She in so much fairness clad,
To each grace a virtue had;
All her goodness cannot be
Cut in marble. Memory
Would be useless, ere we tell

In a stone her worth.-Farewell! 16

Of the four lines on the month of his young wife's death what more can I say than that for tender terseness, agony of pathos, they stand unparalleled !

May! Be thou never graced with birds that sing,

Nor Flora's pride!

In thee all flowers and roses spring,

Mine only died.17

A pool of poetry, rather than a stream sparkling in sunshine! We may take our fill of gazing into its still mirror, and see hills reflected there,

groves,

Gallantly crown'd with large sky-kissing trees; 18

where birds from heat or weather,
Sit sweetly tuning of their notes together; 19

or Venus ascending to Olympus,

Along the milky way by many a star.20

We can listen while

on the breast of Thames
A heavenly bevy of sweet English dames,
In some calm ev'ning of delightful May,
With music give a farewell to the day;

21

or imagine ourselves, and be, of the poet's kindly company, when,

on Isis' banks,

And melancholy Cherwell, near the ranks
Of shading willows, often have we lain
And heard the Muses and Apollo's strain
In heavenly raptures, as the pow'rs on high
Had there been lecturers of poesy,

And Nature's searcher, deep philosophy.22

It is charming; and the charm is the deeper for the

personal accent.

Yet at the same time no poetry of the period produces more the impression that it is of the period, its direct effluence. The spirit of early seventeenth-, even sixteenth-, century fancy floats the verse along; and not the less, but the rather, that the writer himself is there also. A certain want in the mass, not in the special pieces I have quoted, confirms the feeling. We have not, as we had in Herrick, as we shall have in Waller, the sense of art, of an artist. The general reader requires in poetry finish, which only the artist can give. Its absence may help to explain the lack of popularity for William Browne of Tavistock. But, in compensation, no poetry of the age has more of the age's essence, and for the student tells more about it.

William Browne of Tavistock, edited by Gordon Goodwin: Introduction by A. H. Bullen. Two vols. Lawrence and Bullen, 1894. 1 Britannia's Pastorals, Book II, Song ii, v. 248, vol. i, p. 237. 2 Ibid., Book II, Song i, v. 1001, i. 225.

3 On the Countess Dowager of Pembroke (Miscell. Poems), ii. 294. • Brit. P., Book I, Song iv, vv. 353–4, i. 117.

5 Ibid., Book I, Song v, vv. 75–6, i. 139.

• Lydford Journey (Miscell. Poems), ii. 305-9.

7 Brit. P., Book I, Song 3, vv. 197–202, i. 89.

8 Brit. P., Book II, Song i, vv. 771-96, i. pp. 217-18.

9 Brit. P., Book II, Song iii, vv. 601–13, i. 283-4.

10 Brit. P., Book III, Song i, vv. 721-970, ii. 50-60.

11 Sonnet vii (Miscell. Poems, Odes, Songs, and Sonnets), ii. 220-1. 12'Sonnet' (Miscell. Poems, &c.), ii. 226-7.

13 Brit. P., Book II, Song ii, vv. 194–222, i. 235-6.

14 An Elegy on the Countess Dowager of Pembroke, vv. 101-12 (Miscell. Poems), ii. 252.

15 On Charles, Lord Herbert of Cardiff and Shurland, ii. 256–7.

16 An Epitaph on Mrs. El: Y. (Miscell. Poems: Epitaphs), ii. 294–5.

17 In Obitum M. S. x. Maij, 1614 (Ibid.), ii. 289.

18 Brit. P., Book I, Song iv, v. 580, i. 125.

19 Brit. P., Book I, Song iv, vv. 351–2, i. 117.

20 Brit. P., Book III, Song ii, v. 76, ii. 65.

21 Brit. P., Book II, Song ii, vv. 231-4, i. 237.
23 Brit. P., Book III, Song i, vv. 698–704, ii. 50.

ROBERT HERRICK

1591-1674

A CLERIC, as were Donne, and Herbert, and Crashaw; and how gloriously unlike! Nothing in him, except the poet, of the strong-willed, philosophical, remorseful, Dean to be, sensual courtier-soldier that was; of the earnest, high-bred priest of Bemerton; of the unworldly enthusiast of Cambridge. Just the cheerful, kindly, easy-going, scholarly parson, of the character pervading English literature and life, from the days of Chaucer, though hardly of his ideal, to those of Dorsetshire Barnes. At times the type may have been submerged by the passion, the emotions, of Hoopers and Lauds, Baxters, Wesleys, Newtons, Simeons, Newmans; but it has always rested safe from the theological billows above in the quiet deeps. No hermit was our Robin Herrick, either before, or after, Orders. Pupil and correspondent of rare Ben Jonson, he remembered the lyric feasts,

Roman', that is, of the golden Cheapside', he ever rejoiced to fly back, whether in fact or fancy, to London, his 'home' always, and

blest place of my nativity.2

Nevertheless, he was a countryman by instinct. His affection for all country pursuits, traditions, and superstitions, was extraordinarily keen. He had, too, country

blood in him, with the resulting right to shelter in good old manor houses from the tempests of theology and politics. To his rural associations, together with his genial heart, and a muse as genial, incapable, each, of sourness from persecution, we owe sketches of an English Arcadia as joyous, fresh, and real, as Chaucer himself could have drawn.

A merry England indeed this of Herrick's! In it King Oberon and Queen Titania still held their Court. Luxurious their feastings, 'less great than nice', on the pith of sugared rush, mandrake's ears, and

The broke heart of a nightingale
O'ercome in music;

with, to quench royal thirst,

3

A pure seed-pearl of infant dew,
Brought and besweeten'd in a blue

A pregnant violent.1

And if Oberon has his junketings, why not Corydon his ? If only sweet Phyllis, or, if she be not at hand, as sweet Anthea, or, in lack of both-for life is fleeting-Amarillis, or Corinna,

fresh and green as Flora,

will consent to attend him to the Wake, to 'feast, as others do', on

Tarts and custards, creams and cakes;

or to the garlanded May-pole, ere

All love, all liking, all delight

Lies drown'd with us in endless night."

Never was there a more sociable poet. Whatever the apparent theme, it is sure speedily to resolve itself into the question :

Where may I find my shepherdess ? 6

Seemingly it is easily answered; so ubiquitous is She; so eager is the wooer; so well disposed, like Suckling's and like Sheridan's, to discover fascination in the most diverse feminine types. Cupid's pretty cheating wiles' scarcely were needed to entrap him. We see the favourite of the hour hiding behind every garden flower.8 Nature instructs. its ministers to be on the watch to guide her to the evening tryst :

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.9

Corydon, or Robin, waxes rapturous over the fair one's dress, the thread about the wrist, the ribbon round the waist, the sheen, the undulations, of the silken frock; the studied negligence of her attire:

A sweet disorder in the dress

Kindles in clothes a wantonness :
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction:

An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher:
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly :
A winning wave, deserving note,

In the tempestuous petticoat:

A careless shoestring, in whose tie

I see a wild civility:

Do more bewitch me than when art

Is too precise in every part.10

Or the object of his worship may be yet more personal :

Some asked me where the rubies grew,

And nothing I did say :

But with my finger pointed to

The lips of Julia.