If all the pleasures were distill’d
Of every flower in every field—

(This kind of return of words was not common then, as he has since made it)

And all that Hybla’s hives do yield,
Were into one broad mazer fill’d;
If thereto added all the gums
And spice that from Panchaia comes,
The odours that Hydaspes lends,
Or Phœnix proves before she ends;
If all the air my Flora drew,
Or spirit that Zephyr ever blew,
Were put therein; and all the dew
That ever rosy morning knew;
Yet all, diffused upon this bower,
To make one sweet detaining hour,
Were much too little for the grace
And honour you vouchsafe the place.

In the masque of Oberon, Silenus bids his Satyrs rouse up a couple of sleeping Sylvans, who ought to have been keeping watch; “at which,” says the poet’s direction, “the Satyrs fell suddenly into this catch”—Musicians know it well:—

Buz, quoth the blue fly;
Hum, quoth the bee;
Buz and hum they cry,
And so do we.
In his ear, in his nose,
Thus, do you see![They tickle them.
He eat the dormouse,
Else it was he.

It is impossible that anything could better express than this, either the wild and practical joking of the Satyrs, or the action of the thing described, or the quaintness and fitness of the images, or the melody and even the harmony, the intercourse, of the musical words, one with another. None but a boon companion with a very musical ear could have written it. It was not for nothing that Ben lived in the time of the fine old English composers, Bull and Ford; or partook his canary with his “lov’d Alphonso,” as he calls him,—the Signor Ferrabosco.

We have not yet done with this delightful portion of our subject. Fletcher and Milton await us still; together with the pastoral poet, William Browne; and a few other poets, who, though they wrote no pastorals, were pastoral men.