of the modern literatures which had themselves undergone the same
classical impulse. Italy was the source most regarded during the
more strictly Elizabethan period; whence its lyrical poetry and
the dramatic in a less degree, are coloured much less by pure and
severe classicalism with its closeness to reality, than by the
allegorical and elaborate style, fancy and fact curiously
blended, which had been generated in Italy under the peculiar and
local circumstances of her pilgrimage in literature and art from
the age of Dante onwards. Whilst that influence lasted, such
brilliant pictures of actual life, such directness, movement, and
simplicity in style, as Chaucer often shows, were not yet again
attainable: and although satire, narrative, the poetry of
reflection, were meanwhile not wholly unknown, yet they only
appear in force at the close of this period. And then also the
pressure of political and religious strife, veiled in poetry
during the greater part of Elizabeth's actual reign under the
forms of pastoral and allegory, again imperiously breaks in upon
the gracious but somewhat slender and artificial fashions of
England's Helicon: the DIVOM NUMEN, SEDESQUE QUIETAE which, in
some degree the Elizabethan poets offer, disappear; until filling
the central years of the seventeenth century we reach an age as
barren for inspiration of new song as the Wars of the Roses;
although the great survivors from earlier years mask this
sterility;--masking also the revolution in poetical manner and
matter which we can see secretly preparing in the later
'Cavalier' poets, but which was not clearly recognised before the
time of Dryden's culmination.

In the period here briefly sketched, what is Herrick's portion?
His verse is eminent for sweet and gracious fluency; this is a