Hesperides Author:Robert Herrick Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION. Rorf.rt Herrick — whose name was written also Hearicke, Heyricke, Eyrick, and Erick—belonged to a Leicestershire family, out of which came in af... more »ter years the Abigail Erick, who was mother to Jonathan Swift. The poet's father, Nicholas Herrick, was a goldsmith in Cheapside, who in 1582 married a Julian Stone and had seven children, of whom Robert, the youngest, was baptized on the 24th of August, 1591. In November, 1592, Nicholas Herrick, being sick in body, made his will, and within a day afterwards fell or threw himself from a window of his house in Cheapside and was killed. Dr. Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol, father of John Fletcher the poet, claimed, as High Almoner, the goods left by the dead man. He claimed them ns goods aijd chattels of a suicide, but accepted upon arbitration an aviard af 2?c/. In' tile folloy/ing year a posthumous child was born1 to IVIts. Herrick.' Bt; was named William, after the uncle who.acted.as guardian to'the children. The father's possessions reatized'foi' this -family about £S,ooo . '"'.,. ;'-.,. Robert Herrick had been named after the'eldestflf-his uncles, an ironmonger, who was three times tyyytir of F.cicester, lived to keep his golden wedding-day, and died when his nephew and godson was twenty-seven years old. The poet had rich relatives, and many of them. His grandmother, when he wac .twenty years old, died at the age of ninety-seven, and it is said on her tomb that " she did see, before her departure, of her children and her children's children, to the number of 142." Herrick had on his mother's side an Aunt Anne, married to Sir Stephen Soame, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1598. This brings the name of Soame into his poems. After an education of which nothing is known but that it laid foundations for a keen enjoyment...« less