Quarterly Review_ (1810) of his
cross-examination of the Dean Prior villagers for Reminiscences of
Herrick: "The person, however, who knows more of Herrick than all the
rest of the neighbourhood we found to be a poor woman in the 99th year
of her age, named Dorothy King. She repeated to us, with great
exactness, five of his _Noble Numbers_, among which was his beautiful
'Litany'. These she had learnt from her mother, who was apprenticed to
Herrick's successor at the vicarage. She called them her prayers, which
she said she was in the habit of putting up in bed, whenever she could
not sleep; and she therefore began the 'Litany' at the second stanza:--

'When I lie within my bed,' etc."

Another of her midnight orisons was the poem beginning:--

"Every night Thou dost me fright,
And keep mine eyes from sleeping," etc.

The last couplet, it should be noted, is misquoted from No. 56.

54. _Spew out all neutralities._ From the message to the Church of the
Laodiceans, Rev. iii. 16.

59. _A Present by a Child._ Cp. "A pastoral upon the Birth of Prince
Charles" (_Hesperides_ 213), and Note.

63. _God's mirth: man's mourning._ Perhaps founded on Prov. i. 26: "I
also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh".

65. _My Alma._ The name is probably suggested by its meaning "soul". Cp.
Prior's _Alma_.

72. _I'll cast a mist and cloud._ Cp. Hor. I. _Ep._ xvi. 62: Noctem
peccatis et fraudibus objice nubem.

75. _That house is bare._ Horace, _Ep._ I. vi. 45: Exilis domus est, ubi
non et multa supersunt.

77. _Lighten my candle_, etc. The phraseology of the next five lines is
almost entirely from the Psalms and the Song of Solomon.

86. _Sin leads the way._ Hor. _Odes_, III. ii. 32: Raro antecedentem
scelestum Deseruit pede Poena claudo.

88. _By Faith we ... walk ..., not by the Spirit._ 2 Cor. v. 7: "We walk
by faith, not by sight". 'By the Spirit' perhaps means, 'in spiritual
bodies'.

96. _Sung to the King._ See Note on 17.

_Composed by M. Henry Lawes._ See _Hesperides_ 851, and Note.

102. _The Star-Song._ This may have been composed partly with reference
to the noonday star during the Thanksgiving for Charles II.'s birth. See
_Hesperides_ 213, and Note.

_We'll choose him King._ A reference to the Twelfth Night games. See
_Hesperides_ 1035, and Note.

108. _Good men afflicted most._ Taken almost entirely from Seneca, _de
Provid._ 3, 4: Ignem experitur [Fortuna] in Mucio, pau