At first sight these two passages seem contradictory, but the contradiction vanishes when we remember that Herrick’s book of sacred poems is called _Noble Numbers_. To these and these only, as it seems to me, the “ennobled numbers” of the second passage refers, and the plain meaning of these lines is that Herrick, as vicar of Dean Prior, felt his old powers of song-making gone, and gave his attention mainly to sacred poetry. To the same conclusion point some lines in the “Farewell to Poetry,” written probably when he took orders:— I my desires screw from thee, and direct Them and my thoughts to that sublime respect And conscience unto priesthood. But he adds:— When my diviner muse Shall want a handmaid as she oft will use, Be ready then for me to wait upon her, Though as a servant, yet a maid of honour. I do not of course suggest that all this is to be taken quite literally, or that we are to affirm positively that all Herrick’s best lyrics date from an earlier period; but that it is generally true I see no reason to doubt, more especially as in the many hundred lyrics which Sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and flowers, Of April, May and June, and July flowers, there is, so far as I can see, little or no trace of Devonshire. The great poets—whom Herrick looked on as his masters—Catullus and Horace, understood the magic of a name, and were fond of grouping their best thoughts round the names of the particular spots which they knew. Anyone who reads Catullus’s lines on Sirmio, or Horace’s on Tivoli, anyone, we may add, who knows Burns, or Wordsworth, or Scott, will feel the significance of the fact that Herrick only once mentions by name any place in Devonshire. It is not that he dislikes localising, for he lingers affectionately enough over the names of Richmond, Kingston, and of Hampton Court. And on the one occasion, when a Devonshire scene is described by name, it is in the following lines on “Dean, a rude river in Devon, by which he sometimes dwelt”:— Dean Bourn, farewell! I never look to see Dean, or thy watry incivility. The reader of Herrick will remember that he goes on to say that the “currish, churlish” people of Dean are as rocky as their river. Herrick could hardly be expected to admire Dartmoor itself. The love of moor and mountain hardly existed in his time; but the glen of Dean Bourne is a different thing, and surely nothing but invincible prejudice can have made Herrick describe it in such “currish and churlish” terms.