Therfore my hart is surely pyght

Of her alone to have a sight,

Which is my joy and hartes delyght:

In youth is pleasure, in youth is pleasure.

These selections are among the very best specimens of our old songs that have come down to us. If they have all the simplicity of the old ballad, they lack something of the poetic fervour of expression which the others possess in so eminent a degree. This want the Elizabethan writers supplied. "We now arrive at the time," says Ritson, writing of this period," in which we are to look for the origin of the modern English song; not a single composition of that nature, with the smallest degree of poetical merit, being discoverable at any preceding period."*

The collection of songs here presented to the public, being arranged chronologically, will serve to shew the progress of song from the reign of Elizabeth to the present day in the clearest view. The very graphic picture contained in Bishop Still's "Jolly Good Ale," cannot be too much admired— it is not only the earliest English drinking song, but it is the best, and save a phrase or two might be sung with good effect in the present day. Were our musicians to turn more frequently to our best Anthologies, their talent and their ingenuity might be better employed than in setting to not indifferent airs the vast piles of mere trash, and pilfered

Hist. Essay on Nat. Song, p. Ivi.

trash too, that the musical market has of late been deluged with.

The tune of Lady Greensleeves was very popular in the early part of Queen Elizabeth's age. The song or ballad to this air, printed in a little quarto collection of Poems entitled, "A Handeful of Pleasant Delights," 1584, is worthy of having some of its verses extracted into these pages, as affording an insight into the manners of an age we cannot be too well acquainted with. It opens in this manner :

Alas! my love, ye do me wrong,

To cast me off discourteously;
And I have loved you so long
Delighting in your company.

Greensleeves was all my ioy,
Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves was my hart of gold,
And who but Ladie Greensleeves.

I have been readie at your hand,
To grant whatever you would crave,
I have both waged life and land,

Your love and good will for to have.

I bought thee kerchers to thy head,
That were wrought fine and gallantly,

I kept thee booth at boord and bed
Which cost my purse well favouredly.

I bought thee peticotes of the best-
The cloth so fine as might be

I gave thee iewels for thy chest
And all this cost I spent on thee.

Thy smocke of silke bothe fair and white

With gold embrodered gorgeously;

He then describes her girdle of gold, her purse, the crimson stockings all of silk, the pumps as white as milk, the gown of grassy green, the satin sleeves, the gold-fringed garters, all of which he gave her with his gayest gelding, and his men decked all in green to wait upon her :

They set thee up, they took thee down

They served thee with humilitie;

Thy foote might not once touch the ground

And yet thou wouldst not love me.

She could desire no earthly thing but what she had it. Wel I wil pray to God on hie

That thou my constancie mayst see,

And that yet once before I die

Thou wilt voachsafe to love me.

Greensleeves, now farewell! adieu'
God I pray to prosper thee!
For I am still thy lover true,

Come once again and love me.

These verses are homely enough-but there is a song a degree or two more elegant contained in the same curious volume; it bears the singular heading of "The Lover being wounded with his Ladies beautie requireth mercy, to the tune of Apelles.'"

The livelie sparkes of those two eyes
My wounded hart hath set on fire;

And since I can no way devise

To stay the rage of my desire.

With sighs and trembling tears I crave

My deare on me some pitie have.

In vewing thee, I tooke such joy,
As one that sought his quiet rest;

Untill I felt the feather'd boy
Ay flickering in my captive brest-

Since that time, loe! in deep despaire
All void of joy my time I weare.

The wofull prisoner Palemon,

And Troylus eke, Kinge Pyramus sonne,
Constrained by love did never mone
As I my deer for thee have done-

Let pitie then requite my paines

My life and death in thee remaines.

If constant love may reap his hire
And faith unfained may purchase,
Great hope I have to my desire

Your gentle heart will grant me grace,

Till then, my deer! in few wordes plaine

In pensive thoughts I shall remaine.

The Phoenix Neste," another valuable collection of small poems, printed within a few years of the volume we have just quoted from, contains a Lover's description of his Love,

and who wishes

die in her love.

about whose gentle eye

A thousand Cupids flie,

to pursue no sweeter life than to Here are a few of the stanzas.

The lillie in the fielde,

That glories in his white

For pureness now must yeelde,

And render up his right

Heaven pictur'd in her face
Doth promise ioy and grace.

Faire Cinthia's siluer light,
That beates on running streames,
Compares not with her white,
Whose haires are all sunbeames,
Hir virtues so doe shine
As daie vnto mine eine.

With this there is a red,

Exceeds the damaske rose;

Which in her cheekes is spred;
Whence euery fauor groes

In skie there is no starre,

That she surmounts not farre.

When Phoebus from the bed,
Of Thetis doth arise,
The morning blushing red,
In faire carnation wise—

He shenes it in her face

As Queene of every grace.

Our old poets seemed to imagine as too true what the Duke of Orleans wrote on his copy of manuscript poems preserved in the British Museum, that "the god Cupide, and Venus the goddess hau pour on all worldly gladness."

Ritson places Marlowe at the head of the songwriters of Elizabeth's reign, “not more," says he, "by reason of his priority, than on account of his merits." Had Marlowe alone written the little song of the Shepherd to his Love, (" in which," Mr. Campbell writes, "there are found the combined beauties of sweet wild spirit, and an exquisite finish of expression,") his name would descend to posterity as a writer of both high and pure fancy— though his "mighty lines," as Jonson calls them, had never been either composed or preserved. Raleigh's reply to the Shepherd, wanting the originality, has all the same feeling, grace, and delicacy of Marlowe's song. Gifford, Lilly, Fulke Greville, and Greene, have each left some pretty specimens of lyrical talent, but nothing particularly to distinguish them from others.

Had Breton written always with the simplicity and sweetness found in his Phillida and Corydon, his name would have been more widely known.