No More Learning

APPENDIX III.

POOR ROBIN'S ALMANACK.


Herrick's name has been so persistently connected with _Poor Robert's
Almanack_ that a few words must be said on the subject. There is, we are
told, a Devonshire tradition ascribing the _Almanack_ to him, and this
is accepted by Nichols in his _Leicestershire_, and "accredited" by Dr.
Grosart. The tradition apparently rests on no better basis than
Herrick's Christian name, and of the poems in the issues of the
_Almanack_ which I have seen, it may be said, that, while the worst of
them, save for some lack of neatness of turn, might conceivably have
been by Herrick--on the principle that if Herrick could write some of
his epigrams, he could write anything--the more ambitious poems it is
quite impossible to attribute to the author of the _Hesperides_. But
apart from opinion, the negative evidence is overwhelming. Of the three
earliest issues in the British Museum, 1664, 1667 and 1669 (all in the
annual collections of Almanacs, issued by the Stationers' Company, and
all, it may be noted, bound for Charles II. ), I transcribe the
title-page of the first. "Poor Robin. 1664. An Almanack After a New
Fashion wherein the Reader may see (if he be not blinde) many remarkable
things worthy of Observation. Containing a two-fold Kalendar, viz. the
Iulian or English, and the Roundheads or Fanaticks: with their several
Saints daies and Observations, upon every month. Written by Poor Robin,
Knight of the burnt Island and a well-willer to the Mathematicks.
Calculated for the Meridian of Saffron Walden, where the Pole is
elevated 52 degrees and 6 minutes above the Horizon. London: Printed for
the Company of Stationers. "

In the 1667 issue the paragraph about the Pole runs: "Where the
Maypole is elevated (with a plumm cake on the top of it) 5 yards 3/4 above
the Market Cross". The mention of Saffron Walden had apparently been
ridiculed, and the author in this year joins in the laugh, and in 1669
omits the paragraph altogether. But what had Herrick at any time to do
with Saffron Walden, and why should the poet, whose politics, apart from
some personal devotion to Charles I. , were distinctly moderate, mix
himself up with an ultra-Cavalier publication? Also, if Herrick be "Poor
Robin" we must attribute to him, at least, the greater part of the
twenty-one "Poor Robin" publications, of which Mr. H. Ecroyd Smith gave
a list in _Notes and Queries_, 6th series, vii. 321-3, _e. g. _, "Poor
Robin's Perambulation from the Town of Saffron Walden to London" (1678),
"The Merrie Exploits of Poor Robin, the Merrie Saddler of Walden," etc.
These have been generally assigned to William Winstanley, the
barber-poet, on the ground of a supposed similarity of style, and from
"Poor Robin" having been written under a portrait of him. Mr. Ecroyd
Smith, however, attributes them to Robert Winstanley (born, 1646, at
Saffron Walden), younger brother of Henry Winstanley, the projector of
the Eddystone Lighthouse. He assigns the credit of the "identification"
to Mr.