married, but lived at the vicarage surrounded by a happy family of pets, and tended by an excellent old servant named Prudence Baldwin. His first appearance in print was in some verses he contributed to _A Description of the King and Queen of Fairies_, in 1635. In 1650 a volume of _Wit's Recreations_ contained sixty-two small poems afterwards acknowledged by Herrick in the _Hesperides_, and one not reprinted until our own day. These partial appearances make it probable that he visited London from time to time. We have few hints of his life as a clergyman. Anthony Wood says that Herricks's sermons were florid and witty, and that he was "beloved by the neighbouring gentry." A very aged woman, one Dorothy King, stated that the poet once threw his sermon at his congregation, cursing them for their inattention. The same old woman recollected his favourite pig, which he taught to drink out of a tankard. He was a devotedly loyal supporter of the king during the Civil War, and immediately upon his ejection in 1648 he published his celebrated collection of lyrical poems, entitled _Hesperides; or the Works both Human and Divine of Robert Herrick_. The "divine works" bore the title of _Noble Numbers_ and the date 1647. That he was reduced to great poverty in London has been stated, but there is no evidence of the fact. In August 1662 Herrick returned to Dean Prior, supplanting his own supplanter, Dr John Syms. He died in his eighty-fourth year, and was buried at Dean Prior, October 15, 1674. A monument was erected to his memory in the parish church in 1857, by Mr Perry Herrick, a descendant of a collateral branch of the family. The _Hesperides_ (and _Noble Numbers_) is the only volume which Herrick published, but he contributed poems to _Lachrymae Musarum_ (1649) and to _Wit's Recreations_. As a pastoral lyrist Herrick stands first among English poets. His genius is limited in scope, and comparatively unambitious, but in its own field it is unrivalled. His tiny poems--and of the thirteen hundred that he has left behind him not one is long--are like jewels of various value, heaped together in a casket. Some are of the purest water, radiant with light and colour, some were originally set in false metal that has tarnished, some were rude and repulsive from the first. Out of the unarranged, heterogeneous mass the student has to select what is not worth reading, but, after he has cast aside all the rubbish, he is astonished at the amount of excellent and exquisite work that remains. Herrick has himself summed up, very correctly, the themes of his sylvan muse when he says:-- "I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers, Of April, May, of June and July flowers, I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides and of their bridal-cakes."