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shout of success, the sky-piercing ambition

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which dared God out of heaven, the limitless aspiration of passion and of intellect, and the inflexible power of an abnormally developed will. In the twentieth century, whether for good or for evil, we are much closer to the Elizabethans in temperament than any of the generations that stand between. Marlowe is a writer whom we can perfectly understand, even while we secretly realise the folly of such spiritual leadership. As a deeply thoughtful writer 1 of to-day has remarked: It is by their will that we recognise the Elizabethans, by the will that drove them over the seas of passion, as well as over the seas that ebb and flow with the salt tides. It is by their thoughts, so much higher than their emotions, that we know the men of the eighteenth century; and by their quick sensibility to the sting of life, the men of the nineteenth. . . . For, from a sensitive correspondence with environment our race has passed into another stage; it is marked now by a passionate desire for the mastery of life-a desire, spiritualised in the highest lives, materialised in the lowest, so to mould environment that the lives to come may be shaped to our will. It is this which accounts for the curious likeness in our to-day with

1 Miss M. P. Willcocks, in her admirable novel, The Wingless Victory.

that of the Elizabethans; their spirit was the untamed will, but our will moves in other paths than theirs, paths beaten for our treading by the ages between."

Such words as these are well worth reflection, for they contain profound wisdom. Tamburlaine, Faustus, and Barabas - probably Marlowe himself were nothing more nor less than Nietzsche's Superman; and we know very well what he is and what he wants. But his influence is already on the wane; for he is not only no God, he knows less of the meaning of life than a little child.

IX

THE POET HERRICK

"What mighty epics have been wrecked by time

Since Herrick launched his cockleshells of rhyme !"

ROBERT HERRICK died in 1674, and the first biography of the man appeared in 1910. The reason why no "Life" of Herrick was published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was because nobody cared anything about him; the reason for the absence of such a work in the nineteenth century is because there was so little to say. Now the appearance of the first biography of a well-known poet more than two hundred years after his death is a literary event of some consequence, and calls for more than a passing comment. I open the beautiful volume with keen anticipation, read it with steady attention, and close it with disappointment. It is written with considerable skill, contains much good and sound literary criticism, indicates clearly the relation of Herrick's lyrics to the production of his predecessors, and properly appraises his historical significance. But Professor Moorman's Life of Herrick resembles the many lives of Shakespeare in the disparity between the slenderness of fact and the fatness of the book.

This history of Robert Herrick covers over three hundred pages, and the known events of his life could be printed in about the same number of words. That such a work should be undertaken, however, is proof if any were needed-of the permanence of the poet's fame. That a biography should appear within three years of a man's death is a sign that he has made some noise in the world, but it is no indication of how long the echoes will resound. But that the first biography of a seventeenth century poet should appear in the twentieth century looks like immortality.

About all that we really know of Robert Herrick is this: his father's name was Nicholas, who married Julian Stone 8 December 1582. The poet was born in Cheapside, London, in August 1591. The next year his father fell from a window and was killed. On 25 September 1607, the boy was apprenticed to his uncle, Sir William Herrick, a goldsmith. Professor Moorman publishes the full text of the indenture, which is interesting. In 1613 the young man entered Cambridge, and took his B.A. in 1617, and his M.A. in 1620. Whether he remained in residence from 1617 to 1620 is unknown. Where he was, and how he spent the years between 1617 and 1629, is unknown; part of the time he must have been in London, for his poems show an intimate friendship with Ben

Jonson. In 1629 he was appointed to the living of Dean Prior, in Devonshire, and became a country parson. In 1647 he was ejected from this position by the Puritans, and made his way to London. There he published in 1648 the single volume of his poems, Hesperides; a separate title-page in the same book, prefacing the Noble Numbers, has the date 1647. Where and how he lived between 1647 and 1662 is unknown, except that for a part of the time he seems to have been in Westminster. In 1662 he returned to Dean Prior, having been reinstated by the crown. The last twelve years of his life are shrouded in absolute silence. He was buried at Dean Prior, 15 October 1674. No stone is left to mark the spot.

We have a portrait of him, engraved by William Marshall. It looks more like a bartender than a poet. Let us hope it is a caricature, for we know what Milton thought of the same artist's presentment of himself. Although Herrick prophesied immortality for his poems over and over again, the little volume of 1648 attracted no attention, and made absolutely no impression either on contemporary men of letters or on the public. Whether presumptive readers were terrified by the frontispiece-portrait, or whether the poems were choked by the excitement of the political revolution, we do not know; no second edition was called for,

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