ROBERT HERRICK THE HESPERIDES & NOBLE NUMBERS: EDITED BY ALFRED POLLARD WITH A PREFACE BY A. C. SWINBURNE VOL. I. _REVISED EDITION_ [Illustration] LONDON: NEW YORK: LAWRENCE & BULLEN, LTD., CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 16 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C. 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE 1898. 1898. Transcriber's Note: Original spelling and punctuation has been retained. ^ indicates 'superscript' within the text. Obvious typesetting errors have been corrected without note, however additional corrections have been recorded in the Transcriber's Endnotes at the end each volume. EDITOR'S NOTE. In this edition of Herrick quotation is for the first time facilitated by the poems being numbered according to their order in the original edition. This numbering has rendered it possible to print those Epigrams, which successive editors have joined in deploring, in a detachable Appendix, their place in the original being indicated by the numeration. It remains to be added that the footnotes in this edition are intended to explain, as unobtrusively as possible, difficulties of phrase or allusion which might conceivably hinder the understanding of Herrick's meaning. In the longer Notes at the end of each volume earlier versions of some important poems are printed from manuscripts at the British Museum, and an endeavour has been made to extend the list of Herrick's debts to classical sources, and to identify some of his friends who have hitherto escaped research. An editor is always apt to mention his predecessors rather for blame than praise, and I therefore take this opportunity of acknowledging my general indebtedness to the pioneer work of Mr. Hazlitt and Dr. Grosart, upon whose foundations all editors of Herrick must necessarily build. ALFRED W. POLLARD. PREFACE.