Part 13

Now the Lord confirm you in the true grace of God wherein you stand, and make you more instrumentall to the Kingdom and Nations that are Christian the world over, and make you a leading peece to all Generals that now are, or shall be here after, and move your heart to pity the Town of Torrington, and as much as in you lyes, to erect a publick Place for God’s worship there, upon the Publique Stock; the people being poore, yet those that are Christian, both Magistrates and Commanders, that have little incouragement from those that they have adventured their lives for, and expended their estates, for their safety; the Lord put better hearts into them I say, those are thankefull to God, and have gladly received those that would impart the Gospel to them, and keep dayes of Thanksgiving, etc., for so great a deliverance, and though they stand in the open streets, neither cold nor rain can deter them from it; they being true Eagles will feed on the carkasse Christ in the Gospel purely preach’t, as Mr. Peters and divers of the Army can witnesse, and their own testimony for my self annexed, that spent a day by way of Thanksgiving since my being under the Command of Coll. Henry Gray, as it follows word for word in their Certificate annexed, the 20. Decemb. 1646: This day Mr. John Heyden Chaplain to the Honorable Coll. Gray, did powerfully preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Torrington magna, to the great comfort and incouragement of that great audience which were present.—John Voysey Maior, Richard Gay, John Harwood, John Ward, William White, and Henry Semor.

The blowing up of the Church of Great Torrington is recorded on two stones built into the walls of the south transept. The inscriptions on these stones run as follows:—

This Chvrch was blowen up with Powder Febry ye 16^{th} ano 1645 and rebuilt A^d 1651;

and

This Church was re-erected ano Domini 1651.

Under the date of February, 1645, there is this entry in the Register of Burials:—

There have bin buried the 16th 17th 18th 19th and 20th 21st dayes 63 soldyers;

and other entries appear in July and August of the same year of interments of soldiers.

In the _Journal of the House of Lords_ (Vol. x., 318) is the following entry respecting the re-building of the Church:—

_10 June 1648_ _Ordered_, By the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament, That a Grant be prepared, and that the Commissioners of the Great Seal be hereby authorized and required to pass the same under the Great Seal, to the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, of the Town of _Greate Torrington_, in the County of _Devon_, for a General Collection of the Charity of well-disposed People, through all the Counties of _England_ and Dominion of _Wales_ for Reparation of the Great Church of the said Town, which was utterly demolished by the Enemies Firing thereof with their Magazine of Powder, to the Value of Six Thousand Pounds at least; which the Inhabitants, by reason of the Miseries of the late War, and Ruin of the said Town, are no Way able to repair.

The only external part of the Church which appears to have escaped is the vestry, though a few of the piers and arches at the east end seem to be in their original condition, and perhaps also the arch of the north transept.

GEORGE M. DOE.

HERRICK AND DEAN PRIOR.

BY F. H. COLSON, M.A.

The little village of Dean Prior, five miles from Brent on the high road from Plymouth to Ashburton, is indissolubly associated with the name of one of the greatest of our lyric poets; a poet, indeed, who has a certain touch and power which is quite unique in English poetry. Robert Herrick was vicar of this parish for about thirty-two years. The main facts of his life may be very shortly told. Born in London in 1591, he was educated at St. John’s College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He spent the earlier part of his life, after taking his degree, probably partly in Cambridge and partly in London. It was not till 1629, when he was thirty-eight years old, that he was ordained and presented to Dean Prior. Here he remained till 1648, when he was ejected, and a certain John Syms, a Puritan of some fame and worth, established in his place. Herrick went to London and there published his two books of verse, _Hesperides_ and _Noble Numbers_. In 1662 he was sent back to his living, and there spent the remainder of his days. He died and was buried in the churchyard of Dean Prior in 1674.

There is not much in this little parish at the present day to remind one of Herrick. The vicarage is probably an enlargement of the poet’s house. The newer part stands on a somewhat higher level than the old, and this last is probably the “cell,” whose humble comforts Herrick extols in one of his most true and charming pieces. The present vicar, Mr. Perry-Keene, who is himself something of a poet, and knows and loves well his great predecessor, showed me what he believes to be Herrick’s “byn.”

Just opposite the Vicarage stands the Church, which Mr. Perry-Keene tells me has been altered a great deal. It now contains a monument to Herrick erected in 1857 by a remote kinsman, Mr. William Perry Herrick.

Opposite this recent memorial, in the south aisle, stands a far more interesting monument. It is a brass with three figures—husband, wife, and son—but no name or inscription which might give a clue to the name is legible. Underneath it, however, run the following verses:—

No trust to metals nor to marbles, when These have their fate and wear away as men. Times, Titles, Trophies may be lost and spent, But virtue rears the eternal monument.

What more than these can Tombs or Tomb-stones pay? But here’s the sunset of a tedious day. These two asleep are: I’ll but be undrest, And so to Bed, Pray wish us all good rest.

This beautiful and interesting epitaph is printed by Mr. Grosart in his fine edition of Herrick, as being indisputably the work of the poet. Mr. Grosart also states positively that the figures on the monument are those of Sir Edward and Lady Giles, of whom the former died at Dean Court in 1637. Mr. Grosart speaks on these points with such certainty that I was surprised to find that the external evidence for both statements is absolutely nil. As a matter of fact, the monument itself hardly appears to belong to Herrick’s time. Mr. Perry-Keene’s opinion is (and I confess that my own very slight knowledge of such subjects would have led me to the same conclusion) that the figures are Elizabethan rather than Caroline. It seems, therefore, hardly safe to print the inscription as being _undoubtedly_ Herrick’s work. At the same time I do believe that the lines are Herrick’s. There is a very distinct Herrickian ring about them, particularly about the last three, which to my mind is almost unmistakeable. Observe the phrase “I’ll but be undrest.” It borders on the grotesque; in almost any other poet’s hand it would have been grotesque. In his hand it acquires a certain beautiful quaintness, becomes what Herrick himself calls a “phrase of the royal blood.” I commend this charming epitaph, therefore, to the reader as the one existing memorial which connects Dean Prior with Herrick, though I think he should at the same time be cautioned, that the ascription of the lines to the poet is based solely on internal evidence.

About a mile from the Church stands Dean Court, now a farm-house, in Herrick’s time a manor house, and occupied during his incumbency by the above-mentioned Sir Edward Giles, and afterwards by the Yardes. To-day it looks what it is, and unless there has been considerable alteration and demolition, it seems a poor house for such important families.

A charming village is Dean Prior, as indeed are all the villages on the outskirts of Dartmoor. No wonder that essayists on, and editors of, Herrick have traced his freshness and quaintness to the simplicity of a West Country parish, and that the perfume of flowers which pervades his pages almost _ad nauseam_ seems to his readers to be inspired by the soft and luxurious air of Devonshire. In a word, Herrick’s _Hesperides_ has seemed to be the work of a Devonshire man drawing his inspiration from Devonshire, as Barnes from Dorset or Burns from Ayrshire.

I am bound, however, to say that I believe this to be true only with considerable limitations. Generally speaking, I hold that while the _Noble Numbers_ do undoubtedly belong to the Dean Prior period, the same cannot be said with equal certainty of the _Hesperides_, or at least of that part of the _Hesperides_ which has given Herrick his immortality. The book contains, no doubt, several pieces, perhaps some sixty in all, which are shewn by internal evidence to have been written later than 1628, but of these, few, if any, are of special merit. The real Apples of the Golden Garden are practically undated.

Now we must remember that not only was Herrick thirty-eight when he went to Devonshire, an age at which many poets have produced their best work, but that he hated, or, to use his own oft-repeated expression, “loathed” Devonshire. This hatred is expressed in numerous passages. The following, written at the time of his ejection from the living, may serve as a specimen:—

First let us dwell in widest seas, Next with severest savages, Last let us make our best abode Where human foot as yet ne’er trod. Search worlds of ice and rather there Live than in loathèd Devonshire.

“No bird,” says Plato, “sings when it is cold or hungry or suffering any pain,” and it is a natural inference from passages like this of Herrick’s that his native genius suffered rather than gained from his sojourn at Dean Prior. But on this point he has left us his own testimony in two important passages. The first runs thus:—

Before I went In banishment Into the loathèd West, I could rehearse A lyric verse, And speak it with the best.

The second is—

More discontents I never had Since I was born than here, Where I have been and still am sad, In this dull Devonshire. Yet justly too I must confess I ne’er invented such Ennobled numbers for the press As where I loathed so much.

At first sight these two passages seem contradictory, but the contradiction vanishes when we remember that Herrick’s book of sacred poems is called _Noble Numbers_. To these and these only, as it seems to me, the “ennobled numbers” of the second passage refers, and the plain meaning of these lines is that Herrick, as vicar of Dean Prior, felt his old powers of song-making gone, and gave his attention mainly to sacred poetry.

To the same conclusion point some lines in the “Farewell to Poetry,” written probably when he took orders:—

I my desires screw from thee, and direct Them and my thoughts to that sublime respect And conscience unto priesthood.

But he adds:—

When my diviner muse Shall want a handmaid as she oft will use, Be ready then for me to wait upon her, Though as a servant, yet a maid of honour.

I do not of course suggest that all this is to be taken quite literally, or that we are to affirm positively that all Herrick’s best lyrics date from an earlier period; but that it is generally true I see no reason to doubt, more especially as in the many hundred lyrics which

Sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and flowers, Of April, May and June, and July flowers,

there is, so far as I can see, little or no trace of Devonshire.

The great poets—whom Herrick looked on as his masters—Catullus and Horace, understood the magic of a name, and were fond of grouping their best thoughts round the names of the particular spots which they knew. Anyone who reads Catullus’s lines on Sirmio, or Horace’s on Tivoli, anyone, we may add, who knows Burns, or Wordsworth, or Scott, will feel the significance of the fact that Herrick only once mentions by name any place in Devonshire. It is not that he dislikes localising, for he lingers affectionately enough over the names of

Richmond, Kingston, and of Hampton Court.

And on the one occasion, when a Devonshire scene is described by name, it is in the following lines on “Dean, a rude river in Devon, by which he sometimes dwelt”:—

Dean Bourn, farewell! I never look to see Dean, or thy watry incivility.

The reader of Herrick will remember that he goes on to say that the “currish, churlish” people of Dean are as rocky as their river. Herrick could hardly be expected to admire Dartmoor itself. The love of moor and mountain hardly existed in his time; but the glen of Dean Bourne is a different thing, and surely nothing but invincible prejudice can have made Herrick describe it in such “currish and churlish” terms.

Herrick is _par excellence_ the poet of flowers and fruits. Cherries, cowslips, daffodils, and primroses are inseparably connected with his verse. That the rich luxuriance of Dean Prior must have been a source of continual pleasure to him we cannot doubt. Yet even in this department of nature one misses local touches. Where are the high hedgerows, the ferns, and the fox-gloves? and where are the apple orchards of Devon?

Herrick was very fond of observing village festivities and studying folk-lore, and it is generally assumed that the poems which deal with these subjects were written in Devonshire and based on Devonshire observations. This may be so, though I do not know of any evidence in favour of it. On the other hand there is one small circumstance which seems to me significant. In Herrick’s descriptions of barley-breaks, harvest homes, and Christmas festivities, there is much mention of beer but none of cider. Cider making had its poetry for Keats:—

Or by a cider-press with patient look Thou watchest the last oozings hour by hour.

It seems strange that it should never be mentioned by the poet of cider-land.

One of Herrick’s parishioners stands out pleasantly in the pages of _Hesperides_—“my Prue,” otherwise Prudence Baldwin, the house-keeper, who apparently followed him to London at his ejection and returned with him in 1662. It is generally assumed that the persons attacked in the epigrams were parishioners. If so, no wonder they were churlish. It does not appear that many of the fifty or sixty persons addressed in what Mr. Grosart calls “verse-celebrations,” were West-Country people, and on the whole there is as little of local life as of local scenery in the _Hesperides_.

The critics, then, seem to me perverse, who, in spite of Herrick’s assurances, declare that he only pretended to dislike Dean Prior. They rely, presumably, on his keen eye for country beauties. Now I venture to doubt whether Herrick, as we see him in the _Hesperides_, is one of the real nature-poets. He knows and loves certain aspects of nature, more particularly fruits and flowers, bright colours and sweet smells. Even amongst these he is often happiest when he can trace some likeness to human beauty. The famous “Cherries ripe” grew on Julia’s lips, not in an orchard. Above all poets he understands the picturesqueness of dress, and when after a catalogue of Julia’s silks and laces in their “wild civility” he confesses that he dotes less on nature than on art, he probably speaks the truth. It is the same with country life; he has none of the deep respect for the peasant’s healthy and thrifty life, which lies at the bottom of Virgil and Horace and Wordsworth’s work. He has plenty of interest in their May-days and other merry-making, but little, I think, in their life as a whole. And the few praises of country life to be found in the _Hesperides_ do not seem to me to ring very true.

If, then, I read Herrick’s life at Dean Prior aright, he is not the genial parson, moving light-heartedly among the people, drinking in the soft air of Devonshire and pouring it out in spontaneous song, passing from his sermon to the Maypole, blending Paganism with Christianity and ribaldry with religion, without sense of harm or incongruity—writing, in fact, the _Hesperides_ on weekdays and the _Noble Numbers_ on Sundays. Rather it was by the Cam and the Thames that he imbibed his inspiration, made love to his half-imaginary mistresses, and learnt—

How roses first grew red and lilies white.

In Devonshire he is a changed man, sobered partly by isolation and partly by clerical responsibility. He has, no doubt, his light-hearted and even wanton moods, and often writes poetry in the old vein; but he feels that the old lyrical effusiveness is going or gone, and finds his main occupation in writing sacred poetry.

At any rate he did not write gross or indecent verse during this period. This all too plentiful element of the _Hesperides_ need not be fathered on Dean Prior. He himself calls it—

Unbaptised rhymes Writ in my wild, unhallowed times.

There is surely no reason why these words should not be taken in their literal sense, which is that they were written in Herrick’s youth and before he took orders, and the pilgrim to Dean Prior need not harrow his imagination with the revolting picture of this elderly bachelor sitting in the little vicarage spinning out these miserable and often pointless indecencies. No doubt it may be asked why, if these were poems of Herrick’s youth, condemned by his better judgment, he published them in 1648. Two answers may be given to this question, though I do not say that either of them is an excuse. In the first place he had been turned out of his living and probably wanted money. In the second place, the fact that he describes himself on the title page as Robert Herrick, Esq., seems to indicate that he considered his clerical profession had gone with his incumbency, and if so, he very probably had deluded himself into the idea that clerical responsibility had gone also.

I will devote the rest of my allotted space to a few remarks on that part of Herrick’s work which undoubtedly belongs to the Dean Prior period. I mean the “pious pieces,” or _Noble Numbers_. Now it is not to be denied that there is a great deal of poor stuff in the _Noble Numbers_. Nobody is likely to care much for the metrical creeds, or the tawdry and sensuous poems on the Nativity or Passion. Still the little book contains some pieces which English literature could ill spare. There is, for instance, the strange and, indeed, startling “litany to the Holy Spirit.” This hymn is actually included in one at least of our popular hymn-books, and I have sometimes heard parts of it sung in a village church. I wonder what the congregation would have thought of these two stanzas, which, needless to say, are not to be found in the hymn-book version:—

When the artless doctor sees No one hope, but in his fees And his skill runs on the lees, Sweet Spirit, comfort me.

When his Potion and his Pill Has or none or little skill, Meet for nothing but to kill, Sweet Spirit, comfort me.

Probably they would be greatly shocked, and indeed everyone must admit that the stanzas show a certain strange devilry mixing itself with Herrick’s most reverent thoughts. At the same time, I do not think there is any real or intentional irreverence in them. There is one stanza in the “Litany” which has, I think, a personal interest:—

When the house doth sigh and weep, And the world is drowned in sleep, Yet mine eyes the watch do keep, Sweet Spirit, comfort me.

Now compare this with the following:—

Night hath no wings to him that cannot sleep, And time seems then not for to flie but creep. . . . . . . Just so it is with me who listening pray The winds to blow the tedious night away.

And again—

Through all the night Thou dost me fright, And holdst mine eyes from sleeping.

I infer from these that Herrick suffered much from sleeplessness, and if so, may we not with considerable probability trace the genesis of this celebrated litany to some sleepless nights in the little vicarage of Dean Prior?

Again it is to the _Noble Numbers_ that we owe the beautiful “Lord, Thou hast given me a cell.” Familiar as this poem is, it is only a just tribute to Dean Prior that these sweet praises of its simple plenty should be set down here.

A THANKSGIVING TO GOD FOR HIS HOUSE.

Lord, Thou hast given me a cell Wherein to dwell; A little house, whose humble roof Is weather-proof; Under the sparres of which I lie Both soft and drie; Where Thou my chamber for to ward Has set a guard Of harmless thoughts, to watch and keep Me while I sleep. Low is my porch, as is my Fate, Both void of state; And yet the threshold of my doore Is worn by th’ poore, Who thither come, and freely get Good words or meat. Like as my Parlour, so my hall And Kitchen’s small: A little Buttery, and therein A little Byn Which keeps my little Loafe of Bread Unchipt, unflead: Some little sticks of Thorne or Briar Making a fire, Close by whose living fire I sit And glow like it. Lord, I confess too, when I dine, The Pulse is Thine, And all those other bits, that bee There plac’d by Thee; The Worts, the Purslaine, and the Messe Of Water-cresse, Which of Thy kindness Thou hast sent; And my content Makes those, and my beloved Beet To be more sweet. ’Tis thou that crownst my glittering Hearth With guiltlesse mirth; And giv’st me Wassaile Bowles to drink, Spic’d to the brink. Lord,’tis Thy plenty-dropping Hand That soiles my land; And giv’st me, for my Bushell sowne, Twice ten for one: Thou mak’st my teaming Hen to lay Her egg each day: Besides my healthful Ewes to beare Me twins each year. The while the conduits of my kine Run creame (for Wine). All these, and better Thou doest send Me, to this end, That I should render, for my part, A thankful heart, Which, fired with incense, I resigne, As wholly Thine; But the acceptance, that must be, My Christ to Thee.

And now let me ask the reader to note the following triplet, which occurs in a Christmas Anthem in _Noble Numbers_:—

We see Him come and know Him ours, Who with His sunshine and His showers Turns all the patient earth to flowers.