Alas! thou hast not known that shower
That mars a flower,

Nor felt the unkind
Breath of a blasting wind,
Nor are ye worn with years;
Or warped, as we,

Who think it strange to see

Such pretty flowers, like to orphans young,
To speak by tears before ye have a tongue.

If any further instance is needed we may give the fist of the verses "To Blossoms :"

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,

Why do ye fall so fast?

Your date is not so past,

But you may stay here yet awhile,

To blush and gently smile,

And go at last.

In the quotations already made we see another of Herrick's excellences, his felicitous choice of metre, and his skill in the use of it. Here is a verse upon love:

Love, I have broke

Thy yoke;

The neck is free;
But when I'm next

Love-vexed,

Then shackle me;

and here another to appease the offended deity.

Love, I recant,

And pardon crave,
That lately I offended,

But 'twas

Alas!

To make a brave,

But no disdain intended.

There are many others which remind us of Tennyson's lines

Hard, hard, hard is it only not to tumble

So fantastical is the dainty metre.

But there is one metre in which Herrick seems more at home than any other, one that no amount of rough usage suffices to degrade, the ordinary rhymed ballad-metre. Several of his most beautiful poems are in this measure. "Gather ye rosebuds " has been quoted already, but his lines to Anthea are more beautiful still :

Bid me to live, and I will live

Thy Protestant to be;
Or bid me love, and I will give
A loving heart to thee.

A heart as soft, a heart as kind,

A heart as sound and free,

As in the whole world thou canst find,
That heart I'll give to thee.

It has been remarked by Mr. Gosse that Herrick "is alive as no poet before or since to the picturesqueness of dress," and the statement though sweeping is correct. He takes note of each fold in Julia's gown, he writes lines upon the ribbon round her waist, he describes the rustling of her walk, and is in fine as quick to perceive the beauty that lies in dress as to comprehend the splendour of a full-blown rose.

Music too did not go without appreciation from him. It would have been difficult to imagine Herrick dull to the influence of music although some of our poets have been credited with inability to distinguish one tune from another. But on the other hand are many musical poets-Milton, Gray, Browning, and a host of others. Speaking of Milton reminds us that Herrick addresses one of his poems to Harry Lawes, who was the subject of one of Milton's sonnets. Lawes wrote the music to "Comus," and received from the poet the praise that he

first taught our English music how iɔ span Words with just note and accent, not so scan

With Midas' ears, committing short and long.

Both Herrick and Milton seem to have been on familiar terms with the musician, as both address him in their verse as Harry. Some of Herrick's songs were set to music by him, and on his death Herrick wrote:

Some have thee called Amphion, some of us
Named thee Terpander, or sweet Orpheus ;
Some this, some that; but all in this agree
Music had both her birth and death in thee.

The difference between Milton's praise and Herrick's is very marked. The greater poet's more considered eulogy was well deserved and discriminately bestowed; Herrick's is spoilt by its extravagance.

Thus far we have spoken almost entirely of the first part of Herrick's book-the Hesperides proper: the second division has far less value than the first. It occupies a comparatively small part of the volume, there being 79 pages of Noble Numbers, and 398 of Hesperides in the original edition. The verses "To keep a true Lent" show what use he made of his poetry among his flock, and how potent a weapon it probably became. The vigour of the expression and the

skill of the workmanship make the poem worthy of quotation. The poet asks what is a fast:

Is it to quit the dish

Of flesh, yet still
To fill

The platter high with fish?

No; 'tis a fast to dole

Thy sheaf of wheat,
And meat,

Unto the hungry soul.

It is to fast from strife,
From old debate

And hate

To circumcise thy life.

To show a heart grief-rent;

To starve thy sin,

Not bin;

And that's to keep thy Lent.

Perhaps the best known of his serious poems is his "Litany to the Holy Spirit," which contains many fine stanzas, and some, on the other hand, that chiefly illustrate his faults:

But amid such

and out of place :

When the passing-bell doth toll,

And the furies in a shoal

Come to fright a parting soul,

Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the tempter me pursueth

With the sins of all my youth,

And half damns me with untruth,

Sweet Spirit, comfort me !

splendid verses occur two which are irrelevant

When the artless doctor sees
No one hope, but of his fees,
And his skill runs on the lees,

Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
When his potion and his pill,
His or none or little skill,
Meet for nothing but to kill,

Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

This may be a faithful reflection of Herrick's opinion of the medical resources of Dean Prior, but the verses have no business to be in the same poem as the two first quoted.

Similar incongruities are to be found in the Hesperides, and a quaintness that is lacking in beauty, a straining of a simple image

by no means rare. There is a couplet spoilt by one of these extravagant conceits, in which one of his mistresses is described as weeping by the bank of a river, and making it "deeper by a tear."

His verses "How Violets came Blue" give a further instance of this: they are quite below the level of his good work. The same is true in some degree of the epigrams already referred to, almost all of which refer to some unpleasant physical peculiarity or deformity in the poet's victim. They are written in rhymed couplets, and were in all likelihood intended to lash some rustic offenders in his own parish. It is probable that they were successful in this purpose, but it is very startling to come upon one of them between two beautiful lyrics breathing of Love and Roses and sweet country scents. Whoever is responsible for the arrangement, most lovers of Herrick would have preferred, we think, that most of the epigrams so plentifully sprinkled among the Golden Apples from the West had remained in MS. or had been destroyed.

But faults such as these must not weigh seriously against the sterling merits of Herrick's poetry: it would be wonderful indeed to find so large a collection of short poems without blemishes and redundancies. Let us read our Herrick and enjoy him, agreeing that he is one of the most delightful of lyrists, and if the epigrams do not suit our taste, they can be passed over.

H. M. SANDERS.

HOW INDIA HAS SUFFERED IN THE RACE FOR WEALTH.

T is to be hoped that Mr. Gossip's article in the March number of the Fortnightly Review has attracted the attention of English people who have money invested in the United States, and that it has been accepted by them as a timely warning. Mr. Gossip, relying upon the well-known fact that we are a nation of shopkeepers, has availed himself of the opportunity to give an extra twist to the lion's tail, on the supposition that "few well-informed Americans believe in the likelihood of war, because England's investments in the United States amount to an enormous sum, and the United States hold too many hostages to fortune in the shape of British capital invested in various commercial undertakings-breweries, American life insurance offices, railway and other securities-to permit war. The commercial interests involved are too vast." Just so. But nevertheless, the American people are groaning under the burden imposed by these foreign commercial interests, and India has been starved owing to English money having been diverted to the United States, where Protection has appealed to the cupidity of capitalists in Great Britain. Adverting to this fact in a letter which I addressed last year to the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces, on the subject of developing canal irrigation in India by means of private enterprise, I stated that even South America finds no difficulty in commanding the use of English money for the development of private industries, although the Archangel Gabriel himself would not wring a farthing from the English public for industries of a similar description in India unless they were backed by a Government guarantee.

This shows the difference between Free Trade and Protection, as Protection is the bait which attracts English capitalists to American investments. Human nature is weak, and Englishmen, who worship Free Trade principles at home for the development of their own business, are not above taking advantage of Protection in foreign countries to feather their nests. We therefore see English