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, |
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.)
HERRIES, JOHN CHARLES (1778–1855), English politician,
son of a London merchant, began his career as a junior clerk
in the treasury, and became known for his financial abilities
as private secretary to successive ministers. He was appointed
commissary-in-chief (1811), and, on the abolition of that office
(1816), auditor of the civil list. In 1823 he entered parliament
as secretary to the treasury, and in 1827 became chancellor of the
exchequer under Lord Goderich; but in consequence of internal
differences, arising partly out of a slight put upon Herries, the
ministry was broken up, and in 1828 he was appointed master
of the mint. In 1830 he became president of the board of trade,
and for the earlier months of 1835 he was secretary at war.
From 1841 to 1847 he was out of parliament, but during 1852
he was president of the board of control under Lord Derby.
He was a consistent and upright Tory of the old school, who
carried weight as an authority on financial subjects. His eldest son, Sir Charles John Herries (1815–1882), was chairman of the board of inland revenue.
See the Life by his younger son, Edward Herries (1880).
HERRIES, JOHN MAXWELL, 4th Lord (c. 1512–1583),
Scottish politician, was the second son of Robert Maxwell, 4th
Lord Maxwell (d. 1546). In 1547 he married Agnes (d. 1594),
daughter of William Herries, 3rd Lord Herries (d. 1543), a
grandson of Herbert Herries (d. c. 1500) of Terregles, Kirkcudbrightshire,
who was created a lord of the Scottish parliament
about 1490, and in 1567 he obtained the title of Lord Herries.
But before this event Maxwell had become prominent among
the men who rallied round Mary queen of Scots, although
during the earlier part of his public life he had been associated
with the religious reformers and had been imprisoned by the
regent, Mary of Lorraine. He was, moreover—at least until
1563—very friendly with John Knox, who calls him “a man
zealous and stout in God’s cause.” But the transition from one
party to the other was gradually accomplished, and from March
1566, when Maxwell joined Mary at Dunbar after the murder
of David Rizzio and her escape from Holyrood, he remained one
of her staunchest friends, although he disliked her marriage with
Bothwell. He led her cavalry at Langside, and after this battle
she committed herself to his care. Herries rode with the queen
into England in May 1568, and he and John Lesley, bishop of
Ross, were her chief commissioners at the conferences at York.
He continued to labour in Mary’s cause after returning to
Scotland, and was imprisoned by the regent Murray; he also
incurred Elizabeth’s displeasure by harbouring the rebel Leonard
Dacres, but he soon made his peace with the English queen.
He showed himself in general hostile to the regent Morton, but
he was among the supporters of the regent Lennox until his
death on the 20th of January 1583. His son William, 5th Lord
Herries (d. 1604), was, like his father, warden of the west marches.
William’s grandson John, 7th Lord Herries (d. 1677), became 3rd earl of Nithsdale in succession to his cousin Robert Maxwell, the 2nd earl, in 1667. John’s grandson was William, 5th earl of Nithsdale, the Jacobite (see Nithsdale). William was deprived of his honours in 1716, but in 1858 the House of Lords decided that his descendant William Constable-Maxwell (1804–1876) was rightly Lord Herries of Terregles. In 1876 William’s son Marmaduke Constable-Maxwell (b. 1837) became 12th Lord Herries, and in 1884 he was created a baron of the United Kingdom.
HERRING (Clupea harengus, Häring in German, le hareng
in French, sill in Swedish), a fish belonging to the genus Clupea,
of which more than sixty different species are known in various
parts of the globe. The sprat, pilchard or sardine and shad
are species of the same genus. Of all sea-fishes Clupeae are the
most abundant; for although other genera may comprise a
greater variety of species, they are far surpassed by Clupea
with regard to the number of individuals. The majority of the
species of Clupea are of greater or less utility to man; it is only
a few tropical species that acquire, probably from their food,
highly poisonous properties, so as to be dangerous to persons
eating them. But no other species equals the common herring
in importance as an article of food or commerce. It inhabits in
incredible numbers the North Sea, the northern parts of the
Atlantic and the seas north of Asia. The herring inhabiting
the corresponding latitudes of the North Pacific is another
species, but most closely allied to that of the eastern hemisphere.
Formerly it was the general belief that the herring inhabits
the open ocean close to the Arctic Circle, and that it migrates
at certain seasons towards the northern coasts of Europe and America. This view has been proved to be erroneous, and we
know now that this fish lives throughout the year in the vicinity of our shores, but at a greater depth, and at a greater distance from the coast, than at the time when it approaches land for
the purpose of spawning.
Herrings are readily recognized and distinguished from the other species of Clupea by having an ovate patch of very small teeth on the vomer (that is, the centre of the palate). In the dorsal fin they have from 17 to 20 rays, and in the anal fin from 16 to 18; there are from 53 to 59 scales in the lateral line and 54 to 56 vertebrae in the vertebral column. They have a smooth gill-cover, without those radiating ridges of bone which are so conspicuous in the pilchard and other Clupeae. The sprat cannot be confounded with the herring, as it has no teeth on the vomer and only 47 or 48 scales in the lateral line.
The spawn of the herring is adhesive, and is deposited on
