"Melibœus. Cut the cake: who hath the bean shall be king, and where the pea is, she shall be queen.
Nisa. I have the pea and must be queen.
Mel. I the bean, and king. I must command."
[1045]. Comfort in Calamity. An allusion to the ejection from their benefices which befel most of the loyal clergy at the same time as Herrick. It is perhaps worth noting that in the second volume of this edition, and in the last hundred poems printed in the first, wherever a date can be fixed it is always in the forties. Equally late poems occur, though much less frequently, among the first five hundred, but there the dated poems belong, for the most part, to the years 1623-1640. Now, in April 29, 1640, as stated in the brief "Life" prefixed to vol. i., there was entered at Stationers' Hall, "The severall poems written by Master Robert Herrick," a book which, as far as is known, never saw the light. It was probably, however, to this book that Herrick addressed the poem ([405]) beginning:—
"Have I not blest thee? Then go forth, nor fear
Or spice, or fish, or fire, or close-stools here";
and we may fairly regard the first five hundred poems of Hesperides as representing the intended collection of 1640, with a few additions, and the last six hundred as for the most part later, and I must add, inferior work. This is borne out by the absence of any manuscript versions of poems in the second half of the book. Herrick's verses would only be passed from hand to hand when he was living among the wits in London.
[1046]. Twilight. Ovid, Amores, I. v. 5, 6: Crepuscula ... ubi nox abiit, nec tamen orta dies.
[1048]. Consent makes the cure. Seneca, Hippol. 250: Pars sanitatis velle sanari fuit.
[1050]. Causeless whipping. Ovid, Heroid. v. 7, 8: Leniter ex merito quicquid patiare, ferendum est; Quae venit indignae poena, dolenda venit. Quoted by Montaigne, III. xiii.
[1052]. His comfort. Terence, Adelph. I. i. 18: Ego ... quod fortunatum isti putant, Uxorem nunquam habui.