[Page 158.] Drink, drink, all you that think.
Also found in Wit and Mirth, 1684, p. 113.
[Page 159.] Welcome, welcome, again to thy wits.
By James Shirley, (1590-1666) in his comedy, “The Example,” 1637, Act v. sc. 3, where it is the Song of Sir Solitary Plot and Lady Plot. Repeated in the Academy of Complements, 1670, p. 209. Until after that date, for nearly a century, almost all the best songs had been written for stage plays. It forms an appropriate finale, from the last Dramatist of the old school, to the Restoration merriment, the Antidote against Melancholy, of 1661.
In one of the later “Sessions of the Poets” ([vide postea Part 4, § 2])—probably, of 1664-5,—Shirley is referred to, ungenerously. He was then aged nearly seventy:—
Old Shirley stood up, and made an Excuse,
Because many Men before him had got;
He vow’d he had switch’d and spur-gall’d his Muse,
But still the dull Jade kept to her old trot.