The Hesperides & Noble Numbers Part 43

ta??e? d? ?a? e t?pte?

?s?? ?pa?, ?spe? ??st????

??? d' ???eta? ?a?????, ???e d', e?pe, s????????? 30 ???a? ??a?? ?? ???, s? d? ?a?d??? p???se??.

Some of his phrases, however, prove that he was occasionally more indebted to the Latin version of Stepha.n.u.s than to the original.

82. _That for seven l.u.s.ters I did never come._ The fall of Herrick's father from a window, fifteen months after the poet's birth, was imputed at the time to suicide; and it has been reasonably conjectured that some mystery may have attached to the place of his burial. If "seven l.u.s.ters" can be taken literally for thirty-five years, this poem was written in 1627.

83. _Delight in Disorder._ Cp. Ben Jonson's "Still to be neat, still to be drest," in its turn imitated from one of the _Basia_ of Johannes Bonefonius.

85. _Upon Love._ Printed in _Witts Recreations_, 1654. The only variant is "To tell me" for "To signifie" in the third line.

86. _To Dean Bourn._ "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 the First. But they added, with an air of innocent triumph, 'he did see it again,' as was the fact after the restoration." Barron Field in _Quarterly Review_, August, 1810. Herrick was ejected in 1648.

_A rocky generation! a people currish._ Cp. Burton, II. iii. 2: a rude ... uncivil, wild, currish generation.

91. _That man loves not who is not zealous too._ Augustine, _Adv.

Adimant._ 13: Qui non zelat, non amat.

92. _The Bag of the Bee._ Printed in _Witts Recreations_, 1654, and in Henry Bold's _Wit a-sporting in a Pleasant Grove of new Fancies_, 1657.

Set to music by Henry Lawes.

93. _Luxurious love by wealth is nourished._ Ovid, _Remed. Amor._ 746: Divitiis alitur luxuriosus amor.

95. _Homer himself._ Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus. Horace, _De Art. Poet._ 359.

100. _To bread and water none is poor._ Seneca, _Excerpt._ ii. 887: Panem et aquam Natura desiderat; nemo ad haec pauper est.

_Nature with little is content._ Seneca, _Ep._ xvi.: Exiguum Natura desiderat. _Ep._ lx.: parvo Natura dimitt.i.tur.

106. _A Country Life: To his brother, M. Tho. Herrick._ "Thomas, baptized May 12, 1588, was placed by his uncle and guardian, Sir William Heyrick, with Mr. Ma.s.sam, a merchant in London; but in 1610 he appears to have returned into the country and to have settled in a small farm.

It is supposed that this Thomas was the father of Thomas Heyrick, who in 1668 resided at Market Harborough and issued a trader's token there, and grandfather to the Thomas who was curate of Harborough and published some sermons and poems." Hill's _Market Harborough_, p. 122.

A MS. version of this poem is contained in Ashmole 38, from which Dr.

Grosart gives a full collation on pp. cli.-cliii. of his Memorial Introduction. The MS. appears to follow an unrevised version of the poem, and contains a few couplets which Herrick afterwards thought fit to omit. The most important pa.s.sage comes after line 92: "Virtue had, and mov'd her sphere".

"Nor know thy happy and unenvied state Owes more to virtue than to fate, Or fortune too; for what the first secures, That as herself, or heaven, endures.

The two last fail, and by experience make Known, not they give again, they take."

_Thrice and above blest._ Felices ter et amplius, Hor. I. _Od._ xiii. 7.

_My soul's half:_ Animae dimidium meae, Hor. I. _Od._ iii. 8. The poem is full of such reminiscences: "With holy meal and spirting (MS. crackling) salt" is the "Farre pio et saliente mica" of III. _Od._ xxiii. 20; "Untaught to suffer poverty" the "Indocilis pauperiem pati" of I. _Od._ i. 18; "A heart thrice wall'd" comes from I. _Od._ iii. 9: Illi robur et aes triplex, etc. Similar instances might be multiplied. Note, too, the use of "Lar" and "Genius".

_Jove for our labour all things sells us._ Epicharm. apud Xenoph.

_Memor._ II. i. 20, t?? p???? ?????s?? ??? p??ta t??a?' ?? ?e??. Quoted by Montaigne, II. xx.

_Wisely true to thine own self._ Possibly a Shakespearian reminiscence of the "to thine own self be true" in the speech of Polonius to Laertes, Hamlet, I. iii. 78.

_A wise man every way lies square._ Cp. Arist. _Eth._ I. x. 11, ?? ??????

??a??? ?a? tet??????? ??e? ?????.

_For seldom use commends the pleasure._ Voluptates commendat rarior usus. Juvenal, _Sat._ xi. ad fin.

_Nor fear or wish your dying day._ Summum nec metuas diem, nec optes.

Mart. X. xlvii. 13.

112. _To the Earl of Westmoreland._ Mildmay Fane succeeded his father, Thomas Fane, the first earl, in March, 1628. At the outbreak of the Civil War he sided with the king, but after a short imprisonment made his submission to the Parliament, and was relieved of the sequestration of his estates. He subsequently printed privately a volume of poems, called _Otia Sacra_, which has been re-edited by Dr. Grosart.

117. _To the Patron of Poets, M. End. Porter._ Five of Herrick's poems are addressed to Endymion Porter, who seems to have been looked to as a patron by all the singers of his day. According to the inscription on a medal of him executed by Varin in 1635, he was then forty-eight, so that he was born in 1587, coming into the world at Aston-under-Hill in Gloucesters.h.i.+re. He went with Charles on his trip to Spain, and after his accession became groom of his bedchamber, was active in the king's service during the Civil War, and died in 1649. He was a collector of works of art both for himself and for the king, and encouraged Rob.

Dover's Cotswold games by presenting him with a suit of the king's clothes. a Wood tells us this, and mentions also that he was a friend of Donne, that Gervase Warmsely dedicated his _Virescit Vulnere Virtus_ to him in 1628, and that in conjunction with the Earl of St. Alban's he also received the dedication of Davenant's _Madagascar_.

_Let there be patrons_, etc. Burton, I. ii. 3, -- 15. 'Tis an old saying: "Sint Maecenates, non deerunt, Flacce, Marones" (Mart. VIII. lvi. 5).

Fabius, Cotta, and Lentulus are examples of Roman patrons of poetry, themselves distinguished. Cp. Juvenal, vii. 94.

119. _His tapers thus put out._ So Ovid, _Am._ iii. 9:--

Ecce puer Veneris fert eversamque pharetram Et fractos arcus, et sine luce facem.

121. _Four things make us happy here._ From

???a??e?? ?? ???st?? ??d?? ??at??

de?te??? d? f??? ?a??? ?e??s?a??

t? t??t?? d? p???te?? ad?????

?a? t? t?ta?t??, ??? et? t?? f????.

(Bergk, _Anth. Lyr._, _Scol._ 8.)

123. _The Tear sent to her from Staines._ This is printed in _Witts Recreations_ with no other variation than in the t.i.tle, which there runs: "A Teare sent his Mistresse". Dr. Grosart notes that Staines was at the time a royal residence.

128. _His Farewell to Sack._ A ma.n.u.script version of this poem at the British Museum omits many lines (7, 8, 11-22, 29-36), and contains few important variants. "Of the yet chaste and undefiled bride" is a poor antic.i.p.ation of line 6, and "To raise the holy madness" for "To rouse the sacred madness" is also weak. For the line and a half:--

"Prithee not smile Or smile more inly, lest thy looks beguile,"

we have the very inferior pa.s.sage:--

"I prithee draw in Thy gazing fires, lest at their sight the sin Of fierce idolatry shoot into me, and I turn apostate to the strict command Of nature; bid me now farewell, or smile More ugly, lest thy tempting looks beguile".

This MS. version is followed in the first published text in _Witts Recreations_, 1645.

130. _Upon Mrs. Eliz. Wheeler._ "The lady complimented in this poem was probably a relation by marriage. Herrick's first cousin, Martha, the seventh daughter of his uncle Robert, married Mr. John Wheeler." Nott.

132. _Fold now thine arms._ A sign of grief. Cp. "His arms in this sad knot". _Tempest._

134. _Mr. J. Warr._ This John Warr is probably the same as the "honoured friend, Mr. John Weare, Councellour," of a later poem. Dr. Grosart quotes an "Epitaph upon his honoured friend, Master Warre," by Randolph.

Nothing is known of him, but I find in the Oxford Register that a John Warr matriculated at Exeter College, 16th May, 1619, and proceeded M.A.

in 1624. He may possibly be Herrick's friend.

137. _Dowry with a wife._ Cp. Ovid, _Ars Am._ ii. 155: Dos est uxoria lites.

139. _The Wounded Cupid._ This is taken from Anacreon, 33 [40]:--