And so to Bed, Pray wish us all good rest.
This beautiful and interesting epitaph is printed by Mr. Grosart in his fine edition of Herrick, as being indisputably the work of the poet. Mr. Grosart also states positively that the figures on the monument are those of Sir Edward and Lady Giles, of whom the former died at Dean Court in 1637. Mr. Grosart speaks on these points with such certainty that I was surprised to find that the external evidence for both statements is absolutely nil. As a matter of fact, the monument itself hardly appears to belong to Herrick’s time. Mr. Perry-Keene’s opinion is (and I confess that my own very slight knowledge of such subjects would have led me to the same conclusion) that the figures are Elizabethan rather than Caroline. It seems, therefore, hardly safe to print the inscription as being undoubtedly Herrick’s work. At the same time I do believe that the lines are Herrick’s. There is a very distinct Herrickian ring about them, particularly about the last three, which to my mind is almost unmistakeable. Observe the phrase “I’ll but be undrest.” It borders on the grotesque; in almost any other poet’s hand it would have been grotesque. In his hand it acquires a certain beautiful quaintness, becomes what Herrick himself calls a “phrase of the royal blood.” I commend this charming epitaph, therefore, to the reader as the one existing memorial which connects Dean Prior with Herrick, though I think he should at the same time be cautioned, that the ascription of the lines to the poet is based solely on internal evidence.
About a mile from the Church stands Dean Court, now a farm-house, in Herrick’s time a manor house, and occupied during his incumbency by the above-mentioned Sir Edward Giles, and afterwards by the Yardes. To-day it looks what it is, and unless there has been considerable alteration and demolition, it seems a poor house for such important families.
A charming village is Dean Prior, as indeed are all the villages on the outskirts of Dartmoor. No wonder that essayists on, and editors of, Herrick have traced his freshness and quaintness to the simplicity of a West Country parish, and that the perfume of flowers which pervades his pages almost ad nauseam seems to his readers to be inspired by the soft and luxurious air of Devonshire. In a word, Herrick’s Hesperides has seemed to be the work of a Devonshire man drawing his inspiration from Devonshire, as Barnes from Dorset or Burns from Ayrshire.
I am bound, however, to say that I believe this to be true only with considerable limitations. Generally speaking, I hold that while the Noble Numbers do undoubtedly belong to the Dean Prior period, the same cannot be said with equal certainty of the Hesperides, or at least of that part of the Hesperides which has given Herrick his immortality. The book contains, no doubt, several pieces, perhaps some sixty in all, which are shewn by internal evidence to have been written later than 1628, but of these, few, if any, are of special merit. The real Apples of the Golden Garden are practically undated.
Now we must remember that not only was Herrick thirty-eight when he went to Devonshire, an age at which many poets have produced their best work, but that he hated, or, to use his own oft-repeated expression, “loathed” Devonshire. This hatred is expressed in numerous passages. The following, written at the time of his ejection from the living, may serve as a specimen:—
First let us dwell in widest seas,
Next with severest savages,
Last let us make our best abode
Where human foot as yet ne’er trod.