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."
He saw the picturesqueness of English homely life as no one before him had seen it, and he described it in his verse with a certain purple glow of Arcadian romance over it, in tones of immortal vigour and freshness. His love poems are still more beautiful; the best of them have an ardour and tender sweetness which give them a place in the forefront of modern lyrical poetry, and remind us of what was best in Horace and in the poets of the Greek anthology.
After suffering complete extinction for more than a century, the fame of Herrick was revived by John Nichols, who introduced his poems to the readers of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ of 1796 and 1797. Dr Drake followed in 1798 with considerable enthusiasm. By 1810 interest had so far revived in the forgotten poet that Dr Nott ventured to print a selection from his poems, which attracted the favourable notice of the _Quarterly Review_. In 1823 the _Hesperides_ and the _Noble Numbers_ were for the first time edited by Mr T. Maitland, afterwards Lord Dundrennan. Since then the reprints of Herrick's have been too numerous to be mentioned here; there are few English poets of the 17th century whose writings are now more accessible. See F. W. Moorman, _Robert Herrick_ (1910). (E. G.)