All I wish to make clear is that the printed words of Nos. 210 and 212, for instance, can give only a fraction of the pleasure their poets intended, who in writing had always the singing voice and often the twangling string in mind. Their very age to my fancy gives them an enticing strangeness, grace, and freshness. For in their company the imagination returns to the days when first they rang out in the taverns and parlours and palaces and streets of a London that from every steeple and tower was within sight of green fields; a noble city of but about three hundred thousand people (including children) wherein you might any day find William Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Chapman and the rest talking together in its taverns, the Mermaid or the Triple Tun, while that ill-fortuned traveller and statesman, Sir Walter Raleigh, fallen upon evil days, sat mewed up in the Tower of London, engrossed in his History of the World.
None the less there are human beings who remain deaf to the magic both of words and music—that, like the deaf adder, stop their ears: "I know very well," wrote Sir William Temple, "that many who pretend to be wise by the forms of being grave, are apt to despise both poetry and music as toys and trifles too light for the use or entertainment of serious men. But whoever find themselves wholly insensible to these charms, would I think do well to keep their own counsel, for ... while this world lasts, I doubt most but the pleasure and requests of these two entertainments will do so too; and happy those that content themselves with these, or any other so easy and so innocent; and do not trouble the world or other men, because they cannot be quiet themselves, though nobody hurts them!
"When all is done, human life is at the greatest and the best but like a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."
[211]. "The Onely Pretty Ring Time."
"Amo, amas,
I love a lass,
As cedar tall and slender;
Sweet cowslip's face
Is her nominative case,