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NOTES

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and again

'Quam longa una dies, aetas tam longa rosarum. which in turn reminds us of

'Et Rose, elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses
L'espace d'un matin.'

Compare this number with XVII., 'Love in thy youth, fair maid, be wise .' and the sonnets of Shakespeare and Daniel that follow (XXI.-XXIV.), where the same note is sounded with deeper thought and feeling.

XVI

Page 15-'Shun delays, they breed remorse.' Southwell added four stanzas to the three here given: they convey the same advice in a variety of forms, and conclude

'Happy man, that soon doth knock
Babel's babes against the rock!'

XX

Page 18-'Come, my Celia, let us prove.' Catullus'

'Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus.'

Imitated from

For auother rendering of the same see the first song in Campion and Rosseter's first Book of Airs, the verses being undoubtedly Campion's :

'My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love;

And though the sager sort our deeds reprove,

Let us not weigh them: heaven's great lamps do dive
Into the west, and straight again revive:

But soon as once is set our little light,

Then must we sleep in ever-during night.

If all would lead their lives in love like me,

Then bloody swords and armour should not be ;
No drum or trumpet peaceful sleeps should move,
Unless alarm came from the camp of Love:
But fools do live, and waste their little light,
And seek with pain their ever-during night.
When timely death my life and fortune ends,
Let not my heart be vext with mourning friends;
But let all lovers, rich in triumph, come
And with sweet pastimes grace my happy tomb:
And, Lesbia, close thou up my little light,
And crown with love my ever-during night.'

XXVII

Page 23-'The ousel-cock, so black of hue': line 6, The plainSong cuckoo gray: In 'plain-song' the descant rested with the will of the singer; in ' prick-song,' on the other hand, the harmony,

being more elaborate, was pricked or written down. Thus the rich and involved music of the nightingale is often called 'pricksong.' E.g.:

'What bird so sings, yet so does wail?

O, 'tis the ravish'd nightingale.

Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu! she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.
Brave prick-song!...'

XXVIII

Lyly.

Page 23-Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king. Nashe's Summer's Last Will and Testament, from which this is taken, was acted in the autumn of 1593, while London was being devastated by the plague. It is pathetic to contrast these gay spring lines with numbers CCLXXVII. and CCLXXVIII., extracts from the same play.

'Autumn hath all the summer's fruitful treasure;
Gone is our sport, fled is our Croydon's pleasure!
Short days, sharp days, long nights come on apace:

Ah, who shall hide us from the winter's face?

Cold doth increase, the sickness will not cease,

And here we lie, God knows, with little ease.

From winter, plague, and pestilence, good Lord deliver us!'

XXXI

Page 25-This rapturous little catch we owe to Mr. A. H. Bullen, who disinterred it from the collection of early MS. music-books preserved in the library of Christ Church, Oxford. In the MS. the lines are subscribed 'Mr. Gyles.' Nathaniel Giles was a chorister at Magdalen, and successively organist and master of the choristers at St. George's, Windsor, and master of the Children of the Chapel Royal. He died January 24th, 1633, and was buried at Windsor.

XXXII

Page 25-From Thomas Morley's Madrigals to Four Voices, 1600.

·

XXXIV

Page 27, line 1-The Golden Pomp is come is Ovid's 'Aurea pompa venit,' and Now reigns the rose Martial's 'nunc regnat rosa. 'My retorted hairs' seems to be Martial again, vi. 39, 6, ' retorto crine Maurus.' My uncontrolled brow' may be 'soluta, libera, explicita frons.' But Herrick used his classics so freely that it would be a mistake to seek to identify all that looks like direct translation.

XXXVI

Page 30-'Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright' is from The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, 1632-33.

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But it is hard now to dissociate it from its exquisite context in the Compleat Angler:

Piscator. And now, scholar, my direction for fly-fishing is ended with this shower, for it has done raining; and now look about you, and see how pleasantly that meadow looks; nay, and the earth smells as sweetly too. Come, let me tell you what holy Mr. Herbert says of such days and flowers as these; and then we will thank God that we enjoy them, and walk to the river and sit down quietly and try to catch the other brace of trouts. . . .'

Here follow the verses.

Venator. I thank you, good master, for your good direction for fly-fishing, and for the sweet enjoyment of the pleasant day, which is so far spent without offence to God or man: and I thank you for the sweet close of your discourse with Mr. Herbert's verses, who, I have heard, loved angling; and I do the rather believe it, because he had a spirit suitable to anglers, and to those primitive Christians that you love and have so much commended.'

Compare also Walton's Life of Herbert:-'The Sunday before his death he rose suddenly from his bed or couch, called for one of his instruments, took it into his hand, and said

'My God, my God,

My musick shall find Thee
And every string

Shall have his attribute to sing';

and having tuned it, he played and sung:

Thus he sang on

'The Sundaies of man's life

Thredded together on Time's string,
Make bracelets to adorn the wife

Of the eternall glorious King:

On Sunday, Heaven's dore stands ope,
Blessings are plentiful and rife,

More plentiful then hope.'

earth such hymns and anthems as the angels and he and Mr. Farrar [Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding] now sing in heaven.'

XXXIX

Page 33-In the merry month of May.' This song of Breton's first appeared, under the title of 'The ploughman's Song,' in The Honourable Entertainment given to the Queen's Majesty at Elvetham in Hampshire, by the Right Honourable the Earl of Hertford; printed in 1591. It was set to music in Michael Este's Madrigals, 1604, and again in Henry Youll's Canzonets, 1608; and is included in England's Helicon.

XLVI

Page 38-'Hark, all you ladies that do sleep!' From Campion and Rosseter's A Book of Airs, 1601.

XLVIII, XLIX

Pages 40, 41-'Come live with me and be my love.' Marlowe's song (minus the fourth and sixth verses and without the author's name) was first published in The Passionate Pilgrim, 1599, followed by the first verse of the 'Reply.' The next year it was printed complete, with Marlowe's name attached, in England's Helicon.

The 'Reply' in England's Helicon is signed 'Ignoto'; and the evidence that Raleigh wrote it is confined to a famous passage in the Compleat Angler: As I left this place, and entered into the next field, a second pleasure entertained me. 'Twas a handsome milkmaid, that had not yet attained so much age and wisdom as to load her mind with any fears of many things that will never be, as too many men too often do: but she cast away all care, and sung like a nightingale: her voice was good, and the ditty fitted for it: it was that smooth song which was made by Kit Marlowe, now at least fifty years ago: and the milkmaid's mother sung an answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days.'

In the second edition of the Angler Walton inserted-probably from a broad-sheet-an extra penultimate stanza in both Song and Reply:

Marlowe.-'Thy silver dishes for thy meat,

As precious as the gods do eat,

Shall on an ivory table be

Prepared each day for thee and me.'

Raleigh.-'What should we talk of dainties, then,—
Of better meat than's fit for men?
These are but vain: that's only good

Which God hath blest, and sent for food.'

We may conclude with a modest conjecture of the late Professor Henry Morley's. 'Sharing,' he says, 'the spell upon the mind that is in every familiar word of this old song, I feel like a dunce when suggesting that there may be two original misprints in it, of "cup" for "cap," and of "fair-lined" for "fur-lined."'-English Writers, vol. x. p. 135, note.

LII

Page 44-'What bird so sings, yet so does wail.' For 'pricksong' see note on No. XXVII.

LIII

Page 44-This day Dame Nature seem'd in love': Reliquiæ Wottoniane. Quoted in Walton's Angler: 'And I do easily believe, that peace and patience and a calm content did cohabit in the cheerful heart of Sir Henry Wotton; because I know that when he was beyond seventy years of age, he made this description of a part of the present pleasure that possessed him,

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as he sat quietly, in a summer's evening, on a bank a-fishing. It is a description of the spring; which because it glided as soft and sweetly from his pen, as that river does at this time, by which it was then made, I shall repeat unto you.'

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LVII

Page 48-'Quivering fears, heart-tearing cares': Rel. Wotton. with the signature 'Ignoto.' Also described in Walton's Angler as a copy printed among some of Sir Henry Wotton's, and doubtless made either by him or by a lover of angling.' It has been claimed (vide note on No. v.) for Sir Walter Raleigh, but on no evidence.

LIX

Page 53-'The damask meadows and the crawling streams.' From A Country Life: To his brother, Mr. Tho. Herrick.' -Hesperides, 106. The poem is usually attributed to Bishop Corbet (1582-1635), but every line seems to claim Herrick for its author.

It is based on Horace, Ep. i. 10, and is full of classical reminiscences. E.g.,With holy meal and crackling salt' is Horace's 'farre pio et saliente mica."

The Thomas Herrick, to whom it is dedicated, was an elder brother of the poet's, born May 7, 1588, and apprenticed by his uncle, Sir William Herrick, to a London merchant, Mr. Massam. In 1610, however, Thomas quitted London and returned to the country, where he cultivated a small farm.

LX

Page 53-Heigho! chill go to plough no more.' From John Mundy's Songs and Psalms, 1594.

LXI

Page 54-My Love is neither hot nor cold.' From Robert Jones's Second Book of Songs and Airs, 1601.

LXIII

Page 55-Diaphenia like the daffadowndilly.' Signed 'H. C.' in England's Helicon. It is set to music in Francis Pilkington's First Book of Songs or Airs, 1605.

Henry Constable was born about 1555, of a staunch Roman Catholic family was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1579. In 1595 falling (as a Roman Catholic) under suspicion of treasonable correspondence with France, he had to fly the country. About 1601 he ventured to return; but was detected and committed to the Tower, where he languished until the close of 1604. The exact date of his death is uncertain, but it happened before 1616.

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