else poems of Nicholas Breton, 1591; The Phoenix' Nest, an interesting collection, including much of Breton's and Lodge's, and of unknown editorship, 1593; The Passionate Pilgrim, another pirated work, containing poetry by Shakespeare, Barnfield, Griffin, Raleigh, Marlowe, and others, 1599; England's Helicon, possibly the richest and most representative of all, projected by John Bodenham, who was concerned in several other like ventures, 1600; and, in 1602, Francis Davison's admirable Poetical Rhapsody. Less strictly anthologies are the appendix to Chester's Love's Martyr, The Turtle and Phoenix, 1601, including poems by Shakespeare, Jonson, Marston, and Chapman; and collections of extracts like Belvedere or the Garden of the Muses and England's Parnassus. Munday's Banquet of Dainty Conceits, an inferior production published in 1588,1 and Breton's Arbor of Amorous Devices, 1593-94, are the work of their respective editors, who appear to have traded on titles usually employed to convey the idea of an anthology by various authors. After the death of the queen, few new miscellanies appeared, although, as in the case of the sonnet, the old miscellanies continued to be republished. Such miscellanies as were printed in the reign of James are mostly indiscriminate collections of ballads, lyrics, and occasional verse. The lyrical anthology, in a word, had gone out of the fashion, and other collections, especially those of songs and madrigals, generally with the music attached, took their place in the popular esteem.

As might be expected, the earlier miscellanies, which it must be emphasized were the product of an educated literary taste in selection, reflect the prevailing fashions in poetry of these two decades. In England's Helicon (the poetry of which though published in 1600 was written far earlier) there is still not a little affectation of shepherds and shep

1 This I have not been able to procure.

herdesses, whilst The Poetical Rhapsody, which represents poetry for the most part written a dozen years later, is full of sonnets and madrigals. In The Phoenix' Nest, England's Helicon, and Davison's Rhapsody will be found much of the choicest lyrical poetry prior to the accession of James I; including, besides a considerable body of verse the authorship of which it is difficult or impossible to identify, work by almost every important lyrical poet of the age. Except for some minor names, the miscellanies published before 1600 exhibit only the work of tried and successful authors. It was different with Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, which includes, besides work of this character, much that was new, as Davison's own beautiful poetry, distinguishable by its erotic fervor and directness, that of his two brothers, of Sir John Davies, of Donne, Sylvester, Sir Henry Wotton, Campion, and much anonymous verse. Altogether this collection most fittingly opens a new period.

Taking the list of Elizabethan song books compiled by Mr. Davey in his excellent History of English Music,1 1895, I find that out of eighty-five song books of known date of publication, falling between Byrd's Psalms, Sonnets, and Songs of Sadness and Piety, 1587, and Pilkington's Second Set of Madrigals, 1624, sixty-six appeared between 1595 and 1615, and more than half of these in the central decade 1600-10. This seems to establish the fact that, upon the waning of the fashion for sonnets, the attention of the minor lyrists was directed chiefly to the writing of songs for music.

In a contemplation of the preeminence of the literature under consideration, we are apt to forget that other arts too came in to share in the vigorous life and aesthetic activity that distinguished this most fortunate of ages. This is not the place for more than a word as to the popular love of music and the general culture of it as an art in the England

1 P. 172.

of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This popularity is witnessed by a long and honorable list of trained musicians and composers, and by the considerable number of their compositions which have been handed down to us. The estimation in which such men were held may be seen in Barnfield's sonnet To Music and Poetry (p. 87). That other nations have long since outstripped England in music, and that an entirely new school has gone on to achievements utterly undreamed of in this simple age of lutes and virginals, of madrigals and three-part catches, will not alter the historical fact that the English were a very musical people in the days of Henry VIII, of his children and their successor. Our present interest in this popularity of a sister art is confined to the impetus which it seems to have given to the writing of lyrics to be set to music; for the Elizabethans were very particular as to the artistic quality of the words of their songs; and did not consider, as we, that any nonsense is good enough to sing.

There is a large amount of this literature; and, although much of it was either literally translated from Italian or at

166 During the long reign of Elizabeth, music seems to have been in universal cultivation, as well as universal esteem. Not only was it a necessary qualification for ladies and gentlemen, but even the city of London advertised the musical abilities of boys educated in Bridewell and Christ's Hospital, as a mode of recommending them as servants, apprentices, or husbandmen. . . . Tinkers sang catches; milkmaids sang ballads ; carters whistled; each trade, and even the beggars, had their special songs; the base-viol hung in the drawing room for the amusement of waiting visitors; and the lute, cittern and virginals, for the amusement of waiting customers, were the necessary furniture of the barber's shop. They had music at dinner; music at supper; music at weddings; music at funerals; music at dawn, music at night. He who felt not, in some degree, its soothing influences, was viewed as a morose, unsocial being, whose converse ought to be shunned and regarded with suspicion and distrust." Chappell, Old English Popular Music, i. 59. See also Galliard's Cantatus, 1720, Preface.

least inspired by Italian models, the words as well as the music, there was yet some scope for originality. Considering all things, the literary worth of the Elizabethan song books is surprisingly great. It is the opinion of Mr. Bullen, who is certainly best entitled to speak on this subject, that “as a rule composers are responsible only for the music" of the song books published under their names. In consequence much of this beautiful verse remains unidentified as to authorship. Certain it is, however, that some of the composers were likewise poets. This is notably the case with Dr. Thomas Campion, a most accomplished and versatile > man, at once a physician, a musician, a critic, and a lyrical poet of rare order in Latin and English verse. Mr. Bullen, to whose untiring zeal and industry we practically owe the rediscovery of Campion, ranks that poet with Shelley and Burns as a lyrist; adding "for tenderness and depth of feeling, for happiness of phrase and for chaste, artistic perfection he is supreme. . . . As we read Campion's lyrics we feel that the poet could without effort beat out of our rough English speech whatever music he chose. . . . Το every varying mood the lyre-strings are responsive. Never a false or jarring note; no cheap tricks and mannerisms; everywhere ease and simplicity." Whether this seem the pardonable over-estimate of a discoverer or not, few poets have surpassed Campion in the highest quality of the songwriter the writing of words that sing. Although not among the greater masters that have wrought most deeply in thought and emotion, Campion may take his place beside Herrick and Ben Jonson in lighter vein as one of the best Anacreontic lyrists in the language.

1

But the lyrics set to music were not confined to collections of airs, songs, or madrigals by musicians like Byrd, Dowland, Campion, and Jones; they flourished in the drama and in

1 Preface to More Lyrics, etc., p. vi.

the masque, which latter in the hands of Jonson and Daniel assumed a new dignity and beauty. The songs of the dramatists have long been recognized as amongst the best of English lyrics. Beginning with the rollicking old drinking song of Gammer Gurton's Needle, "Back and side go bare, go bare," which it is delightful to believe was the work of a prospective bishop, the practice of enlivening the drama with songs and other lyrics continued until developed into a consummate art in the hands of Lyly, Dekker, and Shakespeare. Indeed even with Shakespeare setting the standard, it is amazing what lyrics far lesser men could produce: Anthony Munday, an obscure and fertile literary hack, reeling out volume after volume of ordinary verse and yet more ordinary prose, yet reaching once or twice a rare level, which shall preserve his name from oblivion; Thomas Heywood, facile and most productive of dramatists, visited at moments by the golden touch of lyric inspiration; Thomas Nashe, the redoubtable English Aretine," with the swagger of a bully in almost all his prose, yet leaving us but too few of the purest and saddest of lyrics; Thomas Dekker, whose life was spent in alternation between the debtor's jail and the lower London theatres, in unremitting drudgery under the usurious, pawnbroking prince of the Elizabethan dramatic sweating system, Richard Henslowe, singing like a lark of "sweet content' and "golden numbers." Little wonder that such men should lament at times that "Virtue's branches wither, Virtue pines," or ask in heart-rending accents: "O sorrow, sorrow, say where dost thou dwell?”

66

Owing to the wide popularity of the drama, these lyrics are far less the reflection of foreign models than the collections of the writers of madrigals; but they reflected the immediate fashion in poetry even more faithfully. Thus the songs, interspersing the plays of Lyly and Peele, partook more or less of the pastoral and classical spirit preced