Compare Herrick with Marlowe, Greene, Breton, Drayton, or other
pretty pastoralists of the HELICON--his general and radical
unlikeness is what strikes us; whilst he is even more remote from
the passionate intensity of Sidney and Shakespeare, the Italian
graces of Spenser, the pensive beauty of PARTHENOPHIL, of DIELLA,
of FIDESSA, of the HECATOMPATHIA and the TEARS OF FANCY.

Nor is Herrick's resemblance nearer to many of the contemporaries
who have been often grouped with him. He has little in common
with the courtly elegance, the learned polish, which too rarely
redeem commonplace and conceits in Carew, Habington, Lovelace,
Cowley, or Waller. Herrick has his CONCETTI also: but they are
in him generally true plays of fancy; he writes throughout far
more naturally than these lyrists, who, on the other hand, in
their unfrequent successes reach a more complete and classical
form of expression. Thus, when Carew speaks of an aged fair one

When beauty, youth, and all sweets leave her,
Love may return, but lovers never!

Cowley, of his mistress--

Love in her sunny eyes does basking play,
Love walks the pleasant mazes of her hair:

or take Lovelace, 'To Lucasta,' Waller, in his 'Go, lovely
rose,'--we have a finish and condensation which Herrick hardly
attains; a literary quality alien from his 'woodnotes wild,'
which may help us to understand the very small appreciation he
met from his age. He had 'a pretty pastoral gale of fancy,' said