He'll teach his swains this carol for a song:
Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well!
Cursed be the souls that think her any wrong!
Goddess! allow this aged man his right
To be your beadsman now, that was your knight."
The feudal feeling can hardly be more beautifully expressed.
From the devotion that was low and lifelong we may turn to the devotion that was loud and fleeting. The love-songs are many and well picked: one is the madrigal from Thomas Lodge's Eitphues' Golden Legacy, which "he wrote," he says, "on the ocean, when every line was wet with a surge, and every humorous passion counterchecked with a storm;" and which (the madrigal) had the good fortune to suggest and name Shakespeare's archest character, Rosalind. We cannot dwell upon this perfumed chaplet of love-ditties. Mrs. Richardson is here doubtless in her element, but she does not always lighten counsel with the wisdom of her words; for instance, when, in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Beauty clear and fair," she makes an attempted emendation in the lines—
"Where to live near,
And planted there,
Is still to live and still live new;