion which was to be observed in England,
^ E. Law's History of Hampton Court Palace in Tudor Times,
P- 337.
B 17
Robert Herrick
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 all 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 miles away. Having so many
relations, both on his father's and his mother's
side, prominently associated with the life 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 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,
18
I
I
Early Years
were, after all, only the dazzling delights of hours
of exceptional splendour. For the common
round of life the boy had only the simple
pleasures and interests afforded by a small river-
side 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 well have
occupied many an idle hour. It could not have
been a dull life, and there is no likelihood 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 inheritance
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 life.
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 ;
19
Robert Herrick
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 shall I reiterate thy Strand,
Whereon so many stately structures stand :
Nor in the summer's sweeter evenings go
To bathe in thee, as thousand others do ;
No more shall I along thy crystal glide,
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 that he
went thither by boat from Hampton via Kingston
and Richmond, is manifestly unsafe ; or, if the
assumption be made, we may well share Mr
Alfred Pollard'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 many 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
1 The numbers here and elsewhere refer to Mr Pollard's num-
bering of Herrick's poems in the Muses' Library Herrick.
20
I
Early Years
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 William 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,
Herrick 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 (106), 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
Robert Herrick
point rather to his school-reading than to the
severely logical and theological training which
formed the main element in his university-
course of study.
While Robert was still 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 uncle, 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 life 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 enter-
ing 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 universi-
ties, but for the present it was not to be. On
September 25, 1607, the future poet was
apprenticed to his uncle William, now Sir
William Herrick, goldsmith, of the city of
London. The indenture of apprenticeship is
preserved 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 which he entered was one
22
I
I
Early Years
of the most substantial in the City of London.
His uncle 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 removed to the neighbouring Wood Street,
and here he amassed a large fortune as gold-
smith 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 2. delightful picture of the household of
Master George Heriot, ''jingling Geordie," who
shared with Sir William Herrick the honour
of being jeweller to his Majesty ; by means
of it we are able to realise something of the
life which Robert Herrick was now leading
beneath his uncle's roof in Cheapside. The
dignity of Sir William'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 delicate
craft of the jeweller and lapidary which had
brought the honour of knighthood to his uncle
23
Robert Herrick
William. At sunset his labours for the day
were over, for a strict injunction of the wardens
of the Goldsmiths' Company forbade buying
and selling 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 light-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 politic, as playwrights, actors, watermen,
and the Dogberrys of the city-wards knew to
their cost. Their cudgellings in the streets,
their tourneys on the river, and their outspoken
comments on the plays which, as two-penny
groundlings, 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 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
24
I
Early Years
Londoji,^ which was written with the express
purpose of glorifying 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 Boulogne respectively, where they perform
wondrous deeds, and are at last re-united 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 commercial career, it is doubtful whether
ny trade could have suited his temper better
han that of a goldsmith and jeweller — unless,
indeed, it were that of a perfumer! Many of
his verses show just that delicate polish, and
that dainty enamelling of thoughts with the gay
colours of poetic fancy, which, if applied 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
^ Published in 1615, but written and acted some years earlier.
25
Robert Herrick
polished in his first youth. He sends his Julia
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, her teeth quarries of
pearls; elsewhere we read of **jimmal rings"
and true-love-knots, of bracelets of pearl and
amber 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 Elizabethan 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 gold-
smith'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 161 3, six
years after entering his uncle's business, he
broke loose from his Wood Street moorings, and
exchanged the apprentice's jerkin for the student s
' 26
Early Years
:ap 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 apprenticed by
Sir William to Mr Massam, a London merchant,
in 1605, had, in similar fashion, turned his back
upon the counting-house in 16 10, 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
well-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.
27
CHAPTER II
AT CAMBRIDGE
BEFORE following Herrick to the
University of Cambridge, 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
composition. 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 consideration.
One of these is the poem, To my dearest Sister,
Mistress Mercy Herrick (818), which must have
been written not later than 161 2 ; for some time
before that year, as Metcalfe's Visitation of
Suffolk (161 2) informs us, she had married a cer-
tain John Wingfield, son and heir of Humphrey
Wingfield, Esq. of Brantham, Suffolk.
The other poem of this period is of a much
28
o
CJ
O a:
s< a v^
X c ^
w r: ft
C/5
I
At Cambridge
more sustained and ambitious character, and is
entitled A Country Life: to his Brother, Mr
Thomas Herrick (io6). The opening 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.
The reference is to the important step in his
career which Thomas Herrick took about the
year 1610, when he left the business house in
London of Mr Massam and settled himself on a
country 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-lived. By the year 16 13 the farm
was anything but the Elysium which the poet
speaks of. On May 12 of that year Thomas
Herrick, writing to his uncle. Sir William, 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
29
Robert Herrick
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 161 3, 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 even-
ings at Dean Prior. Another, and probably
earlier, version of the poem is, in fact, extant in
Ashmole MS. 38, and has been carefully com-
pared 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 light 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 life.
But while the idea of the poem comes from
Horace, there is nowhere any trace of servile
imitation, and the pleasures of a country life which
Herrick points out to his brother are rarely out
of harmony with the surroundings of an English
homestead.
Interesting in its disclosure of the young poet's
feeling for nature and a country life, the poem
^ pp. cli-cliv.
30
At Cambridge
is no less interesting 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 tnici
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 moralising 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
oetry. Shakespeare's '' To thine own self be
true," seems to have been in the young poet's
:^^mind when he wrote the couplet, —
^^H But to live round, and close, and wisely true
^^^ To thine own self, and known to few ; —
I
i
See Mr Pollard's note to this poem, i. p. 265-6.
31
Robert Herrick
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 country
life expressed in his verses " To Sir Robert
Wroth." Jonson is describing the Hfe of a
country gentleman, Herrick that of a simple
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 life and ceremonial, and that frank
transference of all this to English soil, which
characterise much of his later poetry.
It was probably in the summer 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
undergraduate, and he accordingly entered his
college as a fellow-commoner. In so doing, he
32
At Cambridge
subjected himself to a heavy burden of expendi-
ture, 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,
161 2, we find the entry, '* Lent to Robarte
Hericke more at his request £10," and a little
later, " Pd to him the 5 March 161 2 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, clothes, and tuition : extraordinary
items of expenditure were met by extraordinary
grants.^
' 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. 161 5, Paid to Mr Woolley for Robins Gown
and Hose, £2, 12s. od." The College-pot was the silver goblet of
10 oz., which, according to a decree at St John's College, every
fellow-commoner must present to his college on admission. See
Baker- Mayor, History of St Johrts College, Cambridge, p. 548.
The date, July 161 3, is of importance as indicating the time at
which Herrick went up to the University.
c 33
Robert Herrick
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 cousin of 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 pre-
ceding century, when Roger Ascham and Sir
John Cheke were reckoned among its members ;
but it was still, with Trinity and King's, one of
the leading colleges of the University, and had
on its roll during the first half of the seventeenth
century the distinguished names of Thomas
Wentworth, 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 inmates 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, the 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
34
At Cambridge
uncle during his residence at Cambridge, and to
these we naturally turn for information concerning
the character of his college life. But in 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 friend-
ships, nothing of poetic activity. Their persistent
burden, or, as Herrick himself expresses it, their
•* plainsong," is the request for money — " mitte
pecuniamr As already stated, the agreement
between nephew and uncle was that the former
should receive a payment of ^lo quarterly to
meet all ordinary expenses. The ex-apprentice
had not been long at the University before he
discovered that £^o 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 fellow-
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 £^0
to be sufficient ; which I was willing 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 discontent, so another way it made me avoid
unnecessary acquaintance, idle visits and many
35
Robert Herrick
unnecessary expenses." ^ If D'Ewes experienced
want and discontent on ;^50 a year, the want
and discontent of Herrick must have been pro-
portionably 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 live 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 impertinent expens,
but for constraind necessitie : for be your self
the judg, when above twentie pounds will not
suffice the house, not reckening with it com-
moditie for my self (I meane apparell nor other
complements) nor tuition mony nor other
sundrie occasions for chardges, this but
considered, their is no reasonable soule but will
kindly and indulgently censure of my lyfe and
me. Had I but a competent estate to mayntayne
my self to my title, I could presume 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 disfurnished I came to
Cambridg, without bedding (which I yet want)
and other necessaries, you would (as I now
^ Autobiography of Sir Simonds UEives^ ed. Halliwell-Phillips,
vol. i. p. 119.
36
I
At Cambridge
rust 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
prodigall, for I endevour rather to strengthen
(then debilitate) my feeble familie fortune."
From other letters we learn that the fellow-
commoner has been compelled " to runne some-
what 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, St 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 en-
treating you to paye to M' Adrian Marius,
bookseller of the blackfryers, the sum of lo li,
from whome so soone as it is payd, I shall
receave a dew acknowledgment. I shall not
37
Robert Herrick
need to amplyfy my sense, for this warrants
sufficiencie. I expect your countenance and
your futherance to my well beeing who hath
power to command my service to eternitie.
Heaven be your guide to direct you to per-
fection which is the end of mans endeavour.
I expect an answeare from M'^ Adrian, con-
cerning the recipt.
Robin Hearick,
obliged to your virtue eternally.
[Endorsement]
" The right wor" his loving
uncle, S"" William Hearick,
dwelling at London in
great Wood-Street, this.^
The humble and obsequious tone in which
Herrick addresses his uncle in these letters would
seem to indicate 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 William's account books
also discloses the fact that while the impecunious
student was finding infinite difficulty in obtaining
^ This letter was presented to Canon Leigh's grandmother,
Lady Sitwell of Rempstone, Derbyshire, by a foniier proprietor
of Beaumanor, early in the nineteenth century ; its discovery
raises the question whether other letters of the poet's are hidden
away somewhere in private autograph collections.
38
At Cambridge
his quarterly allowance of ^lo, the wealthy uncle
was borrowing hundreds of pounds from the
nephew. The entry in question is as follows :
'* My Nephew, Robert Hericke of Cambridge,
the 25th March 16 14, I owe him upon a Bond
to be paid at my House at 3 Months 300 li."
Dr Grosart in his Memorial Introduction has
emptied the vials of his wrath upon the head of
" the closefisted old knight " with such zeal and
copiousness that subsequent biographers are
for all time relieved of a similar obligation. Yet
one may be allowed to express the opinion that
Sir William was making a churlish repayment to
the orphan son for the generous 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 Goldsmiths' Row, Cheapside, and this fact
ought not to have been forgotten when, thirty
years later, Nicholas's son was struggling with
poverty at Cambridge.
It is unfortunate 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
39
Robert Herrick
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, 161 3, 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 acquaint-
ance the poet must have made at Cambridge,
w^as Clipseby, afterwards Sir Clipseby, Crew,
the eldest son of Sir Ranulphe Crew, who was
Speaker of the House of Commons in 16 14 and
Lord Chief Justice in 1625. We learn from the
Baker Memoirs ^ that Clipseby Crew was a
student at St John's College, Cambridge ; and as
he was born in 1599, his residence at the Univer-
sity must have extended over almost the same
period that Herrick spent there. To this friend
^ See Register of Fellows admitted to St John's College.
Baker- Mayor, p. 293.
2 Vivian, Visitation of Devon^ 1620. ^ P. 492.
40
At Cambridge
several of the Hesperides 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 Clipseby represent that knight as a
sharer in some of the poet's bacchanalian joys,
and the poem entitled A Hymn to Sir Clipseby
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
Cambridge 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,
acquiring 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 still formed the chief
theme of study, though the subversive Dialectica
of Peter Ramus had by this time got a firm hold
of the English universities, and appeared among
41
Robert Herrick
the text-books of the Cambridge undergradu-
ates.i
Of humanistic teaching proper, as far as a
student's preparation for his degree went, there
was very Httle ; though Herrick may very well
have attended the pubHc lectures of the Regius
Professor of Greek, Andrew Downes, and listened
to his exposition of Demosthenes or Thucydides.
We may also be sure that he did not neglect the
Roman poets, whose acquaintance he first made
in his 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 Common-
places in the Public Schools, listened to George
Herbert's public lectures 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 lighter
moments he had Gellius's Attic Nights and
Macrobius's Saturnals. These last two works,
which supply in an informal manner much
antiquarian knowledge of Greek and Roman
1 Mullinger, The University of Cambridge^ vol. ii., p. 404 f.
42
At Cambridge
life, may very well have been included among
Herrick's store of books, and have furnished him
with that acquaintance with Roman social life 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 Herrickwas pursuing
his studies at Cambridge was not remarkable for
the exemplary 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 perennial
conflicts with the townsmen and the watch, and,
contrary to all 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 *' swear-
ing, drinking, rioting, and hatred of all piety
and virtue under false and adulterate names did
abound there [St John's] and generally in all
the University." It may readily be granted that
Herrick, with the hot blood of Norse ances-
tors tingling in his veins, partook of as much of
the ''cakes and ale" of university life as proctorial
vigilance and a slender purse would admit. The
author of the Welco7ne to Sack — Was it perhaps
an effusion of these Cambridge days ? — was no
precisian, and could ruffle it with the best of the
43
Robert Herrick
*'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 important rperiod 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 suc-
ceeding 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 gold-
smith-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 University, 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,
44
I
At Cambridge
an intimation 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 pleasurable expectancy
throughout the colleges, and preparations 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. The news of the royal visit spread
to Oxford, and we find William Herrick, the
eldest son of Sir William, and a fellow-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." ^
The University authorities at Cambridge,
having in mind the seemly behaviour of the
students on so important an occasion as a royal
visit, passed special ordinances. Having regard
to " the fearful] enormitye and excesse of apparell
scene in all degrees " of students, they expressly
forbade the wearing of '* vast bands, huge cuffs,
^ Nichols, History of County of Leicester^ iii. p. 163,
45
Robert Herrick
shoe-roses, tufts, locks and topps of hare, un-
beseeminge that modesty and carridge of
students in so renowned an Universitye,"^ and
threatened with instant expulsion the under-
graduate 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 ^looo
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. The
Disputation, that exhibition of mental gladiator-
ship which was an heirloom 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 interested the King most
of all, was one which concerned the reasoning
powers of dogs. " Can dogs syllogise .^ " was the
form in which the question was worded, and the
disputants were two learned divines, Matthew
Wren, afterwards Bishop of Ely, and John
^ Nichols, Progresses of James /., iii. 44 ; Mullinger, The
University of Cambridge y ii. 516.
2 Letter of Mr Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, quoted by
Nichols, Progresses ofJa?nes /., vol. iii. p. 48.
46
At Cambridge
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 listener 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 xh^ 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
^ Mullinger, op. cit., ii. 520.
47
Robert Herrick
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 well received by Herrick him-
self; for about this time his thoughts were
turning towards the law as a profession. He
was still an undergraduate, but the sense of
advancing 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 16 13, 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 will not long consist in the
spheare where I now move, I make known my
thoughts, and modestly crave your counsell,
48
I
At Cambridge
whether it were better for me to direct my study
towards the lawe or not ; which if I should (as it
will not be impertinent), I can with facilitie laboure
my self into another colledg appointed for the like
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 objec-
tion 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 Hall
was founded in the fourteenth century, its first
master was a collateral ancestor and namesake
of the poet, Robert Eyrick, who had died
Bishop of Lichfield in 1385. When Herrick
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 in-
forms his uncle of the change which he has made
is not written in the best of spirits : —
49
Robert Herrick
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 incor-
porated 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, togeither
with your self, will bring my ebbing estate to an
indifferent tyde ; meanewhile I hope I have (as I
presume you know) changd my colledg 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
(retayning 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
50
I
At Cambridge
college where the cost of living was less had not
relieved him of the burden of impecuniosity.
In his failure to secure a sufficient competence
from his uncle, he realises that he '* must crie with
the afflicted 'usquequo, usquequo, Dominey and
hopes against hope that his uncle will remember
him *' like a trew Maecenas." In January, 1 6 1 7, he
underwent the ordeal of the various Acts which
were required for the passing of the examination,
and in the same month his name, ^'Robertus
Hearick," appears on the register of bachelors of
arts. The successful passing of his '' Commence-
ment " 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
Commencment, v^hich 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"",
51
Robert Herrick
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
vertues.
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 born of success, he even ventures to
send his quarterly request for ten pounds before
the proper time.^ The future is still uncertain,
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 uncle, Sir William
Herrick.
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 remained 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
1 This I take to be the meaning of the phrase, " abortive and
borne before maturitie," as apphed to the letter which he is
writing.
52
I
At Cambridge
minority composed almost exclusively of clerical
fellows of colleges, whose time was mainly given
to the all-absorbing controversial theology of the
day, and to the composition of ' commonplaces '
to be delivered 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 composition of a single declama-
tion. This probably presented little difficulty
to Herrick when, three years later, he took the
higher degree, and was enrolled as a master of
arts at the registry.
In 161 7, 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
^ Mullinger, op. cit.^ vol. ii. p. 414.
53
Robert Herrick
Manuscripts Commission (1870), Mr H. T. Riley
published certain documents preserved at Trinity
Hall, included among which are entries in the
Steward's Book of debts owing to the college by
•* Robert Herricke." The entries are for the
years 1623 and 1630, and the sums owed are
£Zy 17s. 7d. for the former year, and
£10, 1 6s. 9d. 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
Church, Oxford, and Lincoln's Inn, was ever
a member of Trinity Hall, or, indeed, of the
University of Cambridge. The probability is,
therefore, that Mr Riley was right in his identifica-
tion, and what we know of the poet's impecuni-
osity at the University supports this view.
54
CHAPTER III
" SEALED OF THE TRIBE OF BEN "
TH E twelve years which elapse between
Herrick's graduation 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, and, 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 octogenarian master put
into his little urn, and his pulpit occupied by his
successor. The reader, therefore, in following
55
Robert Herrick
the story of the poet's life during these obscure
years, must be prepared to find, instead of the
record of estabHshed facts, a long series of more
or less plausible suppositions. He will frequently
encounter the words "probable" and "not im-
possible," and must rest content with these until
firmer ground is reached.
When Herrick left the University in 1617, it
is natural 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, however, was residing in London with
his wife and family, and several of Herrick's
poems point to a close friendship between the
brothers. Sir William Herrick, too, probably
passed a certain portion of the year at his busi-
ness-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 disappears from
our view. He lived at Beaumanor until 1653,
but we note, without surprise, that he finds no
place in the poet's " white temple of my heroes,"
* Metcalfe, Visitation of Suffolk in 161 2.
56
^"IHP
I^^^^Sealed of the Tribe of Ben"
the ** eternal calendar " which promises im-
mortality 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 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
57
Robert Herrick
on his military expedition to the Isle of Rhe.
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 life, 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 unprinted records of the period.
There 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
Howell, 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
impecunious Cambridge student of former years
managed to meet the expenses of fashionable
London life during the whole of this period. We
know that he had patrons like Endymion Porter,
Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland, and the
58
'' Sealed of the Tribe of Ben "
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 uncertain.
But whether he obtained some lucrative appoint-
ment at Court or elsewhere, or was dependent
for his sustenance on patrons and rich relations,
or whether he had learnt Mrs Rawdon Crawley's
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 Fa^^ewell unto Poetry}
which was almost certainly written in 1629, that
it is not lack of money which leads him to the
priesthood. Apostrophising 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 ; V/V not need
^ Poems not included in the Hesperides^ Pollard, ii. 263.
59
Robert Herrick
(The scarecrow tmto mankind) that doth breed
Wiser conclusions in me^ since I know
Tve 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 geniahty
of his nature, to which his poems bear abundant
testimony, he moved freely in circles somewhat
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 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,
according to Nichols' History of Leicester's hire,
^ ii. 265.
60
"f
Sealed of the Tribe of Ben "
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 Elizabeth 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), woo-
ing 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 found in this tavern life, and
of his willingness to " let the canakin clink,"
there can be no question. H is bacchanalian verses
and his anacreontics in praise of a life of boon
^ These are the following : To his Brother, Nicholas Herrick^
(iioo) ; To his Sister-in-law, Susanna Herrick isil) ; Upon his
Kinswoman, Mistress Elizabeth Herrick {yjd) \ To his Kinsman,
Tho7nas Herrick (983) ; To his Kinswoman, Mistress Susa7ina
Herrick (522) ; Upon his Kinswoman, Mistress Bridget Herrick
(564) ; To his Nephew to be prosperous in Painting (384).
61
Robert Herrick
fellowship are many and whole-hearted, while his
Ode for Ben Jonson (911) is an eloquent tribute
of his devotion to the *' father " who presided over
his ** sons and servitors " at those
Lyric 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 represented
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 Nor-
wich. From the Leges Conviviales, 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 foeminge 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
62
r
' Sealed of the Tribe of Ben "
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 bacch-
analian 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
feelings were ever loyal and devout. When the
*' Master " died in 1 637, Herrick did not contribute
anything to the volume of memorial verses, en-
titled 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 in-
cluded m Jonsonus Virbius. The truth is — and
it is one to which we shall have to return later —
that Herrick recognised 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
I been sealed a member, but he was also his
poetic father, to whom he looked for guidance in
I
I
Robert Herrick
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 religion'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 con-
tributed 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 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
64
"Sealed of the Tribe of Ben"
Herrick lived 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
lyrics in the Hesperides and Noble Numbers
were written with the express purpose of being
set to music and sung before the King in White-
hall. 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 Henry 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 published 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,
published from 1653 onwards, we find the follow-
ing : — " 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 ^ published in
'* 1669, together with the following : " To Elizabeth
Wheeler, under the name of the Lost Shep-
herdess " (263), *' The Willow Garland " (425), and
E 65
Robert Herrick
the famous song ** To Anthea — Bid me to Live "
(267). The composer of the music in the case
of each of the above lyrics was Henry Lawes.
His brother WilHam 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 Lilies came White (190),"
set to music by Nicholas Laniere.
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 mistresses," 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
Katherine 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 "mis-
tresses," as the most casual reader of his poems
must be aware, are many. Here are some of
them : —
1 To Mistress Katherine Bradshaw, the lovely, that crowned
him with Laurel (224).
66
" Sealed of the Tribe of Ben ''
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-like crystalline :
Sweet Electra, and the choice
Myrrha, 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 com-
plete. 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," moralising as he does it ;
Biancha, whom, when he is blind, he will be able
to follow by her perfumes ; Perenna, who is
invited to dress his tomb with smallage,^ cypress-
twigs 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 pre-
^ Water parsley.
67
Robert Herrick
decessor 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 Devonshire. 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 ; lyric 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 HesperideSy
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 lived here \
68
I
Sealed of the Tribe of Ben*'
I should delight to have my curls half drown'd
In Tyrian 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.
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 atmos-
phere of the poem is that of the country, and
the charm with which the poet has invested his
description of the May-day festival accords with
the life 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 Edmund Gosse has discussed 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, Anthea, and the deae minores, but has a very
real faith in Julia of the ''black eyes, double chin,
and strawberry-cream complexion." ^ He thinks
^ Seventeenth Century Studies, p. 123.
69
Robert Herrick
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 JuHa,
and regards her as the mother of the girl to whom
is addressed the poem entided Mr Herrick : His
Daughter s Dow7y!^ Julia is certainly the mis-
tress who produces on our minds the greatest
impression of reality, and we may therefore con-
sider 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 affectionate leave before starting on
his voyage^ — the voyage was probably that to
the Isle of Rhe in 1627 ; he bids her burn his
poems if he shall at his death leave them un-
perfected,* and upon her he lays other solemn
charges, if she shall outlive 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 lips, the
^ Mr Gosse, writing in 1872, believed that Herrick remained at
Cambridge until appointed vicar of Dean Prior.
^ "Poems not included in Hesperides," Pollard, ii. 260.
^ His Sailing frojn Julia (35).
* His Request to Julia (59).
70
r
I
Sealed of the Tribe of Ben "
candour " of her teeth, the perfumes she ex-
hales 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, Julias 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 Julia and her rivals is the complete
absence of anything like incident or drama.
There is no development in the poet's amours,
no inrush of hot jealousy, no satiety, no quarrel-
ling, no reconciliation. The poet, in spite of his
fourteen mistresses, 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 like 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
71
Robert Herrick
makes the love-story of Shakespeare's Sonnets
seem so real? But of all this there is nothing
in the Hesperides, v 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 applies
to Julia just as much as to any of the other
mistresses. He entreats her to close his eyes
when death overtakes him, and follow 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
Herrick'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 char-
acter 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 fervour 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 Julia belong exclusively to the
72
" Sealed of the Tribe of Ben "
period before the poet's ordination. I believe,
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 in-
cluded in the Hesperides, but has been introduced
by modern editors into the collective works of
Herrick from Ashmole MS. 38, in the Bodleian.^
It bears at the close 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.
^ See Pollard ii. 260.
73
Robert Herrick
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 make it clear that, in addition to men of
letters and musicians, Herrick also numbered
amongst his friends certain country knights,
courtiers and court-officials ; that prominent
members of the nobility were his patrons, and
that some of his lyrics were sung in the royal
presence at Whitehall. The poem entitled A
New Years Gift to Sir Simon Steivard (319),
was probably written in the December of
1623 ;^ it is a poetical epistle, apparently written
from somewhere in the country to Sir Simon
^ See Pollard's Note to this poem.
74
" Sealed of the Tribe of Ben '
who is in town. The poet, instead of sending
his friend political 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 festivites which belong to a Yule-
tide in the country. At the same time, he is
anxious that he shall not be forgotten by his
London friends in his absence.
Another associate of these years was Sir
Lewis Pemberton, 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
Pemberton {^']']^ 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, pays a warm
tribute to the hospitality and inborn kindliness
of Sir Lewis.
1 Sir Thomas Overbury's Characters : " The Country
Gentleman."
75
Robert Herrick
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 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 impecunious undergraduate had vainly
desired his uncle. Sir William, to be — '*a true
Maecenas." Porter was, after Buckingham, one
of the most influential of the King's courtiers.
Born 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 fortunes 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 knowledge of
Spain led to his being sent thither in 1622 to
prepare for the arrival of the princely wooer.
76
I
I
'' Sealed of the Tribe of Ben "
He returned to England, but in the following
year accompanied Prince Charles and Buckingham
to Madrid. After the new king's accession,
Endymion 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 misfortunes 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 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
^ See State Papers, Domestic, of the reigns of James I. and
Charles l.^passhii^ and Dorothea Townshend, The Life a7id Letters
of Endymion Porter j also E. B, de Fonblanque, Lives of the
Lords Strangford.
77
Robert Herrick
his admirable wit, and by Charles for his general
learning, brave style, sweet temper, great experi-
ence, travels and modern languages." That, in
addition to these qualities, he was an accomplished
connoisseur is attested by the fact 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 servility 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 gift of
the Sabine form from Maecenas, but in acknow-
ledging 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 Drosomell, and
dainty Amaryllis.
The mention of Endymion Porter brings us
back to Herrick's earlier friend, John Weekes,
^ See To the Honoured Master^ Endymion Porter {1071).
78
F
I
" Sealed of the Tribe of Ben "
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 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, J oh. 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 humourist whose reputation for joviality is
recorded by Anthony a 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 White-
hall, 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
^ See Calendar of State Papers^ DomestiCy 1629-1631, p. 5.
2 Introduction to Herrick's Works, p. xv.
79
Robert Herrick
are the Christmas Carols and Songs for the
Circumcision, which are described as ''sung
before the King, in the Presence at Whitehall."
Mr Hazlitt'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 any mention of Herrick. But what-
ever be the relationship 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
80
r
" Sealed of the Tribe of Ben "
respectively, addressed verses to the king during
the civil wars, and welcomed him with a son or
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 Buckingha^n (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 expedi-
tion to the Isle of Rhe in defence of the French
Huguenots, and to Buckingham had been en-
trusted the leadership. Encountering numerous
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 Supposed Wife when he Travelled
1 Some time after Buckingham's death in 1628, he addresses a
poem to the duke's niece, the Lady Mary ViUiers ; see No. 341.
F 81
Robert Herrick
(465), and, perhaps, his Sho7't Hymn to Neptune
(325). The first of these reads as follows : —
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-deliver 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 kiss :
Work that to life, and let me ever dwell
In thy remembrance, Julia. 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
will 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 "
^ " Remora^ the sea lamprey, or suckstone, believed to check
the course of ships by clinging to their keels " (Pollard).
82
" Sealed of the Tribe of Ben "
whose name the Gallic wit of the besieged soldiers
anagrammatlses into ''coquin bani." ^ The
English State Papers, and the late Professor
S. R. Gardiner ^ 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 be regarded seriously, actually took
part in them on one occasion.
Herrlck's military chaplaincy Indicates that, in
the year 1627 at the latest, he had finally 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
life and character. Those verses help us to
follow the poet along his primrose path of dalli-
1 See " Lettre du Baron de Sainct Surin k un sien amy dans
I'armee du Roy. Ecritte de la Citadelle S. Martin de R^ ce lo
Septembre (1627)."
2 History of England^ 1603- 1642, vol. vi. p. 167.
^Howell, Familiar Letters^ ed. Jacobs, I. 250.
83
Robert Herrick
ance, enjoying to the full 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 ? i
This is the cry of the anacreontic lyrist 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 " :
Crown we our heads with roses then.
And 'noint with Tyrian balm ; for when
We two are dead.
The world with us is buried.
^No. 170.
84
'^ Sealed of the Tribe of Ben '*
Then live we free
As is the air, and let us be
Our own fair wind, and 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 value. 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 declara-
tion 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 Carlisle (169) — the heroine of
Browning's Strafford — show, he could pay a
compliment to a high-born 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 ;
1 To Mistress Pot (226).
2 A Tertiary of Littles (733).
85
Robert Herrick
Or so as darkness made a star,
To show at once both night and 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.^
The year 1629 brought with it a great change
in the poet's circumstances and manner of Hfe.
The essenced cavalier, the sealed member of the
tribe of Ben, became the country 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 Suf-
folk. Of the poet's relations with her we know
nothing, and speculation on such a matter is
particularly undesirable. She left him in her
will a ring of the value of twenty shillings, a like
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 ;^ioo to her son William, but
most of her property went to the daughter in
whose house she died. Her various legacies to
* upon a black twist rounding the arm of the Countess of
Carlisle (169).
86
r
I
" Sealed of the Tribe of Ben "
friends and servants, 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
Public Record Office, and endorsed September
30, 1629, furnishes us with the following informa-
tion : —
** A presentacon 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 promocon of the last Incumbent to the
Bishoprick of Carlile. Subscr upon significacon
of his Ma^^ pleasure by the Lord Viscount
Dorchester, and procured by his Lo^.
p. Gall."
The living of Dean Prior was in the hands of
Sir Edward Giles, the lord of the manor there,
but as Dr 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 slight delay in the negotia-
tions, for among the State Papers we meet with
the following, which is in Herrick's own neat
handwriting, and which furnishes us with the
^ The will is transcribed verbatim in Grosart's Memorial Intro-
duction^ p. Ixxxiv.
87
Robert Herrick
valuable information as to the poet's service
under Buckingham in the Isle of Rh6 : — •
'' To the Kinges most excellent Majesty : The
humble peticon of Robert Hericke, Chaplayne
to the late Duke of Buckingham in the Isle of
Reis. Whereas yt was yo'^ Ma*^ especiall favour
to bestow on y* peticoer the vicaridge of Deane,
by y^ remoovall of Doctor Potter to y'' B^p^ of
Carlyle. It may now please yo"" most sacred
Ma^y (the Commenda granted to him by yo' Ma^^
being expired this present Mictias) 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.
— Ccetera mando Deo."
A further confirmation of Herrick's appoint-
ment to the Devonshire living is found in the
nineteenth volume of Rymer's Foedera where, in
a list of preferments for the year 1629, we
read : —
**Robertus Hearick, Clericus, A.M., habet
consimiles Literas Patentes de presentatione ad
Vicariamde Deane 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
88
I
I
'' Sealed of the Tribe of Ben ''
emotion which is rarely met with elsewhere — it
is manifest that he realised to the full the serious-
ness of the step which he was now taking, and
the lofty duties of the services to which he was
dedicating his life 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 guide and pastor of a village community.
In the Ashmole MS. 2>^, which contains several
of Herrick's poems, is a copy of verses entitled
Mr Robert Her rick : 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 attention 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. 59) as evidence 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 applied
to the noble numbers of sacred song. The part-
ing is hard, for the muse of poetry has been the
yoke-fellow of his life, filling him with rapture
and mystic frenzy : —
^ There is another copy of the same poem, with a few variants,
in the British Museum, Add. MS. 22, 603.
89
Robert Herrick
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 dulled with iron sleep — but have outworn
The fresh and fairest flourish of the morn
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 for more glorious ends, and
he is entering a higher sphere of service than
that of the muses of HeHcon. He casts upon
his mistress the wistful eyes of Orpheus as he
turned to look upon his Eurydice, or those of
Demosthenes 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 ;
^ Poems not included in Hesperides ; Pollard ii. 264.
2 Numerous = moving in rhythmic numbers.
90
Sealed of the Tribe of Ben''
And when thou art upon that forked hill
Amongst the thrice three sacred virgins, fill
A full-brim m'd bowl of fury and of rage,
And quaff it to the poets of our age . . .
Thus with a kiss 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 well. Farewell.
91
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 Plymouth passes through the scattered
village, and within a five miles' radius of Herrick's
church lie the ancient townships of Totnes and
Ashburton. Modern civilisation, 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
92
Dean Prior
honeysuckle creep over the cottages, and the
Httle roadside gardens are still gay with the
flowers which we meet with in the Hesperides —
daffodils, primroses, violets, and wallflowers, the
crimson paeony, and the stately white lily. In
the valley are water-meadows, each meadow
irrigated in the characteristic Devonian manner
>y 'Meats" which bring fertility from the
Dartmoor streams ; and above these, climbing
upwards towards the heather moors, are the
cornfields, the bright red earth of which glows
in the early spring sunshine.
But the chief beauty of the village lies in its
apple orchards, which creep close to the church
and the cottages and follow the devious windings
of Dean Burn. 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 glebe with the Sabine
farm of the famous Roman lyrist.
93
Robert Herrick
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 burn grow more placid, it still preserves
something of its '' warty incivility " :
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.
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
1 To Dean Bu7 Ji {Zb).
94
Dean Prior
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 con-
tent 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 church 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 offices, are probably not later in date
than the seventeenth century, and may well
have been the parlour, hall, kitchen, and buttery
for which the poet offers his hymn of thanksgiving
to God.
Herrick's parishioners were doubtless to a
large extent husbandmen, engaged in the cultiva-
tion of corn and fruit, and in the rearing of cattle
and sheep. Some of them, however, were pro-
bably 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 village of Dean still preserves a
tradition of a weaver whose ghost used to appear
95
Robert Herrick
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 in 1901 was 259, but the church
register gives evidence 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 Northleigh, members of which were settled
at Dean Prior in Herrick's time, and are cele-
brated by him in his poems.
Of Herrick's manner of life at Dean Prior,
and of his relationships with his parishioners, we
learn a good deal from the Hesperides and
^ Worthies of Devon, p. 422.
96
Dean Prior
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- 1 647) 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.
Following upon this, is the poem To his House-
hold 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 lines
Upon Himself {^s^), and His Return to London
{713), in which he welcomes, with something like
c 97
Robert Herrick
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
sympathised 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
Syms. But we can realise that in Dean Prior,
as throughout the country, those years of strife
must have sorely tried the better feelings of
many an English 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 feelings finds
98
Dean Prior
utterance in his verse. At such a time, and
amid such surroundings, the memory of the old
London Hfe 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 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 :
99
Robert Herrick
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.
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 despond-
ency, 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.
ICO
Dean Prior
What, then, do Herrick's strictures on Devon-
shire 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 distasteful and
his parishioners churlish and insolent ; they show,
too, that at other times he experienced moods of
despondency in which his present life stood out
in drab contrast to the glittering shows of
earlier 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 has
lost moves him to elegiac lament, or to male-
diction. 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 against 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
lOI
Robert Herrick
care. It was a much more frugal life than that
which he had spent in London at the tables of
the rich ; but he had come to realise 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 con-
tentment, and entitled His Grange, or Private
Wealth (724), brings the poets Devonshire life
before us with singular vividness 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.
102
Dean Prior
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 Thanks-
giving to God for his House (47). It is too
long, and perhaps too familiar, to quote, but
some reference to it may be made, \i only to show
how completely it refutes the idea that its author
was habitually discontented with his surround-
ings. We see the parson seated in the chimney-
corner of his *' cell," eating his beloved beet and
drinking his spiced wassail bowls, while Prue
Baldwin is in the dairy making Devonshire
cream. Or we follow him to his acres of glebe,
where the cornfields are ripe to harvest, and the
pastures well stocked with the red Devon cattle.
The gratitude of the parish priest is chiefly for
"creature comforts," and the picture which he
paints would have better pleased the Sabine
Horace than Herrick's contemporary, the author
of The Priest to the Temple. Yet we are made
aware of the parson's simple generosity, and we
^ Tracy is the name of his spaniel, as the poet himself informs
us in a note to the original edition of Hesperides.
103
Robert Herrick
see the threshold of his house worn away by the
footsteps of the poor.
When we attempt to realise the sharp contrast
which his manner of Hfe at Dean Prior presented
to that of the London years which preceded it,
our surprise is not that Herrick sometimes gave
voice to feeling^s 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 pliancy of his
temper and the breadth of his tastes and
sympathies. His finely sensuous nature re-
sponded to varying, nay, conflicting appeals.
He is alike the poet of the town and the
country, of the Court and the cottage. He
delights in the artificial graces, the studied re-
finements, the culture and gallantry of the town,
but also in village customs and superstitions,
and the simple pleasures of rustic life. He
sings **of balm, of oil, of spice and ambergris,"
but also '' of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails,
wakes " ; he can take delight in the riband that
supports Julia's petticoat and the odours of
** camphire, storax, spikenard, galbanum " that
are breathed forth when she unlaces herself, but
also in the colour and grace of the daffodil
and the perfume of the violet. Settled in his
Devonshire home, the Anacreon of the Devil
Tavern, the courtier-lyrist, the poet of perfumes
104
Dean Prior
and millinery, seeks amid his new surroundings
new themes for poetic handling, and finds them
close at hand in the rustic sports, junketings and
superstitions 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 things 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.
Dartmoor farmers still declare themselves pixy-
led when they lose their way on the moor in
returning from market, and until 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
from rupture through the split trunk of a young
ash-tree, were everywhere in vogue. Herrick's
fairy-poems are based rather on literary models
^ For a reference to this custom see the Twenty-second Report
of the Co7ninittee on Devonshire Folk-lore^ edited by P. F. S.
Amery, 1905. For an interesting account of Devonshire folk-lore
of a hundred years ago, see Mrs Bray's Description of the part oj
Di^vonshire bordet ing on the Tamar and the Tavy.
Robert Herrick
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 relationship which existed between Herrick
and his parishioners. 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 con-
nected 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
parishioners, but that these are all. 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
io6
I
Dean Prior
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, 1 8 10). ''Being in Devonshire 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 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 acquainted 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
Noble Numbers, among which was the beauti-
ful Litany quoted above. These she had learnt
from her mother, who was apprenticed to Merrick's
107
Robert Herrick
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, dis-
cover ; but she adds, what they do not discover,
that he also kept a pet 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 statements of Dorothy King,
1 08
I
Dean Prior
and her ability to quote from the Hesperides and
Noble Numbers, furnish us with a remarkable
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
Williams 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 bookseller. Thomas Hunt knew well
enough the popularity of Herrick as a local poet,
and accordingly, without waiting for the arrival
109
Robert Herrick
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 appear-
ance 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.
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. Fortunately 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 100). 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 de-
termined not to let himself be forgotten either
no
Dean Prior
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 Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland,
also belong to this period (112) ;2 he looks to
Westmorland and to Robert Pierrepont, Vis-
count Newark, as the foster-fathers who shall
protect his verses when their author is in his
grave.
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
1 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic ,16^7 , p. 435.
2 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 them-
selves, e.^.^
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 Earl of Westmorland.
Ill
Robert Herrick
tomb. The poems which Herrick wrote on the
death of the great literary dictator have already
been referred to (see page 62), 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 Hall, 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
corner of the shire. This was John Weekes,
who had been appointed Vicar of Sherwell, near
Barnstaple, about the same time that Herrick
had gone to Dean Prior.
In the eyes of the Church, Weekes was a more
important person than the vicar of Dean, for in
112
I
Dean Prior
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 against the orphan remainders of worthiest
men after death."
The tenor of the poet's life within his parish
must have been, at least during his first years
there, singularly uneventful ; and probably the
chief subjects which presented 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 matchless 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 in-
cumbency, 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
H 113
Robert Herrick
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 Har-
borough, 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 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 i^^iA^,
he wishes, in the frank manner of the age, all
married bliss 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.
114
P"
Dean Prior
Another poem of a festive character, which
throws pleasant light upon Herrick's life at
Dean Prior, is that entitled The Meadow Verse, or
Anniversary, to Mistress Bridget Lowman (354).
The Lowmans, like the Yardes, were the vicar-
poet's parishioners, and were also relatives of
Sir Edward Giles. Giles Lowman had married
early in 1642 Welthian Austyn 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
hich 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 will be alive to sing another meadow-
verse in Bridget Lowman's honour.
The life of the country vicar in his cell has often
been represented as a life of solitude, broken
only by the faithful ministrations of his house-
keeper. Prudence Baldwin. Such a representa-
tion, 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
115
Robert Herrick
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, 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 {z"^"]), 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 Delicice, pub-
lished in 1655, the author of which was either
116
Dean Prior
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 offering,
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.
A willing mind pawns wedding-ring.
Wife, gown, books, children, anything ;
No way neglected, nought too dear,
To see such friends as thou 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 Sher-
well, with its pointed allusion to Weekes' friend,
the author of the Welcome and Farewell to Sack,
gives us shrewd insight into the temptations
117
Robert Herrick
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 :
Thomsen 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 qualifyed 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 Delles man abt Mr Henrique [sic] a minister.
The statement, and the apparent insinua-
tion of Mr Dell's man, call for notice. William
Dell was secretary to Archbishop Laud, and
among the State Papers are several references
to him in the discharge of his duties. It was
apparently his office to enquire 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,
118
Dean Prior
and the writer of the above letter was one of
these. It can hardly be doubted that '* Mr
Herricque," though the spelling in the endorse-
ment 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 West-
minster Abbey in the reign of James I., and
died in 1623.^ There is no need to accept
the insinuation of Mr Dell'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.
^ See Pollard's edition oi Herrick^ i. 318.
119
Robert Herrick
It may be that Laud was too busy with other
matters in 1640 to enquire into the suggestion
of misconduct brought against a clergyman from
Devonshire, or it may be that on examination
he found Herrick innocent. We all know the
couplet which rounds off the Hesperides :
To his book's end this last line he'd have placed :
Jocund his muse was, but his life was chaste —
but the importance which we attach to this state-
ment is somewhat lessened by the fact that it is
a quotation from Ovid :
Vita verecunda est, musa jocosa, mihi.^
The same declaration, however, is made, with
some display of earnestness, in the poem To
his Tombmaker (546), and those who have learnt
to recognise 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 interest-
ing to find that Herrick while In London was
^ Tristia^ ii. 354.
120
Dean Prior
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 publish any of his verses. They
had circulated freely in manuscript, as the poems
in the Ashmole, Rawlinson, and Harleian collec-
tions 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 ;
121
Robert Herrick
but in them ** nature's copy's not eterne," 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 published. This was a truncated
portion of Oberons Feast, which had appeared in
1635, ^^ ^ 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 I full of mirth. | [Woodcut] | London. |
Printed for Richard Harper, and are to be sold |
at his shop, at the Hospitall 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.
Four years later we meet with the following
entry, in the Stationers' Register :
122
Dean Prior
*' 4 Nov. 1639. Entred for his Copie under
the hands of doctor Wykes and Master Feather-
ston, warden, An Addicion of some excellent
Poems to Shakespeare's Poems by other gentle-
men, 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 con-
taining 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
HesperideSy and suffers nothing by comparison
with those of the mighty ones with which it is
123
Robert Herrick
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 publishing his poems were now
swept away. Five months after the above entry
in the Stationers' Register, we meet with the
following :
" 29 Ap. 1640. Entred for his Copie under the
hands of Master Hanley, and Master Bourne,
warden. The Severall Poems, written by Master
Robert Herrick. vj. d."
The publisher who applied for this licence was
Andrew Crooke. Of this volume nothing is
known ; no copy has been traced, and it is un-
certain whether the poems ever passed through
the press. Did the poet, whose fastidious taste
is expressed in his request to Julia to burn his
poems rather than let them go forth unperfected,
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
124
Dean Prior
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 apprecia-
tion 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 1 640-1, 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 lives them well.
One man has reached his sixty years, but he.
Of all those threescore, has not lived half three.
He lives who lives 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 {^i), he
declares with considerable emphasis that he will
spend his days as a bachelor : —
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
1 On Htmse/f (loSS).
125
Robert Herrick
mention is made of '* Mrs Elizabeth Hearicke,"
who was buried on April ii, 1643, Elizabeth
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 Julian Herrick's
will, in which he is mentioned — and 1632, when
his will was proved. She may have come to
live 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 which 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 despondency at an earlier period.
References to old age and death are found in
126
Dean Prior
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 contemplates death in a half-playful
and half-pathetic manner — the pathos being of
the lightest — as in the fanciful Divtfiation by a
Daffodil (107) or the address To Robifi Red-
breast (50). At other times he is more serious,
as for instance when he writes the poem entitled
His Winding-sheet (515), or His last Request to
Julia {log^).
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 being 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 quite 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 "^ —
127
Robert Herrick
'Twixt Kings and subjects there's this 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 protest 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.
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, like 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 controversy into those of civil
war. Included among the Hesperides are a
number of poems which introduce us to that great
conflict. Early in 1642, impending hostilities
forced Charles and Henrietta apart. The latter
1 The Difference between Kings and Subjects (25).
'^ Obedience in Subjects (269).
128
Dean Prior
left England for Holland, where she proceeded
to purchase munitions of war for the campaign,
while her husband went northwards to collect
troops. The separation of husband and wife
moved Herrick to write his verses To the
King and Queen upon their Unhappy Dis-
tances (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 still 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.
129
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 practical fashion
by advancing on Devonshire and winning over
the greater portion of It to the king's slde.^ 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, under 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 {"J 7), as
loyal in feeling as it is beautiful in expression : —
^ See the poem, To the Lord Hopton on his Fight in Cornwall
(1002).
2 See S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War^ \. 162.
130
Dean Prior
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.
le hopefulness which warmed the poet's
drooping spirits was, for the time at least, well
sustained, and to Charles the verses of the
Royalist vicar must have seemed of fair augury.
The two armies met at Lostwithiel in Cornwall,
at the end of August, and the battle resulted in
a complete victory for the king.
Early in the following year, the last of the west-
ern campaigns took place. Fairfax, ** the rider of
the white horse," as the Yorkshire people called
him, was besieging Exeter and making raids up
and down the county. 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
change in temper of the people of South Devon
towards the two contending parties. " We are
131
Robert Herrick
come," said Cromwell to the new recruits, " to set
you, if possible, at liberty from your taskmasters,"
and his word was believed.^ This chano-e in
temper must have weighed heavily upon the
vicar of Dean Prior, and doubtless inspired him
to write his peevish outbursts upon the ** rocky
generation, currish, churlish as the seas," amongst
whom he must still continue to live. He
summons up courage to address a spirited poem
to Sir John Berkeley,^ who was bravely holding
Exeter against the besiegers, and hails with
gladness the arrival of Prince Charles at Exeter
in the following August : —
Meanwhile thy prophets watch by w^atch shall pray,
While young Charles fights, and fighting wins the day :
That done, our smooth-faced poems all shall be
Sung in the high doxology of thee.^
But the poet's prevailing mood is best expressed
by his poems Upon the Troublous Times and
The Bad Season makes the Poet Sad, already
referred to, or by his beautiful 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,
^ Gardiner, The Great Civil War, ii. 431.
2 " To Sir John Berkeley, Governor of Exeter^'' (745).
^ To Prince Charles upon his Coining to Exeter (756).
*No. 219.
132
I
Dean Prior
seek to draw comfort from those Good Thoughts
m 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, ^^^
Herrick's call did not come yet. For four years
after that date he brooded in his vicarage, or
took his solitary 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. With an elation of spirits that
would have done credit to a schoolboy, he left
his parishioners to the spiritual 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 Burn, that
never again would he endure the warty incivility
of itself or its people :
With whom I did, and may re-sojourn, when
Rocks turn to rivers, rivers turn to men.
133
CHAPTER V
LAST YEARS
WHEN Herrick crossed Dean Burn
and took the high-road to Exeter,
his intention seems to have been, not
to proceed direct to London, but to
pay a visit first of all to his friend Weekes, at
Sherwell near Barnstaple. Weekes, accord-
ing to Anthony a Wood, ** suffered much for
the Royal Cause," but it is uncertain whether he
was dispossessed of his Devonshire living at
this time.^ He was, at any rate, still in posses-
sion 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, bonhomiey 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. . . .^
^ See Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy^ p. 392.
2 No. 1056.
134
c
^-m-J^iy^A (t-
'^
*<
^^~«*u*^«.
I^Oyi^iA^U -//^^ ^W^«^
^.
.f
FACSIMILE OF ONE OF HERRICK S LETTERS
/« ^/id? possession of Canon Egerton Leigh
Last Years
We do not know how long Herrlck 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 London and secure for
his treasure the permanence of print. The joy
which was his when at last the metropolis was
reached is recorded in his memorable 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 in-
formation 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
likely enough that both statements are correct as
far as they go. Nothing is more probable than
that the ejected vicar should take up his resi-
dence 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 sub-
sisted by charity," provided that we understand
by it simply that, having no income of his own,
he was dependent upon the hospitality of
relations and friends.
* Sufferings of the Clergy, p. 263.
135
Robert Herrick
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 in-
credible. 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 Westmor-
land was at hand, and busied, like Herrick
himself, with the publication of his verses.^
Another friend of distinction was Henry Pierre-
pont, 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 publication. When Charles I. came
to reside at Hampton Court on August 24, 1647,
under the protection of the Parliamentary army,
1 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 Heraldica, Second series, i. 98.
2 They appeared under the title, Otia Sacra^ in the same year
as the Hesperides.
136
Last Years
the poet, loyal to his sovereign to the end,
welcomed his arrival there 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 tells 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 Williams
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 are
dated in the following year. This intention,
however, of keeping his best wine until the end
of the feast was subsequently abandoned, and all
1 To the Ki?tg (961). 2 7-^ /^2j Book (3).
137
Robert Herrick
subsequent editors have followed the order of
the original edition. 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 chronological
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 typo-
graphical 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 caldron of his wrath,
138
I
■jr :
I
Last Years
and enshrined it within the covers of his book !
The disorderliness of the collection is also not
quite so complete as it seems. We may not go
as far as Henry Morley and recognise 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 introductory. They
give the "argument," tell us something of the
manner of composition and of the poet's mis-
givings as to publication ; they indicate '* when
he would have 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 keep-
ing 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
^ Introduction to Hesperides in Morley's Universal Library.
2 To his Book {\\2^).
139
Robert Herrick
coarse epigram, Herrick had, in some measure,
the high warrant of his friend and master, Ben
Jonson. In that poet's Underwoods 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 and most hopeful Prince, Charles,
Prince of Wales," who is addressed in verses
which fully come up to the standard of adulation
which the occasion, and the age, demanded.
Eighteen years before he had sung the birth of
* Grosart, Memorial Introduction to Hesperides^ p. cxiv.
140
Last Years
the prince, and in 1645 he had welcomed him
with a paean 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
Noble Numbers. In the second place, the
addition of the word * esquire' to Herrick's name
suggests that on his ejection from Dean Prior he
had assumed layman'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 William Marshall, who had, earlier in
his career, engraved portraits of Bacon, Donne,
and Milton. This, our only portrait of Herrick,
141
Robert 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
Herrick's volume of poems by the reading public
fell far short 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 assurance of poetic power, could
have strained his gaze as far forward as the
nineteenth century, which redeemed him from
oblivion 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
142
Last Years
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 appearance
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 listen to little madrigals upon Julia's stomacher
at the singularly inopportune moment when the
eyes of the whole nation were bent on the unpre-
cedented 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 inop-
portune for the publication of a volume of poems
than the years which immediately preceded or
those which immediately followed it. In this con-
nection, 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 Row-
ton Heath, appeared 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,
^ Seventeenth-Century Studies^ p. 115.
143
Robert Herrick
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 Trans-
lations 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 the 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 generations, must be sought, in
part at least, elsewhere. They are to be found
in the fact that for his most delicate and im-
perishable 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 contemporaries of Samuel Pepys,
the fairy-poems, the descriptions of May-poles,
hock-carts, wassails, wakes, and lyrics like '' The
Mad Maid's Song" or '* Corinna's going a-
Maying," must have seemed, like the Mid-
summer Nighfs Dream, insipid and ridiculous.
144
Last Years
With the publication of the Hesperides in 1648,
Herrick'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 ; like
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 Mayerne, the
physician, to whom 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 Musarum,
alongside of similar poems by Denham, Marvell,
Dryden, and others. So placed, it associates
Herrick with the master-poet of the Restoration
in the same way that the verses, entitled His
Mistress Shade, published in 1 640, had associated
him with Shakespeare.
Of Herrick's life under the Commonwealth
and Protectorate 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
^ Pollard, ii. 270.
K 145
Robert Herrick
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 William, and Warden
of the Collegiate Church of Manchester, was
imprisoned in the Tower on a charge of high
treason. There is no evidence of friendship
between 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 161 5.
Political sympathies had forced the cousins
farther apart, for the family of Sir William had
sided with the Parliament and shown strong
Puritan leanings. Richard Herrick had, like his
cousin, entered the Church, and in 1635 ^^^
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
1 64 1 three sermons in duodecimo, and dedicated
them to the House of Commons. Amid the
checkered fortunes of the Civil War, Richard
Herrick, endowed as he was with some of his
father's qualities for achieving material success,
managed to hold his own; but in 1651 he was
imprudent enough to join a party of discontented
146
Last Years
Presbyterians in what was known as the London
Conspiracy, with the intention of overthrowing
the republican form of government. On June
II, 1 65 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 sung 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 all things grow high. The
1 See Calendar of State Papers, 1651, pp, 247, 401, 457, 465,
466 ; also Grosart's Memorial hitroduction, p. cclxxx., and Diction-
ary of National Biography.
147
Robert Herrick
old clergy talk as being sure of their lands again,
and laugh at the Presbytery ; and it is believed
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 willing to submit to any-
thing." But the restoration of the ejected
clergymen to their livings did not proceed with
the rapidity which was expected. Until the
passing of the Act of Uniformity, most of the
Presbyterian ministers, including John Syms of
Dean Prior, were safe. On May 31, 1662, we
meet with another significant entry in Pepys'
Diary : '' 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 discontented ; 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 expecta-
tion. 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
148
I
Last Years
hopes, they met with disappointment. He was
not passed over, but restored to the old living
in " dull Devonshire," which he had promised to
re- visit 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
predecessor 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 worthy 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, Flibberti-
gibbet. They 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 part which he had
149
Robert Herrick
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
slumber 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 pronounced 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 Burn 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,
reinstated 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.
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Last Years
No tombstone remains to mark the spot where
he lies in the Httle churchyard 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.
151
PART II
THE WORKS
I
I
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 life 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, alive 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 enquiry. In
what position, we ask, does this Jacobean and
Caroline lyric stand to the Elizabethan ? Are
the verses of Carew, Herrick and Suckling in
the direct line of succession from that great out-
burst of Elizabethan 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
155
Robert Herrick
to questions such as these, it may at once be
said that there is a general tendency to regard
EngHsh lyric poetry from the beginning of
Elizabeth's reign onwards to the Restoration as
possessed of a certain unity. It is the lyric of
the English Renaissance, and as such, it falls
into line with the drama of the Renaissance, the
evolution of which falls, roughly speaking, within
the same period. If the spirit of the Renaissance
is breathed into the sonnets of 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 lyric shows the gradual dying away
of the splendid harmonies of Elizabethan song ;
on the other, that this later lyric, 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 English lyric is on the wane ; " ^
while Professor Barrett Wendell, tracing the
^ A Book of Elizabethan Lyrics^ p. xxxiii.
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
changes in the temper of the English people
during the seventeenth century, bids us see the
process of disintegration at work in the Caroline
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 Swinburne. *' It is singular," he writes, '* that
the first great age of English lyric poetry should
have been also the one great age of English
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. Born 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." ^
The contemporaneous expression of views so
divergent as these calls for a close examination
of the lyric of the English 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
1 The Seventeenth Century in English Literature.
2 Preface to Herrick's Poems (Muses' Library edition).
Robert Herrick
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 Elizabeth's
reign jthe 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 danc-
ing 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 remote
ancestry. Among these we may discover the
convivial drinking-songs of medieval scholares
vagantes, with Walter Map as their Coryphaeus ;
also Christmas carols of Norman origin, acclaim-
ing with joyous cries of Noel ! Noel ! the birth of
the infant Christ, or, in lighter 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
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
and minster, and which had withstood the
Reformation ; likewise, the popular love-songs of
medieval minstrelsy, the pedlar-songs andhunting-
songs ; and, finally, all the store of lyric mirth
which ushered in, and gave a ceremonial char-
acter to, the great festivals of May-day, Harvest-
Home and Christmas.
Until the influence of the Italian Renaissance
was felt in England, this popular 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^ published 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 lytyl 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.^
1 Edited by R. Imelmann, (Shakespeare Jahrbuch, xxxix.,
p. 121.)
2 Captain Cox^ his Ballads and Books^ ed. F. J. Furnivall
(Ballad Society Publications) 1871.
159
Robert Herrick
A few years later, however, the popular song
in England received a blow from which it has
never entirely recovered. In 1588, Nicholas
Yonge published his Musica Transalpinay a
collection of madrigals and canzonets, 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 contra-
puntal 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 everything 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-lyric, the mad-
rigal must win the victory. The Fitzwilliam
Virginal Book shows that one or two of the
early madrigalists, like William Byrd and Thomas
Morley, were still ready to supply musical settings
to such a popular song as, "The Carman's Whistle,"
but their main energies were directed towards
the furtherance of the Italian song-lyric. 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 com-
posers of the time, Morley, Weelkes, Wilbye,
Farmer, and others, were directly engaged.
160
r
ft ■
I
Lyric of the English Renaissance
The literary quality of these madrigals is for
the most part poor ; and only in a small number
of instances do we know who wrote the words,
which throughout, and contrary to the practice
in the popular song, are subservient 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
incomplete 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 homeliness 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 of 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 fet aloft,
Ther againe as oft.
All for Daphnes wedding day !
Hey ho, fine brave holiday ! ^
1 History of Music in England, I907> P- 60.
2 Bolle, Die gedruckten englischen Liederbiicher (Palaestra,
vol. xxix, p. 65).
L 161
Robert Herrick
But for the most part they are artificial, and
foreign, both in sentiment and expression, to the
genius of EngHsh folk-song. The prevailing
theme is love, which is treated in the conven-
tional fashion familiar 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, published in 1598, is
typical of the general style and average attain-
ment 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.
O she from hence departs, my love refraining.
From whom, all heartless, alas, I die complaining.^
The swift descent of the popular song from the
banqueting-hall to the ale-house, as soon as the
Italian song-lyric gained a footing in the land, is
* A. H. BuUen, Some Shorter Elizabethan Lyrics^ 1903, p. 150.
162
I
p
Lyric of the English Renaissance
clearly indicated by George Puttenham. In his
Arte of English Poesie, published only one
year after the appearance of Yonge's Musica
Transalpina, he speaks of the popular song in
the following contemptuous manner : '* The over
busie and too speedy returne of one maner of
tune [doth] too much annoy and as is were glut
the eare, unlesse it be in small and popular
Musickes, song by these Cantabanqid 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 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 Elizabethan
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 beginnings of true comedy in England,
we find that the value of the lyric as furnishing
relief from the dramatic tension is fully re-
cognised. Songs are frequent in Ralph Roister
Bolster and Gammer Gurtons Needle^ and it
1 Ed. Arber, p. 96.
163
Robert Herrick
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 Elizabethan
drama of this period more faithfully 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
throughout his career the most loyal to the
native tradition. In his early venture, Loves
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 Burns did, on a far
larger scale, for the folk-songs of Scotland, that
is, remodel them and endue them with new life.
We know for a certainty that he did this in the
case of Desdemona's willow-song, and it is
164
I
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
probable that the same remodelHng 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 synchronises almost exactly with that
of the madrigal. Introduced into our literature
by Wyatt and Surrey, it made little progress
until the last decade of the century ; then, after
the publication of Sidney's Astrophel and Stella
in 1 59 1, it claimed the services of almost all 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 Re-
naissance sonnet, to dwell long upon it here.
In England, as in Italy and France, it is an
essentially romantic and idealistic form of
lyric. Of Provencal 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
165
Robert Herrick
with a loyalty which asks for no reward,
is the paramount quest of the sonneteer
from Dante to Spenser. With this spirit of
medieval chivalry had mingled, from the time of
Petrarch onwards, the ethereal aura of Platonic
idealism, 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 Renaissance sonnets.
Yet it was this very idealism, and this aloofness
from the world of sense, which, when the sonnet
became the fashion of the hour, brought about
its fall. It was easy for a Galahad soul like
that of Edmund Spenser to scale the heights of
chivalrous idealism, 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
i66
r
Lyric of the English Renaissance
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 Philip 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 Lyricall kind of Songs
and Sonnets," he says : *' But truely many of such
writings, as come under the banner of unresist-
able 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 certaine
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 forciblenes
or Energia (as the Greekes cal it) of the writer." ^
A few years later we find the witty young
Templar, Sir John Davies, subjecting the
practice of 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.
* Apologie, ed. Shuckburgh, p. 57.
167
Robert Herrick
The lyrics of the Elizabethan miscellanies
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
little store by the fortunes of their writings, and
gathered from the romances, the sonnet-sequences,
the song-books, and from whatever manuscript
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 Helicon (1600), we come upon
many of the choicest flowers of Elizabethan lyric
poetry. Delightfully simple and spontaneous,
too, as many of these lyrics are, they are in the
main art-lyrics, and have little in common with
the folk-song. The miscellanies were compiled
for cultured 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-lyrics of the dramas which follow
the tradition of the popular melodies. Thus the
anthology, entitled The Passionate Pilgrim, which
the pirate publisher, William Jaggard, compiled
in 1599, and fathered upon Shakespeare, contains
the three sonnets of Loves Labour's Lost, but
none of the snatches of song scattered through
that and through Shakespeare's other early
comedies. The ban of vulgarity which rested
upon the autochthonous song-lyric during the
168
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
closing years of the sixteenth century was not
to be lifted by publishers, eager at all costs to
fall in with the prevailing fashions. But if these
lyrics of the miscellanies are a little artificial as
compared with the wood-notes wild of Shake-
speare and Dekker, they seem artlessness itself
when set by the side of most of the sonnet-
sequences and most of the collections of
madrigals. In buoyancy and verbal melody, in
the absence of intellectual strain and the perfect
subjugation of thought to feeling, the best lyrics
of Marlowe, Breton and Lodge have never been
surpassed.
These lyrics are less dominated by foreign
literary influences than the sonnet and the mad-
rigal ; yet, as we read them, we feel the presence
of the Italy of the Renaissance. This manifests
itself in the glow of romantic idealism with
which they are suffused, in the pleasant garb of
pastoralism which they assume, and in a certain
innocent hedonism, which seems a little foreign
to our sober English temper even in the heyday
of the Renaissance. Varied in character as
these lyrics are, the quality 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 in-
definable rhythmic grace, and whose outlook
upon the world is untroubled by care or mis-
giving. It is a lyric which recreates for us
. 169
Robert Herrick
the golden age long dreamed of by the poets
of antiquity.
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountains, yields.
Thus sings Christopher Marlowe in the exuber-
ance 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 quality of youthful-
ness in the lyrics of the miscellanies 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
Donne. The lyric love is the creation of the
poetic imagination, which never comes into touch
with the hard facts of life, 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 disillusion-
ment, nor does the youthful idealism which
inspires the lyrics to Phillida or Amaryllis ever
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\
170 '
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
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 personality of Breton,
Lodge or Barnfield from their snatches of song
scattered through the miscellanies !
We have now briefly reviewed the leading
forms of lyric 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 diff"use in expression, fraught
with pastoral fancies, essentially romantic and
visionary, and, in its attitude towards woman-
hood, 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
Elizabeth, and to what extent the influence of
Renaissance Italy became subject to modification.
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
Elizabeth. We recognise a certain coarsening
in the fibre of the race, and a certain loss of
171
Robert Herrick
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 characteristic not
only of the lyric poetry, but of Elizabethan
literature as a whole. It is the secret of the
visionary power of that literature, and of that
desire to reach beyond one's grasp, which finds
characteristic expression in the dramas of
Christopher Marlowe. When the seventeenth
century opened, the Renaissance movement had
still far to run ; in some directions, indeed, the
power of the ancient world over life and litera-
ture 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 reached. Already in the
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
sonnets of Shakespeare we are aware that the
power of idealism 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
realism 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, tempestuous 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.
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
Amoretti. At the very time, too, that Shake-
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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. According to Ben
Jonson, Donne wrote " all his best pieces before
he was twenty-five," that is before 1598 ; and this
statement 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 earliest 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." ^
It is with the poems of the first division that
we are concerned at present, for it is in these that
* Poems of John Donne, vol. i. p. 220.
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
we chiefly see the warfare which he waged with
the cherished ideals of the Petrarchan school of
lyrists. In the poem, Loves Growth, he stub-
bornly refuses to rest content with the con-
templative love of those sonneteers who wrote
passionate centuries of love to an imaginary
mistress : —
Love's not so pure and abstract as they use
To say, which have no mistress but their muse ;
But as all else, being elemented too.
Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do ; ^
and in his Loves Alchemy he avows the pro-
foundest scepticism of that hidden mystery of
love, first adumbrated by Plato :
Some that have deeper digg'd love's mine than I,
Say, where his centric happiness doth lie.
I have loved, and got, and told.
But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,
I should not find that hidden mystery.
O ! 'tis imposture all ;
And as no chemic yet th' elixir got,
But glorifies his pregnant pot.
If by the way to him befall
Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal.
So lovers dream a rich and long delight.
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
^ Poe?ns, ed. Chambers, i. 34.
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Robert Herrick
Can be as happy as I can, if he can
Endure the short scorn of a bridegroom'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.^
If love is without spiritual mystery, woman is
without constancy :
If thou be'st born 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:
* Poems, ed. Chambers, i. p. 41. ^ -Son^y Ibid., i. p. 4.
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
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 beUeves, 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 philosophy 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 temperament and
indulges in flights of transcendental fancy ; but at
this early stage realism is all in all to him. His
attitude towards love and woman is not that of
the cynic, for he was too passionate to be
cynical ; it is the effrontery of youthful arrogance
in a poet whose independent nature made him
intolerant of subjection to conventional modes of
thought. .He saw the unreality of the Petrarchan
school of poetry, and he turned contemptuously
away from the pleasant fictions and mellifluous
verse of the pastoralists. 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
1 The Indifferent^ i. p. 9.
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and modes of expression. Scorning the sonnet
and all its kindred forms, he pours forth his
emotion into moulds of his own fashioning, the
nietrical 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 audade, the dawn-song
oTthe 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 Provencal 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 mtbade : how far it is like
that of Shakespeare, or that of the medieval
troubadours, may be judged from the following
verses : - ^^^^"^ > ^'^ .^a^
^- Busy oldjool, unruly Sun, / •"" *! .
\ Why 'dost thou thus, ^^^^^ cLd^^y^
Through windows^and through quj-fains, call oifi us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?
Saucy, pedantic wretch, go chide
■ Late ^hool-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride.
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.^
^The reactionary temper of Donne is seen
again in the stamp of individuality impressed
^ T^e Sun-Risings i. p. 7.
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
upon his poems. As we have already noticed,
the impress of a salient, distinct personality is
rarely met with in the lyrics of the Elizabethan
miscellanies ; and the same is true of most, though
not all, 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 un-
abashed before his audience, displaying the work-
ing 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
mistaken for those of any other poet, either of
his own or of another day.
The intellectuality of Donne, which so pro-
foundly 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 Elizabethan 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 gener-
ally apparent, and they have nothing in 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."
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Robert Herrick
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 unnecessary to dwell
upon them here.
To what extent, and in what directions, was
the influence of Donne's lyric 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 published in
1633, two years after his death, but we have
abundant evidence that they circulated widely in
manuscript copies during his lifetime.^ Jonson's
conversations with Drummond in 1619, and
Carew's Elegy on the Death of Doctor Domie,
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 stylist, of his leadership of
the " metaphysical " school of poets, it is un-
necessary 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 characterised
it as ** remarkably wide and deep, though almost
1 See Mr Gosse's Life of John Donne^ vol. i. p. 79, vol. ii. p. 336
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
entirely malign." ^ But his influence reached far
deeper than points of style. The lyrists of the
generation which followed Donne differ from
those of the Elizabethan era in nothing so much
as in the impress of personality which is re-
vealed in their writings. The Elizabethan lyric,
as already noticed, is curiously lacking in this
personal touch, but the contrary is true of that
which followed. 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 all left upon their verses the indelible mark
of their own personality ; we touch these men to
the quick whenever 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 concealed
from view. And it was Donne who, breaking
away from Elizabethan conventions, first im-
parted to the lyric 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 lyrists towards love and woman-
hood. The Petrarchan ideals, it is true, died
hard. The Spenserian school of poets remained,
on the whole, true to them ; they come to light
^ Life of Don7iey ii. 329.
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Robert Herrick
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, wasting 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 will, 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 blending with
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
it, but more often opposed to it — that of Ben
Jonson, and through Ben Jonson, that of the
lyrists 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 in allusions to classic
fable, and took on at times a certain classic colour-
ing, 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 sonetti 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 Re-
naissance 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 Petrarchan
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
^ Conversations with Drutnmondy ed. Laing, p. 4.
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Robert Herrick
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 English lyrics in
sapphic or anacreontic verse, wherein rhyme is
ignored, and accent is made more or less sub-
servient to quantity. Thus Barnabe Barnes
includes in his Parthenophil 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 lyric collections
of Campion. Campion, whose attack upon the
** vulgar and artificial custom of rhyming," in his
Observations in the Art of English Poesie, is well
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
manner ; and in such lyrics as '* There is a
garden in her face," or 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 un-
mistakable. And in this connection it must be
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
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 vitce, and Catullus'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 conversations 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 English, of
the Pindaric Ode, which Cowley would have
done well to follow. It has the regular arrange-
ment of strophe, antistrophe and epode, and was
written in memory of "that noble pair," Sir
Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morrison. Again, in
the poem entitled Euphemey he fashions a stanza
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which bears a certain resemblance to the famous
sapphic verse, and in his translations 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, in imbuing his lyric verse
with a certain classical colour, and secondly, in
maintaining, in opposition to the romanticism
of the earlier Elizabethans, a certain classical
restraint, and a purity and precision of style.
The classical colouring is most noticeable in the
Masques, where Olympian gods and goddesses,
together with Pan and his attendant Satyrs,
occupy the stage, and pay graceful compliments
to the British Solomon, his queen, and his
courtiers. The popular song is here reserved
for the comic antimasque ; ^ the lyrics of the
masque proper are invariably art-lyrics, full of
allusions to ancient fable, and subject to the
artistic canons of antiquity. Such, for instance,
are the songs of Nature and Prometheus in
Mercury Vindicated, the song of Pallas in The
1 See the Ballad of John Urson in the Masque 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.
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
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 alkisions
to classic fable are, after Jonson's somewhat
pedantic fashion, carefully explained in footnotes.
We miss in these lyrics the charm of spontaneity
and the simple melody of the earlier dramatic
song, but we cannot overlook the subtle effects
of rhythm and the classic colour attained by
the lyrist in such 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.
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 Jonson's love-lyrics. There are not many
^ Song of Apollo in Masqtte of Augurs.
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Robert Herrick
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 Celia in the Forest and the ten lyric pieces,
entitled, *' A Celebration of Charis," in the
Underwoods — we recognise that he is breaking
away from the romantic pastoral manner of the
Italian love-lyric, and drawing very near to that of
the Carfnina of Catullus or the Odes of Anacreon.
The Celia songs, particularly the first and most
famous of them, *' Come, my Celia, let us
prove," is directly based on the Vivamus, mea
Lesbia of Catullus, and is a salient example of
the change which came over the love-lyric in
the seventeenth century. The Petrarchan senti-
ment, 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
lyrics 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'll taste as lightly as the bee.
That doth but touch his flower, and flies away.^
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
Jonson's classicism manifests itself, finally,
in the artistic structure of his lyrics, and in the
precision and lucidity of his style. '' What
vexed Jonson in the writing of the earlier
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 pure in style, and
true to the highest principles of structural art.
To illustrate the differences of style and structure
between the lyrics 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 :
* The Elizabethan Lyric {Quarterly Review^ October, 1902).
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Robert Herrick
O, I could still,
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop.
Since nature's pride is now a withered daffodil.
If we compare this with any of the songs of
Shakespeare, we must at once be conscious of the
entire difference of aim on the part of the rival
lyrists. Shakespeare places his whole trust in
the tunefulness and spontaneity of utterance, and
in the unmistakable wilding flavour, of the popular
song, all of which Jonson is willing to sacrifice to
his artistic conscience, and for the sake of formal
excellence. The theme and the language of his
lyric are alike 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 conditions of the stage demanded
that it should be sung, and set to a musical
accompaniment, we feel that it is complete 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 Wofnan ^ :
Still to be neat, still to be drest,
As you were going to a feast ;
Still to be powdered, still perfumed ;
^ 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.
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
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 epi-
grammatic close of the lyric, are all qualities dear
to the poet's heart, and in perfect accord with his
classical taste. In all that pertains to lucidity of
style Jonson found himself opposed, not only to
the Italianate ornamentation of the earlier art-
lyric, but also to the metaphysical wit of his con-
temporary, Donne. Drummond has preserved for
us his views on Donne's obscurity and his "not
keeping of accent," and even the harshest of
Jonson's critics must allow that he furnished 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 in-
teresting 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
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Robert Herrick
lyrists, above all Herrick, are chiefly on the side
of Jonson ; but Carew, the greatest of these next
to Herrick, is somewhat uncertain in his allegi-
ance. His best songs have the courtly grace and
perfect finish of Jonson, as, for instance, that
beginning :
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 wliich he laments
his death.
In the end it was Jonson who triumphed.'
The Restoration lyric — the songs of Sedley,
Etherege, Rochester and Dryden — is the final
expression of those principles of classicism which
Jonson taught and practised. It is a lyric
painfully limited in its range, and 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 in-
version, and, finally, in the purity and precision of
its vocabulary, it remains true to the pattern set
by that great contemporary of Shakespeare, who
wrought the same revolution in the temper and
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Lyric of the English Renaissance
form of our English 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, together with most of the
religious lyrists, were junior to Herrick in point
of birth ; and if some of them saw their works
pass through the press before the appearance of
the Hesperides in 1 648, 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, full 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 Hall of
Durham. But there is no mention of the
Cavalier 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 parsonage, 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
N 193
Robert Herrick
again the history of the various forms of song-lyric
and reflective lyric 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
occasionally 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 substituted for it an art-
lyric more or less classical in spirit and style.
Yet the seventeenth century had not proceeded
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 jolly
hunter." The collection was well received, and
was followed in the same year by another,
entitled D enter omelia, and consisting of " pleasant
Roundelaies, King Harry's mirth or freemen's
songs and such delightfull catches." Two years
later appeared Ravenscroft's third collection,
Melismata, described as *' Musicall Phantasies,
fitting the Court, Citie and Countrey," and includ-
ing such popular airs as " There were three
ravens sat on a tree," and ** The frog he would
194
Lyric of the English Renaissance
a- wooing ride." How far this revival of interest
in popular song proved creative, and how far it
remained merely antiquarian, is, on the evidence
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 Elizabethan madrigal, in spite of the
presence of a new rival, lived on into the seven-
teenth 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 ^^id 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 Tetrarchan mood
gradually gives way to gallantry, or to the note
of rebellion heard in the lyrics 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 epigram-
matic point is the extreme expression of that
concision of style which is a feature of the
Renaissance lyric from the time of Jonson
195
Robert Herrick
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 :
Your shining eyes and golden hair,
Your lily-rosed lips so fair ;
Your various beauties which excel,
Men cannot choose but like them well :
But when for them they say they'll die,
Believe them not, — they do but lie.^
Crowned with flowers I saw fair Amaryllis
By Thyrsis sit, hard by a fount of crystal,
And with her hand, more white than snow or lilies.
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' First Set of Madrigals (1612) the
following adaptation of the famous dedicatory
^ From Thomas Bateson's First Set of English Madrigals^
1604 ; quoted by Bullen, Lyrics from Elizabethan Song-Books^
p. 45.
2 From William Byrd's Psalms^ Songs and So?inets^ 161 1 ; ibid.^
p. 72.
196
pLy
Lyric of the English Renaissance
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 lyric, 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 polyphonic, but intro-
duced a definite melody ; this, in its turn, led to
the division of the theme into 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 lyre" — or the
lute. The sole object of these composers of
solo-songs, writes Sir Hubert Parry, ''seems to
have b^en to supply a kind of music which
197
Robert Herrick
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." 1 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 Philip
Rossiter, and Robert Jones's Fir^st 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,
Dowland, Jones, Ferrabosco — passed away, but
their places were taken by a younger race, who
^ The Music of the Sevetiteenth Century (Oxford History of
Music), p. 209.
198
r
Lyric of the English Renaissance
followed in the main the same traditions, and
included among whom were Henry and William
Lawes, Nicholas Laniere, John Wilson, John
Gamble and John Playford. This later genera-
tion 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 lyrics from the Hesperides,
we find, in the song-books of the period, fre-
quent 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, published 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 lyric was far less closely
associated with music than that of the Elizabethan
age. It is true that the Caroline era produced
no Campion capable of setting his own songs to
199
Robert Herrick
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 Barnfield.
Turning, in the last place, to the lyrics 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
decline; 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 character in the way that the
madrigal did. Sonnets, and even sonnet-
sequences, were written 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 Philip Ayres, who published a
volume of ** Lyric Poems, made in imitation of
the Italians," as late as 1687. I^ his preface
he finds it necessary to apologise for writing such
obsolete forms of lyric poetry as sonnets, can-
zones, and madrigals ; he is aware that ** none
of our great men, either Mr Waller, Mr Cowley
200
Lyric of the English Renaissance
or Mr Dryden, whom it was most proper to
have followed, have ever stoop'd to anything of
this sort," and that the success of Spenser,
Sidney, and Milton 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
derelict collection of Petrarchan love-lyrics is, as
may be supposed, not high.
With the decline of the sonnet-sequences pro-
ceeded, 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 pre-
ceding generation ; they preferred to keep them
by them until the harvest was large enough to in-
duce them to court publicity 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 appear-
ance of Davison's Poetical Rhapsody in 1602.
Collections of lyrics and epigrams, hailing from
various sources, appeared from time to time
throughout the seventeenth century ; and among
the most important of these were Wit's Recrea-
tions (1640) and Musarum Delicics (1655), which
contained some of Herrick's jewelled lines, and
^ Saintsbury, Caroline Poets, vol. ii., p. 269.
Robert Herrick
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 Caroline 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 six-
teenth, but different from it. It is true that the
later period has nothing to show like the great
Elizabethan sonnet-sequences, and it is also true
that, when we pass from Marlowe, Shakespeare,
Breton, and Campion to the next generation
of lyrists, we find an undoubted falling off in
spontaneity and pure songfulness. But in the
seventeenth century we have, instead of the
sonnet, the great outburst of religious 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\
202 »
r
Lyric of the English Renaissance
there is a loss of spontaneity, tunefulness, 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
lyric, sacrificing romantic charm, wins instead a
certain classic grace. Lastly, the seventeenth
century brought to lyric 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
Caroline lyrists a touch of modernity, a kinship
with ourselves, which the Elizabethan lyric
rarely possesses.
203
CHAPTER II
THE LYRICAL POEMS OF THE HESPERIDES
THE preceding chapter has been con-
cerned with the main Hne of develop-
ment taken by the secular lyric in
England during 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 vari-
ous 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 all Jon-
son's disciples none accepted the lessons which
he taught so completely as Herrick. The class-
icism of Jonson, consisting as it does in the
204
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperldes
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 doubt-
less 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, which
suggests that he obtained his Roman citizen-
ship with a great sum, whereas Herrick was
undoubtedly free-born.
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 lyric 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 sorne. of the poems of the
Greek Anthology ; but he borrows much more
freely from Roman authors, and, what is still
more important, the classic colour in which his
205
\^-V-JL
Robert Herrick
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 satirised beneath classic
masks the humours of London life, and engaged
in wit-combats with Shakespeare at the Mermaid
Tavern in Bread Street. But with Herrick the
case 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 peculiar
gratification in presenting its offerings of " holy
meal and spirting salt " before the images of its
household Lares and Penates. Herrick's al-
lusions to these ceremonial rites are so simple
and so intimate that they give to his verses
something more than a merely antiquarian
colour. His Hymns to the Lares (see
Nos. 324, 2)1'}^, 674) and To the Genius of
206
The Lyrical Poems of the Hespertdes
his House (723) do not read like literary ex-
ercises, 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 life. When the call comes to
him to leave Dean Prior, he seizes the occasion
to address a poem To Lar {^ioZ) •
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 glitt'ring chimney all the year.
gain, 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.
207
Robert Herrick
But now 'tis known, behold ! behold ! I bring
Unto thy ghost th' effused offering :
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 con-
viction that there was in Herrick a curious strain
of paganism, which accords none too well with
his duties as a Christian priest, but which gives
to his lyrics a classical flavour not met with else-
where 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
lyric 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. Refer-
ence has already been made to the popularity
with which the so-called Odes of Anacreon were
received by Elizabethan madrigalists, by mis-
cellany lyrists, and by Ben Jonson in those
love- lyrics entitled A Celebratio7i of Charis ; and
this popularity increased rather than diminished
in the Caroline 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
* To the Reverend Shade of his Religious Father (82).
208
I
I
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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 remarkable affinity of
temperament. The gaiety and frank hedonism
of Anacreon, his picturesque and dainty fanciful-
ness, and his fondness for self-portraiture,, are
all qualities equally characteristic of Herrick.
There are several references to Anacreon in the
Hesperides, and in the poem entitled The Appari-
tion of his Mistress calling him to Elysitim (575),
Herrick definitely recognises that between him-
self and the Greek lyrist there 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 Bacchanalian-like,
Besmear'd with grapes, welcome he shall thee thither,
Where both may rage, both drink and dance together.
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
^See, in particular, The Cheat of Cupid {2>i\ The Wounded
Cupid {ly^, and those lines On Hi7nselfi beginning " Born I was
to meet with age" (519).
O 209
Robert Herrick
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-lyrics
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 expres-
sion. Still keeping to lyrics of which love
is the theme, we cannot fail to recognise
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 ?
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
This way, that way, that way, this,
Here and there a fresh love is.
That doth Hke 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-like eyes,
And gave the bag between them.^
Finally, it seems to have been mainly from
Anacreon, though the practice reappears also in
1 No. 92.
2H
Robert Herrick
Catullus, that Herrick drew the idea of addressing
poems " To Himself," 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 life, or his presentiment of gray
hairs and advancing years. How intensely Ana-
creontic, for instance, is the following :
I fear no earthly powers.
But care for crowns of flowers ;
And love to have my beard
With wine and oil besmear'd.
This day I'll drown all sorrow :
Who knows to live to-morrow ? ^
But while recognising the indebtedness of
Herrick to Anacreon, it is important not to
exaggerate it. It is in his shortest, lightest,
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 undoubtedly 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
1 No. 170. ^ "Essay on Lessing."
212
I
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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, Vivamtis, mea Lesbia^ at que
amemus ; and his elegy Upon the Death of his
Sparrow (256), though different in presentment,
was undoubtedly suggested by the familiar Luctus
in Morte Passeris of the Veronese lyrist. But
the actual borrowings from Catullus are much
slighter than those from Martial, Ovid, Horace,
or Seneca, and indicate little more than that
Herrick had read the Car7nina and remembered
them. Yet the relationship which the English
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 striking superficial resemblance to the
Carrnina of Catullus in their apparently dis-
orderly arrangement — an arrangement which
ignores chronological order, and brings the
loftiest strains of lyric song into close proximity
with the coarsest epigrams. Penetrating beneath
213
Robert Herrick
the surface, we notice the strlkingr sincerity of
utterance which characterises 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 all 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 lines 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 Car-
mina, the directness of appeal, the avoidance of
surplusage and of mannerisms, find their counter-
part in the Hesperides.
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 Julia, Corinna and
the other mistresses, Herrick only on rare occa-
sions 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 accounted for by the belief that he is singing
^ Carmina^ Ixviii.
214
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
only of imaginary mistresses, whereas we know
that Catullus's Lesbia was luridly real ; but, how-
ever explained, this lack of the genuine fire of
love makes Herrick's verses seem very different
from those of the Roman poet. We have only
to compare the lines to Anthea with the fifth of
the Carmina, on which, as already stated, they
are based, in order to realise 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 milHon.^
But, unmoved by the passion and poignancy of
the foreofoinor 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
^ No. 74.
215
Robert Herrick
ever wrote, A Country Life to Thomas Herrick,
is singularly full of Horatian echoes, and shows
the same delight 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 trans-
lations of Horace. Thus he loves to round off
poems by a passage taken from the Roman
master, and generally acknowledges the debt by
italics. 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 —
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 conceal'd, with Horace you'll confess,
Differs not much from drowsy slothfulness —
216
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
is an acknowledged translation of the following :
Paulum sepultse distat inertise
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 fleeting 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, Pro-
pertius, and Tibullus, he makes no mention of
Horace. In his Bacchanalian lyrics he looks not
to Horace, but to Anacreon ; and when he cele-
brates in verse one of his many mistresses, he
has in mind, not the love-lyrics which Horace
devotes to his Lycjia, 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 life of modera-
tion. Such poems as His Wish (153), Purposes
1 IV. Ode ix. 29.
217
Robert Herrick
(615), or that entitled Men mind no State in Sick-
ness (696), are clearly reminiscent of Horace, as is
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 i9^^^^^r^ 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 Words worth's //i:?//j 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 life,
there was also a kinship 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 life. Both had
known the life of the court and the city, and both
had followed up this life 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
fashionable Tibur or Baia^, and there mingle
218
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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 affec-
tionate terms in which Horace always refers to
his country life, 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 feeling that
the work which they are doing, the monument
which they are raising, is one which will outlive
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,
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 belief in the immortality of the Hesperides
Herrick had Horace in mind, and the thought
of that poet's fame, veiled for something like a
thousand years beneath a cloud, and then
effulgent in the stirring days of the Renais-
sance, when the dead came to life again, and old
things were made new, may well have cheered
the Caroline lyrist amid his work. The very
219
Robert Herrick
language in which he assures himself of this im-
mortality 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 lines,
And learned musicians shall, to honour Herrick's
Fame and his name, both set and sing his lyrics.^
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 Pyramides.^
Space does not permit us to investigate further
the indebtedness of Herrick to the writers of the
classic world. A large number of lines taken
direct from the works of Ovid show his diligent
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
reminiscences of both the tragedies and the prose
works of Seneca, as well as of the historical
writings of Tacitus. Indeed, the more carefully
the Hesperides are studied, the more do they
1 Up07t Hi?nself {^66).
2 His Poetry his Pillar (211).
220
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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
Renaissance age was less profound. There is
nothing to show that he had any acquaintance
with the Petrarchan school of Italian lyrists who
had inspired the poets of Elizabethan England.
The reaction against the Petrarchists, begun by
Jonson and Donne, was continued by Herrick.
He has left us nothing in the nature of sonnet
or canzone, nor is there much resemblance
between his love lyrics and those of Renaissance
Italy. Nor, again, can we trace in his works the
influence of French lyric 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 hiventions, the lyrics and idylls of La
Bergerie and Les Amours et N ouveaux Eschanges
des Pierres Precieuses found a place on his shelves
side by side with the Odes of Anacreon. There
was in fact much that was common to the two
poets : both were lovers and imitators of
Anacreon, who inspired both of them to write of
love and of '' times trans-shifting," and to weave
delicate fancies round the minute creations
Robert Herrick
of Nature. Herrick would have found pure
delight in Belleau's beautiful song, Avril:
Avril, I'honneur et des bois,
Et des mois :
Avril, la douce esperance
Des fruicts qui sous le coton
Du bouton
Nourrissent leur jeune enfance. . . . ^
And the poet who sang of the hock-cart would
have found a kindred soul in the author of Les
Vendangeurs. W^xx\q}^s> Description of a Woman,
again, is strikingly like Belleau'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.
,«i^ J Herrick's attitude as a master of lyric 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 tem-
perament appreciate the Platonic idealism of
Spenser. jBut there was an undoubted strain of
romance in Herrick's geniusj while his long as-
sociation with English rural life, and his
intense delight in all the pagan ritual of the
country-side, brought him into touch with the
simple idyllic poetry of England's Helicony and,
^ Belleau, (Euvres Poetiques^ ed. Marty-Lavaux, i. p. 201.
222
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperidcs
in spite of his artistic tastes and classical bias,
with the ruder minstrelsy 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 several
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 quaff up a bowl
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.
223
Robert Herrick
Who frolic 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 ahernating
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 Hke it, in Up Tails -A II
(727), which is also a version of another extremely
popular song of the time, in Tke 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 seven-
teenth 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-corners of Dean Prior
in the simplest possible manner :
224
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
If ye fear to be affrighted,
When ye are by chance benighted,
In your pocket for a trust,
Carry nothing but a crust j
For that holy piece of bread
Charms the danger and the dread.^
This I'll tell 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 rhymes of the English country-
side, 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. I It may
be taken for granted that he was fairly well
aquainted with the collections of madrigals and
miscellany-lyrics ; and when the authors of these
1 A Charm (1065). 2 ^ Charm (1063).
p 225
Robert Herrick
sing of country life and country festivities, they
come very near to Herrick. But the more
artificial kinds of art-lyric, 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 amoebean
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 lyrists of classical antiquity,
and of Ben Jonson among the moderns, 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 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
beautiful strain of Marlowe's '' Copie 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 associa-
tions 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 Ophelia.
226
r
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
There is, further, a certain kinship between some
of the lighter lyrics 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 is frequently regarded as the most perfect
of all his idyllic songs, Corinndls going a-Maying
(178), seems to have owed its inspiration to the
following song from Thomas Bateson's First Set
of English Madrigals ( 1 604) :
Sister, awake ! close not your eyes !
The day her light 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.
Therefore awake ! make haste, I say,
And let us, without staying,
All in our gowns of green so gay
Into the park a-maying.^
Compare the barley-break song in Morley's Canzonets or Little
Short Aers (1597) (Bolle. p. 125), with Herrick's " Barley- Break "
(loi).
2 BuUen, Lyrics from Elizabethan Song-Books^ p. 198.
227
Robert Herrick
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 believe, 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 direc-
tions ; yet it must, I think, be admitted that the
ever-present personal note of the author of the
Hesperides, the individuality and direct manner
of his lyrics, were all qualities which Donne had
been the first to introduce into the Elizabethan
lyric, and that without the example of Donne
before him, Herrick would somehow have written
differently. 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 — his obscurity, his perversa
ingenuity and met^physic wit, his cramped,
diction and harsh rhythms — are directly opposed _
^ Exception must perhaps be made in the case of No Loath-
omeness in Love (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.
228
'he Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
to the lucidity and fluid melody of the vicar of
EJean Prior.
Of English lyric poets, the only one that can
be compared 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 master — Ben
Jonson. We can well believe that it was^l
Jonson's precept and example that led Herrick
to the study and imitation of the Greek and
Roman lyric, that taught him structural form
and precision of style, and that inspired him
with his fastidious sense of artistic treatment.
The classicism of Herrick is that of Anacreon,
Catullus and Horace, but it is also that of
Jonson, who overthrew the Petrarchan traditions
and replaced them by those of antiquity. More-
over, it was allegiance to Jonson, reinforced,
it is true, by innate sanity of genius, which kept
Herrick free from all the extravagances of the
fantastic school of English lyrists that was grow-
ing up around him. And in this respect it is
to be noticed that what is almost Herrick s
only mannerism of style — a certain love of in-
version — is one which he shares with his master.
Many a chance phrase scattered through the
Hesperides is reminiscent of the Forest, the
Underwoods and the Masques of Ben Jonson,
and now and again we find him reproducing
the music of his verse. Thus the rhythm —
229
Robert Herrick
and something more than the rhythm — of one
of Herrick's most perfect lyrics, The Night Piece
to Julia (619), inevitably recalls the Song of
the Patrico in Gipsies Metamorphosed. Jonson's
song begins as follows :
The faery beams upon you,
The stars to glister on you ;
A moon of light,
In the noon of night.
Till the fire-drake hath o'ergone you ;
and this is the first stanza of Herrick's :
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.
Reference has already been made (see page
32) to the relationship which the poem, entitled
A Country Life : to his Brother, M. Tho.
Herrick (106), bears to Jonson's Epistle to
Sir Robert Wroth, and there is an equally close
relationship between Herrick's Panegyric to
Sir L. Pemberton ^Zll^ ^^^ Jonson's Penshurst.
Both poems describe the hospitality of a seven-
teenth 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 all the points in common, but a few
230
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides J
verses will suffice to show the dependence of
the one poet upon the other. Jonson praises,
amongst other things, the generous table kept
at Penshurst :
&-.
Whose liberal board doth flow
With all 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 knows, 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 relief
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, like 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 tells danger's nigh,
231
Robert Herrick
A hand too desp'rate, or a knife that bites
Skin-deep into the pork, or lights
Upon some part of kid, as if mistook,
When checked by the butler's look.^
Herrlck's dependence upon his master is un-
mistakable, 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.
I Again, we may observe the connection between
Jonson's famous song, '' Still to be Neat,"
and Herrick's Delight in Disorder (^'^, where
the younger poet, taking to heart the instruc-
tions 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 ex-
pression 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 recognise in Herrick a
quality higher than these — the genuine lyric
* The inspiration of both Jonson's and Herrick's poem comes
from the fifty-eighth epigram of Martial's third Book.
232
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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 Collins, as we turn
from Wordsworth to Coleridge, as we turn from
Byron to Shelley, so do we turn from Jonson
to Herrick ; and so do we recognise 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 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.1
Love is the supreme theme of the Hesperides, as
of the Cavalier lyric generally, and to its pleasures
^ A Study of Ben Jonson, p. 98.
233
Robert Herrick
/"derrick devotes some of his most perfect songs.
( Love is the theme of youth, but Herrick, if
1 certain statements made by him in his verses
<f are to be beheved, remained constant to the
master-passion until gray 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 cynicism, he re-
mained 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 en-
titled 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.
In his amours Herrick is a butterfly of not too
fastidious taste. His mistresses are many, and
he professes the same ardour for them all, and
234
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
woes 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,
Fm 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 con-
fesses on one occasion, has scorched his finger, but
has spared the burning of his heart. Thanks to
^ Love dislikes Nothing (750).
235
Robert Herrick
the delicate grace of his sentiments, the match-
less lilt of his verses, and at times the idyllic
beauty which suffuses his lyrics, Herrick occupies
an exalted position among English love-poets ;
but his lack of genuine passion places him on an
altogether lower level than that of Burns. For
the chivalry of Burns's '' O wert thou in the
cauld, cauld blast," Herrick can offer only gal-
lantry, 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
236
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
a fragrance exhaled from all the perfumes of
Arabia. The Herrick-mistress is Milton's Dalila,
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 some-
times gross. But this is by no means aWays
the case; there are occasions when, purged 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 still feel ourselves 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 lips of Julia.
Some ask'd how pearls did grow, and where ;
Then spoke I to my girl,
To part her lips and show them there
The quarrelets of pearl.
237
Robert Herrick
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 links 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.
Tell 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 tell her this, — but do not so ! —
Lest a handsome anger fly,
Like a lightning from her eye,
And burn thee up, as well as L
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 compli-
ment, but the passionate utterance of true
devotion. In moments such as these he wrote
238
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides "^i2
his famous song To Afithea (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 Will-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, Julia, 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,
239
Robert Herrick
he introduces into his lyrics, somewhat in the
manner of Spenser and Campion, a certain idyllic
element. He paints for us pictures of country
life, and places his mistresses against a back-
ground of spring flowers and rustic merri-
ment. Most of his mistresses seem town-bred,
frequenters of the court or the city, but in these
idyllic lyrics they harmonise 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 CorinncHs going a- Maying (178), to which re-
ference 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(76i), and in the Marlow-
esque 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 characterise
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.
240
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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.
I'll 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 live with
me and 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 Elizabethan manner more
completely than anywhere 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
introspectiveness and love-casuistry of the Eliza-
bethan 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
Q 241
Robert Herrick
himself stranded upon the reefs of Danger, j All
is smooth sailing in the wide ocean of his lovej
and it is death alone that bids him cast anchor.
jThe thought of death frequently enters his mind
when writing his love-poems, and he makes no
attempt to put it aside l so far from shrinking
from the inevitable, he meets it like a voluptuary.
He imprints his ''supremest kiss " upon the lips
of Perilla, bids Julia embalm him with the myrrh
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 all come, on the
anniversary of his decease, to his graveside,
and pour forth their libations :
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 hck th' effused sacrifice :
Though paleness be the Hvery that I wear.
Look ye not wan or colourless for fear.
Trust me, I will not hurt ye, or once show
The least grim look, or cast a frown on you :
Nor shall the tapers when I'm there burn blue.
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.
242
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
The bulk of Herrick's love-lyrics 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 be-
decked 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 Mirtillo lament the loss of
the shepherdess, Amarillis :
Miriillo. This 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. Mirtillo, tell us whither.
Mir. Where she and I shall never meet together.^
^ A Pastoral sung to the King {^21).
243
Robert Herrick
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.
The finest example of the impersonal lyric in
the Hesperides is The Mad Maids Song (412),
and it illustrates, amongst other things, his unerr-
ing taste. The mad maid had become an all too
familiar figure in our literature 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 de-
graded 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 morrow, 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.
244
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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.
Pray, hurt him not ; though he be dead,
He knows well who do love him ;
And who with green turfs 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 shall never find him.
Whether Herrick, if the circumstances ot his
life had been different, would have achieved
success as a dramatist, 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 life 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
245
Robert Herrick
to Sack with his tavern-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 lines, To live merrily and
trust to good verses (201), he makes us feel
that the wine-god is a ministering spirit to the
muses. After drinking a health to Homer,
Virgil and the Roman lyrists 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 pyramids,
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 lyric as that
entitled The Tinkers Song (see page 223); at
a higher elevation we come upon those hymns
and canticles to Bacchus inspired by Anacreon
and the epigrammatists of the Greek anthology,
of which the following is a good example : —
Bacchus, let me drink no more ;
Wild are seas that want a shore.
When our drinking has 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.^
A Hy77in to Bacchus (304).
246
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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 like 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 lightning, 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 fill'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 sustained force and dithyrambic
grandeur of this ode. It is not the utterance
^ Farewell to Sack (128).
247
Robert Herrick
of some reveller, 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 lullabies.
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.
248
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
Ease my sick head
And make my bed,
Thou power that canst sever
From me this ill ;
And quickly still,
Though thou not kill,
My fever.
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 live 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), pre- -y^^
fixed to the Hesperides^ the fair things of Nature "^
and the associations of a country Hfe hold a
distinguished place. He begins : —
249
Robert Herrick
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 twilights, and —
How roses first came red and lilies white.
The prominence given to such things in the
** Argument " 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 ** country's sweet simplicity," 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
Millions of lilies 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 con-
templation 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
250
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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 content-
ment 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 feeling for Nature was strictly limited, but
genuine and even intense within its limitations.
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 farmyard and its
inmates, the open fireplace and the chimney
corner, but there is no trace of anything beyond,
and the beautiful distances of Devonshire, the
rocky tors, the rugged line of Dartmoor, the
glens in the hills — 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 concentrate all his atten-
tion 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,
^ Seventeenth-Century Studies^ Robert Herrick, p. 128.
2 si
Robert Herrick
Endymion Porter, he spreads a wide vista
before us, his method is to call up a suc-
cession 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 contemporaneous L' Allegro of
Milton, and partly because we find enumer-
ated here most of the features of rustic life
and scenery which made the strongest appeal
to Herrick's feelings : —
When now the cock, the ploughman's horn,
Calls forth the lily-wristed morn,
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-like 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.
252
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides —
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 hill.
For sports, for pageantry and plays.
Thou hast thy eves and holidays ;
On which the young men and maids meet
To exercise their dancing feet ;
Tripping the comely country round,
With daffodils 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 j
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 revellings,
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 alloy of pastoral-
ism ; but apart from this the picture is faithful to
English country life 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 — V
Thou see'st a present God-like power
Imprinted in each herb and flower —
is suggestive of Wordsworth and modern pan-
theistic poetry, it is probable that what the
253
Robert Herrick
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 country would have seemed to him a dreary
place. It is worthy of note that this aspect of
country life finds no place in the Horatian verses
on the " country's sweet simplicity " which, early
m 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 mysteries of 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
malignant as in the warfare which it waged
with all this pagan ritual of the villagery. He
never tires of referring to these merry-makings
in his poems. In a number of short verses he
describes with infinite zest the mystic ceremonies
associated with Christmas, Twelfth- Night, and
Candlemas Day ; but it is the spring and summer
festivals, with their open-air delights, which ap-
peal to him most. The May-day rejoicings are
celebrated in one of the most beautiful of his
lyrics, Corinnds going a- Maying (178), a poem
254
The I^yrical Poems of the Hesperides
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'll abroad ; and let's obey
The proclamation made for May :
And sin no more, as we have done by staying :
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-thorn laden home.
Some have despatch'd 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 off sloth :
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-Maying.
English poets from Chaucer onwards have loved
to '' doon observaunce to the month of May," but
none has brought the once familiar scene so
255
Robert Herrick
vividly before us as Herrick. The festival is
presented to us in all its fresh grace and merri-
ment, and the poet, realising the charm of the
actual picture, makes no attempt to bedeck it
with the false colours of Arcadian fiction. And
when the promise of May has realised 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 all the country art :
See here a maukin, there a sheet,
As spotless pure as it is sweet :
The horses, mares, and frisking fillies,
Clad all in linen white as lilies.
The harvest swains and wenches bound
For joy, to see the hock-cart crown'd.
About the cart, hear how the rout
Of rural youngUngs 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.
256
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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 sub-
limity 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 all 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 mediaeval Minnesinger : —
Fled are the frosts, and now the fields appear
Recloth'd in fresh and verdant diaper.
R 257
Robert Herrick
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 here
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 formal
description. His instincts are not those of the
descriptive poet, but those of the lyrist, and
where he paints the face of Nature for us, he
charges the scene with personal feeling 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 symbolism
over the objects of Nature, and bids us see in
flower, tree, or rainbow, emblems of things
spiritual. The laurel tree is for him a symbol of
the eternity of his poetic fame, the willow of love
1 Farewell Frost (642.)
258
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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 I
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
attached to them, and partly because of the
appeal which they made to his love of gay
colours and sweet scents. Among the induce-
ments 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 ;
^ To the Yew and Cypress to Grace his Funeral (280).
259
Robert Herrick
and among the joys of Elysium which his
sensuous imagination conjures up is that of
sitting on primrose banks, crowned with endless
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 lyric 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 sug-
gestive to him of mortality, he divines the end
of all 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 loveliest of his flower-songs is that To
Daffodils (316), and here again it is the thought
of their transitoriness which fills his mind : —
The Apparition of his Mistress calling hiin to Elysium (575).
To Primroses filled with Morning Dew (257).
260
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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 lyric, and one which well suited the
temper of Herrick's genius. Of classic origin,
it came into being, lived, and died with the
261
Robert Herrick
Renaissance, leaving behind a considerable body
of verse, ranging from the gross fescinnina locutio
of many of the Caroline lyrists 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 Elizabeth, and it is fair to add that the verses
in which he 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 epi-
thalamium written by Donne in honour of the
marriage of Frederick, Count Palatine of the
Rhine, and the Lady Elizabeth, daughter of
James L The prototype of most of the Renais-
sance epithalamia was Catullus's famous In
Nuptias Juliae et Ma?ilit, and in his Epi-
thalamy 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 Hymenaee io,
lo Hymen Hymenaee —
but he comes near him in the stately structure of
his lyric and in the grace of his imagery : —
262
The Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides --j^
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-light
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.
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 lifting of the
263
Robert Herrick
bride over the threshold, the blessing of the
sack-posset, and the scramble for the nuts
scattered by the bridegroom — Catullus's nee
nuces pueris neget.
Similar to this in general style, and excelling
it in beauty of imagery, is the nuptial song
in honour of his friend, Sir Clipseby Crew (283),
the opening stanzas of which have much of the
splendour and sustained harmony 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 vermilion
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 corn.
264
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-lyrical character is exceedingly
hard to draw. The term lyric is at
best vague, and, in the case of Herrick, the
point at which the lyric ceases and the descrip-
tive 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-
quality associate them with the epigrams.
The animation, human interest, and keen sense
of observation displayed in some of Herrick's
greater lyrics indicate that, had he cared, he
265
Robert Herrick
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 collec-
tion of secular verse a small group of poems
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 Oberons Chapel^
Oberons Feast, and Oberons Palace —
were written, but the probability is that they
belong to the years which preceded his settle-
ment at Dean Prior. An earlier and briefer
version of the Feast was published in 1635,
in a 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
266
Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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 Oberons 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 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 pre-
cise evidence is furnished by one of the poems
themselves. Describing the religion of the
267
,y^.
Robert Herrick
fairies in The Fairy Temple or Oberons Chapel
(223), he says —
They have their ash-pans and their brooms
To purge the chapel and the rooms ;
Their many mumbHng mass-priests here,
And many a dapper chorister,
Their ush'ring vergers, here Hkewise
Their canons and their chanteries
Of cloister-monks they have enow,
Aye, and their abbey-lubbers too ;
And if their legend do not lie,
They much affect the papacy.
And since the last is dead, there's hope
Elf Boniface shall next be pope.
The words which I have itaHcised seem to
point to an historic fact — the recent death of one
of the Popes ; and unless we refer the composi-
tion 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 Shakespeare, who first fully realised its
268
Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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 relationship with human affairs. They
are the fairies 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 delight in mischief-
making ; but he insists less upon their diminutive
stature, and, while keeping the background of
rustic superstition, also contrives to introduce
a certain amount of classic colouring, and
associates his native elves with the fauns and
satyrs of ancient mythology. In the next
generation this poetic handling of fairy-lore
underwent further modification, and between the
years 1620 and 1630 there arose a considerable
mass of fairy-poetry which, under the forms of
epic, lyric, and descriptive verse, attracted the
attention not only of young men like Herrick,
but also of such a veteran as Michael Drayton.
269
Robert Herrick
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
WilHam Browne's Britannia! s Pastorals, the
contributions of Steward and other anonymous
writers to the Httle 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 no-
where is the fairy-world brought into touch with
the lives of men and 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
270
Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
fairy-world from the affairs of mortal men checks
at its source the outflow of that delicate humour
which, in A Midsummer Nighfs 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 Nymphidia, for this lack
of humour by the skiful 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 outline, and a nice sense of propor-
tion in miniature. At times, too, nobler qualities
reveal themselves, as when, for instance, describ-
ing 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 {22 2^) —
^ Oberon^ s Palace (444).
271
Robert Herrick
The fringe that circumbinds it, too,
Is spangle-work of trembling dew ;
Which, gently gleaming, makes a show
Like frost-work glitt'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 Hes-
perides, however, are a number of other poems
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 de-
scribes the night-hag stand out in bold contrast
to the thin-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,
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Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
But hush'd in his lair he lies lurking \
While mischiefs, 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
Affrighted shall come,
Call'd out by the clap of the thunder.^
Here we are face to face with the darker and
more maHgnant forces of the spirit-world, and
Herrick makes us realise the baneful influence
of the night-hag, and her league with the powers
of darkness, as surely as Shakespeare 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 connection with Devonshire customs, and
belong, beyond a doubt, to the time of his re-
sidence at Dean Prior. There, for instance,
must have been written his verses on the
Christmas ceremony for the fertilisation of the
fruit trees —
Wassail the trees that they may bear
You many a plum and many a pear :
For more or less fruits they will bring
As you do give them wassailing.^
1 The Hag (643). 2 ^ Qharfn (787).
s 273
Robert Herrick
The ceremony here referred to, that of firing shot
from a gun into the branches of the fruit-trees
at Christmastide, has lingered on in the neigh-
bourhood of Dean Prior down to the present day.
Mingling freely with his Devonshire parish-
ioners in all the homely details of their lives,
Herrick finds an especial delight in the cere-
monious ritual with which they propitiated the
occult powers of Nature, and has enshrined
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 Night and St Distaffs Day. A certain
direct homeliness characterises all these cere-
monial verses, and they make us realise 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
raciness of Burns's Halloween : —
Partly work and partly play
Ye must on S. Distaffs Day :
From the plough soon free your team,
Then come home and fodder them.
If the maids a-spinning go.
Burn the flax and fire the tow ;
Scorch their plackets, but beware
That ye singe no maidenhair.
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Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
Bring in pails of water, then,
Let the maids bewash the men.
Give S. Distaff all the right ;
Then bid Christmas sport good-night ;
And next morrow every one
To his own vocation.
Akin to these ceremonial verses are the charm-
poems which lie scattered through the pages of
the Hesperides. These not only serve to associate
their author with the simple faiths and super-
stitions of rural England, but, as stated before,
they connect him with one of the most primitive
forms of English verse. His charms to allay
love (587), to make the bread rise (1063), to
bring in the witch (890), or to secure stables
against the malice of the night-hag (891), are
all of this character, and show that English
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 the
Hesperides, 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, conceived in the worst manner
of Martial, and directed against some hapless
wretch who has goaded the poet to sting, it
275
r
Robert Herrick
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 com-
pressed and delicately finished poem which does
not necessarily aim 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
modern sense, or that he would have accepted
Boileau's definition of it as "un bon mot de
deux rimes orne," 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
dpigrammes a la grecque which, in number as
in poetic quality, far exceed the satiric verses
directed against some offending person at Dean
1 Two instances out of many are Upon Adam Peapes : Epig.
(835), and Upon Hanch a Schoolmaster : Epi^. (842).
276
Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
Prior or elsewhere. But this should not prevent
us from applying the term to those exquisite
cameos of verse — epitaphs, gnomic verses, short
complimentary poems, prayers and dedications
to pagan deities — which are too brief to be called
lyrics, 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 literary form, sprang
into being through the contact of the modern
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 pub-
lication of the Planudean Anthology. This
anthology, which had been compiled from the
earlier 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 fol-
lowed.^ The composition of Latin epigrams,
either after the Greek or the Roman model,
thenceforward became the delight of humanists
all over Western Europe, the Scotsman, George
^ See J. W. Mackail, Select Epigrams froiii the Greek Anthology ^
pp. 21-23.
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Robert Herrick
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, published in black
letter in 1562.^ He wrote six hundred epigrams
in all, 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 transla-
tion of Seneca's tragedies shows, a classical
scholar, his epigrams give little evidence of
the study of Roman models. The epigram
is recognised 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 under 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
^ Republished by the Spenser Society.
2 Ed. Arber, p. 68.
278
Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
Ckre staler OS, ^ consisting of nearly three hundred
epigrams, arranged in seven books ; and about
the same time were written the better known
epigrams of Sir John Davies.^ Davies claims to
be the direct successor and also the eclipser of
Hey wood : —
Heywood that did in epigrams excel
Is now put down since my light muse arose ;
As buckets are put down into a well,
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 Donnepractised this formof versebothin Latin
and in English. In 16 10 appeared John Heath's
Two Centuries of Epigrammes, and the follow-
ing 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 161 3 were published no less than
three collections of epigrams, namely those of
Sir John Harington, many of which were merely
translations from Martial, Henry Parrott's
1 Re-edited by E. V. Utterson, 1842.
2 Published in Dyce's edition of the Works of Christopher
Marlowe. ^ Epigram xxix.
279
Robert Herrick
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 16 16 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 books of epigrams appeared in 161 2,
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 different
character. There are, for instance, generous
tributes of friendship to men like Donne, Camden,
Francis Beaumont and Edward Alleyn, and
complimentary verses to great nobles ; included
amongst them, too, are the touching epitaphs on
280
Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
'* 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 all this, however, he does not depart
far from the Roman manner. Complimentary
verses, tributes to friends, epitaphs, gnomic verses
and lines addressed to himself and his book, may
all be found among the epigrams of Martial,
though their number is small in comparison with
the satiric verses. Yet, when compared with
earlier English 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 Heidelberg, 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 Farnaby, published 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 Delitiae Delitiarum^ familiarised classical
students in England with the Latin epigrams,
281
Robert Herrick
written after the Greek manner, by Italian,
French and EngHsh humanists of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. And although most of the
seventeenth century collections of English epi-
grams 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 Hawthornden.
Among his collected poems, published in 1656,
after his death, is a section entitled *' Madrigals
and Epigrams," the composition of which in all
probability 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
epigrammatic 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 countrymen of Meleager and
Callimachus. Their literary quality is not high,
282
Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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 :
Proteus 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.
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.
In approaching the epigrams of Herrick, we
may dismiss with a very few words those of a
satiric character. There is little 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 Carmtna. The
most that can be said for them is that they are
283
Robert Herrick
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 literary 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 epigram-
matist 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, while he reproduced
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 trans-
lations from Martial, and 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 : —
1 e.g. : 'Tis sin to throttle wine" (502), a translation of Martial's
Scelus estjugulare Falernu?fi" (Book i. 9).
284
Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
Each must in virtue strive for to excel ;
That man lives twice that lives the first life well —
where the second line is a translation of the
following words : —
hoc est
Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui.i
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 trans-
fers the elaborate fancy of the epigram Ad
Diadumenum (iii. 65) to a graceful complimentary
poem addressed to his kinswoman, The most
fair and lovely Mistress Anne Soame (375).
One of the neatest of Herrick'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 Pembe7'ton {^^11^ ^^7
be traced back, through Jonson's Penshurst,
1 Epigrafjiniata^ x. 23.
' Epigram mata, iv. 32, and compare Herrick, The Amber Bead
(817) and Upon a Fly (497).
285
Robert Herrick
to Martial's description of the country-house of
Faustinus (iii. 58).
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
translating 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 writ-
ing this : —
Make haste away, and let one be
A friendly patron unto thee :
Lest, rapt from hence, I see thee lie
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. ^
1 To his Book (4) ; cf. Martial, Epigraminata^ xi. 16.
2 To his Book (844) ; cf. Martial, iii. 2, and Catullus, Car-
mifuiy xcv.
286
Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
But a large proportion of Herrick'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 acquaintance with the
epigrams of that anthology, either in the original
Greek or in Latin translations, is hard to
determine. Mr Pollard has traced two or three
of the epigrams to Greek originals,^ but there is
very little of that transference of some fortunate
idea or phrase from the anthologists 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 Hesperides. Whether he
is writing on erotic or on gnomic themes, address-
ing complimentary verses to the living, or writing
epitaphs for the dead, Herrick acquires some-
thing of the 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
1 See his notes to the following poems of the Hesperides^ Nos.
-?^^y/
Robert Herrick
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.^
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.^
1 Hymn to Neptune (325). With this we may compare the follow-
ing epigram from the Palatine Anthology (vi. 251) : " Phoebus who
boldest 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 little 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.)
' Hymti to Juno (360).
3 To Vulcan (613).
288
Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides /
But in his Hymn to the Muses (657) he grows
lyrical 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 live 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 compliment. 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-kindling :
But when she's up and fully dress'd
'Tis then broad day throughout the east.^
^ Upon Electra (404).
T 289
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, lilies, daffodils do stoop :
But when again she's got her healthful hour,
Each, bending then, will rise a proper flower. 2
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 lilies 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 261), deserves to be
quoted here : —
1 To Sappho (803). 2 xo Anthea (1054)-
290
Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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 remembered that he loved to assume
the role 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 pro-
found 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 informs 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
unlike that happy blend of Stoicism and Epi-
cureanism 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 content with the manna
of the wilderness — the pulse and beans of Dean
^ Divination by a Daffodil (107).
291
Robert Herrick
Prior. Estimating an equal mind and mastery
over self at their true worth, he places ** content "
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 pipkin 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 particularly snug in his Devon-
shire home, he offers up a hymn of thanksgiving
to his Lares, his
Chimney-keepers,
(I dare not call ye chimney-sweepers) —
and bedecks their idol brows with crowns of
green parsley and garlic chives.^ His purpose
is to make the most of this life, uncertain what
may follow : —
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.^
1 Content^ not Cates (312). ^ Hyfnn to the Lares (674).
3 To Sappho i^dc^i).
292
Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
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 sailing 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 comes 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-delivers 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 suffers 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 epigrammatic, we find him ever prepared to
rejoice with those that rejoice, and to weep with
those that weep: he is the attendant spirit at
293
Robert Herrick
christenings and funerals, offering in his graceful,
affectionate, but never very profound way, felici-
tation or condolence. He is the "music of a
feast," and the domiduca of home-coming brides ;
he pays compliments to high-born ladies with the
easy grace of the practised cavalier, and to the
memory of his many friends, kinsmen, and kins-
women, he builds a *' college," a '' white temple of
my heroes," where, immortalised 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 Tur-
berville 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.
1 86), 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
* See the poem, To his honoured kinsman^ Sir Richard Stone
(496). ^ Arte of English Poesie^ chap, xxviii.
294
Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hesperides
full of years, and on mothers dying 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.
Give her strewings, but not stir
The earth that lightly covers her.^
Here a solemn fast we keep ;
While all beauty lies asleep
Hush'd be all things — no noise here.
But the toning of a tear :
Or a sigh of such as bring
Cowslips 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.
1 Up07i a Child that died (310).
"^ An Epitaph upon a Virgin (450).
295
Robert Herrick
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 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 fol-
lowing, 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 Muses' martyrdom ;
But with this 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 slipped from his
1 On Himself {V12.Z).
296
Non-Lyrical Poems of the Hespertdes
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 full 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 lived, but few.
Who by his grey hairs doth his lusters tell.
Lives not those years, but he that lives them well.
One man has reach'd his sixty years, but he
Of all those threescore, has not liv'd half three.
He lives, who lives to virtue ; men who cast
Their ends for pleasure, do not live, but last.^
The epigrams of the Hesperides will never
win from the reader the same recognition that
the lyrics have won, for they are inferior to
them in variety of rhythmic effect, 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 epi-
grams, by virtue of the resemblance which they
bear to those of Greek literature in the Alex-
andrian period, deepen our sense of the classical
qualities of their author's genius.
1 On Hi?nself{zy2). 2 q^ Himself {ioZ%).
297
CHAPTER IV
THE NOBLE NUMBERS
IT is sometimes stated that the secular
poems, in particular the love-lyrics, be-
long 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 neigh-
bourhood 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 tells us that his mind is now
filled with '' sublime respect and conscience unto
priesthood," and that henceforth he must part
company with that Muse of Helicon with whom
he has
outworn
The fresh and fairest flourish of the morn
With flame and rapture ;
298
HES'PE\I'DES: ^
THE WORKS
BOTH
HUA4ANE& DIVINE
OF
Ro BERT HeRRICK Ejq.
Ovid.
Ejfugitnt dvidos Carm'ma. nofira Rogos.
L O ,N 'D O ?C.,
Printed for ^oh^ WilUdms^ :i\\^ Francis I.glcsf.i /•.-/,
dnd are to be fold by rho: Btint^ Book-lcllcr
ia Exon, i 6 4 8.
TITLE-PAGE OF THE FIRST EDITION OF liHSPKRIDES
The Noble Numbers
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.^
As we have already seen, the vow to part
company with the Muse of Helicon was not
kept, but there can be little doubt that we owe
the Noble 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 falling
into line with the practice of many other poets
of the day. The religious lyric of the seventeenth
century is in its way as unique a creation as the
sonnet-sequences of the Elizabethan age ; inti-
mately associated with the High Church move-
ment of the Caroline age, its nearest parallel is
to be found in the religious lyric of the High
Church movement of the early Victorian era.
The religious lyric in the age of Elizabeth is
of small account. 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, and
Songs of Sadness and Pietie^ (1587), and John
Mundy's Songs and Psalmes^ (i594) — we find
^ " Poems not included in the Hesperides," ed. Pollard, ii. 267.
2 See BoUe, Die gedruckten en^lischeti Liederbilcher bis 1600, p. 2.
'^ Ibid,, p. -j-j.
299
Robert Herrick
a number of the Psalms set to madrigal music,
and arranged for part-singing. We also know-
that in England, as well as in France, the
sonnet came to be used for the expression of
religious sentiment. In 1591, Henry Constable
published his Spiritual Sonnettes to the Honour
of God and His Sayntes'^ ; in 1595, appeared the
Divine Centurie of Spirituall Sonnets by Barnabe
Barnes, and in 1597, Henry Lok's Sundrie Sonnets
of Christian Passions. A year or two later,
Gervase Markham published two collections of
religious lyrics, written in a six-line stanza and
entitled Tears of the Beloved {1600) and Mary
Magdalen s Tears (1601) respectively. But the
literary quality of these collections of religious
verses is exceedingly low, and the only lyrics of
a religious character in the Elizabethan age
which have the breath of true poetic life in
them are those of the Jesuit Father, Robert
Southwell, who stands far apart from the main
tendencies of the age in which he lived.
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 side with his madrigals
and canzonets in 16 13. In his religious, as in
his secular, work, Campion is a transitional figure.
1 Ed. V^. C. Hazlitt.
300
The Noble Numbers
Some of his divine songs are in the manner
of the old psalm-lyrics of Byrd or Mundy,
but in the following, and in others like it, we
discern the first beginnings of a religious lyric,
touched with that personal feeling which a few
years later was to rise to intensest fervour : —
View me, Lord, a work of Thine.
Shall I then lie drown'd in night ?
Might Thy grace in me but shine,
I should seem made all of light.
But my soul still surfeits so
On the poison'd baits of sin,
That I strange and ugly grow ;
All is dark and foul within.
Cleanse me, Lord, that I may kneel
At Thine altar, pure and white ;
They that once Thy mercies feel
Gaze no more on earth's delight.
Worldly joys, like shadows, fade,
When the heavenly light appears ;
But the covenants Thou hast made,
Endless, know not days nor years.
In Thy Word, Lord, is my trust,
To Thy mercies fast I fly ;
Though I am but clay and dust,
Yet Thy grace can lift me high.
But the true founder of the seventeenth-
century religious lyric was Donne, some of whose
Divine Poems, though not published until 1633,
301
Robert Herrick
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
recognised 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 individuality, 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 ex-
altation. We hear the voice of a repentant
sinner, lamenting his wasted youth, in his
Hymn to Gody 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 ;
302
The Noble Numbers
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.i
Nor is Donne content with mere emotion in his
religious lyrics. Here, as in his secular verse,
he loves to 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, 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 all their might, 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 light affecting, in religion, news,
From thinking us all soul, neglecting thus
Our mutual duties. Lord, deliver us.^
^ Donne's Poems, ed. E. K. Chambers, i. 213.
2 Poems, i. 181.
303
Robert Herrick
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 Traherne, is but an
easy step, and with these later publications we
reach the full florescence of the seventeenth-
century religious lyric.
Herrick's Noble Numbers have far less in
common with the Caroline religious 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 Herbert's Temple, of the rapt ecstasy of
Crashaw, or the mystic soarings of Traherne
or Vaughan, Herrick knew nothing at all.
\ Among his Noble Numbers are many poems
of unquestionable orthodoxy, in which he sets
forth the attributes of God, or depicts the war-
fare 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
j 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
304
The Noble Numbers
our gaze. His Thanksgiving to God for his
House (see page 103) 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 humour than for
its piety : —
When the artless doctor sees
No one hope, but of his fees,
And his skill runs on the lees.
Sweet Spirit, comfort me I
When his potion and his pill
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 burn blue.
And the comforters are few,
And that number more than true,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me !
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
irreverence when he wrote verses such as these ;
u 305
Robert Herrick
the truth is that his conception of reHgion, in
spite of his reading of the Fathers, was scarcely
more mature than that of a child of eight. His God
is neither the stern Taskmaster of the Puritans,
nor the ineffable King whom Laud taught his
followers to worship in *'the beauty of holiness."
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 naweU 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, unseasoned and profane.
But as Heaven's public 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.i
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
1 To God {iif,.
306
The Noble Numbers
of Bethlehem, a *' Twelfth-tide King " to be
honoured with wassailings, and to whom he bids
a child bring childish presents — a 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 affrightment ; Thou art He
Whom all the flux of nations comes to see,
Not those poor thieves that act their parts with Thee.^
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 recognises the place of a Saviour in
the scheme of redemption, and is as sure of sal-
vation as any elect Anabaptist. Hell, he informs
us, is 'Hhe place where whipping-cheer abounds," ^
^ Rex tragicus J or, Christ going to His Cross (263).
2 To his Saviour (73). ^ ^^// ^ j 20).
307
Robert Herrick
but it has no terrors for him, and he intones
his creed with unfaltering voice : —
I do believe that die I must,
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.
I do believe I shall inherit
Heaven by Christ's mercies, not my merit.
I do believe the One in Three,
And Three in perfect unity :
Lastly, that Jesus is a deed
Of gift from God : and here's my creed.^
In one of his most beautiful lyrics 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 :
"^ His Creed {:]Z\
308
The Noble Numbers
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
Pleasures such as shall pursue
Me immortalised, 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 NumberSy and as
we contemplate it we wonder what the sermons ,
were like which he preached to his Devonshire v>>>-
parishioners. He turned this childlike 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 :
1 The White Island; or, Place of the Blest (128).
309
Robert Herrick
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 die
Ere thou dost threat me.
Lord, do not scourge me
If I by lies and oaths
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 Herrick's fame as a
poet, but occasionally they convey some new
thought, or some old thought set forth in a new
and striking way. The following may serve as
examples : —
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.^
* Another Grace for a Child {()^).
2 To God (49). ^ upon God (Sy)-
310
The Noble Numbers
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
Jephthalis Daughter {^'^ and The Dirge of
Dorcas (123). The beauty of the latter is some-
what marred by the same kind of materialism
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 strew-
ing 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 this 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 Sin (196).
Robert Herrick
No boisterous winds, or storms, come hither
To starve or wither
Thy soft sweet earth ! but, hke 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 gentleman who,
in these cavaliering days, spent idle moments in
tossing off verses of gallantry to their mistresses,
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,
^ A Sessions of the Poets.
312
The Noble Numbers
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 live not perfected.^
In addition to the authentic text of 1648, we
possess, as we have already seen, earlier printed
versions of some of the Hesperides poems ; more-
over, there are to be found among the Ashmole,
Harley, Egerton, and Rawlinson 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 carefully 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 sixteen, 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
^ His Request to Julia (59).
313
Robert Herrick
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 limbs 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.
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 published in 1640,
and contained the following lines describing
the modern dramatists who sit with Homer,
Virgil, ''soft Catullus," '' sharp-fang'd Martial,"
and other great classic poets in the green
meadows of Elysium :
314
The Noble Numbers
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 Shake-
speare, and so he alters the verses as follows : —
Among which glories, crown'd with sacred bays
And flatt'ring ivy, to recite their plays —
Beaumont and Fletcher, swans to whom all ears
Listen, while they, like 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 rhythm. Illustrations of the emenda-
tions made by the poet might be jurnished_tQ_aay
extent, but they all tell the same tale — gain in
te'rsene'SS aild~simpIicity ~ot utterance, and7 lik e-
WTsertrfpu r i t y_a^ndji^;aniiy: joilrhyth m .
^Th e most obv igua-jquality-^ H errick's style
is its freedom from the fashionable mannerisms
of his day. There is at times a certain quaint^
ness in his diction, and, more rarely, a Jonsoniaij
fondness for inversions. Mr Courthope has also
drawn attenl;ion to his occasional use of strange
words like " carcanet " and "pannicle," and to his
py ^
Robert Herrick
fgndness 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 _pf
poetry then in vogue. To the allurements of
this seventeenth-century poetic diction even so
surejii artist as Milton fell a victim in the early ^
portion of his career, but Herrick, from first^to
last, IceptTilmseir free from blemish. At the
same tinie,'Tie Ts free from the affectations of the
Elizabethans, ^e admits into his verses neither
thii^archaisms and provincialisms of Spender,
nor the indirectness and over-subtlety of the
sonneteers ; and everything in the nature of word-
quibbling he regards with just abhorrence^ In
the Ashmole MS. version of A Country Life
(io6) there occurs the following line :
Vice is vice-gerent at the court.
Recognising afterwards that his readers might
accuse him of punning, he recasts it thus : —
Vice rules the most or all at court.
Xhe- secret of his art consist^^n— 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
316
The Noble Numbers
imitating the rhythm of the popular song, his
diction is also extremely simple. Simplicity
is likewise sought in most of his song-lyrics,
and the beauty of the song To Anthea (267),
The Night-Piece to Julia (619), or The Mad
MaicTs Song {/}^\2), is largely^ jdue to the magic
effect produced by th^^omely wordsT^ In poems ^S^]
of this nature he relies upon monosyllabic words '^
to a greater extent than any other English poet,
and it is not at all difficult to find among the
Hesperides whole stanzas like the following, where
nothing but monosyllables 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'll give to thee.i
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-
lyric, as, for instance, in his odes and elegies, his
style grows more elaborate. Still pursuing clear-
ness and precision of utterance, and avoiding
everything in the nature of preciosity, he at the
same time manages to introduce high-sounding
latinised words, enriches the verses with the
treasures of classic story, and makes a bold use
1 To Anthea (267).
Robert Herrick
of figures of speech. The resuh is that his
verses acquire a certain massiveness, a resonance,
cR Td'^Sr aug ust, imperial splendour, which place
tfiem at a wide distance from the homely strains of
his songs*- We meet with this heightened style in
his Farewell and Welcome to Sack, and in the
lines, entitled The Apparition of his Mistress
calling him to Elysium (575). His__styje as a
l^ 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 bold-
ness 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 sheltering wall
Whereon my vine did crawl.
Now, now blown down ; needs must the old stock fall.^
A fondness for classic al 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
^ An Ode to Endymion Porter upon his Brother's Death (185).
318
The Noble Numbers
are most noticeable in that early poem, A
Country Life : to his Brother ^ Tho7nas Her rick
(io6), 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 live
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 envy, can their fames convince.
Homer, Musaeus, 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.^
Most of the poems describing the rustic
festivals of the countryside are as simple as his
1 " Poems not included in the Hesperides" Pollard, ii. 264.
319
Robert Herrick
songs, but even here there are times when
reminiscences of the ceremonial rites of a bye-
gone age come back to him, and then his
imagination glows with a rare incandescence
and his style takes on a richer colour. JThus^
many of the stanzas of that limpid poem,
Corinna's going a- Maying (178), the theme_of
>^HicE~is peculiarly English,_haye an undoubted
classic aromaj^jiijthe figurative opening lines
jmjght have come sixaight^from Ovid :
Get up, get up for shame, the blooming morn
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 bespangling herb and tree.
The grace and purity of Herrick's diction are
the natural complement to the grace and purity
of his verse. He lived in an age when lyric
'poetry was wonderfully plastic in respect of the
metrical moulds into which it flowed. The
tyranny of the sonnet-structure was over, 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 Puttenham
320
The Noble Numbers
who, in his Arte of English Poesies 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 " ; but 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.
Herrick had at his command an immense host
of lyric measures, some of them of his own
creation, and all of them skilfully adapted to the
lyric theme which is being set forth. In his
choice of metres, he shows once again that I
between him and the Elizabethan lyrists thereil
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 Elizabethan
lyric — Alexandrine, septenarius, and poulter's
measure — which still drag their weary chains
through some of the lyrics of Campion, find
favour with him. Verses of more than five
beats are extremely rare in the Hesperides, and
a .striking- feature. of_ H errick's nietrLc._art- is hi§
fondness^ Jbr^ a short line in iambic or trochaic
^ See chapter xi., " Of Proportion in Figure."
* See The Pillai' of Fame (1129) and The Cross {Noble Numbers^
268).
X 321
Robert Herrick
f measure. Verses of four, three^ or two accents
are extremefy common, and in his poem, Upon
his 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 hammer-
ing the Augustan distich out of the flowing
heroic verse of Chaucer ; the sfructure of his
earliest verses in this measure — e.g. the Farewell
to Sack — is still 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 delicacy of his ear and the fineness of his
workmanship are best displayed in his strophic
poems. Like most of the poets of the time, he
keeps chiefly ^to~]anibic and trochaic measures.
Dactyls are rarely IrieF^ith in his poems,^ and
anapaests are reserved almost entirely for certain
song-lyrics in which he is employing the rhythms
of popular airs ^ ; but by the use of feminine
rhymes, and by bringing into proximity lines of
1 His most effective use of the dactyl is in his poem To his
Mistress (94) :
Choose me your valentine.
Next let us marry —
Love to the death will pine
If we long tarry.
2 Instances are Ceremonies for Christinas (784), 77^*? hag is
astride (643).
322
The Noble Numbers
different lengths, he attains a wonderful variety
of effects. Thus the combination of verses with
four accents and verses with two accents gives a
delightful rhythm to his Thanksgiving to God
for 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 Trtie
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 j '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 life.
323 '
Robert Herrick
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 found, not unfittingly, in one
of the several poems written In honour of Ben
Jonson, from whom he had learnt so much of
the harmonies of verse. Here a swelling effect
is produced by the gradual lengthening of the
linens the^ stanza advances^the rhythmic waves
increasing in volume like the breakers of an in-
coming tide :
Ah Ben !
Say how or when
Shall we, thy guests.
Meet at those lyric feasts
Made at the Sun,
.^ N> The Dog, the Triple Tun ?
Where we such clusters had
" a/-V\ ^v^" As made us nobly wild not mad ;
-r^\^ i And yet each verse of thine
r t^ ^ ^ Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.^
^\
e\
All his poems are in rhyme, but occasionally he
introduces, like Milton in Lycidas, a rhymeless
verse Into his more highly- wrought stanzas.
This is the case with the first line of His Re-
cantation (246) :
1 A71 Ode for Ben Jonson (911).
324
The Noble Numbers
Love, I recant,
And pardon crave
That lately I offended ;
But 'twas
Alas!
To make a brave.
But no disdain intended.
Nor is he afraid of placing verses which rhyme
together at a great distance from one another,
the deHcacy of his ear assuring him that the
effect 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 :
Why do ye weep, sweet babes ? Can tears ,'t
Speak grief in you, b
Who were but born "
c Just as the modest morn
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 dissecting table, and lay bare
325
Robert Herrick
their intricate and finely- wrought structure. But
J. 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 consciousness 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 con-
summator 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.
Herrick can attune his lyre to the strains of
Marlowe and the earliest melodists of Eliza-
bethan song, and, at the same time, he can
rival the courtly gallantries of his immediate
contemporaries, Carew and Suckling. 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 Catallus and Horace on his left.
He is at once romantic and classic, learned and
326
I
The Noble Numbers
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 house-
wives ; 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 super-
stitions of the country-side. He is both Christian
and pagan, and, almost in the same breath, he
will present his supplication to God the Father,
and invite the protection of his " peculiar Lar."
The comparison which is sometimes drawn
between Herrick and the lyrists of a later day
—Burns, Shelley, Heine — is of singularly little
327
Robert Herrick
value, for it is like a comparison between youth
and age. Civilisation has moved forward
since the day on which Herrick published his
HesperideSy and advancing years have brought
to lyric 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 that "youth's a stuff
will not endure " ; but the resilience of their
natures soon lifts them out of their forebodings,
and the thrill of exultation comes back to them
with quickened pulse. They know nothing of
the heartache of modern lyricism, and their philo-
sophy of life is but to seize the day. With
Burns 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 tell of saddest thought, and about them
there gathers an intensity which is sometimes
the child of hope, and sometimes of disillusion-
ment. The passion of Burns, 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
I
The Noble Numbers
and the other masters of Renaissance song.
Burns 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 nobler aspirations, or confirming us in
our fears and misgivings. But there are times
when, feeling 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 holiday mood,
we turn to the Hesperides, and find refreshment
of soul in the contemplation of an age that knew
little 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 I
HERRICK'S INDENTURE OF APPRENTICESHP
(^September 25, 1607).^
THIS indenture witnesseth that Robert Herick
the Sonne of Nicholas Herick of London,
Goldsmithe, doth put him selfe apprentize to
Sir Wm. Herick, knighte, citizen, and gold-
smith of London to learne his Arte. And with him
(after the manner of Apprentize) to serve from the
feaste of St Bartholomew the apostle last past before
the date heereof unto the full end and terme of Tenn
yeres from thence next following to be full complete
and ended. During which terme the said Apprentize
his said master faithfully shall serve his secrets keepe
his lawfuU 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 to his master of the same. He
shall not waste the goode of his said master nor lend
them unlawfully 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 unlawfull games whereby his said master may
have any losse with his own goode or others during
the said terme without licence of his said master; he
shall neither beg nor stele : he shall not haunt Tavernes
nor absent him selfe from his said master's service daic
nor nighte unlawfully. But in all thinges as a faithfuU
^ From the Herrick Papers at Beaumanor.
Robert Herrick
Apprentize he shall 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 useth, by the best means he can, shall teach and
iustruct with due correction, finding unto his said
Apprentize meate, drinke, Apparell, Lodging, and all
other necessaries- according 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 interchang-
ably have put their hand and seales the xxvth daie of
September in the 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
ffrance and Ireland, defender of the ffaith etc.
(Signed) ROBERT Hericke.
APPENDIX II
THE DIRGE OF ERIC BLOODAXE
IT is a far cry from the publication of Hesperides
back through the centuries to the old Norse
Eiriks-Mal, or Dirge of Eric Bloodaxe^ 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 apo-
theosis of his far-distant ancestor. The poem in the
Hesperides^ entitled The Apparition of his Mistress calling
him to Elysiuviy is, after its kind, a treatment of the
same theme which is set forth in the following poem.
Eric Bloodaxe fell at the battle of Stainmoor, 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 translation into English prose, and
fuller details as to the life of Eric Bloodaxe, will be
found in the first volume of Magnusson 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.
333
Robert Herrick
From sleep I awoke the Champions, I bade them
stir their limbs,
The benches with rushes to scatter, the beer-vats
to fill to the brims ;
Bade the Valkyrie bear the wine, as though a king
were at hand,
Or of chieftains, to gladden my heart, a fair and
goodly band.
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 all.
Odin. Of a truth thou speakest fondly, good Bragi,
though thou art wise,
'Tis for Eric Bloodaxe it thunders, 'tis he who
comes to the skies.
Sigmund, and thou, Sinfiotli, rise in haste the king
to greet.
Bid him in, if it be 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.
334
Appendix
But what kings are these which follow from the
clash of the keen-edged swords ?
Eric. Kings are they five in number, I will tell thee all
their names,
And I myself am the sixth. . . .
INDEX
Act of Uniformity, 148-9
Aemilia, 47
Amery, Mr P. F. S., 105 «.
Anacreon, 68, 183, 188, 205, 208
seg., 217, 221, 222, 246, 326
Anatomy of Melancholy i The, 172
Anthologia Grace a, 197, 205, 287
Apollo Chamber, loi, 116
Apologie for Poetrie, Sidney's, 167
Apparition of his Mistress calling
him to Elysium^ The, 209, 260,
314-5
Arber, Professor, 26
Argument of his Book, The, 249-50
Arte of English Poesie, 163, 278,
321
Ashmole MSS., 73, 313, 316
Astrophel and Stella, 165
Athenae Oxonienses, 135
Autobiography of Sir Simonds
D'Ewes, 35 seq,
Ayres, Philip, 200-1
Ayres and Dialogues, 65
B
Bad Princes pill the People, 128
Bad Season makes the Poet Sad, The,
68, 129, 132, 216
Bag of a Bee, The, 211
Bagford Ballads, 195
Baldwin, Prudence, 55, lOi, 103,
116, 151
Barnes, Barnabe, 183, 300
Barnfield, Richard, 200
Bastard, Thomas, 27S
Bateson, Thomas, 196 «., 227
Beaumanor Park, 7, 23, 34
Beaumont, Francis, 123
Belleau, Remy, 221-2
Bennett, Sir John, 7, 18
Berkeley, Sir John, 132
Boileau, 276
Boleyn, Anne, i6
Bolle, Wilhelm, 161 n., 227 «.
Book of Airs, Campion's, 185
Bradshaw, Mrs Katherine, 66
Brantham, 56, 86
Bray, Mrs, 105 n.
Breton, Nicholas, 169, 200, 202, 32S
Britannia' s Pastorals, 270
Brome, Richard, 194
Browne, William, 95, 182, 270
Buchanan, George, 278
Buckingham, Duke of, 57, 76, 79,
81
Bullen, Mr A. H., 162 «., 196 ;/.,.
227 n.
Burns, Robert, 164, 236, 328
Byrd, William, 160-1, 196, 299
Cambridge, University of, 32 seq.
Campion, Anne, 15
— Thomas, 184, 198, 202, 226,
238, 280, 284, 300, 321
Canticle to Bacchus, A, 210
Carew, Thomas, 64, 155, 180, 192,
I99> 234, 312
Carlisle, Countess of, 85, 327
Carman's Whistle, The, 160
Carols, Christmas, 158
Cartwright, William, 62, 144
Castara, 182
Catullus, 71, 140, 183, 188, 2i2J^^.»
262, 283, 286, 296, 327
Celebration of Char is, A, 188, 208
Cephalas, 277
Ceremonies for Christmas, 224
Chambers, E. K., 174
Charles I., 65, 87, 128 seq.^ 136
337
Robert Herrick
Charles II., 132, 140, 147
Charms, Herrick's, 224-5, 273-5
— Old EngHsh, 224
Charon and Philomel, 145
Chaucer, 255
Cherry Ripe, 226, 237
Chrestoleros, 279
Christian Militant, The, 218, 293,
322
Chronologische Anordnung der
Dichtungen Her ricks, Die, 1 40
Civil War, The, 98, 127 seq.
Coleridge, S. T., 179
Complimentary Poems, Herrick's,
293
Constable, Henry, 300
Content, not Gates, 292
Corbett, Dr, 49
Corinna, 214
Corinnas going a- Mayings 69, 144,
227, 240, 254, 320
Corpus Poeticum Boreale, 4 «. , 5 ^^
Cotton, Charles, 64, 193
Country Life, to Endyviion Porter,
The, 251-3
— to Thomas Herrick, A, 21, 29-
32, 216, 230, 250, 316, 319
Courthope, Mr W. J., 315
Cowley, Abraham, 144, 182, 185
Cox, Captain, 159
Coxe, Richard, 15, 19
Crabbe, George, 113
Crashaw, Richard, 143, 171, 202,
304
Crew, Sir Clipseby, 40, 41, 261, 264
Crofts, John, 76
Cromwell, Oliver, 132
Crooke, Andrew, 124
Cruel Maid, The, 205
Cynthia's Revels, 189
D
Daniel, Samuel, 17, 173, 185
Dante, 166
Dartmoor, 92, 105, 251
Davies, John, of Hereford, 279
— Sir John, 167, 196, 279
Dean Burn, 93, 94, 133, 150
— Court, 96, 114
— Prior, 89, 92 seq., 1 4 1, 149, 224,
240, 254, 273, 291
of
Dekker, Thomas, 77, 225, 328
Delight in Disorder, 232
Delitiae Delitiarum, 281
Dell, William, 118-20
Denham, Sir John, 64, 145
Description of a Woman, 221
— of the King and Queen
Fairies, A, 266-7
Deuteromelia, 194
Devil Tavern, The, 104
D'Ewes, Sir Simonds, 35, 42
Difference between Kings and Sub-
jects, The, 128
Dirge of Dorcas, The, 311
— of Jephthah's Daughter, The,
311
Discontents in Devon, 99, 100
Divination by a Daffodil, \TJ, 291
Divine and Moral Songs, Campion's,
301
— 'Poems, Donne's, 301
Donne, Dr, 71, 170, 174 seq., 184,
188, 195, 228, 241, 262, 279,
301 seq.
Dowland, John, 198
Downes, Andrew, 34, 42
Drayton, Michael, 173, 269-70
Drinking Songs, Herrick's, 245 seq.
Drummond of Hawthornden, 180,
183, 185, 191, 200, 282 •
Dryden, John, 145
East, Michael, 195
Eclogue, or Pastoral between Endy-
niion Porter and Lycidas Herrick^
78
Egerton MSS., 313, 3^4
Electra, 210
Elegy on the Death of Dr Donne,
180
Eiriks-Mal, or Dirge of Eric, 4
Elizabeth, Queen, 16, 159
Encoujtter, The, 224
England's Helicon, 168, 222
English Garner, An, 26
Epigrammes in the Oldest Gut, 279
Epigrams, Herrick's, 275 seq.
Epigrams, Roman, Greek, and
English, 275 seq.
Epistle to Sir Robert Wroth, 32, 230
338
Index
Epitaph on a Virgin, An, 295
Epitaphs, Herrick's, 293 seq.
Epithalamia, Herrick's, 261 seq.
Epithalamium, Spenser's, 262.
Epithalayny to Sir Thomas South-
well, 262
Eric Bloodaxe, 4, 333
Eric Hakonsson, 4-5
Eric, The Forester, 3
Ericke, Thomas, 6
Estienne, Henri, 208
Eupheme, Jonson's, 185
Exegi monumentum aere perenniiis,
220
Eyrick, John, 6- 11
— Mary, 6-12
— Robert, 5, 49
— Sir William, 5, 6
Fairfax, General, 131
Fairy-Poems, Herrick's, 266 seq.
Fairy Temple, The, 266, 268, 271
Fane, Mildmay, Earl of Westmor-
land, 58, 76, III, 136, 257
Farewell Frost, 257-8
Farewell to Sack^ 117, 245, 247-8,
322
Farnaby, Thomas, 281
Ferrabosco, A., 198
Field, Barron, 107-8
Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 160
Fletcher, John, 122, 123, 193, 315
Fcedera, Rymer's, 88
Folk-Lore Poems, Herrick's, 272
seq.
Folk-Song, 158
Forest, The, Jonson's, 187, 191, 228
Four Prentices of London, The, 24-5
Freeman, Thomas, 28c
Fuller, Thomas, 133
Gamage, William, 280
Gamble, John, 199
Gardiner, S. R,, 83, 130 «., 132 «.
Gibbons, Orlando, 196
Giles, Sir Edward, 87, 96, 113
Gipsies Metamorphosed, The, 230
Gnomic Verses, Herrick's, 291
Good Thoughts in Bad Times, 133
Golden Age Restored, The, 187
Gondibert, 144
Gosse, Mr Edmund, 69, 72, 143,
174, 180, 251
Graces for Children, Herrick's, 309
Greene, Robert, 34
Grosart, Dr, 19, 30, 39, 52, 89,
138, 140, 314
Gwyn, Owen, 34
H
Habington, William, 182
Hagis Astride, The, 224, 272-3, 316
Hale, Dr E. E., 140
— John, 193
Hall, Joseph, 112
Hampton (Middlesex), 15
— Court, 16-18, 136
— Court Conference, 17-18
Happy Warrior, The, 218
Harington, Sir John, 279
Harlean MSS., 313
Hastings, Lord, 145
Hazlitt, Mr W. Carew, 79, 267
Heath, John, 279
Heine, 328
Hele, Sir Thomas, 112
Henrietta Maria, Queen, 69, 128-9,
130
— Princess, 130
Herbert, George, 103, 181, 202,
304, 321
Herric, Ivo de, 5
Herrick ; see also Eric, Ericke,
Eyrick, Herric
— Elizabeth, 125-6
— Julian, 8-15, 56, 86
— Mary, 7, 17
— Nicholas (senior), 6-14
— Nicholas (junior), ii, 14, 22, 86,
136
— Richard, 146-7
— Robert : ancestry, i seq. ; birth
and early years, 1 1 seq. ; at Hamp-
ton, 15-19; school, 19-21; ap-
prenticeship, 22, 331; first poems,
28-32 ; at Cambridge, 32 seq. ;
letters from Cambridge, 34 seq.\
college friendships, 39 ; course of
339
Robert Herrick
Herrick, Robert — contimied.
study, 41 ; graduation, 52 ; life
in London, 55 seq. ; London
friends, 60 ; poems of the London
period, 63 ; his mistress-poems,
()6 seq.', his patrons, 76-81; mili-
tary chaplaincy, 82 ; expedition to
the Isle of Rhe, 82 ; character of
his London life, 83; vicar of Dean
Prior, 87 ; ^x\\.t%His Farewell unto
Poetry, 89 ; at Dean Prior, 92 seq. ;
his parishioners, 95 ; his attituae
towards his life in Devon, 97 seq.:,
poems of the Dean Prior period,
105 seq. ; posthumous fame at
Dean Prior, 107; visit to London,
118; first appearance of his poems
in print, 122-4 ; return to Dean
Prior, 125 ; his royalist sym-
pathies, 128; poems on the Civil
War, 129 seq. ; ejection from Dean
Prior, 133; visits John Weekes,
134; in London, 135; publica-
tion oi Hesperides, 137; reception
of his poems, 142 ; writes The
New Charon, 145 ; life under the
Commonwealth, 145-7 ; restored
to Dean Prior, 149 ; death and
burial, 150; the lyrical poems of
the Hesperides, 204 seq. ; Herrick's
debt to classical authors, 205 seq. ;
his classic paganism, 205-8 ; in-
debtedness to Anacreon, 208-12 ;
to Catullus, 212-5 ; to Horace,
215-20; relation to Belleau,
221-2; to the Elizabethan lyrists,
222 seq. ; relation to Donne, 228 ;
to Jonson, 229 seq. ; his love-
lyrics, 233-45 ; his drinking-
songs, 245-8 ; songs in praise of
music, 248 ; his Nature-lyrics
and lyrics of country life, 249-
61; his epithalamia, 261-4; iiis
non-lyrical poems, 265 seq.; fairy-
Doems, 266-72; folk-lore poems,
272-5; epigrams, 275 seq.; his
debt to Martial, 284-6 ; his ^pi-
grammes a la grecque, 287-91 ;
gnomic verses, 291-3 ; occasional
verses and epitaphs, 293-7 > the
Noble Numbers, 298 seq. ; his
religion, 304 seq. ; Herrick as an
artist, 312 seq. ; his diction, 312-
Herrick, Robert — continued.
20 ; his verse, 320-6 ; his lyrical
range, 326 ; comparison with later
lyrists, 327-9 », ; „ .r.
— Robert (uncle of poet), 6, 14 | {
— Sir William, 7, 14, 22-7, 33 seq.,
56, 146
— Susannah, 61 w.
— Thomas, ii, 14, 22, 29
— William, 86, 126, 214, 294
Hesperides, passim.
Pleywood, John, 278-9
— Thomas, 24
His Age: to Mr John Weekes, 84,
218, 314, 319
His Cha7-ge to Jtilia at his Death,
n
His Content in the Country, 10
His Creed, 308
His Daughter's Dowry, 70,|73
His Farewell to Poetry, 59, 89, 1 10,
298-9, 319
His Grange, 102, 317
His Lachrymae, 63, 99, IIO
His last Request to Julia, 127
His Mistress Shade, 123
His own Epitaph, 296
His Parting from Mistress Dorothy
Keneday, 72
His Poetry his Pillar, 220
His Request to Julia, 313
His Return to London, 97, 135
His Sailing fro?n Julia, 8 1
His Tears for Thamasis, 20
His Winding Sheet, 127
His Wish, 217, 285
Historical Manuscripts Commission,
Report of, 53-4
History of St John's College, Cam-
bridge, 33 n.
Hock- Cart, or Harvest-Home, The,
256-7, 265
Holy Sonnets, Donne's, 302
Homer, 253
Hopton, Lord, 130
Horace, 30-2, 93, 183, 185, 215
seq., 250, 291, 327
Howell, James, 58. 83
Hunt, Thomas, 109, 142
Hutton, Dr I^L, 57
Hymn to Bacchus, A, 2lo, 246
— to God, Donne's, 302
— to Juno, 2S8
340
Index
Hymn to Neptune, 288
— to Sir Clipseby Crewe, A, 41
— to the Muses, 289
Hymns to the Lares, 206, 292
I
Ignoramus, 47
Imelmann, Dr R., 159 n.
In Nuptias Juliae et Manlii, 262
In Praise of Wometi, 234
Indifferent, The, Donne's, 177
Integer Vitce, Horace's, 185
J
James I., 17, 45-8
Johnson, Dr, 180
Jones, Robert, 198
Jonson, Ben, 32, 62-4, no, 11 1-2,
123, 155, 183 seq., 196, 204, 206,
208, 226, 229 seq., 269, 280
/onsonus Virbius, 63
Jovial Tinker, The, 223
» Julia, 26, 69, 70, 71, 210, 214,
236
Julia's Churching, 71
Juvenal, 31
Keneday, Dorothy, 68
King, Dorothy, 107-8
Kingston, 21
Knight oj the Burning Pestle, The,
25
V Allegro, 252
La Bergerie, Belleau's, 22 1
La Pleiade, 221
Laniere, Nicholas, 65, 199
Laquei Ridiculosi, 280
Lascaris, Janus, 277
Laud, Archbishop, 118, 120, 306
Lawes, Henry, 65, 199
— William, 65, 199
Leges Conviviales, 62
Les Vendangeurs, Belleau's, 221
Lesbia, Catullus's, 71, 214-5, 217
Linsi-Woolsie, 280
Litany, Donne's, 303
Litany to the Holy Spirit, 107-8,
150, 305
Lok, Henry, 300
Love- Lyrics, Herrick's, 233 seq.
Love Dislikes Nothing, 235
— Freed from Folly, 1 86
— Vagabonding, 283
Lovers Alchemy, 175
— Growth, 175
— Labour's Lost, 168
Lovelace, Richard, 144, 181, 199
Lowell, J. R., 212
Lowman, Bridget, 115
Luctus in Morte Passeris, 213
Lyly, John, 157, 164
Lyrics in the Elizabethan Drama,
163 seq., 194
M
Mackail, Mr J. W., 277, 288 n.
Mad MaicTs Song, The, 144, 226,
244-5» 317
Madrigals, English, 160 seq., 195,
225
Malherbe, 193
Map, Walter, 158
Markham, Gervase, 300
Marlowe, 157, 169, 170, 172, 200,
202, 241
Marshall, William, 141
Martial, 31, 232 «., 277, 284 seq.
Mary Magdalen^ s Tears, 300
Masque of Augurs^ 186
— of Beauty, 186
Masques, Jonson's, 186, 229
Meadow Verse, The, 115
Metis mata, 194
Mennes, Sir John, 76, 117, 202
Mercury Vindicated, 186
Merry Drollery Complete, 223
Midsum??ier Night^s Dream, A,
271
Milton, John, 150, 156, 200, 237,
252
Miscellany-lyrics, 162, 168,225
Moderation, 128
More, Sir Thomas, 278
Morley, Henry, 139
— Thomas, 160-1, 227
Mullinger, Mr J. B., 42 n., 43,
46 n., 47«-> 53 »•
Mundy, John, 299
341
Robert Herrick
Musarum Deliciae, ii6, 201
Musica Transalpina, 160
N
Nature-Poems, Herrick's, 249 seq.
New Charon, The, 145
New Yearns Gift to Sir Simon
Steward, A, 74.
Nice Valour, Fletcher's, 122
Nichols, John, i n.,io n., 45«., 60
Night-Piece to Julia, The, 230, 239,
317
No Spouse but a Sister, 125
Noble Nu77ibers, 298 seq., et passim
Non omnis mortar, 220
Non-lyrical poems, Herrick's, 265
seq.
Norgate, Edward, 76
Northleigh, Henry, 114
Nuptial Song ojt Sir Clipsehy Crew,
264, 313
Nymphidia, 270-1
Obedience in Subjects, 128
Oberon^s Chapel, see Fairy Temple,
The
Oberon's Feast, 122
Oberon's Palace, 266, 267, 271
Observations on the Art of English
Poesie, Campion's, 184, 284
OdeforBenJonson, 62, 63, 324
— to Endymion Porter, An, 318
Olor Jscamis, 144
On a Bee enclosed in Amber, 285
On Himself, 125, 296, 297
On Virtue, 284
Ophelia, 226
Orlando di Lasso, 160
Otia Sacra, 136
Overbury, Sir Thomas, 75.
Ovid, 98, 120, 217, 220, 320
Owen, John, 280
Palatine Anthology, The, 281,
288 «.
Pammelia, 194
Panegyric to Sir Lewis Pemberton,
75, 230, 285
Parliament of Roses to Julia, The^
237
Parrott, Henry, 279
Parry, Sir Hubert, 197
— Sir George, 112
Parsons, Dorothy, 67, 119
— Thomasin, 118, 119
Parthenophil and Parthenope, 183
Parting Verse, The, 73, 81
Passionate Pilgri?n, The, 168
Pastoral Dialogues, Herrick's, 243
Pastoral Song to the King, A, 243
Pemberton, Sir Lewis, 75
Penshurst, Jonson's, 230-1, 285
Pepys, Samuel, 144, 147-8
— Ballads, 223
Petrarch, 160, 166, 183, 195, 221,
226
Philip, Earl of Pembroke, 76
Pierrepont, Robert, Viscount New-
ark, 76, III, 136
Pindar, 197
Planudean Anthology, 277, 281
Plato, 171, 175
Playford, John, 65-6, 199
Plunder, The, 136
Poems of Devotion, Jonson's, 300
Poems on Music, Herrick's, 248 seq.
Poetical Rhapsody, Davison's, 184,
201
Pollard, Mr A. W., 20, 119,275,
287, 314
Porter, Endymion, 58, 76-8, ill,
136, 261
— Thomas, ill
Portrait de sa Maistresse, Belleau's,
222
Posting to Printing, 121
Potter, Amy, 67
— Dr, 87-8
Prayer to Ben Jonson, 64
Propertius, 217, 220
Proteus of Marble, 283
Puttenham, George, 163, 278, 294^
320
Pyggott, Edmund, 15, 19
Quarles, Francis, 199
Quarterly Review, 107, 189
Queen Mab, Shakespeare's, 270
Quintilian, 41
342
Index
I
R
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 241, 279
Ramsay, Robert, 65
Ramus, Peter, 41
Randolph, Thomas, 62, 64
Ravenscroft, Thomas, 194
Rawlinson MSS., 313
Eestoration Lyrists, The, 192
Rex Tragicus, 307
Rhe, Isle of, 58, 70, 81-3
Riley, Mr H. T., 54
Ritson, Joseph, 268
Rock of Rubies, The, 237
Rosary, The, 289
Rossiter, Philip, 198
Rowton Heath, 132
Roxburghe Ballads, 195
Rubbe and a Great Caste, 280
Ruggle, George, 47
Rump-Songs, 224
Saint Distaff's Day, 274
Saintsbury, Professor, 201 n.
Salmasius, 281
Schelling, Professor, 156
Scott, Sir Walter, i, 23, 280
Scotirge of Folly, The, 279
Semple, Lord, of Beltreis, 16-7
Seneca, 217, 291
Sessions of the Poets, A, 312 n.
Severall Poems, The, etc. , 1 24
Shakespeare, 31, 72, 123, 164, 173,
178, 190, 202, 225, 269, 315
Shelley, 328
Short Hymn to Neptune, A, 82
Sidney, Sir Philip, 156, 165, 167
Silent Woman, The, 190
Silex Scintillans, 144
Sin, 311
Smith, James, 201
Soame, Anne, 8, 18
— Sir Stephen, 8
— Sir Thomas, 60
— Sir William, 60
Solemn League and Covenant, The,
133
Songs and Sonnets, Donne's, 174
seq., 191
Songs for the Circumcision, 80
Sonnet, The Elizabethan, 165, 200-1
Sonnets, Shakespeare's, 173
Southwell, Sir Thomas, 262
Spenser, 156, 166, 173, 222,262,264
St John's College, Cambridge, 32
seq.
Stanley, Thomas, 144, 199
State Papers, Domestic, 87, 118
Stationers' Register, The, 122-3, ^24
Steps to the Temple, 143, 304
Steward, Sir Simon, 74, 122, 267,
270
" Still to be Neat," 190, 232
Stuart, Lord Bernard, 132
Study of Ben Jonso7t, ^,233
Suckling, Sir John, 62, 64, 155,
181, 234, 312
Sufferings of the Clergy, Walker's^
134
Sun- Rising, The, 178
Surrey, Lord, 1551
Swinburne, A. C, 157, 233
Syms, John, 98, 133, 148
Tears of the Beloved, 300
Temple, The, 304
Thanksgiving to God for His House ^
A, 103, 305, 323
Theocritus, 205
Tibullus, 217, 220
Tinkers Song, The, 223, 246
To Anthea, 213, 215, 239, 317
To Daffodils, 325
To Dean Burn, 97
To Dr IVeekes, 117
To Groves, 258
To his Book, 74, 137 ;/., 139, 286
To his Household Gods, 97
'To his Lovely Mistresses, 242
To his Maid Prew, 116
To his Mistress, 322
To his Saviour, 307
To his Tombmaker, 120
To keep a true Lent, 323
To Lar, 99, 207
To Live Merrily and trust to Gcod
Verses, 63, 213, 217, 246
To Meadows, 258
To Music, 248
To Phillis, to love and live with hiin^
240, 259
343
Robert Herrick
To Primroses filled with Dew, 260,
325
To Robin Redbreast, 127, 295
To Sappho, 290, 292
To the Earl of Westmorland, 2 16
To the Genius of his House, 206
To the King, 137
To the King and Queen, 129
To the King upon his Cofning into
the West, 130
To the Reverend Shade of his re-
ligious Father, 14, 207-8
To the Rose, 238
To the Western Wind, 238
To the Yew and Cypress, 259
To Vulcan, 288
Totnes, 131
Traherne, Thomas, 202, 304
Trinity Hall, Cambridge, 48, 49,
54
Twelfth Night, 165
Two Centuries of Epigrammes , 279
Two Noble Kinsmen, The, 244
U
Underwoods, Jonson's, 140, 191,
228
Upon a Black Twist rounding the
Arm of the Countess of Carlisle,
86
Upon a Child that died, 295
Upon Electra, 289
Upon God, 310
Upon HijHself, 220
Upon his Departure hence, 322
Upon Julia washing herself in a
River, 285
Upon the Death of his Sparrow,
213
Upon the Loss of his Mistresses^
67, 210
Upon the Troublous Times ^ 129
Vaughan, Henry, 144, 171, 18]
202, 304
View of Devonshire, Westcote's,
96
Virgil, 217, 220
Vision, The, 210
Vision to Electra, The, 210
Vision of the Twelve Goddesses,
The, 17
Visitation of Suffolk, Metcalfe's,
28
Vivanus, mea Lesbia, 185, 188, 213
Vow to Mars, A, 83
W
Wake, The, 240
Wakefield Plays, The, 307
Walker, Mr E., 161
— John, 134 n., 135
Waller, Edmund, 62, 199, 238
Warmestry, Gervase, 77
Weekes, John, 40, 78-9, 84, 112-3,
117, 123-4, 134
Weever, John, 279
Welcofue to Sack, 43, 1 17, 245, 247
W^endell, Professor, 156
Westminster, 20, 118, 121, 135
— School, 19
Wheeler, Elizabeth, 61, 67
White Island, The, 309
Whitehall, loi
Wilbye, John, 160, 162
Wilson, John, 199
Wingfield, Mercy, nie Herrick, 28,
86, 146
Wither, George, 182
Wit's Recreations, 201
Wood, Anthony a, 79, 134, 135
Worde, Wynkyn de, 159
Wordsworth, 218, 253
Worthies of Devon, Prince's, 96
Wright, Abraham, 281
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 155
Yarde, Elizabeth, 114
— Lettice, 114
Yonge, Nicholas, 160
MEMORIES OF SIXTY YEARS AT ETON,
CAMBRIDGE AND ELSEWHERE. By
Oscar Browning, M.A., University Lecturer in
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Tutor at King's College, Cambridge, and formerly
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LADY CHARLOTTE SCHREIBER'S JOURNALS :
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the conflict raged fiercest; and the unpublished Diary of Mrs
Brownrigg, who had the misfortune to be at Wexford while the
town was in the hands of the rebels. A few extracts from the
Diary were printed by Sir Richard Musgrave in his " Memoirs
of the different Rebellions in Ireland," and he refers to the writer
as " a very amiable and respectable lady," her name being
" concealed at her own desire." Mrs Brownrigg went through
many heart-rending experiences which are related at length and
in grim detail. She was imprisoned for a time on the ship
commanded by the notorious Captain Dixon, witnessed the
massacre on Wexford Bridge, and was present in the town until
it was relieved by Moore's troops, after spending " twenty-six
days and nights of the most exquisite misery." The works of
contemporary writers and historians have also been utilised and
their discrepancies noted, while an attempt is made to arrive at
a just verdict in the case of Loyalist v. Rebel.
AIRSHIPS IN PEACE AND WAR: Being the
second edition of "Aerial Warfare." By R. P. Hearne,
with an Introduction by Sir HiRAM S. Maxim, and upwards
of seventy Illustrations. Demy 8vo. (9 x 5I inches. )
7s. 6d. net.
*5,t* Great success attended the publication of " Aerial War fare "
in England, Germany, the United States and other countries.
The book was written at a time when aerial vessels had no im-
mediate purpose beyond being employed for warlike require-
ments. But so great has been the development during 1909,
that it has been thought advisable to widen the scope of the work,
and treat of the sporting, commercial and other uses to which
aerial vessels can be put in time of peace. The entire book has
been thoroughly revised and brought up to date, and a number of
new chapters have been added dealing with the commercial
uses of airships, etc. There are also full results of the aeroplane
races of the year, new tables of records, and bringing out several
interesting points in connection with aerial traffic. A chapter
is devoted to the details of the principal aeroplanes of the year ;
another chapter deals with the recent progress of dirigible
balloons, and there is also a table of the airships of the world,
together with much other useful information. "Airships in
Peace and War " may now be said to cover the whole subject in
a novel and interesting manner ; and as it has a full list of re-
cords up to November 1909, it is one of the few works which
deals fully with the events of this wonderful year.
UNMUSICAL NEW YORK: A Brief Criticism of
Triumphs, Failures and Abuses. By Hermann
Klein. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.
*^* This is a revision and enlargement of the manuscript
of a lecture delivered by the author at Bechstein Hall, London,
on October 2$th, under the title of " The Truth about Music in
America." The original subject matter referred so essentially
to New York, rather than the United States as a whole, that it
has been thought only fair to modify the title of the book accord-
ingly. The question — To what extent can New York really
claim to be a musical city — has often been put, but never very
definitely answered. Even Mr Klein, who is a musical authority
and has lived in the Empire City seven or eight years, may be
said to conclude his criticism with a note of interrogation. But
at any rate he sets forth the actual state of affairs with a lucidity
and candour which it has not hitherto been vouchsafed, and will
enable the reader to form a pretty accurate opinion upon this
interesting topic.
WALKS AND PEOPLE IN TUSCANY. By Sir
Francis Vane, Bart. With numerous Illustra-
tions by Stephen Haweis and S. Garstin
Harvey. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
*^* This book treats of many walks and cycle rides, practically
describing, if not covering, the whole of Tuscany. It has been
written with the especial object of setting before the reader not
only the characteristics of the landscape, but no less the inhabi-
tants of all classes, whom the author eyicountered. Not only,
however, does he describe the people and the scenery, but he has
placed on record his thoughts about them in a frank and bold
manner. The author has also a considerable acquaintance with
history, heraldry and genealogy, which prove useful to him in
dealing with the social system of Italy in the past and of to-day.
The general scheme of the author has been to take the two centres,
Florence, the capital, and the summer resort, Bagni di Lucca,
and he has made his expeditions from these, consequently cover-
ing, with an effective network of raids, the mountains and valleys
between.
STAINED GLASS TOURS IN ENGLAND. By
C. H. Sherrill, Author of " Stained Glass Tours
in France." With 16 full-page Illustrations and
5 Maps. Demy 8vo. (9 x 5f inches.) Second
Edition. 7s. 6d. net.
INDIAN BIRDS: Being a Key to the Common
Birds of the Plains of India. By Douglas Dewar,
Author of " Bombay Ducks," " Birds of the Plains,"
"The Making of Species" (with Frank Finn).
Demy 8vo. (9 x 5I inches.) 6s. net.
*** The object of this hook is to enable people interested in
Indian birds to identify at sight those they are likely to meet
with in their compounds and in their excursions into the jungle.
The existi7ig works on ornithology make it necessary to have the
bird in the hand, which means to kill it before identification, a
proceeding obnoxious to real bird lovers. Mr Dewar's volume
is a key to everyday birds of the plains of India, a dictionary of
birds so arranged that the budding ornithologist is able to turn
up any particular bird in a few minutes.
THE MAKING OF SPECIES. By Douglas Dewar,
F.C.S., F.Z.S., B.A. (Cantab.), and Frank Finn,
F.Z.S., M.B.O.U., B.A. (Oxon.). With 15 Illustra-
tions. Demy 8vo. (9 x 5J inches.) 7s. 6d. net.
LAKE VICTORIA TO KHARTOUM WITH
RIFLE AND CAMERA. By Captain F. A.
Dickinson, D.C.L.I. With an Introduction by
the Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer Churchill, M.P.
With numerous Illustrations taken by the Author.
Uniform with " Big Game Shooting in the Equator."
Demy 8vo. (9 x 5 J inches.) 12s. 6d. net.
THE ISLE OF MAN. By Agnes Herbert, Author
of " Two Dianas in Somaliland " and " Two Dianas
in Alaska " (in collaboration with a Shikari). With
32 full-page Illustrations in colour by Donald
Maxwell. Demy 8vo. (9 x 5I inches.) los. 6d.
net.
JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD, VIGO ST.. LONDON, W.
?ipTICE
Those who possess old letters, documents, corre-
spondence, MSS., scraps of autobiography, and
also miniatures and portraits, relating to persons
and matters historical, literary, political and social ^
should communicate with Mr. John Lane, The
Bodley Head, Vigo Street, London, W.^ who will
at all times be pleased to give his advice and
assistance, either as to their preservation or
publication,
Mr. Lane also undertakes the planning and
printing of family papers, histories and pedigrees »
LIVING MASTERS OF MUSIC.
An Illustrated Series of Monographs dealing with
Contemporary Musical Life, and including
Representatives of all Branches of the Art.
Edited by ROSA NEWMARCH.
Crown 8vo. Cloth. Price 2/6 net.
HENRY J. WOOD. By Rosa Newmarch.
SIR EDWARD ELGAR. By R. J. Buckley.
JOSEPH JOACHIM. By J. A. Fuller
Maitland.
EDWARD A. MACDOWELL. By Lawrence
Oilman.
THEODOR LESCHETIZKY. By Annette
Hull AH.
ALFRED BRUNEAU By Arthur Hervey.
GIACOMO PUCCINI. By Wakeling Dry.
IGNAZ PADEREWSKI. By E. A. Baughan.
CLAUDE DEBUSSY. By Mrs. Franz Liebich.
RICHARD STRAUSS. By Ernest Newman.
STARS OF THE STAGE.
A Series of Illustrated Biographies of the
Leading Actors, Actresses, and Dramatists.
Edited by J. T. GREIN.
Crown 8vo. Price 2/6 each net.
ELLEN TERRY. By Christopher St. John.
SIR HERBERT BEERBOHM TREE. By Mrs.
George Cran.
SIR W. S. GILBERT. By Edith A. Browne.
SIR CHARLES WYNDHAM. By Florence
Teignmouth Shore.
A CATALOGUE OF
MEMOIRS, "BIOGRAPHIES, ETC.
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WILLIAM
COBBETT IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. By Lewis
Melville. Author of " William Makepeace Thackeray." With
two Photogravures and numerous other Illustrations. 2 vols.
Demy 8vo. 32s. net.
THE LETTER-BAG OF LADY ELIZABETH
SPENCER STANHOPE. By A. M. W. Stirling. Author
of «< Coke of Norfolk," and " Annals of a Yorkshire House."
With a Colour Plate, 3 in Photogravure, and 27 other
Illustrations. 2 vols. Demy 8vo. 32s. net.
%* Extracts might be multiplied indefinitely, but we have given enough t«
show the richness of the mine. We have nothing but praise for the editor's
work, and can conscientiously commend this book equally to the student of
manners and the lover of lively anecdote."— S/aKt/or-*/.
MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ENGLAND
IN 1675. By Marie Catherine Comtesse d'Aulnoy. Trans-
lated from the original French by Mrs. William Henry Arthur.
Edited, Revised, and with Annotations (including an account of
Lucy Walter) by George David Gilbert. With Illustrations.
Demy 8vo. 21s. net.
%* When the Comte de Gramont went back to France and Mr. Pepys
decided that to save his eyesight it was essential that he should suspend his
Diary, the records of delectable gossip of the ever interesting Restoration Court
became, of necessity, sadly curtailed. Indeed, of the second decade of the
Golden Days the sedate Lvelyn has hitherto been almost the only source of
information available to the public. Though the Memoirs of the Countess
d'Aulnoy have always been known to students, they have never received the
respect they undoubtedly merit, for until Mr. Gilbert, whose hobby is the social
history of this period, took the matter in hand, no-one had succeeded in either
deciphering the identity of the leading characters of the Memoirs or of verifying
the statements made therein. To achieve this has been for some years his labour
of love and an unique contribution to Court and Domestic history is the crown ot
his labours. The Memoirs, which have only to be known to rank with the
sparkling " Comte de Gramont" (which they much resemble), contain amusing
anecdotes and vivid portraits of King Charles II., his son the Duke of Monmouth,
Prince Rupert, Buckingham, and other ruffling "Hectors" of those romantic
days. Among the ladies we notice the Queen, the Duchess of Norfolk and
Richmond, and the lively and vivacious Maids of Honour. The new Nell Gwynn
matter is of particular interest. The Memoirs are fully illustrated with portraits,
not reproduced before, from the collection of the Duke of Portland and others.
AUSTRIA: HER PEOPLE AND THEIR
HOMELANDS. By James Baker, F.R.G.S. With 48 Pictures
in Colour by Donald Maxvi^ell. Demy 8vo. 21s. net.
*** The Empire of Austria with its strangely diversified population of many
tongues is but little known to English readers. The Capital and a few famous
interesting places, such as Carlsbad, Marienbad, the glorious Tyrol, and such
cities as Golden Prague and Innsbruck are known to the English and Americans ;
but the remarkable scenery of the Upper Elbe, the Ultava or Moldau and the
Danube, the interesting peasantry in their brilliant costumes, the wild mountain
gorges, are quite outside the ken of the ordinary traveller. The volume is
written by one who since 1873 has continually visited various parts of the Empire
and has already written much upon Austria and her people. Mr. Baker was
lately decorated! by the Emperor Francis Joseph for his literary work and was
also voted the Great Silver Medal by the Prague Senate. The volume is
illustrated with 48 beautiful water-colour pictures by Mr. Donald Maxwell, the
well-known artist of the Graphic^ who has made several journeys to Austria for
studies for this volume.
A CATALOGUE OF
TAPESTRIES : THEIR ORIGIN, HISTORY,
AND RENAISSANCE. By George Leland Hunter. With
four full-page Plates in Colour, and 147 Half-tone Engravings.
Square 8vo. Cloth. i6s. net.
%* This is a fascinating book on a fascinating subject. It is written by a
scholar whose passion for accuracy and original researcli did not prevent him
from making a story easy to read. It answers the questions people are always
asking as to how tapestries differ from paintings, and good tapestries from bad
tapestries. It will interest lovers of paintings and rugs and historj' and fiction,
for it shows how tapestries compare with paintings in picture interest, with rugs
in texture intei'est, and with historic and other novels in romantic interest;
presenting on a magnificent scale the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the
^neid and the Metamorphoses, the Bible and the Saints, Ancient and Medieval
History and Romance. In a word, the book is indispensable to lovers ol art and
literature in general, as well as to tapestry amateurs, owners and dealers.
FROM STUDIO TO STAGE. By Weedon
Grossmith. With 32 full-page Illustrations. Demy 8vo.
1 6s. net.
%* Justly famous as a comedian of unique gifts, Mr. Weedon Grossmith is
nevertheless an extremely versatile personality, whose interests are by no means
confined to the theatre. These qualities have enabled him to write a most
entertaining book. He gives an interesting account of his early ambitions and
exploits as an artist, which career he abandoned for that of an actor. He goes on
to describe some of his most notable roles, and lets us in to little intimate
glimpses "behind the scenes," chats pleasantly about all manner of celebrities in
the land of Bohemia and out of it, tells many amusing anecdotes, and like a true
comedian is not bashful when the laugh is against himself The book is well
supplied with interesting illustrations, some of them reproductions of the
author's own work.
FANNY BURNEY AT THE COURT OF
QUEEN CHARLOTTE. By Constance Hill. Author of
" The House in St. Martin Street," " Juniper Hall," etc. With
numerous Illustrations by Ellen G. Hill and reproductions of
contemporary Portraits, etc. Demy 8vo. i6s.net.
%* This book deals with the Court life of Fanny Burney covering the years
1786-91, and therefore forms a link between the two former works on Fanny
Burney by the same writer, viz. "The House in St. Martin Street," and
"Juniper Hall." The writer has been fortunate in obtaining much unpublished
material from members of the Burney family as well as interesting contemporary
portraits and relics. The scene of action in this work is constantly shifting —
now at Windsor, now at Kew, now sea-girt at Weymouth, and now in London ;
and the figures that pass before our eyes are endowed with a marvellous vitality
by the pen of Fanny Bnrney. When the court was at St. James's the Keeper of
the Robes had opportunities of visiting her own family in St. Martin Street, and
also of meeting at the house of her friend Mrs. Ord "eveiything delectable in the
blue way." Thither Horace Walpole would come in all haste from Strawberry
Hill for the sole pleasure of spending an evening in her society. After such a
meeting Fanny writes — " he was in high spirits, polite, ingenious, entertaining,
quaint and original." A striking account of the King's illness in the winter of
1788-9 is given, followed by the widespread rejoicings for his recovery ; when
London was ablaze with illuminations that extended for many miles around, and
when "even the humblest dwelling exhibited its rush-light." The author and the
illustrator of this work have visited the various places, where King George and
8ueen Charlotte stayed when accompanied by Fanny Burney. Among these are
xford, Cheltenham, Worce.ster, Weymouth and Dorchester ; where sketches
have been made, or old prints discovered, illustrative of those towns in the late
i8th century savours of Georgian days. There the national flag may still be seen
as it appeared before the union.
MEMORIES OF SIXTY YEARS AT ETON,
CAMBRIDGE AND ELSEWHERE. By Oscar Browning.
Illustrated. Demy 8vo. 14s. net.
MEMOIRS, BIOGRAPHIES, Etc 5
THE STORY OF DON JOHN OF AUSTRIA.
By Padre Luis Coloma, S.J., of the Real Academia Espaiiola.
Translated by Lady Morkton. With Illustrations. Demy 8vo.
1 6s. net.
*^^* "A new type ol book, half novel and half history," as it is very aptly
called in a discourse delivered on the occasion of Padre Coloma's election to the
Academia de Espana, the story of the heroic son of Charles V. is retold by one of
Spain's greatest living writers with a vividness and charm all his own. The
childhood of Jeromin, afterwards Don John of Austria reads like a mysterious
romance. His meteoric career is traced through the remaining chapters of the
book ; first as the attractive youth ; the cynosure of all eyes that were bright and
gay at the court of Philip II., which Padre Coloma maintains was less austere
than is usually supposea ; then as conqueror of the Moors, culminating as the
"man from God" who saved Europe from the terrible peril of a Turkish
dominion ; triumphs in Tunis ; glimpses of life in the luxury loving Italy of the
day; then the sad story of the war in the Netherlands, when our hero, victim
of an infamous conspiracy, is left to die of a broken heart ; his end hastened by
fever, and, maybe, by the "broth of Doctor Ramirez,' Perhaps more fully than
ever before is laid bate the intrigue which led to the cruel death of the secretary,
Escovedo, including the dramatic interview between Philip II. and Antonio
Perez, in the lumber room of the Escorial. A minute account of the celebrated
auto da fe in Valladolid cannot fail to arrest attention, nor will the details of
several of the imposing ceremonies of Old Spain be less welcome than those of
more intimate festivities in the Madrid of the sixteenth century, or of everyday
life in a Spanish castle.
%* "This book has all the fascination of a vigorous roman a clef . . . the
translation is vigorous and idiomatic."— ilfr. Owen Edwards in Morning Post.
THIRTEEN YEARS OF A BUSY WOMAN'S
LIFE. By Mrs. Alec Tweedie. With Nineteen Illustrations.
Demy 8vo. i6s. net. Third Edition.
^*j^ It is a novel idea for an author to give her reasons for taking up her pen
as a journalist and v/riter of books. This Mrs. Atec Tweedie has done in
"Thirteen Years of a Busy Woman's Li(e." She tells a dramatic story of youthful
happiness, health, wealth, and then contrasts that life with the thirteen years of
hard work that followed the loss of her husband, her father, and her income in
quick succession in a few weeks. Mrs. Alec Tweedie's books of travel and
biography are well-known, and have been through many editions, even to shilling
copies for the bookstalls. This is hardly an autobiography, the author is too
young for that, but it gives romantic, and tragic peeps into the life of a woman
reared in luxury, who suddenly found herself obliged to live on a tiny income
with two small children, or work — and work hard — to retain something of her old
life and interests. It is a remarkable story with many personal sketches of some
of the best-known men and women of the day.
<f% " One of the gayest and sanest surveys of English society we have read
for years."— Pa// Mall Gazette.
.^% "A pleasant laugh from cover to cover." — Daily Chronicle.
THE ENGLISH AND FRENCH IN THE
XVIIth century. By Charles Bastide. With Illustrations.
Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.
^,% The author of this book of essays on the intercourse between England
and France in the seventeenth century has gathered much curious and little-
known information. How did the travellers proceed from London to Paris? Did
the Frenchmen who came over to Englind learn, and did they ever venture
to write English? An almost unqualified admiration for everything French then
prevailed : French tailors, milliners, cooks, even fortune-tellers, as well as writers
and actresses, reigned supreme. How far did gallomania affect the relations
between the two countries ? Among the foreigners who settled in England none
exercised such varied influence as the Hu^enots ; students of Shakespeare and
Milton can no longer ignore the Hugenot friends of the two poets, historians of
the Commonwealth must take into account the "Nouvelles ordinaires de
Londres."' the French gazette, issued on the Puritan side, by some enterprising
refugee. Is it then possible to determine how deeply the refugees impressed
English thought? Such are the main questions to which the book affords an
answer. With its numerous hitherto unpublished documents and illustrations,
drawn from contemporary soui ces. it cannot fail to interest those to whom a most
brilliant and romantic period in English history must necessarily appeal.
A CATALOGUE OF
THE VAN EYCKS AND THEIR ART. By
W. H. James Weale, with the co-operation of Maurice
Brockwell. With numerous Illustrations. Demy 8vo.
125. 6d. net.
^^*^ The large book on "Hubert and John Van Kyck" which Mr. Weale
published in i^ through Mr. John Lane was instantly recognised by the
reviewers and critics as an achievement of quite exceptional importance. It is
now felt that the time has come for a revised and slightly abridged edition of that
which was issued four years ago at ;^5 5s. net. The text has been compressed in
some places and extended in others, while certain emendations have been made,
and after due reflection, the plan of the book has been materially recast. This
renders it of greater assistance to the student.
The large amount of research work and methodical preparation of a revised
text obliged Mr. Weale, through failing health and eyesight, to avail himself of
the services of Mr. Brockwell, and Mr. Weale gives it as his opinion in the new
Foreword that he doubts whether he could have found a more able collaborator
than Mr. Brockwell to edit this volume.
"The Van Eycks and their Art," so far from being a mere reprint at a popular
price of '* Hubert and John Van Eyck," contains several new features, notable
among which are the inclusion of an Appendix giving details of all the sales at
public auction in any country from i66a to 1912 of pictures reputed to be by the
Van Eycks. An entirely new and ample Index has been compiled, while the
bibliography, which extends over many pages, and the various component parts
of the book have been brought abreast of the most recent criticism. Detailed
arguments are given for the first time of a picture attributed to one of the brothers
Van Eyck in a private collection in Russia.
In conclusion it must be pointed out that Mr. Weale has, with characteristic
care, read through the proofs and passed the whole book for press
The use of a smaller /orwa/ and of thinner paper renders the present edition
easier to handle as a book of reference.
COKE OF NORFOLK AND HIS FRIENDS.
The Life of Thomas Coke, First Earl of Leicester and of
Holkham. By A. M. W. Stirling. New Edition, revised,
with some additions. With 19 Illustrations. In one volume.
Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.
THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE. By Joseph
Turquan. Author of "The Love Affairs of Napoleon,"
"The Wife of General Bonaparte." Illustrated. Demy 8vo.
I2S. 6d. net.
^.% "The Empress Josephine" continues and completes the graphically
drawn life story begun in " The Wife of General Bonaparte" by the same author,
takes us through the brilliant period of the Empire, shows us the gradual
development and the execution ot the Emperor's plan to divorce his middle-aged
wife, paints in vivid colours the picture of Josephine's existence after her divorce,
tells us how she, although now nothing but his friend, still met him occasionally
«nd corresponded frequently with him, and how she passed her time in the midst
of her minature court. This work enables us to realise the very genuine
affection which Napoleon possessed for his first wife, an affection which lasted
till death closed her eyes in her lonely hermitage at La Malmaison, and until he
went to expiate at Saint Helena his rashness in braving all Europe. Compar-
atively little is known of the period covering Josephine s life after her divorce,
ancTyet M. Turquan has found much to tell us that is very interesting; for fhe
ex- Empress in her two retreats, Navarre and La Malmaison, was visited by many
celebrated people, and after the Emperor's downfall was so ill-judged as to
welcome and fete several of the vanquished hero's late friends, now his declared
enemies. The story of her last illness and death forms one of the most interesting
chapters in this most complete work upon Ihe first Empress of the French.
NAPOLEON IN CARICATURE : 1 795-1 821. By
A. M. Broadley. With an Introductory Essay on Pictorial Satire
as a Factor in Napoleonic History, by J. Holland Rose, Litt. D.
(Cantab.). With 24 full-page Illustrations in Colour and upwards
of 200 in Black and White from rare and unique originals.
2 Vols. Demy 8vo. 42s. net.
Also an Edition de Luxe. 10 guineas net.
MEMOIRS, BIOGRAPHIES, Etc. 7
NAPOLEON'S LAST CAMPAIGN IN GER-
MANY. By F. LoRAiNE Petre. Author of "Napoleon's
Campaign in Poland," " Napoleon's Conquest of Prussia," etc.
With 17 Maps and Plans. Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.
»% In the author's two first histories of Napoleon's campaigns (1806 and 1807)
the Emperor is at his greatest as a soldier. The third (1809) showed the
commencement of the decay of his genius. Now, in 1813, he has seriously declined.
The military judgment of Napoleon, the general, is constantly fettered by the
pride and ODStinacy of Napoleon, the Emperor. The military principles which
guided him up to 1807 are frequently abandoned ; he aims at secondary objectives,
or mere geographical points, instead of solely at the destruction of^the enemy's
army ; he hesitates and fails to grasp the true situation in a way that was never
known in his earlier campaigns. Yet frequently, as at Bautsen and Dresden, his
genius shines with all its old brilliance.
The campaign of 1813 exhibits the breakdown of his over-centralised system
of command, which lelt him without subordinates capable of exercising semi-
independent command over portions of armies which had now grown to dimensions
approaching those of our own day.
The autumn campaign is a notable example of the system of interior lines, as
opposed to that of strategical envelopment. It marks, too, the real downfall ot
Napoleon's power, for, after the fearful destruction of 1813, the desperate struggle
of 1814, glorious though it was, could never have any real probability of success.
FOOTPRINTS OF FAMOUS AMERICANS IN
PARIS. By John Joseph Conway, M.A. With 32 Full-page
Illustrations. With an Introduction by Mrs. John Lane.
Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.
^f*^^ Franklin, Jefferson, Munroe, Tom Paine, La Fayette, Paul Jones, etc.,
etc., the most striking figures of a heroic age, working out in the City of Light
the great questions for which they stood, are dealt with here. Longlellow the
poet of the domestic affections ; matchless Margaret Fuller who wrote so well ol
women in the nineteenth century ; Whistler master of American artists ; Saint-
Gaudens chief of American sculptors ; Rumford, most picturesque of scientific
knight-errants and several others get a chapter each for their lives and
achievements in Paris. A new and absorbing interest is opened up to visitors.
Their trip to Versailles becomes more pleasurable when they realise what
Franklyn did at that brilliant court. The Place de la Bastille becomes a sacred
place to Americans realizing that the principles of the young republic brought
about the destruction of the vilest old dungeon in the world. The Seine becomes
silvery to the American conjuring up that bright summer morning when Robert
Fulton started from the Place de la Concorde in the first steamboat. The Louvre
takes on a new attraction from the knowledge that it houses the busts of
Washington and Franklyn and La Fayette by Houdon. The Luxembourg becomes
a greater temple of art to him who knows that it holds Whistler's famous portrait
of his mother. Even the weather-beaten bookstalls by the banks of the Seine
become beautiful because Hawthorne and his son loitered among them on sunny
days sixty years ago. The book has a strong literary flavour. Its history is
enlivened with anecdote. It is profusely illustrated.
MEMORIES OF JAMES McNEILL
WHISTLER : The Artist. By Thomas R. Way. Author of
" The Lithographs of J. M. Whistler," etc. With numerous
Illustrations. Demy 4 to. los. 6d. net.
%* This volume contains about forty illustrations, including an unpublished
etching drawn by Whistler and bitten in by Sir Frank Short, A.K..A., an original
lithograph sketch, seven lithographs in colour drawn by the Author upon brown
paper, and many in black and white. The remainder are facsimiles by photo-
lithography. In most cases the originals are drawings and sketches by Whistler
which have never been published before, and are closely connected with the
matter of the book. The text deals with the Author's memories of nearly twenty
year's close association with Whistler, and he endeavours to treat only with the
man as an artist, and perhaps, especiallj' as a lithographer.
*Also an Edition de Luxe on hand-made paper, with the etching
printed from the original plate. Limited to 50 copies.
*This is Out of Print with the Publisher.
A CATALOGUE OF
HISTORY OF THE PHILHARMONIC SO-
CIETY : A Record of a Hundred Years' Work in the Cause of
Music. Compiled by Myles Birket Foster, F.R.A.M., etc.
With 1 6 Illustrations. Demy 8vo. los. 6d. net.
%*As the Philharmonic Society, whose Centenary is now being celebrated, is
and has ever been connected, during its long existence, with the history of
musical composition and production, not only in this country, but upon the
Continent, and as every great name in Europe and America in the last hundred
years (within the realm of high-class music), has been associated with it, this
volume will, it is believed, prove to be an unique work, not only as a book of
reference, but also as a record of the deepest interest to all lovers of good
music. It is divided into ten Decades, with a small narrative account of the
principal happenings in each, to which are added the full programmes of every
concert, and tables showing, at a glance, the number and nationality of the per-
formers and composers, with other particulars of interest. The book is made of
additional value by means of rare illustrations of MS. works specially composed
for the Society, and of letters from Wagner, Berlioz, Brahms, Liszt, etc., etc.,
written to the Directors and, by their permission, reproduced for the first time,
IN PORTUGAL. By Aubrey F. G. Bell.
Author of " The Magic of Spain." Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
^f% The guide-books give full details of the marvellous convents, gorgeous
palaces, and solemn temples of Portugal, and no attempt is here made to write
complete descriptions of them, the very name of some of them being omitted.
But the guide-books too often treat Portugal as a continuation, almost as a province
of Spain. It is hoped that this little book may give some idea of the individual
character of the country, of the quaintnesses of its cities, and of peasant life in
its remoter districts. While the utterly opposed characters of the two peoples
must probably render the divorce between Spain and Portugal eternal, and reduce
hopes of union to the idle dreams of politicians. Portugal in itself contains an
infinite variety. Each of the eight provinces (more especially those of the
alcmtejanos, niinhotos and beiroes) preserves many peculiarities of language,
customs, and dress ; and each will, in return for hardships endured, give to the
traveller many a day of delight and interest.
A TRAGEDY IN STONE, AND OTHER
PAPERS. By Lord Redesdale, G.C.V.O., K.C.C., et^,.
Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
^% " From the author of ' Tales of Old Japan ' his readers always hope for
more about Japan, and in this volume they will find it. The earlier papers,
however, are not to be passed over." — Times.
4f% "Lo'-d Redesdale's present volume consists of scholarly essays on a
variety of subjects of historic, literary and artistic appeal."— S/awrfarc^.
jf% "The author of the classic 'Tales of Old Japan' is assured of welcome,
and the more so when he returns to the field in which his literary reputation was
made. Charm is never absent from his pages."— Dai/y Chronicle.
MY LIFE IN PRISON. By Donald Lowrie.
Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
^% This book is absolutely true and vital. Within its pages passes the
mynorama of prison life. And within its pages may be found revelations of the
divine and the undivine ; of strange humility and stranger arrogance ; of free
men brutalized and caged men humanized; of big and little tragedies; of love,
cunning, hate, despair, hope. There is humour, too though sometimes the jest is
made ironic by its sequel. And there is romance — the romance of the real ; not the
romance of Itipling's g.15, but the romance of No. 19,093, and of all the other
numbers that made up the arithmetical hell of San Quentin prison.
Few novels could so absorb interest. It is human utterly. That is the reason.
Not only is the very atmosphere of the prison preserved, from the colossal sense
of encagement and defencelessness, to the smaller jealousies, exultations and
disappointments ; not only is there a succession of characters emerging into the
clearest individuality and ^.enuineness, — each with its distinctive contribution
and separate value ; but beyond the details and through all the contrasted
variety, there is the spell of complete drama,— the drama of life. Here is the
underworld in continuous moving pictures, with the overworld watching. True,
the stage is a prison; but is not all the world a stage ?
It is a book that should exercise a profound influence on the lives of the
caged, and on the whole attitude of society toward the problems of poverty and
criminality.
MEMOIRS, BIOGRAPHIES, Etc. 9
AN IRISH BEAUTY OF THE REGENCY : By
Mrs. Warrenne Blake. Author of " Memoirs of a Vanished
Generation, i8 13-1855." With a Photogravure Frontispiece and
other Illustrations. Demy 8vo. i6s. net.
%*The Irish Beauty is the Hon. Mrs. Calvert, daughter of Viscount Pery,
Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, and wife of Nicholson Calvert, M.P., of
Hunsdon. Born in 1767, Mrs. Calvert lived to the aee of ninety-two, and there
are many people still living who remember her. in the delightiul journals, now
for the first time published, exciting events are described.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY. By Stewart Houston Chamberlain. A Translation
from the German by John Lees. With an Introduction by
Lord Redesdale. Demy 8vo. 2 vols. 25s. net. Second
Edition.
*^* A man who can write such a really beautiful and solemn appreciation of
true Christianity, of true acceptance of Christ's teachings and personality, as
Mr. Chamberlain has done. . . . represents an influence to be reckoned with
and seriously to be taken into account.' —Theodore Roosevelt m the Outlook, New
Yotk.
*:n* ■' It is a masterpiece of really scientific history. It does not make con-
fusion, it clears it away. He is a great generalizer of thought, as distinguished
from the crowd of mere specialists. It is certain to stir up thought. Whoever
has not read it will be rather out ol it in political and sociological discussions for
some time to come." — George Bernard Shaw in Fabian Nezvs.
%* "This is unquestionably one of the rare books that really matter. His
judgments of men and things are deeply and indisputably sincere and are based
on immense reading . . . But even many well-informed people . . . will be
grateful to Lord Redesdale for the biographical details which he gives them in the
valuable and illuminating introduction contributed by him to this English
translation." — Tttnes.
THE SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF
COMMONS from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, with
a Topographical Account of Westminster at Various Epochs,
Brief Notes on Sittings of Parliament and a Retrospect of
the principal Constitutional Changes during Seven Centuries. By
Arthur Irwin Dasent, Author of "The Life and Letters of John
Delane," "The History of St. James's Square," etc., etc. With
numerous Portraits, including two in Photogravure and one in
Colour. Demy 8vo. 21s. net.
ROMANTIC TRIALS OF THREE CENTU-
RIES. By Hugh Childers With numerous Illustrations.
Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.
%* This volume deals with some famous trials, occurring between the years
1650 and 1850, All of them possess some exceptional interest, or introduce
historical personages in a fascinating style, peculiarly likely to attract attention.
The book is written for the general reading public, though in many respects
it should be of value to lawyers, who will be especially interested in the trials of
the great William Penn and Elizabeth Canning. The latter case is one of the
most enthralling interest.
Twenty-two years later the same kind of excitement was aroused over
Elizabeth Chudleigh, alias Duchess of Kingston, who attracted more attention in
1776 than the war of American independence.
Then the history of the fluent Dr. Dodd, a curiously pathetic one, is related,
and the inconsistencies of his character very clearly brought out; perhaps now he
may have a little more sympathy than he has usually received. Several im-
portant letters of his appear here for the first time in print.
Among other important trials discussed we find the libel action against
Disraeli and the story of the Lyons Mail. Our knowledge of the latter is chiefly
gathered from the London stage, but there is in it a far greater historical interest
than would be suspected by those who have only seen the much altered story
enacted before them.
lo A CATALOGUE OF
THE OLD GARDENS OF ITALY— HOW TO
VISIT THEM. By Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond. With loo
Illustrations from her own Photographs. Crown 8vo. 5 s. net.
%* Hitherto all books on the old gardens of Italy have been large, costly, and
incomplete, and designed for the library rather than for the traveller. Mrs.
Aubrey Le Blond, during the course of a series of visits to all parts ot Italy, has
compiled a volume that garden lovers can carry with them, enabling them to
decide which gardens are worth visiting, where they are situated, how they may
be reached, it special permission to see them is required, and how this may be
obtained. Though the book is practical and technical, the artistic element is
supplied by the illustrations, one at least of which is given lor each of the 71
gardens described. Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond was the illustrator of the monumental
work by H. Inigo Triggs on "The Art of Garden Design in Italy," and has since
taken three special journeys to that country to collect material for her *' The Old
Gardens of Italy."
The illustrations have been beautifully reproduced by a new process which
enables them to be printed on a rough lignt paper, instead of the highly glazed
and weighty paper necessitated by half-tone blocks. Thus not only are the
illustrations delightful to look at, but the book is a pleasure to handle instead of
a dead weight.
DOWN THE MACKENZIE AND UP THE
YUKON. By E. Stewart. With 30 Illustrations and a Map.
Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
%* Mr. Stewart was former Inspector of Forestry to the Government of
Canada, and the experience he thus gained, supplemented by a really remarkable
journey, will prove of great value to those who are interested in the commercial
growth of Canada. The latter portion ol his book deals with the various peoples,
animals, industries, etc., of tne Dominion; while the story of the journey he
accomplished provides excellent reading in Part I, Some of the difficulties he
encountered appeared insurmountable, and a description of his perilous voyage
in a native canoe with Indians is quite haunting. There are many interesting
illustrations of the places of which he writes.
AMERICAN SOCIALISM OF THE PRESENT
DAY. By Jessie Wallace Hughan. With an Introduction
by John Spargo. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
%* All who are interested in the multitudinous political problems brought
about by the changing conditions of the present day should read this book,
irrespective of personal bias. The applications of Socialism throughout the
world are so many and varied that the book is of peculiar importance to
English Socialists.
THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. By "A
Rifleman " Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
*** This book is a reply to Mr. Norman Angell's vrell-known workj^ "The
Great Illusion" and also an enquiry into the present economic state of Europe.
The author, examining the phenomenon of the high food-prices at present rnling
in all great civilized states, proves by statistics that these are caused by a
relative decline in the production of food-stuffs as compared with the increase in
general commerce ana the production ot manufactured-articles, and that con-
sequently there has ensued a rise in the exchange-values ot manufactured-articles,
which with our system of society can have no other effect than of producing high
food-prices and low wages. The author proves, moreover, that this is no tem-
porary fluctuation of prices, but the inevitable outcome of an economic movement,
which whilst seen at its fullest development during the last few years has been
slowly germinating for the last quarter-century. Therefore, food-prices must
continue to rise whilst wages must continue to fall.
THE LAND OF TECK & ITS SURROUNDINGS.
By Rev. S. Baring-Gould. With numerous Illustrations (includ-
ing several in Colour) reproduced from unique originals. Demy
8vo. I OS. 6d. net.
MEMOIRS, BIOGRAPHIES, Etc. ii
GATES OF THE DOLOMITES. By L. Marion
Davidson. With 32 Illustrations from Photographs and a Map.
Crown Hvo. Second Edition. 5s. net.
Whilst many English books have appeared on the Lande Tirol, few have
lore than a chapter on the fascinating Dolomite Land, and it is in the hope
of helping other travellers to explore the mountain land with less trouble and
inconvenience than tell to her lot that the author has penned these attractive
pages. The object of this book is not to inform the traveller how to scale the
apparently inaccessible peaks of the Dolomites, but rather how to find the roads,
and thread the valleys, which lead him to the recesses of this most lovely part of
the world's face, and Miss Davidson conveys just the knowledge which is wanted
for this purpose; especially will her map be appreciated by those who wish to
make their own plans for a tour, as it shows at a glance the geography of the
country.
KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE. By William
Arkwright. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.
*^* This is a remarkably written book— brilliant and vital. Mr. Arkwright
illumines a number of subjects with jewelled flashes of word harmony and chisels
them all with the keen edge of his wit. Art, Letters, and Religion of different
appeals move before the reader in vari-coloured array, like the dazzling phan-
tasmagoria of some Eastern dream.
CHANGING RUSSIA. A Tramp along the Black
Sea Shore and in the Urals. By Stephen Graham. Author of
" Undiscovered Russia," " A Vagabond in the Caucasus," etc.
With Illustrations and a Map. Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
%* In " Changing Russia," Mr. Stephen Graham describes a journey from
Rostof-on-the-Don to Batum and a summer spent on the Ural Mountains. The
author has traversed all the region which is to be developed by the new railway
It is a tramping diary with notes and reflections.
The book deals more with the commercial life of Russia than with that of the
from Novo-rossisk to Poti. It is a tramping
he book deals more with the commercial lii
jasantry, and there are chapters on the Russia of the hour, the Russian town,
peasantry, and tnere are chapters on tne Kussia oi the hour, the Kussian town,
life among the gold miners of the Urals, the bourgeois, Russian journalism, the
intelligentsia, tne election of the fourth Duma. An account is given of Russia at
the seaside, and each of the watering places of the Black Sea shore is
described in detail.
ROBERT FULTON ENGINEER AND ARTIST :
HIS LIFE AND WORK. By H. W. Dickinson, A.M.I.Mech.E.
Demy 8vo. los 6d. net.
*^* No Biography dealing as a whole with the life-work ol the celebrated
Robert Fulton has appeared of late years, in spite of the fact that the introduction
of steam navigation on a commercial scale, which was his greatest achievement
has recently celebrated its centenary.
The author has been instrumental in bringing to light a mass of documentary
matter relative to Fulton, aud has thus been able to present the facts about him in
an entirely new light . The interesting but little known episode of his career as
an artist is for the first time fully dealt wfth. His sfay in France and his
experiments under the Directory and the Empire with the submarine and with
the steamboat are elucidated with the aid r.f documents preserved in the Archives
Nationaies at Paris. His subsequent withdra»val from France and his
employment by the British Cabinet to destroy the Boulogne flotilla that Napoleon
had prepared in 1804 to invade England are gone into fully. The latter part of his
career in the United States, spent in the introduction of steam navigation and in
the construction of the first steam-propelled warship, is of the greatest interest.
With the lapse of time facts assume naturally their true perspective. Fulton,
instead of being represented, according to the English point of view, as a
charlatan and even as a traitor, or from the Americans as a universal genius, is
cleared from these charges, and his pretensions critically examined, with the
result that he appears as a cosmopolitan, an earnest student, a painstaking
experimenter and an enterprising engineer.
It is believed that practically nothing of moment in Fulton's career has been
omitted. The illustrations, which are numerous, are drawn in nearly every case
from the original sources. It may confidently be expected, therefore, that this
book will take its place as the authoritative biography which everyone interested
in the subjects enumerated above will require to possess.
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