Choyce Drollery: Songs and Sonnets / Being a Collection of Divers Excellent Pieces of Poetry, of Several Eminent Authors.

by Unknown

APPENDIX. Part 4.

§ 1.—EXTRA SONGS IN THE MERRY DROLLERY, 1661.

(Not repeated in the 1670 and 1691 Editions.)

Falstaff.—“If Sack and Sugar be a fault, Heaven help the wicked.”

(Henry IV., Pt. 1, Act ii. Sc. 4.)

Collections of Songs, depending chiefly on the popularity of such as are already in vogue, or of others that promise fairly to please the reader, are necessarily of all books the most liable to receive alterations when re-issued. Thus we ourselves possess half-a-dozen editions of the Roundelay, and also of the Bullfinch, both undated eighteenth-century songsters; each copy containing a dozen or more of Songs not to be found in the others. Our Merry Drollery is a case in point. As already mentioned, there is absolutely no difference between the edition of 1670 and 1691 of Merry Drollery, Compleat, except the title-page. It was a well-understood trade stratagem, to re-issue the unsold sheets, those of 1670, with a freshly-dated title-page, as in 1691; so to catch the seekers after novelty by their most tempting lure. Even the two pages of “List of New Books” (reprinted conscientiously by ourselves in M. D., C., pp. 358, 359) are identical in both!

We take credit beforehand for the readers’ satisfaction at our providing such a Table of First Lines, as we hereafter give, that may enable him easily and convincedly to understand the alterations made from the 1661 edition of Merry Drollery, both parts, when it was re-issued in a single volume, paged consecutively, in 1670 and 1691. It is more difficult to understand why the changes were made, than thus to see what they were. 1. It could not have been from modesty: although some objectionable pieces were omitted, others, quite as open to censure, were newly admitted instead. 2. Scarcely could it have been that as political satires they were out of date (except in the case of the Triumph over The Gang—England’s Woe—and Admiral Dean’s Funeral: our pp. [198], [218], [206]); for in the later volume are found other songs on events contemporary with these, which, being rightly considered to be of abiding interest, were retained. 3. It was not that the songs rejected were too common, and easily attainable; for they are almost all of extreme rarity, and now-a-days not procurable elsewhere. 4. It must have been a whim that ostracised them, and accepted novelties instead! At any rate, here they are! As in the case of the sheet from Westminster-Drollery, 1674 ([see p. 177]), readers possess the Extra Songs of both early and late editions, along with all that are common to both, and this without confusion.

Almost all of these Merry Drollery Extra Songs were written before the Restoration; of a few we know the precise date, as of 1653, 1650, 1623, &c. These are chiefly on political events, viz. the Funeral of Admiral Dean, so blithely commented on, with forgetfulness of the man’s courage and skill while remembering him only as an associate of rebels; the story of England’s Woe (certainly published before the close of 1648), with scorn against the cant of Prynne and Burton; the noisy, insensate revel of the song on the Goldsmith’s Committee (1647, [p. 237]), where we can see in the singers such unruly cavaliers as those who brought discredit and ruin; as also in the coarser “Letany” (on our [page 241]); and in the still earlier description of New England (before 1643), which forms a most important addition to the already rich material gathered from these contemporary records, shewing the views entertained of the nonconforming and irreconcileable zealots who held close connection with the discontented Dutchmen. Although caricatured and maliciously derisive, it is impossible to doubt that we have here a group of portraits sufficiently life-like to satisfy those who beheld the originals. As to the miscellaneous pieces, the Sham-Tinker, who comes to “Clout the Cauldron,” has genuine mirth to redeem the naughtiness. Dr. Corbet’s(?) “Merrie Journey into France” is crammed full of pleasantry, and while giving a record of sights that met the traveller, enlivens it with airy gaiety that makes us willing companions. This, with variations, may be met with elsewhere in print; but not so the delightfully sportive invitation of The Insatiate Lover to his Sweetheart, “Come hither, my own Sweet Duck” ([p. 247]). To us it appears among the best of these thirty-five additions: musical and fervent, without coarseness, the song of an ardent lover, who fears nothing, and is ripe for any adventure that war may offer. One of Rupert’s reckless Cavaliers may have sung this to his Mistress. Of course it would be unfair to blame him for not being awake to the higher beauty of such a sentiment as Montrose felt and inspired:—

But if thou wilt prove faithful, then,

And constant of thy word,

I’ll make thee glorious by my pen,

And famous by my sword:

I’ll serve thee in such noble ways

Was never heard before;

I’ll crown and deck thee all with bays,

And love thee more and more.

Or, as Lovelace nobly sings:—

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkinde,

That from the nunnerie

Of thy chaste breast and quiet minde

To warre and armes I flie.

True: a new Mistresse now I chase,

The first foe in the field;

And with a stronger faith embrace

A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such

As you too shall adore;

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Lov’d I not Honour more.

C’est magnifique! mais ce n’est pas—L’amour. At least, and we imply no more, Lovelace and those who act on such high principles, find their Lux Casta marrying some neighbouring rival. But we may be sure that the singer of our Merry Drollery ditty won his Lass, literally in a canter.

[Part I., p. 2 [our p. 195.] A Puritan of late.

Compare John Cleveland’s “Zealous Discourse between the Independent-Parson and Tabitha,” “Hail Sister,” &c. (J. C. Revived, 1662, p. 108); and also the superior piece of humour, beginning, “I came unto a Puritan to wooe,” M. D., C., p. 77. The following description of the earlier sort of Precisian, ridiculous but not yet dangerous, is by Richard Brathwaite, and was printed in 1615:—

To the Precisian.

For the Precisian that dares hardly looke,

(Because th’ art pure, forsooth) on any booke,

Save Homilies, and such as tend to th’ good

Of thee and of thy zealous brother-hood:

Know my Time-noting lines ayme not at thee,

For thou art too too curious for mee.

I will not taxe that man that’s wont to slay

“His Cat for killing mise on th’ Sabbath day:[”]

No; know my resolution it is thus,

I’de rather be thy foe then be thy pus:

And more should I gaine by’t: for I see,

The daily fruits of thy fraternity:

Yea, I perceiue why thou my booke should shun,

“Because there’s many faultes th’ art guiltie on:”

Therefore with-drawe, by me thou art not call’d,

Yet do not winch (good iade) when thou art gall’d,

I to the better sort my lines display,

I pray thee then keep thou thy selfe away.

(A Strappado for the Diuell, 1615.)

The sixth line offers another illustration of what has been ably demonstrated by J. O. Halliwell, commenting on the “too-too solid flesh” of Hamlet, Act i. sc. 2, in Shakespeare Soc. Papers, i. 39-43, 1844.

By it being printed within double quotational commas, we see that the reference to a Puritan hanging his cat on a Monday, for having profanely caught a mouse on the Sabbath-Sunday, was already an old and familiar joke in 1615. James Hogg garbled a ballad in his Jacobite Relics, 1819, i. 37, as “There was a Cameronian Cat, Was hunting for a prey,” &c., but we have a printed copy of it, dated 1749, beginning “A Presbyterian Cat sat watching of her prey.” Also, in a poem “On Lute-strings, Cat-eaten,” we read:—

Puss, I will curse thee, maist thou dwell

With some dry Hermit in a Cel,

Where Rat ne’re peep’d, where Mouse ne’er fed,

And Flies go supperlesse to bed:

Or with some close par’d Brother, where

Thou’lt fast each Sabbath in the yeare,

Or else, profane, be hang’d on Monday,

For butchering a Mouse on Sunday, &c.

(Musarum Deliciæ, 1656, p. 53.)

John Taylor, the Water-Poet, so early as 1620, writes of a Brownist:—

The Spirit still directs him how to pray,

Nor will he dress his meat the Sabbath day,

Which doth a mighty mystery unfold;

His zeale is hot, although his meat be cold.

Suppose his Cat on Sunday kill’d a rat,

She on the Monday must be hang’d for that.

(J. P. C.’s Bibl. Acc., ii. 418.)

[Page 11 [our 197].] I dreamt my Love, &c.

In the Percy Folio MS. (about 1650) p. 480; E. E. T. S., iv. 102, with a few variations, one of which we have noted in margin of p. 181. The industrious editors of the printed text of the Percy Folio MS. were not aware of the fact that many of the shorter pieces were already to be found in print; but this is no wonder. They are not easy to discover ([see next p. 352]), and although we ourselves note occasionally “not found elsewhere,” it is with the remembrance that a happy “find” may yet reward a continuous search hereafter. We do not despair of recovering even the lost line of “The Time-Poets.”

[Page 12 [our 198].] Now Lambert’s sunk, &c.

In the 1662 edit. of the Rump, i. 330, and in Loyal Sgs., 1731, i. 219. It may have been written so early as Jan. 15th, 1659-60, when Col. Lambert had submitted to the Parliament, on finding the troops disinclined to support him unanimously. Another ballad made this inuendo:—

John Lambert at Oliver’s Chair did roare,

And thinks it but reason upon this score,

That Cromwell had sitten in his before;

Still blessed Reformation.

(Rump, ii. 99.)

Fairfax had returned to his house, and to Monk were given the thanks of the rescued Parliament. As M. de Bordeaux writes of him to Card. Mazarin, at this exact date, “he is now the most powerful subject in the whole nation. Fleetwood, Desborough, and all the others of the same faction are entirely out of employment” (Guizot’s Monk, 1851, p. 156). Although no mention or definite allusion seems made in the ballad to Monk’s attack on the London defences, Feb. 9th, we incline to think this may be nearer to the true date: if it refers to the oath of abjuration, of Feb. 4th, which was offered to Monk, as on March 1st. “Arthur’s Court” is an allusion to Sir Arthur Haselrig, “a rapacious, head-strong, and conceited agitator” (Ibid., p. 37). Monk had not publicly declared himself for the King until May; but he was seen to be opposed to the Rump by 11th Feb., when its effigies were enthusiastically burnt. Richard Cromwell’s abdication had been, virtually, April 22nd, 1659.

[Page 32 [204].] A young man walking all alone.

This is another of the songs contained in the Percy Folio MS. (p. 460; iv. 92 of print); wrongly supposed to be otherwise lost, but imperfect there, our fourth and fifth verses being absent. We cannot accept “if that I may thy favour haue, thy bewtye to behold,” as the true reading; while we find “If that thy favour I may win With thee for to be bold:” which is much more in the Lover’s line of advance. Yet we avail ourselves of the “I am so mad” in 3rd verse, because it rhymes with “maidenhead,” in M. D., though not suiting with the “honestye” of the P. F. MS. The final half-verse is different.

[Page 56 [206].] Nick Culpepper and Wm. Lilly.

Also in 1662 edition of the Rump, i. 308; and Loyal Songs, 1731, i. 192. The event referred to happened in June, 1653, the engagement between the English and Dutch fleets commencing on the 2nd, renewed the next day. Six of the Dutch ships were sunk, and twelve taken, with thirteen hundred prisoners. Blake, Monk, and Dean were the English commanders, until Dean was killed, the first day. Monk took the sole command on the next. Clarendon gives an account of the battle, and says: “Dean, one of the English Admirals, was killed by a cannon-shot from the Rear-Admiral of the Dutch,” before night parted them. “The loss of the English was greatest in their General Dean. There was, beside him, but one Captain, and about two hundred Common Sea-men killed: the number of the wounded was greater; nor did they lose one Ship, nor were they so disabled but that they followed with the whole fleet to the coast of Holland, whither the other fled; and being got into the Flie and the Texel, the English for some time blocked them up in their own Harbors, taking all such Ships as came bound for those parts.” (His. Reb., B. iii. p. 487, ed. 1720.)

Verse 1. Nicholas Culpeper, of Spittle Fields, near London, published his New Method of Physick, and Alchemy, in 1654.

As to William Lilly, “the famous astrologer of those times, who in his yearly almanacks foretold victories for the Parliament with so much certainty as the preachers did in their sermons,” consult his letter written to Elias Ashmole, and the notes of Dr. Zachary Gray to Butler’s Hudibras, Part ii. Canto 3. “He lived to the year 1681, being then near eighty years of age, and published predicting almanacks to his death.” He was one of the close committee to consult about the King’s execution (Echard). He lost much of his repute in 1652; in 1655 he was indicted at Hickes Hall, but acquitted. He dwelt at Hersham, Walton-on-Thames, and elsewhere. Henry Coley followed him in almanack-making, and John Partridge next. In the Honble. Robt. Howard’s Comedy, “The Committee,” 1665, we find poor Teague has been consulting Lilly:—

“I will get a good Master, if any good Master wou’d

Get me; I cannot tell what to do else, by my soul, that

I cannot; for I have went and gone to one Lilly’s;

He lives at that house, at the end of another house,

By the May-pole house; and tells every body by one

Star, and t’other Star, what good luck they shall have.

But he cou’d not tell nothing for poor Teg.”

(The Committee, Act i.)

Verse 12. The Master of the Rolls. This was Sir Dudley Digges, builder of Chilham Castle, near Canterbury, Kent, who had in 1627 moved the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham, and been rewarded with this Mastership.

Verse 18. Alludes to the rigorous suppression of the Play-houses ([vide ante p. 285], for a descriptive Song); and as we see from verse 17, the Bear-garden, like Rope-dancers and Tumblers, met more tolerance than actors (except from Colonel Pride). Not heels were feared, but heads and hands. Bears, moreover, could not stir up men to loyalty, but tragedy-speeches might. One Joshua Gisling, a Roundhead, kept bears at Paris Garden, Southwark.

23. “Goodman Lenthall,” “neither wise nor witty,” (“that creeps to the house by a backdoor,” Rump, ii. 185,) the Speaker of the Commons from 1640 to 1653; Alderman Allen, the dishonest and bankrupt goldsmith, both rebuked by Cromwell, when he forcibly expelled the Rump. (See the ballad on pp. 62-5 of M. D., C., verses 9 and 10, telling how “Allen the coppersmith was in great fear. He had done as [i.e. us] much hurt,” &c.; also 2, 15, for the dumb-foundered “Speaker without his Mace.”) This Downfall of the Rump had been on April 20th, 1653, not quite three months before the funeral of Dean. Whoever may have been the writer of this spirited ballad, we believe, wrote the other one also: judging solely by internal evidence.

24. Henry Ireton, who married Bridget Cromwell in January, 1646-7, and escaped from the Royalists after having been captured at Naseby, proved the worst foe of Charles, insatiably demanding his death, died in Ireland of the plague, 15th November, 1651. His body was brought to Bristol in December, and lay in state at Somerset House. Over the gate hung the “hatchment” with “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”—which one of the Cavaliers delightedly translated, “Good it is for his country that he is dead.” Like Dean’s, two years later, Ireton’s body was buried with ostentatious pomp in Henry VII.’s Chapel, (Feb. 6 or 7;) to be ignominiously treated at Tyburn after the Restoration. The choice of so royal a resting-place brought late insult on many another corpse. His widow was speedily married to Charles Fleetwood, before June, 1652.

In verse 26, we cannot with absolute certainty fill the blank. Yet, in the absence of disproof, we can scarcely doubt that the name suppressed was neither Sexby, “an active agitator,” who, in 1658, employed against Cromwell “all that restless industry which had formerly been exerted in his favour” (Hume’s Hist. Engd., cap. lxi.); nor “Doomsday Sedgwick;” not Sidney, staunch Republican, Algernon Sidney, whose condemnation was in 1687 secured most iniquitously, and whose death more disgracefully stains the time than the slaughter of Russell, although sentimentalism chooses the latter, on account of his wife. Sidney was “but a young member” at the Dissolution of 20th April, 1653. Probably the word was Say, the notorious “Say and Seale,” “Crafty Say,” of whom we read:—

There’s half-witted Will Say too,

A right Fool in the Play too,

That would make a perfect Ass,

If he could learn to Bray too.

(“Chips of the Old Block,” 1659; Rump, ii. 17.)

[Page 64 [213].] I went from England, &c.

A MS. assertion gives the date of this Cantilena de Gallico itinere as 1623. There seems to us no good reason for doubting that the author was Dr. Richard Corbet (1582-1635), Bishop of Oxford, afterwards of Norwich. It is signed Rich. Corbett in Harl. MS. No. 6931, fol. 32, reverso, and appears among his printed poems, 3rd edit. 1672, p. 129. In Wit and Mirth, 1684, p. 76, it is entitled “Dr. Corbet’s Journey,” &c. But it is fair to mention that we have found it assigned to R. Goodwin, by the epistolary gossip of inaccurate old Aubrey (see Col. Franc. Cunningham’s “Mermaid edit.” of Ben Jonson, i. Memoirs, p. lvii. first note). In a recent edition of Sir John Suckling’s Works, 1874, it is printed as if by him (“There is little doubt that it is his”), i. 102, without any satisfactory external evidence being adduced in favour of Suckling. In fact, the external evidence goes wholly against the theory. The very MS. Harl. 367, which is used as authority, is both imperfect and corrupt throughout, as well as anonymous (ex. gratiæ, misreading the Bastern, for Bastile), and the date on it, 1623, will not suit Suckling at all: though Sir Hy. Ellis is guessed (by his supposed handwriting,) to have attributed it to him. Could it be possible that he was otherwise unacquainted with the poem?

At earlier date than our own copy we find it, by Aug. 30th, 1656, in Musarum Deliciæ, p. 17, and in Parnassus Biceps, also 1656, p. 24. From this (as well as Harl. MS. 367) we gain corrections printed as our marginalia, [pp. 214-6]: deserv’d, for received; statue stairs, At Nôtre Dame; prate, doth please, &c. Harl. MS. 367 reads “The Indian Roc” [probably it is correct]; and “As great and wise as Luisuè” [Luines, who died 1622]. Parnassus Biceps has an extra verse, preceding the one beginning “His Queen,” (and Harl. 367 has it, but inferior):—

The people don’t dislike the youth,

Alleging reasons. For in truth

Mothers should honoured be.

Yet others say, he loves her rather

As well as ere she loved his father,

And that’s notoriously.

(A similar scandal meets us in other early French reigns: Diana de Poictiers had relations with Henry II., as well as with his father, Francis I., &c.) Compare West. Droll., i. 87, and its Appendix, pp. xxv-vi.

It may be a matter of personal taste, but we cannot recognize the genial Bishop in the “R. C., Gent.,” who wrote “The Times Whistle.” A reperusal of the E. E. T., 1871, almost convinces us that they were not the same person. We must look elsewhere for the author.

In MS., on fly leaf, prefixed to 1672 edition of Dr. Corbet’s poems, in the Brit. Mus. (press mark, 238, b. 56), we read:—

If flowing wit, if Verses wrote with ease,

If learning void of pedantry can please,

If much good humour, join’d to solid sense,

And mirth accompanied by Innocence,

Can give a Poet a just right to fame,

Then Corbet may immortal honour claim.

For he these virtues had, & in his lines

Poetick and Heroick spirit shines.

Tho’ bright yet solid, pleasant but not rude,

With wit and wisdom equally endued.

Be silent Muse, thy praises are too faint,

Thou want’st a power this prodigy to paint,

At once a Poet, Prelate, and a Saint.

Signed, John Campbell.

[Page 85 [218].] I mean to speak of England’s, &c.

In the 1662 Rump, i. 39; and in Loyal Songs, 1731, i. 12. It is also in Parnassus Biceps so early as 1656, p. 159, where we obtain a few peculiar readings; even in the first line, which has “of England’s fate;” “Prin and Burton;” “wear Italian locks for their abuse (instead of “Stallion locks for a bush”); They’ll only have private keyes for their use,” &c. We are inclined to accept these as correct readings, although our text (agreeing with the Rump) holds an intelligible meaning. But those who have inspected the curiosities preserved in the Hôtel de Cluny, at Paris, can scarcely have forgotten “the Italian [pad-] Locks” which jealous husbands imposed upon their wives, as a preservative of chastity, whenever they themselves were obliged to leave their fair helpmates at home; and the insinuation that Prynne and Burton intended to introduce such rigorous precautions, nevertheless retaining “private keyes” for their own use, has a covert satire not improbable to have been intentional. Still, remembering the persistent war waged by these intolerant Puritans against “the unloveliness of love-locks,” there are sufficient claims for the text-reading: in their denunciation of curled ringlets “as Stallion locks” hung out “for a bush,” or sign of attraction, such as then dangled over the wine-shop door (and may still be seen throughout Italy), although “good wine needs no bush” to advertise it. Instead of “The brownings,” (i.e. The Brownists, a sect that arose in the reign of Elizabeth, founded by Robt. Browne), in final verse, Parnassus Biceps reads “The Roundheads.” The poem was evidently written between 1632 and 1642. Strengthening the probability of “Italian locks” being the correct reading, we may mention in one of the Rump ballads, dated 26 January, 1660-1, we find “The Honest Mens Resolution” is to adopt this very expedient:—

“But what shall we do with our Wives

That frisk up and down the Town, ...

For such a Bell-dam,

Sayes Sylas and Sam,

Let’s have an Italian Lock!”

(Rump Coll., 1662, ii. 199.)

[Page 88 [220].] Hang Chastity, &c.

Probably refers to the New Exchange, at Durham House stables (see Additional Note to page 134 of M. D., C.). Certainly written before 1656. Lines 15 and 32 lend some countenance, by similarity, to the received version in the previous song’s sixth verse.

[Page 95 [222].] It was a man, and a jolly, &c.

With some trifling variations, this re-appears as “The Old Man and Young Wife,” beginning “There was an old man, and a jolly old man, come love me,” &c., in Wit and Mirth, 1684, p. 17. The tune and burden of “The Clean Contrary Way” held public favour for many years. See Pop. Mus. O. T., pp. 425, 426, 781. In the 1658 and 1661 editions of Choyce Poems [by John Eliot, and others], pp. 81, are a few lines of verse upon “The Fidler’s” that were committed for singing a song called, “The Clean Contrary Way”:—

The Fidlers must be whipt the people say,

Because they sung the clean contrary way;

Which if they be, a Crown I dare to lay

They then will sing the clean contrary way.

And he that did these merry Knaves betray,

Wise men will praise, the clean contrary way:

For whipping them no envy can allay, [p. 82.]

Unlesse it be the clean contrary way.

Then if they went the Peoples tongues to stay,

Doubtless they went the clean contrary way.

[Page 134 [223].] There was a Lady in this Land.

Re-appears in Wit and Drollery, 1682, p. 291 (not in the 1656 and 1661 editions), as “The Jovial Tinker,” but with variations throughout, so numerous as to amount to absolute re-casting, not by any means an improvement: generally the contrary. Here are the second and following verses, of Wit and Drollery version:—

But she writ a letter to him,

And seal’d it with her hand,

And bid him become a Tinker

To clout both pot and pan.

And when he had the Letter,

Full well he could it read;

His Brass and eke his Budget, [p. 292.]

He streight way did provide,

His Hammer and his Pincers

And well they did agree

With a long Club on his Back

And orderly came he.

And when he came to the Lady’s Gates

He knock’d most lustily,

Then who is there the Porter said,

That knock’st thus ruggedly?

I am a Jovial Tinker, &c.

The words of a later Scottish version of “Clout the Cauldron,” beginning “Hae ye ony pots or pans, Or ony broken Chandlers?” (attributed by Allan Cunningham to one Gordon) retouched by Allan Ramsay, are in his Tea-Table Miscellany, 1724, Pt. i. (p. 96 of 17th edit., 1788.) Burns mentions a tradition that the song “was composed on one of the Kenmure family in the Cavalier time.” But the disguised wooer of the later version is repulsed by the lady. Ours is undoubtedly the earlier.

[Page 148 [230].] Upon a Summer’s day.

The music to this is given in Chappell’s Pop. Music of Olden Time [1855], p. 255, from the Dancing Master, 1650-65, and Musick’s Delight on the Cithern, 1666, where the tune bears the title “Upon a Summer’s day.” In Pepy’s Collection, vol. i. are two other songs to the same tune.

[Page 153 [Suppl. 3].] Mine own sweet honey, &c.

Evidently a parody, or “Mock” of “Come hither, my own,” &c., for which, and note, see pp. [247], [367].

Second Part of Merry Drollery, 1661.

[Page 22 [235].] You that in love, &c.

A different version of this same song, only half its length, in four-line stanzas, had appeared in J. Cotgrave’s Wit’s Interpreter, 1655, p. 124. It is also in the 1671 edition, p. 229; and in Wit and Drollery, 1682 edit., 287, entitled “The Tobacconist.” We prefer the briefer version, although bound to print the longer one; bad enough, but not nearly so gross as another On Tobacco, in Jovial Drollery, 1656, beginning “When I do smoak my nose with a pipe of Tobacco.”

In the Collection of Songs by the Wits of the Age, appended to Le Prince d’Amour, 1660, (but on broadsheet, 1641) we find the following far-superior lyric on

TOBACCO.

To feed on Flesh is Gluttony,

It maketh men fat like swine.

But is not he a frugal Man

That on a leaf can dine!

He needs no linnen for to foul,

His fingers ends to wipe,

That hath his Kitchin in a Box,

And roast meat in a Pipe.

The cause wherefore few rich mens sons

Prove disputants in Schools,

Is that their fathers fed on flesh,

And they begat fat fools.

This fulsome feeding cloggs the brain,

And doth the stomack cloak;

But he’s a brave spark that can dine

With one light dish of smoak.

Audi alterem partem! Five years earlier (May 28th, 1655), William Winstanley had published “A Farewell to Tobacco,” beginning:—

Farewell thou Indian smoake, Barbarian vapour,

Enemy unto life, foe to waste paper,

Thou dost diseases in thy body breed,

And like a Vultur on the purse doth feed.

Changing sweet breaths into a stinking loathing,

And with 3 pipes turnes two pence into nothing;

Grim Pluto first invented it, I think,

To poison all the world with hellish stink, &c.

(18 lines more. The Muses’ Cabinet, 1655, p. 13.)

The three pipes for two-pence was a cheapening of Tobacco since the days, not a century before, when for price it was weighed equally against gold. Our early friend Arthur Tennyson wrote in one of our (extant) Florentine sketch-books the following impromptu of his own:—

I walk’d by myself on the highest of hills,

And ’twas sweet, I with rapture did own;

As fish-like I opened unto it my gills

And gulp’d it in ecstasy down;

To feel it breathe over my bacca-boiled tongue,

That so much of its fragrance did need,

And brace up completely a system unstrung

For months with this Devil’s own Weed.

But even so early as 1639, Thomas Bancroft had printed, (written thirteen years before) in his First Booke of Epigrammes, the following,

ON TOBACCO TAKING.

The Old Germans, that their Divinations made

From Asses heads upon hot embers laid,

Saw they but now what frequent fumes arise

From such dull heads, what could they prophetize

But speedy firing of this worldly frame,

That seemes to stinke for feare of such a flame.

(Two Bookes of Epigrammes, No. 183, sign. E 3.)

We need merely refer to other Epigrams On Tobacco, as “Time’s great consumer, cause of idlenesse,” and “Nature’s Idea,” &c., in Wit’s Recreations, 1640-5, because they are accessible in the recent Reprint (would that it, Wit Restored and Musarum Deliciæ had been carefully edited, as they deserved and needed to be; but even the literal reprint of different issues jumbled together pell-mell is of temporary service): see vol. ii., pp. 45, 38; and 96, 97, 139, 161, 227, 271. Also p. 430, for the “Tryumph of Tobacco over Sack and Ale,” attributed to F. Beaumont, (if so, then before 1616) telling

Of the Gods and their symposia;

But Tobacco alone,

Had they known it, had gone

For their Nectar and Ambrosia;

and vol. i. p. 195, on “A Scholler that sold his Cussion” to buy tobacco. It is but an imperfect version on ii. 96, headed “A Tobacconist” (eight lines), of what we gave from Le Prince d’Amour: it begins “All dainty meats I doe defie, || Which feed men fat as swine.” Answered by No. 317, “On the Tobacconist,” p. 97. By the way: “Verrinus” in M. D., C., pp. 10, 364, consult History of Signboards, p. 354—“Puyk van Verinas en Virginia Tabac;” Englished, “Tip-Top Varinas,” &c.

[Page 27 [237].] Come Drawer, some Wine.

Probably written by Thomas Weaver, and about 1646-8. It is in his collection entitled Love and Drollery, 1654, p. 13. Also in the 1662 Rump, i. 235; and the Loyal Garland, 1686 (Percy Soc. Reprint, xxix. 31). Compare a similar Song (probably founded on this one) by Sir Robt. Howard, in his Comedy, “The Committee,” Act iv., “Come, Drawer, some Wine, Let it sparkle and shine,”—or, the true beginning, “Now the Veil is thrown off,” &c. The Committee of Sequestration of Estates belonging to the Cavaliers sat at Goldsmith’s Hall, while Charles was imprisoned at Carisbrook, in 1647. A ballad of that year, entitled “Prattle your pleasure under the Rose,” has this verse:—

Under the rose be it spoken, there’s a damn’d Committee,

Sits in hell (Goldsmith’s Hall) in the midst of the City,

Only to sequester the poor Cavaliers,—

The Devil take their souls, and the hangmen their ears.

(As Hamlet says, “You pray not well!”—but such provocation transfers the blame to those who caused the anger.)

Again, in another Ballad, “I thank you twice,” dated 21st August, same year, 1647:—

The gentry are sequestered all;

Our wives we find at Goldsmith’s Hall,

For there they meet with the devil and all,

Still, God a-mercy, Parliament!

On our [p. 239], it is amusing to find reference to “the Cannibals of Pym,” remembering how Lilburn and others of that party indulged in similar accusations of cannibalism, with specific details against “Bloody Bones, or Lunsford” (Hudibras, Pt. iii. canto 2), who was killed in 1644. Thus, “From Lunsford eke deliver us, || That eateth up children” (Rump i. 65); and Cleveland writes, “He swore he saw, when Lunsford fell, || A child’s arm in his pocket” (J. C. Revived, Poems, 1662, p. 110).

[Page 32 [240].] Listen, Lordings, to my story.

With the music, this reappears in Pills to p. Mel., 1719, iv. 84, entitled “The Glory of all Cuckolds.” Variations few, and unimportant: “The Man in Heaven’s” being a very doubtful reading. In the Douce Collection, iv. 41, 42, are two broadsides, A New Summons to Horn Fair, beginning “You horned fumbling Cuckolds, In City, court, or Town,” and (To the women) “Come, all you merry jades, who love to play the game,” with capital wood-cuts: Jn Pitts, printer. They recal Butler’s description of the Skrimmington. The joke was much relished. Thus, in Lusty Drollery, 1656, p. 106, is a Pastorall Song, beginning:—

A silly poor sheepherd was folding his sheep,

He walked so long he got cold in his feet,

He laid on his coales by two and by three,

The more he laid on

The Cu-colder was he.

Three verses more, with the recurring witticism; repeated finally by his wife.

[Page 33 [Supp. 6].] Discourses of late, &c.

Also, earlier in Musarum Deliciæ, 1656, (Reprint, p. 48) as “The Louse’s Peregrinations,” but without the sixth verse. Breda, in the Netherlands, was beseiged by Spinola for ten months, and taken in 1625. Bergen, in our text, is a corrupt reading.

[Page 38 [241].] From Essex-Anabaptist Lawes.

We do not understand whence it cometh that the most bitter non-conformity and un-Christian crazes of enthusiasm seem always to have thriven in Essex and the adjacent Eastern coast-counties, so far as Lincolnshire, but the fact is undeniable. Whether (before draining the fens, see “The Upland people are full of thoughts,” in A Crew of kind London Gossips, 1663, p. 65) this proceeded from their being low-lying, damp, dreary, and dismal, with agues prevalent, and hypochondria welcome as an amusement, we leave others to determine. Cabanis declared that Calvinism is a product of the small intestines; and persons with weak circulation and slow digestion are seldom orthodox, but incline towards fanaticism and uncompromising dissent. Your lean Cassius is a pre-ordained conspirator. Plain people, whether of features or dwelling-place, think too much of themselves. Mountaineers may often hold superstitions, but of the elemental forces and higher worship. They possess moreover a patriotic love of their native hills, which makes them loth to quit, and eager to revisit them, with all their guardian powers: the nostalgia and amor patriæ are strongest in Highlanders, Switzers, Spanish muleteers, and even Welsh milkmaids. It was from flat-coasted Essex that most of the “peevish Puritans” emigrated to Holland, and thence to America, when discontented with every thing at home.

The form of a Le’tanty or Litany, for such mock-petitions as those in our text (not found elsewhere), and in M. D., C., p. 174, continued in favour from the uprise of the Independents (simply because they hated Liturgies), for more than a century. In the King’s Pamphlets, in the various collections of Loyal Songs, Songs on affairs of State, the Mughouse Diversions, Pills to purge State Melancholly, Tory Pills, &c., we possess them beyond counting, a few being attributed to Cleveland and to Butler. One, so early as 1600, “Good Mercury, defend us!” is the work of Ben Johnson.

Verse 1.—The “Brownist’s Veal” refers to Essex calves, and the scandal of one Green, who is said to have been a Brownist. 4.—“From her that creeps up Holbourne hill:” the cart journey from Newgate to the “tree with three corners” at Tyburn. Sic itur ad astra. When, Oct. 1654, Cromwell was thrown from the coach-box in driving through Hyde park, a ballad on “The Jolt on Michaelmas Day, 1654,” took care to point the moral:—

Not a day nor an hour

But we felt his power,

And now he would show us his art;

His first reproach

Is a fall from a coach,

And his last will be from a cart.

(Rump Coll. i. 362.)

Thus also in M. D., C. p. 255:

Then Oliver, Oliver, get up and ride, ...

Till thou plod’st along to the Paddington tree.

5.—“Duke Humphrey’s hungry dinner” refers to the tomb popularly supposed to be of “the good Duke” Humphrey of Gloucester (murdered 1447), but probably of Sir John Beauchamp (Guy of Warwick’s son), in Paul’s Walk, where loungers whiled away the dinner-hour if lacking money for an Ordinary, and “dined with Duke Humphrey.” See Dekker’s Gulls Horn Book, 1609, cap. iv. And Robt. Hayman writes:—

Though a little coin thy purseless pockets line,

Yet with great company thou’rt taken up;

For often with Duke Humfray thou dost dine,

And often with Sir Thomas Gresham sup.

(R. H.’s Quodlibets, 1628.)

“An old Aunt”—this term used by Autolycus, had temporary significance apart from kinship, implying loose behaviour; even as “nunkle” or uncle, hails a mirthful companion. In Roxb. Coll., i. 384, by L[aur.] P[rice], printed 1641-83, is a description of three Aunts, “seldom cleanly,” but they were genuine relations, though “the best of all the three” seems well fitted by the Letany description: which may refer to her.

[Page 46 [Supp. p. 7].] If you will give ear.

A version of this, slightly differing, is given with the music in Pills to p. Mell., iv. 191. It has the final couplet; which we borrow and add in square brackets.

[Page 61 [Supp. 9].] Full forty times over.

Earlier by six years, but without the Answer, this had appeared in Wit and Drollery, 1656, p. 58; 1661, p. 60. It is also, as “written at Oxford,” in second part of Oxford Drollery, 1671, p. 97.

[Page 62 [Supp. 11].] He is a fond Lover, &c.

This, and the preceding, being superior to the other reserved songs might have been retained in the text but for the need to fill a separate sheet. This Answer is in Love and Mirth (i.e. Sportive Wit) 1650, p. 51.

[Page 64 [Supp. 12].] If any one do want a House.

Virtually the same (from the second verse onward) as “A Tenement to Let,” beginning “I have a Tenement,” &c., in Pills to p. Mel., 1720, vi. 355; and The Merry Musician (n. d. but about 1716), i. 43. Music in both.

[Page 81 [Supp. 13].] Fair Lady, for your New, &c.

Resembling this is “Ladies, here I do present you, With a dainty dish of fruit,” in Wit and Drollery, 1656, p. 103.

[Page 103 [244].] Among the Purifidian Sect.

In Harl. MS. No. 6057, fol. 47. There it is entitled “The Puritans of New England.”

[Page 106 [248].] Come hither, my own sweet Duck.

We come delightedly, as a relief, upon this racy and jovial Love-song, which redeems the close of the volume. It has the gaiety and abandon of John Fletcher’s and Richard Brome’s. We have never yet met it elsewhere. It was probably written about 1642. The reserved song in Part i., p. 153 (Supplement, p. 3), seems to be a vile parody on it, in the coarse fashion of those persons who disgraced the cause of the Cavaliers. The rank and file were often base, and their brutality is evidenced in the songs which we have been obliged to degrade to the Supplement.

It was certainly popular before 1659, for we find it quoted as furnishing the tune to “A proper new ballad (25 verses) on the Old Parliament,” beginning “Good Morrow, my neighbours all,” with a varying burden:—

Hei ho, my hony,

My heart shall never rue,

Four and twenty now for your Mony,

And yet a hard penny worth too.

(Rump, 1662 ii, 26.)

The music is in Playford’s English Dancing Master, 1686.

[Page 116 [Supp. 14].] She lay up to, &c.

Five years earlier, in Wit and Drollery, 1656, p. 56; 1661, p. 58. With the original, in M. D., C., p. 300, compare the similar disappointment, by Cleveland, “The Myrtle-Grove” (Poems, p. 160, edit. 1661.)

[Page 149 [253].] If that you will hear, &c.

This is the same, except a few variations, as “Will you please to hear a new ditty?” in our Westminster-Drollery, 1671, i. 88; Appendix to ditto, pp. xxxvi-vii (compare the coarser verses, [p. 368] in present volume, and “Upon the biting of Fleas,” in Musarum Deliciæ, 1656; Reprint, p. 64.)

[We here close our Notes to the “Extra Songs” of Merry Drollery, 1661. But we have still some Additional Notes, on what is common to the editions of 1661, 1670, and 1691 (as promised in M. D., C., p. 363).]

---

§ 2.—ADDITIONAL NOTES TO THE MERRY DROLLERY, COMPLEAT.

(Common to all editions, 1661, ’70, ’91, and 1875.)

“A pretty slight Drollery.”

(Henry IV., pt. 2. Act ii. Sc. 1.)

MERRY
DROLLERY,
Complete.
OR,
A COLLECTION

Of	{ Jovial POEMS,
	{ Merry SONGS,
	{ Witty DROLLERIES,

Intermixed with Pleasant Catches.

The First Part.

Collected by
W.N. C.B. R.S. J.G.
LOVERS of WIT.

LONDON,
Printed for Simon Miller, at the Star, at
the West End of St. Pauls, 1670.

Title-page to 1670 Edition.

We here give the title-page of the 1670 Edition of Merry Drollery, Compleat, Part 1st. As mentioned on our [p. 231], the 1670 edition was reissued as a new edition in 1691, but with no alteration except the fresh title-page, with its date and statement of William Miller’s stock in trade.

Of the four “Lovers of Wit,” 1661, we believe we have unearthed one, viz. “R. S.,” in Ralph Sleigh, who wrote a song beginning, “Cupid, Cupid, makes men stupid; I’ll no more of such boys’ play;” (Sportive Wit,) Jovial Drollery, 1656, p. 22.

M. D., C., p. 11 [13].

Verse 6. “Mahomet’s pidgeon,” that was taught to pick seeds from out his ear, so that it might be thought to whisper to him. The “mad fellow clad alwaies in yellow,” i.e., in his military Buff-coat—“And somewhat his nose is blew, boys,” certainly alludes to Oliver Cromwell: His being “King and no King,” to his refusing the Crown offered by the notables whom he had summoned in 1657. As the “New Peers,” his sons Henry and Richard among them, insulted and contemned by the later and mixed Parliament of January 20th, 1658, were “turned out” along with their foes the recalcitrant Commons, on Feb. 4th, we have the date of this ballad established closely.

Page 29. Nonsense. Now Gentlemen, if, &c.

Two other “Messes of Nonsense” may be found in Recreations for Ingenious Headpieces, 1645 (Reprint, Wit’s Recreations, pp. 400, 401); beginning “When Neptune’s blasts,” and “Like to the tone of unspoke speeches.” The latter we believe to have been written by Bishop Corbet. In Wit’s Merriment (i.e. Sportive Wit), 1656, is the following: A FANCY:—

When Py crust first began to reign,

Cheese parings went to warre.

Red Herrings lookt both blew and wan,

Green leeks and Puddings jarre.

Blind Hugh went out to see

Two Cripples run a race,

The Ox fought with the Humble Bee,

And claw’d him by the face.

Page 36, lines 21, 22. “Honest Dick;” and “L.”

These lines furnish a clue to the date of this ballad, (and its “Answer” quickly followed): “Honest Dick” being Richard Cromwell, whose Protectorate lasted only eight months, beginning in September, 1658. “The name with an L—” refers to his unscrupulous rival Lambert; with his spasmodic attempts at supremacy, urged on by his own ambition and that of his wife (accustomed too long to rule Oliver himself, during a close intimacy, not without exciting scandal, while she insisted on displacing Lady Dysart). For an account of Lambert’s twenty-one years of captivity, first at Guernsey and later at Plymouth, see Choice Notes on History, from N. and Q., 1858, pp. 155-163. Lambert played a selfish game, lost it, and needs no pity for having had to pay the stakes. But for “Honest Dick,” “Tumble down Dick,” who had warmly pleaded with his father to save the king’s life in the fatal January of 1649, we keep a hearty liking. Carlyle stigmatizes him as “poor, idle, trivial,” &c., but let that pass. Had Richard been crafty or cruel, like those who removed him from power, his reign might have been prolonged. But “what a wounded name” he would have then left behind, compared with his now stainless character: and, in any case, his ultimate fall was certain.

Page 43, line 16th, “Call for a constable blurt.”

An allusion to Middleton’s Comedy, “Blurt, Master Constable,” 1602.

Page 62, 368. Will you hear a strange thing.

The important event here described took place April 20th, 1653, and the ballad immediately followed. (Compare “Cheer up, kind country men,” by S. S., “Rebellion hath broken up house,” and “This Christmas time,” in the Percy Soc. Pol. Bds., iii. 126; 180 Loyal Songs, 149, 1694; Rump, ii. 52.) At this date the strife between the fag-end of the Rump and Oliver, who was supported by his council of officers, came to open violence. Fearing his increased power, it was proposed to strengthen the Parliamentarians by admitting a body of “neutrals,” Presbyterians, to act in direct opposition against the army-leaders. With a pretence of dissolving themselves there would have ensued a virtual extension of rule. Anxious and lengthy meetings had been held by Cromwell’s adherents at Whitehall, one notably on the 19th, and continued throughout the night. Despite a promise, or half promise, of delay made to him, the Rump was meantime hurrying onward the objectionable measure, clearly with intention of limiting his influence: among the leaders being Sir Hy. Vane, Harry Marten, and Algernon Sidney. They knew it to be a struggle for life or death. From the beginning, this Long Parliament cherished the mistaken idea that they were everything supreme: providence, strength, virtue, and wisdom, etc., etc. If mere empty talk could be all this, such representative wind-bags might deserve some credit. Their doom was sealed; not alone for their incompetence, but also for proved malignity, and the attempt to perpetuate their own mischief, destroying the only power that seemed able to bring order out of chaos.

Cromwell received intelligence, from his adherents within the house, of the efforts being made to hurry the measure for settling the new representation, and then to dissolve for re-election. Major Harrison talked against time; until Cromwell could arrive after breaking up the Whitehall meeting. Ingoldsby, as the second or third messenger, had shown to him the urgent need of action. Followed by Lambert and some half-dozen officers, the General took with him a party of soldiers, reached the house, and found himself not too soon. Surrounding the chamber, and guarding the doors, the troopers remained outside. Clad in plain black, unattended and resolute, Oliver entered, stood looking on his discomfitted foes, and then sat down, speaking to no one except “dusky tough St. John, whose abstruse fanaticisms, crabbed logics, and dark ambitions issue all, as was natural, in decided avarice” (Carlyle’s Cromwell, iii. 168, 1671 edit.). Vane must have felt the peril, but held on unflinchingly, imploring the house to dispense with everything that might delay the measure, such as engrossing. The Speaker had risen at last to put the question, before the General started up, uncovered, and began his address. Something of stately commendation for past work he gave them. Perhaps at first his words were uttered solely to obtain a momentary pause, the whilst he gathered up his strength, and measured all the chances, before he broke with them for ever. Soon the tone changed into that of anger and contempt. He heaped reproaches on them: Ludlow says: “He spoke with so much passion and discomposure of mind, as if he had been distracted.” “Your time is come!” he told them: “The Lord has done with you. He has chosen other instruments for the carrying on his work, that are more worthy.”

Vane, Marten, and Sir Peter Wentworth tried to interrupt him, but it was almost beyond their power. Wentworth could but irritate him by indignant censure. He crushed his hat on, sprang from his place, shouting that he would put an end to their prating, and, while he strode noisily along the room, railed at them to their face, not naming them, but with gestures giving point to his invectives. He told them to begone: “I say you are no Parliament! I’ll put an end to your sitting. Begone! Give way to honester men.” A stamp of his foot followed, as a signal; the door flies open, “five or six files of musqueteers” are seen with weapons ready. Resistance (so prompt, with less provocation, in 1642) is felt to be useless, and, except mere feminine scolding, none is attempted. Not one dares to struggle. Afraid of violence, their swords hang idly at their side. As they pass out in turn, they meet the scathing of Oliver’s rebuke. His control of himself is gone. Their crimes are not forgotten. He denounces Challoner as a drunkard, Wentworth for his adultery, Alderman Allen for his embezzlement of public military money, and Bulstrode Whitelock of injustice. Harry Marten is asked whether a whore-master is fit to sit and govern. Vane is unable to resist a feeble protest, availing nothing—“This is not honest: Yea! it is against morality and honesty.” In the absence of such crimes or flagrant sins of his companions, as his own frozen nature made him incapable of committing, there are remembered against him his interminable harangues, his hair-splitting, his self-sufficiency; and all that early deliberate treachery in ransacking his father’s papers, which he employed to cause the death of Strafford. To all posterity recorded, came the ejaculation of Cromwell: “Sir Harry Vane, Sir Harry Vane—the Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!” And, excepting a few dissentient voices, the said posterity echoes the words approvingly. The “bauble” mace had been borne off ignominiously, the documents were seized, including that of the unpassed measure, the room was cleared, the doors were locked, and all was over. The Long Parliament thus fell, unlamented.

Page 66. I’le sing you a Sonnet.

Written and published in 1659; as we see by the references to “Dick (Oliver’s Heir) that pitiful slow-thing, Who was once invested with purple clothing,”—his retirement being in April, 1659. Bradshaw, the bitter Regicide (whose harsh vindictiveness to Charles I. during the trial has left his memory exceptionally hateful), died 22nd November, 1659. Hewson the Cobbler was one of Oliver’s new peers, summoned in January, 1658.

Pages 69, 368. Be not thou so foolish nice.

The music to this, by Dr. John Wilson, is in his Chearfull Ayres, 1659-60, p. 126.

Pages 70, 369. Aske me no more.

Gule is misprint for “Goal,” and refers to the Bishops who, having been molested and hindered from attending to vote among the peers, were, on 30th December, 1642, committed to the Tower for publishing their protest against Acts passed during their unwilling absence. Finch, Lord Keeper; who, to save his life, fled beyond sea, and did not return until after the Restoration.

Pages 72, 369. A Sessions was held, &c.

To avoid a too-long interruption, our Additional Note to the “Sessions of the Poets” is slightly displaced from here, and follows later as [Section Third].

Pages 87, 369. Some Christian people all, &c.

We have traced this burlesque narrative of the Fire on London Bridge ten years earlier than Merry Drollery, 1661, p. 81. It appeared (probably for the first time in print) on April 28th, 1651, at the end of a volume of facetiæ, entitled The Loves of Hero and Leander (in the 1677 edition, following Ovid de Arte Amandi, it is on p. 142). The event referred to, we suspect, was a destructive fire which broke out on London Bridge, 13th Feb. 1632-3. It is thus described:—“At the latter end of the year 1632, viz., on the 13th Feb., between eleven and twelve at night, there happened in the house of one Briggs, a needle-maker, near St. Magnus Church, at the north end of the bridge, by the carelessness of a maid-servant, setting a tub of hot sea-coal ashes under a pair of stairs, a sad and lamentable fire, which consumed all the buildings before eight of the clock the next morning, from the north end of the bridge, to the first vacancy on both sides, containing forty-two houses; water being then very scarce, the Thames being almost frozen over. Beneath, in the vaults and cellars, the fire remained burning and glowing a whole week after. After which fire, the north end of the bridge lay unbuilt for many years; only deal boards were set up on both sides, to prevent people’s falling into the Thames, many of which deals were, by high winds, blown down, which made it very dangerous in the nights, although there were lanthorns and candles hung upon all the cross-beams that held the pales together.” (Tho. Allen’s Hist. and Antiq. of London, vol. ii. p. 468, 1828.) Details and list of houses burnt are given (as in Gent. Mag. Nov. 1824), from the MS. Record of the Mercies of God; or, a Thankfull Remembrance, 1618-1635 (since printed), kept by the Puritan Nehemiah Wallington, citizen and turner, of London, a friend of Prynn and Bastwick. He gives the date as Monday, 11th February, 1633. Our ballad mentions the river being frozen over, and “all on the tenth of January;” but nothing is more common than a traditional blunder of the month, so long as the rhythm is kept. (Compare Choyce Drollery, [p. 78], and Appendix [p. 297]).

Another Fire-ballad (in addition to the coarse squib in present vol., [pp. 33-7],) is “Zeal over-heated;” telling of a fire at Oxford, 1642; tune, Chivey Chace; and beginning, “Attend, you brethren every one.” It is not improbably by Thomas Weaver, being in his Love and Drollery, 1654, p. 21.

Page 92, 370. Cast your caps and cares away.

Of this song, from Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Beggar’s Bush,” bef. 1625, the music set by Dr. John Wilson is in his Cheerfull Ayres, 1659-60, p. 22.

Pages 97, 371. Come, let us drink.

“Mahomet’s Pigeon,” a frequent allusion: compare M. D. C., pp. 11, 192; and present appendix, [p. 356].

Pages 100, 108 (App.) 371. Satires on Gondibert.

See Additional Note in this vol. [§ 3, post], for a few words on D’Avenant. Since printing M. D. C., we have been enabled (thanks to W. F. Fowle, Esq., possessor of) to consult the very rare Second Satire, 1655, mentioned on p. 371. It is entitled, “The Incomparable Poem Gondibert Vindicated from the Wit-Combats of Four Esquires, Clinias, Dametas, Sancho, and Jack Pudding.” [With this three-fold motto:—]

Χοτέει καὶ ἀοίδ τω ἀοίδω.

Vatum quoque gratia rara est.

Anglicè,

One Wit-Brother || Envies another.

Printed in the year 1655.” It begins on p. 3, with a poetical address to Sir Willm. Davenant, asking pardon beforehand in case his “yet-unhurt Reputation” should suffer more through the champion than from the attack made by the four “Cyclops, or Wit-Centaurs,” two of whom he unhesitatingly names as “Denham and Jack Donne,” or “Jack Straw.” But even thus early we notice the sarcasm against D’Avenant himself: when in reference to the never-forgotten “flaws” in his face, the Defender writes:—

Will shew thy face (be’t what it will),

We’l push ’um yet a quill for quill.

The third poem, p. 8, again to the Poet, mocks him as well as his assailants’ lines (our M. D. C., p. 108) with twenty triplets:—

After so many poorer scraps

Of Playes which nere had the mishaps

To passe the stage without their claps, &c.

Next comes a poem “Upon the continuation of Gondibert,” “Ovid to Patmos pris’ner sent.” (Later, we extract the chief lines for the “Sessions” Add. Note.) He is told,

Wash thee in Avon, if thou flie,

My wary Davenant so high,

Yet Hypernaso now you shall

Ore fly this Goose so Capitall. (p. 14.)

After five others, came one Upon the Author, beginning,

Daphne, secure of the buff,

Prethee laugh,

Yet at these four and their riff raff;

Who can hold

When so bold?

And the trim wit of Coopers green hill, ...

Ending thus:—

Denham, thou’lt be shrewdly shent

To invent

Such Drawlery for merriment, &c....

A Drawing Donne out of the mire.

A burlesque of Gondibert on same p. 18, as “Canto the Second, or rather Cento the first;” begins “All in the Land of Bembo and of Bubb.” One stanza partly anticipates Sam. Butler:—

The Sun was sunk into the watery lap

Of her commands the waves, and weary there,

Of his long journey, took a pleasing nap

To ease his each daies travels all the year.

P. 23 gives “To Daphne on his incomparable (and by the Critick incomprehended) Poem, Gondibert,” this consolation: “Chear up, dear friend, a Laureat thou must be,” &c. Hobbes comes in for notice, on p. 24, and Denham with his Cooper’s Hill has another slap. The final poem, on p. 27, is “Upon the Author’s writing his name, as in the Title of his Booke, D’Avenant:”—

1.

“Your Wits have further than you rode,

You needed not to have gone abroad.

D’avenant from Avon comes,

Rivers are still the Muses Rooms.

Dort, knows our name, no more Durt on’t;

An’t be but for that D’avenant.

2.

And when such people are restor’d

(A thing belov’d by none that whor’d)

My noches then may not appeare,

The gift of healing will be near.

Meane while Ile seeke some Panax (salve of clowns)

Shall heal the wanton Issues and crackt Crowns.

I will conclude, Farewell Wit Squirty Fegos

And drolling gasmen Wal-Den-De-Donne-Dego.

(Finis.)”

Here, finally, are Waller, Denham, [Bro]de[rick], and Donne clearly indicated. They receive harder measure, on the whole, than D’avenant himself; so that the Second Volume of Satires, 1655, is neither by the author of “Gondibert,” nor by those who penned the “Certain Verses” of 1653. Q. E. D.

Pages 101, 372. I’ll tell thee, Dick, &c.

As already mentioned, the popularity of Suckling’s “Ballad on a Wedding” (probably written in 1642) caused innumerable imitations. Some of these we have indicated. In Folly in Print, 1667, is another, “On a Friend’s Wedding,” to the same tune, beginning, “Now Tom, if Suckling were alive, And knew who Harry were to wive.” In D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1699, p. 81: ed. 1719, iii, 65, is a different “New Ballad upon a Wedding” [at Lambeth], with the music, to same tune and model, beginning, “The sleeping Thames one morn I cross’d, By two contending Charons tost.” Like Cleveland’s poem, as an imitation it possesses merit, each having some good verses.

Pages 111, 112. The Proctors are two.

Among the references herein to Cambridge Taverns is one (3rd verse) to the Myter: part of which fell down before 1635, and was celebrated in verse by that “darling of the Muses,” Thomas Randolph. His lines begin “Lament, lament, ye scholars all!” He mentions other Taverns and the Mitre-landlord, Sam:—

Let the Rose with the Falcon moult,

While Sam enjoys his wishes;

The Dolphin, too, must cast her crown:

Wine was not made for fishes.

Pages 115, 374. ’Tis not the silver, &c.

The mention, on pp. 116, of “our bold Army” turning out the “black Synod,” refers less probably to Colonel “Pride’s Purge” of the Presbyterians, on 6th December, 1648, than to the events of April 20, 1653; and helps to fix the date to the same year. In 6th verse the blanks are to be thus filled, “Arms of the Rump or the King;” “C. R., or O. P.;” the joke of “the breeches” being a supposed misunderstanding of the Commonwealth-Arms on current coin (viz., the joined shields of England and Ireland) for the impression made by Noll’s posteriors. Compare “Saw you the States-Money,” in Rump Coll., i. 289. On one side they marked “God with us!”

“Common-wealth on the other, by which we may guess

God and the States were not both of a side.”

Pages 121, 375. Come, let’s purge our brains.

This song is almost certainly by Thomas Jordan, the City-Poet. With many differences he reprints it later in his London in Luster, as sung at the Banquet given by the Drapers Company, October 29th, 1679; where it is entitled “The Coronation of Canary,” and thus begins (in place of our first verse):—

Drink your wine away,

’Tis my Lord Mayor’s day,

Let our Cups and Cash be free.

Beer and Ale are both || But the sons of froth,

Let us then in wine agree.

To taste a Quart || Of every sort,

The thinner and the thicker;

That spight of Chance || We may advance,

The Nobler and the Quicker.

Who shall by Vote of every Throat

Be crown’d the King of Liquor.

2.

Muscadel Avant, Bloody Alicant,

Shall have no free vote of mine;

Claret is a Prince, And he did long since

In the Royal order shine.

His face, &c., (as in M. D. C. p. 112.)

In sixth verse, “If a Cooper we With a red nose see,” refers to Oliver Cromwell; and proves it to have been written before September, 1658.

Pages 125, 315. Lay by, &c., Law lies a-bleeding.

The date of this ballad seems to have been 1656, rather than 1658. The despotism of the sword here so powerfully described, was under those persons who are on p. 254 of M. D. C. designated “Oliver’s myrmidons,” meaning, probably, chiefly the major-generals of the military districts, into which the country was divided after Penruddock’s downfall in 1655. They were Desborough, Whalley, Goffe, Fleetwood, “downright” Skippon, Kelsey, Butler, Worseley, and Berry; to these ten were added Barkstead. Compare Hallam’s account:—“These were eleven in number, men bitterly hostile to the royalist party, and insolent to all civil authority. They were employed to secure the payment of a tax of ten per cent., imposed by Cromwell’s arbitrary will on those who had ever sided with the King during the late wars, where their estates exceeded £100 per annum. The major-generals, in their correspondence printed among Thurloe’s papers, display a rapacity and oppression greater than their master’s. They complain that the number of those exempted is too great; they press for harsher measures; they incline to the unfavourable construction in every doubtful case; they dwell on the growth of malignancy and the general disaffection. It was not indeed likely to be mitigated by this unparalleled tyranny. All illusion was now gone as to the pretended benefits of the civil war. It had ended in a despotism, compared to which all the illegal practices of former kings, all that had cost Charles his life and crown, appeared as dust in the balance. For what was Ship-money, a general burthen, by the side of the present decimation of a single class, whose offence had long been expiated by a composition and effaced by an act of indemnity? or were the excessive punishments of the Star Chamber so odious as the capital executions inflicted without trial by peers, whenever it suited the usurper to erect his high court of justice [by which Gerard and Vowel in 1654, Slingsby and Dr. Hewit in 1658 fell]? A sense of present evils not only excited a burning desire to live again under the ancient monarchy, but obliterated, especially in the new generation, that had no distinct remembrance of them, the apprehension of its former abuses.” (Constitutional Hist. England, cap. x. vol. ii. p. 252, edit. 1872.) This from a writer unprejudiced and discriminating.

Pages 131, 376. I’ll tell you a story.

Tower hill and Tyburn. The date of this ferocious ballad is not likely to have been long before the execution of the regicides Harrison, Hacker, Cook, and Hew Peters, in October, 1660; some on the 13th, others on the 16th. Probably, shortly before the trial of Harry Marten, on the 10th of the same month. The second verse indicates a considerable lapse of time since Monk’s arrival and the downfall of the Rump (burnt in effigy, Febr. 11, 1659-60); so we may be certain that it was written late, about September, if not actually at beginning of October.

Sir Robert Tichbourne, Commissioner for sale of State-lands, Alderman, Regulator of Customs, and Lord Mayor in 1658, was named in the King’s Proclamation, 6th June, 1660, as one of those who had fled, and who were summoned to appear within fourteen days, on penalty of being exempted from any pardon. His name occurs again, among the exceptions to the Act of Indemnity; along with those of Thos. Harrison, Hy. Marten, John Hewson, Jn. Cook, Hew Peters, Francis Hacker, and other forty-five. Nineteen of these fifty-one surrendered themselves: Tichbourne and Marten among them. None of them were executed; although Scoop was, who also had yielded. The trial of the regicides commenced on 9th October, at Hick’s Hall, Clerkenwell.

Hugh Peters suffered, along with John Cook (the Counsel against Charles I.) “that read the King’s charge,” on the 16th October. He was depressed in spirits at the last, but there was dignity in his reply to one who insulted him in passing—“Friend, you do not well to trample on a dying man;” and his sending a token to his daughter awakens pity. Physically he had failed in courage, and no wonder, to face all that was arrayed to terrify him: or he might have justified anticipations and “made a pulpit of the place.” His last sermon at Newgate is said to have been “incoherent.”

Harry Marten’s private life is so generally declared to have been licentious (dozens of ballads referring to his “harem,” “Marten’s girl that was neither sweet nor sound,” “Marten, back and leave your wench,” &c.), and his old friend Cromwell when become a foe openly taxing him as a “whoremaster,” that it is better for us to think of him with reference to his unswerving faithfulness in Republican opinions; his gay spirit (more resembling the reckless indifference of Cavaliers than his own associates can have esteemed befitting); his successful exertions on many occasions to save the shedding of blood; and his gallant bearing in the final hours of trial. The living death to which he was condemned, of his twenty years imprisonment at Chepstow Castle, has been recorded (mistakenly as thirty) by that devoted student Robert Southey, clarum et venerabilem nomen! in a poem which can never pass into oblivion, although cleverly mocked by Canning in the Anti-Jacobin, Nov. 20, 1797:—

For twenty years secluded from mankind

Here Marten lingered. Often have these walls

Echo’d his footsteps, as with even tread

He paced around his prison; not to him

Did Nature’s fair varieties exist:

He never saw the sun’s delightful beams

Save when through yon high bars it pour’d a sad

And broken splendour. Dost thou ask his crime?

He had rebelled against his King, and sat

In judgment on him: &c.

John Forster has written his memoir, and, in one of his best moments, Wallis painted him. Here are his own last words, sad yet firm, the old humour still apparent, if only in the choice of verse, it being the anagram of his name:—

Here, or elsewhere (all’s one to you—to me!)

Earth, air, or water, gripes my ghostless dust,

None knowing when brave fire shall set it free.

Reader, if you an oft-tried rule will trust,

You’ll gladly do and suffer what you must.

My life was worn with serving you and you,

And death is my reward, and welcome too:

Revenge destroying but itself. While I

To birds of prey leave my old cage and fly.

Examples preach to th’ eye—care, then, mine says,

Not how you end, but how you spend your days.

(Athenæ Oxonienses, iii. 1243.)

As to Thomas Harrison, fifth-monarchy enthusiast, firm to the end in his adversity, he who had been ruthless in prosperity, we have already briefly referred to his closing hours in our Introduction to Merry Drollery, Compleat, p. xxix.

John Hewson, Cobbler and Colonel, who had sat in the illegal mockery of Judgment on King Charles, was for the after years ridiculed by ballad-singers as a one-eyed spoiler of good leather. He escaped the doom of Tyburn by flight to Amsterdam, where he died in 1662. In default of his person, his picture was hung on a gibbet in Cheapside, 25th January, 1660-61. (See Pepys’ Diary of that date.) His appearance was not undignified. One ballad specially devoted to him, at his flight, is “A Hymne to the Gentle Craft; or, Hewson’s Lamentation”:—

Listen a while to what I shall say

Of a blind cobbler that’s gone astray

Out of the Parliament’s High-way,

Good people, pity the blind!

[verse 17.]

And now he has gone to the Lord knows whether,

He and this winter go together,

If he be caught he will lose his leather,

Good people, pity the blind!

(Rump, Coll. 1662 edit., ii. 151-4.)

Verse 14. Dr. John Hewit with Sir Harry Slingsby had been executed for conspiracy against Cromwell, 8th June, 1658. The Earl of Strafford’s death was May 12th, 1641; and that of Laud, January 10th, 1644.

Verse 15. Dun was the name of the Hangman at this time, frequently mentioned in the Rump ballads. Jack Ketch was his successor: Gregory had been Hangman in 1652.

Pages 134, 376. I’ll go no more to the Old Exchange.

The first Royal Exchange, Sir Thomas Gresham’s Bourse, was opened by Queen Elizabeth, January 23rd, 1570, and destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. The second was commenced on May 6th, 1667, and burnt on January 10th, 1838. The present building, the third, was opened by Queen Victoria Oct., 28th, 1844. The “Old Exchange,” often referred to in ballads, was Gresham’s. But the “New Exchange” was one, erected where the stables of Durham House in the Strand had stood: opened April 11th, 1609, and removed in 1737. King James I. had named it “Britain’s Bourse.” Built on the model of the established Royal Exchange, it had “cellars, a walk, and a row of shops, filled with milliners, seamstresses, and those of similar occupations; and was a place of fashionable resort. What, however, was intended to rival the Royal Exchange, dwindled into frivolity and ruin, and the site is at present [1829] occupied by a range of handsome houses facing the Strand” (T. Allen’s Hist. and Antiq. of London, iv. 254). In the ballad it is sung of as “Haberdashers’ Hall.” Cp. Roxb. Coll., ii., 230.

Pages 152, 378. There is a certain, &c.

This is an imperfect version of “A Woman’s Birth,” merely the beginning, four stanzas. The whole fifteen (eleven following ours) are reprinted by Wm. Chappell, in the Ballad Society’s Roxburghe Bds., iii. 94, 1875, from a broadside in Roxb. Coll., i. 466, originally printed for Francis Grove [1620-55]. 2nd verse reads:—Her husband Hymen; 4th. Wandring eye; insatiate. The gifts of Juno, Flora, and Diana follow; with woman’s employment of them.

Page 172. Blind Fortune, if thou, &c.

We find this in MS. Harleian, No. 6396, fol. 13. Also two printed copies, in Parnassus Biceps, 1656, 124; and in Sportive Wit, same year, p. 39. We gained the corrections, which we inserted as marginalia, from the MS.; “Ceres in hir Garland” having been corrupted into “Cealus in his.” “Aglaura,” Sir John Suckling’s play, (printed originally in 4to. 1639, with a broad margin of blank, on which the wits made merry with epigrammes, “By this wide margent,” &c.), appeared on April 18th, 1638, and is here referred to. Probably the date of the poem is nearly as early. On p. 175 the “Pilgrimage up Holborn Hill” refers to a journey from Newgate to Tyburn. (See p. 365).

Pages 180, 379. Heard you not lately of a man.

The Mad-Man’s Morrice; written by Humfrey Crouch: For the second part of the broad-sheet version we must refer readers to vol. ii. page 153, of the Ballad Society’s reprint of the Roxburghe Ballads (now happily arrived at completion of the first massive folio vol. of Major Pearson’s original pair; the bulky third and slim fourth vols. being afterwards added). We promised to give it, and gladly would have done so, if we had space: for it is a trustworthy picture of a Bedlamite’s sufferings, under the harsh treatment of former days. Date about 1635-42.

To our enumeration of mad songs (Westm. Droll. App. p. 9) we may add Thomas Jordan’s “I am the woefullest madman.”

M. D., C., p. 198, lines 22, 23. True Hearts.

“I’ll drink to thee a brace of quarts || Whose Anagram is called True Hearts.” The Anagram of True Hearts gives us “Stuart here!” which, like drinking “to the King—over the water!” in later days by the Jacobites, would be well understood by suspected cavaliers.

In March 1659-60 appeared the anagram “Charles Stuart: Arts Chast Rule.” Later: Awld fool, Rob the Jews’ Shop.

Pages 255, 287. When I do travel in the night.

Like “How happy’s the prisoner,” Ibid. p. 107, we trace this so early as 1656. It is in Sportive Wit, p. 12, as “When I go to revel in the night,” The Drunkard’s Song.

Pages 153 (and Introduction, ix). The best of Poets, &c.

The Bow Goose. We have found this, (15 verses of our 18,) five years earlier, in Sportive Wit, 1656, p. 35. It there begins, “The best of Poets write of Hogs, And of Ulysses barking Dogs; Others of Sparrows, Flies, and Hogs.” Our text, though later, seems to be the better, and has three more verses: “Frogs,” in connection with “the Best of Poets,” referring to Homer and to Batrachomyomachia; supposed to be his, and translated by George Chapman, about 1623 (of whom A. C. Swinburne has recently written so glowing a eulogium, coupling with it the noblest praise of Marlowe).

M. D., C., pp. 166, 376. Now, thanks to, &c.

Of course, the words displayed by dashes are Crown, Bishop, King. To this same tune are later songs (1659-60) in the Rump, ii. 193-200, “What a reprobate crew is here,” &c. Wilkins prints an inferior version of 7th line in 3rd verse, as “Take Prynne and his clubs, or Say and his tubs,” referring to William, Viscount “Say and Seal.” Ours reads “club, or Smec and his tub,” the allusion being to Smectymnuus, a name compounded, like the word Cabal in Charles II.’s time, of the initials of five personal names: Ste. Marshall, Edm. Calamy, Thos. Young, Matth. Newcomen, and Willm. Spurstow; all preachers, who united in a book against Episcopacy and the Liturgy. Milton, in 1641 published his Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence against Smectymnuus; and in 1642, An Apology for Smectymnuus. John Cleveland devotes a poem to “The Club Divines,” beginning “Smectymnuus! the Goblin makes me start.” (Poems, p. 38, 1661; also in the Rump Coll., i. 57.)

Pages 200, 382. A Story strange, &c.

Correction:—Instead of the words “Choyce Drollery, p. 31,” in first line of note (M. D., C., p. 382), read “Jovial Drollery (i.e., Sportive Wit), p. 59.” The same date, viz. 1656.

Pages 210-11, 384. “To Virginia for Planters.”

The reference here is to the proposed expedition of disheartened Cavaliers (among whom was Wm. D’Avenant) from France and England to the Virginian plantations. It was defeated in 1650, the vessels having been intercepted in the channel by the Commonwealth’s fleet. By the way, the infamous sale into slavery of the royalist prisoners during the war in previous years by the intolerant Parliament, deserves the sternest reprobation.

Page 226. “Sea-coal Lane.”

An appropriate dower, as Sea-coal Lane in the Old Bailey bore a similar evil repute to Turnball Street, Drury Lane, and Kent Street, for the bona-roba tribe: as “the suburbs” always did.

Pages 232, 390. How poor is his spirit.

Written when Oliver rejected the title of King, 8th May, 1657. (See next note, on p. 254.)

Pages 254, 393. Oliver, Oliver, take up thy Crown.

After Cromwell’s designating the Battle of Worcester, 3rd September, 1651, his “crowning victory” many of his more uncompromising Republicans kept a stealthy eye upon him. Our ballad evidently refers itself to the date of the “purified” Parliament’s “Petition and Advice,” March 26, 1656, when Cromwell hesitated before accepting or declining the offered title of King; thinking (mistakenly, as we deem probable) that his position would become more unsafe, from the jealousy and prejudices of the army, than if he seemed contented with the name of Protector to the Commonwealth, while holding the actual power of sovereignty. His refusal was in April, 1657. Hallam thinks it was not until after Worcester fight that “he began to fix his thoughts, if not on the dignity of royalty, yet on an equivalent right of command. Two remarkable conversations, in which Whitelock bore a part, seem to place beyond controversy the nature of his designs. About the end of 1651, Whitelock himself, St. John, Widdrington, Lenthall, Harrison, Desborough, Fleetwood, and Whalley met Cromwell, at his own request to consider the settlement of the nation,” &c. (Constit. Hist. England, cap. x. p. 237, edit. 1872.) “Twelve months after this time in a more confidential discourse with Whitelock alone, the general took occasion to complain both of the chief officers of the army and of the parliament,” &c. (Ibid. p. 238). The conference not being satisfactory to Cromwell, on each occasion ended abruptly; and Whitelock (if we may trust his own account, which perhaps is asking too much) was little consulted afterwards. When they had conferred the title of Lord Protector, the right of appointing his successor was added on 22nd May.

Pages 255, 393. When I do travel, &c.

“With upsie freeze I line my head,” of our text, is in the play “Cromwell’s Coronation” printed “With tipsy frenzie.” But we often find the other phrase; sometimes, as in the ballad of “The Good Fellow’s Best Beloved” (i.e. strong drink) varied thus, “With good ipse he,” (about 1633). See Bd. Soc. Roxb. Bds. iii. 248, where is W. Chappell’s note, quoting Nares:—“It has been said that op-zee, in Dutch, means ‘over sea,’ which cones near to another English phrase for drunkenness, being ‘half-seas over.’ But op-zyn-fries means, ‘in the Dutch fashion,’ or à la mode de Frise, which perhaps is the best interpretation of the phrase.” In Massinger and Decker’s “Virgin Martyr,” 1622, Act ii. sc. 1, we find the vile Spungius saying, “Bacchus, the God of brewed wine and sugar, grand patron of rob-pots, upsie freesie tipplers, and super-naculum takers,” &c. Probably Badham’s conjecture is right, and in Hamlet, i. 4, we should read not “up-spring,” but

“Keeps wassail, and the swaggering upsy freeze.”

(Cambr. Essays, 1656; Cambr. Shakesp. viii. 30). T. Caldecott had so early as 1620 (in Spec. new edit. Shakesp. Hamlet) anticipated the guess, but not boldly. He brings forward from T. Lodge’s Wit’s Miserie, 4to, 1596, p. 20, “Dance, leap, sing, drink, upsefrize.” And again:—

For Upsefreeze he drunke from four to nine,

So as each sense was steeped well in wine:

Yet still he kept his rouse, till he in fine

Grew extreame sicke with hugging Bacchus shrine.

[The Shrift.]

A new Spring shadowed in sundrie pithie Poems by Musophilus, 4to. 1619, signat. l. b., where “Upsefreese” is the name of the frier. Like “Wassael” and “Trinkael,” the phrase upsie-friese, or vrijster, seems to have been used as a toast, perhaps for “To your sweetheart.”

Pages 259, 354. If none be offended.

The exact date of this ballad’s publication was 31st December, 1659: in Thomason Collection, Numero xxii., folio, Brit. Mus.

Page 270. Pray why should any, &c.

Probably written in 1659-60, when Monk was bridling the Commons. “Cooks” alludes to John Cook, the Solicitor for the Commonwealth, who at the trial of Charles Ist. exhibited the charge of high treason. After the Restoration, Cook was executed along with Hugh Peters, 16th Oct., 1660, at Charing Cross.

Pages 283 (line 22), 395. I have the finest Nonperel.

“Hyrens” (as earlier printed in Wit and Drollery, 1656, p. 26), instead of “Syrens” of our text, is probably correct. Ancient Pistol twice asks “Have we not Hirens here?” (Henry IV., Part 2nd, Act ii. sc. 4). George Peele had a play, now lost, on “The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the fair Greek” [1594?] In the Spiritual Navigator, 1615, we learn, is a passage, “There be Syrens in the sea of the world. Syrens? Hirens, as they are now called. What a number of these syrens, hirens, cockatrices, courteghians—in plain English, harlots—swimme amongst us!”

Page 287. Title, “Oxford Feasts.”

An unfortunate misprint crept in, detected too late: for “Feasts” read properly “Jeasts:” the old fashioned initial J being barred across like F.

Page 293, line 11. “Heresie in hops.”

This must have been an established jest. Compare Introd. to M. D., C., pp. xxxi-ii. and T. Randolph’s “Fall of the Mitre Tavern,” Cambridge, before 1635,

“The zealous students of that place

Change of religion bear:

That this mischance may soon bring in || A heresy of beer.”

Page 295, line 24. “A hundred horse.”

“He that gave the King a hundred horse,” refers, no doubt, to Sir John Suckling and his loyal service in 1642. See introduction to M. D., C., pp. xix. xx. The Answer to “I tell thee, Jack, thou gavest the King,” there mentioned, and probably referring to Sir John Mennis, a carping rival although a Cavalier, has a smack of Cleveland about it (it certainly is not Suckling’s):—

I tell thee, fool, who ere thou be,

That made this fine sing-song of me,

Thou art a riming sot:

These very lines do thee betray,

This barren wit makes all men say

’Twas some rebellious Scot.

But it’s no wonder if you sing

Such songs of me, who am no King,

When every blew-cap swears

Hee’l not obey King James his Barn,

That huggs a Bishop under’s Arme,

And hangs them in his ears.

Had I been of your Covenant,

You’d call me th’ son of John of Gaunt,

And give me t’ great renown;

But now I am John [f]or the King,

You say I am but poor Suckling,

And thus you cry me down.

Well, it’s no matter what you say

Of me or mine that run away:

I hold it no good fashion

A Loyal subjects blood to spill,

When we have knaves enough to kill

By force of Proclamation.

Commend me unto Lesley stout,

And his Pedlers him about,

Tell them without remorse [p. 151.]

That I will plunder all their packs

Which they have got with their stoln knick knacks,

With these my hundred horse.

This holy War, this zealous firke

Against the Bishops and the Kirk

Is a pretended bravery;

Religion, all the world can tell,

Amongst Highlanders nere did dwell,

Its but to cloak your knavery.

Such desperate Gamesters as you be,

I cannot blame for tutoring me,

Since all you have is down,

And every Boor forsakes his Plow,

And swears that he’l turn Gamester now

To venture for a Crown.

(Le Prince d’Amour, 1660, pp. 150, 151.)

Pages 296, 398 (Cp. this vol. [p. 149], line 8). Now that the Spring.

This is by Willm. Browne, author of “Britannia’s Pastorals.” The date is probably about fifteen years before 1645. It is one among the “Odes, Songs, and Sonnets of Wm. Browne,” in the Lansdowne MS. 777, fol. 4 reverso and 5, with extra verses not used in the Catch.

A Rounde. [1st verse sung by] All.

Now that the Spring hath fill’d our veynes

With kinde and actiue fire,

And made green Liu’ryes for the playnes,

and euery grove a Quire,

Sing we a Song of merry glee

and Bacchus fill the bowle:

1. Then heres to thee; 2. And thou to mee

and euery thirsty soule.

Nor Care nor Sorrow ere pay’d debt

nor never shall doe myne;

I haue no Cradle goeing yet,

[?2.] nor I, by this good wyne.

No wyfe at home to send for me,

noe hoggs are in my grounde,

Noe suit at Law to pay a fee,

Then round, old Jockey, round.

All.

Sheare sheepe that haue them, cry we still,

But see that noe man scape

To drink of the Sherry

That makes us so merry

and plumpe as the lusty Grape.

(Lansdowne MS., No. 777.)

“Noe hoggs are in my grounds” may refer to the Catch (if it be equally old):—

Whose three Hogs are these, and whose three Hoggs are these,

They are John Cook’s, I know by their look, for I found them in my pease.

Oh! pound them: oh pound them! But I dare not, for my life;

For if I should pound John Cook’s Hoggs, I should never kiss John Cook’s wife, &c.

(Catch Club, 1705, iii. 46.)

Pages 293, 358. Fetch me Ben Jonson’s scull.

In 1641 this was printed separately and anonymously as “A Preparative to Studie; or, the Vertue of Sack,” 4to. Ben Jonson had died in August, 1637. Line 9 reads: dull Hynde; 21, Genius-making; 28, Welcome, by; after the word “scapes” these additional lines:—

I would not leave thee, Sack, to be with Jove,

His Nectar is but faign’d, but I doe prove

Thy more essentiall worth; I am (methinks), &c.

Line 46, instead of “long since,” reads “of late” (referring to whom?); 38, tempt a Saint; 44, farther bliss; 53, against thy foes (N.B.); That would; and, additional, after “horse,” in line 56, this historical allusion to David Lesley, of the Scotch rebellion:—

I’me in the North already, Lasley’s dead,

He that would rise, carry the King his head,

And tell him (if he aske, who kill’d the Scot)

I knock’t his Braines out with a pottle pot.

Out ye Rebellious vipers; I’me come back

From them againe, because there’s no good Sack,

T’other odd cup, &c.

By this we are guided to the true date: between May, 1639, and August, 1640.

Pages 309, 399. Why should we boast.

Compare pp. [129], [315], of present volume, for the Antidote version and note upon it. Brief references must suffice for annotation here. See Mallory’s “Morte d’Arthur,” the French Lancelot du Lac, and Sir Tristram. Three MSS., the Auchinlech, Cambridge University, and Caius College, preserve the romance of Sir Bevis of Hamptoun, with his slaying the wild boar; his sword Morglay is often mentioned, like Arthur’s Excalibur: Ascapard, the thirty-feet-long giant, who after a fierce battle becomes page to Sir Bevis. Caius Coll. MS. and others have the story Richard Cœur de Leon, but the street-ballad served equally to keep alive his fame among the populace, Coll. Old. Bds. iii. 17. Wm. Ellis gives abstracts of romances on Arthur, Guy of Warwick, Sir Bevis, Richard Lion-heart, Sir Eglamour of Artoys, Sir Isumbras, the Seven Wise Masters, Charlemagne and Roland, &c., in his Spec. Early English Metrical Romances; of which J. O. Halliwell writes, in 1848:—“Ellis did for ancient romance what Percy had previously accomplished for early poetry.” In passing, we must not neglect to express the debt of gratitude due to the managers of the E. E. Text Soc., for giving scholarly and trustworthy prints of so many MSS., hitherto almost beyond reach. For Orlando Inamorato and Orlando Furioso we must go to Boiardo and Ariosto, or the translators, Sir John Harrington and W. Stewart Rose. Dunlop’s Hist. of Fiction gives a slight notice of some of this ballad’s heroes, including Huon of Bordeaux, the French Livre de Jason, Prince of the Myrmidons, the Vie de Hercule, the Cléopâtre, &c. Valentine and Orson is said to have been written in the reign of Charles VIII., and first printed at Lyons in 1495. SS. David, James, and Patrick, with the rest of the Seven Champions, like the Four Sons of Aymon, are of easy access. Cp. Warton.

ARTHUR O’BRADLEY.

(Merry Droll., Com., pp. 312, 395; Antidote ag. Mel., 16).

Here is the five years’ earlier Song of “Arthur o’ Bradley,” ([vide ante, pp. 166-175]) never before reprinted, we believe, and not mentioned by J. P. Collier, W. Chappell, &c., when they referred to “Saw ye not Pierce the Piper” of Antidote and M. D., C., 1661. But ours is the earliest-known complete version [before 1642?]:—

A SONG. [p. 81.]

All you that desire to merry be,

Come listen unto me,

And a story I shall tell,

Which of a Wedding befell,

Between Arthur of Bradley

And Winifred of Madly.

As Arthur upon a day

Met Winifred on the way,

He took her by the hand,

Desiring her to stand,

Saying I must to thee recite

A matter of [great] weight,

Of Love, that conquers Kings,

In grieved hearts so rings,

And if thou dost love thy Mother,

Love him that can love no other.

Which is oh brave Arthur, &c.

For in the month of May,

Maidens they will say,

A May-pole we must have, [∴ date before 1642.]

Your helping hand we crave.

And when it is set in the earth,

The maids bring Sullybubs forth; [Syllabubs]

Not one will touch a sup,

Till I begin a cup.

For I am the end of all

Of them, both great and small.

Then tell me yea, or nay,

For I can no longer stay.

With oh brave Arthur, &c.

Why truly Arthur[,] quoth she,

If you so minded be,

My good will I grant to you,

Or anything I can do.

One thing I will compell,

So ask my mothers good will.

Then from thee I never will flye,

Unto the day I do dye.

Then homeward they went with speed,

Where the mother they met indeed.

Well met fair Dame, quoth Arthur,

To move you I am come hither,

For I am come to crave, [p. 83.]

Your daughter for to have,

For I mean to make her my wife,

And to live with her all my life.

With oh brave Arthur, &c.

The old woman shreek’d and cry’d,

And took her daughter aside,

How now daughter, quoth she,

Are you so forward indeed,

As for to marry he,

Without consent of me?

Thou never saw’st thirteen year,

Nor art not able I fear,

To take any over-sight,

To rule a mans house aright:

Why truly mother, quoth she,

You are mistaken in me;

If time do not decrease,

I am fifteen yeares at least.

With oh brave Arthur, &c.

Then Arthur to them did walk,

And broke them of their talk.

I tell you Dame, quoth he,

I can have as good as thee;

For when death my father did call,

He then did leave me all

His barrels and his brooms,

And a dozen of wo[o]den spoones,

Dishes six or seven,

Besides an old spade, even

A brasse pot and whimble,

A pack-needle and thimble,

A pudding prick and reele,

And my mothers own sitting wheele;

And also there fell to my lot

A goodly mustard pot.

With O brave Arthur, &c.

The old woman made a reply,

With courteous modesty,

If needs it must so be,

To the match I will agree.

For [when] death doth me call,

I then will leave her all;

For I have an earthen flaggon,

Besides a three-quart noggin,

With spickets and fossets five,

Besides an old bee-hive;

A wooden ladle and maile,

And a goodly old clouting paile;

Of a chaff bed I am well sped,

And there the Bride shall be wed,

And every night shall wear

A bolster stufft with haire,

A blanket for the Bride,

And a winding sheet beside,

And hemp, if he will it break, [p. 85.]

New curtaines for to make.

To make all [well] too, I have

Stories gay and brave.

Of all the world so fine,

With oh brave eyes of mine,

With oh brave Arthur, &c.

When Arthur his wench obtained,

And all his suits had gained,

A joyfull man was he,

As any that you could see.

Then homeward he went with speed,

Till he met with her indeed.

Two neighbours then did take

To bid guests for his sake;

For dishes and all such ware,

You need not take any care.

With oh brave Arthur, &c.

To the Church they went apace,

And wisht they might have grace,

After the Parson to say,

And not stumble by the way;

For that was all their doubt,

That either of them should be out.

And when that they were wed,

And each of them well sped,

The Bridegroom home he ran,

And after him his man, [p. 86.]

And after him the Bride,

Full joyfull at the tyde,

As she was plac’d betwixt

Two yeomen of the Guests,

And he was neat and fine,

For he thought him at that time

Sufficient in every thing,

To wait upon a King.

But at the doore he did not miss

To give her a smacking kiss.

With oh brave Arthur, &c.

To dinner they quickly gat,

The Bride betwixt them sat,

The Cook to the Dresser did call,

The young men then run all,

And thought great dignity

To carry up Furmety.

Then came leaping Lewis,

And he call’d hard for Brewis;

Stay, quoth Davy Rudding,

Thou go’st too fast with th’ pudding.

Then came Sampson Seal,

And he carry’d Mutton and Veal;

The old woman scolds full fast,

To the Cook she makes great hast,

And him she did controul,

And swore that the Porridge was cold.

With oh brave, &c.

My Masters a while be brief,

Who taketh up the Beef?

Then came William Dickins, [p. 87.]

And carries the Snipes & Chickens.

Bartholomew brought up the Mustard,

Caster he carry’d the Custard.

In comes Roger Boore,

He carry’d up Rabbets before:

Quoth Roger, I’le give thee a Cake,

If thou wilt carry the Drake.

[1] Speak not more nor less,

Nor of the greatest mess,

Nor how the Bride did carve,

Nor how the Groom did serve

With oh brave Arthur, &c.

But when that they had din’d,

Then every man had wine;

The maids they stood aloof,

While the young men made a proof.

Who had the nimblest heele,

Or who could dance so well,

Till Hob of the hill fell over, [? oe’r]

And over him three or four.

Up he got at last,

And forward about he past;

At Rowland he kicks and grins,

And he [? hit] William ore the shins;

He takes not any offence,

But fleeres upon his wench.

The Piper he play’d [a] Fadding,

And they ran all a gadding.

With oh brave Arthur [o’ Bradley], &c.

(“Wits Merriment,” 1656, pp. 81-7.)

The often mentioned “Arthur o’ Bradley’s Wedding,” a modern version attributed to Mr. Taylor, the actor and singer, is given, not only in Songs and Ballads of the Peasantry, &c., (p. 139 of R. Bell’s Annot. ed.), collected by J. H. Dixon; but also in Berger’s Red, White, and Blue Monster Songbook, p. 394, where the music arranged by S. Hale is stated to be “at Walker’s.”

Pages 326, 402. Why should we not laugh?

The reference to “Goldsmith’s Hall” ([see p. 363]), where a Roundhead Committee sate in 1647, and later, for the spoliation of Royalists’ estates, levying of fines and acceptance of “Compounders” money, dates the song.

Pages 328, 402. Now we are met.

If we are to reckon the “twelve years together by the ears” from January 4, 1641-2, the abortive attempt of Charles I. to arrest at the House “the Five Members” (Pym, Hampden, Haslerig, Denzil Holles, and Strode), we may guess the date of this ballad to be 1653-4. Verse 14 mentions Oliver breaking the Long Parliament (20th April, 1653); and verses 15, 16 refer to the Little, or “Barebones Parliament” July 4, to 2nd December, 1653, (when power was resigned into the hands of Cromwell). Shortly after this, but certainly before Sept. 3rd, 1654 (when the next Parliament, more impracticable and persecuting, met), must be the true date of the ballad. “Robin the Fool” is “Robin Wisdom,” Robert Andrews. “Fair” is Thomas Lord Fairfax the “Croysado-General.” “Cowardly W——” is probably Philip, Lord Wharton, a Puritan, and Derby-House committee-man; of inferior renown to Atkins in unsavoury matters; but whose own regiment ran away at Edgehill: Wharton then took refuge in a saw-pit. President Bradshaw died 22nd Nov., 1659. Dr. Isaac Dorislaus, Professor of History at Cambridge, and of Gresham College, apostatized from Charles I., and was sent as agent by the Commons to the Hague, where he was in June, 1649, assassinated by some cavaliers, falsely reported to be commissioned by the gallant Montrose (see the ballad “What though lamented, curst,” &c., in King’s Pamphlets, Brit. Mus.).

“Askew,” is “one Ascham a Scholar, who had been concerned in drawing up the King’s Tryal, and had written a book,” &c., (Clarendon, iii. 369, 1720). This Anthony Ascham, sent as Envoy to Spain from the Parliament in 1649, was slain at Madrid by some Irish officers, (Rapin:) of whom only one, a Protestant, was executed. See Harl. Misc. vi. 236-47. All which helped to cause the war with Spain in 1656.

Harry Marten’s evil repute as to women, and lawyer Oliver St. John’s building his house with stones plundered from Peterborough Cathedral, were common topics. “The women’s war,” often referred to as the “bodkin and thimble army,” of 1647, was so called because the “Silly women,” influenced by those who “crept into their houses,” gave up their rings, silver bodkins, spoons and thimbles for support of Parliamentary troops.

Page 332, line 2.

We should for Our read Only.

Page 348, line 10. “Old Lilly.”

An allusion to William Lilly’s predictive almanacks, shewing that this Catch was not much earlier in date than Hilton’s book, 1652. Lilly was the original of Butler’s “Cunning man, hight Sidrophel” in Hudibras, Part 2nd, Canto 3. Compare note, p. 353.

Page 361 (Appendix), line 5.

For misprint alterem, read alteram.

Page 394 (Appendix), New England, &c.

References should be added to the Rump Coll., 1662, i. 95, and Loyal Songs, 1731, i. 92. “Isaack,” is probably Isaac Pennington. Hampden and others were meditating this journey to New England, until stopped, most injudiciously, by an order in Council, dated April 6, 1638.

We here give our additional Note, on the “Sessions of the Poets,” reserved from [p. 376].

§ 3.—SESSIONS OF POETS.

We believe that Sir John Suckling’s Poem, sometimes called “A Sessions of Wit,” was written in 1636-7; almost certainly before the death of Ben Jonson (6th August, 1637). Among its predecessors were Richard Barnfield’s “Remembrance of some English Poets,” 1598 (given in present volume, [p. 273]); and Michael Drayton’s “Censure of the Poets,” being a Letter in couplets, addressed to his friend Henry Reynolds; and the striking lines, “On the Time-Poets,” pp. 5-7 of Choyce Drollery, 1656. The latter we have seen to be anonymous; but they were not impossibly by that very Henry Reynolds, friend of Drayton; although of this authorship no evidence has yet arisen. Of George Daniel’s unprinted “Vindication of Poesie,” 1636-47, we have given specimens on pp. [272], [280-1], and [331-2]. Later than Suckling (who died in 1642), another author gave in print “The Great Assizes Holden in Parnassus by Apollo and his Assessors:” at which Sessions are arraigned Mercurius Britannicus, &c., Feb. 11th, 1644-5. This has been attributed to George Wither; most erroneously, as we believe. The mis-appropriation has arisen, probably, from the fact of Wither’s name being earliest on the roll of Jurymen summoned:

“Hee, who was called first in all the List,

George Withers hight, entitled Satyrist;

Then Cary, May, and Davenant were called forth,

Renowned Poets all, and men of worth,

If wit may passe for worth: Then Sylvester,

Sands, Drayton, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger,

Shakespeare, and Heywood, Poets good and free,

Dramatick writers all, but the first three:

These were empanell’d all, and being sworne

A just and perfect verdict to return,” &c. (p. 9.)

George Wither was quite capable of placing himself first on the list, in such a manner, we admit; but it is incredible to us that, if he had been the author, he could have described himself so insultingly as we find in the following lines, and elsewhere:—

“he did protest

That Wither was a cruell Satyrist;

And guilty of the same offence and crime,

Whereof he was accused at this time:

Therefore for him hee thought it fitter farre,

To stand as a Delinquent at the barre,

Then to bee now empanell’d in a Jury.

George Withers then, with a Poetick fury,

Began to bluster, but Apollo’s frowne

Made him forbeare, and lay his choler downe.”

(Ibid, p. 11.)

Two much more sparkling and interesting “Sessions of Poets” afterwards appeared, to the tune of Ben Jonson’s “Cook Laurel.” The first of these begins:—

“Apollo, concern’d to see the Transgressions

Our paltry Poets do daily commit,

Gave orders once more to summon a Sessions,

Severely to punish th’ Abuses of Wit.

Will d’Avenant would fain have been Steward o’ the Court,

To have fin’d and amerc’d each man at his will;

But Apollo, it seems, had heard a Report,

That his choice of new Plays did show h’ had no skill.

Besides, some Criticks had ow’d him a spite,

And a little before had made the God fret,

By letting him know the Laureat did write

That damnable Farce, ‘The House to be Let.’

Intelligence was brought, the Court being set

That a Play Tripartite was very near made;

Where malicious Matt. Clifford, and spirituall Spratt,

Were join’d with their Duke, a Peer of the Trade,” &c.

The author did not avow himself. It must have been written, we hold, in 1664-5. The second is variously attributed to John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, being printed in the works of both. It begins:—

“Since the Sons of the Muses grew num’rous and loud,

For th’ appeasing so factious and clam’rous a crowd,

Apollo thought fit in so weighty a cause,

T’ establish a government, leader, and laws,” &c.

Assembled near Parnassus, Dryden, Etherege, Wycherley, Shadwell, Nat Lee, Settle, Otway, Crowne, Mrs. Aphra Behn, Rawlins, Tom D’Urfey, and Betterton, are in the other verses sketched with point and vivacity; but in malicious satire. It was probably written in 1677. Clever as are these two later “Sessions,” they do not equal Suckling’s, in genial spirit and unforced cheerfulness.

We need not here linger over the whimsical Trial of Tom D’Urfey and Tom Brown (who squabbled between themselves, by the bye), in a still later “Sessions of the Poets Holden at the foot of Parnassus Hill, July the 9th, 1696: London, printed for E. Whitlock, near Stationers’ Hall, 1696”:—a mirthful squib, which does not lay claim to be called poetry. Nor need we do more than mention “A Trip to Parnassus; or, the Judgment of Apollo on Dramatic Authors and Performers. A Poem. London, 1788”—which deals with the two George Colmans, Macklin, Macnally, Lewis, &c. Coming to our own century, it is enough to particularize Leigh Hunt’s “Feast of the Poets;” printed in his “Reflector,” December, 1811, and afterwards much altered, generally with improvement (especially in the exclusion of the spiteful attack on Walter Scott). It begins—“’Tother day as Apollo sat pitching his darts,” &c. In 1837 Leigh Hunt wrote another such versical review, viz., “Blue-Stocking Revels; or, The Feast of the Violets.” This was on the numerous “poetesses,” but it cannot be deemed successful. Far superior to it is the clever and interesting “Fable for Critics,” since written by James Russell Lowell in America.

Both as regards its own merit, and as being the parent of many others (none of which has surpassed, or even equalled it), Sir John Suckling’s “Sessions of Poets” must always remain famous. We have not space remaining at command to annotate it with the fulness it deserves.

---

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.

The type-ornaments in Choyce Drollery reprint are merely substitutes for the ruder originals, and are not in fac-simile, as were the Initial Letters on pages 5 and 7 of our Merry Drollery, Compleat reprint.

[Page 42], line 6, “a Lockeram Band:” Lockram, a cheap sort of linen, see J. O. Halliwell’s valuable Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, p. 525, edit. 1874. To this, and to the same author’s 1876 edition of Archdeacon Nares Glossary, we refer readers for other words.

[Page 73-77], [297], Marchpine, or Marchpane, biscuits often made in fantastic figures of birds or flowers, of sweetened almonds, &c. Scettuall, or Setiwall, the Garden Valerian. Bausons, i.e. badgers. Cockers; boots. Verse fifth omitted from Choyce Drollery, runs:—

“Her features all as fresh above,

As is the grass that grows by Dove,

And lythe as lass of Kent;

Her skin as soft as Lemster wool,

As white as snow on Peakish Hull,

Or Swan that swims in Trent.”

A few typographical errors crept into sheet G (owing to an accident in the Editor’s final collation with original). [P. 81], line 2, read Blacke; line 20, Shaft; [p. 85], line 3, Unlesse; [p. 86], line 5, Physitian; line 17, that Lawyer’s; [p. 87], line 9, That wil stick to the Laws; [p. 88], line 8, O that’s a companion; [p. 90], first line, basenesse; line 23, nature; [p. 91], line 13, add a comma after the word blot; [p. 94], line 13, Scepter; [p. 96], line 10, Of this; [p. 97], line 15, For feare; [p. 99], line 6, add a comma; [p. 100], line 13, finde. These are all single-letter misprints.

[Page 269], line 14, for encreasing, read encreaseth; and end line 28 with a comma.

I. H. in line 35, are the initials of the author, “Iohn Higins.”

[Page 270], line 9, add the words—“It is by Sir Wm. Davenant, and entitled ‘The Dying Lover.’”

[Page 275], penultimate line, read Poet-Beadle. [P. 277], l. 17, for 1698 read 1598.

[Page 281], line 20, for liveth, read lives; claime.

[Page 289], after line 35, add—“Page 45, ‘As I went to Totnam.’ This is given with the music, in Tom D’Urfey’s Pills to purge Melancholy, p. 180, of 1700 and 1719 (vol. iv.) editions; beginning ‘As I came from Tottingham.’ The tune is named ‘Abroad as I was walking.’ Page 52, He that a Tinker; Music by Dr. Jn. Wilson.”

[Page 330], after line 10, add—“Fly, boy, fly: Music by Simon Ives, in Playford’s Select Ayres, 1659, p. 90.”

The date of “The Zealous Puritan,” M. D. C., p. 95, was 1639. “He that intends,” &c., Ibid., p. 342, is the Vituperium Uxoris, by John Cleveland, written before 1658 (Poems, 1661, p. 169).

“Love should take no wrong,” in Westminster-Drollery, 1671, i. 90, dates back seventy years, to 1601: with music by Robert Jones, in his Second Book of Songs, Song 5.

Introduction to Merry Drollery (our second volume) p. xxii. lines 20, 21. Since writing the above, we have had the pleasure of reading the excellent “Memoir of Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland,” and the “Althorp Memoirs,” by G. Steinman Steinman, Esq., F. S. A., (printed for Private Circulation, 1871, 1869); by the former work, p. 22, we are led to discredit Mrs. Jameson’s assertion that the night of May 29, 1660, was spent by Charles II. in the house of Sir Samuel Morland at Vauxhall. “This knight and friend of the King’s may have had a residence in the parish of Lambeth before the Restoration, but as he was an Under Secretary of State at the time, it is more probable that he lived in London; and as he did not obtain from the Crown a lease of Vauxhall mansion and grounds until April 19, 1675, the foundations of a very improbable story, whoever originated it, are considerably shaken.” Mr. Steinman inclines to believe the real place of meeting was Whitehall. He has given a list of Charles II.’s male companions in the Court at Bruges, with short biographies, in the Archæologia, xxxv. pp. 335-349. We knew not of this list when writing our Introduction to Choyce Drollery.

---

The Phœnix (emblematical of the Restoration) is adapted from Spenser’s Works, 1611.

---

TABLE OF FIRST LINES
In “Merry Drollery,” 1661, 1670, 1691
(Now first added.)

[The Songs and Poems peculiar to the first edition, 1661 (having been afterwards omitted), are here distinguished by being printed in Roman type. They are all contained in the present volume. Those that were added, in the later editions only, have no number attached to them in our first column of pages, viz. for 1661. The third edition, in 1691, was no more than a re-issue of the 1670 edition, with a fresh title-page to disguise it, in pretence of novelty ([see p. 345, ante]). The outside column refers to our Reprint of the “Drolleries;” but where the middle column is blank, as shewing the song was not repeated in 1670 and 1691, our Reprint-page belongs to the present volume. The “Reserved Pieces,” given only in Supplement, bear the letter “R” (for the extra sheet, signed R*).—Ed.]

First Lines.	[In Editions]	1661	1670	1875
A Brewer may be a Burgess	ii.	70	252	252
A fig for Care, why should we			217	217
A Fox, a Fox, up gallants		29	38	38
A Maiden of late, whose name		160	170	170
A Pox on the Jaylor, and on his			289	289
A Puritan of late		2		195
A Session was held the other day		68	72	72
A Story strange I will you tell	ii.	12	200	200
A young man of late		27		201
A young man that’s in love		34	42	42
A young man walking all alone		32		204
After so many sad mishaps		112	118	118
After the pains of a desperate Lover			171	171
Ah, ah, come see what’s		30	40	40
All in the Land of Essex		48	56	56
Am I mad, O noble Festus?	ii.	50	234	234
Amarillis told her swain			8	10
Among the Purifidian sect	ii.	103		243
Are you grown so melancholy?	ii.	101	286	286
Aske me no more why there appears		62	70	70
Bacchus I am, come from		61	69	69
Be merry in sorrow		1b	6	8
Be not thou so foolish nice		61	69	69
Blind Fortune, if thou want’st		163	172	172
Bring forth your Cunny-skins	ii.	8	196	196
But since it was lately enacted	ii.	24	212	212
Call for the Master, oh, this			9	11
Call George again, boy	ii.	118	304	304
Calm was the evening, and clear			220	220
Calm was the evening, and clear			292	292
Cast your caps and cares aside		87	92	92
Come, Drawer, and fill us about	ii.	80	263	263
Come, Drawer, some wine	ii.	29		237
Come, Drawer, turn about the b.	ii.	86	268	268
Come, Drawer, come, fill us	ii.	3	190	190
Come, faith, let’s frolick	ii.	65	246	246
Come, hither, my own sweet	ii.	106		247
Come, Imp Royal, come away	ii.	45	231	231
Come, Jack, let’s drink a pot of Ale		45	52	52
Come, let us drink, the time invites		93	97	97
Come, let’s purge our brains		114	121	121
Come, my dainty Doxies, my Dove	ii.	44	230	230
Come, my Daphne, come away		86	91	91
Come, my delicate, bonny sweet		23	34	34
Cook Laurel would needs have	ii.	26	214	14
Discoveries of late have been	ii.	33		Rf
Doctors, lay by your irkesome		41	48	48
Fair Lady, for your New Year’s	ii.	81		Rn
Fetch me Ben Johnson’s scull			293	293
From Essex Anabaptist Laws	ii.	38		241
From hunger and cold, who lives	ii.	9	197	197
From Mahomet and Paganisme		164	174	174
From the fair Lavinian shore			291	291
From what you call’t Town		191	182	182
Full forty times over I have, &c.	ii.	61		Ri
Gather your rosebuds while	ii.	11	199	199
Go, you tame Gallants	ii.	57	242	242
God bless my good Lord Bishop		166	176	176
Good Lord, what a pass is this		75	79	79
Had she not care enough			211	211
Hang Chastity! it is		88		220
Have you observed the Wench	ii.	141	332	332
He is a fond Lover, that doateth	ii.	62		Rl
He that a happy life would lead	ii.	147	339	339
He that intends to take a wife	ii.	153	342	342
Heard you not lately of a man		169	180	180
Here’s a health unto his Majesty			212	212
Hey, ho, have at all!		168		Re
Hold, quaff no more	ii.	19	210	210
How happy is the Prisoner		101	107	107
How poor is his spirit	ii.	48	232	232
I am a bonny Scot, Sir		119	127	127
I am a Rogue, and a stout one	ii.	16	204	204
I came unto a Puritan to woo		73	77	77
I doat, I doat, but am a sot	ii.	53	237	237
I dreamt my Love lay in her bed		11		197
I have reason to fly thee	ii.	97	281	281
I have the fairest Non-perel	ii.	99	283	283
I loved a maid—she loved not me	ii.	151		Rp
I marvel, Dick, that having been		46	54	54
I mean to speak of England’s		85		218
I met with the Divel in the shape		103	109	109
I pray thee, Drunkard, get thee	ii.	119	306	306
I tell thee, Kit, where I have been			317	317
I went from England into France		64		213
If any one do want a House	ii.	64		Rm
If any so wise is, that Sack	ii.	157	348	348
If every woman were served in her		80	85	85
If none be offended with the scent	ii.	77	259	259
If that you will hear of a ditty	ii.	149		253
If thou wilt know how to chuse		21	32	32
If you will give ear	ii.	46		Rg
I’ll go no more to the Old Exchange		126	134	134
I’ll sing you a sonnet, that ne’er			66	66
I’ll tell thee, Dick, where I have		97	101	101
I’ll tell you a story, that never w. t.		123	131	131
In Eighty-eight, e’er I was born		77	82	82
In the merry month of May			99	99
It chanced not long ago, as I was	ii.	82	264	264
It was a man, and a jolly old man		95		222
Ladies, I do here present you	ii.	55	240	240
Lay by your pleading, Law		118	125	125
Lay by your pleading, Love lies a	ii.	4	191	191
Let dogs and divels die		31	41	41
Let Souldiers fight for praise	ii.	31	218	218
Let the Trumpet sound	ii.	142	333	333
Let’s call, and drink the cellar dry		130	138	138
Listen, lordings, to my story	ii.	32		240
Mine own sweet honey bird		153		Rc
My bretheren all attend		91	95	95
My Lodging is on the cold ground			290	290
My Masters, give audience	ii.	91	275	275
My Mistris is a shittle-cock		51	60	60
My Mistris is in Musick		154	163	163
My Mistris, whom in heart		107	113	113
Nay, out upon this fooling		79	84	84
Nay, prithee, don’t fly me		25	36	36
Ne’er trouble thy self at the times			219	219
Nick Culpepper and William Lilly		56		190
No man Love’s fiery passion	ii.	1	187	187
No sooner were the doubtful people	ii.	58	243	243
Now, gentlemen, if you will hear		18	29	29
Now I am married, Sir John	ii.	96	280	280
Now, I confess, I am in love		1	5	7
Now Lambert’s sunk, and gallant		12		198
Now thanks to the Powers below		156	166	166
Now that the Spring has filled	ii.	110	296	296
Now we are met in a knot	ii.	138	328	328
O that I could by any Chymick	ii.	31		239
O the wily, wily Fox	ii.	114	300	300
Of all the Crafts that I do know		7	17	17
Of all the rare juices			178	178
Of all the Recreations, which			146	146
Of all the Sciences beneath the Sun	ii.	129	319	319
Of all the Sports the world doth	ii.	111	296	296
Of all the Trades that ever I see	ii.	40	225	225
Of an old Souldier of the Queen’s		20	31	31
Oliver, Oliver, take up thy Crown	ii.	72	254	254
Once was I sad, till I grew to be		2b	10	12
Pox take you, Mistris, I’ll be gone	ii.	118	304	304
Pray, why should any man	ii.	87	270	270
Riding to London, in Dunstable		14		200
Room for a Gamester	ii.	10	197	197
Room for the best Poets heroick!		96	100	100
Saw you not Pierce the piper	ii.	124	312	312
She lay all naked in her bed	ii.	115	300	300
She lay up to the navel bare	ii.	116		Ro
She that will eat her breakfast	ii.	120	308	308
Shew a room, shew a room	ii.	145	337	337
Sir Eglamore, that valiant knight	ii.	75	257	257
Some Christian people all give ear		81	87	87
Some wives are good, and some			302	302
Stay, shut the gate!	ii.	18	207	207
Sublimest discretions have club’d			287	287
The Aphorisms of Galen	ii.	94	277	277
The best of Poets write of F.		141	153	153
The Hunt is up, the Hunt is up		20	30	30
The Proctors are two, and no more		105	111	111
The Spring is coming on		40	47	47
The thirsty Earth drinks up			22	22
The Turk in linnen wraps		13	25	25
The Wise Men were but seven			232	232
The World’s a bubble, and the life		104	110	110
There dwelt a Maid in the C. g.		37	46	46
There is a certain idle kind of cr.		140	152	152
There was a jovial Tinker		17	27	27
There was a Lady in this land		134		223
There was an old man had an acre		44	52	52
There was three birds that built		139		Ra
There was three Cooks in C	ii.	129	318	318
There’s a lusty liquor which		132	140	140
There’s many a blinking verse	ii.	35	221	221
Three merry Boys came out			220	220
Three merry Lads met at the Rose			143	143
’Tis not the Silver nor Gold		109	115	115
To friend and to foe		38	23	23
Tobacco that is wither’d quite		16	26	26
Tom and Will were Shepherd			149	149
Upon a certain time			146	Rb
Upon a Summer’s day		148		230
Wake all you Dead, what ho!			151	151
Walking abroad in the m.		76	81	81
We Seamen are the honest boys		152	162	162
What an Ass is he, Waits, &c.	ii.	90	273	273
What Fortune had I, poor Maid	ii.	152	341	341
What is that you call a Maid.	ii.	68	249	249
What though the ill times do run		116	124	124
What though the times produce		161		Rd
When blind god Cupid, all in an	ii.	2	188	188
When first Mardike was made		4	12	12
When first the Scottishwar		89	93	93
When I a Lady do intend to flatter	ii.	158	348	348
When I do travel in the night	ii.	73	255	255
When I’se came first to London	ii.	133	323	323
When Phœbus had drest	ii.	69	250	250
When the chill Charokoe blows		155	164	164
White bears have lately come		149	159	159
Why should a man care	ii.	146	337	337
Why should we boast of Arthur	ii.	122	309	309
Why should we not laugh	ii.	136	326	326
Will you hear a strange thing		53	62	62
You Gods, that rule upon	ii.	21		233
You talk of New England	ii.	84	266	266
You that in love do mean to sport	ii.	22		235

---

First Lines of the “Antidote” Songs:
Given in this Volume (and not in M. D. C.).

[Present Reprint,]	Page
A Man of Wales, a little before Easter	[157]
An old house end	[153]
Bring out the [c]old Chyne	[146]
Come, come away to the Tavern, I say	[150]
Come hither, thou merriest of all the Nine	[133]
Come, let us cast dice who shall drink	[151]
Drink, drink, all you that think	[158]
Fly boy, fly boy, to the cellar’s bottom	[157]
Good Symon, how comes it	[154]
Hang Sorrow, and cast away Care	[152]
Hang the Presbyter’s Gill	[144]
He that a Tinker, a tinker will be	[52]
In love? away! you do me wrong	[147]
I’s not come here to tauke of Prut	[141]
Jog on, jog on the foot-path-way	[156]
Let’s cast away Care	[152]
Mongst all the pleasant juices	[150]
My Lady and her Maid	[152]
Never let a man take heavily	[151]
Not drunken nor sober	[113]
Of all the birds that ever I see	[155]
Old Poets Hypocrin admire	[143]
Once I a curious eye did fix	[139]
The parcht earth drinks the rain	[157]
The wit hath long beholden been	[135]
There was an old man at Walton Cross	[151]
This Ale, my bonny lads	[155]
’Tis Wine that inspires	[145]
Welcome, welcome, again to thy wit	[159]
What are we met? Come, let’s see	[156]
Why should we boast of Arthur	[129]
Wilt thou be fat? I’ll tell thee how	[154]
Wilt thou lend me thy mare	[153]
With an old song made by an old a. p.	[125]
You merry Poets, old boyes	[149]
Your mare is lame, she halts outright	[153]

---

Here the Editor closes his willing toil, (after having added a Table of First Lines, and a Finale,) and offers a completed work to the friendly acceptance of Readers. They are no vague abstractions to him, but a crowd of well-distinguished faces, many among them being renowned scholars and genial critics. To approach them at all might be deemed temerity, were it not that such men are the least to be feared by an honest worker. On the other hand, it were easy for ill-natured persons to insinuate accusations against any one who meddles with Re-prints of Facetiæ. Blots and stains are upon such old books, which he has made no attempt to disguise or palliate. Let them bear their own blame. There are dullards and bigots in the world, nevertheless, who decry all antiquarian and historical research. A defence is unnecessary: “Let them rave!”

Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa,

Misericordia e giustizia gli sdegna,

Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa.

He thanks those who heartily welcomed the earlier Volumes, and trusts that no unworthy successor is to be found in the present Conclusion, which holds many rare verses. Hereafter may ensue another meeting. Our olden Dramatists and Poets open their cellars, full of such vintage as Dan Phœbus had warmed. Leaving these “Drolleries of the Restoration” behind him, as a Nest-Egg, the Editor bids his Readers cheerfully

FAREWELL!

---