Notes to Additional Poems
The Description of a Woman. Printed in Witts Recreations, 1645, and contained also in Ashmole MS. 38, where it is signed: “Finis. Robert Herrick.” Our version is taken from Witts Recreations, with the exception of the readings show and grow (for shown and grown, in ll. 15 and 16). The Ashmole MS. contains in all thirty additional lines, which may or may not be by Herrick, but which, as not improving the poem, have been omitted in our text in accordance with the precedent set by the editor of Witts Recreations.
Mr. Herrick: his Daughter’s Dowry. From Ashmole MS. 38, where it is signed: “Finis. Robt. Hericke.”
Mr. Robert Herrick: his Farewell unto Poetry. Printed by Dr. Grosart and Mr. Hazlitt from Ashmole MS. 38. I add a few readings from Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 22, 603, where it is entitled: Herrick’s Farewell to Poetry. The importance of the poem for Herrick’s biography is alluded to in the brief “Life” prefixed to vol. i.
For some sleepy keys the Museum MS. reads, the sleeping keys; for yet forc’t they are to go it has and yet are forc’t to go; drinking to the odd Number of Nine for Number of Wine, as to which see below; turned her home for twirled her home; dear soul for rare soul. All these are possible, but beloved Africa, and the omission of the two half lines, “’tis not need The scarecrow unto mankind,” are pure blunders.
Drinking to the odd Number of Nine. I introduce this into the text from the Museum manuscript as agreeing with the
“Well, I can quaff, I see,
To th’ number five
Or nine”
of A Bacchanalian Verse (Hesperides 653), on which see Note. Dr. Grosart explains the Ashmole reading Wine by the Note “οἶνος and vinum both give five, the number of perfection”; but this seems too far-fetched for Herrick.
Kiss, so depart. By a strange freak Ashmole MS. writes Guesse, and the Museum MS. Ghesse; but the emendation Kiss (adopted both by Dr. Grosart and Mr. Hazlitt) cannot be doubted.
Well doing’s the fruit of doing well. Seneca, de Clem. i. 1: Rectè factorum verus fructus [est] fecisse. Also Ep. 81: Recte facti fecisse merces est. The latter, and Cicero, de Finib. II. xxii. 72, are quoted by Montaigne, Ess. II. xvi.
A Carol presented to Dr. Williams. From Ashmole MS. 36, 298. For Dr. Williams, see Note to Hesperides 146. This poem was apparently written in 1640, after the removal of the bishop’s suspension.
His Mistress to him at his Farewell. From Add. MS. 11, 811, at the British Museum, where it is signed “Ro. Herrick”.
Upon Parting. From Harleian MS. 6917, at the British Museum.
Upon Master Fletcher’s Incomparable Plays. Printed in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Works, 1647, and Beaumont’s Poems, 1653.
The Golden Pomp is come. Ovid, “Aurea Pompa venit” (as in Hesperides 201).
To be with juice of cedar washed all over. Horace’s “linenda cedro,” as in Hesperides.
Evadne. See Note to Hesperides 575.
The New Charon. First printed in “Lachrymae Musarum. The tears of the Muses: exprest in Elegies written by divers persons of Nobility and Worth, upon the death of the most hopefull Henry, Lord Hastings.... Collected and set forth by R[ichard] B[rome]. London, 1649.” This is the only poem which we know of Herrick’s, written after 1648, and even in this Herrick uses materials already employed in “Charon and the Nightingale” in Hesperides.
Epitaph on the Tomb of Sir Edward Giles. First printed by Dr. Grosart from the monument in Dean Prior Church. Sir Edward Giles was the occupant of Dean Court and the magnate of the parish.