The Hesperides & Noble Numbers Part 44

???? p?t' ?? ??d??s??

???????? ???tta?

??? e?de?, ???' ?t????

t?? d??t????? pata??e??

t?? ?e??a? ??????e??

d?a?? d? ?a? petas?e??

p??? t?? ?a??? ???????

????a, ?te?, e?pe?, ????a ??p????s???

?f?? ' ?t??e ?????

pte??t??, ?? ?a???s??

???tta? ?? ?e?????.

? d' e?pe?? e? t? ???t???

p??e? t? t?? e??tta?, p?s?? d??e?? p????s??, ????, ?s??? s? ???e??;

142. _A Virgin's face she had._ Herrick is imitating a charming pa.s.sage from the first aeneid (ll. 315-320), in which aeneas is confronted by Venus:--

Virginis os habitumque gerens et virginis arma, Spartanae vel qualis equos Threissa fatigat Harpalyce volucremque fuga praevert.i.tur Eurum.

Namque umeris de more habilem suspenderat arc.u.m Venatrix, dederatque comam diffundere ventis, Nuda genu nodoque sinus collecta fluentis.

_With a wand of myrtle_, etc. Cp. Anacreon, 7 [29]:--

?a??????? e ??d?

?a??p??, ???? ?ap???? ... e?pe?

S? ??? ?? d??? f???sa?.

146. _Upon the Bishop of Lincoln's Imprisonment._ John Williams (1582-1650), Bishop of Lincoln, 1621; Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, 1621-1625; suspended and imprisoned, 1637-1640, on a frivolous charge of having betrayed the king's secrets; Archbishop of York, 1641. Save from this poem and the _Carol_ printed in the Appendix we know nothing of his relations with Herrick. He had probably stood in the way of the poet's obtaining holy orders or preferment. When Herrick was appointed to the cure of Dean Prior in 1629, Williams had already lost favour at the Court.

147. _Cynthius pluck ye by the ear._ Cp. Virg. _Ecl._ vi. 3: Cynthius aurem Vellit et admonuit; and Milton's _Lycidas_, 77: "Phbus replied and touched my trembling ears".

_The lazy man the most doth love._ Cp. Ovid, _Remed. Amor._ 144: Cedit amor rebus: res age, tutus eris. Nott. But Ovid could also write: Qui nolet fieri desidiosus amet (1 _Am._ ix. 46).

149. _Sir Thomas Southwell_, of Hangleton, Suss.e.x, knighted 1615, died before December 16, 1642.

_Those tapers five._ Mentioned by Plutarch, _Qu. Rom._ 2. For their significance see Ben Jonson's _Masque of Hymen_.

_O'er the threshold force her in._ The custom of lifting the bride over the threshold, probably to avert an ill-omened stumble, has prevailed among the most diverse races. For the anointing of the doorposts Brand quotes Langley's translation of Polydore Vergil: "The bryde anoynted the poostes of the doores with swynes' grease, because she thought by that meanes to dryve awaye all misfortune, whereof she had her name in Latin 'Uxor ab unguendo'".

_To gather nuts._ A Roman marriage custom mentioned in Catullus, _Carm._ lxi. 124-127, the _In Nuptias Juliae et Manlii_, which Herrick keeps in mind all through this ode.

_With all lucky birds to side._ Bona c.u.m bona nubit alite virgo. Cat.

_Carm._ lxi. 18.

_But when ye both can say Come._ The wish in this case appears to have been fulfilled, as Lady Southwell administered to her husband's estate, Dec. 16, 1642, and her own estate was administered on the thirtieth of the following January.

_Two ripe shocks of corn._ Cp. Job v. 26.

153. _His wish._ From Hor. _Epist._ I. xviii. 111, 112:--

Sed satis est orare Jovem quae donat et aufert; Det vitam, det opes; aequum mi animum ipse parabo:

where Herrick seems to have read _qui_ for _quae_.

157. _No Herbs have power to cure Love._ Ovid, _Met._ i. 523; id. _Her._ v. 149: Nullis amor est medicabilis herbis. For the 'only one sovereign salve' cp. Seneca, _Hippol._ 1189: Mors amoris una sedamen.

159. _The Cruel Maid._ Printed in _Witts Recreations_, 1650, with no other variant than the mistaken omission of "how" in l. 7. I do not think that it has been yet pointed out that the whole poem is a close imitation of Theocritus, xxiii. 19-47:--

????e pa? ?a? st????, ?.t.?.

Possibly Herrick meant to translate the whole poem, which would explain his initial _And_. But cp. Ben Jonson's _Engl. Gram._ ch. viii.: "'And'

in the beginning of a sentence serveth instead of an admiration".

164. _To a Gentlewoman objecting to him his gray hairs._ Mr. Hazlitt quotes an early MS. copy headed: "An old man to his younge Mrs.". The variants, as he observes, are mostly for the worse. The poem may have been suggested to Herrick by Anacreon, 6 [11]:--

?????s?? a? ???a??e?, ??a?????, ????? e??

?a?? ?s?pt??? ???e?

??a? ?? ????t' ??sa? ?.t.?.

168. _Jos. Lo. Bishop of Exeter._ Joseph Hall, 1574-1656, author of the satires.

169. _The Countess of Carlisle._ Lucy, the second wife of James, first Earl of Carlisle, the Lady Carlisle of Browning's _Strafford_.

170. _I fear no earthly powers._ Probably suggested by Anacreon [36], beginning: t? e t??? ????? d?d?s?e??; Cp. also 7 [15]: ?? ?? ??e? t?

G??e?.

172. _A Ring presented to Julia._ Printed without variation in _Witts Recreations_, 1650, under the t.i.tle: "With a O to Julia".

174. _Still thou reply'st: The Dead._ Cp. Martial, VIII. lxix. 1, 2:--

Miraris veteres, Vacerra, solos Nec laudas nisi mortuos poetas.

178. _Corinna's going a-Maying._ Herrick's poem is a charming expansion of Chaucer's theme: "For May wol have no slogardye a night". The account of May-day customs in Brand (vol. i. pp. 212-234) is unusually full, and all Herrick's allusions can be ill.u.s.trated from it. Dr. Nott compares the last stanza to Catullus, _Carm._ v.; but parallels from the cla.s.sic poets could be multiplied indefinitely.

_The G.o.d unshorn_ of l. 2 is from Hor. I. _Od_. xxi. 2: Intonsum pueri dicite Cynthium.

181. _A dialogue between Horace and Lydia._ Hor. III. _Od._ ix.

_Ramsey._ Organist of Trinity College, Cambridge, 1628-1634. Some of his music still exists in MS.

185. _An Ode to Master Endymion Porter, upon his brother's death._ Endymion Porter is said to have had an only brother, Giles, who died in the king's service at Oxford, _i.e._, between 1642 and 1646, and it has been taken for granted that this ode refers to his death. The supposition is possibly right, but if so, the ode, despite its beauty, is so gratingly and extraordinarily selfish that we may wonder if the dead brother is not the William Herrick of the next poem. The first verse is, of course, a soliloquy of Herrick's, not, as Dr. Grosart suggests, addressed to him by Porter. Dr. Nott again parallels Catullus, _Carm_. v.

186. _To his dying brother, Master William Herrick._ According to Dr.

Grosart and Mr. Hazlitt the poet had an elder brother, William, baptized at St. Vedast's, Foster Lane, Nov. 24, 1585 (he must have been born some months earlier, if this date be right, for his sister Martha was baptized in the following January), and alive in 1629, when he acted as one of the executors of his mother's will. But, it is said, there was also another brother named William, born in 1593, after his father's death, "at Harry Campion's house at Hampton". I have not been able to find the authority for this last statement, which, as it a.s.serts the co-existence of two brothers, of the same name, is certainly surprising.

According to Dr. Grosart, it is the younger William who "died young" and was addressed in this poem, but I must own to feeling some doubt in the matter.

193. _The Lily in a Crystal._ The poem may be taken as an expansion of Martial, VIII. lxviii. 5-8:--

Condita perspicua vivit vindemia gemma Et tegitur felix, nec tamen uva latet: Femineum lucet sic per bombycina corpus, Calculus in nitida sic numeratur aqua.

197. _The Welcome to Sack._ Two MSS. at the British Museum (Harl. 6931 and Add. 19,268) contain copies of this important poem. These copies differ considerably from the printed version, are proved by small variations to be independent of each other, and at the same time agree in all important points. We may conclude, therefore, that they represent an earlier version of the poem, subsequently revised by Herrick before the issue of _Hesperides_. In the subjoined copy, in which the two MSS.