Ponkapog Papers [35]
sense. Herrick had probably accepted the vicar- ship as he would have accepted a lieutenancy in a troop of horse--with an eye to present emol- ument and future promotion. The promotion never came, and the emolument was nearly as scant as that of Goldsmith's parson, who con- sidered himself "passing rich with forty pounds a year"--a height of optimism beyond the reach of Herrick, with his expensive town wants and habits. But fifty pounds--the salary of his benefice--and possible perquisites in the way of marriage and burial fees would enable him to live for the time being. It was better than a possible nothing a year in London. Herrick's religious convictions were assuredly not deeper than those of the average layman. Various writers have taken a different view of the subject; but it is inconceivable that a clergy- man with a fitting sense of his function could have written certain of the poems which Her- rick afterward gave to the world--those aston- ishing epigrams upon his rustic enemies, and those habitual bridal compliments which, among his personal friends, must have added a terror to matrimony. Had he written only in that vein, the posterity which he so often invoked with pathetic confidence would not have greatly troubled itself about him. It cannot positively be asserted that all the verses in question relate to the period of his in- cumbency, for none of his verse is dated, with the exception of the Dialogue betwixt Horace and Lydia. The date of some of the composi- tions may be arrived at by induction. The re- ligious pieces grouped under the title of Noble Numbers distinctly associate themselves with Dean Prior, and have little other interest. Very few of them are "born of the royal blood." They lack the inspiration and magic of his secu- lar poetry, and are frequently so fantastical and grotesque as to stir a suspicion touching the ab- solute soundness of Herrick's mind at all times. The lines in which the Supreme Being is as- sured that he may read Herrick's poems with- out taking any tincture from their sinfulness might have been written in a retreat for the un- balanced. "For unconscious impiety," remarks Mr. Edmund Gosse, <1> "this rivals the famous passage in which Robert Montgomery exhorted God to 'pause and think.'" Elsewhere, in an apostrophe to "Heaven," Herrick says:
Let mercy be So kind to set me free, And I will straight Come in, or force the gate.
In any event, the poet did not purpose to be left out! Relative to the inclusion of unworthy pieces
<1> In Seventeenth-Century Studies. and the general absence of arrangement in the "Hesperides," Dr. Grosart advances the theory that the printers exercised arbitrary authority on these points. Dr. Grosart assumes that Herrick kept the epigrams and personal tributes in manuscript books separate from the rest of the work, which would have made a too slender volume by itself, and on the plea of this slender- ness was induced to trust the two collections to the publisher, "whereupon he or some un- skilled subordinate proceeded to intermix these additions with the others. That the poet him- self had nothing to do with the arrangement or disarrangement lies on the surface." This is an amiable supposition, but merely a supposition. Herrick personally placed the "copy" in the hands of John Williams and Francis Eglesfield, and if he were over-persuaded to allow them to print unfit verses, and to observe no method whatever in the contents of the book, the dis- credit is none the less his. It is charitable to believe that Herrick's coarseness was not the coarseness of the man, but of the time, and that he followed the fashion malgre lui. With re- gard to the fairy poems, they certainly should have been given in sequence; but if there are careless printers, there are also authors who are careless in the arrangement of their manuscript, a kind of task, moreover, in which Herrick was wholly unpractised, and might easily have made mistakes. The "Hesperides" was his sole
Let mercy be So kind to set me free, And I will straight Come in, or force the gate.
In any event, the poet did not purpose to be left out! Relative to the inclusion of unworthy pieces
<1> In Seventeenth-Century Studies. and the general absence of arrangement in the "Hesperides," Dr. Grosart advances the theory that the printers exercised arbitrary authority on these points. Dr. Grosart assumes that Herrick kept the epigrams and personal tributes in manuscript books separate from the rest of the work, which would have made a too slender volume by itself, and on the plea of this slender- ness was induced to trust the two collections to the publisher, "whereupon he or some un- skilled subordinate proceeded to intermix these additions with the others. That the poet him- self had nothing to do with the arrangement or disarrangement lies on the surface." This is an amiable supposition, but merely a supposition. Herrick personally placed the "copy" in the hands of John Williams and Francis Eglesfield, and if he were over-persuaded to allow them to print unfit verses, and to observe no method whatever in the contents of the book, the dis- credit is none the less his. It is charitable to believe that Herrick's coarseness was not the coarseness of the man, but of the time, and that he followed the fashion malgre lui. With re- gard to the fairy poems, they certainly should have been given in sequence; but if there are careless printers, there are also authors who are careless in the arrangement of their manuscript, a kind of task, moreover, in which Herrick was wholly unpractised, and might easily have made mistakes. The "Hesperides" was his sole