of contemporary minds. Here and
there in his work are traces of his beloved Ben Jonson, or fleeting
impressions of Fletcher, and in one instance a direct infringement
on Suckling; but the sum of Herrick's obligations of this sort is
inconsiderable.

This indifference to other writers of his time, this insularity, was
doubtless his loss. The more exalted imagination of Vaughan or Marvell
or Herbert might have taught him a deeper note than he sounded in his
purely devotional poems. Milton, of course, moved in a sphere apart.
Shakespeare, whose personality still haunted the clubs and taverns which
Herrick frequented on his first going up to London, failed to lay any
appreciable spell upon him. That great name, moreover, is a jewel which
finds no setting in Herrick's rhyme. His general reticence relative to
brother poets is extremely curious when we reflect on his penchant for
addressing four-line epics to this or that individual. They were, in
the main, obscure individuals, whose identity is scarcely worth
establishing. His London life, at two different periods, brought him
into contact with many of the celebrities of the day; but his verse has
helped to confer immortality on very few of them. That his verse had the
secret of conferring immortality was one of his unshaken convictions.
Shakespeare had not a finer confidence when he wrote,

Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,

than has Herrick whenever he speaks of his own poetry, and he is not by
any means backward in speaking of it. It was the breath of his nostrils.
Without his Muse those nineteen years in that dull, secluded Devonshire
village would have been unendurable.

His poetry has the value and the defect of that seclusion. In spite,
however, of his contracted horizon there is great variety in Herrick's
themes. Their scope cannot be stated so happily as he has stated it:

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers;
I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes;
I write of Youth, of Love, and have access
By these to sing of cleanly wantonness;
I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by piece
Of balm, of oil, of spice and ambergris;
I sing of times trans-shifting, and I write
How roses first came red and lilies white;
I write of groves, of twilights, an