the earlier version is read as a whole that Herrick's taste in omitting is vindicated. Each stanza is good in itself, but in the MSS. the poem drags from excessive length, and the reduction of its twenty-three stanzas to sixteen greatly improves it.
- 286 ##
286. Ever full of pensive fear. Ovid, Heroid. i. 12: Res est solliciti plena timoris amor.
- 287 ##
287. Reverence to riches. Perhaps from Tacit. Ann. ii. 33: Neque in familia et argento quæque ad usum parantur nimium aliquid aut modicum, nisi ex fortuna possidentis.
- 288 ##
288. Who forms a godhead. From Martial, VIII. xxiv. 5:—
Qui fingit sacros auro vel marmore vultus
Non facit ille deos: qui rogat, ille facit.
- 290 ##
290. The eyes be first that conquered are. From Tacitus, Germ. 43: Primi in omnibus proeliis oculi vincuntur.
- 293 ##
293. Oberon's Feast. For a note on Herrick's Fairy Poems and on the Description of the King and Queene of the Fayries (1635), in which part of this poem was first printed, see Appendix. Add. MS. 22, 603, at the British Museum, and Ashmole MS. 38, at the Bodleian, contain early versions of the poem substantially agreeing. I transcribe the Museum copy:—
"A little mushroom table spread
After the dance, they set on bread,
A yellow corn of hecky wheat
With some small sandy grit to eat
