The poetical works of Robert Herrick

Front matter

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Cornell University Library PR 3510.A5M82 1921

The poetical works of Robert Herrick, 3 1924 012 961 623

Preface

The present reprint follows the authoritative text of the Hesperides which Herrick published in 1648. A larger edition, with an introduction discussing the text and a critical appendix, has already been issued by the Clarendon Press under the editorship of Professor Moorman.

The printing and publishing of the 1648 edition raise some interesting problems. It appeared in octavo, with the poems in two sections — ^the Hesperides or secular pieces covering pages 1-398, with signatures A to C c 7, and the Noble Numbers ; or, his Pious Poems, with a separate title-page dated 1647, a new pagination, and a new set of signatures beginning again at A a and ending at E e 8. At first sight this suggests the separate, and therefore earlier, publication of the Noble Numbers. But the title-page beginning with a pronoun — His Noble Numbers — shows that these poems were intentionally placed last, and a valedictory couplet among the closing poems of the Hesperides (page 325) says explicitly —

Part of the worke remaines ; one part is past : And here my ship rides having Anchor cast.

The Works both Humane & Divine of Robert Herrick Esq. therefore appeared together, and probably they were printed simultaneously. The shorter section of the Noble Numbers must have been finished first in 1647, and the title-page printed off with that date in the expectation that the complete work would be issued before the end of the year, A problem of this kind caii vi Preface

often be solved by consulting the Register of the Stationers' Company, on which books were entered for publication when the licensing fee was paid. But the only relevant entry is too early to be of any help : the following is found under the date ag April, 1640:

Entred for his Copie vnder the hands Md ¥ * r* u °f Master Hansley and Master Bourne Master ^.rooke ^^^^^^ -j-he seuerall Poems written by

Master Robert Herrick vj*

(Arber, Transcript, \M. 509.)

No edition of ,1640 is known, and presumably this entry covered the publication of the Hesperides eight years later. Herrick had employed the interval with unwearied patience and consumma,te art to reshape and refine his poems to their utmost perfection of form. Professor Moorman's larger edition gives an extensive collation of the extant manuscripts, showing that many of these were early drafts which the poet revised with minute care before he allowed the poems to be published. The scholar who wishes to study the development of Herrick's art must consult the record of these variants.

Herrick's conscientious labour did not end with the revision of his tejdt in manuscript. He supervised the printing with equal Care. A collation of a number of copies has proved that he went personally to the printing office and corrected the work sheet by sheet as it issued from the press. The critical notes of the present edition record corrections made in the text after some early sheets had been printed off. Some corrections were made in the standing type; but when the error was riaore serious — as, for instance^ in Kissing Usurie (page 30), where the first and last half of the final stanza were

Preface

Vll transposed by the printer — the faulty leaves were cancelled and new ones were inserted. At least three leaves of the original issue were reset because of the printer's errors — those containing pages 39 and 30, 175 and 176, 207 and ao8 ; in the Thomason copy in the British Museum one cancel is inserted the wrong way round. Some of the corrections have a literary value : thus, the lines on Dean-bourn, a rude River in Devon (page 39) begin —

Dgan-boum, farewell ; I never look to see

Deane, or thy warty incivility.

Here the expressive epithet ' warty ' applied to the rough, bed of the stream,

Thy rockie bottome, that doth teare thy streams And makes them frantick, ev'n to all extreames,

was at first misprinted ' watry '. Occasionally the poet inserts a last touch of revision: in the pretty lines on Mistress Susanna Southwell's feet (page 193) —

Her pretty feet Like snailes did creep A little out, and then, As if they started at Bo-peep, Did soon draw in agen —

some copies preserve an original reading 'As if they played at Bo-peep ', which is not likely to have been an error of the printer.

Finally, Herrick read over the sheets of the entire work after it had been printed off, made a list of errata which had escaped him in the hurry of reading at the printing office, and placed them before the text with the playful quatrain preserved on page 4.

viii Preface

The ordinary title-page of 1648 has been reproduced. But a few copies (e.g. the British Museum copy with press-mark E. 1090) give the interesting imprint : —

L o N T) o :h^

Printed for John JVilliams, and Francis EglesfieU,

and are to be fold by Tho: Hunt, Book-feller

in Exon. 1548.

Herrick's original publishers are to be commended for their enterprise in thus pushing the sale of his poems in the West Country.

The present reprint differs in two points from the larger edition. First, it confines itself to the text of 1648, noting only the variants of that issue. Secondly, as it has been prepared, not for the scholar, but for the lover of poetry, it omits almost entirely the ' Epigrams ' of the Hesperides. Herrick's conception of the epigram was derived, through Ben Jonson, from the antique ; but in actual practice he usually narrowed it down to the satiric type — a short poem, hitting off some ludicrous personal trait. It is one of the paradoxes of literature that this exquisite artist, experimenting in minute satire, should have composed a monotonous and, on the whole, pointless series of poems on merely nauseous themes. A reprint of Herrick among the Oxford Poets, side by side with the complete text already issued, gives a welcome opportunity of clearing away these weeds from the flower-garden of the Hesperides.

Prefi

'ace IX

The library edition of Herrick (in the Oxford English Texts) was published in 1915, and the edition now issued would in the ordinary course have followed at no long interval. It has been delayed by the war, and in consequence of Professor Moorman's lamented death this preface has been supplied by another hand.