The fallyng out of faithfull frends renewing is of love."[714:A]
"The happiness of the illustration," remarks Sir Egerton Brydges, "the facility, elegance, and tenderness of the language, and the exquisite turn of the whole, are above commendation; and show to what occasional polish and refinement our literature even then had arrived. Yet has the treasure which this gem adorned, lain buried and inaccessible, except to a few curious collectors, for at least a century and an half."[714:B]
Edwards has a song of four stanzas "In commendation of Musick,"[714:C] of which the first has been quoted by Shakspeare in Romeo and Juliet[714:D], affording a proof, if any were wanted, that the madrigals of Edwards were very popular in their day.
Of the poetry of William Hunnis the more remarkable features are a peculiar flow of versification, and a delicate turn upon the words, which approximate his songs, in an extraordinary degree, to the standard of the present age. By dividing his lines of sixteen syllables into two, this similarity becomes more apparent; for instance,—
"When first mine eyes did view and mark
Thy beauty fair for to behold,
And when mine eares gan first to hark
The pleasant words that thou me told;
I would as then I had been free
From ears to hear and eyes to see.