1.—CHOYCE DROLLERY, 1656.
Note, on [The Address to the Reader], &c.
The subscribed initials, “R. P.” are those of Robert Pollard; whose name appears on the title-page (which we reproduce), preceding his address. Excepting that he was a bookseller, dwelling and trading at the “Ben Jonson’s Head, behind the Exchange,” in business-connection with John Sweeting, of the Angel, in Pope’s Head Alley, in 1656; and that he had previously issued a somewhat similar Collection of Poems to the Choyce Drollery (successful, but not yet identified), we know nothing more of Robert Pollard. The books of that date, and of that special class, are extremely rare, and the few existing copies are so difficult of access (for the most part in private possession, almost totally inaccessible except to those who know not how to use them), that information can only be acquired piecemeal and laboriously. Five years hence, if the Editor be still alive, he may be able to tell much more concerning the authors and the compilers of the Restoration Drolleries.
We are told that there is an extra leaf to Choyce Drollery, “only found in a few copies, containing ten lines of verse, beginning Fame’s windy trump, &c. This leaf occurs in one or two extant copies of England’s Parnassus, 1600. Many of the pieces found here are much older than the date of the book [viz., 1656]. It contains notices of many of our early poets, and, unlike some of its successors, is of intrinsic value. Only two or three copies have occurred.” (W. C. H.’s Handb. Pop. Lit. G. B., 1867, p. 168.) “Cromwell’s Government ordered this book to be burned.” (Ibid.) On this last item see our [Introduction], section first. J. P. Collier, who prepared the Catalogue of Richard Heber’s Collection, Bibliotheca Heberiana, Pt. iv., 1834 (a rich storehouse for bibliographical students, but not often gratefully acknowledged by them), thus writes of Choyce Drollery:—“This is one of the most intrinsically valuable of the Drolleries, if only for the sake of the very interesting poem in which characters are given of all the following Poets: Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Chapman, Daborne, Sylvester, Quarles, May, Sands, Digges, Daniel, Drayton, Withers, Brown, Shirley, Ford, Middleton, Heywood, Churchyard, Dekker, Brome, Chaucer, Spencer, Basse, and finally John Shank, the Actor, who is said to have been famous for a jig. Other pieces are much older, and are here reprinted from previous collections” [mostly lost]. P. 90.
It is also known to J. O. Halliwell-Phillips; (but, truly, what is not known to him?) See Shakespeare Society’s Papers, iii. 172, 1847.
In our copy of England’s Parnassus (unindexed, save subjects), 1600, we sought to find “Fame’s windy trump.” [We hear that the leaf was in E. P. at Tite’s sale, 1874.]
As we have never seen a copy of Choyce Drollery containing the passage of “ten lines,” described as beginning “Fame’s Windy Trump,” we cannot be quite certain of the following, from England’s Parnassus, 1600, being the one in question, but believe that it is so. Perhaps it ran, “Fame’s Windy Trump, whatever sound out-flies,” &c. There are twenty-seven lines in all. We distinguish the probable portion of “ten lines” by enclosing the other two parts in brackets:—
FAME.
[A Monster swifter none is under sunne;
Encreasing, as in waters we descrie
The circles small, of nothing that begun,
Which, at the length, unto such breadth do come,
That of a drop, which from the skies doth fall,
The circles spread, and hide the waters all:
So Fame, in flight encreasing more and more;
For, at the first, she is not scarcely knowne,
But by and by she fleets from shore to shore,
To clouds from th’ earth her stature straight is growne.
There whatsoever by her trumpe is blowne,]
The sound, that both by sea and land out-flies,
Rebounds againe, and verberates the skies.
They say, the earth that first the giants bred,
For anger that the gods did them dispatch,
Brought forth this sister of those monsters dead,
Full light of foote, swift wings the winds to catch:
Such monsters erst did nature never hatch.
As many plumes she hath from top to toe,
So many eyes them underwatch or moe;
And tongues do speake: so many eares do harke.
[By night ’tweene heaven she flies and earthly shade,
And, shreaking, takes no quiet sleepe by darke:
On houses roofes, on towers, as keeper made,
She sits by day, and cities threates t’ invade;
And as she tells what things she sees by view,
She rather shewes that’s fained false, then true.]
[Legend of Albanact.] I. H., Mirror of Magist.
[Page 1.] Deare Love, let me this evening dye.
This beautiful little love-poem re-appears, as Song 77, in Windsor Drollery, 1672, p. 63. (There had been a previous edition of that work, in 1671, which we have examined: it is not noted by bibliographers, and is quite distinct.) A few variations occur. Verse 2. are wrack’d; 3. In love is not commended; only sweet, All praise, no pity; who fondly; 4. Shall shortly by dead Lovers lie; hallow’d; 5. He which all others els excels, That are; 6. Will, though thou; 7. the Bells shall ring; While all to black is; (last line but two in parenthesis;) Making, like Flowers, &c.
[Page 4.] Nor Love nor Fate dare I accuse.
By Richard Brome, in his “Northerne Lasse,” 1632, Act ii., sc. 6. It is also given in Westminster-Drollery, 1671, i. 83 (the only song in common). But compare with it the less musical and tender, “Nor Love, nor Fate can I accuse of hate,” in same vol. ii. 90, with Appendix Note thereunto, p. lxiii.
[Page 5.] One night the great Apollo, pleased with Ben.
This remarkable and little-known account of “The Time-Poets” is doubly interesting, as being a contemporary document, full of life-like portraiture of men whom no lapse of years can banish from us; welcome friends, whom we grow increasingly desirous of beholding intimately. Glad are we to give it back thus to the world; our chief gem, in its rough Drollery-setting: lifted once more into the light of day, from out the cobwebbed nooks where it so long-time had lain hidden. Our joy would have been greater, could we have restored authoritatively the lost sixteenth-line, by any genuine discovery among early manuscripts; or told something conclusive about the author of the poem, who has laid us under obligation for these vivid portraits of John Ford, Thomas Heywood, poor old Thomas Churchyard, and Ben’s courageous foeman, worthy of his steel, that Thomas Dekker who “followed after in a dream.”
In deep humility we must confess that nothing is yet learnt as to the authorship. Here, in the year 1656, almost at fore-front of Choyce Drollery, the very strength of its van-guard, appeared the memorable poem. Whether it were then and there for the first time in print, or borrowed from some still more rare and now-lost volume, none of us can prove. Even at this hour, a possibility remains that our resuscitation of Choyce Drollery may help to bring the unearthing of explanatory facts from zealous students. We scarcely dare to cherish hope of this. Certainly we may not trust to it. For Gerard Langbaine knew the poem well, and quoted oft and largely from it in his 1691 Account of the English Dramatick Poets. But he met with it nowhere save in Choyce Drollery, and writes of it continually in language that proves how ignorant he was of whom we are to deem the author. Yet he wrote within five-and-thirty years behind the date of its appearance; and might easily have learnt, from men still far from aged, who had read the Drollery on its first publication, whatever they could tell of “The Time-Poets:” if, indeed, they could tell anything. Five years earlier, William Winstanley had given forth his Lives of the most famous English Poets, in June, 1686; but he quotes not from it, and leaves us without an Open Sesame. Even Oldys could not tell; or Thomas Hearne, who often had remembered whatever Time forgot.
As to the date: we believe it was certainly written between 1620 (inclusive) and 1636; nearer the former year.
We reconcile ourselves for the failure, by turning to such other and similar poetic groupings as survive. We listen unto Richard Barnfield, when he sings sweetly his “Remembrance of some English Poets,” in 1598. We cling delightedly to the words of our noble Michael Drayton—whose descriptive map of native England, Polyolbion, glitters with varie-coloured light, as though it were a mediæval missal: to whom, enditing his Epistle to friend Henry Reynolds—“A Censure of the Poets”—the Muses brought each bard by turn, so that the picture might be faithful: even as William Blake, idealist and spiritual Seer, believed of spirit-likenesses in his own experience. And, not without deep feeling (marvelling, meanwhile, that still the task of printing them with Editorial care is unattempted), we peruse the folio manuscripts of that fair-haired minstrel of the Cavaliers, George Daniel of Beswick, while he also, in his “Vindication of Poesie,” sings in praise of those whose earlier lays are echoing now and always “through the corridors of Time:”—
Truth speaks of old, the power of Poesie;
Amphion, Orpheus, stones and trees could move;
Men, first by verse, were taught Civilitie;
’Tis known and granted; yet would it behove
Mee, with the Ancient Singers, here to crowne
Some later Quills, some Makers of our owne.
Nor should we fail to thank the younger Evelyn, for such graphic sketches as he gives of Restoration-Dramatists, of Cowley, Dryden, Wycherley, “Sedley and easy Etherege;” a new world of wits, all of whose works we prize, without neglecting for their sakes the older Masters who “so did take Eliza, and our James.”
Something that we could gladly say, will come in befittingly on after-pages of this volume, in the “Additional Note on Sir John Suckling’s ‘Sessions of the Poets,’” as printed in our Merry Drollery, Compleat, page 72.
Are we stumbling at the threshold, absit omen! even amid our delight in perusing “the Time-Poets,” when we wonder at the precise meaning of the statement in our opening couplet?
One night the great Apollo, pleas’d with Ben,
Made the odd number of the Muses ten.
By whom additional? Who is the lady, thus elevated? We see only one solution: namely, that furnished by the conclusion of the poem. It was the Faerie Queene herself whom the God lifted thus, in honour of her English Poets, to rank as the Tenth Muse, an equal with Urania, Clio, Euterpe, and their sisterhood. Yet something seems wanting, next to it; for we never reach a full-stop until the end of the 39th (or query, the 40th) line; and all the confluent nominatives lack a common verbal-action. Our mind, it is true, accepts intelligibly the onward rush of each and all (but later, “with equal pace each of them softly creeps”). It may be only grammatical pedantry which craves some such phrase, absent from the text, as—
[While throng’d around his comrades and his peers,
To list the ’sounding Music of the Spheres:]
But, since a momentary rashness prompts us here to dare so much, as to imagine the hiatus filled, let us suppose that the lost sixteenth-line ran someway thus (each reader being free to try experiments himself, with chance of more success):—
Divine-composing Quarles, whose lines aspire
[And glow, as doth with like etherial fire] 16th.
The April of all Poesy in May,
Who makes our English speak Pharsalia;
It is with some timidity we let this stand: but, as the text is left intact, our friends will pardon us; and foes we never quail to meet. As to Ben Jonson, see our “Sessions,” in Part iv. Of Beaumont and Fletcher, we write in [the note on final page of Choyce Drollery, p. 100]. Of “Ingenious Shakespeare” we need say no more than give the lines of Richard Barnfield in his honour, from the Poems in diuers humors, 1598:—
A Remembrance of some English Poets.
Liue Spenser euer, in thy Fairy Queene:
Whose like (for deepe Conceit) was neuer seene.
Crownd mayst thou bee, vnto thy more renowne,
(As King of Poets) with a Lawrell Crowne.
And Daniell, praised for thy sweet-chast Verse:
Whose Fame is grav’d in Rosamonds blacke Herse.
Still mayst thou liue: and still be honored,
For that rare Worke, The White Rose and the Red.
And Drayton, whose wel-written Tragedies
And sweet Epistles, soare thy fame to skies.
Thy learned Name, is æquall with the rest;
Whose stately Numbers are so well addrest.
And Shakespeare thou, whose hony-flowing Vaine,
(Pleasing the World) thy Praises doth obtaine.
Whose Venus, and whose Lucrece (sweete and chaste)
Thy Name in fames immortall Booke hath plac’t.
Liue euer you, at least in Fame liue euer:
Well may the Bodye dye, but Fame dies neuer.
The praise of Massinger will not seem overstrained; although he never affects us with the sense of supreme genius, as does Marlowe. The recognition of George Chapman’s grandeur, and the power with which this recognition is expressed, show how tame is the influence of Massinger in comparison. There need be little question that it was to Dekker’s mind and pen we owe the nobler portion of the Virgin Martyr. Massinger, when alongside of Marlow, Webster, and Dekker, is like Euripides contrasted with Æschylus and Sophocles. We think of him as a Playwright, and successful; but these others were Poets of Apollo’s own body-guard. Drayton sings:
Next Marlow, bathed in the Thespian springs,
Had in him those brave translunary things
That the first poets had, his raptures were
All air and fire, which made his verses clear;
For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.
Robert Daborne is chiefly interesting to us from his connection in misfortunes and dramatic labours with Massinger and Nat Field; and as joining them in the supplication for advance of money from Philip Henslow, while they lay in prison. The reference to Daborne’s clerical, as well as to his dramatic vocation, and to his having died (in Ireland, we believe, leaving behind him sermons,) “Amphibion by the Ministry,” confirms the general belief.
Jo: Sylvester’s translation of Du Bartas, 1621; Thomas May’s of Lucan’s Pharsalia, George Sandys’ of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, need little comment here; some being referred to, near the end of our volume.
Dudley Digges (1612-43), born at Chilham Castle, near Canterbury (now the seat of Charles S. Hardy, Esq.); son of Sir Dudley Digges, Master of the Rolls, wrote a reverent Elegy for Jonsonus Virbius, 1638. L[eonard] Digges had, fifteen years earlier, written the memorial lines beginning “Shake-speare, at length thy pious fellows give || The World thy Workes:” which appear at beginning of the first folio Shakespeare, 1623.
To Samuel Daniel’s high merits we have only lately awakened: his “Complaint of Rosamond” has a sustained dignity and pathos that deserve all Barnfield’s praise; the “Sonnets to Delia” are graceful and impressive in their purity; his “Civil Wars” may seem heavy, but the fault lies in ourselves, if unsteady readers, not the poet: thus we suspect, when we remember the true poetic fervour of his Pastoral,
O happy Golden Age!
and his Description of Beauty, from Marino.
Of “Heroick Drayton” we write more hereafter: He grows dearer to us with every year. His “Dowsabell” is on [p. 73]. Was his being coupled as a “Poet-Beadle,” in allusion to his numerous verse-epistles, showing an acquaintance with all the worthies of his day, even as his Polyolbion gives a roll-call of the men, and a gazetteer of the England they made illustrious? For, as shown in the Apophthegmmes of Erasmus, 1564, Booke 2nd, (p. 296 of the Boston Reprint,) it is “the proper office and dutie of soche biddelles (who were called in latin Nomenclators) to have perfecte knowlege and remembrance of the names, of the surnames, and of the titles of dignitees of all persones, to the ende that thei maie helpe the remembraunce of their maisters in the same when neede is.” To our day the office of an Esquire Beddell is esteemed in Cambridge University. But, we imagine, George Wither is styled a “Poets Beadle” with a very different significance. It was the Bridewell-Beadles’ whip which he wielded vigorously, in flagellation of offenders, that may have earned him the title. See his “Abuses Stript and Whipt,” 1613, and turn to the rough wood-cut of cart’s-tail punishment shown in the frontispiece to A Caueat or Warening for Common Cursetors, vulgarly called Vagabones, set forth by Thomas Harman, Esquier for the utilitie and profit of his naturall country, &c., 1566, and later (Reprinted by E. E. Text Soc., and in O. B. Coll. Misc., i. No. 4, 1871).
George Wither was his own worst foe, when he descended to satiric invective and pious verbiage. True poet was he; as his description of the Muse in her visit to him while imprisoned in the Marshalsea, with almost the whole of his “Shepherd’s Hunting” and “Mistress of Phil’arete,” prove incontestibly. He is to be loved and pitied: although perversely he will argue as a schismatick, always wrong-headed and in trouble, whichever party reigns. To him, in his sectarian zeal or sermonizing platitudes—all for our good, alas!—we can but answer with the melancholy Jacques: “I do not desire you to please me. I do desire you to sing!”
“Pan’s Pastoral Brown” is, of course, Wm. Browne, author of “Britannia’s Pastorals.” Like James Shirley, last in the group of early Dramatists, his precocious genius is remembered in the text. Regretting that no painted or sculptured portrait of John Forde survives, we are thankful for this striking picture of him in his sombre meditation. We could part, willingly, with half of our dramatic possessions since the nineteenth century began, to recover one of the lost plays by Ford. No writer holds us more entirely captive to the tenderness of sorrow; no one’s hand more lightly, yet more powerfully, stirs the affections, while admitting the sadness, than he who gave us “The Broken Heart,” and “’Tis pity she’s a whore.”
Not unhappily chosen is the epithet “The Squibbing Middleton,” for he almost always fails to impress us fully by his great powers. He warms not, he enlightens not, with steady glow, but gives us fireworks instead of stars or altar-burnings. We except from this rebuke his “Faire Quarrel,” 1622, which shows a much firmer grasp and purpose, fascinating us the while we read. Perhaps, with added knowledge of him will come higher esteem.
Of Thomas Heywood the portrait is complete, every word developing a feature: his fertility, his choice of subjects, and rubicund appearance.
Nor is the humourous sadness, of the figure shewn by the aged Thomas Churchyard, less touching because it is dashed in with burlesque. “Poverty and Poetry his Tomb doth enclose” (Camden’s Remains). His writings extend from the time of Edward VI. to early in the reign of James I. (he died in 1604); some of the poems in Tottel’s Miscellany, 1557, were claimed by him, but are not identified, and J. P. Collier thought him not unlikely to have partly edited the work, His “Tragedie of Shore’s Wife,” (best edit. 1698), in the Mirror for Magistrates, surpasses most of his other poems; yet are there biographical details in Churchyard’s Chips, 1575, that reward our perusal. Gascoigne and several other poets added Tam Marti quàm Mercurio after their names; but Churchyard could boast thus with more truth as a Soldier. He says:—
Full thirty yeers, both Court and Warres I tryed,
And still I sought acquaintaunce with the best,
And served the Staet, and did such hap abyed
As might befall, and Fortune sent the rest:
When drom did sound, a souldier was I prest,
To sea or lande, as Princes quarrell stoed,
And for the saem, full oft I lost my blood.
But, throughout, misfortune dogged him:—
... To serve my torn [i.e., turn] in service of the Queen:
But God he knoes, my gayn was small, I ween,
For though I did my credit still encreace,
I got no welth, by warres, ne yet by peace.
(C.’s Chips: A Tragicall Discourse of the unhappy man’s Life; verses 9, 26.)
Of Thomas Dekker, or Decker (about 1575-1638), “A priest in Apollo’s Temple, many yeares,” with his “Old Fortunatus,” both parts of his “Honest Whore,” his “Satiromastix,” and “Gull’s Hornbook,” &c.,—which take us back to all the mirth and squabbling of the day—we need add no word but praise. We believe that a valuable clue is afforded by the allusion in our text to the pamphlet “Dekker his Dreame,” 1620, (reprinted by J. O. Halliwell, 1860.) We may be certain that “The Time-Poets” was not written earlier than 1620, or any later than 1636 (or probably than 1632), and before Jonson’s death.
[Page 7.] “Rounce, Robble, Hobble, he that writ so big.”
In this 50th line the word “high” is evidently redundant (probably an error in printer’s MS., not erased when the true word “big” was added): we retain it, of course, though in smaller type; as in similar cases of excess. But who was “Rounce, Robble, Hobble?” Most certainly it was no other than Richard Stanyhurst (1547-1618), whose varied adventures, erudition, and eccentricities of verse combined to make him memorable. His Hexameter translation of the Æneis Books i-iv, appeared in 1583; not followed by any more during the thirty-five years succeeding. Gabriel Harvey praised him, in his “Foure Letters,” &c., although Thomas Nashe, in 1592, declares that “Master Stanyhurst (though otherwise learned) trod a foule, lumbring, boystrous, wallowing measure in his translation of Virgil. He had never been praised by Gabriel [Harvey] for his labour, if therein he had not been so famously absurd.” (Strange Newes.) This Æneid had a limited reprint in 1839. Warton in Hist. Eng. Poetry gives examples (misnaming him Robert) but Camden says “Eruditissimus ille nobilis Richardus Stanihurstus.” In his preface to Greene’s Arcadia, Nash quotes Stanyhurst’s description of a Tempest:—
Then did he make heauens vault to rebound
With rounce robble bobble, [N.B.]
Of ruffe raffe roaring,
With thicke thwacke thurly bouncing:
and indicates his opinion of the poet, “as of some thrasonical huffe-snuffe,” indulging in “that quarrelling kind of verse.” One more specimen, to justify our text, regarding “he that writ so big:” in the address to the winds, Æn., Bk. i., Neptune thus rails:—
Dare ye, lo, curst baretours, in this my Seignorie regal,
Too raise such racks iacks on seas and danger unorder’d?
The recent death of Stanyhurst, 1618, strengthens our belief that the Time-Poets was not later than 1620-32.
To William Basse we owe the beautiful epitaph on Shakespeare, printed in 1633, “Renowned Spencer, lye a thought more nigh To learned Chaucer,” etc., and at least two songs (beside “Great Brittaine’s Sunnes-set,” 1613), viz., the Hunter in his Career, beginning “Long ere the Morn,” and one of the best Tom o’ Bedlam’s; probably, “Forth from my sad and darksome cell.”
The name of John Shanke, here suggestively famous “for a jigg,” occurs in divers lists of players (see J. P. C.’s Annals of the Stage, passim), he having been one of Prince Henry’s Company in 1603. That he was also a singer, we have this verse in proof, written in the reign of James I. (Bibliog. Acc. i. 163):—
That’s the fat foole of the Curtin,
And the lean fool of the Bull:
Since Shanke did leave to sing his rimes
He is counted but a gull.
The Players on the Banckeside,
The round Globe and the Swan,
Will teach you idle tricks of love,
But the Bull will play the man.
(W. Turner’s Common Cries of London Town, 1662.)
“Broom” is Richard Brome (died 1652), whose racy comedies have been, like Dekker’s, lately reprinted. The insinuation that Ben Jonson had “sent him before to sweep the way,” alludes, no doubt, to the fact of Brome having earlier been Jonson’s servant, and learning from his personal discourse much of dramatic art. Neither was it meant nor accepted as an insult, when, (printed 1632,) Jonson wrote (“according to Ben’s own nature and custom, magisterial enough,” as their true friend Alexander Brome admits),
I had you for a Servant once, Dick Brome;
And you perform’d a Servant’s faithful parts:
Now, you are got into a nearer room
Of Fellowship, professing my old Arts.
And you do doe them well, with good applause,
Which you have justly gained from the Stage, &c.
It is amusing to mark the survival of the old joke in our text, about sweeping (it came often enough, in Figaro in London, &c., at the time of the 1832 Reform Bill, as to Henry Brougham and Vaux); when we see it repeated, almost literally, in reference to Alexander Pope’s fellow-labourer on the Odyssey translation, the Rev. William Broome, of our St. John’s College, Cambridge:—
Pope came off clean with Homer, but they say,
Broome went before, and kindly swept the way.
Leaving a few words on the matchless Ben himself for [the “Sessions of the Poets” Additional Note], we end this commentary on our book’s chief poem with a few more stanzas from the Beswick Manuscript, by George Daniel, (written in great part before, part after, 1647,) in honour of Ben Jonson, but preceded by others relating to Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare, Beaumont, and Donne:—
I am not bound to honour antique names, [8th verse]
Nor am I led by other men to chuse
Any thing worthy, which my judgment blames;
Heare better straines, though by a later Muse;
The sweet Arcadian singer first did raise
Our Language current, and deserv’d his Baies.
That Lord of Penhurst, Penhurst whose sad walls
Yet mourne their master, in the Belgicke fray
Untimely lost; to whose dear funeralls
The Medwaie doth its constant tribute paye;
But glorious Penhurst, Medwaies waters once
With Mincius shall, and Mergeline advance;
The Shepherds Boy; best knowen by that name
Colin: upon his homely Oaten Reed.
With Roman Tityrus may share in ffame;
But when a higher path hee strains to tread,
This is my wonder: for who yet has seene
Soe cleare a Poeme as his Faierie Queene?
The sweetest Swan of Avon; to the faire
And cruel Delia, passionatelie sings:
Other mens weaknesses and follies are
Honour and Wit in him; each Accent brings
A sprig to crowne him Poet; and contrive
A Monument, in his owne worke to live.
Draiton is sweet and smooth: though not exact,
Perhaps to stricter Eyes; yet he shall live
Beyond their Malice: to the Scene and Act,
Read Comicke Shakespeare; or if you would give
Praise to a just Desert, crowning the Stage,
See Beaumont, once the honour of his Age.
The reverent Donne; whose quill God purely fil’d,
Liveth to his Character: so though he claim’d
A greater glory, may not be exil’d
This Commonwealth, &c.
Here pause a little; for I would not cloy [verse 15]
The curious Eare, with recitations;
And meerily looke at names; attend with joy,
Unto an English Quill, who rivall’d once
Rome, not to make her blush; and knowne of late
Unenvied (’cause unequall’d) Laureate.
This, this was Jonson; who in his own name
Carries his praise; and may he shine alone;
I am not tyed to any generall ffame,
Nor fixed by the Approbation
Of great ones: But I speake without pretence
Hee was of English Dramatiskes, the Prince.
[Page 10.] Come, my White-head, let our Muses.
This was written by Sir Simeon Steward, or Stewart. The numbers 1 and 2 of our text are twice incorrect in original, viz. the 10th and 14th verses, each assigned to 1 (Red-head), whereas they certainly belong to 2 (White-head). From third verse the figure “1” has unfortunately dropt in printing. By aid of Addit. MS. No. 11, 811, p. 36, we are enabled to correct a few other errors, some being gross corruptions of sense; although, as a general rule, regarding poems that had appeared in print, the private MS. versions abound with blunders of the transcriber, additional to those of the original printer. It is, in the MS., entitled “A Dialogue between Pyrrotrichus and Leucothrix,” the latter taking verses 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and the final verse, 14 (marked Leuc). His earliest verse reads, in the MS., “And higher, Rufus, who would pass; were some; 3rd. v. ’Tis this that; 6th. The Roman King who; be lopt; Ruddy pates; 8th v. Red like unto; colour; 9th. Nay if; doth beare no; side looks as fair; other doth my; bear my [?]; 10th. Therefore, methinks; Besides, of all the; 12th. N.B.—Yet what thy head must buy with yeares, Crosses; That hath nature giv’n; 13th, be two friendly peeres; let us joyn; make one beauteous; 14th, [Leucothrix.] We joyn’d our heads; beat them to heart [i.e. to boot]; Was just but; of our head.” In the Reresby Memoirs, we believe, is mention of an ancestress, who, about 1619, married this (?) “Sir Simeon Steward.”
[Page 15.] A Stranger coming to the town.
In Wm. Hickes his Oxford Drollery, 1671, in Part 3rd, (“Poems made at Oxford, long since”), p. 157, this Epigram appears, with variations. The second verse reads: But being there a little while, || He met with one so right || That upon the French Disease || It was his chance to light. The final couplet is:—The French-man’s Arms are the sign without, || But the French-man’s harms are within.
Throughout the first half of the Seventeenth century the abundance of Epigrams produced is enormous; whole volumes of them, divided into Books, like J. Heywood’s, being issued by poets of whom nothing else is known, except the name, unless Anthony à Wood has fortunately preserved some record. These have not been systematically examined, as they deserve to be. Amid much rubbish good things lie hid. Perhaps the Editor may have more to say on them hereafter. Meanwhile, take this, by Robert Hayman, as alike a specimen and a summary:—
To the Reader:
Sermons and Epigrams have a like end,
To improve, to reprove, and to amend:
Some passe without this vse, ’cause they are witty;
And so doe many Sermons, more’s the pitty.
(Quodlibets, 1628, Book iv., p. 59.)
[Page 20.] List, your Nobles, and attend.
This was (perhaps, by John Eliot,) certainly written in anticipatory celebration of the event described, the Reception of Queen Henrietta Maria by the citizens of London, 1625. The full title is this:—“The Author intending to write upon the Duke of Buckingham, when he went to fetch the Queen, prepared a new Ballad for the Fidlers, as might hold them to sing between Dover and Callice.” It is thus the poem reappears, with some variations (beginning “Now list, you Lordlings, and attend, || Unto a Ballad newly penned,” &c.,) among the “Choyce Poems, being Songs, Sonnets, Satyrs, and Elegies. By the Wits of both Universities, London,” &c., 1661, p. 83. This was merely the earlier edition (of June, 1658), reissued with an irregular extra sheet at beginning. The original title-page (two issued in 1658) was “Poems or Epigrams, Satyrs, Elegies, Songs and Sonnets, upon several persons and occasions. By no body must know whom, to be had every body knows where, and for any body knows what. [MS. The Author John Eliot.] London, Printed for Henry Brome, at the Gun in Ivie Lane, 1658.” It is mentioned that “These poems were given me neer sixteen years since [therefore about 1642] by a Friend of the Authors, with a desire they might be printed, but I conceived the Age then too squeemish to endure the freedom which the Author useth, and therefore I have hitherto smothered them, but being desirous they should not perish, and the world be deprived of so much clean Wit and Fancy, I have adventured to expose them to thy view; ... The Author writes not pedantically, but like a gentleman; and if thou art a gentleman of thy own making thou wilt not mislike it.”
Verse 9th. Gondomar was the Spanish Ambassador at the Court of James I., to whom, with his “one word” of “Pyrates, Pyrates, Pyrates,” we in great part owe the slaughter of Raleigh. Of course, the date ’526, four lines lower, is a blunder. The rash visit to Madrid was in March, 1623.
Title, and verse 8th. A Jack-a-Lent was a stuffed puppet, set up to be thrown at, during Lent. Perhaps it was a substitute for a live Cock; or else the Cock-throwing may have been a later “improvement:” See Hone’s Every Day Book, for an illustrated account, i. 249. Trace of the habit survives in our modern “Old Aunt Sally,” by which yokels lose money at Races (although Dorset Rectors try to abolish Country Fairs, while encouragement is given to gambling at Chapel Bazaars with raffles for pious purposes). In the Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iii. sc. 3, Mrs. Page says to the boy, “You little Jack-a-Lent, have you been true to us?” Quarles alludes to the practice:—
How like a Jack-a-Lent
He stands, for boys to spend their Shrove-tide throws,
Or like a puppet made to frighten crows.
(J. O. Halliwell’s M. W. of W., Tallis ed., p. 127.)
John Taylor (the Water-Poet) wrote a whim-wham entitled “Jack a Lent: his Beginning and Entertainment,” about 1619, printed 1630; as “of the Jack of Jacks, great Jack a Lent.” And Cleveland devoted thus a Cavalier’s worn suit: “Thou shalt make Jack-a-Lents and Babies first.” (Poems, 1662, p. 56.)
Martin Llewellyn’s Song on Cock-throwing begins “Cock a doodle doe, ’tis the bravest game;” in his Men-Miracles, &c., 1646, p. 61.
[Page 31.] A Story strange I will you tell.
As to the burden (since some folks are inquisitive about the etymology of Down derry down, or Ran-dan, &c.), we may note that in a queer book, The Loves of Hero and Leander, 1651, p. 3, is a six-line verse ending thus:
“Oh, Hero, Hero, pitty me,
With a dildo, dildo, dildo dee.”
By which we may guess that the Rope-dancer’s Song, in our text, was probably written about, or even before, 1651. Some among us (the Editor for one) saw Madame Sacchi in 1855 mount the rope, although she was seventy years old, as nimbly as when the first Napoleon had been her chief spectator. During the Commonwealth, rope-dancing and tumbling were tolerated at the Red-Bull Theatre, while plays were prohibited. See (Note to p. 210) our Introduction to Westminster Drollery, pp. xv.-xx, and the Frontispiece reproduced from Kirkman’s “Wits,” 1673, representing sundry characters from different “Drolls,” grouped together, viz.: Falstaff and Dame Quickly, from “the Bouncing Knight;” the French Dancing-Master, from the Duke of Newcastle’s “Variety,” Clause, from Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Beggar’s Bush,” Tom Greene as Bubble the Clown uttering “Tu Quoque” from John Cooke’s “City Gallant” (peeping through the chief-entrance, reserved for dignitaries); also Simpleton the Smith, and the Changeling, from two of Robert Cox’s favourite Drolls. We add now, illustrative of practical suppression under the Commonwealth, a contemporary record:—
A Song.
1.
The fourteenth of September
I very well remember,
When people had eaten and fed well,
Many men, they say,
Would needs go see a Play,
But they saw a great rout at the red Bull.
2.
The Soldiers they came,
(The blind and the lame)
To visit and undo the Players;
And women without Gowns,
They said they would have Crowns;
But they were no good Sooth-sayers.
3.
Then Jo: Wright they met,
Yet nothing could get,
And Tom Jay i’ th’ same condition:
The fire men they
Would ha’ made ’em a prey,
But they scorn’d to make a petition.
4. [p. 89.]
The Minstrills they
Had the hap that day,
(Well fare a very good token)
To keep (from the chase)
The fiddle and the case,
For the instruments scap’d unbroken.
5.
The poor and the rich,
The wh... and the b...,
Were every one at a losse,
But the Players were all
Turn’d (as weakest) to the wall,
And ’tis thought had the greatest losse. [? cross.]
(Wit’s Merriment, or Lusty Drollery, 1656, p. 88.)
One such raid on the poor actors (and probably at this very theatre, the Red Bull, St. John’s Street, Clerkenwell) is recorded, as of 20th December, 1649:—“Some Stage-players in St. John’s-Street were apprehended by troopers, their clothes taken away, and themselves carried to prison” (Whitelocke’s Memorials, 435, edit. 1733, cited by J. P. C., Annals, ii. 118). It was a serious business, as we see from the Ordinance of 11 Feb., 1647-8; the demolishing of seats and boxes, the actors “to be apprehended and openly and publicly whipt in some market town ... to enter into recognizances with two sufficient sureties, never to act or play any Play or Interlude any more,” &c.
As for the Light-skirts, so elegantly referred to in the Song now reprinted (as far as we are aware, for the first time), they were certainly not actresses, but courtezans frequenting the place to ensnare visitors. Although English women did not publicly perform until after the Restoration, except on one occasion (of course, at Court Masques and private mansions, the Queen herself and her ladies had impersonated characters), yet so early as 8th November, 1629, some French professional actresses vainly attempted to get a hearing at Blackfriars Theatre, and a fortnight later at the Red Bull itself, as three weeks afterwards at the Fortune. Evidently, they were unsuccessful throughout. We hear a good deal about the far-more objectionable “Ladies of Pleasure,” who beset all places of amusement. Thomas Cranley, addressing one such, in his Amanda, 1635, describes her several alluring disguises and habits:—
The places thou dost usually frequent
Is to some playhouse in an afternoon,
And for no other meaning and intent
But to get company to sup with soon;
More changeable and wavering than the moon.
And with thy wanton looks attracting to thee
The amorous spectators for to woo thee.
Thither thou com’st in several forms and shapes
To make thee still a stranger to the place,
And train new lovers, like young birds, to scrapes,
And by thy habit so to change thy face;
At this time plain, to-morrow all in lace:
Now in the richest colours to be had;
The next day all in mourning, black and sad. &c.
[Page 33.] Oh fire, fire, fire, where?
Despite our repugnance to mutilate a text (see Introduction to Westminster Drollery, p. 6; ditto to Merry Drollery Compleat, pp. 38, 39, 40; and that to our present volume, [foot-note in section third]), a few letters have been necessarily suppressed in this piece of coarse humour. Verse fourth, on p. 33, refers to Ben Jonson’s loss of valuable manuscripts by fire, and his consequent “Execration upon Vulcan,” before June, 1629; an event deeply to be regretted: also to the whimsical account of the fire on London Bridge (see Merry Drollery, Compleat, pp. 87, 369, and [Additional Note] in present volume, tracing the poem to 1651, and the event to 1633).
An amusing poem was written, by Thomas Randolph, on the destruction of the Mitre Tavern at Cambridge, about 1630; it begins, “Lament, lament, you scholars all.” (See A Crew of kind London Gossips, 1663, p. 72).
[Page 38.] In Eighty Eight, ere I was born.
Also given later, in Merry Drollery, 1661, p. 77, and Ditto, Compleat, p. 82 and 369. Compare the Harleian MS. version, No. 791, fol. 59, given in our Appendix to Westminster Drollery, p. 38, with note. The romance of the Knight of the Sun is mentioned by Sir Tho. Overbury in his Characters, as fascinating a Chambermaid, and tempting her to turn lady-errant. “The book is better known under the title of The Mirror of Princely Deedes and Knighthood, wherein is shewed the worthinesse of The Knight of the Sunne, &c. It consists of nine parts, which appear to have been published at intervals between 1585, and 1601.” (Lucasta, &c., edit. 1864, p. 13.)
[Page 40.] And will this Wicked World, &c.
We never met this elsewhere: it was probably written either in 1605, or almost immediately afterwards. Among Robert Hayman’s Quodlibets, 1628, in Book Second, No. 49, is an Epigram (p. 27):—
Of the Gunpowder Holly-day, the 5th of November.
The Powder-Traytors, Guy Vaux, and his mates,
Who by a Hellish plot sought Saints estates,
Haue in our Kalendar vnto their shame,
A ioyful Holy-day cald by their Name.
Jeremiah Wells has among his Poems on Several Occasions, 1667, one, at p. 9, “On Gunpowder Treason,” beginning “Hence dull pretenders unto villany,” which solemnly conjures up a picture of what might have ensued if (what even Baillie Nicol Jarvie would call) the “awfu’ bleeze” had taken place. [The same rare volume is interesting, as containing a Poem on the Rebuilding of London, after the fire of 1666, p. 112, beginning “What a Devouring Fire but t’other day!”]
With Charles Lamb, we have always regretted the failure of the Gunpowder Plot. It would have been a magnificent event, fully equal to Firmillian’s blowing up the Cathedral of St. Nicholas, at Badajoz; and the loss of life to all the Parliament Members would have been a cheap price, if paid, for such a remembrance. The worst of all is, that, having been attempted, there is no likelihood of any subsequent repetition meeting with better success. Hinc illæ lachrymæ! Faux, Vaux, or Fawkes must have been a noble, though slightly misguided, enthusiast; for he had intended to perish, like Samson, with his victims. All good Protestants now admire the Nazarite, although they bon-fire-raise poor Guido. But then he failed in his work, while the other slayer of Philistines attained success: which perhaps accounts for the different apotheosis. As Lady Macbeth puts it: “The attempt, and not the deed, confounds us!”
[Page 44.] A Maiden of the Pure Society.
A version of this epigram is among the MSS. at end of a volume of “Various Poems,” in the British Museum: Press-mark, Case 39. a. These have been printed by Fred. J. Furnival, Esq., for the Ballad Society, as “Love Poems and Humorous Ones,” 1874. “A Puritane with one of hir societie,” is No. 26, p. 22.
[Page 52.] He that a Tinker, &c.
This re-appears in the Antidote against Melancholy, 1661 p. 65; and, with music, in the 1719 Pills to p. Mel., iii. 52
[Page 55.] Idol of our Sex! &c.
This Lady Carnarvon was the wife of Robert Dormer, second Baron Dormer, created Visc. Ascott, or Herld, and Earl of Carnarvon, 2d Aug., 1628. Obiit 1643. He fell at the Battle of Newbury, 20th Sept. (See Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, Book vii. p. 350, edit. 1720, where his merits are recognized.) Her name was Anna-Sophia, daughter of Philip, Earl of Pembroke. The child mentioned in the poem was their son, Charles Dormer, who died in 1709, when the Viscounty and Earldom became extinct. The poem was written at his birth, on January 1st.
[Page 57.] Uds bodykins! Chill work no more.
We find this, a year earlier, (an inferior version, lacking third verse, but longer,) as Cockbodykins, chill, &c., in Wit’s Interpreter, p. 143, 1655; and p. 247, 1671. It is a valuable, because trustworthy and graphic, record of the troubles falling upon those who tried to labour on, despite the stir of civil war. 4th verse, “that a vet,” seems corruption of that is fetched; horses in a hole (W. Int.); vange thy note, is take thy note. (do). Prob. date, 1647.
The Second Part.
Then straight came ruffling to my dore,
Some dozens of these rogues, or more;
So zausie they be grown.
Facks[,] if they come, down they sit,
They’l never ask me leave one whit,
They’l take all for their own.
Then ich provision straight must make,
And from my Chymney needs must take,
And vlitch both pure and good. Oh! ’twould melt a Christians heart to see, That such good Bacon spoil’d should be, ’Twas as red as any blood. But in it would, whether chud or not, Together with Beans into the pot, As sweet as any viggs. And when chave done all that I am able, They’l slat it down all under table, And zwear they be no Pigs. Then Ize did intreat their worships to be quiet, And ich would strive to mend their diet, And they shall have finer feeding, They zwear goddam thee for a boor, Wee’l gick thee raskal out a door, And teach thee better breeding. Then on the fire they [do] put on A piece of beef, or else good mutton, No, no, this is no meat. Forsooth they must have finer food, A good vat hen with all her brood; And then perhaps they’l eat. But of late ich had a crew together, They were meer devils, ich ask’d them whether That they were not of our nation. Good Lord defend us from all zuch, They zaid they were wild Irish, or else Dutch, They were of the Devils generation. And when these raskals went away, What e’re you thing they did me repay Ich will not you deceive. Facks[,] just as folks go to a vaire, They vaidled up my goods and ware, And so they took their leave. O what a clutter they did make Our house for Babel they did take, We could not understand a jot. Yet they did know what did belong To drink and zwear in our own tongue, Such language they had a got. Nor home ich any zafe aboad, If that Ise chance to go abroad, These rogues will come to spy me; Then zurrah, zurrah, quoth they, tarry, We know false letters you do carry, And so they come to try me. For as swift as any lightning goes Straight all their hand into my hose, There out they pull my purse. O zurrah, zurrah, this is it, Your Letters are in silver writ; You may go take your course. A Trouper t’other day did greet me, [ ... Lost line.] But could you guesse the reason, Thou art, quoth he, a rebel, Knave, And zo thou dost thy zelf behave, For thou doest whistle treason. Nor was this raskal much to blame, For all his mates zwore just the zame, That ich was fain to do. Ich humble pardon of him sought, And gave him money for my fault, And glad I could scape so too. (Wits Interpreter, 250, 1671 ed.) This is, veritably, a “document in madness” of such civil wars and military licence. It reads like the genuine narratives of Prussian brutality and outrage during the occupation of Alsace and Lorraine: which is hereafter to be bitterly avenged. This lively ditty is sung by Latrocinio in the comedy of “The Widow,” Act iii. sc. 1, produced about 1616, and written by John Fletcher, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton. The song bears trace of Fletcher’s hand (more, we believe, than of Jonson’s). It has a rollicking freedom that made it a favourite. We meet it in Wit’s Interpreter, 1655, p. 69; 1671, p. 175; and elsewhere. See Dyce’s Middleton, iii. 383, and Dodsley’s Old Plays, 1744, vi. 34. This re-appears, with variations and twelve additional lines (inferior), in Westminster-Drollery, 1671, i. 102; where is the corrupt text “and daily pays us with what is.” Our present text gives us the true word, “dully.” Fuller’s book, “A Pisgah sight of Palestine,” was published about 1649. The epitaph “Here lies Fuller’s earth,” is well known. He died in 1661. The author of this song was Dr. Henry Hughes. Henry Lawes gives the music to it, in his “Ayres,” 1669, Bk. iii. p. 10. It is also in J. P.’s Sportive Wit, 1656, p. 15; the Loyal Garland (Percy Soc. Reprint of 1686 edit, xxix. 67); Pills to p. Mel., 1719, iii. 331. Sometimes attributed to Sir R[obert] A[ytoun]. In Sportive Wit there are variations as well as an Answer, which we here give. The different title seems consequent on the Answer presupposing that Amintas has not died, merely disappeared. It is “A Shepherd fallen in Love: A Pastoral.” The readings are: Lambkins follow; They’re gone, they’re; Dog howling lyes, While he laments with woful cryes; Oh Cloris, Cloris, I decay, And forced am to cry well, &c. Sixth verse there omitted. It has, however, on p. 16:— The Answer. [1656.] Cloris, since thou art gone astray, Amyntas Shepherd’s fled away; And all the joys he wont to spye I’ th’ pretty babies of thine eye, Are gone; and she hath none to say But who can help what will away, will away? The Green on which it was her [? his] chance To have her hand first in a dance, Among the merry Maiden-crue, Now making her nought but sigh and rue The time she ere had cause to say [p. 17.] Ah, who can help what will away, will away? The Lawn with which she wont to deck And circle in her whiter neck; Her Apron lies behinde the door; The strings won’t reach now as before: Which makes her oft cry well-a-day: But who can help what will away? He often swore that he would leave me, Ere of my heart he could bereave me: But when the Signe was in the tail, He knew poor Maiden-flesh was frail; And laughs now I have nought to say, But who can help what will away. But let the blame upon me lie, I had no heart him to denie: Had I another Maidenhead, I’d lose it ere I went to bed: For what can all the world more say, Than who can help what will away? (Sportive Wit; or, The Muses’ Merriment.) Also in Captain William Hickes’ London Drollery, 1673, p. 179, where it is entitled “Queen Elizabeth’s Song.” The dance tune Sallanger’s (or more commonly Sellenger’s) Round is given in Chappell’s Pop. Music, O. T., p. 69. The name is corrupted from St. Leger’s Round; as in Yorkshire the Doncaster race is called the Sillinger, or Sellenger, to this day. Not yet found elsewhere, in MS. or print. The sixth verse refers to King James the First making so many Knights, on insufficient ground, that he incurred ridicule. Allusions are not infrequent in dramas and ballads. Here is the most noteworthy of the latter. It is in Additional MS. No. 5,832, fol. 205, British Museum. Verses upon the order for making Knights of such persons Come all you farmers out of the country, Carters, plowmen, hedgers and all, Tom, Dick and Will, Ralph, Roger and Humfrey, Leave off your gestures rusticall. Bidd all your home-sponne russetts adue, And sute your selves in fashions new; Honour invites you to delights: Come all to Court and be made Knights. 2. He that hath fortie pounds per annum Shalbe promoted from the plowe: His wife shall take the wall of her grannum, Honour is sould soe dog-cheap now. Though thow hast neither good birth nor breeding, If thou hast money, thow art sure of speeding. 3. Knighthood in old time was counted an honour, Which the best spiritts did not disdayne; But now it is us’d in so base a manner, That it’s noe creditt, but rather a staine: Tush, it’s noe matter what people doe say, The name of a Knight a whole village will sway. 4. Shepheards, leave singing your pastorall sonnetts, And to learne complements shew your endeavours: Cast of[f] for ever your two shillinge bonnetts, Cover your coxcombs with three pound beavers. Sell carte and tarrboxe new coaches to buy, Then, “Good your Worship,” the vulgar will cry. 5. And thus unto worshipp being advanced, Keepe all your tenants in awe with your frownes; And let your rents be yearly inhaunced, To buy your new-moulded maddams new gowns. Joan, Sisse, and Nell shalbe all ladified, Instead of hay-carts, in coaches shall ryde. 6. Whatever you doe, have a care of expenses, In hospitality doe not exceed: Greatnes of followers belongeth to princes: A Coachman and footmen are all that you need: And still observe this, let your servants meate lacke, To keep brave apparel upon your wives backe. [Additional stanza from Mr. Hunter’s MS.] 7. Now to conclude, and shutt up my sonnett, Leave of the Cart-whip, hedge-bill and flaile, This is my counsell, think well upon it, Knighthood and honour are now put to saile. Then make haste quickly, and lett out your farmes, And take my advice in blazing your armes. Honor invites, &c. (Shakespeare Soc., 1846, pp. 145-6, J. O. Halliwell’s Commentary on Merry Wives of Windsor, Act. ii. sc. 1, “These Knights will hack.” Also his notes in Tallis’s edit., of the same, n. d., pp. 122-3. William Chappell, in Pop. Music O. T., p. 327, gives the tune.) Another tolerable Epigram on a Chandler meets us, beginning “How might his days end that made weeks [wicks]?” among the Epitaphs of Wits Recreations, 1640-5 (Reprint, p. 271). This is one of Michael Drayton’s Pastorals, printed in 1593, in the Third Eclogue, and entitled Dowsabell. See Percy’s Reliques, vol. i. bk. 3, No. 8, 2nd edit. 1767, for remarks on variations, amounting to a remodelling, of this charming poem. We are glad to know that Mr. James Russell Smith is preparing a new edition of Michael Drayton’s voluminous works, to be included in the Library of Old Authors. Drayton suppressed his couplet poem of “Endimion and Phœbe:” Ideas Latmvs. It has no date, but was cited by Lodge in 1595, and has been reprinted by J. P. Collier; one of his handsome and carefully printed quartos, a welcome boon. This ballad, a very early example of the Down down derry burden, is not yet found elsewhere. It refers to the expedition against Scotland (then in alliance with Henry II. of France) made by the Protector, Edward, Duke of Somerset, in 1547, the first (not “fourth”) year of Edward VIth’s reign. The battle was fought on the “Black Saturday,” as it was long remembered, the tenth day of September (not of “December,” as the ballad mis-states it to have been). Terrible and remorseless was the slaughter of the ill-armed Scots, after they had imprudently abandoned their excellent hilly position, by the well-appointed English horsemen. The prisoners taken amounted to about fifteen hundred (“we found above twenty of their villains to one of their gentlemen,” says Patten), among whom was the Earl of Huntley, Lord Chancellor of Scotland, who on the previous day had sent a personal challenge to Somerset, asking to decide the contest by single combat: an offer which was not unreasonably declined, the Protector declaring that he desired no peace but such as he might win by his sword. “And thou, trumpet,” he told Huntley’s herald, “say to thy master, he seemeth to lack wit to make this challenge to me, being of such estate by the sufferance of God as to have so weighty a charge of so precious a jewel, the government of a King’s person, and then the protection of all his realms.” We learn that the Scots slain were tenfold the number of the prisoners taken. This battle of “Muskleburgh Field” (nearly the same locality as the battle of Prestonpans, wherein Prince Charles Edward in 1745 defeated Colonel Gardiner and his English troops), known also as of Fawside Brae, or of Pinkie, is described with unusual precision by an eye-witness: See The Expedition into Scotland of the most worthily-fortunate Prince Edward Duke of Somerset, uncle to our most noble Sovereign Lord the King’s Majesty Edward the VI., &c., made in the first year of his Majesty’s most prosperous reign, and set out by way of Diary, by W. Patten, Londoner. First published in 1548, this was reprinted in Dalyell’s Fragments of Scottish History, Edinburgh, 1798. This old ballad is not included by Dalyell, who probably knew not of its existence. By Thomas Carew, written before 1638. In Addit. MSS. No. 11,811, fol. 10; No. 22,118, fol. 43; also in Wits Recreations (Repr., p. 19); Roxb. Libr. Carew, p. 6, &c. By James Howell, Historiographer to Charles II., and author of the celebrated Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, 1645, 1647, 1650, and 1655. He died in November, 1666; according to Anthony à Wood, (whose account of him in the Athenæ Oxonienses, iii. 744, edit. 1817, is given by Edward Arber in his excellent English Reprints, vol. viii, 1869, with a welcome promise of editing the said Epistolæ). This poem of “Black eyes,” &c., occurs among Howell’s poems collected by Sergeant-Major Peter Fisher, p. 68, 1663; again re-issued (the same sheets) as Mr. Howell’s Poems upon divers Emergent Occasions; Printed by James Cottrel, and dated 1664.” It is also found in C. F.’s “Wit at a Venture; or, Clio’s Privy Garden, containing Songs and Poems on Several Occasions, Never before in Print” (which statement is incorrect, as usual). Our text is the earliest we know in type. The only variations, in Howell’s Poems, are: 1st line, doth lie; 4th verse, And by those spells I am possest. This is another of the charming poems by Thomas Carew, always a favourite with his own generation (few MS. or printed Collections being without many of them), and deserving of far more affectionate perusal in our own time than he generally meets. It is in Addit. MS. No. 11, 811, fol. 6b., entitled there “His Love Neglected.” Elsewhere, as “A Cruel Mistress.” Although closely resembling the Catch “What Fortune had I, poor Maid as I am,” of 1661 Antidote ag. Melancholy, p, 74, and Merry Drollery ii. 152 (equal to p. 341 of editions 1670 and 1691), this song is virtually distinct, and probably was the earlier version in date. One has been evidently borrowed or adapted from the other. This vigorous expression of opinion from a robust nature, uncorrupted amid a conventionalized, treacherous, and selfishly-cruel community, is a valuable record of the true Cavalier “all of the olden time.” We have never met it elsewhere. He has no half-likings, no undefined suspicions, and admits of no paltering with the truth, or shirking of one’s duty. As we read we behold the honest man before us, and remember that it was such as he who made our England what she is:— Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the Lords of human kind pass by. The contemplation of such brave spirits may help to nerve fresh readers to emulate their virtues, despite the sickly fancies or grovelling politics and social theories of degenerate days. The singer may be somewhat overbearing in announcement of his preferences: ——Just this Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, Or there exceed the mark,— But, if he errs at all, it is on the safe side. Composers and arrangers of such collections as this Drollery seem to have often chosen pieces simply for contrast. Thus, after the manly directness of “The Doctor’s Touchstone,” we find the vilely mercenary husband here exhibited, and followed by the truthful description (justifiable, although coarsely outspoken) of “The baseness of Whores.” Such were they of old: such are they ever. Like the three preceding poems, not yet found elsewhere, but worthy of preservation. Written “by a Person of Quality:” whom we suspect to have been Sir Francis Wortley, but without evidence to substantiate the guess. This is the earliest appearance in print, known to us, of this characteristic outburst of Cavalier vivacity, which re-appears as the Musician’s Song, in “Cromwell’s Conspiracy,” 1660, Act iii. sc. 2; and Merry Drollery, 1661, p. 101. (See also M. D. C., pp. 107, 373). As to the introduction of the several ancient philosophers (referred to in former Appendix, p. 373), compare the delightful Chanson a Boire, Je cherche en vin la vérité, Si le vin n’aide à ma foiblesse, Toute la docte antiquité Dans le vin puisa la sagesse, Oui c’est par le bon vin que le bon sens éclate, J’en atteste Hypocrate, Qui dit qu’il fait a chaque mois Du moins s’enivrer une fois, &c. (The other twelve verses are given complete in “Brallaghan; or, the Deipnosophists,” 1845, pp. 198-203, with a clever verse-translation, by the foremost of linguistic scholars now alive—the friend of Talfourd and of Dr. W. Maginn—at whom many nowadays presume to scoff, and whom Benchers defame and banish themselves from.) Also in Windsor Drollery, 1672, p. 126, as “Fire! Fire! lo here I burn in my desire,” &c. And in Henry Bold’s Latine Songs, 1685, p. 139, where it is inserted, to be alongside of this parody on it by him, song xlvii., or a MOCK. 1. Fire, Fire, Is there no help for thy desire? Are tears all spent? Is Humber low? Doth Trent stand still? Doth Thames not flow? Though all these can’t thy Feaver cure, Yet Tyburn is a Cooler lure, And since thou can’st not quench thy Fire, Go hang thy self, and thy desire! 2. Fire, fire, Here’s one [still] left for thy desire, Since that the Rainbow in the skye, Is bent a deluge to deny, As loth for thee a God should Lye. Let gentle Rope come dangling down, One born to hang shall never drown, And since thou can’st not quench the Fire, Go hang thy self, and thy desire! (Latine Songs, 1685, p. 140.) A year earlier, this had appeared in Wit’s Interpreter, 1655, p. 4 (1671, p. 108), entitled “What is most to be liked in a Mistress.” Robt. Jamieson quotes it, from Choyce Drollery, in his Pop. Bds., 1806, ii. 309. We believe it to be by the same author as the poem next following, and regret that they remain anonymous. Both are of a stately beauty, and recall to us those Cavalier Ladies with whose portraits Vandyck adorned many family mansions. One clue, that may hereafter guide us to the authorship, we know the lady’s name. It was Freeman. This poem also had appeared a year earlier, at least, in Wit’s Interpreter, 1655, p. 55 (; 1671 ed., p. 161). Also in Wit and Drollery, 1661, p. 162; in Oxford Drollery, part ii. 1671, p. 87; and in Loyal Garland, 1686, as “The Platonick Lover” (reprinted by Percy Soc., xxix. 64). There should be a comma in fifth line, after the word Constancy. Various readings:—Verse 2, meanest wit; and yet a; 3, His dear addresses; walls be brick or stone. This Song, by John Fletcher, in his Lover’s Progress, Act iii. sc. 1., before 1625. The music is found in Additional MS. No. 11,608 (written about 1656), fol. 20; there called “Myne Ost’s Song, sung in ye Mad Lover [wrong: a different play], set by Robt. Johnson.” It re-appears in Wit and Drollery 1661, p. 212; in the Academy of Complements, 1670, p. 175, &c. It is the Song of the Dead Host, whose return to wait upon his guests and ask their aid to have his body laid in consecrated ground, is so humorously described. His forewarnings of death to Cleander are, to our mind, of thrilling interest. These scenes were Sir Walter Scott’s favourites; but Leigh Hunt, perversely, could see no merit in them. We believe that the tinge of sepulchral dullness in Mine Host enhances the vividness of the incidents, like the taciturnity of Don Guzman’s stony statue in Shadwell’s “Libertine.” Thus the hundred-paged volume of Choyce Drollery, 1656,—“Delicates served up by frugall Messes, as aiming at thy satisfaction not saciety,”—comes to an end, with Beaumont and Fletcher. On them remembrance loves to rest, as the fitting representatives of that class of courtly gentlemen, poets, wits, and scholars, who were, to a great extent, even then, fading away from English society. To them had been visible no phase of the Rebellion, and they probably never conceived that it was near. Beaumont, with his statelier reserve, and his tendency to quiet musing, fostered “under the shade of melancholy boughs” at Grace-Dieu, had early passed away, honoured and lamented; a month before his friend Shakespeare went to rest: Shakespeare, who, having known half a century of busy life, felt contented, doubtless, to fulfil the wish that he had long before expressed, himself, almost prophetically:— “Let me not live,”— Thus his good melancholy oft began, ... “After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses All but new things disdain; whose judgments are Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies Expire before their fashions:”—this he wished. Fletcher survived nine years, and battled on with somewhat of spasmodic action; at once widowed and orphaned by the death of his close friend and work-fellow; winning fresh triumphs, it is true, and leaving many a trace of his bright genius like a gleam of heaven’s own light across the sadness and corruption of an imaginary world, that was not at all unreal in heroism or in wickedness. He also passed away while young; a few months later than the time when Charles the First came to the throne, suddenly elevated by the death of his father James, bringing abruptly to a consummation that marriage with the French Princess which did so much to lead him and his country into ruin. The year 1625 was the separating date between the autumnal ripeness and the chill of fruitless winter. A sunny glow remains on Fletcher to the last. With him it fades, and the world that he had known is changed. [End of Notes to Choyce Drollery.] Gratiano.—“Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, Sleep when he wakes, and creep into the jaundice By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio,— I love thee, and it is my love that speaks;— There are a sort of men, whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing pond, And do a wilful stillness entertain, With purpose to be dress’d in an opinion Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit; As who should say, ‘I am Sir Oracle, And, when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!’” (Merchant of Venice, Act i. sc. 1.) We have already, in a brief Introduction, ([pp. 105-110]), explained our reason for adding all that was necessary to complete this work; a large portion having been anticipated in Merry Drollery of the same year, 1661. In the Postscript (pp. [161-165]), we endeavoured to trace the authorship of the entire collection; leaving to these following notes, and those attached to M. Drollery, Compleat, the search for separate poems or songs. Also, on pp. [166-175], we traced the history of “Arthur o’ Bradley,” delaying the important song of his Wedding (from an original of the date 1656), unto [Part IV. of our Appendix]. To no other living writer are we lovers of old literature more deeply indebted than to the veteran John Payne Collier, who is now far advanced in his eighty-seventh year, and whose intellect and industry remain vigorously employed at this great age: one proof of the fact being his new edition of Shakespeare (each play in a separate quarto, issued to private subscribers), begun in January, 1875, and already the Comedies are finished, in the third volume. Among his numerous choice reprints of rare originals, his series of the more than “Seven Early Poetical Miscellanies” was a work of greatest value. To these, with his new “Shakespeare,” the interesting “Old Man’s Diary,” his “Bibliographical and Critical Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language,” his “Annals of the Stage,” “The Poetical Decameron,” his charming “Book of Roxburghe Ballads,” 1847, his “Broadside Black-Letter-Ballads,” 1868, and other labours, no less than to his warmth of heart and friendly encouragement by letters, the present Editor owes many happy hours, and for them makes grateful acknowledgment. About the year 1870, J. P. Collier issued to private subscribers his very limited and elegant Reprint, in quarto, of “An Antidote against Melancholy,” 1661. This is already nearly as unattainable as the original. J. P. Collier gave no notes to his Reprint of the “Antidote,” but, in the brief Introduction thereunto, he mentioned that:—“This poetical tract has been selected for our reprint on account of its rarity, the excellence of the greater part of its contents, the high antiquity of some of them, and from the fact that many of the ballads and humorous pieces of versification are either not met with elsewhere, or have been strangely corrupted in repetition through the press. Two or three of them are used by Shakespeare, and the word ‘incarnadine’ [[see our p. 148]] is only found in ‘Macbeth’ (A. ii., sc. 2), in Carew’s poems, and in this tract: here we have it as the name of a red wine; and nobody hitherto has noticed it in that sense. “When Ritson published his ‘Robin Hood’ in 1795, he relied chiefly upon the text of the famous ballad of ‘Arthur o’ Bradley,’ as he discovered it in the miscellany before us [See our Merry Drollery, Compleat, pp. 312, 399; also, in present volume, [p. 166], and [Additional Note]]; but, learned in such matters as he undoubtedly was, he was not aware of the very early period at which ‘Arthur o’ Bradley’ was so popular as to be quoted in one of our Old Moralities, which may have been in existence in the reigns of Henry VI. or Henry VII., which was acted while Henry VIII. or Edward VI. were on the throne, and which is contained in a manuscript bearing the date of 1579. “The few known copies of ‘An Antidote against Melancholy’ are dated 1661, the year after the Restoration, when lawless licence was allowed both to the press and in social intercourse; and, if we permitted ourselves to mutilate our originals, we might not have reproduced such coarseness; but still no words will be found which, even a century afterwards, were not sometimes used in private conversation, and which did not even make their appearance at full length in print. Mere words may be said to be comparatively harmless; but when, as in the time of Charles II, they were employed as incentives to vice and laxity of manners, they become dangerous. The repetition of them in our day, in a small number of reprints, can hardly be offensive to decorum, and unquestionably cannot be injurious to public morals. We always address ourselves to the students of our language and habits of life.” Joseph Ritson gave this Bacchanalian chant in the second volume of his “English Songs,” p. 58, 1783. Forty-six verses, out of the seventy, had been repeated in the “Collection of Old Ballads,” 1723-25, (which Ambrose Philips and David Mallet may have edited,) “The Ex-Ale-tation of Ale” is in vol. iii. p. 166. Part, if not all, must have been in existence fully ten years before it appeared in the “Antidote,” as we find “O Ale ab alendo, thou Liquor of life!” with music by John Hilton, in his “Catch that Catch Can,” p. 5, 1652. It is also in Wit’s Merriment; or, Lusty Drollery, 1656, p. 118; eight verses only. These are: 1. Not drunken; 2. But yet to commend it; 3. But yet, by your leave; 4. It makes a man merry; 5. The old wife whose teeth; 6. The Ploughman, the Lab’rer; 7. The man that hath a black blous to his wife; 8. With that my friend said, &c. Still earlier, the poem had appeared, imperfectly, in a four-paged quarto pamphlet, dated 1642 (along with “The Battle fought between the Norfolk Cock and the Wisbeach Cock,” see M. D. C., p. 242) as by Thomas Randall, i.e. Randolph. Accordingly, it has been included (34 verses only) in the 1875 edition of his Works, p. 662. We personally attach no weight to the pamphlet’s ascription of it to Randolph, (who died in March, 1634-5). It is far more likely to have been the work of Samuel Rowlands, in whose Crew of Kind London Gossips, 1663, we meet it, p. 129-141, and whose style it more closely resembles. Some poems duly assigned to Randolph are in the same volume, but the “Exaltation of Ale” is not thus distinguished. There are seventy-two verses given, and the motto is Tempus edax rerum, &c. We have not been able to consult an earlier edition of S. Rowland’s “Crew,” &c., about 1650. So long afterwards as 1788, we find an abbreviated copy of the song, six verses, in Lackington’s “British Songster,” p. 202, entitled “A Tankard of Ale.” The first verse runs thus:— “Not drunk, nor yet sober, but brother to both, I met with a man upon Aylesbury Vale, I saw in his face that he was in good case To go and take part of a tankard of ale.” Omitting all sequence of narrative, the other verses are adapted from the Antidote’s 21st, 19th, 10th, 26th, and 50th; concerning the hedger, beggar, widow, clerk, and amicable conclusion over a tankard of ale. In a Convivial Songster, of 1807, by Tegg, London, these six are given with addition of another as fifth:— The old parish Vicar, when he’s in his liquor, Will merrily at his parishioners rail, “Come, pay all your tithes, or I’ll kiss all your wives,” When once he shakes hands with a tankard of ale. It had appeared in a Chap-book (circa 1794, according to Wm. Logan; see his amusing “Pedlar’s Pack,” pp. 224-6), with other five verses inserted before the Finale. We give them to complete the tale:— There’s the blacksmith by trade, a jolly brisk blade, Cries, “Fill up the bumper, dear host, from the pail;” So cheerful he’ll sing, and make the house ring, When once he shakes hands with a tankard of ale. Laru la re, laru, &c. So cheerful, &c. There’s the tinker, ye ken, cries “old kettles to mend,” With his budget and hammer to drive in the nail; Will spend a whole crown, at one sitting down, When once he shakes hands with a tankard of ale. Laru, &c. There’s the mason, brave John, the carver of stone, The Master’s grand secret he’ll never reveal; Yet how merry is he with his lass on his knee, When once he shakes hands with a tankard of ale. Laru, &c. You maids who feel shame, pray me do not blame, Though your private ongoings in public I tell; Young Bridget and Nell to kiss will not fail When once they shake hands with a tankard of ale. Laru, &c. There’s some jolly wives, love drink as their lives, Dear neighbours but mind the sad thread of my tale; Their husbands they’ll scorn, as sure’s they were born, If once they shake hands with a tankard of ale. Laru, &c. From wrangling or jangling, and ev’ry such strife, Or anything else that may happen to fall; From words come to blows, and sharp bloody nose, But friends again over a tankard of ale. Laru, &c. Notice the characteristic mention of William Elderton, the Ballad-writer (who died before 1592), in the thirty-third verse (our [p. 119]):— For ballads Elderton never had peer; How went his wit in them, with how merry a gale, And with all the sails up, had he been at the cup, And washed his beard with a pot of good ale. William Elderton’s “New Yorkshire Song, intituled Yorke, Yorke, for my Monie,” (entered at Stationers’ Hall, 16 November, 1582, and afterwards “Imprinted at London by Richard Iones; dwelling neere Holbourne Bridge: 1584),” has the place of honour in the Roxburghe Collection, being the first ballad in the first volume. It consequently takes the lead in the valuable “Roxburghe Bds.” of the Ballad Society, 1869, so ably edited by William Chappell, Esq., F.S.A. It also formed the commencement of Ritson’s Yorkshire Garland: York, 1788. It is believed that Elderton wrote the “excellent Ballad intituled The Constancy of Susanna” (Roxb. Coll., i. 60; Bagford, ii. 6; Pepys, i. 33, 496). A list of others was first given by Ritson; since, by W. C. Hazlitt, in his Handbook, p. 177. Elderton’s “Lenton Stuff ys come to the town” was reprinted by J. O. Halliwell, for the Shakespeare Society, in 1846 (p. 105). He gives Drayton’s allusion to Elderton in Notes to Mr. Hy. Huth’s “79 Black-Letter Ballads,” 1870, 274 (the “Praise of my Ladie Marquess,” by W. E., being on pp. 14-16). Elderton had been an actor in 1552; his earliest dated ballad is of 1559, and he had ceased to live by 1592. Camden gives an epitaph, which corroborates our text, in regard to the “thirst complaint” of the balladist:— Hic situs est sitiens, atque ebrius Eldertonus— Quid dico—Hic situs est? his potius sitis est. Thus freely rendered by Oldys:— Dead drunk here Elderton doth lie; Dead as he is, he still is dry; So of him it may well be said, Here he, but not his thirst, is laid. A MS., time of James I., possessed by J. P. Collier, mentions, in further confirmation: Will Elderton’s red nose is famous everywhere, And many a ballet shows it cost him very dear; In ale, and toast, and spice, he spent good store of coin, You need not ask him twice to take a cup of wine. But though his nose was red, his hand was very white, In work it never sped, nor took in it delight; No marvel therefore ’tis, that white should be his hand, That ballets writ a score, as you well understand. (See Wm. Chappell’s Popular Music of the Olden Time, pp. 107, 815; and J. P. Collier’s Extracts from Reg. Stat. Comp., passim, Indices, art. Elderton; and his Bk. of Roxb. Bds., p. 139.) The fashion of disparaging the present, by praising the customs and people of days that have passed away, is almost as old as the Deluge, if not older. Homer speaks of the degeneracy in his time, and aged Israel had long earlier lamented the few and evil days to which his own life extended, in comparison with those patriarchs who had gone before him. Even as we know not the full value of the Mistress or the friend whose affection had been given unto us, until separated from them, for ever, by estrangement or the grave, so does it seem to be with many customs and things. Robert Browning touchingly declares:— And she is gone; sweet human love is gone! ’Tis only when they spring to heaven that angels Reveal themselves to you; they sit all day Beside you, and lie down at night by you Who care not for their presence, muse or sleep, And all at once they leave you, and you know them! Modified in succeeding reigns, the ballad of “The Queen [Elizabeth]’s Old Courtier, and A New Courtier of the King [James]” has already known two hundred and fifty years’ popularity. The earliest printed copy was probably issued by T. Symcocke, by or after 1626. We find it in several books about the time of the Restoration, when parodies became frequent. It is in Le Prince d’Amour, 1660, p. 161; Wit and Drollery, 1682 (not in 1656, 1661 edits.), p. 278, “With an old Song,” &c.; Wit and Mirth, 1684, p. 43; Dryden’s Misc. Poems (ed. 1716, iv. 108); with the Music, in Pills, iii. 271; in Philomel, 130, 1744; Percy’s Reliques, ii. Bk. 3, No. 8, 1767; Ritson’s English Sgs., ii. 140, and Chappell’s Pop. Music, p. 300, to which refer for a good introduction, with extract from Pepys Diary of 16th June, 1668. Accompanying a Parody by T. Howard, Gent. (beginning similarly, “An Old Song made of an old aged pate”), it meets us in the Roxburghe Coll., iii. 72, printed for F. Coles (1646-74). Among other parodies may be mentioned one entitled “An Old Souldier of the Queen’s” (in Merry Drollery, Compleat, 31, and in Wit and Drollery, 248, 1661); another, “The New Souldier” (Wit and Drollery, 282, 1682), beginning:— With a new Beard but lately trimmed, With a new love-lock neatly kemm’d, With a new favour snatch’d or nimm’d, With a new doublet, French-like trimm’d; And a new gate, as if he swimm’d; Like a new Souldier of the King’s, And the King’s new Souldier. With a new feather in his Cap; With new white bootes, without a strap; &c. In the same edition of Wit and Drollery, p. 165, is yet another parody, headed “Old Souldiers,” which runs thus (see Westminster-Drollery, ii. 24, 1672,):— Of Old Souldiers the song you would hear, And we old fiddlers have forgot who they were. John Cleveland had a parody on the Queen’s Courtier, about 1648, entitled The Puritan, beginning “With face and fashion to be known, For one of sure election.” Another, called The Tub-Preacher, is doubtfully attributed to Samuel Butler, and begins similarly, “With face and fashion to be known: With eyes all white, and many a groan” (in his Posthumous Works, p. 44, 3rd edit., 1730). The political parody, entitled “Saint George and the Dragon, anglicé Mercurius Poeticus,” to the same tune of “The Old Courtier,” is in the Kings Pamphlets, XVI., and has been reprinted by T. Wright for the Percy Soc., iii. 205. It bears Thomason’s date, 28 Feb., 1659-[60], and is on the overthrow of the Rump, by General Monk. It begins thus:— News! news! here’s the occurrences and a new Mercurius, A dialogue between Haselrigg the baffled and Arthur the furious; With Ireton’s readings upon legitimate and spurious, Proving that a Saint may be the Son of a Wh——, for the satisfaction of the curious. From a Rump insatiate as the Sea, Libera nos, Domine, &c. Old songs have rarely, if ever, been modernized so successfully as “The Queen’s Old Courtier,” of which “The Fine Old English Gentleman” is no unworthy representative. Popular though it was, thirty or forty years ago, it is not easily met with now; thus we may be excused for adding it here:— THE FINE OLD ENGLISH GENTLEMAN. I’ll sing you a good old song, made by a good old pate, Of a fine old English gentleman, who had an old estate, And who kept up his old mansion, at a bountiful old rate; With a good old porter to relieve the old poor at his gate. Like a fine old English gentleman, all of the olden time. His hall so old was hung around with pikes, and guns, and bows, And swords, and good old bucklers, that had stood against old foes; ’Twas there “his worship” held his state in doublet and trunk hose, And quaff’d his cup of good old Sack, to warm, his good old nose: Like a fine old English gentleman, &c. When Winter’s cold brought frost and snow, he open’d house to all; And though threescore and ten his years, he featly led the ball; Nor was the houseless wanderer e’er driven from his hall, For, while he feasted all the great, he ne’er forgot the small: Like a fine old English gentleman, &c. But time, though sweet, is strong in flight, and years roll swiftly by; And autum’s falling leaves proclaimed, the old man—he must die! He laid him down right tranquilly, gave up life’s latest sigh; While a heavy stillness reign’d around, and tears dimm’d every eye. For this good old English gentleman, &c. Now surely this is better far than all the new parade Of theatres and fancy balls, “At Home,” and masquerade; And much more economical, when all the bills are paid: Then leave your new vagaries off, and take up the old trade Of a fine old English gentleman, &c. A series of eight Essays, each illustrated with a design by R. W. Buss, was devoted to “The Old and Young Courtier” in the Penny Magazine of the Society for Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, in 1842. Charles Matthews used to sing (was it in “Patter versus Clatter”?) an amusing version of “The Fine Young English Gentleman,” of whom it was reported that, He kept up his vagaries at a most astounding rate, And likewise his old Landlady,—by staying out so late, Like a fine young English gentleman, one of the present time, &c. T. R. Planché wrote a parody to the same tune, in his “Golden Fleece,” on the “Fine Young Grecian Gentleman,” Iason, as described by his deserted wife Medea: it begins, “I’ll tell you a sad tale of the life I’ve been led of late.” In Dinny Blake’s “Sprig of Shillelah,” p. 3, is found “The Rale Ould Irish Gintleman,” (5 verses) beginning, “I’ll sing you a dacent song, that was made by a Paddy’s pate,” and ending thus:— Each Irish boy then took a pride to prove himself a man, To serve a friend, and beat a foe it always was the plan Of a rale ould Irish Gintleman, the boy of the olden time. (Or, as Wm. Hy. Murray, of Edinburgh, used to say, in his unequalled “Old Country Squire,” “A smile for a friend, a frown for a foe, and a full front for every one!”) At the beginning of the Crimean War appeared another parody, ridiculing the Emperor Nicholas, as “The Fine Old Russian Gentleman” (it is in Berger’s Red, White, and Blue, 467); and clever Robert B. Brough, in one of his more bitter moods against “The Governing Classes,” misrepresented the “Fine Old English Gentleman” (Ibid., p. 733), as splenetically as Charles Dickens did in Barnaby Rudge, chapter 47. Given already, in our Appendix to the Westminster Drollery, p. liv., with note of tune and locality. [See Additional Note in Part 3 of present Appendix.] There are so many differences in the version printed in the Antidote agt. Melancholy from that already given in Merry Drollery, Compleat, p. 309, (cp. Note, p. 399), that we give the former uncurtailed. Along with the music in Pills to p. Mel., iii. 116, 1719, are the extra verses (also in Wit and Mirth, 1684, p. 29?) agreeing with the Antidote; as does the version in Old Bds., i. 24, 1723. Another old ballad, in the last-named collection, p. 153, is upon “King Edward and Jane Shore; in Imitation, and to the Tune of, St. George and the Dragon.” It begins (in better version):— Why should we boast of Lais and her knights, Knowing such Champions entrapt by Whorish Lights? Or why should we speak of Thais curled Locks, Or Rhodope, &c. Roxb. Coll., iii. 258, printed in 1671. Also in Pills, with music, iv. 272. The authorship of it is ascribed to Samuel Butler, in the volume assuming to be his “Posthumous Works” (p. iii., 3rd edition, 1730); but this ascription is of no weight in general. In Edm. Gayton’s Festivous Notes upon Don Quixot, 1654, p. 231, we read:—“’Twas very proper for these Saints to alight at the sign of St. George, who slew the Dragon which was to prey upon the Virgin: The truth of which story hath been abus’d by his own country-men, who almost deny all the particulars of it, as I have read in a scurrilous Epigram, very much impairing the credit and Legend of St. George; As followeth, They say there is no Dragon, Nor no Saint George ’tis said. Saint George and Dragon lost, Pray Heaven there be a Maid! But it was smartly return’d to, in this manner, Saint George indeed is dead, And the fell Dragon slaine; The Maid liv’d so and dyed,— She’ll ne’r do so againe.” Somewhat different is the earlier version, in Wit’s Recreations, 1640-45. (Reprint, p. 194, which see, “To save a maid,” &c.) The Answer to it is probably Gayton’s own. Issued as a popular broadsheet, printed at London for Thomas Lambert, probably during the lifetime of Charles I., we find this lively ditty of “Blew Cap for Me!” in the Roxburghe Coll., i. 20, and in the Bd. Soc. Reprint, vol. i. pp. 74-9. Mr. Chappell mentions that the tune thus named “is included in the various editions of The Dancing Master from 1650 to 1690; and says, the reference to ‘when our good king was in Falkland town,’ [in the Antidote it reads “our good knight,” line 13] may supply an approximate date to the composition.” We believe that it must certainly have been before the Scots sold their king for the base bribe of money from the Parliamentarians, in 1648, when “Blew caps” became hateful to all true Cavaliers. The visit to Falkland was in 1633, so the date is narrowed in compass. From the Black-letter ballad we gain a few corrections: drowne, for dare, in 4th line; long lock’d, 26th line; for further exercises, 28th; Mistris (so we should read Maitresse, not a metrel), 29th; Pe gar me do love you (not “Dear”), 30th; she replide. The First Part ends with the Irishman. The Second Part begins with two verses not in the Antidote:— A Dainty spruce Spanyard, with haire black as jett, long cloak with round cape, a long Rapier and Ponyard; Hee told her if that she could Scotland forget, hee’d shew her the Vines as they grow in the Vineyard. “If thou wilt abandon this Country so cold, I’ll show thee faire Spaine, and much Indian gold.” But stil she replide, “Sir, I pray let me be; Gif ever I have a man, Blew-cap for me.” A haughty high German of Hamborough towne, a proper tall gallant, with mighty mustachoes; He weepes if the Lasse vpon him doe but frowne, yet he’s a great Fencer that comes to ore-match vs. But yet all his fine fencing Could not get the Lasse; She deny’d him so oft, that he wearyed was; For still she replide, “Sir, I pray let me be; Gif ever I have a man, Blew-cap for me.” In the Netherland Mariner’s Speech we find for the fifth line of verse, “Isk will make thee,” said he, “sole Lady,” &c. Another verse follows it, before the conclusion:— These sundry Sutors, of seuerall Lands, [4] did daily solicite this Lasse for her fauour; And euery one of them alike vnderstands that to win the prize they in vaine did endeauour: For she had resolued (as I before said) To haue bonny Blew-cap, or else bee a maid. Vnto all her suppliants still replyde she, “Gif ever I have a man, Blew-cap for me.” At last came a Scottish-man (with a blew-cap), and he was the party for whom she had tarry’d; To get this blithe bonny Lasse ’twas his gude hap,— they gang’d to the Kirk, & were presently marry’d. I ken not weele whether it were Lord or Leard; [Laird] They caude him some sike a like name as I heard; To chuse him from au She did gladly agree,— And still she cride, “Blew-cap, th’art welcome to mee.” The song is also reprinted for the Percy Society, (Fairholt’s Costume), xxvii. 130, as well as in Evans’ O. Bds., iii. 245. Compare John Cleavland’s “Square Cap,”—“Come hither, Apollo’s bouncing girl.” In Harleian MS. No. 6931, where it is signed as by Dr. W. Strode. The tune of this is “The Shaking of the Sheets,” according to a broadside printed for John Trundle (1605-24, before 1628, as by that date we believe his widow’s name would have been substituted). We find it reprinted by J. P. Collier in his Book of Roxburghe Ballads, p. 172, 1847, as “The Song of the Caps.” In an introductory note, we gather that “This spirited and humorous song seems to have been founded, in some of its points, upon the ‘Pleasant Dialogue or Disputation between the Cap and the Head,’ which prose satire went through two editions, in 1564 and 1565: (see the Bridgewater Catalogue, p. 46.) It is, however, more modern, and certainly cannot be placed earlier than the end of the reign of Elizabeth. It may be suspected that it underwent some changes, to adapt it to the times, when it was afterwards reprinted; and we finally meet with it, but in a rather corrupted state, in a work published in 1656, called ‘Sportive Wit: the Muses Merriment, a new Spring of Lusty Drollery,’ &c.” [p. 23.] It appears, with the music, in Pills, iv. 157; in Percy Society’s “Costume,” 1849, 115, with woodcuts of several of the caps mentioned. In Sportive Wit, 1656, p. 23, is a second verse (coming before “The Monmouth Cap,” &c.):— 2.—The Cap doth stand, each man can show, Above a Crown, but Kings below: The Cap is nearer heav’n than we; A greater sign of Majestie: When off the Cap we chance to take, Both head and feet obeysance make; For any Cap, &c. In our 3rd verse, it reads:—ever brought, The quilted, Furr’d; crewel; 4th verse, line 6, of (some say) a horn. 5th verse, crooked cause aright; Which, being round and endless, knows || To make as endless any cause [A better version]. 6th, findes a mouth; 7th, The Motley Man a Cap; [for lines 3, 4, compare Shakespeare, as to it taking a wise man to play the fool,] like the Gyant’s Crown. 8th, Sick-mans; When hats in Church drop off apace, This Cap ne’er leaves the head uncas’d, Though he be ill; [two next verses are expanded into three, in Sp. Wit.] 11th, none but Graduats [N.B.]; none covered are; But those that to; go bare. This Cap, of all the Caps that be, Is now; high degree. This is in Thomas Weaver’s Songs and Poems of Love and Drollery, p. 16, 1654. Elsewhere attributed to John Cleveland (who died in 1658), and printed among his Poems “J. Cleavland Revived” (p. 106, 3rd edit. 1662), as “The Schismatick,” with a trashy fifth verse (not found elsewhere):— I heard of one did touch, He did tell as much, Of one that would not crouch At Communion; Who thrusting up his hand Never made a stand Till he came where her f—— had union; She without all terrour, Thought it no errour, But did laugh till the tears down did trickle, Ha, ha, ha, Rotundus, Rotundus, ’tis you that my spleen doth tickle. It is likewise in the Rump collection, i. 223, 1662; Loyal Sgs., i. 131, 1731. By Ben Jonson. This is the song of the Welshmen, Evan, Howell, and Rheese, alternately, in Praise of Wales, sung in an Anti-Masque “For the Honour of Wales,” performed before King James I. on Shrove Tuesday, 1618-19. The final verse is omitted from the Antidote against Melancholy. It is this (sung by Rheese):— Au, but what say yow should it shance too, That we should leap it in a dance too, And make it you as great a pleasure, If but your eyes be now at leisure; As in your ears s’all leave a laughter, To last upon you six days after? Ha! well-a-go to, let us try to do, As your old Britton, things to be writ on. Chorus.—Come, put on other looks now, And lay away your hooks now; And though yet yow ha’ no pump, sirs, Let ’em hear that yow can jump, sirs, Still, still, we’ll toudge your ears, With the praise of her thirteen s’eeres. (See Col. F. Cunningham’s “Mermaid” Ben Jonson, iii. 130-2, for Gifford’s Notes.) With a quaint old woodcut of a strutting Welshman, in cap and feather, the song reappears in “Recreations for Ingenious Head-pieces,” 1645 (Wits Recreations, Reprint, p. 387). This is attributed to Thomas Randall, or Randolph (died 1634-5), in Wit and Mirth, 1684. p. 101: But to N. N., along with music by Hy. Lawes, in his Ayres, Book ii. p. 29, 1655. It is also in Parnassus Biceps, 1656, p. 158, “All Poets,” &c., and in Sportive Wit, p. 60. With music in Pills, vi. 182; title, “The Presbyter’s Gill:” where we find three other verses, as 4th, 5th, and 7th:— 4. The stout-brested Lombard, His brains ne’er incumbred, With drinking of Gallons three; Trycongius was named, And by Cæsar famed, Who dubb’d him Knight Cap-a-pee. 5. If then Honour be in’t, Why a Pox should we stint Ourselves of the fulness it bears? H’ has less Wit than an Ape, In the blood of a Grape, Will not plunge himself o’er Head and Ears. 7. See the bold Foe appears, May he fall that him Fears, Keep you but close order, and then We will give him the Rout, Be he never so stout[,] And prepare for his Rallying agen. 8 (Final). Let’s drain the whole Cellar, &c. The accumulative progression, humourously exaggerated, is to be seen employed in other Drinking Songs; notably in “Here’s a Health to the Barley-Mow, my brave boys!” (still heard at rural festivals in East Yorkshire, and printed in J. H. Dixon’s Bds. & Sgs. of the Peasantry, Bell’s annotated edit., p. 159) and “Bacchus Overcome,” beginning “My Friend and I, we drank,” &c. (in Coll. Old Bds., iii. 145, 1725.) With music by Henry Lawes, in his Select Ayres, i. 32, 1653, entitled “The Excellency of Wine:” the author was “Lord Broughall” [query, Broghill?]. See Introduction to our Westminster-Drollery Reprint, pp. xxxvii-viii. Although not printed in the first edition of his “Spanish Curate,” it is so entirely in the spirit of John Fletcher that we need not hesitate to assign it to him: and he died in 1625. With music, by Dr. John Wilson, in John Playford’s Select Ayres, 1659, p. 86, entitled Glee to the Cook. A poem attributed to Thomas Flatman, 1655, begins, “A Chine of Beef, God save us all!” Given, with music by Henry Lawes, in his Select Ayres, Book iii. p. 5, 1669. The author of the words was Dr. Henry Hughes. We do not find the burden, “Come, fill’s a Cup,” along with the music. See Choyce Drollery, 52, and note on p. 289. This was written by Willm. Browne, author of “Britannia’s Pastorals,” and therefore dates before 1645. See Additional Note, late in Part IV., on p. 296 of M. D. C. Given, with music by John Hilton, in his Catch that Catch Can, 1652, p. 7. Also in Walsh’s Catch-Club, ii. 13, No. 24. By Sir John Suckling, in his unfinished tragedy “The Sad One,” Act iv. sc. 4, where it is sung by Signior Multecarni the Poet, and two of the actors; but without the final couplet, which recalls to memory Francis’s rejoinder in Henry IV., pt. i. Suckling was accustomed to introduce Shakesperian phrases into his plays, and we believe these two lines are genuine. We find the Catch, with music by John Hilton in that composer’s Catch that Catch Can, 1652, p. 15. (Also in Playford’s Musical Companion, 1673, p. 24.) Captain William Hicks has a dialogue of Two Parliamentary Troopers, beginning with the same first line, in Oxford Drollery, i. 21, 1671. Written before 1659, thus: Come, come away, to the Tavern, I say, Whilst we have time and leisure for to think; I find our State lyes tottering of late, And that e’re long we sha’n’t have time to drink. Then here’s a health to thee, to thee and me, To me and thee, to thee and me, &c. This should read “Waltham Cross.” By Richard Brome, in his comedy of “The Jovial Crew,” Act ii., 1641, wherein it is sung by Hearty, as “t’other old song for that” [the uselessness of sighing for a lass]; to the tune of “Taunton Dean,” (see Dodsley’s Old Plays, 1st edit., 1744, vi. 333). With music by John Hilton, it is given in J. H.’s Catch that Catch Can, 1652, p. 31. It is also in Walsh’s Catch Club (about 1705) ii. 17, No. 43. In J. Hilton’s Catch that Catch Can, 1652, p. 55, with music by William Lawes; and in John Playford’s Musical Companion, 1673, p. 24. With music by William Lawes, in Hilton’s Catch that Catch Can, 1652, p. 38. With music by William Lawes, in Hilton’s Catch that Catch Can, 1652, p. 37. Wm. Chappell gives the words of four lines, omitting fifth and sixth, to accompany the music of Ben Jonson’s “Cock Lorrell,” in Pop. Mus. of O. T., 161 (where date of the Antidote is accidentally misprinted 1651, for 1661). With music by William Lawes, in Hilton’s Catch that Catch Can, 1652, p. 39. The words alone in Windsor Drollery, 140, 1672. Richard Climsall, or Climsell, has a long ballad, entitled “Joy and Sorrow Mixt Together,” which begins, Hang Sorrow! let’s cast away care, for now I do mean to be merry; Wee’l drink some good Ale and strong Beere, With Sugar, and Clarret, and Sherry. Now Ile have a wife of mine own: I shall have no need for to borrow; I would have it for to be known that I shall be married to morrow. Here’s a health to my Bride that shall be! come, pledge it, you coon merry blades; The day I much long for to see, we will be as merry as the Maides. Poor fellow! he soon changes his tune, after marriage, although singing to the music of “Such a Rogue would be hang’d,”—better known as “Old Sir Simon the King.” Printed by John Wright the younger (1641-83), it survives in the Roxburghe Collection, i. 172, and is reprinted for the Bd. Soc., i. 515. As may be seen, it is totally different from the Catch in Hilton’s volume and the Antidote; which is also in Oxford Drollery, Pt. 3, p. 136, there entitled “A Cup of Sack:—“Hang Sorrow, cast,” &c. It there has two more verses:— 2. Come Ladd, here’s a health to thy Love, [p. 136.] Do thou drink another to mine, I’le never be strange, for if thou wilt change I’le barter my Lady for thine: She is as free, and willing to be To any thing I command, I vow like a friend, I never intend To put a bad thing in thy hand: Then be as frollick and free [p. 137.] With her as thou woul’st with thine own, But let her not lack good Claret and Sack, To make her come off and come on. 3. Come drink, we cannot want Chink, Observe how my pockets do gingle, And he that takes his Liquor all off I here do adopt him mine ningle: Then range a health to our King, I mean the King of October, For Bacchus is he that will not agree A man should go to bed sober: ’Tis wine, both neat and fine, That is the faces adorning, No Doctor can cure, with his Physick more sure, Than a Cup of small Beer in the morning. This shows how a great man’s gifts are undervalued. Christopher Sly was truly wise (yet accounted a Sot and even a Rogue, though “the Slys are no rogues: look in the chronicles! We came in with Richard Conqueror!”) when, with all the wealth and luxury of the Duke at command, he demanded nothing so much as “a pot o’ the smallest ale.” He had good need of it. This meets us earlier, in Hilton’s Catch that Catch Can, 1651, p. 64, with music by William Ellis. The missing first verse reappears (if, indeed, not a later addition) in Oxford Drollery, 1674, Part iii. p. 163, as “made at Oxford many years since”:— My Lady and her Maid Were late at Course-a-Park: The wind blew out the candle, and She went to bed in the dark, My Lady, &c. [as in Antidote ag. Mel.] It was popular before December, 1659; allusions to it are in the Rump, 1662, i. 369; ii. 62, 97. Also in Windsor Drollery, 1672, p. 30. With music by Edmund Nelham, in John Hilton’s Catch that Catch can, 1652, p. 78. The Answer, here beginning “Your Mare is lame,” &c., we have not met elsewhere. The Catch itself has always been a favourite. In a world wherein, amid much neighbourly kindness, there is more than a little of imposition, the sly cynicism of the verse could not fail to please. Folks do not object to doing a good turn, but dislike being deemed silly enough to have been taken at a disadvantage. So we laugh at the Catch, say something wise, and straightway let ourselves do good-natured things again with a clear conscience. With music by William Howes, in Hilton’s Catch that Catch can, 1652, p. 84. Also in Walsh’s Catch-Club, ii. 77. We are told that the Symon here addressed, regarding his Bardolphian nose, was worthy Symon Wadloe,—“Old Sym, the King of Skinkers,” or Drawers. Possibly some jocular allusion to the same reveller animates the choice ditty (for which see the Percy Folio MS., iv. 124, and Pills, iii. 143), Old Sir Simon the King! With his ale-dropt hose, And his malmesy nose, Sing hey ding, ding a ding ding. We scarcely believe the ascription to be correct, and that “Old Symon the King” originally referred to Simon Wadloe, who kept the “Devil and St. Dunstan” Tavern, whereat Ben Jonson and his comrades held their meetings as The Apollo Club; for which the Leges Conviviales were written. Seeing that Wadloe died in 1626, or ’27, and there being a clear trace of “Old Simon the King” in 1575, in Laneham’s Kenilworth Letter (Reprinted for Ballad Society, 1871, p. cxxxi.), the song appears of too early a date to suit the theory. Tant pis pour les faits. But consult Chappell’s Pop. Mus., 263-5, 776-7. In 1865 (see his Bibliog. Account, i. 25), J. P. Collier drew attention to the mention of Falstaff’s name in this Catch; also to the other Shakesperiana, viz., the complete song of “Jog on, jog on the footpath way,” ([p. 156]), and the burden of “Three merry boys,” to “The Wise-men were but Seven” (M. D. C., p. 232), which is connected with Sir Toby Belch’s joviality in Twelfth Night, Act ii. 3. With the music, in Chappell’s Pop. Mus. O. T., p. 75. This favourite of our own day dates back so early, at least, as 1609, when it appeared in (Thomas Ravenscroft’s?) Deuteromelia; or, the Second Part of Musick’s Melodie, &c., p. 7. We therein find (what has dropped out, to the damage of our Antidote version), as the final couplet:— Sinamont and ginger, nutmegs and cloves, And that gave me my jolly red nose. Of course, it was the spice deserved blame, not the liquor (as Sam Weller observed, on a similar occasion, “Somehow it always is the salmon”). Those who remember (at the Johnson in Fleet Street, or among the Harmonist Society of Edinburgh) the suggestive lingering over the first syllable of the word “gin-ger,” when “this song is well sung,” cannot willingly relinquish the half-line. It is a genuine relic, for it also occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Knight of the Burning Pestle,” about 1613, Act i. sc. 3; where chirping Old Merrythought, “who sings with never a penny in his purse,” gives it thus, while “singing and hoiting” [i.e., skipping]:— Nose, nose, jolly red nose, And who gave thee this jolly red nose? Cinnamon and ginger, nutmegs and cloves, And they gave me this jolly red nose. And we know, by A Booke of Merrie Riddles, 1630, and 1631, that it was much sung: —then Ale-Knights should To sing this song not be so bold, Nutmegs, Ginger, Cinamon and Cloves, They gave us this jolly red nose. Like Nos. 4, 21, 24, 31, &c., not yet found elsewhere. With music by Thomas Holmes, in Hilton’s Catch that Catch can, 1652, p. 46. The four earliest lines of this ditty are sung by Autolycus the Pedlar, and “picker up of unconsidered trifles,” in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale (about 1610), Act iv. sc. 2. Whether the latter portion of the song was also by him (nay, more, whether he actually wrote, or merely quoted even the four opening lines), cannot be determined. We prefer to believe that from his hand alone came the fragment, at least—this lively snatch of melody, with good philosophy, such as the Ascetics reject, to their own damage. No wrong is done in accepting the remainder of the song as genuine. The final verse is orthodox, according to the Autolycusian rule of faith. It is in Windsor Drollery, p. 30; and our Introduction to Westminster-Drollery, p. xxxv. Compare, with this lame paraphrase of Anacreon’s racy Ode, the more poetic version by Abraham Cowley, printed in Merry Drollery, Compleat, p. 22 (not in 1661 ed. Merry D.) All of Cowley’s Anacreontiques are graceful and melodious. He and Thomas Stanley fully entered into the spirit of them, arcades ambo. We meet this, six years earlier, in Wits Interpreter, 1655 edit., p. 285; 1671, p. 290. Our text is the superior. Also found in Wit and Mirth, 1684, p. 113. By James Shirley, (1590-1666) in his comedy, “The Example,” 1637, Act v. sc. 3, where it is the Song of Sir Solitary Plot and Lady Plot. Repeated in the Academy of Complements, 1670, p. 209. Until after that date, for nearly a century, almost all the best songs had been written for stage plays. It forms an appropriate finale, from the last Dramatist of the old school, to the Restoration merriment, the Antidote against Melancholy, of 1661. In one of the later “Sessions of the Poets” ([vide postea Part 4, § 2])—probably, of 1664-5,—Shirley is referred to, ungenerously. He was then aged nearly seventy:— Old Shirley stood up, and made an Excuse, Because many Men before him had got; He vow’d he had switch’d and spur-gall’d his Muse, But still the dull Jade kept to her old trot. He is also mentioned, with more reverence implied, by George Daniel of Beswick; and we may well conclude this second part of our Appendix with the final verses from the Beswick MS. (1636-53); insomuch as many Poets are therein mentioned, to whom we return in Section Fourth:— The noble Overburies Quill has left [verse 20] A better Wife then he could ever find: I will not search too deep, lest I should lift Dust from the dead: Strange power, of womankind, To raise and ruine; for all he will claime, As from that sex; his Birth, his Death, his Fame. But I spin out too long: let me draw up My thred, to honour names, of my owne time Without their Eulogies, for it may stop With Circumstantiall Termes, a wearie Rhime: Suffice it if I name ’em; that for me Shall stand, not to refuse their Eulogie. The noble Falkland, Digbie, Carew, Maine, Beaumond, Sands, Randolph, Allen, Rutter, May,[13] The devine Herbert, and the Fletchers twaine, Habinton, Shirley, Stapilton; I stay [N.B.] Too much on names; yet may I not forget Davenant, and Suckling, eminent in witt. Waller, not wants, the glory of his verse; And meets, a noble praise in every line; What should I adde in honour? to reherse, Admired Cleveland? by a verse of mine? Or give ye glorious Muse of Denham praise? Soe withering Brambles stand, to liveing Bayes. These may suffice; not only to advance Our English honour, but for ever crowne Poesie, ’bove the reach of Ignorance; Our dull fooles unmov’d, admire their owne Stupiditie; and all beyond their sphere As Madnes, and but tingling in the Eare. [Final Verse.] Great Flame! whose raies at once have power to peirce The frosted skull of Ignorance, and close The mouth of Envie; if I bring a verse Unapt to move; my admiration flowes With humble Love and Zeale in the intent To a cleare Rapture, from the Argument. (G. D.’s “A Vindication of Poesie.”) End of Notes to Antidote.[Page 60.] I keep my horse, I keep, &c.
[Page 61.] There is not halfe so warm a fire.
[Page 62.] Fuller of wish, than hope, &c.
[Page 63.] Cloris, now thou art fled away.
[Page 68.] I tell you all, both great and small.
[Page 70.] When James in Scotland first began.
who had £46 per annum in King James I.’s time.[Page 72.] The Chandler drew near his end.
[Page 73.] Farre in the Forrest of Arden.
[Page 78.] On the twelfth day of December.
[Page 80.] In Celia[’s face] a question did arise.
[Page 81.] Blacke Eyes, in your dark Orbs doe lye.
[Page 83.] We read of Kings, and Gods, &c.
[Page 84.] What ill luck had I, Silly Maid, &c.
[Page 85.] I never did hold all that glisters, &c.
[Page 88.] No Gypsie nor no Blackamore.
[Page 92.] Let not Sweet Saint, &c.
[Page 93.] How happy’s that Prisoner.
[Page 97.] Fire! Fire! O how I burn, &c.
[Page 98.] ’Tis not how witty, nor how free.
[Page 99.] She’s not the fairest of her name.
[Page 100.] ’Tis late and cold, stir up the fire.
APPENDIX. Part 2.
ANTIDOTE AGAINST MELANCHOLY. 1661.[Page 113 (original, p. 1).] Not drunken, nor sober, &c.
[Page 125 (orig. 14).] With an old Song, made by, &c.
[Page 20 (original).] Pan leave piping, &c.
[Page 129 (orig. 26).] Why should we boast of Arthur, &c.
[Page 133 (orig. 29).] Come hither, thou merriest, &c.
[Page 135 (orig. 30).] The Wit hath long beholden been.
[Page 139 (orig. 37).] Once I a curious eye did fix.
[Page 139 (orig. 47).] I’s not come here to tauk of Prut.
[Page 143.] Old Poets Hipocrin admire.
[Page 144.] Hang the Presbyter’s Gill.
[Page 145.] ’Tis Wine that inspires.
[(Page, in original, 55.)] Let the bells ring.
[Page 146.] Bring out the [c]old Chyne.
[Page 147.] In Love? away! you do me wrong.
[(Page 65, orig.)] He that a Tinker, a Tinker &c.
[Page 149], line 8th, Now that the Spring, &c.
[Page 149.] You Merry Poets, old boys.
[Page 150.] Come, come away, to the Tavern, I say.
[Page 151.] There was an Old Man at Walton Cross.
[Page 151.] Come, let us cast dice, who shall drink.
[Page 151.] Never let a man take heavily, &c.
[Page 152.] Let’s cast away care, and merrily sing.
[Page 152.] Hang sorrow, and cast away care.
[Page 152.] My Lady and her Maid, upon a merry pin.
[Page 153.] An old house end.
[Same p. 153.] Wilt thou lend me thy Mare.
[Page 154.] Good Symon, how comes it, &c.
[Same p. 154.] Wilt thou be fatt? &c.
[Page 155.] Of all the birds that ever I see.
[Same p. 155.] This Ale, my bonny lads, &c.
[Page 156.] What! are we met? Come. &c.
[Same p. 156.] Jog on, jog on the foot path-way.
[Page 157.] The parcht earth drinks, &c.
[Same p. 157.] A Man of Wales, &c.
[Page 158.] Drink, drink, all you that think.
[Page 159.] Welcome, welcome, again to thy wits.