No More Learning

The great majority of Herrick's poems cannot be dated, and it is idle to
enquire which were written before his ordination and which afterwards.
His conception of religion was medieval in its sensuousness, and he
probably repeated the stages of sin, repentance and renewed assurance
with some facility. He lived with an old servant, Prudence Baldwin, the
"Prew" of many of his poems; kept a spaniel named Tracy, and, so says
tradition, a tame pig. When his parishioners annoyed him he seems to
have comforted himself with epigrams on them; when they slumbered during
one of his sermons the manuscript was suddenly hurled at them with a
curse for their inattention.

In the same year that Herrick was appointed to his country vicarage his
mother died while living with her daughter, Mercy, the poet's dearest
sister (see 818), then for some time married to John Wingfield of
Brantham in Suffolk (see 590), by whom she had three sons and a
daughter, also called Mercy. His eldest brother, Thomas, had been placed
with a Mr. Massam, a merchant, but as early as 1610 had retired to live
a country life in Leicestershire (see 106). He appears to have married a
wife named Elizabeth, whose loss Herrick laments (see 72). Nicholas, the
next brother was more adventurous. He had become a merchant trading to
the Levant, and in this capacity had visited the Holy Land (see 1100).
To his wife Susanna, daughter of William Salter, Herrick addresses two
poems (522 and 977). There were three sons and four daughters in this
family, and Herrick wrote a poem to one of the daughters, Bridget (562),
and an elegy on another, Elizabeth (376). When Mrs. Herrick died the
bulk of her property was left to the Wingfields, but William Herrick
received a legacy of ? 100, with ten pounds apiece to his two children,
and a ring of twenty shillings to his wife.
Nicholas and Robert were
only left twenty-shilling rings, and the administration of the will was
entrusted to William Herrick and the Wingfields. The will may have been
the result of a family arrangement, and we have no reason to believe
that the unequal division gave rise to any ill-feeling. Herrick's
address to "his dying brother, Master William Herrick" (186), shows
abundant affection, and there is every reason to believe that it was
addressed to the William who administered to Mrs. Herrick's will.

While little nephews and nieces were springing up around him, Herrick
remained unmarried, and frequently congratulates himself on his freedom
from the yoke matrimonial. He imagined how he would bid farewell to his
wife, if he had one (465), and wrote magnificent epithalamia for his
friends, but lived and died a bachelor. When first civil troubles and
then civil war cast a shadow over the land, it is not very easy to say
how he viewed the contending parties. He was devoted to Charles and
Henrietta Maria and the young Prince of Wales, and rejoiced at every
Royalist success. Many also of his poems breathe the spirit of
unquestioning loyalty, but in others he is less certain of kingly
wisdom. Something, however, must be allowed for his evident habit of
versifying any phrase or epigram which impressed him, and not all his
poems need be regarded as expressions of his personal opinions. But with
whatever doubts his loyalty was qualified, it was sufficiently obvious
to procure his ejection from his living in 1648; and, making the best of
his loss, he bade farewell to Dean Prior, shook the dust of "loathed
Devonshire" off his feet, and returned gaily to London, where he appears
to have discarded his clerical habit and to have been made abundantly
welcome by his friends.

Free from the cares of his incumbency, and free also from the restraints
it imposed, Herrick's thoughts turned to the publication of his poems.
As we have said, in his old Court-days these had found some circulation
in manuscript, and in 1635 one of his fairy poems was printed, probably
without his leave (see Appendix). In 1639 his poem (575) _The Apparition
of his Mistress calling him to Elysium_ was licensed at Stationers' Hall
under the title of _His Mistress' Shade_, and it was included the next
year in an edition of Shakespeare's Poems (see Notes). On April 29,
1640, "The severall poems written by Master Robert Herrick," were
entered as to be published by Andrew Crook, but no trace of such a
volume has been discovered, and it was only in 1648 that _Hesperides_ at
length appeared. Two years later upwards of eighty of the poems in it
were printed in the 1650 edition of _Witt's Recreations_, but a small
number of these show considerable variations from the _Hesperides_
versions, and it is probable that they were printed from the poet's
manuscript.