A Poet’s Studies23
It would be curious to trace the history of the value we now attach to originality of ideas. Certainly, in the Middle Ages originality was but lightly esteemed in comparison with the appearance of learning which is obtained by frequent reference to older authors. Chaucer, for instance, delights in acknowledgments of his indebtedness to ‘oldé bookés,’ and even appears to have invented one or two authorities rather than take the responsibility for his statements on his own shoulders. Moreover, in many of his earlier poems his indebtedness to other writers is really great. Thus in the ‘Parliament of Foules’ we find him taking hints from Boccaccio, from Dante, from Alain de l’Isle, from Macrobius, Claudian, and Statius. Despite this indebtedness his work remains essentially his own; but his borrowings, especially from Boccaccio and De l’Isle, are much more considerable than custom would permit to a modern poet. Shakespeare’s royal method of appropriation is something quite different from this, and it is probable that the esteem for originality first sprung up as an incident of that general revolt from the tyranny of authority which marked the sixteenth century. By 1672, when the ‘Rehearsal’ was upon the stage, the habit of copying old authors had become a subject for ridicule:—
‘Why, sir,’ says Bayes, ‘when I have anything to invent I never trouble my head about it as other men do, but presently turn o’er this book, and there I have at one view all that Persius, Montaigne, Seneca’s ‘Tragedies,’ Horace, Juvenal, Claudian, Pliny, Plutarch’s ‘Lives,’ and the rest have ever thought upon this subject, and so, in a trice, by leaving out a few words, or putting in others of my own, the business is done.’ The bolt was apparently only shot into the air, and certainly had not, as far as we can see, any special appropriateness to Dryden, whom Bayes was mainly intended to satirise. But it is curious to note, though Buckingham was probably quite ignorant of the fact, that when the words were first spoken a poet was still living, in a quiet country parsonage, to whom by way of caricature they might have been applied with remarkable exactness. The poet was Robert Herrick, by common consent one of the most individual and original of poets, from whose title to that honour nothing in this paper will in any way detract. For Herrick’s borrowings assuredly were the outcome less of his poverty of thought than of his wealth of music. A saying pleased him, and by putting in or leaving out a few words he seems to have made it run into graceful verse with an ease and charm which were wholly his own. A friend to whom the present writer’s Herrick-studies are more indebted than he can easily express has made a special investigation into the borrowings, and the results of his inquiries are extremely curious.24
It should, perhaps, be premised that, although Herrick does not draw our attention to more than a small part of his indebtedness, he had certainly no wish to conceal it. In the sole edition of his poems published during his life —an edition which served the needs of his few readers for a hundred and seventy-five years—a considerable number of lines are printed in italics. Some of these lines represent a few words of a speech, others are the quotation of a proverb or proverbial saying, but the great majority indicate that the poet is translating from a Latin author. The italicised lines do not by any means exhaust Herrick’s obligations to classical writers, and we may conjecture that when preparing his poems for the press he underscored the passages of which he happened to recollect the original, but that his memory in many cases refused to serve him.
Herrick’s poems are known to so many readers only by selections and anthologies, that it will probably cause even professed students of poetry some surprise to hear that among his heaviest creditors is the prosaic Seneca, and that he is also considerably indebted to Tacitus, and in some slight degree to Sallust. The popularity of the epigram during the first half of the seventeenth century is an episode in the history of English literature which has been too much ignored. Most of the epigrams themselves are worth little or nothing—often less than nothing, for many of them are vulgar or vile. Neither can it be said that the men who wrote them—Sir John Davies, Bastard, Pick, Parrot, the Mays, and the rest—are of great interest. But the popularity of the epigram, as testified by such a collection as ‘Wit’s Recreation,’ which ran through five editions in the fourteen years, 1640-54, helps us greatly to understand the transition from the luxuriant poetry which flourished in the first half of the century to the colder and more prosaic verse which we associate with Dryden. Now, of these epigrams Herrick wrote somewhat more than his fair share, and they were so much in the temper of the time that in the next edition of ‘Wit’s Recreations,’ which appeared after the publication of his ‘Hesperides,’ the editors helped themselves liberally from his store. Some of these epigrams had better never have been written, for Herrick, whose sweetness at times almost cloys, was also master of a peculiarly nauseating dirt, which his modern editors surely do well in refusing to print. Most of these unpleasant verses he must take upon his own shoulders, though for a considerable number he found his evil inspiration in Martial. But for his cleaner epigrams he was often indebted, as we have said, to Seneca and Tacitus, and the influence of these authors may also be traced in some of the gnomic sayings which occasionally heighten the effect of his best and most graceful poems. Here are a few instances, chosen almost at random. Herrick’s ‘Safety on the Shore’:—
‘What though the sea be calm? Trust to the shore;
Ships have been drown’d where late they danced before’—
is from Seneca, ‘Ep.’ 4: ‘Noli huic tranquillitati confidere; momento mare evertitur; eodem die ubi luserunt navigia, sorbentur.’ In Herrick’s ‘No Bashfulness in Begging’—
‘To get thine ends, lay bashfulness aside,
Who fears to ask doth teach to be deny’d’—
the line he italicises is from Seneca’s ‘Hippolytus’ (ll. 594, 5)—‘Qui timide rogat... docet negare.’ So too in ‘Loss from the Least’—
‘Great men by small means oft are overthrown;
He’s lord of thy life who contemns his own’—
the quotation is again from Seneca, ‘Ep.’ 4—‘Quisquis vitam suam contempsit tuae dominus est.’
If we turn now to Herrick’s borrowings from Tacitus we may take as a good example his couplet headed, ‘Things mortal still mutable’:—
‘Things are uncertain, and the more we get
The more on icy pavements we are set.’
Which is really a wonderful rendering of a saying of the Emperor Tiberius reported in ‘Annals’ I. 72—‘Cuncta mortalium incerta, quantoque plus adeptus foret, tanto se magis in lubrico.’ Another good instance is supplied by ‘The Eyes’—
‘’Tis a known principle in war,
The eyes be first that conquered are’—
where Herrick’s not very lucid English is explained by ‘De Moribus German.’ 43—‘Primi in omnibus praeliis oculi vincuntur.’ Or again, we may take ‘Revenge’—a rather longer verse than those we have hitherto quoted:—
‘Man’s disposition is for to requite
An injury before a benefit:
Thanksgiving is a burden and a pain,
Revenge is pleasing to us, as our gain’—
where Herrick’s original is Tacitus, ‘Hist.’ IV., 3:—‘Tanto proclivius est iniuriae quam beneficio vicem exsolvere; quia gratia oneri, ultio in quaestu habetur.’
Herrick’s obligations to Sallust are less important than those to Seneca and Tacitus. In one case he mentions the historian by name:—
‘Empires of kings are now, and ever were,
As Sallust saith, coincident to fear.’
The reference being to the spurious ‘Epist. ad Cai. Caesar. de Rep. Ordinanda.’ ‘Consultation’—
‘Consult ere thou begin’st; that done, go on
With all wise speed for execution’—
is apparently suggested by the ‘Nam et prius quam incipias consulto, et ubi consulueris mature facto opus est,’ of the opening of the ‘Catiline.’ There are some three or four other reminiscences about equally close, but they are hardly worth special mention.
As might be expected, many of Herrick’s borrowings, especially those from Tacitus, have to do with politics, and commentators who have mistaken his jottings from his common-place book for the expression of his own principles have been rather confused by their alternate leaning to absolutism and its reverse. Thus, in ‘A King and no King’—
‘That prince who may do nothing but what’s just
Rules but by leave, and takes his crown on trust’—
the sentiment is remarkably ‘thorough’; but the italics indicate a quotation, and we can hardly be wrong in tracing the lines to the ‘Thyestes’ of Seneca:—
‘Ubicunque tantum honeste dominanti licet,
Precario regnatur.’
Again, in ‘Shame no Statist’—
‘Shame is a bad attendant to a State:
He rents his crown, who fears the people’s hate’—
both lines, though only the last is italicised, are from Seneca; the first from ‘Hippolytus’ 431—‘Malus est minister regii imperii pudor’; the second from ‘Œdipus’ 701—‘Odia qui nimium timet regnare nescit.’ On the other hand, the italics in the lines entitled ‘Patience in Princes’ and ‘Gentleness’ show that some of Herrick’s constitutional maxims were also quotations, though their source has not yet been traced. That of the first is, perhaps, to be found in Seneca’s ‘De Clementia’ i. 22. ‘Kings ought to shear, not skin, their sheep’ comes from Suetonius, ‘Tiberius’ 32 (‘Boni pastoris est tondere pecus, non deglubere’), and ‘Kings ought to be more loved than feared’ from Seneca’s ‘Octavia,’ l. 457 (‘Decet timeri Cæsarem. At plus diligi’). Even in weightier matters than politics we must be on our guard against the tricks Herrick may play us. The lines entitled ‘Devotion makes the Deity’—
‘Who forms a godhead out of gold or stone,
Makes not a god, but he that prays to one’—
have recently been quoted as expressing ‘for once a really high and deep thought in words of really noble and severe propriety’; yet they are taken almost literally from Martial VIII. xxiv. 5:—
‘Qui fingit sacros auro vel marmore vultus,
Non facit ille deos: qui rogat ille facit.’
In his ‘Noble Numbers’ Herrick quotes or paraphrases in the same way from S. Augustine, Cassiodorus, S. Bernard, S. Basil, S. Ambrose, John of Damascus, Boethius, and Thomas Aquinas. One or two passages have also been traced with absolute certainty to a contemporary theological work, and it fills us with admiration to watch how dexterously Herrick, with a minimum of alteration, turns the prose of the commentator into excellent verse.
If we turn to Herrick’s debt to more poetical writers we find that he takes a few phrases from Catullus (his obligations to whom have been absurdly exaggerated), about as much from Tibullus, and a little also from Propertius and Juvenal. To his poem entitled ‘The Vision’ he transfers from Virgil (‘Aeneid’ i. 315-20) the charming description of the dress of the Spartan huntress, in which Venus encounters Aeneas. From Horace, whom he occasionally imitates, he borrows many single lines, for the most part acknowledging them by italics. To Ovid his indebtedness for phrases and turns of thought is still more marked. On the whole, however, his chief obligation is to Martial, who supplied him not only with many of his epigrams, both good and bad, but also with suggestions for more important poems. Thus, in his second poem (‘To his Muse’) he is inspired by Martial I. iv.; a phrase in his third (‘To his Book’) is suggested by the same original; the reference to Brutus in the fourth is from Martial XI. xvi.; and the next poem is a paraphrase from X. xix. All these poems have to do with his book, and it is needless to say that the amount of borrowing in them is very exceptional; but it was from Martial VII. lxxxix. that Herrick took his lovely ‘Go, Happy Rose’; one of his poems on Julia is from Martial IV. xxii.; ‘The Lily and the Crystal’ is suggested by the same poet (VIII. lxviii. 5-8), and there are numerous smaller borrowings, altogether apart from the epigrams.
Of Greek, it is probable that Herrick’s knowledge was only slight. There is even some slight reason to believe that his acquaintance with Greek authors was mainly derived from Latin translations. ‘The Cruel Maid’ is a very close imitation of part of the twenty-third Idyll of Theocritus; the only other Greek poetry which plays a serious part in his verse is the pseudo-Anacreon. To the collection of sportive poems, whose very slightness is their charm, which passed under Anacreon’s name, Herrick’s obligations are really immense. It is not only that several of his most charming poems—‘The Cheat of Cupid,’ ‘The Wounded Cupid,’ ‘On Himself,’ ‘Upon His Grey Hairs,’ etc.—are directly translated or closely imitated from the Greek; but we feel in the case of these lyrics that they really helped the development of Herrick’s own gifts in a way in which none of his Latin storehouses even approached. Thus it would be easy to make out a fairly long list of poems, in which he comes so close to the spirit of ‘Anacreon’ that the curious student of such matters is sent hunting through the pages of his Bergk in a vain search for originals which never existed.
Herrick went late to the University, and, despite the extreme propriety of the language as to his reading which we find in his letters to his goldsmith-uncle when he was in need of a remittance, it is difficult to believe that he was ever a very earnest or laborious student. Thus the list of authors from whom he borrowed comes rather as a surprise. It is probable that a little discount must be taken off the amount of erudition with which it might incline us to credit him. His poems make it absolutely certain that he was steeped in the works of Ben Jonson and well acquainted with Burton’s ‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ and the Essays of Montaigne. Now Jonson, Burton, and Montaigne, as it is hardly necessary to remark, all three drew inspiration from the classics, and it would not be difficult to prove that at times Herrick’s quotations came to him filtered through these authors, and not directly from the fountain head. This helps us to understand some excursions of the poet which seem unusually far afield. For instance, there can be no doubt that the ultimate original of Herrick’s—
‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying’—
is from Ausonius (361, ll. 49-50):—
‘Collige, virgo, rosas, dum flos novus, et nova pubes,
Et memor esto aevum sic properare tuum.’
But how came Herrick to be reading an author so little known? The probable answer is that he found the lines in Burton (III. ii. s. sec. 5), where they are quoted with the gloss:—
‘A virgin is like a flower, a rose withered on a sudden. Let them take time then while they may, make advantage of youth,’ etc.
So too when we find Herrick in his ‘Jove for our labours all things sells us,’ quoting Epicharmus, economy bids us imagine that he found the saying (τôν πονôν πôλοuσιν ηêμιν παντα ταγατη’ ηοι Τηεοι) not in Xenophon’s ‘Memorabilia’ ii. i. 20), where it first appears, but in Montaigne (II. 20), where it is quoted. For we know Herrick read Montaigne, and we have no evidence that he read Xenophon. Where the quotation is from Horace, or Martial, or Seneca, or any other author whom we may be reasonably sure that Herrick studied at first hand, it is of course quite as likely that he found it for himself as that his attention was drawn to it by Jonson, Burton, or Montaigne. Probably the poet himself would sometimes have been puzzled to trace his obligations to their sources. In any case, when all necessary allowance has been made, it is obvious that his knowledge of the chief Latin writers was considerable, and that according to the stereotyped phrase, he must have ‘kept up his classics’ very diligently after leaving Cambridge.
What effect should this tracking out the poet’s quotations and adaptations to their sources have on our judgment of his genius? Surely, it should make us rate it more highly. We may almost say that what Herrick borrowed was intrinsically of little more value than the tags from a Latin delectus. He breathed upon them and filled them with his music, so that they assimilate so admirably with his verse, that even when he printed them in italics the meaning of the change of type has long remained a secret to his commentators. It has become a commonplace of criticism to write of Herrick as a ‘butterfly,’ but he was really a conscious artist, and no mean one. The examples which have been given in this paper have necessarily been chosen chiefly to illustrate the width of his reading. If space allowed, it would be pleasant to adduce others with the special object of exhibiting the skilfulness of his transmutations. Even in those we have given, few genuine lovers of poetry will deny that while to translate ‘luserunt navigia’ by ‘where late they danced’ is merely a happy stroke of scholarship, the rendering of ‘in lubrico’ by ‘on icy pavements,’ or ‘regnare nescit’ by ‘he rents his crown,’ is sheer genius.