poets. His subjects are frequently pastoral, with a
classical tinge, more or less slight, infused; his language, though not
free from exaggeration, is generally free from intellectual conceits
and distortion, and is eminent throughout for a youthful NAIVETE. Such,
also, are qualities of the latter sixteenth century literature. But if
these characteristics might lead us to call Herrick 'the last of the
Elizabethans,' born out of due time, the differences between him and
them are not less marked. Herrick's directness of speech is accompanied
by an equally clear and simple presentment of his thought; we have,
perhaps, no poet who writes more consistently and earnestly with his
eye upon his subject. An allegorical or mystical treatment is alien
from him: he handles awkwardly the few traditional fables which he
introduces. He is also wholly free from Italianizing tendencies: his
classicalism even is that of an English student,--of a schoolboy,
indeed, if he be compared with a Jonson or a Milton. Herrick's personal
eulogies on his friends and others, further, witness to the extension
of the field of poetry after Elizabeth's age;--in which his enthusiastic
geniality, his quick and easy transitions of subject, have also little
precedent.

If, again, we compare Herrick's book with those of his fellow-poets
for a hundred years before, very few are the traces which he gives of
imitation, or even of study. During the long interval between Herrick's
entrance on his Cambridge and his clerical careers (an interval all but
wholly obscure to us), it is natural to suppose that he read, at
any rate, his Elizabethan predecessors: yet (beyond those general
similarities already noticed) the Editor can find no positive proof of
familiarity. Compare Herrick with Marlowe, Greene, Breton, Drayton,
or other pretty pastoralists of the HELICON--his general and radical
unlikeness is what strikes us; whilst he is even more remote from the
passionate intensity of Sidney and Shakespeare, the Italian graces of
Spenser, the pensive beauty of PARTHENOPHIL, of DIELLA, of FIDESSA, of
the HECATOMPATHIA and the TEARS OF FANCY.

Nor is Herrick's resemblance nearer to many of the contemporaries who
have been often grouped with him. He has little in common with
the courtly elegance, the learned polish, which too rarely redeem
commonplace and conceits in Carew, Habington, Lovelace, Cowley, or
Waller. Herrick has his CONCETTI also: but they are in him generally