No More Learning

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 pray'd,
And I nod to what is said,
'Cause my speech is now decay'd,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When, God knows, I'm tost about
Either with despair, or doubt;
Yet, before the glass be out,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the tempter me pursu'th
With the sins of all my youth,
And half damns me with untruth,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the flames and hellish cries
Fright mine ears, and fright mine eyes,
And all terrors me surprise,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the Judgment is reveal'd,
And that open'd which was seal'd;
When to Thee I have appeal'd,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!




258. TO DEATH

Thou bidst me come away,
And I'll no longer stay,
Than for to shed some tears
For faults of former years;
And to repent some crimes
Done in the present times;
And next, to take a bit
Of bread, and wine with it;
To don my robes of love,
Fit for the place above;
To gird my loins about
With charity throughout;
And so to travel hence
With feet of innocence;
These done, I'll only cry,
'God, mercy! ' and so die.




259. TO HIS SWEET SAVIOUR

Night hath no wings to him that cannot sleep;
And Time seems then not for to fly, but creep;
Slowly her chariot drives, as if that she
Had broke her wheel, or crack'd her axletree.
Just so it is with me, who list'ning, pray
The winds to blow the tedious night away,
That I might see the cheerful peeping day.
Sick is my heart; O Saviour! do Thou please
To make my bed soft in my sicknesses;
Lighten my candle, so that I beneath
Sleep not for ever in the vaults of death;
Let me thy voice betimes i' th' morning hear;
Call, and I'll come; say Thou the when and where:
Draw me but first, and after Thee I'll run,
And make no one stop till my race be done.




260. ETERNITY

O years! and age! farewell:
Behold I go,
Where I do know
Infinity to dwell.

And these mine eyes shall see
All times, how they
Are lost i' th' sea
Of vast eternity:--

Where never moon shall sway
The stars; but she,
And night, shall be
Drown'd in one endless day.




261. THE WHITE ISLAND:
OR PLACE OF THE BLEST

In this world, the Isle of Dreams,
While we sit by sorrow's streams,
Tears and terrors are our themes,
Reciting:

But when once from hence we fly,
More and more approaching nigh
Unto young eternity,
Uniting

In that whiter Island, where
Things are evermore sincere:
Candour here, and lustre there,
Delighting:--

There no monstrous fancies shall
Out of hell an horror call,
To create, or cause at all
Affrighting.

There, in calm and cooling sleep,
We our eyes shall never steep,
But eternal watch shall keep,
Attending

Pleasures such as shall pursue
Me immortalized, and you;
And fresh joys, as never too
Have ending.





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? The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2, by
Robert Herrick

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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Title: The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2

Author: Robert Herrick

Release Date: August 28, 2007 [EBook #22421]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HESPERIDES ***




Produced by Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www. pgdp. net









ROBERT HERRICK

THE HESPERIDES & NOBLE
NUMBERS: EDITED BY
ALFRED POLLARD
WITH A PREFACE BY
A. C. SWINBURNE

VOL. I.

_REVISED EDITION_

[Illustration]

LONDON: NEW YORK:
LAWRENCE & BULLEN, LTD. , CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS,
16 HENRIETTA STREET, W. C. 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE
1898. 1898.




Transcriber's Note:

Original spelling and punctuation has been retained.

^ indicates 'superscript' within the text.

Obvious typesetting errors have been corrected without note, however
additional corrections have been recorded in the Transcriber's
Endnotes at the end each volume.




EDITOR'S NOTE.


In this edition of Herrick quotation is for the first time facilitated
by the poems being numbered according to their order in the original
edition. This numbering has rendered it possible to print those
Epigrams, which successive editors have joined in deploring, in a
detachable Appendix, their place in the original being indicated by the
numeration. It remains to be added that the footnotes in this edition
are intended to explain, as unobtrusively as possible, difficulties of
phrase or allusion which might conceivably hinder the understanding of
Herrick's meaning. In the longer Notes at the end of each volume earlier
versions of some important poems are printed from manuscripts at the
British Museum, and an endeavour has been made to extend the list of
Herrick's debts to classical sources, and to identify some of his
friends who have hitherto escaped research. An editor is always apt to
mention his predecessors rather for blame than praise, and I therefore
take this opportunity of acknowledging my general indebtedness to the
pioneer work of Mr. Hazlitt and Dr. Grosart, upon whose foundations all
editors of Herrick must necessarily build.

ALFRED W. POLLARD.




PREFACE.


It is singular 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, it 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.
Shakespeare's last song, the exquisite and magnificent overture to "The
Two Noble Kinsmen," is hardly so limpid in its flow, so liquid in its
melody, as the two great songs in "Valentinian": but Herrick, our last
poet of that incomparable age or generation, has matched them again and
again. As a creative and inventive singer, he surpasses all his rivals
in quantity of good work; in quality of spontaneous instinct and
melodious inspiration he reminds us, by frequent and flawless evidence,
who above all others must beyond all doubt have been his first master
and his first model in lyric poetry--the author of "The Passionate
Shepherd to his Love".

The last of his line, he is and will probably be always the first in
rank and station of English song-writers. We have only to remember how
rare it is to find a perfect song, good to read and good to sing,
combining the merits of Coleridge and Shelley with the capabilities of
Tommy Moore and Haynes Bayly, to appreciate the unique and
unapproachable excellence of Herrick. The lyrist who wished to be a
butterfly, the lyrist who fled or flew to a lone vale at the hour
(whatever hour it may be) "when stars are weeping," have left behind
them such stuff as may be sung, but certainly cannot be read and endured
by any one with an ear for verse. The author of the Ode on France and
the author of the Ode to the West Wind have left us hardly more than a
song a-piece which has been found fit for setting to music: and, lovely
as they are, the fame of their authors does not mainly depend on the
song of Glycine or the song of which Leigh Hunt so justly and so
critically said that Beaumont and Fletcher never wrote anything of the
kind more lovely. Herrick, of course, lives simply by virtue of his
songs; his more ambitious or pretentious lyrics are merely magnified and
prolonged and elaborated songs. Elegy or litany, epicede or
epithalamium, his work is always a song-writer's; nothing more, but
nothing less, than the work of the greatest song-writer--as surely as
Shakespeare is the greatest dramatist--ever born of English race. The
apparent or external variety of his versification is, I should suppose,
incomparable; but by some happy tact or instinct he was too naturally
unambitious to attempt, like Jonson, a flight in the wake of Pindar. He
knew what he could not do: a rare and invaluable gift. Born a blackbird
or a thrush, he did not take himself (or try) to be a nightingale.

It has often been objected that he did mistake himself for a sacred
poet: and it cannot be denied that his sacred verse at its worst is as
offensive as his secular verse at its worst; nor can it be denied that
no severer sentence of condemnation can be passed upon any poet's work.
But neither Herbert nor Crashaw could have bettered such a divinely
beautiful triplet as this:--

"We see Him come, and know Him ours,
Who with His sunshine and His showers
Turns all the patient ground to flowers".

That is worthy of Miss Rossetti herself: and praise of such work can go
no higher.

But even such exquisite touches or tones of colour may be too often
repeated in fainter shades or more glaring notes of assiduous and facile
reiteration. The sturdy student who tackles his Herrick as a schoolboy
is expected to tackle his Horace, in a spirit of pertinacious and stolid
straightforwardness, will probably find himself before long so nauseated
by the incessant inhalation of spices and flowers, condiments and
kisses, that if a musk-rat had run over the page it could hardly be less
endurable to the physical than it is to the spiritual stomach. The
fantastic and the brutal blemishes which deform and deface the
loveliness of his incomparable genius are hardly so damaging to his fame
as his general monotony of matter and of manner. It was doubtless in
order to relieve this saccharine and "mellisonant" monotony that he
thought fit to intersperse these interminable droppings of natural or
artificial perfume with others of the rankest and most intolerable
odour: but a diet of alternate sweetmeats and emetics is for the average
of eaters and drinkers no less unpalatable than unwholesome. It is
useless and thankless to enlarge on such faults or such defects, as it
would be useless and senseless to ignore. But how to enlarge, to
expatiate, to insist on the charm of Herrick at his best--a charm so
incomparable and so inimitable that even English poetry can boast of
nothing quite like it or worthy to be named after it--the most
appreciative reader will be the slowest to affirm or imagine that he can
conjecture. This, however, he will hardly fail to remark: that Herrick,
like most if not all other lyric poets, is not best known by his best
work. If we may judge by frequency of quotation or of reference, the
ballad of the ride from Ghent to Aix is a far more popular, more
generally admired and accredited specimen of Mr. Browning's work than
"The Last Ride Together"--and "The Lost Leader" than "The Lost
Mistress". Yet the superiority of the less-popular poem is in either
case beyond all question or comparison: in depth and in glow of spirit
and of harmony, in truth and charm of thought and word, undeniable and
indescribable. No two men of genius were ever more unlike than the
authors of "Paracelsus" and "Hesperides": and yet it is as true of
Herrick as of Browning that his best is not always his best-known work.
Everyone knows the song, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may"; few, I
fear, by comparison, know the yet sweeter and better song, "Ye have been
fresh and green". The general monotony of style and motive which
fatigues and irritates his too-persevering reader is here and there
relieved by a change of key which anticipates the note of a later and
very different lyric school. The brilliant simplicity and pointed grace
of the three stanzas to OEnone ("What conscience, say, is it in thee")
recall the lyrists of the Restoration in their cleanlier and happier
mood. And in the very fine epigram headed by the words "Devotion makes
the Deity" he has expressed for once a really high and deep thought in
words of really noble and severe propriety. His "Mad Maid's Song,"
again, can only be compared with Blake's; which has more of passionate
imagination, if less of pathetic sincerity.

A. C. SWINBURNE.




LIFE OF HERRICK.


Of the lives of many poets we know too much; of some few too little.
Lovers of Herrick are almost ideally fortunate. Just such a bare outline
of his life has come down to us as is sufficient to explain the
allusions in his poems, and, on the other hand, there is no temptation
to substitute chatter about his relations with Julia and Dianeme for
enjoyment of his delightful verse. The recital of the bare outline need
detain us but a few minutes: only the least imaginative of readers will
have any difficulty in filling it in from the poems themselves.

From early in the fourteenth century onwards we hear of the family of
Eyrick or Herrick at Stretton, in Leicestershire. At the beginning of
the sixteenth century we find a branch of it settled in Leicester
itself, where John Eyrick, the poet's grandfather, was admitted a
freeman in 1535, and afterwards acted as Mayor. This John's second son,
Nicholas, migrated to London, became a goldsmith in Wood Street,
Cheapside, and, according to a licence issued by the Bishop of London,
December 8, 1582, married Julian, daughter of William Stone, sister of
Anne, wife of Sir Stephen Soame, Lord Mayor of London in 1598. The
marriage was not unfruitful. A William[A] Herrick was baptized at St.
Vedast's, Foster Lane, November 24, 1585; Martha, January 22, 1586;
Mercy, December 22, 1586; Thomas, May 7, 1588; Nicholas, April 22, 1589;
Anne, July 26, 1590; and Robert himself, August 24, 1591.

[A] A second William is said to have been born, posthumously, in "Harry
Campion's house at Hampton," in 1593.

Fifteen months after the poet's birth, on November 7, 1592, Nicholas
Herrick made his will, estimating his property as worth ? 3000, and
devising it, as to one-third to his wife, and as to the other two-thirds
to his children in equal shares. In the will he described himself as "of
perfect memorye in sowle, but sicke in bodye". Two days after its
execution he was buried, having died, not from disease, but from a fall
from an upper window. His death had so much the appearance of
self-destruction that ? 220 had to be paid to the High Almoner, Dr.
Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol, in satisfaction of his official claim to
the goods and chattels of suicides. Herrick's biographers have not
failed to vituperate the Bishop for his avarice, but dues allowed by law
are hardly to be abandoned because a baby of fifteen months is destined
to become a brilliant poet, and no other exceptional circumstances are
alleged. The estate of Nicholas Herrick could the better afford the fine
inasmuch as it realized ? 2000 more than was expected.

By the will Robert and William Herrick were appointed "overseers," or
trustees for the children. The former was the poet's godfather, and in
his will of 1617 left him ? 5. To William Herrick, then recently knighted
for his services as goldsmith, jeweller, and moneylender to James I. ,
the young Robert was apprenticed for ten years, September 25, 1607. An
allusion to "beloved Westminster," in his _Tears to Thamesis_, has been
taken to refer to Westminster school, and alleged as proof that he was
educated there. Dr. Grosart even presses the mention of Richmond,
Kingston, and Hampton Court to support a conjecture that Herrick may
have travelled up and down to school from Hampton. If so, one wonders
what his headmaster had to say to the "soft-smooth virgins, for our
chaste disport" by whom he was accompanied. But the references in the
poem are surely to his courtier-life in London, and after his father's
death the apprenticeship to his uncle in 1607 is the first fact in his
life of which we can be sure.

In 1607, Herrick was fifteen, and, even if we conjecture that he may
have been allowed to remain at school some little time after his
apprenticeship nominally began, he must have served his uncle for five
or six years. Sir William had himself been bound apprentice in a similar
way to the poet's father, and we have no evidence that he exacted any
premium. At any rate, when in 1614, his nephew, then of age, desired to
leave the business and go to Cambridge, the ten years' apprenticeship
did not stand in his way, and he entered as a Fellow Commoner at St.
John's. His uncle plainly still managed his affairs, for an amusing
series of fourteen letters has been preserved at Beaumanor, until lately
the seat of Sir William's descendants, in which the poet asks sometimes
for payment of a quarterly stipend of ? 10, sometimes for a formal loan,
sometimes for the help of his avuncular Maecenas. It seems a fair
inference from this variety of requests that, since Herrick's share of
his father's property could hardly have yielded a yearly income of ? 40,
he was allowed to draw on his capital for this sum, but that his uncle
and Lady Herrick occasionally made him small presents, which may account
for his tone of dependence.

The quarterly stipend was paid through various booksellers, but
irregularly, so that the poor poet was frequently reduced to great
straits, though ? 40 a-year (? 200 of our money) was no bad allowance.
After two years he migrated from St. John's to Trinity Hall, to study
law and curtail his expenses. He took his Bachelor's degree from there
in January, 1617, and his Master's in 1620. The fourteen letters show
that he had prepared himself for University life by cultivating a very
florid prose style which frequently runs into decasyllabics, perhaps a
result of a study of the dramatists. Sir William Herrick is sometimes
addressed in them as his most "careful" uncle, but at the time of his
migration the poet speaks of his "ebbing estate," and as late as 1629 he
was still ? 10 16s. 9d. in debt to the College Steward. We can thus
hardly imagine that he was possessed of any considerable private income
when he returned to London, to live practically on his wits, and a study
of his poems suggests that, the influence of the careful uncle removed,
whatever capital he possessed was soon likely to vanish. [B] His verses
to the Earl of Pembroke, to Endymion Porter and to others, show that he
was glad of "pay" as well as "praise," but the system of patronage
brought no discredit with it, and though the absence of any poetical
mention of his uncle suggests that the rich goldsmith was not
well-pleased with his nephew, with the rest of his well-to-do relations
Herrick seems to have remained on excellent terms.

[B] Yet in his _Farewell to Poetry_ he distinctly says:--

"I've more to bear my charge than way to go";

the line, however, is a translation from his favourite Seneca, Ep. 77.

Besides patrons, such as Pembroke, Westmoreland, Newark, Buckingham,
Herrick had less distinguished friends at Court, Edward Norgate, Jack
Crofts and others. He composed the words for two New Year anthems which
were set to music by Henry Lawes, and he was probably personally known
both to the King and Queen. Outside the Court he reckoned himself one of
Ben Jonson's disciples, "Sons of Ben" as they were called, had friends
at the Inns of Court, knew the organist of Westminster Abbey and his
pretty daughters, and had every temptation to live an amusing and
expensive life. His poems were handed about in manuscript after the
fashion of the time, and wherever music and poetry were loved he was
sure to be a welcome guest.

Mr. Hazlitt's conjecture that Herrick at this time may have held some
small post in the Chapel at Whitehall is not unreasonable, but at what
date he took Holy Orders is not known. In 1627 he obtained the post of
chaplain to the unlucky expedition to the Isle of Rhe, and two years
later (September 30, 1629) he was presented by the King to the Vicarage
of Dean Prior, in Devonshire, which the promotion of its previous
incumbent, Dr. Potter, to the Bishopric of Carlisle, had left in the
royal gift. The annual value of the living was only ? 50 (? 250 present
value), no great prize, but the poem entitled _Mr. Robert Hericke: his
farwell unto Poetrie_ (not printed in _Hesperides_, but extant in more
than one manuscript version) shows that the poet was not unaware of the
responsibilities of his profession. "But unto me," he says to his Muse:

"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 sublime respect
And conscience unto priesthood. 'Tis not need
(The scarecrow unto mankind) that doth breed
Wiser conclusions in me, since I know
I've more to bear my charge than way to go;
Or had I not, I'd stop the spreading itch
Of craving more: so in conceit be rich;
But 'tis the God of nature who intends
And shapes my function for more glorious ends. "

Perhaps it was at this time too that Herrick wrote his _Farewell to
Sack_, and although he returned both to sack and to poetry we should be
wrong in imagining him as a "blind mouth," using his office merely as a
means of gain. He celebrated the births of Charles II and his brother in
verse, perhaps with an eye to future royal favours, but no more than
Chaucer's good parson does he seem to have "run to London unto Seynte
Poules" in search of the seventeenth century equivalent for a chauntry,
and many of his poems show him living the life of a contented country
clergyman, sharing the contents of bin and cruse with his poor
parishioners, and jotting down sermon-notes in verse.

The great majority of Herrick's poems cannot be dated, and it is idle to
enquire which were written before his ordination and which afterwards.
His conception of religion was medieval in its sensuousness, and he
probably repeated the stages of sin, repentance and renewed assurance
with some facility. He lived with an old servant, Prudence Baldwin, the
"Prew" of many of his poems; kept a spaniel named Tracy, and, so says
tradition, a tame pig. When his parishioners annoyed him he seems to
have comforted himself with epigrams on them; when they slumbered during
one of his sermons the manuscript was suddenly hurled at them with a
curse for their inattention.

In the same year that Herrick was appointed to his country vicarage his
mother died while living with her daughter, Mercy, the poet's dearest
sister (see 818), then for some time married to John Wingfield of
Brantham in Suffolk (see 590), by whom she had three sons and a
daughter, also called Mercy. His eldest brother, Thomas, had been placed
with a Mr. Massam, a merchant, but as early as 1610 had retired to live
a country life in Leicestershire (see 106). He appears to have married a
wife named Elizabeth, whose loss Herrick laments (see 72). Nicholas, the
next brother was more adventurous. He had become a merchant trading to
the Levant, and in this capacity had visited the Holy Land (see 1100).
To his wife Susanna, daughter of William Salter, Herrick addresses two
poems (522 and 977). There were three sons and four daughters in this
family, and Herrick wrote a poem to one of the daughters, Bridget (562),
and an elegy on another, Elizabeth (376). When Mrs. Herrick died the
bulk of her property was left to the Wingfields, but William Herrick
received a legacy of ? 100, with ten pounds apiece to his two children,
and a ring of twenty shillings to his wife. Nicholas and Robert were
only left twenty-shilling rings, and the administration of the will was
entrusted to William Herrick and the Wingfields. The will may have been
the result of a family arrangement, and we have no reason to believe
that the unequal division gave rise to any ill-feeling. Herrick's
address to "his dying brother, Master William Herrick" (186), shows
abundant affection, and there is every reason to believe that it was
addressed to the William who administered to Mrs. Herrick's will.

While little nephews and nieces were springing up around him, Herrick
remained unmarried, and frequently congratulates himself on his freedom
from the yoke matrimonial. He imagined how he would bid farewell to his
wife, if he had one (465), and wrote magnificent epithalamia for his
friends, but lived and died a bachelor. When first civil troubles and
then civil war cast a shadow over the land, it is not very easy to say
how he viewed the contending parties. He was devoted to Charles and
Henrietta Maria and the young Prince of Wales, and rejoiced at every
Royalist success. Many also of his poems breathe the spirit of
unquestioning loyalty, but in others he is less certain of kingly
wisdom. Something, however, must be allowed for his evident habit of
versifying any phrase or epigram which impressed him, and not all his
poems need be regarded as expressions of his personal opinions. But with
whatever doubts his loyalty was qualified, it was sufficiently obvious
to procure his ejection from his living in 1648; and, making the best of
his loss, he bade farewell to Dean Prior, shook the dust of "loathed
Devonshire" off his feet, and returned gaily to London, where he appears
to have discarded his clerical habit and to have been made abundantly
welcome by his friends.

Free from the cares of his incumbency, and free also from the restraints
it imposed, Herrick's thoughts turned to the publication of his poems.