So too when we find Herrick in his 'Jove for our labours all things sells us,' quoting Epicharmus, economy bids us imagine that he found the saying (τôν πονôν πôλοuσιν ηêμιν παντα ταγατη' ηοι Τηεοι) not in Xenophon's 'Memorabilia' ii. i. 20), where it first appears, but in Montaigne (II. 20), where it is quoted. For we know Herrick read Montaigne, and we have no evidence that he read Xenophon. Where the quotation is from Horace, or Martial, or Seneca, or any other author whom we may be reasonably sure that Herrick studied at first hand, it is of course quite as likely that he found it for himself as that his attention was drawn to it by Jonson, Burton, or Montaigne. Probably the poet himself would sometimes have been puzzled to trace his obligations to their sources. In any case, when all necessary allowance has been made, it is obvious that his knowledge of the chief Latin writers was considerable, and that according to the stereotyped phrase, he must have 'kept up his classics' very diligently after leaving Cambridge.
What effect should this tracking out the poet's quotations and adaptations to their sources have on our judgment of his genius? Surely, it should make us rate it more highly. We may almost say that what Herrick borrowed was intrinsically of little more value than the tags from a Latin delectus. He breathed upon them and filled them with his music, so that they assimilate so admirably with his verse, that even when he printed them in italics the meaning of the change of type has long remained a secret to his commentators. It has become a commonplace of criticism to write of Herrick as a 'butterfly,' but he was really a conscious artist, and no mean one. The examples which have been given in this paper have necessarily been chosen chiefly to illustrate the width of his reading. If space allowed, it would be pleasant to adduce others with the special object of exhibiting the skilfulness of his transmutations. Even in those we have given, few genuine lovers of poetry will deny that while to translate 'luserunt navigia' by 'where late they danced' is merely a happy stroke of scholarship, the rendering of 'in lubrico' by 'on icy pavements,' or 'regnare nescit' by 'he rents his crown,' is sheer genius.
[PRINTERS' MARKS OF THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES][25]
DEVICE OF FUST AND SCHÖFFER, 1462
IF truth is to be told, I have never as yet met with any amateur who collected books for the sake of the printer's mark at the beginning or end of them. But it has always seemed to me that it would be an agreeable variety of book-collecting to do this, and one which would lead the collector along many by-paths of curious knowledge. For fear of any possible mistake, I should perhaps emphasise the point that the collection must be one not of printers' marks cut out from books, but of books in which the marks are printed. Even in the case of book-plates, it has often been noted how much they gain in interest when they are found in situ, though there is always the haunting fear that the conjunction of book and plate may only be due to the ingenuity of the vendor. Book-plates, however, have of right a separate existence apart from books, since they are made separately and must await their owners' pleasure before they can be set to their proper work. But the printer's device is an integral part of the book in which it occurs, nor can any limpet torn from its rock look more unhappy than one of these marks cut out from the page on which it was printed, and pasted in a scrap-book. Unhappily, it must be said that, like the book-plate, though more rarely, a device is sometimes found attached to a book to which it does not belong. Thus, in the last Inglis sale an edition of a 'Defensorium Curatorum' by an unknown French printer, was catalogued as from the press of Colard Mansion on the score of Mansion's device, cut out with extraordinary neatness, being pasted on the last leaf. The buyer of it certainly bid with open eyes, but it is annoying to pay even a few shillings more because of such a freak. So, too, a leaf with Caxton's device bound at the end of Pynson's edition of the 'Speculum Vitae Christi' led the late Mr. Blades to believe that Pynson was Caxton's apprentice. But these misdeeds or mishaps are exceptional, and it is the collector of scraps, from Bagford downwards, whom the printers' device has chiefly to fear.
DEVICE OF MATTHIAS VAN DER GOES
DEVICE OF EGMONT AND BARREVELT