"... Love made me Poet
And this I writt,
My harte did do yt
And not my witt."
[159]. "There is a Garden in her Face."
Thomas Campion was "borne upon Ash Weddensday being the twelft day of February. An. Rg. Eliz. nono"—1567. He had one sister, Rose. He was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and this was his yearly allowance of clothes: A gowne, a cap, a hat, ii dubletes, ii payres of hose, iiii payres of netherstockes, vi payre of shoes, ii shirts, and two bandes. He was allowed also one quire of paper every quarter; and half a pound of candles every fortnight from Michaelmas to Lady Day. He studied law, may for a time have fought as a soldier in France, and became a physician. He died on March 1, 1620, and was buried on the same day at St. Dunstan's in the West, Fleet Street, the entry in the register under that date being: "Thomas Campion, doctor of Phisicke, was buried."
I have taken these particulars from Mr. S. P. Vivian's edition of his poems, because it is pleasant to share even this little of what is known of a man who is not only a rare and true poet—though for two centuries a forgotten one—but also because he was one of the chief song-writers in the great age of English Music. Like all good craftsmen, he did his work "well, surely, cleanly, workmanly, substantially, curiously, and sufficiently," as did the glaziers of King's College Chapel, which is distant but a kingfisher's flight over a strip of lovely water from his own serene Peterhouse. It seems a little curious that being himself a lover of music he should have at first disliked rhymes in verse, though he lived to write such delicate rhymed poems as this.
In the preface to his Book of Ayres, he tells the secret of his craft: "In these English Ayres," he says, "I have chiefely aymed to couple my Words and Notes lovingly together, which will be much for him to doe that hath not power over both."