[106]. A Country Life: To his brother, M. Tho. Herrick. "Thomas, baptized May 12, 1588, was placed by his uncle and guardian, Sir William Heyrick, with Mr. Massam, a merchant in London; but in 1610 he appears to have returned into the country and to have settled in a small farm. It is supposed that this Thomas was the father of Thomas Heyrick, who in 1668 resided at Market Harborough and issued a trader's token there, and grandfather to the Thomas who was curate of Harborough and published some sermons and poems." Hill's Market Harborough, p. 122.
A MS. version of this poem is contained in Ashmole 38, from which Dr. Grosart gives a full collation on pp. cli.-cliii. of his Memorial Introduction. The MS. appears to follow an unrevised version of the poem, and contains a few couplets which Herrick afterwards thought fit to omit. The most important passage comes after line 92: "Virtue had, and mov'd her sphere".
"Nor know thy happy and unenvied state
Owes more to virtue than to fate,
Or fortune too; for what the first secures,
That as herself, or heaven, endures.
The two last fail, and by experience make
Known, not they give again, they take."
Thrice and above blest. Felices ter et amplius, Hor. I. Od. xiii. 7.
My soul's half: Animæ dimidium meæ, Hor. I. Od. iii. 8. The poem is full of such reminiscences: "With holy meal and spirting (MS. crackling) salt" is the "Farre pio et saliente mica" of III. Od. xxiii. 20; "Untaught to suffer poverty" the "Indocilis pauperiem pati" of I. Od. i. 18; "A heart thrice wall'd" comes from I. Od. iii. 9: Illi robur et æs triplex, etc. Similar instances might be multiplied. Note, too, the use of "Lar" and "Genius".
Jove for our labour all things sells us. Epicharm. apud Xenoph. Memor. II. i. 20, τῶν πόνων Πωλοῦσιν ἡμῖν πάντα τἀγαθ' οἱ θεοί. Quoted by Montaigne, II. xx.
Wisely true to thine own self. Possibly a Shakespearian reminiscence of the "to thine own self be true" in the speech of Polonius to Laertes, Hamlet, I. iii. 78.
A wise man every way lies square. Cp. Arist. Eth. I. x. 11, ὡς ἀληθῶς ἀγαθὸς καὶ τετράγωνος ἄνευ ψόγου.
For seldom use commends the pleasure. Voluptates commendat rarior usus. Juvenal, Sat. xi. ad fin.
Nor fear or wish your dying day. Summum nec metuas diem, nec optes. Mart. X. xlvii. 13.