Of all our English poets, Robert Herrick, a writer of the seventeenth century, has left us the most complete contemporary picture of the Christmas season. He was born in Cheapside, London, and received his early education, it is supposed, at Westminster School, whence he removed to Cambridge, and after taking his M.A. degree in 1620, left Cambridge. He afterwards spent some years in London in familiar intercourse with the wits and writers of the age, enjoying those "lyric feasts" which are celebrated in his "Ode to Ben Jonson":-- "Ah Ben! Say how or when Shall we, thy guests Meet at those lyric feasts Made at the Sun, The Dog, the Triple Tun; Where we such clusters had As made us nobly wild, not mad? And yet each verse of thine Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine." In 1629 he accepted the living of Dean Prior, in Devonshire, where he lived as a bachelor Vicar, being ejected by the Long Parliament, returning on the Restoration under Charles the Second, and dying at length at the age of eighty-four. He was buried in the Church at Dean Prior, where a memorial tablet has latterly been erected to his memory. And it is fitting that he should die and be buried in the quiet Devonshire hamlet from which he drew so much of his happiest inspiration, and which will always be associated now with the endless charm of the "Hesperides." In "A New Year's Gift, sent to Sir Simeon Steward," included in his "Hesperides," Herrick refers to the Christmas sports of the time, and says:-- "No new device or late-found trick * * * * *