Jesse Sharpe PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

Herrick’s Church of Earthly Delights 190
Of Beeves for sacrifice;
Which rosted, we the steam
Must sacrifice to them:
Who though they do not eat,
Yet love the smell of meat. 58
However this is not the last time that Herrick discusses meat and its scent as
sacrifice. In the epigram ‘Bad Princes pill their People’ (H-826), he inverts concept so that
he might show how society and religion out of their natural order are an abomination.
Where true deities enjoy the immaterial aspects of the sacrifice and leave the physical to
humanity to enjoy, in ‘Bad Princes’, the reader sees religion and politics united in the use
of sacrificed meat. If good gods give the meat to the people, then gods, and in Herrick’s
world this includes kings, who misuse their power keep the meat for themselves and only
give the people the ‘smoak’.
LIke those infernall Deities which eate
The best of all the sacrificed meate;
And leave their servants, but the smoak and sweat:
So many Kings, and Primates too there are,
Who claim the Fat, and Fleshie for their share,
And leave their Subjects but the starved ware.
That Herrick equates the gods and the king can be seen in the dedicatory poem ‘To
the Most Illustrious, and Most Hopefull Prince, Charles, Prince of Wales’; however, what
58 ‘The smell of the Sacrifice’ (H-736).