Browning's The Ring and the Book is Italian;Tennyson wandered to the land of myth for the Idylls of the King, and Matthew Arnold's Soh-rab and Rustum--a narrative poem second in dignity to none produced in the nineteenth cen-tury--is a Persian story. But Herrick's "golden apples" sprang from the soil in his own day, and reddened in the mist and sunshine of his native island.
Even the fairy poems, which must be classed by themselves, are not wanting in local flavor.
Herrick's fairy world is an immeasurable dis-tance from that of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Puck and Titania are of finer breath than Herrick's little folk, who may be said to have Devonshire manners and to live in a minia-ture England of their own. Like the magician who summons them from nowhere, they are fond of color and perfume and substantial feasts, and indulge in heavy draughts--from the cups of morning-glories. In the tiny sphere they in-habit everything is marvelously adapted to their requirement; nothing is out of proportion or out of perspective. The elves are a strictly religious people in their winsome way, "part pagan, part papistical;" they have their pardons and indul-gences, their psalters and chapels, and An apple's-core is hung up dried, With rattling kernels, which is rung To call to Morn and Even-song;and very conveniently, Hard by, I' th' shell of half a nut, The Holy-water there is put.