So many large taxes upon this land should bring."
And inform me to what political event this song, of which I have an imperfect MS. copy, refers.
EDWARD PEACOCK, JUN.
Henry and the Nut-brown Maid.—SEARCH would be obliged for any information as to the authorship of this beautiful ballad.
[Mr. Wright, in his handsome black-letter reprint, published by Pickering in 1836, states, that "it is impossible to fix the date of this ballad," and has not attempted to trace the authorship. We shall be very glad if SEARCH's Query should produce information upon either of these points.]
REPLIES.
FRENCH POEM BY MALHERBE.
The two stanzas your correspondent E.R.C.B. has cited (Vol. ii., p. 71.) are from an elegiac poem by MALHERBE (who died in 1628, at the good old age of seventy-three), which is entitled Consolation à Monsieur Du Perrier sur la Mort de sa Fille. It has always been a great favorite of mine; for, like Gray's Elegy and the celebrated Coplas of Jorge Manrique on the death of his father, beside its philosophic moralising strain, it has that pathetic character which makes its way at once to the heart. I will transcribe the first four stanzas for the sake of the beauty of the fourth:—
"Ta douleur, Du Perrier, sera done éternelle,