Vos, tamen, o nostri, ne festinate, libelli:
Si post fata venit gloria, non propero.
[1023]. No kingdoms got by rapine long endure. Seneca, Troad. 264: Violenta nemo imperia continuit dies.
[1026]. Saint Distaff's Day. "Saint Distaff is perhaps only a coinage of our poet's to designate the day when, the Christmas vacation being over, good housewives, with others, resumed their usual employment." (Nott.) The phrase is explained in dictionaries and handbooks, but no other use of it is quoted than this. Herrick's poem was pilfered by Henry Bold (a notorious plagiarist) in Wit a-sporting in a pleasant Grove of New Fancies, 1657.
[1028]. My beloved Westminster. As mentioned in the brief "Life" of Herrick prefixed to vol. i., all the references in this poem seem to refer to Herrick's courtier-days, between leaving Cambridge and going to Devonshire. He then, doubtless, resided in Westminster for the sake of proximity to Whitehall. It has been suggested, however, that the reference is to Westminster School, but we have no evidence that Herrick was educated there.
Golden Cheapside. My friend, Mr. Herbert Horne, in his admirably-chosen selection from the Hesperides, suggests that the allusion here is to the great gilt cross at the end of Wood Street. The suggestion is ingenious; but as Cheapside was the goldsmiths' quarter this would amply justify the epithet, which may indeed only refer to Cheapside as a money-winning street, as we might say Golden Lombard Street.
[1032]. Things are uncertain. Tiberius, in Tacitus, Annal. i. 72: Cuncta mortalium incerta; quantoque plus adeptus foret, tanto se magis in lubrico.
[1034]. Good wits get more fame by their punishment. Cp. Tacit. Ann. iv. 35, sub fin.: Punitis ingeniis gliscit auctoritas, etc., quoted by Bacon and Milton.
[1035]. Twelfth Night: or King and Queen. Herrick alludes to these "Twelfth-Tide Kings and Queens" in writing to Endymion Porter ([662]), and earlier still, in the "New-Year's Gift to Sir Simeon Steward" ([319]) he speaks—
"Of Twelfth-Tide cakes, of Peas and Beans,
Wherewith ye make those merry scenes,
Whenas ye choose your King and Queen".
Brand (i. 27) illustrates well from "Speeches to the Queen at Sudley" in Nichols' Progresses of Queen Elizabeth.