No More Learning

Single pieces of equal, a few of higher, quality, we have,
indeed, meanwhile received, not only from the master-singers who did not
confine themselves to the Lyric, but from many poets--some the unknown
contributors to our early anthologies, then Jonson, Marvell, Waller,
Collins, and others, with whom we reach the beginning of the wider sweep
which lyrical poetry has since taken. Yet, looking at the whole work,
not at the selected jewels, of this great and noble multitude, Herrick,
as lyrical poet strictly, offers us by far the most homogeneous,
attractive, and varied treasury. No one else among lyrists within the
period defined, has such unfailing freshness: so much variety within
the sphere prescribed to himself: such closeness to nature, whether
in description or in feeling: such easy fitness in language: melody so
unforced and delightful. His dull pages are much less frequent: he has
more lines, in his own phrase, 'born of the royal blood': the

Inflata rore non Achaico verba

are rarer with him: although superficially mannered, nature is so much
nearer to him, that far fewer of his pieces have lost vitality and
interest through adherence to forms of feeling or fashions of thought
now obsolete. A Roman contemporary is described by the younger Pliny in
words very appropriate to Herrick: who, in fact, if Greek in respect
of his method and style, in the contents of his poetry displays the
'frankness of nature and vivid sense of life' which criticism assigns
as marks of the great Roman poets. FACIT VERSUS, QUALES CATULLUS AUT
CALVUS. QUANTUM ILLIS LEPORIS, DULCEDINIS, AMARITUDINIS AMORIS! INSERIT
SANE, SED DATA OPERA, MOLLIBUS LENIBUSQUE DURIUSCULOS QUOSDAM; ET
HOC, QUASI CATULLUS AUT CALVUS. Many pieces have been, here refused
admittance, whether from coarseness of phrase or inferior value: yet
these are rarely defective in the lyrical art, which, throughout the
writer's work, is so simple and easy as almost to escape notice through
its very excellence. In one word, Herrick, in a rare and special sense,
is unique.

To these qualities we may, perhaps, ascribe the singular neglect which,
so far as we may infer, he met with in his own age, and certainly in
the century following. For the men of the Restoration period he was
too natural, too purely poetical: he had not the learned polish, the
political allusion, the tone of the city, the didactic turn, which were
then and onwards demanded from poetry. In the next age, no tradition
consecrated his name; whilst writers of a hundred years before were then
too remote for familiarity, and not remote enough for reverence. Moving
on to our own time, when some justice has at length been conceded to
him, Herrick has to meet the great rivalry of the poets who, from Burns
and Cowper to Tennyson, have widened and deepened the lyrical sphere,
making it at once on the one hand more intensely personal, on the other,
more free and picturesque in the range of problems dealt with: whilst at
the same time new and richer lyrical forms, harmonies more intricate and
seven-fold, have been created by them, as in Hellas during her golden
age of song, to embody ideas and emotions unknown or unexpressed under
Tudors and Stuarts. To this latter superiority Herrick would, doubtless,
have bowed, as he bowed before Ben Jonson's genius.
'Rural ditties,' and
'oaten flute' cannot bear the competition of the full modern orchestra.
Yet this author need not fear! That exquisite: and lofty pleasure which
it is the first and the last aim of all true art to give, must, by its
own nature, be lasting also. As the eyesight fluctuates, and gives the
advantage to different colours in turn, so to the varying moods of the
mind the same beauty does not always seem equally beautiful. Thus from
the 'purple light' of our later poetry there are hours in which we
may look to the daffodil and rose-tints of Herrick's old Arcadia, for
refreshment and delight. And the pleasure which he gives is as eminently
wholesome as pleasurable. Like the holy river of Virgil, to the souls
who drink of him, Herrick offers 'securos latices. ' He is conspicuously
free from many of the maladies incident to his art. Here is no
overstrain, no spasmodic cry, so wire-drawn analysis or sensational
rhetoric, no music without sense, no mere second-hand literary
inspiration, no mannered archaism:--above all, no sickly sweetness, no
subtle, unhealthy affectation. Throughout his work, whether when it is
strong, or in the less worthy portions, sanity, sincerity, simplicity,
lucidity, are everywhere the characteristics of Herrick: in these, not
in his pretty Pagan masquerade, he shows the note,--the only genuine
note,--of Hellenic descent. Hence, through whatever changes and fashions
poetry may pass, her true lovers he is likely to 'please now, and please
for long. ' His verse, in the words of a poet greater than himself, is of
that quality which 'adds sunlight to daylight'; which is able to 'make
the happy happier. ' He will, it may be hoped, carry to the many Englands
across the seas, east and west, pictures of English life exquisite
in truth and grace:--to the more fortunate inhabitants (as they must
perforce hold themselves! ) of the old country, her image, as she was two
centuries since, will live in the 'golden apples' of the West, offered
to us by this sweet singer of Devonshire. We have greater poets, not a
few; none more faithful to nature as he saw her, none more perfect in
his art;--none, more companionable:--

F. T.