It is perhaps worth noting that in the second volume of this
edition, and in the last hundred poems printed in the first, wherever a
date can be fixed it is always in the forties.
edition, and in the last hundred poems printed in the first, wherever a
date can be fixed it is always in the forties.
Robert Herrick
1035. _Twelfth Night: or King and Queen. _ Herrick alludes to these
"Twelfth-Tide Kings and Queens" in writing to Endymion Porter (662), and
earlier still, in the "New-Year's Gift to Sir Simeon Steward" (319) he
speaks--
"Of Twelfth-Tide cakes, of Peas and Beans,
Wherewith ye make those merry scenes,
Whenas ye choose your King and Queen".
Brand (i. 27) illustrates well from "Speeches to the Queen at Sudley" in
Nichols' _Progresses of Queen Elizabeth_.
"_Meliboeus. _ Cut the cake: who hath the bean shall be king, and where
the pea is, she shall be queen.
_Nisa. _ I have the pea and must be queen.
_Mel. _ I the bean, and king. I must command. "
1045. _Comfort in Calamity. _ An allusion to the ejection from their
benefices which befel most of the loyal clergy at the same time as
Herrick.
It is perhaps worth noting that in the second volume of this
edition, and in the last hundred poems printed in the first, wherever a
date can be fixed it is always in the forties. Equally late poems occur,
though much less frequently, among the first five hundred, but there the
dated poems belong, for the most part, to the years 1623-1640. Now, in
April 29, 1640, as stated in the brief "Life" prefixed to vol. i. , there
was entered at Stationers' Hall, "The severall poems written by Master
Robert Herrick," a book which, as far as is known, never saw the light.
It was probably, however, to this book that Herrick addressed the poem
(405) beginning:--
"Have I not blest thee? Then go forth, nor fear
Or spice, or fish, or fire, or close-stools here";
and we may fairly regard the first five hundred poems of _Hesperides_
as representing the intended collection of 1640, with a few additions,
and the last six hundred as for the most part later, and I must add,
inferior work. This is borne out by the absence of any manuscript
versions of poems in the second half of the book. Herrick's verses would
only be passed from hand to hand when he was living among the wits in
London.
1046. _Twilight. _ Ovid, _Amores_, I. v. 5, 6: Crepuscula . . .
