![]() Although the ancients and the best moderns must be employed as models, Jonson counseled, the aspiring poet’s own sensibility should be imposed on the borrowed subjects, themes, and styles. More than any of the other “sons,” Herrick follows Jonson’s prescription for “writing well.” For example, Jonson recommended reading “the best Authors,” particularly “the Ancients,” and Herrick has long been recognized for his more than nodding acquaintance with the works of classical writers such as the legendary Greek poet of wine, women, and song, Anacreon and with Roman poets, especially Horace and Martial, but also Catullus, Tibullus, and Ovid (all of whom Herrick mentions, quotes, or borrows from). The influence of Ben Jonson, however, goes beyond these poetic tributes. In the gently humorous “ His Prayer to Ben Jonson,” Herrick implicitly promises the kind of “life immortal” (through his poem) that he had explicitly promised Nicholas Herrick in “To the reverend shade of his religious Father.” The poet’s ultimate contentment in his role as a “son of Ben” finds expression in the formality of his epitaph “ Upon Ben Jonson” and in the intimacy and nostalgia of “An Ode for him.” Epigram” and “Another,” are not without ambivalence toward yet another “father” who has died (1637) and left his “son” behind. Although all of the poems praise Jonson as an artist, the first two to appear in Hesperides, “Upon Master Ben. Paterfamilias to “the sons of Ben,” eminent poet, dramatist, actor, man of letters, London’s literary lion, Jonson became the subject of five of Herrick’s poems. It is almost certain, however, that some of this time was spent in London, where the budding poet at last found a surrogate father who lived up to his expectations, Ben Jonson. Limited means would eventually force Herrick to transfer to a less expensive college, Trinity Hall.īetween his graduation from Cambridge in 1617 and his appointment, 12 years later, as vicar of Dean Prior in Devonshire, tantalizingly little is known about Herrick’s life. #DEFINE HESPERIDES FULL#Extant, however, are 14 letters from young “Robin” to his uncle: full of filial humility, all ask for money out of the nephew’s own inheritance, which was apparently still controlled by Sir William. Although his Hesperides would include a large number of commendatory poems to various relatives, none is addressed to Sir William. At the comparatively advanced age of 22, Herrick matriculated at Saint John’s College, Cambridge. One of that collection’s best-known works, for example, is “To the reverend shade of his religious Father,” in which Herrick resurrects his father by eternizing him in poetry: “For my life mortall, Rise from out thy Herse, / And take a life immortal from my Verse.”īy age 16 Herrick was apprenticed to his uncle, but apparently found either Sir William Herrick or the goldsmith trade incompatible, for the ten-year apprenticeship was terminated after six years. His mother never remarried, and it seems more than a coincidence that father figures would loom large in the poet’s Hesperides. He was little more than 14 months old when his father apparently committed suicide by “falling” from an upper story window of his house in Cheapside on November 9, 1592. Robert Herrick, baptized on August 24, 1591, was the seventh child and fourth son of a London goldsmith, Nicholas Herrick, and Julian (or Juliana or Julia) Stone Herrick. In short, Robert Herrick, who was proud to be one of “the Sons of Ben,” has begun to be seen, along with his literary father Ben Jonson, as one of the most noteworthy figures of early-17th-century English poetry. While some of his individual poems-“ To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” “ Upon Julia’s Clothes,” and “ Corinna’s going a Maying,” for example-are among the most popular of all time, recent examinations of his Hesperides as a whole have begun to reveal a Herrick whose artistry in the arrangement of his volume approximates the artistry of his individual works and whose sensibility is complex but coherent, subtle as well as substantive. Long dismissed as merely a “minor poet” and, as a consequence, neglected or underestimated by scholars and critics, the achievement represented by his only book, the collection of poems entitled Hesperides: Or, The Works Both Humane & Divine (1648), is gradually coming to be more fully appreciated. Almost forgotten in the 18th century, and in the 19th century alternately applauded for his poetry’s lyricism and condemned for its “obscenities,” Robert Herrick is, in the latter half of the 20th century, finally becoming recognized as one of the most accomplished nondramatic poets of his age. ![]()
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