LXIV

Page 56-' Like to Diana in her summer weed.' From Greene's romance of Menaphon, 1589. 'What manner of woman is she?' quoth Melicertus. 'As well as I can, answered Doron, 'I will make description of her :

Like to Diana, etc.'

4

'Thou hast,' quoth Melicertus, made such a description as if Priamus' young boy should paint out the perfection of his Greekish paramour."

LXV

An

Page 57-'See where she sits upon the grassy green.' extract from The Shepherd's Calendar: April. The same being 'purposely intended to the honour and prayse of our most gratious soveraigne, queene Elizabeth .. whom abruptly he termeth Eliza.' The original ditty extends to fourteen stanzas. The opulence of Spenser's muse will always be the despair of the anthologist, and I commend my extracts to the reader with much diffidence. But it was a question between curtailment and omitting altogether.

LXVII

Page 66-'It fell upon a holy eve.' From The Shepherd's Calendar: August.

LXVIII

Page 66-'Tell me, thou skilful shepherd swain.' From Drayton's Pastorals: The Ninth Eclogue. It is included, under the title here given, in England's Helicon.

LXIX

Page 67-'Fair and fair and twice so fair.' From Peele's Arraignment of Paris, 1584. For light-hearted melody I believe this little duet can hardly be matched in the whole range of our poetry. Its charm is impossible to analyse as that of Shakespeare's 'It was a lover and his lass'-mere spontaneous gaiety and the perfection of writing.

LXX

Page 68-'Like the Idalian queen.' Paramours=sing. paramour (of course without the offensive modern connotation). Compare Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, v. 157:

Page 68, line 6-Which of her blood were born. See Bion's first Idyll; also the Pervigilium Veneris, 1. 23; and compare Drummond's little poem, 'The Rose':

'Flower, which of Adon's blood

Sprang, when of that clear flood

Which Venus wept another white was born. . .

Which is a translation of Tasso:

'O del sangue d' Adone

Nata fior, quando un altro del' acque

Lacrimose di Venere ne nacque.'

Bion's story was that the red rose sprang from the blood of Adonis, and the anemone from the tears shed by Venus over him. But there is a variant, that the rose sprang from the blood of Venus herself as she passed barefoot through the briars in her grief at Adonis's death.

LXXI

Page 69-' Beauty sat bathing by a spring.' From England's Helicon where, with six other pieces, it is signed Shepherd Tony.' It is also found in Antony Munday's Primaleon, 1619; and though Antony Munday (our best plotter' according to Meres, and elsewhere, less reverently, 'the Grub Street Patriarch') could write poorly enough as a rule, the evidence is sufficient that he was the 'Shepherd Tony' and author of this graceful lyric. Others have identified the shepherd with one Antony Copley, author of A Fig for Fortune, 1596, and Wits, Fits, and Fancies, 1614.

LXXII

Page 70-'Open the door!' From Martin Peerson's Private Music, 1620: Bodleian Library, Douce Collection.

LXXIII

Page 70-'On a time the amorous Silvy.' From John Attye's First Book of Airs, 1622. Mr. Bullen points out that this is a graceful rendering from the French of Pierre Guedron:

Page 73-Art thou gone in haste?'

...

From The Thracian Wonder, which was published by Francis Kirkman in 1661 and assigned on the title-page to Webster and Rowley. It is

as certain as can be that Webster took no hand in it. William Rowley, 'once a rare Schollar of learned Pembroke Hall of Cambridge,' colaborated with Middleton in The Spanish Gipsy (published in 1652, though written quite thirty years earlier), and probably also in More Dissemblers besides Women written at least as early as 1623 and published in 1657). The dates of his birth and death are alike uncertain.

LXXIX

Page 76-'Shepherd, what's Love, pray thee tell.' Originally subscribed 'S. W. R.' in England's Helicon, 1600; but in extant copies this has been obliterated by a label on which is printed Ignoto.' Signed 'S. W. Rawly,' in Davison's list, Harl. MS. 280, fol. 99, but anonymous in The Phoenix Nest, 1593, and Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, 1602, where it is headed 'The Anatomy of Love.' In the two last the first line runs 'Now what is Love, I pray thee tell?' There is an early MS. copy in Harl. MS. 6910, and an imperfect copy of the first and last stanzas form the 'third song' in T. Heywood's The Rape of Lucrece, 1608. The song was also set to music in Robert Jones's Second Book of Songs and Airs, 1601.

LXXXII

Page 79-'Hey, down a down! did Dian sing.' From England's Helicon. The signature again is 'Ignoto.'

LXXXIII

Page 80-Never love unless you can.' From Thomas Campion's Third Book of Airs, not dated, but certainly not earlier than 1617.

LXXXIV

Page 81-Thus saith my Chloris bright.' From John Wilbye's Madrigals, 1598: a rendering of an Italian madrigal by Luca Marenzio. Another version is found in Musica Transalpina. The Second Book of Madrigals, 1597:

'So saith my fair and beautiful Lycoris,
When now and then she talketh

With me of love:

"Love is a spirit that walketh,
That soars and flies,

And none alive can hold him,

Nor touch him, nor behold him.”

Yet when her eye she turneth,

I spy where he sojourneth:

In her eyes there he flies,
But none can catch him

Till from her lips he fetch him.'

Page 81-'Come hither, shepherd's swain.' Found entire in Deloney's Garland of Goodwill (whence Percy obtained the version in his Reliques) and in Breton's Bower of Delights, 1597. A shorter copy is found in Puttenham's Art of Poesy, 1589, where it is attributed to 'Edward, Earl of Oxford, a most noble and learned gentleman.'

Edward Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford, was born not earlier than 1540 travelled in Italy in early youth, and returned with very foppish manners and a pair of gloves which so pleased Elizabeth, to whom he presented them, that she was drawn with them on her hands. In 1585 he took part in the Earl of Leicester's expedition for the relief of the states of Holland and Zealand. In the following year he sat as Lord Great Chamberlain of England at the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots. In 1588 he fitted out ships at his own charges against the Spanish Armada. In 1589 he helped to try Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel; and in 1601, the Earls of Essex and Southampton. In private life he appears to have been something of a ruffian. He died in the summer of 1604.

Page 81, line 6-Prime of May: v.l. 'pride of May.'

Page 82, line 2-Unfeigned lovers' tears: v.l. 'unsavoury lovers'

tears.

Page 82, line 20-A thousand times a day: v.l. 'ten thousand times a day.'

LXXXVI

From

Page 83-The sea hath many thousand sands.' Robert Jones's The Muses Garden of Delights, 1610-a book which (says Mr. Bullen) 'I have sought early and late without success. In 1812 a copy was in the library of the Marquis of Stafford; and in that year Beloe printed six songs from it in the sixth volume of his Anecdotes'-the song under notice is one of that half-dozen. These six songs are so delightful that I

am consumed with a desire to see the rest of the contents of the song-book.'

LXXXVII

Page 83-If thou long'st so much to learn,' etc. This and the following song, so similar in subject and treatment, are both from Campion's Third Book of Songs and Airs (circ. 1617).

LXXXIX

Page 86-'Love guards the roses of thy lips.' From Lodge's Phillis. The old editions have 'Love guides the roses 'evidently (says Mr. Bullen), a misprint for " 'guildes." the reading here adopted seems even more obvious.

Y

But

XC

Page 87-Sweet Love, if thou wilt gain a monarch's glory.' From John Wilbye's Madrigals, 1598.

XCI

Page 87-'Cupid and my Campaspe played.' This little poem, so easy and yet inimitable, so artless apparently and yet unapproachable, is from Lyly's Alexander and Campaspe, probably acted at Court in the year 1581. Lyly's songs, however, were not included in the early editions of his plays, but appear for the first time in the collected edition of 1597.

XCIV

Page 89-'Come, you pretty false-eyed wanton.'

From the

second book of Two Books of Airs. The first containing Divine and Moral Songs: the second, Light Conceits of Lovers' (circ. 1613), where a third stanza is given:

'Would it were dumb midnight now,
When all the world lies sleeping!
Would this place some desert were,
Which no man hath in keeping!

My desires should then be safe,

And when you cried, then would I laugh :
But if aught might breed offence,

Love only should be blamèd:
I would live your servant still,
And you my saint unnamed.'

XCVI

Page 90-Turn back, you wanton flyer.' and Rosseter's A Book of Airs, 1601.

From Campion

Page 91, line 8-times' or seasons' swerving.' Old ed. 'changing.' 'Swerving' is Mr. Bullen's correction.

Page 91, lines 10, 11-The original reads:

'Then what we sow with our lips,

Let us reap, love's gains dividing.'

And it is so printed in Mr. Bullen's edition of Campion (1889). The arrangement in the text, however, gives us two even stanzas, and has the further advantage of making sense.

XCVII

Page 91-'Steer, hither steer your wingèd pines.' The opening song of The Inner Temple Masque, presented by the gentlemen there,' in January 1614, but not printed until 1772, when Thomas Davies included it in his edition of Browne, his authority being a MS. in the library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.