Flowery rhymes that blossom free In a tuft of greenery, Smiled on by the sun, and bright With the dews of lyric light. OULD we quit Babylon, to while away an hour in Fairyland, among Titania and her maids of honour? We have only to take up the "Hesperides" of Robert Herrick. It is merely a piece of sweet and careless dissipation-the poetical epitome of a fanciful brain, and a tender, happy heart. Its author squandered all his genius in flower-painting, music-making, and sporting in the shade with Amaryllis; but his book exists, full of the author and his peccadilloes; a book to be cherished by lovers of lyrics; a pretty souvenir of a jovial verse-writer who lived and made innocent love in a cassock, who tippled "Simon the King's" canary with Ben the laureate and Selden the antiquary, and who lived a hot-headed poet's life, not the life of a philosopher, in the quiet woodland ways. It teems with that luscious physical life which abounded in the man who wrote it; it is full of his idle fancies, his naughty sayings, and his wooings of women in the abstract. À more exceptionable book than "The Complete Angler," its shortcomings spring, like the other's racy morality, from a nature which means happiness and candour. 66 The Hesperides" is, perhaps, the most musical collection of occasional verses in the language. Pretty thoughts and sounds, controlled and regulated by principles of most magical harmony, wreathe magically from the quaint old book, singing and dancing, smiling and shining, perpetuating the memory of Herrick, the kindly clerical Prospero who created them. Glad verses, sad verses, mad verses, and (in a strait-laced sense) bad verses, fill these pages, melting and sighing and dying in a thousand flats and sharps of melody. A book of all moods and measures, a rainbow blended of a thousand different colours; a thing both of sable and of tinsel, of beautiful shreds and patches. It is redolent of ambrosia, nectar, and all the tipple of the gods. In short, it is a green arbour book, just as old Isaac's "Complete Angler," and Cotton's "Montaigne" are green arbour books; it is to be opened at random, in fine weather, and dreamed over. The cool flow of the syllables, the jingle and glitter of the fancies, the little hidden love-sentiments bubbling cheerily up at the ends of the stanzas, make Herrick's Hippocrene very refreshing to the parched literary Arab, the over-worn philosopher, and the lover, if not to the ambitious and metaphysical modern Alastor. Many familiar faces-smiling up, as it were, through green leaves, daffodils, and daisies,peep out on me as I dip into the book. One of these is the well-known "Night Piece," addressed to Mistresse Julia, his inspiration—a poem which every modern cavalier ought to have by heart. Another, also pretty generally known, is the sweet little song about " Daffodils." following lines are also unique : Q The |