the volatile ease, the effortless grace, the wild bird-like
fluency with which he

Scatters his loose notes in the waste of air

are not, in truth, the results of exquisite art working in co-
operation with the gifts of nature. The various readings which
our few remaining manuscripts or printed versions have supplied
to Mr Grosart's 'Introduction,' attest the minute and curious
care with which Herrick polished and strengthened his own work:
his airy facility, his seemingly spontaneous melodies, as with
Shelley--his counterpart in pure lyrical art within this century
--were earned by conscious labour; perfect freedom was begotten
of perfect art;--nor, indeed, have excellence and permanence any
other parent.

With the error that regards Herrick as a careless singer is
closely twined that which ranks him in the school of that master
of elegant pettiness who has usurped and abused the name
Anacreon; as a mere light-hearted writer of pastorals, a gay and
frivolous Renaissance amourist. He has indeed those elements:
but with them is joined the seriousness of an age which knew that
the light mask of classicalism and bucolic allegory could be worn
only as an ornament, and that life held much deeper and further-
reaching issues than were visible to the narrow horizons within
which Horace or Martial circumscribed the range of their art.
Between the most intensely poetical, and so, greatest, among the
French poets of this century, and Herrick, are many points of
likeness. He too, with Alfred de Musset, might have said