The Hesperides & Noble Numbers Part 48

Ampliat aetatis spatium sibi vir bonus: hoc est Vivere bis vita posse priore frui.

301. _Master Edward Norgate, Clerk of the Signet of his Majesty:_--

Son to Robert Norgate, D.D., Master of Bene't College, Cambridge. He was employed by the Earl of Arundel to purchase pictures, and on one occasion found himself at Ma.r.s.eilles without remittances, and had to tramp through France on foot. According to the Calendars of State Papers in 1625, it was ordered that, "forasmuch as his Majesty's letters to the Grand Signior, the King of Persia, the Emperor of Russia, the Great Mogul, and other remote Princes, had been written, limned, and garnished with gold and colours by scriveners abroad, thenceforth they should be so written, limned, and garnished by Edward Norgate, Clerk of the Signet in reversion". Six years later this order was renewed, the "Kings of Bantam, Maca.s.sar, Barbary, Siam, Achine, Fez, and Sus" being added to the previous list, and Norgate being now designated as a Clerk of the Signet Extraordinary. In the same year, having previously been Bluemantle Pursuivant, he was promoted to be Windsor Herald, in which capacity he received numerous fees during the next few years, and was excused s.h.i.+p money. He still, however, retained his clerks.h.i.+p, for he writes in 1639: "The poor Office of Arms is fain to blazon the Council books and Signet". The phrase occurs in a series of nineteen letters of extraordinary interest, which Norgate wrote from the North, chiefly to his friend, Robert Reade, secretary to Windebank, on the course of affairs. In Sept., 1641, "Ned Norgate" was ordered personally to attend the king. "It is his Majesty's pleasure that the master should wait and not the men, and _that_ they shall find." Henceforth I find no certain reference to him; according to Fuller he died at the Herald's Office in 1649. It would be interesting if we could be sure that this Edward Norgate is the same as the one who in 1611 was appointed Tuner of his Majesty's "virginals, organs, and other instruments," and in 1637 received a grant of 140 for the repair of the organ at Hampton Court.

Herrick's love of music makes us expect to find a similar trait in his friends.

313. _The Entertainment, or Porch Verse._ The words _Ye wrong the threshold-G.o.d_ and the allusion to the porch in the Clipsby Crew Epithalamium (stanza 4) show that there is no reference here (as Brand thinks, ii. 135) to the old custom of reading part of the marriage service at the church door or porch (cp. Chaucer: "Husbands at churche door she had had five"). The porch of the house is meant, and the allusions are to the ceremonies at the threshold (cp. the Southwell Epithalamium). Dr. Grosart quotes from the Dean Prior register the entry of the marriage of Henry Northleigh, gentleman, and Mistress Lettice Yard on September 5, 1639, by licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

319. _No noise of late-sp.a.w.ned t.i.ttyries._ In the Camden Society's edition of the _Diary of Walter Yonge_, p. 70 (kindly shown me by the Rev. J. H. Ward), we have a contemporary account of the Club known as the t.i.tyre Tues, which took its name from the first words of Virgil's first _Eclogue_. "The beginning of December, 1623, there was a great number in London, haunting taverns and other debauched places, who swore themselves in a brotherhood and named themselves _t.i.tyre Tues_. The oath they gave in this manner: he that was to be sworn did put his dagger into a pottle of wine, and held his hand upon the pommel thereof, and then was to make oath that he would aid and a.s.sist all other of his fellows.h.i.+p and not disclose their council. There were divers knights, some young n.o.blemen and gentlemen of this brotherhood, and they were to know one the other by a black bugle which they wore, and their followers to be known by a blue ribbond. There are discovered of them about 80 or 100 persons, and have been examined by the Privy Council, but nothing discovered of any intent they had. It is said that the king hath given commandment that they shall be re-examined." In Mennis's _Musarum Deliciae_ the brotherhood is celebrated in a poem headed "The Tytre Tues; or, a Mocke Song. To the tune of Chive Chase. By Mr. George Chambers."

The second verse runs:--

"They call themselves the Tytere-tues, And wore a blue rib-bin; And when a-drie would not refuse To drink. O fearful sin!

"The council, which is thought most wise, Did sit so long upon it, That they grew weary and did rise, And could make nothing on it."

According to a letter of Chamberlain to Carleton, indexed among the _State Papers_, the t.i.tyres were a secret society first formed in Lord Vaux's regiment in the Low Countries, and their "prince" was called Ottoman. Another entry shows that the "Bugle" mentioned by Yonge was the badge of a society originally distinct from the t.i.tyres, which afterwards joined with it. The date of Herrick's poem is thus fixed as December, 1623/4, and this is confirmed by another sentence in the same pa.s.sage in _Yonge's Diary_, in which he says: "The Jesuits and Papists do wonderfully swarm in the city, and rumours lately have been given out for firing the Navy and House of Munition, on which are set a double guard". The Parliament to which Herrick alludes was actually summoned in January, 1624, to meet on February 12. Sir Simeon Steward, to whom the poem is addressed, was of the family of the Stewards of Stantney, in the Isle of Ely. He was knighted with his father, Mark Steward, in 1603, and afterwards became a fellow-commoner of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He was at different times Sheriff and Deputy-Lieutenant for Cambridges.h.i.+re, and while serving in the latter capacity got into some trouble for unlawful exactions. In 1627 he wrote a poem on the _King of the Fairies Clothes_ in the same vein as Herrick's fairy pieces.

321. _Then is the work half done._ As Dr. Grosart suggests, Herrick may have had in mind the "Dimidium facti qui cpit habet" of Horace, I.

_Epist._ ii. 40. But here the emphasis is on beginning _well_, there on _beginning_.

_Begin with Jove_ is doubtless from the "Ab Jove principium, Musae," of Virg. _Ecl._ iii. 60.

323. _Fears not the fierce sedition of the seas._ A reminiscence of Horace, III. _Od._ i. 25-32.

328. _Gold before goodness._ Printed in _Witts Recreations_, 1650, as _A Foolish Querie_. The sentiment is from Seneca, _Ep._ cxv.: An dives, omnes quaerimus; nemo, an bonus. Cp. Juvenal, III. 140 sqq.; Plaut.

_Menaechm._ IV. ii. 6.

331. _To his honoured kinsman, Sir William Soame._ The second son of Sir Stephen Soame, Lord Mayor of London in 1598. Herrick's father and Sir Stephen married sisters.

_As benjamin and storax when they meet._ Instances of the use of "Benjamin" for gum benzoin will be found in the Dictionaries. Dr.

Grosart's gloss, "_Benjamin_, the favourite youngest son of the Patriarch," is unfortunate.

336. _His Age: dedicated to ... M. John Wickes under the name of Posthumus._ There is an important version of this poem in Egerton MS., 2725, where it is ent.i.tled _Mr. Herrick's Old Age to Mr. Weekes_. I do not think it has been collated before. Stanzas i.-vi. contain few variants; ii. 6 reads: "Dislikes to care for what's behind"; iii. 6: "Like a lost maidenhead," for "Like to a lily lost"; v. 8: "With the best and whitest stone"; vi. 1: "We'll not be poor". After this we have two stanzas omitted in 1648:--

"We have no vineyards which do bear Their l.u.s.tful cl.u.s.ters all the year, Nor odoriferous Orchards, like to Alcinous; Nor gall the seas Our witty appet.i.tes to please With mullet, turbot, gilt-head bought At a high rate and further brought.

"Nor can we glory of a great And stuffed magazine of wheat; We have no bath Of oil, but only rich in faith O'er which the hand Of fortune can have no command, But what she gives not, she not takes, But of her own a spoil she makes."

Stanza vii., l. 2, has "close" for "both"; l. 3 "see" for "have"; l. 6, "open" for "that cheap"; l. 7, "full" for "same". Stanzas x.-xvii. have so many variants that I am obliged to transcribe them in full, though they show Herrick not at his best, and the poem is not one to linger over:--

10.

"Live in thy peace; as for myself, When I am bruised on the shelf Of Time, and _read Eternal daylight o'er my head:_ When with the rheum, _With_ cough _and_ ptisick, I consume _Into an heap of cinders:_ then The Ages fled I'll call again,

11.

"And with a tear compare these last _And cold times unto_ those are past, While Baucis by _With her lean lips_ shall kiss _them dry Then will we_ sit By the fire, foretelling snow and sleet And weather by our aches, grown Old enough to be our own

12.

"True Calendar [ ]

_Is for to know_ what change is near, Then to a.s.suage The gripings _in_ the chine by age, I'll call my young Iulus to sing such a song I made upon my _mistress'_ breast; _Or such a_ blush at such a feast.

13.

"Then shall he read _my Lily fine Entomb'd_ within a crystal shrine: _My_ Primrose next: A piece then of a higher text; For to beget In me a more transcendent heat Than that insinuating fire Which crept into each _reverend_ Sire,

14.

"When the _high_ Helen _her fair cheeks Showed to the army of the Greeks;_ At which I'll _rise_ (_Blind though as midnight in my eyes_), And hearing it, Flutter and crow, _and_, in a fit Of _young_ concupiscence, and _feel New flames within the aged steal_.

15.

"Thus frantic, crazy man (G.o.d wot), I'll call to mind _the times_ forgot And oft between _Sigh out_ the Times that _we_ have seen!

_And shed a tear_, And twisting my Iulus _hair_, Doting, I'll weep and say (in truth) Baucis, these were _the_ sins of youth.

16.

"Then _will I_ cause my hopeful Lad (If a wild Apple can be had) To crown the Hearth (Lar thus conspiring with our mirth); _Next_ to infuse Our _better beer_ into the cruse: Which, neatly spiced, we'll first carouse Unto the _Vesta_ of the house.

17.

"Then the next health to friends of mine _In oysters, and_ Burgundian wine, _Hind, G.o.deriske, Smith, And Nansagge_, sons of _clune[M] and_ pith, Such _who know_ well _To board_ the magic _bowl_, and _spill All mighty blood, and can do more Than Jove and Chaos them before_."

[M] Clune = "clunis," a haunch.

This John Wickes or Weekes is spoken of by Anthony a Wood as a "jocular person" and a popular preacher. He enters Wood's _Fasti_ by right of his co-optation as a D.D. in 1643, while the court was at Oxford; his education had been at Cambridge. He was a prebendary of Bristol and Dean of St. Burian in Cornwall, and suffered some persecution as a royalist.

Herrick later on, when himself shedless and cottageless, addresses another poem to him as his "peculiar friend,"

To whose glad threshold and free door I may, a poet, come, though poor.

A friend suggests that Hind may have been John Hind, an Anacreontic poet and friend of Greene, and has found references to a Thomas Goodricke of St. John's Coll., Camb., author of two poems on the accession of James I., and a Martin Nansogge, B.A. of Trinity Hall, 1614, afterwards vicar of Cornwood, Devon. Smith is certainly James Smith, who, with Sir John Mennis, edited the _Musarum Deliciae_, in which the first poem is addressed "to Parson Weekes: an invitation to London," and contains a reference to--

"That old sack Young Herrick took to entertain The Muses in a sprightly vein".

The early part of this poem contains, along with the name Posthumus, many Horatian reminiscences: cp. especially II. _Od._ xiv. 1-8, and IV.

_Od._ vii. 14. It may be noted that in the imitation of the latter pa.s.sage in stanza iv. the MS. copy at the Museum corrects the misplacement of the epithet, reading:--

"But we must on and thither tend Where Tullus and rich Ancus blend," etc.,