Almost forgotten in the eighteenth century, and in the nineteenth century alternately applauded for his poetry's lyricism and condemned for its "obscenities," Robert Herrick is, in the latter half of the twentieth century, finally becoming recognized as one of the most accomplished nondramatic poets of his age. Long dismissed as merely a "minor poet" and, as a consequence, neglected or underestimated by scholars and critics, the achievement represented by his only book, the collection of poems entitled Hesperides: Or, The Works Both Humane & Divine (1648), is gradually coming to be more fully appreciated. While some of his individual poems--"To the Virgins to make much of Time," "Upon Julia's Clothes," and "Corinna's going a Maying," for example--are among the most popular of all time, recent examinations of his Hesperides as a whole have begun to reveal a Herrick whose artistry in the arrangement of his volume approximates the artistry...