and twenty pounds a year, which Queen Elizabeth had formerly given to Sir Philip Sidney. With this,' says Izaak Walton, and his annuity, and the advantages of his college and of his oratorship, he enjoyed his genteel humor for clothes and court-like company, and seldom looked toward Cambridge unless the King was there, but then he never failed.'

The death of the king and of two powerful friends, the Duke of Richmond and the Marquis of Hamilton, destroyed Herbert's court hopes, and he, therefore, entered into sacred orders. He was first prebend of Layton Ecclesia, and afterward rector of Bemerton, in Wiltshire. The third day after he was made rector of Bemerton,' says Walton,' and had changed his sword and silk clothes into a canonical habit, he returned so habited with his friend Mr. Woodnot to Bainton; and immediately after he had seen and saluted his wife, he said to her, 'You are now a minister's wife, and must now so far forget your father's house as not to claim a precedence of any of your parishioners; for you are to know that a priest's wife can challenge no precedence or place but that which she purchases by her obliging humility; and I am sure places so purchased do best become them. And let me tell you, I am so good a herald as to assure you that this is truth.' 'And she was so meek a wife as to assure him it was no vexing news to her, and that he should see her observe it with a cheerful willingness.' Herbert remained at Bemerton till the close of his life, and to the last discharged his clerical duties with saint-like zeal and purity; but his strength was not equal to his self-imposed tasks, and he died at the early age of thirty-nine.

The principal production of Herbert is The Temple, or Sacred Poems, and Private Ejaculations. The lines on Virtue are the best in the collection; but even in them we find what mars all the poetry of this writer, ridiculous conceits and coarse unpleasant similes. The most sacred subject could not repress his love of fantastic imagery, or keep him for any number of consecutive verses in a serious and natural strain. It may be safely said, therefore, that his poetry alone would not have preserved his name, and that he is indebted for the reputation he enjoys to his excellent and amiable character, to his prose work, the Country Parson, and to the warm and fervent piety which gave a charm to his life, and breathes through all his writings. The following are the lines on 'Virtue' already alluded to, to which we shall add a much more elaborate poem on Sunday.

VIRTUE.

Sweet day! so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky;
The dews shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die.

Sweet rose! whose hue, angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye;

Thy root is ever in its grave;

And thou must die.

Sweet spring! full of sweet days and roses
A box where sweets compacted lie;
Thy music shows ye have your closes;
And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like season'd timber never gives;

But, though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.

SUNDAY.

O day most calm, most bright,
The fruit of this the next world's bud,
The indorsement of supreme delight,
Writ by a friend, and with his blood;
The couch of time, care's balm and bay:
The week were dark, but for thy light;
Thy torch doth show the way.

The other days and thou

Make up one man; whose face thou art,
Knocking at heaven with thy brow;
The worky days are the back-part;
The burden of the week lies there,
Making the whole to stoop and bow,
Till thy release appear.

Man had straight-forward gone
To endless death: but thou dost pull
And turn us round, to look on one,
Whom, if we were not very dull,

We could not choose, but look on still;
Since there is no place so alone,
The which he doth not fill.

Sundays the pillars are,

On which heaven's palace arched lies;
The other days fill up the spare

And hollow room with vanities.

They are the fruitful beds and borders
In God's rich garden: that is bare,

Which parts their ranks and orders.

The Sundays of man's life,
Threaded together on Time's string,
Make bracelets to adorn the wife
Of the eternal glorious King.

On Sunday heaven's gate stands ope;
Blessings are plentiful and rife-

More plentiful than hope.

This day my Saviour rose,

And did inclose this light for his;

That, as each beast his manger knows,

Man might not of his fodder miss.

Christ hath took in this piece of ground,

And made a garden there for those

Who want herbs for their wound.

The rest of our creation

Our great Redeemer did remove

With the same shake, which at his passion
Did the earth and all things with it move.

As Samson bore the doors away,

Christ's hands, though nail'd, wrought our salvation,
And did unhinge that day.

The brightness of that day
We sullied by our foul offence:
Wherefore that robe we cast away,

Having a new at his expense,

Whose drops of blood paid the full price,
That was required to make us gay,
And fit for paradise.

Thou art a day of mirth:

And where the week-days trail on ground,
Thy flight is higher, as thy birth;

O let me take thee at the bound,

Leaping with thee from seven to seven,

Till that we both being toss'd from earth,

Fly hand in hand to heaven.

ROBERT HERRICK, one of the most exquisite of the early English lyrical poets, was born in Cheapside, London, in 1591. He was educated at the university of Cambridge, and having taken orders, was presented, by Charles the First, in 1629, to the vicarage of Dean Prior, in Devonshire. After residing about twenty years in this rural parish, Herrick was ejected from his living by the storms of the civil war; but whatever regret the poet may have felt on being turned adrift upon the world, he could have experienced little pain on parting with his parishioners, whom he describes as a 'wild amphibious race, almost as rude as savages, and churlish as the seas.' Herrick, at the same time, gives us a glimpse of his own character :—-

Born I was to meet with age,
And to walk life's pilgrimage:
Much, I know, of time is spent;
Tell I can't what's resident.
Howsoever, cares adieu !

I'll have nought to say to you;

But I'll spend my coming hours

Drinking wine and crown'd with flowers.

So light and genial a temperament would enable the poet to ride out the storm in comparative composure.

Herrick published his Noble Numbers, or Pious Pieces, in 1647, which must have been about the time that he lost his vicarage. In the following year appeared The Hesperides, or the Works, both Humane and Divine, of Robert Herrick, Esquire. The clerical prefix to his name seems now to have been abandoned by the poet, and there are certainly many pieces in his second volume which would not become one ministering at the altar, belonging to the sacred profession. He now took up his residence in West

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minster, associated with the jovial spirits of the age, and was supported or assisted by the wealthy royalists.

After the Restoration Herrick was restored to the Devonshire vicarage. How he was received by the 'rude savages' of Dean Prior, or how he felt on quitting the gayeties of the metropolis to resume his clerical duties and seclusion, is not recorded. He was at this time about seventy years of age, and was probably tired of wine and tavern jollities. He had an unquestionable taste for the pleasures of a country life, if we may judge from his works, and the fondness with which he dwells on old English festivals and rural scenes. Though his rhymes were sometimes wild, he says his life was chaste, and he repented of his errors :

For these my unbaptized rhymes,
Writ in my wild unhallowed times,
For every sentence, clause, and word,
That's not inlaid with thee, O Lord!
Forgive me, God, and blot each line
Out of my book that is not thine;
But if, 'mongst all thou findest one
Worthy thy benediction,

That one of all the rest shall be
The glory of my work and me.

The poet would have better evinced the sincerity and depths of his contrition by blotting out the unbaptized rhymes himself; but the vanity of the author probably triumphed over the penitence of the Christian. Gayety was Herrick's natural element. His muse was a goddess fair and free, that did not move happily in serious numbers. The time of the poet's death has not been ascertained, but he must have lived to reach a ripe old age.

The poetical works of Herrick lay neglected for many years after his death, but they have recently become popular, especially his shorter Lyrics, some of which have, within a few years, been set to music, and are now sung and quoted by all lovers of song. His verses, Cherry Ripe, and Gather the Rose-buds while ye may, possess a delicious mixture of playful fancy and natural feeling. Those To Blossoms, To Daffodils, and To Primroses, have a tinge of pathos that at once wins its way to the heart. They abound, like all Herrick's poems, in lively imagery and conceits; but the pensive moral feeling predominates, and we feel that the poet's smiles might as well be tears. Shakspeare and Jonson had scattered such delicate fancies among their plays and masques, that Herrick was not without models of the highest excellence in this species of composition. There is, however, in his songs and anacreontics, an unforced gayety and natural tenderness, which show that he wrote chiefly from the impulses of his own cheerful and happy nature. The select beauty and picturesqueness of Herrick's language, when he is in his happiest vein, is worthy of his fine conceptions; and his versification is harmony itself. His verses bound and flow like some exquisite lively melody, that echoes nature, by wood and dell, and presents new beauties at

every turn and winding. The strain is short, and sometimes fantastic, but the notes long linger in the mind, and take their place forever in the memory. One or two words, such as gather the rose-buds,' call up a summer landscape, with youth, beauty, flowers, and music. This is, and ever must be, true poetry.

We shall introduce Herrick's minor poems in the order in which they are enumerated above; and shall follow them by two that are more extended, the latter of which is one of the finest of his serious poetical performances.

CHERRY RIPE.

Cherry ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry,

Full and fair ones-come and buy;
If so be you ask me where
They do grow?-I answer, There,
Where my Julia's lips do smile-
There's the land, or cherry-isle;
Whose plantations fully show
All the year where cherries grow.

GATHER THE ROSE-BUDS.

Gather the rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying,

And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the Sun,
The higher he's a getting,

The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Time shall succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For, having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

TO BLOSSOMS.

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,

Why do ye fall so fast?

Your date is not so past,

But you may stay yet here a while,
To blush and gently smile,

And go at last.

What! were ye born to be

An hour or half's delight,

And so to bid good-night?

'Tis pity nature brought ye forth

Merely to show your worth,

And lose you quite.