Just opposite the Vicarage stands the Church, which Mr. Perry-Keene tells me has been altered a great deal. It now contains a monument to Herrick erected in 1857 by a remote kinsman, Mr. William Perry Herrick. Opposite this recent memorial, in the south aisle, stands a far more interesting monument. It is a brass with three figures—husband, wife, and son—but no name or inscription which might give a clue to the name is legible. Underneath it, however, run the following verses:— No trust to metals nor to marbles, when These have their fate and wear away as men. Times, Titles, Trophies may be lost and spent, But virtue rears the eternal monument. What more than these can Tombs or Tomb-stones pay? But here’s the sunset of a tedious day. These two asleep are: I’ll but be undrest, And so to Bed, Pray wish us all good rest. This beautiful and interesting epitaph is printed by Mr. Grosart in his fine edition of Herrick, as being indisputably the work of the poet. Mr. Grosart also states positively that the figures on the monument are those of Sir Edward and Lady Giles, of whom the former died at Dean Court in 1637. Mr. Grosart speaks on these points with such certainty that I was surprised to find that the external evidence for both statements is absolutely nil. As a matter of fact, the monument itself hardly appears to belong to Herrick’s time. Mr. Perry-Keene’s opinion is (and I confess that my own very slight knowledge of such subjects would have led me to the same conclusion) that the figures are Elizabethan rather than Caroline. It seems, therefore, hardly safe to print the inscription as being _undoubtedly_ Herrick’s work. At the same time I do believe that the lines are Herrick’s. There is a very distinct Herrickian ring about them, particularly about the last three, which to my mind is almost unmistakeable. Observe the phrase “I’ll but be undrest.” It borders on the grotesque; in almost any other poet’s hand it would have been grotesque. In his hand it acquires a certain beautiful quaintness, becomes what Herrick himself calls a “phrase of the royal blood.” I commend this charming epitaph, therefore, to the reader as the one existing memorial which connects Dean Prior with Herrick, though I think he should at the same time be cautioned, that the ascription of the lines to the poet is based solely on internal evidence. About a mile from the Church stands Dean Court, now a farm-house, in Herrick’s time a manor house, and occupied during his incumbency by the above-mentioned Sir Edward Giles, and afterwards by the Yardes. To-day it looks what it is, and unless there has been considerable alteration and demolition, it seems a poor house for such important families.