real note of the 'Elizabethan' poets. His subjects are
frequently pastoral, with a classical tinge, more or less slight,
infused; his language, though not free from exaggeration, is
generally free from intellectual conceits and distortion, and is
eminent throughout for a youthful NAIVETE. Such, also, are
qualities of the latter sixteenth century literature. But if
these characteristics might lead us to call Herrick 'the last of
the Elizabethans,' born out of due time, the differences between
him and them are not less marked. Herrick's directness of speech
is accompanied by an equally clear and simple presentment of his
thought; we have, perhaps, no poet who writes more consistently
and earnestly with his eye upon his subject. An allegorical or
mystical treatment is alien from him: he handles awkwardly the
few traditional fables which he introduces. He is also wholly
free from Italianizing tendencies: his classicalism even is that
of an English student,--of a schoolboy, indeed, if he be compared
with a Jonson or a Milton. Herrick's personal eulogies on his
friends and others, further, witness to the extension of the
field of poetry after Elizabeth's age;--in which his enthusiastic
geniality, his quick and easy transitions of subject, have also
little precedent.

If, again, we compare Herrick's book with those of his fellow-
poets for a hundred years before, very few are the traces which
he gives of imitation, or even of study. During the long
interval between Herrick's entrance on his Cambridge and his
clerical careers (an interval all but wholly obscure to us), it
is natural to suppose that he read, at any rate, his Elizabethan
predecessors: yet (beyond those general similarities already
noticed) the Editor can find no positive proof of familiarity.