The Hesperides & Noble Numbers Part 109

971. _Strength_, etc. Tacitus, _Ann._ xiii. 19: Nihil rerum mortalium tam instabile ac fluxum est, quam fama potentiae, non sua vi nixa.

975. _Case is a lawyer_, etc. Martial, I. xcviii. Ad Naevolum Causidic.u.m. c.u.m clamant omnes, loqueris tu, Naevole, tantum.... Ecce, tacent omnes; Naevole, dic aliquid.

977. _To his sister-in-law, M. Susanna Herrick._ Cp. _supra_, 522. The subject is again the making up of the book of the poet's elect.

978. _Upon the Lady Crew._ Cp. Herrick's Epithalamium for her marriage with Sir Clipsby Crew, 283. She died 1639, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

979. _On Tomasin Parsons._ Daughter of the organist of Westminster Abbey: cp. 500 and Note.

983. _To his kinsman, M. Thomas Herrick, who desired to be in his book._ Cp. 106 and Note.

989. _Care keeps the conquest._ Perhaps jotted down with reference to the Governors.h.i.+p of Exeter by Sir John Berkeley: see Note to 745.

992. _To the handsome Mistress Grace Potter._ Probably sister to the Mistress Amy Potter celebrated in 837, where see Note.

995. _We've more to bear our charge than way to go._ Seneca, Ep. 77: quantulumcunque haberem, tamen plus superesset viatici quam viae, quoted by Montaigne, II. xxviii.

1000. _The G.o.ds, pillars, and men._ Horace's Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non di, non concessere columnae (_Ars Poet._ 373). Latin poets hung up their epigrams in public places.

1002. _To the Lord Hopton on his fight in Cornwall._ Sir Ralph Hopton won two brilliant victories for the Royalists, at Bradock Down and Stratton, January and May, 1643, and was created Baron Hopton in the following September. Originally a Parliamentarian, he was one of the king's ablest and most loyal servants.

1008. _Nothing's so hard but search will find it out._ Terence, _Haut._ IV. ii. 8: Nihil tam difficile est quin quaerendo investigari posset.

1009. _Labour is held up by the hope of rest._ Ps. Sall.u.s.t, _Epist. ad C. Caes._: Sapientes laborem spe otii sustentant.

1022. _Posting to Printing._ Mart. V. x. 11, 12:--

Vos, tamen, o nostri, ne festinate, libelli: Si post fata venit gloria, non propero.

1023. _No kingdoms got by rapine long endure._ Seneca, _Troad._ 264: Violenta nemo imperia continuit dies.

1026. _Saint Distaff's Day._ "Saint Distaff is perhaps only a coinage of our poet's to designate the day when, the Christmas vacation being over, good housewives, with others, resumed their usual employment." (Nott.) The phrase is explained in dictionaries and handbooks, but no other use of it is quoted than this. Herrick's poem was pilfered by Henry Bold (a notorious plagiarist) in _Wit a-sporting in a pleasant Grove of New Fancies_, 1657.

1028. _My beloved Westminster._ As mentioned in the brief "Life" of Herrick prefixed to vol. i., all the references in this poem seem to refer to Herrick's courtier-days, between leaving Cambridge and going to Devons.h.i.+re. He then, doubtless, resided in Westminster for the sake of proximity to Whitehall. It has been suggested, however, that the reference is to Westminster School, but we have no evidence that Herrick was educated there.

_Golden Cheapside._ My friend, Mr. Herbert Horne, in his admirably-chosen selection from the _Hesperides_, suggests that the allusion here is to the great gilt cross at the end of Wood Street. The suggestion is ingenious; but as Cheapside was the goldsmiths' quarter this would amply justify the epithet, which may indeed only refer to Cheapside as a money-winning street, as we might say Golden Lombard Street.

1032. _Things are uncertain._ Tiberius, in Tacitus, _Annal._ i. 72: Cuncta mortalium incerta; quantoque plus adeptus foret, tanto se magis in lubrico.

1034. _Good wits get more fame by their punishment._ Cp. Tacit. _Ann._ iv. 35, sub fin.: Punitis ingeniis gliscit auctoritas, etc., quoted by Bacon and Milton.

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) ill.u.s.trates well from "Speeches to the Queen at Sudley" in Nichols' _Progresses of Queen Elizabeth_.

"_Melibus._ 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 ma.n.u.script versions of poems in the second half of the book. Herrick's verses would only be pa.s.sed from hand to hand when he was living among the wits in London.

1046. _Twilight._ Ovid, _Amores_, I. v. 5, 6: Crepuscula ... ubi nox abiit, nec tamen orta dies.

1048. _Consent makes the cure._ Seneca, _Hippol._ 250: Pars sanitatis velle sanari fuit.

1050. _Causeless whipping._ Ovid, _Heroid._ v. 7, 8: Leniter ex merito quicquid patiare, ferendum est; Quae venit indignae poena, dolenda venit. Quoted by Montaigne, III. xiii.

1052. _His comfort._ Terence, _Adelph._ I. i. 18: Ego ... quod fortunatum isti putant, Uxorem nunquam habui.

1053. _Sincerity._ From Hor. _Ep._ I. ii. 54: Sincerum est nisi vas, quodcunque infundis acescit. Quoted by Montaigne, III. xiii.

1056. _To his peculiar friend, M. Jo. Wicks._ See 336 and Note. Written after Herrick's ejection. We know that the poet's uncle, Sir William Herrick, suffered greatly in estate during the Civil War, and it may have been the same with other friends and relatives. But there can be little doubt that the poet found abundant hospitality on his return to London.

1059. _A good Death._ August. _de Disciplin. Christ._ 13: Non potest male mori, qui bene vixerit.

1061. _On Fortune._ Seneca, _Medea_, 176: Fortuna opes auferre non animum potest.

1062. _To Sir George Parry, Doctor of the Civil Law._ According to Dr.

Grosart, Parry "was admitted to the College of Advocates, London, 3rd Nov., 1628; but almost nothing has been transmitted concerning him save that he married the daughter and heir of Sir Giles Sweet, Dean of Arches". I can hardly doubt that he must be identified with the Dr.

George Parry, Chancellor to the Bishop of Exeter, who in 1630 was accused of excommunicating persons for the sake of fees, but was highly praised in 1635 and soon after appointed a Judge Marshal. If so, his wife was a widow when she came to him, as she is spoken of in 1638 as "Lady Dorothy Smith, wife of Sir Nicholas Smith, deceased". She brought him a rich dower, and her death greatly confused his affairs.

1067. _Gentleness._ Seneca, _Phoen._ 659: Qui vult amari, languida regnet manu. And Ben Jonson, _Panegyre_ (1603): "He knew that those who would with love command, Must with a tender yet a steadfast hand, Sustain the reins".

1068. _Mrs. Eliza Wheeler._ See 130 and Note.

1071. _To the Honoured Master Endymion Porter._ For Porter's patronage of poetry see 117 and Note.

1080. _The Mistress of all singular Manners, Mistress Portman._ Dr.

Grosart notes that a Mrs. Mary Portman was buried at Putney Parish Church, June 27, 1671, and this was perhaps Herrick's schoolmistress, the "pearl of Putney".

1087. _Where pleasures rule a kingdom._ Cicero, _De Senect._ xii. 41: Neque omnino in voluptatis regno virtutem posse consistere. _He lives who lives to virtue._ Comp. Sall.u.s.t, _Catil._ 2, s. fin.

1088. _Twice five-and-twenty (bate me but one year)._ As Herrick was born in 1591, this poem must have been written in 1640.

1089. _To M. Laurence Swetnaham._ Unless the various entries in the parish registers of St. Margaret's, Westminster, refer to different men, this Lawrence Swetnaham was the third son of Thomas Swettenham of Swettenham in Ches.h.i.+re, married in 1602 to Mary Birtles. Lawrence himself had children as early as 1629, and ten years later was church-warden. He was buried in the Abbey, 1673.

1091. _My lamp to you I give._ Allusion to the ?apad?f???a which Plato (_Legg._ 776B) uses to ill.u.s.trate the succession of generations. So Lucretius (ii. 77): Et quasi cursores vita lampada tradunt.

1092. _Michael Oulsworth._ Michael Oulsworth, Oldsworth or Oldisworth, graduated M.A. from Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1614. According to Wood, "he was afterwards Fellow of his College, Secretary to Earl of Pembroke, elected a burgess to serve in several Parliaments for Sarum and Old Sarum, and though in the Grand Rebellion he was no Colonel, yet he was Governor of Old Pembroke, and Montgomery led him by the nose as he pleased, to serve both their turns". The partners.h.i.+p, however, was not eternal, for between 1648 and 1650 Oldisworth published at least eight virulent satires against his former master.