Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/800

was afterwards to adorn. He seems to have been present at the first performance of Zhe Alchemist in 1610, and it was probably about this time that Ben Jonson adopted him as his poetical “son.” He entered the university as fellow-commoner of St John’s College, and he remained there until, in 1616, upon taking his degree, he removed to Trinity Hall; in 1620 he became master of arts. From this date until 1629 we entirely lose sight of him; it has been variously conjectured that he spent these nine years preparing for the ministry at Cambridge, or in much looser pursuitsim London. In the latter year his mother died, and, taking orders, he was presented to the rural living of Dean Prior, not far from Totnes in Devonshire. He entered upon this new career on October 2, 1629, being in his thirty- ninth year. At Dean Prior he resided quietly until 1648, when he was ejected by the Puritans. The solitude there oppressed him at first; the village was dull and remote, and he felt very bitterly that he was cut off from all literary and social associations ; but soon the quiet existence in Devonshire soothed and delighted him. He was pleased with the rural and semi-pagan customs that survived in the village, and in some of his most charming verses he has immortalized the morris-dances, wakes, and quintains, the Christmas mummers and the Twelfth Night revellings, that diversified the quiet of Dean Prior. Herrick never married, but lived at the vicarage surrounded by a happy family of pets, and tended by an excellent old servant named Prudence Baldwin. His first appearance in print was in some verses he contributed to A Description of the King and Queen of Fairies, in 1635. In 1640 a volume of Wit’s Zecreations contained sixty-two small poems afterwards acknowledged by Herrick in the Z/esperides, and one not reprinted until our own day. These partial appearances make it probable that he visited London from time to time. We have few hints of his life as a clergyman. Anthony Wood says that Herrick’s sermons were florid and witty, and that he was “beloved by the neighbouring gentry.” A very agel woman, one Dorothy King, stated that the poet once threw his sermon at his congregation, cursing them for their inattention. The same old woman recollected his favourite pig, which he taught to drink out of a tankard. In 1648 he published his celebrated collection of lyrical poems, entitled J/esperides, or the Works both Human and Divine of Robert Herrick, only a few weeks, it would seem, after his ejection from his living by the Puritans. That he was reduced to great poverty in London has been stated, but Dr Grosart shows this to be very unlikely. 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.

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, heape together ina 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 repul- sive from the first. Out of the unarranged, heterogencous 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 howers, 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 fore- front 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 mere than a century, the fame of Herrick was revived by Mr Nichols (Sylvanus Urban), who introduced his poems to the readers of the Gentleman’s Mayazine 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 Levicw.. In 1823 the Jesperides and the Noble Numbers were for the first time edited by Mr T. Maitland, afterwards Lord J)undrennan. Other editions followed in 1889, 1844, 1846, 1850, 1852, and 1859. A more complete collection, by Mr W. C. Hazlitt, was brought out in 1869. In 1876 followed Dr Grosart’s exhaustive and authori- tative edition in three vols., and in 1877, under the title of Chrysomela, a very clegant selection by Mr F. T. Palgrave, with a prefatory essay. There are therefore few English poets of the 17th century whose writings are now more accessible to every class of readers than those of Herrick.

HERRING (Clupea harengus, Héring in German, Le Hareng in French, Sidi in Swedish), a fish belonging to the genus C/upea, of which more than sixty different species are known im various parts of the globe. The sprat, pilchard or sardine, and shad are species of the same genus. Of all sea-fishes Clupece 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 per- sons eating them. But no other species equals the Common Herring in importance as an article of food or comimerce. It inhabits in incredible numbers the German Ocean, 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 epen 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 fron: 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 invariably 56 vertcbre in the vertebral column. They have a smooth gill-cover, without those radiating ridges of bone which are so conspicnoms in the pilchard and other Clupeew. The sprat cannot be con- founded with the herring, as it has no teeth on the vomer, and only 47 or 48 scales in the lateral line.

Herrings grow very rapidly ; according to H. A. Meyer’s observations, they attain a length of from 17 to 18 mm. during the first month after hatching, 34 to 36 mm. during the second, 45 to 50 mm. during the third, 55 to 61 mm. during the fourth, and 65 to 72 mm, during the fifth. The size which they finally attain and their general condition depend chiefly on the abundance of food (which consists of crustaceans and other small marine animals), on the tempcrature of the water, on the season at which they have been hatched, &c. Their usual size is