attempts of Davies of Hereford; they are farther from the author's best
than the worst parts of Young's _Odes_ are from the best part of the _Night
Thoughts_. It is impossible without producing specimens (which God forbid
that any one who has a respect for Herrick, for literature, and for
decency, should do) to show how bad they are. Let it only be said that if
the worst epigram of Martial were stripped of Martial's wit, sense, and
literary form, it would be a kind of example of Herrick in this vein.

In his two other veins, but for certain tricks of speech, it is almost
impossible to recognise him for the same man. The secular vigour of the
_Hesperides_, the spiritual vigour of the _Noble Numbers_, has rarely been
equalled and never surpassed by any other writer. I cannot agree with Mr.
Gosse that Herrick is in any sense "a Pagan." They had in his day shaken
off the merely ascetic temper of the Middle Ages, and had not taken upon
them the mere materialism of the _Aufklaerung_, or the remorseful and
satiated attitude of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century. I believe
that the warmest of the Julia poems and the immortal "Litany" were written
with the same integrity of feeling. Here was a man who was grateful to the
upper powers for the joys of life, or who was sorrowful and repentant
towards the upper powers when he felt that he had exceeded in enjoying
those joys, but who had no doubt of his gods, and no shame in approaching
them. The last--the absolutely last if we take his death-date--of those
poets who have relished this life heartily, while heartily believing in
another, was Robert Herrick. There is not the slightest reason to suppose
that the _Hesperides_ were wholly _peches de jeunesse_ and the _Noble
Numbers_ wholly pious palinodes. Both simply express, and express in a most
vivid and distinct manner, the alternate or rather varying moods of a man
of strong sensibilities, religious as well as sensual.

Of the religious poems the already-mentioned "Litany," while much the most
familiar, is also far the best. There is nothing in English verse to equal
it as an expression of religious fear; while there is also nothing in
English verse to equal the "Thanksgiving," also well known, as an
expression of religious trust. The crystalline simplicity of Herrick's
style deprives his religious poems of that fatal cut-and-dried appearance,
that vain repetition of certain phrases and thoughts, which mars the work
of sacr