No More Learning

37. _When once the sin has fully acted been. _ Tacitus, _Ann. _ xiv. 10:
Perfecto demum scelere, magnitudo ejus intellecta est.

38. _Upon Time. _ Were this poem anonymous it would probably be
attributed rather to George Herbert than to Herrick.

41. _His Litany to the Holy Spirit. _ We may quote again from Barron
Field's account in the _Quarterly Review_ (1810) of his
cross-examination of the Dean Prior villagers for Reminiscences of
Herrick: "The person, however, who knows more of Herrick than all the
rest of the neighbourhood we found to be a poor woman in the 99th year
of her age, named Dorothy King. She repeated to us, with great
exactness, five of his _Noble Numbers_, among which was his beautiful
'Litany'. These she had learnt from her mother, who was apprenticed to
Herrick's successor at the vicarage. She called them her prayers, which
she said she was in the habit of putting up in bed, whenever she could
not sleep; and she therefore began the 'Litany' at the second stanza:--

'When I lie within my bed,' etc. "

Another of her midnight orisons was the poem beginning:--

"Every night Thou dost me fright,
And keep mine eyes from sleeping," etc.
The last couplet, it should be noted, is misquoted from No. 56.

54. _Spew out all neutralities. _ From the message to the Church of the
Laodiceans, Rev. iii. 16.

59. _A Present by a Child. _ Cp. "A pastoral upon the Birth of Prince
Charles" (_Hesperides_ 213), and Note.

63. _God's mirth: man's mourning. _ Perhaps founded on Prov. i. 26: "I
also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh".