More discontents I never had Since I was born than here, Where I have been and still am sad, In this dull Devonshire. Yet justly too I must confess; I ne’er invented such Ennobled numbers for the Press Than where I loathed so much. It has been remarked that, even when he writes of fairies, he has in mind, not the fairies of the West Country, but the fairies he brought with him from Ben Jonson’s London. He is rich in the fancies of the town-poet. For him Oberon walks through a grove “tinselled with twilight,” and is led by the shine of snails. As for the cave in which the Fairy King seeks Queen Mab: To pave The excellency of this cave, Squirrels’ and children’s teeth late shed Are neatly here enchequered. _Oberon’s Feast_ again is a revel of fantastical dishes not from nature, but from that part of the imagination that is a toy-shop: A little moth Late fattened in a piece of cloth: With withered cherries; mandrake’s ears; Moles’ eyes; to these, the slain stag’s tears; The unctuous dewlaps of a snail; The broke heart of a nightingale O’ercome in music. The very titles of many of his poems seem to have come straight from the toy-shop. How charming some of them are: _A ternary of Littles upon a pipkin of Jelly sent to a lady; Upon a Cherrystone sent to the tip of the Lady Jemonia Walgrave’s ear; Upon a black Twist, rounding the Arm of the Countess of Carlisle; Upon Julia’s Hair, bundled up in a golden net; To the Fever, not to trouble Julia; Upon Lucia, dabbled in the Dew; The Funeral Rites of the Rose!_ Most beautiful of all, perhaps, is the title of his most famous poem, “Gather ye rosebuds,” which runs, _To the Virgins, to make much of time_. Herrick’s small and delightful genius is as manifest in the titles of his poems as in the poems themselves. All the perfume of his verse is in such titles as _To live merrily, and to trust to Good Verses_; _To Mistress Katherine Bradshaw the lovely, that crowned him with Laurel_; _To the most virtuous Mistress Pot, who many times entertained him_; and, especially, _To Daisies, not to shut so soon_. Herrick appears in his poetry, if we leave out of consideration the inferior religious verse in _Noble Numbers_, mainly in three characters. He is the cheerful countryman, the praiser of his mistresses, and the philosopher of the mortality of pretty things. As for the first, he was too good a disciple of Horace not to be able to play the part cheerfully and to smile among his animals and his beans: A hen I keep, which, creaking day by day, Tells when She goes her long white egg to lay. A lamb I keep (tame) with my morsels fed, Whose dam An orphan left him (lately dead) ... A cat I keep, that plays about my house, Grown fat With eating many a miching mouse.