Again, in 'Shame no Statist'—
'Shame is a bad attendant to a State:
He rents his crown, who fears the people's hate'—
both lines, though only the last is italicised, are from Seneca; the first from 'Hippolytus' 431—'Malus est minister regii imperii pudor'; the second from 'Œdipus' 701—'Odia qui nimium timet regnare nescit.' On the other hand, the italics in the lines entitled 'Patience in Princes' and 'Gentleness' show that some of Herrick's constitutional maxims were also quotations, though their source has not yet been traced. That of the first is, perhaps, to be found in Seneca's 'De Clementia' i. 22. 'Kings ought to shear, not skin, their sheep' comes from Suetonius, 'Tiberius' 32 ('Boni pastoris est tondere pecus, non deglubere'), and 'Kings ought to be more loved than feared' from Seneca's 'Octavia,' l. 457 ('Decet timeri Cæsarem. At plus diligi'). Even in weightier matters than politics we must be on our guard against the tricks Herrick may play us. The lines entitled 'Devotion makes the Deity'—
'Who forms a godhead out of gold or stone,
Makes not a god, but he that prays to one'—
have recently been quoted as expressing 'for once a really high and deep thought in words of really noble and severe propriety'; yet they are taken almost literally from Martial VIII. xxiv. 5:—
'Qui fingit sacros auro vel marmore vultus,
Non facit ille deos: qui rogat ille facit.'
In his 'Noble Numbers' Herrick quotes or paraphrases in the same way from S. Augustine, Cassiodorus, S. Bernard, S. Basil, S. Ambrose, John of Damascus, Boethius, and Thomas Aquinas. One or two passages have also been traced with absolute certainty to a contemporary theological work, and it fills us with admiration to watch how dexterously Herrick, with a minimum of alteration, turns the prose of the commentator into excellent verse.