and some verses of Dr. Donne (both these writers being contemporaries of James I.), are also mentioned by Walton as popular among the lower classes in his day. Here is another instance of the power of song over the peasantry in the early part of the XVIIth century. In the spring of 1613, on the occasion of Queen Anne of Denmark’s return from Bath, where she had gone for her health, she was met on Salisbury Plain by the Rev. George Fereby, vicar of some obscure country parish, who entreated that her majesty would be pleased to listen to a concert performed by his people. “When the queen signified her assent, there rose out of the ravine a handsome company, dressed as Druids and as British shepherds and shepherdesses, who sang a greeting, beginning with these words, to a melody which greatly pleased the musical taste of her majesty:
“‘Shine, oh! shine, thou sacred star,
On seely[167] shepherd swains!’
We should suppose, from the commencing words, that this poem had originally been a Nativity hymn pertaining to the ancient church; and it is possible that the melody might be traced to the same source.… The music, the voices, and the romantic dresses, so well corresponding with the mysterious spot where this pastoral concert was stationed, greatly captivated the imagination of the queen.”[168] Anne of Denmark admired and patronized the genius of Ben Jonson, the writer of several musical masques often performed at court by the queen and her noble attendants. The really classical time of English poetry and music was before the Commonwealth, and popular music certainly received a blow during the Puritan rule. Songs and ballads were forbidden as profane; and in 1656 Cromwell enacted that “if any of the persons commonly called fiddlers or minstrels shall at any time be taken playing, fiddling, and making music in any inn, ale-house, or tavern, or shall be taken proffering themselves, or designing or entreating any to hear them play or make music in any of the places aforesaid,” they should be “adjudged and declared to be rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars.” Fines and imprisonments were often the penalties attached to a disregard of these ordinances; but this opposition only turned the course of popular song into political channels, and it became a point of honor among the Royalists to listen to, applaud, and protect the veriest scamp who called himself a minstrel. Songs were written with no poetical merit, but full of political allusions, bitter taunts and sneers; and it was the delight of the Cavaliers to sing these doggerel rhymes and make the wandering fiddlers sing them. Many a brawl owed its origin to this. Even certain tunes, without any words, were considered as identified with political principle, and led to dangerous ebullitions of feeling, or kept alive party prejudices in those who heard them. Popular music has always been a powerful engine for good or bad, in a political sense. Half the loyalty of the Jacobites of Scotland in the XVIIIth century was due to inflammatory songs; Körner’s lyrics fired German patriotism against Napoleon; and there has never been a party of any kind that did not speedily adopt some representative melody to fan the ardor of its adherents.
But if music and poetry were proscribed by the over-rigorous Puritans, a worse excess was fostered by the immoral reign of Charles II. The Restoration polluted the stream which the Commonwealth had attempted to dam up. Just as, in a spirit of bravado and contradiction, the Cavaliers had ostentatiously made cursing and swearing a badge of their party, to spite the sanctimoniousness of the Roundheads, so they affected to oppose to the latter’s psalm-singing roaring and immodest songs. Ritson says that Charles II. tried his hand at song-writing, and quotes a piece by him, beginning:
“I pass all my hours in a shady old grove.”
“Though by no means remarkable for poetical merit,” says the critic, “it has certainly enough for the composition of a king.” Molière was not more severe on the attempts of Louis XIV. But though the general spirit of the age was licentious, many good songs were still written. Sedley, Rochester, Dorset, Sheffield, and others wrote unexceptionable ones, and the great Dryden flourished in this reign. One of his odes, “On S. Cecilia’s Day,” is thoroughly musical in its rhythm, the refrains at the end of each stanza having the ring of some of the old German Minnesongs of the XIIth and XIIIth centuries. But his verses were scarcely simple or flowing enough to become popular in the widest sense, which honor rather belonged to the less celebrated poets of his day. Lord Dorset, for instance, was the author of a sea-song said to have been written the night before an engagement with the Dutch in 1665, and which, from its admirable ease, flow, and tenderness, became at once popular with all classes. The circumstances under which it was supposed to be written had, no doubt, something to do with its popularity; but Dr. Johnson says: “Seldom any splendid story is wholly true. I have heard from the late Earl of Orrery, who was likely to have good hereditary intelligence, that Lord Dorset had been a week employed upon it, and only retouched or finished it on the memorable evening. But even this, whatever it may subtract from his facility, leaves him his courage.” The anonymous writer to whom we have referred[169] tells us that “the shorter pieces of most of the poets of the time of Charles II. had a rhythm and cadence particularly well suited to music. They were, in short, what the Italians call cantabile, or fit to be sung.… In the succeeding reigns, with the growth of our literature, there was a considerable increase in song-writing; most of our poets of eminence, and some who had no eminence except what they obtained in that way, devoting themselves occasionally to the composition of lyrical pieces. Prior, Rowe, Steele, Philips, Parnell, Gay, and others contributed a stock which might advantageously be referred to by the composers of our own times.” Prior was a friend and protégé of Lord Dorset, who sent him to Cambridge and paid for his education there. Parnell was an Irishman. His “Hymn to Contentment” is a sort of counterpart to the old song “My Mind to me a Kingdom is”:
“Lovely, lasting peace, appear;
This world itself, if thou art here,
Is once again with Eden blest,