ROBERT HERRICK.*

THERE is a fascination about the poetry of Herrick which

affects both the general reader and the critic, and is due partly to the perfection of his workmanship, and partly to the diffused presence of a drop of that elixir vitae which no analysis has yet been able to separate off. But in addition the critic feels the fascination of certain problems about the man and his work. What was he in character P What was his artistic aim P How did he reconcile the classicism of his sentiment and the paganism of much of his imagery with his profession as a Christian minister? Were his " many fresh and fragrant mistresses " merely lay figures ?

Dr. Moorman in the course of a much too long but very readable book gives the best answers he can to these and kindred questions. He begins with a hundred and fifty pages of biography, but adds scarcely anything of moment to the gleanings of Dr. Grosart and Mr. Pollard. One letter found in the collection of Canon Egerton Leigh, and a few details as to the relations of the Cambridge undergraduate with his curmudgeonly uncle from the papers at Beaumanor, are the most considerable of his novelties. This is no discredit to the biographer, who seems to have searched all the available sources of information for every period of the poet's life, but it makes the labour of writing out the old story again at great length a work of piety rather than of necessity. However, the large size of the canvas gives the learned author an opportunity of adding full-length sketches of the poet's friends.

It would help us to a better understanding of Herrick's personal character if we had any clue to his motive in taking Holy Orders. At first apprenticed to his goldsmith uncle, he presently broke away from trade, and entered the University of Cambridge. After three years at St. John's he migrated to Trinity Hall in order to study law. This was in 1616. We know nothing more, except the dates of his degrees, till we find him in 1627 chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham in his expedition to the isle of Rhe, an appointment which was followed two years later by a Crown presentation to the vicarage of Dean Prior in Devonshire. As he writes, even from Trinity Hall, of " Time contracting him to some obher calling," we may not unreasonably suppose that he found the study of law uncongenial, and took to divinity as the easier choice when some profession became urgent. It would not necessarily follow that he made a bad country parson. Both Donne and Herbert were influenced in their decision to adopt the clerical life by the closing of other avenues to preferment, and we cannot read Herrick's " Farewell unto Poetry" without recognising that he took his new profession seriously :- " 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."

We need not interpret his vow too precisely. The Civil War poems and those to his country friends must have been written later. But as he himself tells us that the poems chiefly written in Devonshire were " ennobled numbers "—by which he must mean his " Noble Numbers " or religious verses—we are justified in dating the verses to his " many mistresses" earlier in his career; and, indeed, most poets get these things written before they are forty. Dr. Moorman very properly disbelieves in the real existence of all these ladies. He points out, even in the case of Julia, the complete absence of anything like incident or drama, and the fact that the portrait contains inoonsistencies. He might have added that there are manuscript versions of Julia poems addressed to other names. Rightly also, as we think, Dr. Moorman dismisses a theory of Mr. Gosse's that Julia was the mother of the young lady referred to in a poem entitled " His Daughter's Dowry." He takes this daughter to be as imaginary as the " supposed wife " to whom Herrick wrote a. " parting verse " when about to travel ; and, we should add, as imaginary as the little son Italus who figures in the address to his friend John Wicks ; especially as he bids this daughter cultivate " the good seed of chastity "

• Robert Herrick : a Biographical and Critical Study. By F. W. Moorman, Ph-D. London; John Lane. [IU ed. net.]

which she inherited from her father, who certainly was never married.

On the charge of paganism Dr. Moorman is less convincing. Speaking of the " Noble Numbers " he says :—" The orthodox verses disclose very little of the man's personality, and show no trace of religious emotion. And no sooner does his true character appear than his orthodoxy falls from him like a mask, and the pagan Flamen stands revealed to our gaze." Poor Herrick ! How incredulous be would have been if he had been told that a serious scholar in years to come would accuse him of paganism for speaking of his household Lares, or calling his church a temple. It is quite true that he speaks of "an altar of perfume" in his temple; but as he also speaks of " pews " we know where we are. A similar mixture of old and new is found in his epitaph on his maid Prudence :— " In this little urn is laid Prudence Baldwin, once my maid, From whose happy spark here let

Spring the purple violet."

Even the use of " Jove " for God in " Evensong," a poem not in the " Noble Numbers," does not prove him a pagan, any more than a similar use in " Lycidas," which also is a Christian poem in substance though not in form, proves Milton to have been a pagan. With Herrick it was part of the same curious convention which made him speak of himself as a Roman citizen, and sit for his portrait in a toga. It might indeed be argued that Herrick's religious poems, so far from not reveal- ing his personality, are the only poems of his which do so ; they are almost the only poems, besides those upon country life, the sentiments of which are not borrowed from other

sources ; and Dr. Moorman -inconsistently allows that they exhibit Herrick's childlike mind. If they had been rapturous and intellectual we should know that Herrick had only been

copying Donne. As it is, we have in Herrick's " Litany," ,‘ Thanksgiving for his House," " Humility," " To Keep a True Lent," and ode " To his Conscience " religious poems which no one else could have written, and which we are very glad to have. Mr. Barron Field found in 1810 at Dean Prior an old woman in the ninety-ninth year of her age who could repeat from memory five of the " Noble Numbers," which she bad learnt from her mother, a proof that the religious poet was not held to be a pagan in his own country.

The truth about Herrick seems to be that be was a con- summate artist, with nothing much of his own to say, who therefore borrowed sentiments from others, chiefly from the Latin poets, and spent the main of his strength in perfecting his expression. The best proof of this is to be found in the number of poems which are merely translations. This habit of translation, we may note in parenthesis, is a great trap to his biographers. Dr. Moorman avoids it very dexterously as a rule, but even he has tripped at the Ode from Anacreon, " I fear no earthly powers." However, we owe him thanks for pointing out from the Dean Prior registers that Prudence Baldwin, whose epitaph the poet wrote, survived him four years. Another proof of the poet's preference of manner to matter is the number of studies which survive on the same theme. Another is the fact that no one now reads the poem which he himself singled out as his masterpiece, " The Lily in a Crystal," though as a study in expression it is excellent. Dr. Moorman does justice, in many pages of analysis and illustration, to Herrick's matchless skill in rhythm, to the delicacy of his ear, and the fineness of his workmanship; but when he speaks of the "universality of his genius in all that pertains to lyricism," we must think he is carried away by a biographer's partiality for his subject.

Herrick has written one love-poem of first-rate quality, a study after Lovelace, the lines " To Anthea, who may command him anything "; and one or two no less admirable lyrics about flowers, especially the exquisite lines "To Violets" and "To Blossoms," and the still more beautiful ode "To Meadows "; but most of his Nature lyrics are spoilt by their vapid sentiment. To these must be added one or two perfect pieces on the immortality of his own verses. When, therefore, Time makes up his lyrical anthology, it may be found that the salvage of Herrick, for all his greater technical skill, is not larger than that of his master, Ben Jonson, who was more careful to find a worthy thought before he attempted to express it in fit words.

Before leaving Dr. Moorinan's book we must call attention

to a careful and interesting essay on the "Lyric of the English Renaissance" which forms one of the chapters.