Never was there so pretty a table of contents! When you open his book
the breath of the English rural year fans your cheek; the pages seem to
exhale wildwood and meadow smells, as if sprigs of tansy and lavender
had been shut up in the volume and forgotten. One has a sense of
hawthorn hedges and wide-spreading oaks, of open lead-set lattices half
hidden with honeysuckle; and distant voices of the haymakers, returning
home in the rosy afterglow, fall dreamily on one's ear, as sounds should
fall when fancy listens. There is no English poet so thoroughly English
as Herrick. He painted the country life of his own time as no other has
painted it at any time.
It is to be remarked that the majority of English poets regarded as
national have sought their chief inspiration in almost every land and
period excepting their own. Shakespeare went to Italy, Denmark, Greece,
Egypt, and to many a hitherto unfooted region of the imagination, for
plot and character. It was not Whitehall Garden, but the Garden of Eden
and the celestial spaces, that lured Milton.
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