Note 500 — Chapter XXII

One of these poems begins, “Amongst the myrtles as I walked, Love and my sighs thus intertalked.” Herrick wants four good lines which are in Carew; and as they are rather more likely to have been interpolated than left out, this leads to a sort of inference that he was the original; there are also some other petty improvements. The second poem is that beginning, “Ask me why I send you here, This firstling of the infant year.” Herrick gives the second line strangely, “This sweet infanta of the year,” which is little else than nonsense; and all the other variances are for the worse. I must leave it in doubt, whether he borrowed, and disfigured a little, or was himself improved upon. I must own that he has a trick of spoiling what he takes. Suckling has an incomparable image, on a lady dancing.