laughs to scorn the ascetic tortures to which lovers fancifully subject themselves :— Beauty, like man's old en'my, 's known For surfeits sooner kill than fasts. In another poem he describes how he laid siege to a heart according to the slow scientific strategy of the Cours d'Amour; and the conclusion of this poem furnishes an admirable specimen of his cynical wit: When I had done what man could do, And thought the place my own, The enemy lay quiet too, And smil'd at all was done. I sent to know from whence and where A spy inform'd, Honour was there, March, march, quoth I; the word straight give ; Let's lose no time but leave her; That giant upon air will live, And hold it out for ever. To such a place our camp remove I hate a fool that starves her love, The "gaiety and ease" that undoubtedly sparkle in these lines are attained by the sacrifice of that respect for woman which was the very essence of chivalry; and in the same spirit of reckless effrontery, on the marriage of Lord Broghill with Lady Margaret Howard he replaced the stately epithalamium, customary on such occasions, with a ballad, in which the raillery and innuendo proper to the rustic speaker, who is supposed to describe the ceremony, are enlivened by flashes of his own fanciful wit. All this speaks to the decline of courtly manners; yet when he chooses to strike a more serious note, Suckling shows that he possesses something of the true spirit of poetry, as in the following beautiful song:When, dearest, I but think of thee, Methinks, all things that lovely be Are present, and my soul delighted; Still present with us, though unsighted. Thus while I sit, and sigh the day Till night's black wings do overtake me, So they by their bright rays awake me. As much, for that's an ocean too, Which flows not every day, but ever. III. More clearly even than in the metaphysical thought of the religious poets, more significantly than in the lowered tone of the Court poets, is the exhaustion of the ancient system of life and manners reflected in the paradoxical fusion during the reign of Charles I. of the Christian and pagan modes of poetical expression. What had happened in alinost every Court of continental Europe, where the art and literature of pagan antiquity-held by Gregory the Great to be incompatible with the spirit of Christianity-had, since the Council of Trent, been taken under the patronage of the Catholic Church, was now happening, mutatis mutandis, in the Court of England. The forms of the classical Renaissance had superseded the forms of the Middle Ages, as vehicles to express men's ideas of religion, love, honour, and beauty; and the arts that appeal to the imagination primarily through the senses were held in special esteem. Charles I., who, with less learning, had a finer taste than his father, was an enthusiastic lover of all the fine arts. Through his influence painting, the typical art of the Renaissance, represented at Whitehall by the genius of Van Dyck, had taken a firm hold on the taste of the English nobility; while, in close alliance with Van Dyck and his pupils, a little band of musicians, headed by Henry Lawes, were introducing into the services of the King's chapel the more secular melodies of Italy. The structure of the masque, brought by Inigo Jones to the highest point of perfection, constantly called into use the ideas and images of Greek mythology. All these influences co-operated to bring poetry into closer touch with the arts of painting and music: at the same time the enthusiastic study of classical literature tended to encourage those semi-pagan forms of thought and language which are so characteristically employed in the verse of Herrick. Robert Herrick, son of Nicholas Herrick, sprung of an old family in Leicestershire, was born, or at least baptized, in London in 1591. His father (who died the year after his birth) was a goldsmith in the city; his mother's name was Julian Stone. He was educated first (probably) at Westminster, and after having been bound apprentice in 1607 to his uncle, William (afterwards Sir William) Herrick, a goldsmith in Cheapside, was entered as a Fellow Commoner at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1613. A number of his letters still remain, written from Cambridge to his uncle, who seems to have been left as his guardian. The invariable refrain of these isto use his own phrase-"Mitte pecuniam"; and he apparently met with great difficulty in procuring from Sir William the necessary means of support. He took his degree of B.A. in 1617 from Trinity Hall, whither he had removed for the purpose of studying law, and became M.A. in 1620. From that date till 1629, when he was appointed to the living of Dean Prior in Devonshire, his life is without a record; but it is easy to gather from his verse that he mixed much in the company of Ben Jonson, and that his fame as a song-writer was established at Court. He left the gay society of London with reluctance, and on the eve of his departure for his new duties addressed a Farewell to the Poetry in which he had had hitherto delighted : Thus with a kiss of warmth and love I part, Not so but that some relic of my heart Doing's the fruit of doing well. : Farewell! To the period before his removal into Devonshire doubtless belong all such anacreontic poems as the numerous addresses to his Julias, Perillas, and Antheas, as well as the Apparition of his Mistress and Farewell to Sack, and perhaps also the well-known lines to Ben Jonson. Soon after his induction to Dean Prior he wrote his pastoral on the birth of Prince Charles (1630), which was followed by his ode on the birth of the Duke of York in 1633. His life in his vicarage was never agreeable to him: he seems to have disliked his parishioners, against whom he wrote several epigrams; but he allows that the country inspired him with some of his best poetry : More discontent 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. We may conclude with confidence that his most beautiful compositions, such as The Hock - Cart; Content in the Country; Panegyric on Sir L. Pemberton; his fairy poems (published in 1635), etc., were the fruits of this period. In 1640 sixty-two of the poems afterwards included in Hesperides were published in a miscellany called Wit's Recreations. Hesperides, including Noble Numbers (dated 1647), was published in 1648. In the previous year Herrick had been ejected from his living, and his place supplied by John Simms, a nominee of the Parliament. Resentment at the wrong thus done him seems to have been outweighed in his mind by his joy at returning to London; though in view of the state of feeling in the city, his own Royalist sympathies, and the great tragedy which all men perceived to be approaching, his enthusiasm at the prospect seems only one degree less strange than the air of Arcadian indifference with which, in the opening lines of Hesperides, he announces the subjects of his song. He thus salutes his birthplace :— O place! O people! manners! framed to please I am a free-born Roman: suffer then That I amongst you live a citizen. London my home is, though by hard fate sent Into a long and irksome banishment. Yet since called back, henceforward let me be, I'll beg of thee first here to have my urn. Weak I am grown, and must in short time fall; His aspiration was not fulfilled. During the Commonwealth he appears to have been supported in London by the generosity of Endymion Porter, one of the chief literary patrons of the time, but in 1662 he was replaced in his living, and continued in it till his death in October 1674, when he was buried in the churchyard of Dean Prior. After the appearance of Hesperides he did not publish anything. Of particular interest, for the purposes of this History, is the influence exercised on Herrick's genius by the |