The little village of Dean Prior, five miles from Brent on the high road from Plymouth to Ashburton, is indissolubly associated with the name of one of the greatest of our lyric poets; a poet, indeed, who has a certain touch and power which is quite unique in English poetry. Robert Herrick was vicar of this parish for about thirty-two years. The main facts of his life may be very shortly told. Born in London in 1591, he was educated at St. John’s College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He spent the earlier part of his life, after taking his degree, probably partly in Cambridge and partly in London. It was not till 1629, when he was thirty-eight years old, that he was ordained and presented to Dean Prior. Here he remained till 1648, when he was ejected, and a certain John Syms, a Puritan of some fame and worth, established in his place. Herrick went to London and there published his two books of verse, Hesperides and Noble Numbers. In 1662 he was sent back to his living, and there spent the remainder of his days. He died and was buried in the churchyard of Dean Prior in 1674.

There is not much in this little parish at the present day to remind one of Herrick. The vicarage is probably an enlargement of the poet’s house. The newer part stands on a somewhat higher level than the old, and this last is probably the “cell,” whose humble comforts Herrick extols in one of his most true and charming pieces. The present vicar, Mr. Perry-Keene, who is himself something of a poet, and knows and loves well his great predecessor, showed me what he believes to be Herrick’s “byn.”

Just opposite the Vicarage stands the Church, which Mr. Perry-Keene tells me has been altered a great deal. It now contains a monument to Herrick erected in 1857 by a remote kinsman, Mr. William Perry Herrick.

Opposite this recent memorial, in the south aisle, stands a far more interesting monument. It is a brass with three figures—husband, wife, and son—but no name or inscription which might give a clue to the name is legible. Underneath it, however, run the following verses:—

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:—

“No bird,” says Plato, “sings when it is cold or hungry or suffering any pain,” and it is a natural inference from passages like this of Herrick’s that his native genius suffered rather than gained from his sojourn at Dean Prior. But on this point he has left us his own testimony in two important passages. The first runs thus:—

The second is—

At first sight these two passages seem contradictory, but the contradiction vanishes when we remember that Herrick’s book of sacred poems is called Noble Numbers. To these and these only, as it seems to me, the “ennobled numbers” of the second passage refers, and the plain meaning of these lines is that Herrick, as vicar of Dean Prior, felt his old powers of song-making gone, and gave his attention mainly to sacred poetry.

To the same conclusion point some lines in the “Farewell to Poetry,” written probably when he took orders:—

But he adds:—

I do not of course suggest that all this is to be taken quite literally, or that we are to affirm positively that all Herrick’s best lyrics date from an earlier period; but that it is generally true I see no reason to doubt, more especially as in the many hundred lyrics which

there is, so far as I can see, little or no trace of Devonshire.

The great poets—whom Herrick looked on as his masters—Catullus and Horace, understood the magic of a name, and were fond of grouping their best thoughts round the names of the particular spots which they knew. Anyone who reads Catullus’s lines on Sirmio, or Horace’s on Tivoli, anyone, we may add, who knows Burns, or Wordsworth, or Scott, will feel the significance of the fact that Herrick only once mentions by name any place in Devonshire. It is not that he dislikes localising, for he lingers affectionately enough over the names of

And on the one occasion, when a Devonshire scene is described by name, it is in the following lines on “Dean, a rude river in Devon, by which he sometimes dwelt”:—

The reader of Herrick will remember that he goes on to say that the “currish, churlish” people of Dean are as rocky as their river. Herrick could hardly be expected to admire Dartmoor itself. The love of moor and mountain hardly existed in his time; but the glen of Dean Bourne is a different thing, and surely nothing but invincible prejudice can have made Herrick describe it in such “currish and churlish” terms.

Herrick is par excellence the poet of flowers and fruits. Cherries, cowslips, daffodils, and primroses are inseparably connected with his verse. That the rich luxuriance of Dean Prior must have been a source of continual pleasure to him we cannot doubt. Yet even in this department of nature one misses local touches. Where are the high hedgerows, the ferns, and the fox-gloves? and where are the apple orchards of Devon?

Herrick was very fond of observing village festivities and studying folk-lore, and it is generally assumed that the poems which deal with these subjects were written in Devonshire and based on Devonshire observations. This may be so, though I do not know of any evidence in favour of it. On the other hand there is one small circumstance which seems to me significant. In Herrick’s descriptions of barley-breaks, harvest homes, and Christmas festivities, there is much mention of beer but none of cider. Cider making had its poetry for Keats:—

It seems strange that it should never be mentioned by the poet of cider-land.

One of Herrick’s parishioners stands out pleasantly in the pages of Hesperides—“my Prue,” otherwise Prudence Baldwin, the house-keeper, who apparently followed him to London at his ejection and returned with him in 1662. It is generally assumed that the persons attacked in the epigrams were parishioners. If so, no wonder they were churlish. It does not appear that many of the fifty or sixty persons addressed in what Mr. Grosart calls “verse-celebrations,” were West-Country people, and on the whole there is as little of local life as of local scenery in the Hesperides.

The critics, then, seem to me perverse, who, in spite of Herrick’s assurances, declare that he only pretended to dislike Dean Prior. They rely, presumably, on his keen eye for country beauties. Now I venture to doubt whether Herrick, as we see him in the Hesperides, is one of the real nature-poets. He knows and loves certain aspects of nature, more particularly fruits and flowers, bright colours and sweet smells. Even amongst these he is often happiest when he can trace some likeness to human beauty. The famous “Cherries ripe” grew on Julia’s lips, not in an orchard. Above all poets he understands the picturesqueness of dress, and when after a catalogue of Julia’s silks and laces in their “wild civility” he confesses that he dotes less on nature than on art, he probably speaks the truth. It is the same with country life; he has none of the deep respect for the peasant’s healthy and thrifty life, which lies at the bottom of Virgil and Horace and Wordsworth’s work. He has plenty of interest in their May-days and other merry-making, but little, I think, in their life as a whole. And the few praises of country life to be found in the Hesperides do not seem to me to ring very true.

If, then, I read Herrick’s life at Dean Prior aright, he is not the genial parson, moving light-heartedly among the people, drinking in the soft air of Devonshire and pouring it out in spontaneous song, passing from his sermon to the Maypole, blending Paganism with Christianity and ribaldry with religion, without sense of harm or incongruity—writing, in fact, the Hesperides on weekdays and the Noble Numbers on Sundays. Rather it was by the Cam and the Thames that he imbibed his inspiration, made love to his half-imaginary mistresses, and learnt—

In Devonshire he is a changed man, sobered partly by isolation and partly by clerical responsibility. He has, no doubt, his light-hearted and even wanton moods, and often writes poetry in the old vein; but he feels that the old lyrical effusiveness is going or gone, and finds his main occupation in writing sacred poetry.

At any rate he did not write gross or indecent verse during this period. This all too plentiful element of the Hesperides need not be fathered on Dean Prior. He himself calls it—

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:—

Probably they would be greatly shocked, and indeed everyone must admit that the stanzas show a certain strange devilry mixing itself with Herrick’s most reverent thoughts. At the same time, I do not think there is any real or intentional irreverence in them. There is one stanza in the “Litany” which has, I think, a personal interest:—

Now compare this with the following:—

And again—

I infer from these that Herrick suffered much from sleeplessness, and if so, may we not with considerable probability trace the genesis of this celebrated litany to some sleepless nights in the little vicarage of Dean Prior?

Again it is to the Noble Numbers that we owe the beautiful “Lord, Thou hast given me a cell.” Familiar as this poem is, it is only a just tribute to Dean Prior that these sweet praises of its simple plenty should be set down here.

And now let me ask the reader to note the following triplet, which occurs in a Christmas Anthem in Noble Numbers:—

I think if we compare these two poems, which embody Herrick’s attitude to nature and country life during the Dean Prior period, with some of the earlier (as I think) lyrics in the Hesperides, we shall feel that if Dean Prior took something from him, it also gave him something. Compare them, for instance, with “Fair Daffodils, we weep to see,” or the song to “Meddows,” which begins “Ye have been fresh and green.” These last are beautiful fancies, among the most beautiful in our language, but they have not the depth or fulness of feeling which the triplet has. That breathes the spirit of the true lover of rural life, and so it seems to me that if Herrick, in this little out-of-the-way village, felt the lyric power gone, if the “fairy fancies” no longer “ranged” or “lightly stirred” as before, on the other hand, something of the peace of a country village, something of the peace which Wordsworth felt two centuries later, had descended upon him.

Finally, let me call the reader’s attention to the two “Graces for little children,” also to be found in Noble Numbers:—

And again—

If I may indulge in a little fancy, I should say that this last was written for some small Dean Prior “maid”; written on one of those delicious balmy days which a Devonshire spring sometimes, though not, alas! always, brings; written during the first half of Herrick’s first incumbency, when peace still “flourished” at Dean Prior, though perhaps the shadows of the coming trouble were not unfelt by those who could read the signs of the times. Both these “Graces” always seem to me to have a peculiar charm and freshness, and even by themselves they would go far to justify the view that has been maintained in this essay, that Herrick’s genius, if hampered and enfeebled in some ways, was in other ways matured and mellowed by his sojourn in “dull Devonshire.”

The following passage, which is an extract from an article in the Quarterly of August, 1809, by Mr. Barron Field, may be of some interest:—