In one of his many epigrams, poet Robert Herrick (1591-1674) wrote, "Let others to the Printing Presse Run fast, / Since after death comes glory, Ile not haste." That glory was two centuries in coming. Not until the 1960s was Herrick shown to be far more than a "minor" poet and member of Ben Jonson's "Tribe of Ben." Recent criticism illuminates him as an extraordinary and original talent: he is among the most self-reflexive of the English poets; he arranges his collected works, Hesperides, according to a subtle and complex design; and he is an artist with a deep and well-formed vision of life and art. Herrick's over 1,400 poems, including such familiar anthology favorites as "The Night Piece, to Julia" and the song that begins "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," today receive significant scholarly attention; and the complex nature of his talent, craftsmanship, and lyricism has spawned an outpouring of criticism.
This timely revision of Roger B. Rollin's now classic 1966 study synthesizes, evaluates, and benefits from this Herrick "renaissance," and it remains the only full-scale introduction to the poet. Framed by a new preface and the most up-to-date bibliography available, Rollin's Revised Edition maintains its balanced, traditional approach, offering fresh close readings of works from Herrick's entire canon; careful placement of the poet in his seventeenth-century context; and chapters devoted to each of Herrick's main concerns: transiency, the good life, love, religion, poetry, and immortality. Rollin sets the stage for his interpretations with a look at the critical controversies surrounding Hesperides. His readings of that collection reassert Herrick's place beside Milton and Marvell in the British pastoral tradition, and reintroduce him as an eminent devotional poet with sophisticated conceptions of God, humanity, life, and death.