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8 - Robert Herrick

from Part 2 - Some poets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Thomas N. Corns
Affiliation:
University of Wales, Bangor
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Summary

Robert Herrick (1591-1674) and his Hesperides have long been admired for their lyricism. After a century of relative neglect between the poet's death and the late eighteenth century, interest in Herrick was revived by John Nichols through the Gentleman's Magazine. Poems like 'To the Virgins, to make much of Time', 'Corinna's going a Maying', 'Delight in Disorder', 'To Live Merrily, and to Trust to Good Verses', 'How Roses came Red', and 'How Violets came Blue' made Herrick the darling of nineteenth-century anthologists; Algernon Charles Swinburne called him 'the greatest songwriter - as surely as Shakespeare is the greatest dramatist - ever born of English race'. The copy of Hesperides now in the Newberry Library (Chicago, Illinois) was once owned by a Mr William Combes of Henley, an amiable gentleman book collector who was said to carry Hesperides in his right-hand coat pocket and Izaak Walton's Complete Angler in his left whenever 'with tapering rod and trembling float, he enjoys his favourite diversion of angling on the banks of the Thames'. But the genteel songster of this pastoral vignette was not the only image of the poet to surface during the nineteenth century: at least one Herrick poem, 'To Daffodils', was appropriated by Chartist writers, who identified him as a poet 'for the People'.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1993

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  • Robert Herrick
  • Edited by Thomas N. Corns, University of Wales, Bangor
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521411475.008
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  • Robert Herrick
  • Edited by Thomas N. Corns, University of Wales, Bangor
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521411475.008
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Robert Herrick
  • Edited by Thomas N. Corns, University of Wales, Bangor
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521411475.008
Available formats
×