descent, had been shamed into the adoption of an alias. And yet
not one of them had figured in a court of justice; two were men
of kindly virtues; and one, as he sat and shivered under the
purao, had a tattered Virgil in his pocket.

Certainly, if money,could have been raised upon the book,
Robert Herrick would long ago have sacrificed that last
possession; but the demand for literature, which is so marked a
feature in some parts of the South Seas, extends not so far as
the dead tongues; and the Virgil, which he could not exchange
against a meal, had often consoled him in his hunger. He would
study it, as he lay with tightened belt on the floor of the old
calaboose, seeking favourite passages and finding new ones only
less beautiful because they lacked the coinsecration of
remembrance. Or he would pause on random country walks; sit on
the path side, gazing over the sea on the mountains of Eimeo; and
dip into the Aeneid, seeking sortes. And if the oracle (as is
the way of oracles) replied with no very certain nor encouraging
voice, visions of England at least would throng upon the exile's
memory: the busy schoolroom, the green playing-fields, holidays
at home, and the perennial roar of London, and the fireside, and
the white head of his father. For it is the destiny of those
grave, restrained and classic writers, with whom we make enforced
and often painful acquaintanceship at school, to pass into the
blood and become native in the memory; so that a phrase of
Virgil speaks not so much of Mantua or Augustus, but of
English places and the student's own irrevocable youth.

Robert Herrick was the son of an intelligent, active, and
ambitious man, small partner in a considerable London house.