As these verses remind us, Porter was a patron of many other poets besides Herrick, and by them also was duly besung. He was a patron, too (the trait is too delightful to be omitted), of the redoubtable Captain Dover, and in his capacity of Groom of the Bedchamber, gave that worthy a suit of the King's clothes to lend more grace to the celebration of the Cotswold Games. But here, alas, we must bid farewell to him. There are yet others of Herrick's friends of whom we would fain write, notably a group of charming ladies: Mistress Bridget Lowman, to whom he wrote his 'Meadow Verse'; Mrs. Dorothy Kennedy, from whom he parted with so much sorrow; the 'most comely and proper Mistress Elizabeth Finch'; 'Mrs. Catherine Bradshaw, the lovely, that crowned him with laurels'; and last, but certainly not least, that 'Pearl of Putney, the mistress of all singular manners, Mistress Portman.' But these, alas, are as mysterious to us as Julia and Dianeme themselves. The gossip that has here been set down has been gleaned, painfully enough, from old records and registers, and even these seemingly inexhaustible treasures will not always yield the information we desire.
[A POET'S STUDIES] [23]
IT would be curious to trace the history of the value we now attach to originality of ideas. Certainly, in the Middle Ages originality was but lightly esteemed in comparison with the appearance of learning which is obtained by frequent reference to older authors. Chaucer, for instance, delights in acknowledgments of his indebtedness to 'oldé bookés,' and even appears to have invented one or two authorities rather than take the responsibility for his statements on his own shoulders. Moreover, in many of his earlier poems his indebtedness to other writers is really great. Thus in the 'Parliament of Foules' we find him taking hints from Boccaccio, from Dante, from Alain de l'Isle, from Macrobius, Claudian, and Statius. Despite this indebtedness his work remains essentially his own; but his borrowings, especially from Boccaccio and De l'Isle, are much more considerable than custom would permit to a modern poet. Shakespeare's royal method of appropriation is something quite different from this, and it is probable that the esteem for originality first sprung up as an incident of that general revolt from the tyranny of authority which marked the sixteenth century. By 1672, when the 'Rehearsal' was upon the stage, the habit of copying old authors had become a subject for ridicule:—
'Why, sir,' says Bayes, 'when I have anything to invent I never trouble my head about it as other men do, but presently turn o'er this book, and there I have at one view all that Persius, Montaigne, Seneca's 'Tragedies,' Horace, Juvenal, Claudian, Pliny, Plutarch's 'Lives,' and the rest have ever thought upon this subject, and so, in a trice, by leaving out a few words, or putting in others of my own, the business is done.' The bolt was apparently only shot into the air, and certainly had not, as far as we can see, any special appropriateness to Dryden, whom Bayes was mainly intended to satirise. But it is curious to note, though Buckingham was probably quite ignorant of the fact, that when the words were first spoken a poet was still living, in a quiet country parsonage, to whom by way of caricature they might have been applied with remarkable exactness. The poet was Robert Herrick, by common consent one of the most individual and original of poets, from whose title to that honour nothing in this paper will in any way detract. For Herrick's borrowings assuredly were the outcome less of his poverty of thought than of his wealth of music. A saying pleased him, and by putting in or leaving out a few words he seems to have made it run into graceful verse with an ease and charm which were wholly his own. A friend to whom the present writer's Herrick-studies are more indebted than he can easily express has made a special investigation into the borrowings, and the results of his inquiries are extremely curious.[24]
It should, perhaps, be premised that, although Herrick does not draw our attention to more than a small part of his indebtedness, he had certainly no wish to conceal it. In the sole edition of his poems published during his life —an edition which served the needs of his few readers for a hundred and seventy-five years—a considerable number of lines are printed in italics. Some of these lines represent a few words of a speech, others are the quotation of a proverb or proverbial saying, but the great majority indicate that the poet is translating from a Latin author. The italicised lines do not by any means exhaust Herrick's obligations to classical writers, and we may conjecture that when preparing his poems for the press he underscored the passages of which he happened to recollect the original, but that his memory in many cases refused to serve him.
Herrick's poems are known to so many readers only by selections and anthologies, that it will probably cause even professed students of poetry some surprise to hear that among his heaviest creditors is the prosaic Seneca, and that he is also considerably indebted to Tacitus, and in some slight degree to Sallust. The popularity of the epigram during the first half of the seventeenth century is an episode in the history of English literature which has been too much ignored. Most of the epigrams themselves are worth little or nothing—often less than nothing, for many of them are vulgar or vile. Neither can it be said that the men who wrote them—Sir John Davies, Bastard, Pick, Parrot, the Mays, and the rest—are of great interest. But the popularity of the epigram, as testified by such a collection as 'Wit's Recreation,' which ran through five editions in the fourteen years, 1640-54, helps us greatly to understand the transition from the luxuriant poetry which flourished in the first half of the century to the colder and more prosaic verse which we associate with Dryden. Now, of these epigrams Herrick wrote somewhat more than his fair share, and they were so much in the temper of the time that in the next edition of 'Wit's Recreations,' which appeared after the publication of his 'Hesperides,' the editors helped themselves liberally from his store. Some of these epigrams had better never have been written, for Herrick, whose sweetness at times almost cloys, was also master of a peculiarly nauseating dirt, which his modern editors surely do well in refusing to print. Most of these unpleasant verses he must take upon his own shoulders, though for a considerable number he found his evil inspiration in Martial. But for his cleaner epigrams he was often indebted, as we have said, to Seneca and Tacitus, and the influence of these authors may also be traced in some of the gnomic sayings which occasionally heighten the effect of his best and most graceful poems. Here are a few instances, chosen almost at random. Herrick's 'Safety on the Shore':—
'What though the sea be calm? Trust to the shore;
Ships have been drown'd where late they danced before'—
is from Seneca, 'Ep.' 4: 'Noli huic tranquillitati confidere; momento mare evertitur; eodem die ubi luserunt navigia, sorbentur.' In Herrick's 'No Bashfulness in Begging'—
'To get thine ends, lay bashfulness aside,