ook, Robert Herrick
would long ago have sacrificed that last possession; but the demand for
literature, which is so marked a feature in some parts of the South
Seas, extends not so far as the dead tongues; and the Virgil, which he
could not exchange against a meal, had often consoled him in his hunger.
He would study it, as he lay with tightened belt on the floor of the old
calaboose, seeking favourite passages and finding new ones only less
beautiful because they lacked the consecration of remembrance. Or he
would pause on random country walks; sit on the path-side, gazing over
the sea on the mountains of Eimeo; and dip into the _Aeneid_, seeking
_sortes_. And if the oracle (as is the way of oracles) replied with no
very certain nor encouraging voice, visions of England at least would
throng upon the exile's memory: the busy schoolroom, the green
playing-fields, holidays at home, and the perennial roar of London, and
the fireside, and the white head of his father. For it is the destiny of
those grave, restrained, and classic writers, with whom we make enforced
and often painful acquaintanceship at school, to pass into the blood and
become native in the memory; so that a phrase of Virgil speaks not so
much of Mantua or Augustus, but of English places and the student's own
irrevocable youth.

Robert Herrick was the son of an intelligent, active, and ambitious man,
small partner in a considerable London house. Hopes were conceived of
the boy; he was sent to a good school, gained there an Oxford
scholarship, and proceeded in course to the western University. With all
his talent and taste (and he had much of both) Robert was deficient in
consistency and intellectual manhood, wandered in bypaths of study,
worked at music or at metaphysics when he should have been at Greek, and
took at last a paltry degree. Almost at the same time, the London house
was disastrously wound up; Mr. Herrick must begin the world again as a
clerk in a strange office, and Robert relinquish his ambitions and
accept with gratitude a career that he detested and despised. He had no
head for figures, no interest in affairs, detested the constraint of
hours, and despised the aims and the success of merchants. To grow rich
was none of his ambitions; rather to do well. A worse or a more bold
young man would have refused the destiny; perhaps tried his future with
his pen; perhaps enlisted. Robert, more prudent, possibly more timid,
consented to embrace that