the "eternal calendar" which promises immortality to so many persons bearing the poet's name. Various relations on his mother's side -the families of Stone and Soame of whom we shall hear more presently-were also either residing in London, or in some way connected with it.

As we saw in the preceding chapter, it seems to have been Herrick's purpose during the latter portion of his stay at Cambridge to take up a legal career as soon as he had finished with the University. How far he carried this project is uncertain; his name does not appear on the register of the Inner or Middle Temple, Gray's Inn, or Lincoln's Inn, though some of the poems in the Hesperides show that he numbered amongst his friends several persons intimately associated with the law. In any case, he had, by the year 1627 at the latest, abandoned the law for the church. We have no knowledge of the date of his ordination, and it is particularly unfortunate that in Dr M. Hutton's Extracts from the Registers of the Bishop of London, preserved in the Manuscript Room at the British Museum (Harleian MSS., 6955-6), and giving a list of clergymen ordained within the London diocese, there is an hiatus for the years 1620-7. It is probable, however, that his ordination did not take place long before 1627, when he was appointed chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham

on his military expedition to the Isle of Rhé. We have, accordingly, a period of no less than ten years, during which we learn nothing of Herrick except what he chooses to tell us in his poems. These make it clear that he moved freely at this time in some of the most important circles of London life, was intimate with city fathers and their wives, with noblemen and noblewomen, with musicians, men of letters, and men of law; but, in spite of his many friendships, his name has as yet been sought in vain among the printed and unprinted records of the period. There is no mention of him prior to 1629 in any of the State Papers, or in any of the valuable collections of records published by the Historical Manuscripts Commission, with the exception of that reference to his debts at Trinity Hall, already alluded to. The letter-writers of the time are also silent concerning him. James Howell, who, when in London, moved in the same circles as Herrick, and, like him, was able to subscribe himself "son and servitor" to Ben Jonson, never mentions his name in his Familiar Letters.

It would also be interesting to know how the impecunious Cambridge student of former years managed to meet the expenses of fashionable London life during the whole of this period. We know that he had patrons like Endymion Porter, Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland, and the

princely Philip, Earl of Pembroke, who supplied him with what he happily calls "the oil of maintenance"; but at what period in his career he first won their patronage is uncertain. But whether he obtained some lucrative appointment at Court or elsewhere, or was dependent for his sustenance on patrons and rich relations, or whether he had learnt Mrs Rawdon Crawley's art of living well on nothing a year, one thing is certain there is throughout his poems, which tell us so much of his state of mind and body, no mention of poverty until we reach the time of his ejection from Dean Prior in 1647. He has left us no "Compleynt to his Purse," and even hastens to assure his readers in his Farewell unto Poetry,1 which was almost certainly written in 1629, that it is not lack of money which leads him to the priesthood. Apostrophising the muse of poetry as the almighty nature that gives

:

Food,

White fame and resurrection to the good,

he earnestly bids her turn from him at this crisis in his career :

But unto me be only hoarse, since now
(Heaven and my soul bear record of my vow)
I my desires screw from thee, and direct
Them and my thoughts to that sublim'd respect
And conscience unto priesthood; 'tis not need

1 Poems not included in the Hesperides, Pollard, ii. 263.

(The scarecrow unto mankind) that doth breed
Wiser conclusions in me, since I know

I've more to bear my charge than way to go;
Or had I not, I'd stop the spreading itch
Of craving more, so in conceit be rich.
But 'tis the God of Nature who intends

And shapes my function for more glorious ends.1

The story of Herrick's London years, as far as we can piece it together by the help of his poems, is the story of his friendships. His friends were many, and thanks to the geniality of his nature, to which his poems bear abundant testimony, he moved freely in circles somewhat widely separated from each other. The circle which he would most naturally enter when he first came up from Cambridge was that of his own family-the circle of prosperous city merchants, alderman uncles and lady mayoress aunts. On his mother's side were the "honoured kinsmen" to whom some of the Hesperides poems are addressed-Sir William Soame, his brother Sir Thomas, who at a later period held the posts of Sheriff of London and Middlesex, Lord Mayor of London and M. P. for the city; also Mr Stephen Soame, the son of either Sir William or Sir Thomas, and Sir Richard Stone. On his father's side there were, in addition to his merchant brother Nicholas, his wife and family-to whom, according to Nichols' History of Leicestershire,

1 ii. 265.

no less than seven poems are addressed 1-the various branches of the family of Wheeler, one member of which, John Wheeler the goldsmith, had married a daughter of Mr Robert Herrick of Leicester, the poet's uncle. Towards one of the Wheelers he seems to have felt something deeper than kinship. This was Elizabeth Wheeler, who may, perhaps, be identified with the Elizabeth, daughter of Edmund Wheeler, that was baptized in St Vedast's Church, Foster Lane, on July 20, 1589. He celebrates her beauty in three of his most graceful poems (Nos. 130, 263, 1068), wooing her, somewhat after the manner of the pastoralists, under the name of Amaryllis.

If Herrick was free of the society of city merchants, their wives and pretty daughters, he also had access to the literary circles of the time, and forgathered with poets and wits in the London taverns. His open sesame to this society was, of course, his poetry, which was now poured forth in no stinting measure. Of the delight which he found in this tavern life, and of his willingness to "let the canakin clink," there can be no question. His bacchanalian verses and his anacreontics in praise of a life of boon

1 These are the following: To his Brother, Nicholas Herrick, (1100); To his Sister-in-law, Susanna Herrick (977); Upon his Kinswoman, Mistress Elizabeth Herrick (376); To his Kinsman, Thomas Herrick (983); To his Kinswoman, Mistress Susanna Herrick (522); Upon his Kinswoman, Mistress Bridget Herrick (564); To his Nephew to be prosperous in Painting (384).