Notices to Correspondents [358]
Advertisements [358]
[List of Notes and Queries volumes and pages]
Notes.
UNPUBLISHED SONG BY THOMAS OTWAY.
In turning over a quantity of miscellaneous papers in MS. (some originals and some copies) of the latter half of the seventeenth century (which chance lately threw in my way), I stumbled upon the following song by the unfortunate author of Venice Preserved. It may, possibly, have been printed in one, or more, of the numerous volumes of "miscellany poems" which teemed from the press at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the following century; but in looking over a tolerable assemblage which time has accumulated on my shelves, I have not been able to discover it. The MS. does not appear to be an original, although the handwriting is of the author's period. The punctuation is as I found it:—
"Health breeds care; love, hope and fear;
What does love or bus'ness here?
While Bacchus merry does appear,
Fight on and fear no sinking: