Excerpt from Hesperides, or Works Both Human and Divine

It was not until nine years after the completion of his course at Cambridge that Robert Herrick - in 1629, the year of his mother's death - took orders and was presented by Charles I. To the living of Dean Prior, in what he calls dull Devonshire. Though he was happiest as comrade of the poets of the town, and loved no scenery so well as that of Cheapside and the Strand; though he abuses the rocky stream of Dean Burn that breaks down from the moor through a wild little valley and feeds watercresses by the long and empty road between his parsonage and the few houses of Dean Prior; the love of flowers runs through all his verse. The watercresses of Dean Burn are not forgotten among the simple havings of his grange; and if he shows no interest in rural scenery, he was full of sympathy with all that was human in his little world among the hills. Dean Prior is on the borders of Dartmoor, and within easy reach of' some of the best scenery in Devonshire. For eighteen years Herrick lived in his Vicarage, and then reverse of fortune seemed to him almost a blessing, when he came to be among the deprived clergy; for when he gave place in 1647 to John Syms he returned to London, the blest place of his nativity.

Herrick's source of income was cut off, but he belonged to a numerous and monied family. He had, as a poet and good Royalist, many patrons among whom the cause of his reverse entitled him to ready welcome, and he could dine well when he pleased at tables not his own. His first business when he came to London was to print, in 1647 - 8, the collection of poems he brought with him from Devonshire, and named, as being from the W'est, Hesperides: \v0rks Human and Divine. He was at that time about fifty-seven years old.

The book strengthened friendships, but failed to win general attention in the troubled times of the last years of Charles I., or to touch the spirit that prevailed under the Commonwealth. Herrick published after this no other book, though he was for thirteen years, in London and elsewhere, withdrawn from his duties as a clergyman. It was not until August, 1662, that John Syms was in his turn ejected, and Robert Herrick, at the age of seventy-one, returned to his Vicarage. There he resumed his duties and spent the last twelve years of his life. He was buried there, on the a4th of October, 1674, aged eighty-three. Milton, whose age then was about sixty-six, died on the 8th of the next month.

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