o
the "Lacrymae Musarum" in 1649.

He seems to have had lodgings, for a while at least, in St. Anne's,
Westminster. With the court in exile and the grim Roundheads seated in
the seats of the mighty, it was no longer the merry London of his early
manhood. Time and war had thinned the ranks of friends; in the old
haunts the old familiar faces were wanting. Ben Jonson was dead, Waller
banished, and many another comrade "in disgrace with fortune and men's
eyes." As Herrick walked through crowded Cheapside or along the dingy
river-bank in those years, his thought must have turned more than once
to the little vicarage in Devonshire, and lingered tenderly.

On the accession of Charles II. a favorable change of wind wafted
Herrick back to his former moorings at Dean Prior, the obnoxious
Syms having been turned adrift. This occurred on August 24, 1662, the
seventy-first anniversary of the poet's baptism. Of Herrick's movements
after that, tradition does not furnish even the shadow of an outline.
The only notable event concerning him is recorded twelve years later
in the parish register: "Robert Herrick, vicker, was buried ye 15th day
October, 1674." He was eighty-three years old. The location of his grave
is unknown. In 1857 a monument to his memory was erected in Dean Church.
And this is all.

II

THE details that have come down to us touching Herrick's private life
are as meagre as if he had been a Marlowe or a Shakespeare. But were
they as ample as could be desired they would still be unimportant
compared with the single fact that in 1648 he gave to the world
his "Hesperides." The environments of the man were accidental and
transitory. The significant part of him we have, and that is enduring so
long as wit, fancy, and melodious numbers hold a charm for mankind.

A fine thing incomparably said instantly becomes familiar, and has
henceforth a sort of dateless excellence. Though it may have been said
three hundred years ago, it is as modern as yesterday; though it may
have been said yesterday, it has the trick of seeming to have been
always in our keeping. This quality of remoteness and nearness belongs,
in a striking degree, to Herrick's poems. They are as novel to-day as
they were on the lips of a choice few of his contemporaries, who, in
reading them in their freshness, must surely have been aware here and
there of the ageless grace of old idyllic poets dead and gone.

Herrick was the bearer of no heavy message to