[376]. Upon his Kinswoman, Mistress Elizabeth Herrick, daughter of the poet's brother Nicholas.
[377]. A Panegyric to Sir Lewis Pemberton of Rushden, in Northamptonshire, sheriff of the county in 1622; married Alice, daughter of Tho. Bowles. Died 1641. With this poem cp. Ben Jonson's Epig. ci.
But great and large she spreads by dust and sweat. Dr. Grosart very appositely quotes Montaigne: "For it seemeth that the verie name of vertue presupposeth difficultie and inferreth resistance, and cannot well exercise it selfe without an enemie" (Florio's tr., p. 233). But I think the two passages have a common origin in some version of Hesiod's τῆς ἀρετῆς ἱδρῶτα θεοὶ προπάροιθεν ἔθηκαν, which is twice quoted by Plato.
[382]. After the rare arch-poet, Jonson, died. Perhaps suggested by the Epitaph of Plautus on himself, ap. Gell. i. 24:—
Postquam est mortem aptus Plautus, comoedia luget;
Scena deserta, dein risus, ludu' jocusque,
Et numeri innumeri simul omnes collacrumarunt.
[384]. To his nephew, to be prosperous in painting. This artistic nephew may have been a Wingfield, son of Mercy Herrick, who married John Wingfield, of Brantham, Suffolk; or one of three sons of Nicholas Herrick and Susanna Salter, or Thomas, or some unknown son of Thomas Herrick. There is no record of any painter Herrick's achievements.
[392]. Sir Edward Fish, Knight Baronet, of Chertsey, in Surrey. Died 1658.
[405]. Nor fear or spice or fish. Herrick is remembering Persius, i. 43: Nec scombros metuentia carmina, nec thus. To form the paper jacket or tunica which wrapt the mackerel in Roman cookery seems to have been the ultimate employment of many poems. Cp. Mart. III. l. 9; IV. lxxxvii. 8; and Catullus, XCV. 8.
The farting Tanner and familiar King. The ballad here alluded to is that of King Edward IV. and the tanner of Tamworth, printed in Prof. Child's collection. "The dancing friar tattered in the bush" of the next line is one of the heroes of the old ballad of The Fryar and the Boye, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, and included in the Appendix to Furnivall and Hales' edition of the Percy folio. The boy was the possessor of a "magic flute," and, having got the friar into a bush, made him dance there.
"Jack, as he piped, laughed among,
The Friar with briars was vilely stung,
He hopped wondrous high.
At last the Friar held up his hand
And said: I can no longer stand,
Oh! I shall dancing die."