Writ in my wild, unhallowed times.
There is surely no reason why these words should not be taken in their literal sense, which is that they were written in Herrick’s youth and before he took orders, and the pilgrim to Dean Prior need not harrow his imagination with the revolting picture of this elderly bachelor sitting in the little vicarage spinning out these miserable and often pointless indecencies. No doubt it may be asked why, if these were poems of Herrick’s youth, condemned by his better judgment, he published them in 1648. Two answers may be given to this question, though I do not say that either of them is an excuse. In the first place he had been turned out of his living and probably wanted money. In the second place, the fact that he describes himself on the title page as Robert Herrick, Esq., seems to indicate that he considered his clerical profession had gone with his incumbency, and if so, he very probably had deluded himself into the idea that clerical responsibility had gone also.
I will devote the rest of my allotted space to a few remarks on that part of Herrick’s work which undoubtedly belongs to the Dean Prior period. I mean the “pious pieces,” or Noble Numbers. Now it is not to be denied that there is a great deal of poor stuff in the Noble Numbers. Nobody is likely to care much for the metrical creeds, or the tawdry and sensuous poems on the Nativity or Passion. Still the little book contains some pieces which English literature could ill spare. There is, for instance, the strange and, indeed, startling “litany to the Holy Spirit.” This hymn is actually included in one at least of our popular hymn-books, and I have sometimes heard parts of it sung in a village church. I wonder what the congregation would have thought of these two stanzas, which, needless to say, are not to be found in the hymn-book version:—
When the artless doctor sees
No one hope, but in his fees
And his skill runs on the lees,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When his Potion and his Pill
Has or none or little skill,
Meet for nothing but to kill,