4. resemble, liken, compare: here used in an obsolete active sense; like the Lat. simulare, to make like; so in F. Q. iii. 10. 21, "And th' other... He did resemble to his lady bright"; Raleigh, Hist. of World, "Most safely may we resemble ourselves to God."

7. shuns, declines. For this use of 'shun' with an infinitive comp. Acts, xx. 27, "I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God"; and in another of Waller's poems, "The lark still shuns on lofty boughs to build."

graces, charms: this is the usual sense in the plural; in one passage of Milton, however, it means 'favour' (Sams. Agon. 360), 66 given with solemn hand as graces.

spied, espied: Spenser has 'spy' in the senses of 'a keen glance' and 'an eye.'

9. In deserts: comp. Gray's lines, "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen," etc.

11. Small is the worth, etc. Comp. Comus, 745, "Beauty is Nature's brag, and must be shown In courts, at feasts," etc.; also Shakespeare's Sonnet, iv., "Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?"

13. Bid: governing the three imperatives 'come,' 'suffer,' and 'blush.'

16. Then, i.e. after having delivered your message. 17. rare the original and usual sense of : that of incomparable': comp. Wint. Tale, i. 2.

scarce' passes into

20. wondrous. The adverbial use of this word, condemned by Johnson as barbarous, was very commmon in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: comp. Pope's Rape of the Lock, iii., women, wondrous fond of place"; Par. Lost, v. 115.

No. XXXII.

TO CELIA.

THIS song is versified from passages in the love-letters of Philostratus the Sophist. It is comprised in Ben Jonson's The Forest, a collection of short lyrics first published in 1616, and including some of the finest of Jonson's lines.

3. leave but: hyperbaton for 'leave but a kiss,' or 'only leave a kiss'; see note, No. xxiv., 1. 15.

8. change, i.e. exchange it.

9. late, lately.

10. Not so much: see note, No. XLII., 1. 1.

11. there, with thee.

13. didst... sent'st; see note, Il Pens. 46. For a similar idea comp. Herrick's poem, No. 94, in Palgrave's edition of that poet. Jonson has another song addressed to Celia, in Volpone, or the Fox:

"Come my Celia, let us prove,

While we may, the sports of love,” etc.

No. XXXIII.

CHERRY-RIPE.

THIS lyric is set to music in An Houre's Recreation in Musike, published in 1606, and in Robert Jones's Ultimum Vale (1608). The piece is now attributed to Campion (see notes, No. XVII.), of whom Mr. Bullen says: "It is time that Campion should again take his rightful place among the lyric poets of England. He was, like Shelley, occasionally careless in regard to the observance of metrical exactness, and it must be owned that he had not learned the art of blotting. But his best work is singularly precious. Whoever cannot feel the witchery of such poems as Hark, all you ladies that do sleep!' or 'Thrice toss these oaken ashes in the air,' is past praying for. In his own day his fame stood high... Camden did not hesitate to couple his name with the names of Spenser and Sidney, but he has been persistently neglected by modern critics" (Preface to Lyrics from Elizabethan Song-Books). It may be compared with the Cherry-Ripe of Herrick :

66

Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry,

Full and fair ones; come and buy ;
If so be you ask me where

They do grow? I answer, there
Whose my Julia's lips do smile ;-
There's the land, or cherry-isle;
Whose plantations fully show

All the year where cherries grow."

2. roses, etc. Comp. Spenser's description of Belphoebe (F. Q. ii. 3):

"In her cheeks the vermeill red did shew

Like roses in a bed of lilies shed."

3. paradise: see No. LVIII., 1. 63, note.

6. Cherry-Ripe: this being the cry of the fruit-sellers; see Nares' Glossary.

themselves: here the subject of 'do cry,' being used without the simple pronoun; (they) themselves do cry 'Cherry

66

Ripe," " or (less probably) they do cry themselves (to be) cherry-ripe." The use of himself, themselves, etc., as nominatives is common enough in Eliz. English (see Abbott, § 20), as it was in Early English, Piers Plow. 12,689, "if himself wolde." Them is a dative: at first self (i.e. the same) was added in order to define the subject, the pronoun being repeated in the dative before self: hence he him-self,'' they them-selves.' The dative with self then came to be used alone, and even as a nominative. Finally, when self came to be regarded as a substantive it was added to possessives, e.g. my-self, your-self, Beauty's self, etc. 8. orient pearl; see Hymn Nat., 1. 231, note. 9. when... snow: comp. F. Q. ii. 3:

"And when she spake,

Sweete words, like dropping honey, she did shed:
And twixt the pearls and rubins softly brake

A silver sound that heavenly music seemed to make."

10. They grammatically redundant; comp. Abbott, §§ 248, 9, and the relic of an Anglo-Saxon idiom in such passages as Chaucer's Prol. 43-5, "A knight there was... That from the time that he first began to riden out, he loved chivalry.”

11. no... nor: comp. Abbott, § 396.

13. angels, guardian spirits. 'Angel' is common in this sense; comp. her good angel,' and (since the face is here compared to a garden or paradise) refer to Genesis, ii. 22-4.

still, always see note, No. XXIV., 1. 2.

14. bended bows: comp. Eccles. xliii. 12, "The hand of the Most High hath bended it," said of the rainbow. Except in a few phrases with a special sense (e.g. 'on bended knees '), bended is replaced by bent in accordance with the general law that verbs ending in ld, nd, rd, change the d into t for the past tense and participle.

16. approach... to come nigh. The phrase seems redundant, but 'approach' had an older sense to resolve or set about; e.g. "Shunne evil, and approch to do wel" (Hellowes' Guenara's Epist. 15).

No. XXXIV.

CORINNA'S MAYING.

A LYRIC more faultless and sweet than this cannot be found in any literature. Keeping with profound instinctive art within the limits of the key chosen, Herrick has reached a perfection very rare at any period of literature in the tones of playfulness, natural description, passion, and seriousness which introduce

and follow each other, like the motives in a sonata by Weber or Beethoven, throughout this little masterpiece of 'music without notes' (Palgrave's note).

On the observances connected with the first of May see Chambers's Book of Days, i. 569; they are a survival of the Floralia of the Romans, who, in their turn, derived their festival from the East, where Sun-worship was associated with similar ceremonies. In England the festival has been shorn of much of its glory, but in Italy the anniversary is still kept up, young people going out at daybreak to collect boughs with which to decorate the doors of their relatives and friends. "In England, as we learn from Chaucer and Shakespeare and other writers, it was customary during the Middle Ages for all, both high and low-even the court itself to go out on the first May morning at an early hour 'to fetch the flowers fresh.' Hawthorn branches were also gathered: these were brought home about sunrise, with accompaniments of horn and tabor and all possible signs of joy and merriment. The people then proceeded to decorate the doors and windows of their houses with the spoil. By a natural transition of ideas they gave the hawthorn bloom the name of the 'May'; they called the ceremony 'the bringing home the May'; they spoke of the expedition as 'going a-Maying.'

,,,

2. the god unshorn, i.e. Apollo, the sun-god: comp. Milton's Vac. Ex. 37, "listening to what unshorn Apollo sings" (Lat. Apollo imberbis).

3. Aurora: see the notes on L'Alleg., 11. 19, 20.

4. fresh-quilted: comp. "the tissued clouds" (Hymn Nat. 146), "the plighted (i.e. interwoven) clouds" (Comus, 301), with the notes there.

and

5. Slug-a-bed: comp. 'lie-abed.' "The buttercup is no slugabed," N. and Q. (Aug. 11, 1894). The obsolete verb slug is cognate with slouch and slack. Shakespeare has "Thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot," Com. of Err. ii. 2. 196: "Why, lady, fie, you slug-a-bed," Rom. and Jul. iv. 5. 2.

7. bow'd, as if saluting the rising sun.

10. matins see note, L'Alleg. 114.
13. Whenas: see note, No. xxix., 1. 7.
17. Flora: see note, L'Alleg. 20.

22. Against you come, against your coming, in expectation of your coming. Against is essentially a preposition, but becoming by ellipsis a conjunction or conj. adverb; thus, against (the time) at which or that I come' = against I come. Comp. Hamlet i. 1. 158, "'gainst that season comes," and see Wordsworth's Shakespeare and the Bible on the occurrence of this idiom in Gen. xliii. 25; Exod. vii. 15; Hamlet 11. 2, III. 4; Rom. and Jul.

iv. 1; etc. This use of against with reference to time is found in Spenser (Prothal. 17), Hooker, and Dryden.

orient pearls unwept: comp. Hymn Nat. 231, note; S. A. 728; and M. N. D. iv. 1. 59, "That same dew which sometimes on the buds Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls."

25. Titan, the sun, so called by Ovid and Virgil: comp. Rom. and Jul. ii. 3, "Titan's fiery wheels"; Cymb. iii. 4. 166.

26. Retires here used reflectively.

28. beads, prayers: see note, Lyc. 22.

30. turns, turns into, becomes; so many young people are out in the fields that they are as busy as streets.

34. tabernacle: in allusion to the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, Levit. xxiii. 40-43, "And ye shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly trees and willows of the brook; ... ye shall dwell in booths seven days," etc.

35. interwove: see note, No. xxI., l. 14.

39. we'll abroad: the verb of motion omitted, as frequently in Shakespeare. Comp. Ham. ii. 2. 170, ii. 2. 265, iii. 1. 171, iii. 3. 4, iii. 4. 198.

48. left to dream, left off dreaming.

49. plighted troth: see notes, No. XLIV., 1. 14; No. XLIX., 1. 8. 50. their priest, i.e. with a view to marriage.

51. green-gown, a romp in the new-mown hay or on the grass. 54. firmament: comp. No. XXIX., 11. 1, 2.

No. XXXV.

THE POETRY OF DRESS.

WITH the sentiments of these lines compare The Sweet Neglect, a song in Ben Jonson's play, "The Silent Woman," imitated from a Latin poem printed at the end of Petronius (see Percy's Reliques, III. ii.); and Herrick's own Art above Nature (No. 86, Palgrave's edition):

"I must confess mine eye and heart

Dotes less on nature than on art."

2. Kindles, produces. The verb kindle in the sense of 'to produce is radically distinct from kindle in the sense of to inflame,' being perhaps connected with kind (A.S. cynd), nature. But Herrick may have the latter meaning in view. Comp. As You Like It, iii. 2, 358, "The cony that you see dwell where she