'Shame is a bad attendant to a State:
_He rents his crown, who fears the people's hate_'--
both lines, though only the last is italicised, are from Seneca; the
first from 'Hippolytus' 431--'Malus est minister regii imperii pudor';
the second from 'Œdipus' 701--'Odia qui nimium timet regnare nescit.' On
the other hand, the italics in the lines entitled 'Patience in Princes'
and 'Gentleness' show that some of Herrick's constitutional maxims were
also quotations, though their source has not yet been traced. That of
the first is, perhaps, to be found in Seneca's 'De Clementia' i. 22.
'Kings ought to shear, not skin, their sheep' comes from Suetonius,
'Tiberius' 32 ('Boni pastoris est tondere pecus, non deglubere'), and
'Kings ought to be more loved than feared' from Seneca's 'Octavia,' l.
457 ('Decet timeri Cæsarem. At plus diligi'). Even in weightier matters
than politics we must be on our guard against the tricks Herrick may
play us. The lines entitled 'Devotion makes the Deity'--
'Who forms a godhead out of gold or stone,
Makes not a god, but he that prays to one'--
have recently been quoted as expressing 'for once a really high and deep
thought in words of really noble and severe propriety'; yet they are
taken almost literally from Martial VIII. xxiv. 5:--
'Qui fingit sacros auro vel marmore vultus,
Non facit ille deos: qui rogat ille facit.'
In his 'Noble Numbers' Herrick quotes or paraphrases in the same way
from S. Augustine, Cassiodorus, S. Bernard, S. Basil, S. Ambrose, John
of Damascus, Boethius, and Thomas Aquinas. One or two passages have also
been traced with absolute certainty to a contemporary theological work,
and it fills us with admiration to watch how dexterously Herrick, with a
_minimum_ of alteration, turns the prose of the commentator into
excellent verse.
If we turn to Herrick's debt to more poetical writers we find that he
takes a few phrases from Catullus (his obligations to whom have been
absurdly exaggerated), about as much from Tibullus, and a little also
from Propertius and Juvenal. To his poem entitled 'The Vision' he
transfers from Virgil ('Aeneid' i. 315-20) the charming description of
the dress of the Spartan huntress, in which Venus encounters Aeneas.
From Horace, whom he occasionally imitates, he borrows many single
lines, for the most part acknowledging them by italics. To Ovid his
indebtedness for phrases and turns of thought is still more marked. On
the whole, however, his chief obligation is to Martial, who supplied him
not only with many of his epigrams, both good and bad, but also with
suggestions for more important poems. Thus, in his second poem ('To his
Muse') he is inspired by Martial I. iv.; a phrase in his third ('To his
Book') is suggested by the same original; the reference to Brutus in the
fourth is from Martial XI. xvi.; and the next poem is a paraphrase from
X. xix. All these poems have to do with his book, and it is needless to
say that the amount of borrowing in them is very exceptional; but it was
from Martial VII. lxxxix. that Herrick took his lovely 'Go, Happy Rose';
one of his poems on Julia is from Martial IV. xxii.; 'The Lily and the
Crystal' is suggested by the same poet (VIII. lxviii. 5-8), and there
are numerous smaller borrowings, altogether apart from the epigrams.
Of Greek, it is probable that Herrick's knowledge was only slight. There
is even some slight reason to believe that his acquaintance with Greek
authors was mainly derived from Latin translations. 'The Cruel Maid' is
a very close imitation of part of the twenty-third Idyll of Theocritus;
the only other Greek poetry which plays a serious part in his verse is
the pseudo-Anacreon. To the collection of sportive poems, whose very
slightness is their charm, which passed under Anacreon's name, Herrick's
obligations are really immense. It is not only that several of his most
charming poems--'The Cheat of Cupid,' 'The Wounded Cupid,' 'On Himself,'
'Upon His Grey Hairs,' etc.--are directly translated or closely imitated
from the Greek; but we feel in the case of these lyrics that they really
helped the development of Herrick's own gifts in a way in which none of
his Latin storehouses even approached. Thus it would be easy to make out
a fairly long list of poems, in which he comes so close to the spirit of
'Anacreon' that the curious student of such matters is sent hunting
through the pages of his Bergk in a vain search for originals which
never existed.
Herrick went late to the University, and, despite the extreme propriety
of the language as to his reading which we find in his letters to his
goldsmith-uncle when he was in need of a remittance, it is difficult to
believe that he was ever a very earnest or laborious student. Thus the
list of authors from whom he borrowed comes rather as a surprise. It is
probable that a little discount must be taken off the amount of
erudition with which it might incline us to credit him. His poems make
it absolutely certain that he was steeped in the works of Ben Jonson and
well acquainted with Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' and the Essays of
Montaigne. Now Jonson, Burton, and Montaigne, as it is hardly necessary
to remark, all three drew inspiration from the classics, and it would
not be difficult to prove that at times Herrick's quotations came to him
filtered through these authors, and not directly from the fountain head.
This helps us to understand some excursions of the poet which seem
unusually far afield. For instance, there can be no doubt that the
ultimate original of Herrick's--
'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying'--
is from Ausonius (361, ll. 49-50):--
'Collige, virgo, rosas, dum flos novus, et nova pubes,
Et memor esto aevum sic properare tuum.'
But how came Herrick to be reading an author so little known? The
probable answer is that he found the lines in Burton (III. ii. s. sec.
5), where they are quoted with the gloss:--
'A virgin is like a flower, a rose withered on a sudden. Let them
take time then while they may, make advantage of youth,' etc.
So too when we find Herrick in his 'Jove for our labours all things
sells us,' quoting Epicharmus, economy bids us imagine that he found the
saying ([Greek: _tôn ponôn pôlousin hêmin panta tagath' hoi Theoi_]) not
in Xenophon's 'Memorabilia' ii. i. 20), where it first appears, but in
Montaigne (II. 20), where it is quoted. For we know Herrick read
Montaigne, and we have no evidence that he read Xenophon. Where the
quotation is from Horace, or Martial, or Seneca, or any other author
whom we may be reasonably sure that Herrick studied at first hand, it is
of course quite as likely that he found it for himself as that his
attention was drawn to it by Jonson, Burton, or Montaigne. Probably the
poet himself would sometimes have been puzzled to trace his obligations
to their sources. In any case, when all necessary allowance has been
made, it is obvious that his knowledge of the chief Latin writers was
considerable, and that according to the stereotyped phrase, he must have
'kept up his classics' very diligently after leaving Cambridge.
What effect should this tracking out the poet's quotations and
adaptations to their sources have on our judgment of his genius? Surely,
it should make us rate it more highly. We may almost say that what
Herrick borrowed was intrinsically of little more value than the tags
from a Latin delectus. He breathed upon them and filled them with his
music, so that they assimilate so admirably with his verse, that even
when he printed them in italics the meaning of the change of type has
long remained a secret to his commentators. It has become a commonplace
of criticism to write of Herrick as a 'butterfly,' but he was really a
conscious artist, and no mean one. The examples which have been given in
this paper have necessarily been chosen chiefly to illustrate the width
of his reading. If space allowed, it would be pleasant to adduce others
with the special object of exhibiting the skilfulness of his
transmutations. Even in those we have given, few genuine lovers of
poetry will deny that while to translate 'luserunt navigia' by 'where
late they danced' is merely a happy stroke of scholarship, the rendering
of 'in lubrico' by 'on icy pavements,' or 'regnare nescit' by 'he
_rents_ his crown,' is sheer genius.