in England begins in 1588, to neglect to notice that several poets had, since 1580, been attempting, and sometimes with considerable success, to attain a pure lyrical movement. It is difficult to know exactly how to date the songs of Sidney, all of which must be precedent to 1586, while some may date from 1581. 'My true love has my heart' and Weep, neighbours, weep,' were in any case among the very earliest and most successful of Elizabethan songs. The miscellany called A Handful of Pleasant Delights was published in 1584, and the contents of it are entirely, as Mr Bullen has pointed out, 'intended to be sung to one or other popular tune.' This is from that collection :

Consider, Sweet, what sighs and sobs

Do nip my heart with cruel throbs,
And all, my Dear, for love of you,

Trust me truly;

But I hope that you will some mercy show In due time duly.

If that you do my case well weigh,

And show some sign whereby I may

Have some good hope of your good grace,
Trust me truly;

I count myself in blessed case;
Let reason rule ye.

Here, however, it may be said that little advance beyond the shambling measures of folk-song has been made. But into his comedies of Campaspe and of Sapho and Phao, both published in 1584, Lyly introduces six or seven songs of a definitely artistic character, and these may be said to mark the advent of pure Elizabethan song. No previous lyrist had sung like this in England:

What bird so sings, yet so does wail?
O'tis the ravish'd nightingale.

Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu! she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.
Brave prick-song! Who is 't now we hear?
None but the lark so shrill and clear;
How at heaven's gates she claps her wings,
The morn not waking till she sings.
Hark, hark, with what a pretty throat
Poor Robin Redbreast tunes his note;
Hark! how the jolly cuckoos sing!
Cuckoo! to welcome in the spring!
Cuckoo, to welcome in the spring.

The same ecstatic and almost infantile melody is found in one or two scraps of another dramatist, George Peele, whose famous 'Fair, and fair, and thrice so fair' (quoted below at page 323) is found in his Arraignment of Paris, which dates from 1584.

It is, however, certain that in the abundant romances of the period and the various poetical miscellanies this peculiar note of joyous lyricism does not show itself until about 1588, whereas after that year it becomes so natural and abundant that we cease to record its manifestations. This is

undoubtedly connected with the foundation of the national chamber music, which owed its character

to William Byrd. Italian airs were now imported and English airs invented in immense numbers, and it was necessary to find poems to suit those airs; the result was the composition of innumerable brief snatches of song, lucid, aerial, and sympathetic, either of a gaiety that clapped its hands and danced, or else of a melancholy which melted into tears. To 1588 belongs the old favourite by Sir Edward Dyer :

My mind to me a kingdom is :
Such perfect joy therein I find
That it excels all other bliss

That God or Nature hath assigned.
Though much I want that most would have
Yet still my mind forbids to crave.

At the same time, the importation of the madrigal began from Italy. Here is an example, dating probably from 1589, by Thomas Watson; it is an adaptation to the case of Sir Philip Sidney of a popular Italian madrigal by Luca Marenzio :

How long with vain complaining,

How long with dreary tears and joys refraining,
Shall we renew his dying,
Whose happy soul is flying-
Not in a place of sadness-
But of eternal gladness?
Sweet Sidney lives in heaven;
O therefore let our weeping

Be turned to hymns and songs of pleasant greeting.

The

From this time until the end of the century the abundance and variety of song in English poetry is beyond the power of any historian to chronicle. The full choir burst forth simultaneously into warbling melody. But it is to be noted that the connection with music continued unbroken. most exquisite songs of Shakespeare and Fletcher were introduced to lighten the action by an instrumental as well as a vocal interlude; even the lyrics in the romances of Greene and Lodge were probably intended to be sung to an accompaniment on the lute. Campion, one of the most delicate and characteristic of Elizabethan lyrists, was a professional musician; and some of the most exquisite specimens of pure song-writing which

have come down to us are those which have been gathered out of the motets and madrigals of Morley, Dowland, Robert Jones, Wilbye, Weelkes, and Orlando Gibbons, the Little Masters of English chamber music.

EDMUND GOSSE.

Sir Edward Dyer (c.1545-1607), poet and courtier-diplomatist, was born at Sharpham Park, in Somerset, studied at Oxford, was knighted in 1596, and died in London. He was praised by his intimate friend Sidney, as well as by Puttenham and Meres, who commended especially his elegies. It was long difficult to know which were his poems : some ascribed to him in one collection were elsewhere recognised as the work of Lodge or Breton ; but in 1872 Dr Grosart did his best to identify and edit all Dyer's extant work-a dozen pieces in all. My Mind to Me a Kingdom is,' set to music by Byrd in 1588, is almost certainly his, and is by far the best known.

My Mind to Me a Kingdom is.

My mynde to me a kyngdome is,
Such preasent joyes therein I fynde,
That it excells all other blisse

That earth affords or growes by kynde.

Thoughe muche I wante which moste would have,
Yet still my mynde forbiddes to crave.

No princely pompe, no wealthy store,

Nor force to winne the victorye;

No wilye wit to salve a sore,

No shape to feede a lovinge eye;
To none of these I yielde as thrall,
Forwhy? my mynde doth serve for all.

I see how plenty suffers ofte,

And hasty clymers sone do fall;

I see that those which are alofte
Mishappe doth threaten moste of all;
They get with toyle, they keepe with feare:
Such cares my mynde could never beare.

Content I live, this is my staye;

I seeke no more than maye suffyse;
I presse to beare no haughty swaye ;

Look, what I lack my mynde supplies:
Lo! thus I triumphe like a kynge,
Content with that my mynde doth bringe.

Some have too muche, yet still do crave;
I little have and seek no more.

They are but poore, though muche they have,
And I am ryche with lyttle store :

They poore, I ryche; they begge, I gyve;
They lacke, I leave; they pyne, I lyve.

I laughe not at another's losse ;

I grudge not at another's gayne ;
No worldly waves my mynde can toss ;
My state at one dothe still remayne:

I feare no foe, I fawne no friende ;

I loathe not lyfe nor dread my ende.
Some weighe theyre pleasure by theyre luste,
Theyre wisdom by theyre rage of wyll;
Theyre treasure is theyre onlye truste;

A clocked craft theyre store of skylle:

Because

cloaked

But all the pleasure that I fynde,
Is to mayntayne a quiet mynde.

My wealthe is healthe and perfect ease:
My conscience cleere my choyce defence;
I neither seek by brybes to please,

Nor by deceyte to breede offence :
Thus do I lyve; thus will I dye;
Would all did so well as I!

Dr Hannah, the editor of Raleigh and others, has pointed out that one of Greene's poems ends with:

A mind content both croune and kingdome is; and Dyer himself, as if to show that this happy optimism was not the whole truth, indited a very different tune :

The Man of Woe.

The mann whose thoughtes agaynste him do conspyre,
On whom Mishapp her storye dothe depaynt;
The mann of woe, the matter of desier,

Tree of the dead, that lives in endles plaint;

His spirit am I whiche in this deserte lye,
To rue his case whose cause I cannot flye.

Despayre my name whoe never findes releife,
Frended of none, but to myself a foe;

An idle care mayntaynde by firme beleife,

That prayse of faythe shall throughe my torments growe; And counte those hopes that others hartes do ease, Butt base conceites the common sense to please.

For sure I am I never shall attayne

The happy good from whence my joys aryse; Nor have I power my sorrows to refrayne,

Butt wayle the wante when noughte ellse maye suffyse; Wherebye my lyfe the shape of deathe muste beare, That deathe which feeles the worst that lyfe doth feare.

But what avayles with tragicall complaynte,

Not hopinge healpe, the Furyes to awake?

Or why should I the happy mynds aquaynte
With doleful tunes, theyre settled peace to shake?
All
ye that here behould Infortune's feare,
May judge noe woe may withe my gref compare.

And the alternating joys and sorrows of the lover are expressed in the song beginning:

I woulde it were not as it is,
Or that I cared not yea or no ;

I woulde I thoughte it not amiss,

Or that amiss myghte blamless goo;

I would I were, yet would I not;

I myghte be gladd, yet coulde I not.

And he sums up the situation in :

Now griefe, now hope, now love, now spyghte,
Long sorrows mixte with shorte delyghte.

Nicholas Breton (1545 ?–1626?) was a prolific and versatile writer of works in prose and verse, pastoral, satirical, romantic, religious, and humorous. Of him little personally is known, save that his father, William Breton, a London merchant, left money and property for his education. William's widow married the poet Gascoigne, and Nicholas is said, on poor authority, to have studied at Oriel

College, Oxford. His Works of a Young Wit appeared in 1577; and a swift succession of small volumes proceeded from his pen-over a score in prose and about as many in verse; eight pieces with his name, comprising his first lyrics, are in England's Helicon, a notable poetical miscellany published in 1600, including contributions from Sidney, Spenser, Raleigh, Lodge, Marlowe, Watson, Greene, &c. He wrote far too much. His satire is less coarse but less effective than that of some contemporaries; his religious poems are disfigured by too fantastic conceits. Wit's Trenchmour, a prose idyl of angling, though named from an old merry dance, is one of his most notable pieces.

A Pastoral of Phillis and Coridon.
On a hill there growes a flower,

Faire befall the daintie sweet!
By that flower there is a bower,
Where the heavenly Muses meete.

In that bower there is a chaire,

Fringed all about with golde, Where doth sit the fairest faire

That did ever eye beholde.

It is Phillis, fair and bright,

She that is the shepheards joy, She that Venus did dispight,

And did blind her little boy.

There is she, the wise, the rich,
That the world desires to see;

This is ipsa quæ, the which

There is none but onely shee.

Who would not this face admire? Who would not this saint adore? Who would not this sight desire, Though he thought to see no more?

O faire eyes, yet let me see

One good looke, and I am gone: Looke on me, for I am hee,

Thy poor sillie Coridon.

Thou that art the shepheards queene,
Looke upon thy silly swaine;
By thy comfort have beene seene
Dead men brought to life againe.

Phillida and Coridon.

In the merry moneth of May
In a morne by breake of day,
Forth I walked by the wood-side,
Whenas May was in his pride:
There I spied all alone
Phillida and Coridon.
Much adoo there was, God wot!
He would love and she would not.

She sayd, Never man was true;
He sayd, None was false to you.
He sayd, He had loved her long;
She sayd, Love should have no wrong.
Coridon would kisse her then;
She sayd, Maides must kisse no men

Till they did for good and all;
Then she made the sheepheard call
All the heavens to witness truth-
Never loved a truer youth.
Thus with many a pretty oath,
Yea, and nay, faith and troth,
Such as seely sheepheards use
When they will not love abuse,
Love, which had beene long deluded,
Was with kisses sweete concluded;
And Phillida with garlands gay
Was made the Lady of the May.

A Sweet Lullabie.

Come, little babe, come, silly soule,
Thy father's shame, thy mother's griefe,
Borne as I doubt to all our dole,

And to thyself unhappie chiefe :

Sing lullabie and lap it warme,

Poore soule that thinkes no creature harme.

Thou little thinkst, and lesse doost knowe

The cause of this thy mother's moane;
Thou wantst the wit to waile her woe,
And I myselfe am all alone;

Why doost thou weepe? why doost thou waile?
And knowest not yet what thou doost ayle.

Come, little wretch! Ah! silly heart,
Mine onely joy, what can I more?
If there be any wrong thy smart,
That may the destinies implore,

'Twas I, I say, against my will-
I wayle the time, but be thou still.

And doest thou smile? O thy sweete face!
Would God Him selfe He might thee see!
No doubt thou wouldst soone purchase grace,
I know right well, for thee and mee,

But come to mother, babe, and play,
For father false is fled away.

Sweet boy, if it by fortune chance
Thy father home againe to send,
If Death do strike me with his launce,
Yet mayest thou me to him commend:
If any aske thy mother's name,
Tell how.by love she purchast blame.
Then will his gentle heart soone yeeld:
I know him of a noble minde:
Although a Lyon in the field,

A lamb in towne thou shalt him finde :
Aske blessing, babe, be not afrayde!
His sugred words hath me betrayde.
Then mayst thou joy and be right glad,
Although in woe I seeme to moane.
Thy father is no rascall lad:
A noble youth of blood and boane,

His glancing lookes, if he once smile,
Right honest women may beguile.
Come, little boy, and rocke a-sleepe!
Sing lullabie, and be thou still!

I, that can doe naught else but weepe,
Will sit by thee and waile my fill:

God blesse my babe, and lullabie,
From this thy father's quality.

Popular and esteemed in the seventeenth century, Breton's work was forgotten in the eighteenth, till Bishop Percy printed in the Reliques two of his pieces from England's Helicon. There was no edition of his works in prose and verse till Dr Grosart produced them for the 'Chertsey Library' in 1877; another volume of new discoveries was added in 1893. Single works have been published separately - as The Bower of Delights in the 'Elizabethan Library' in 1893, and No Whippinge nor Trippinge in 1896. Professor Saintsbury reprinted in his Elizabethan and Jacobean Tracts (1892) Breton's 'Pretie and Wittie Discourse between Wit and Will,' which contains the 'Song between Wit and Will' and other amœbean strains between them, between Care and Misery, &c.

Edward de Vere, EARL OF OXFORD (15501604), studied at Cambridge, succeeded his father as seventeenth earl in 1562, and, already a favoured courtier, married Burghley's daughter in 1571.. He was handsome, accomplished, foppish, luxurious, ruinously extravagant, and unbearably insolent and wrong-headed. He called Sidney a puppy, but was not allowed by the queen to accept Sidney's challenge. He was appointed to high offices, was special commissioner for the trial of Mary Queen of Scots, and acted as Lord Chamberlain at James I.'s coronation. But his estates had to be sold his wealth was utterly squandered by his wastefulness-and Burghley had to provide for his family. Yet some twenty-three of his poems remain to support the contemporary judgment that he was one of the best of the courtier poets of Elizabeth's early reign; they were printed in the Paradise of Dainty Devices and other anthologies. Puttenham illustrated his English Poesie with the one best known, given below; Grosart printed all that could be attributed to Oxford in his Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthy Library (1872).

Fancy and Desire.

Come hither, shepherd's swaine !
Sir, what doe ye require?

I pray thee shew to me thy name!
My name is Fond Desire.

When werte thou borne, Desyre?
In pryde and pompe of May.

By whom, sweet boy, wert thou begott?
By selfe-conceyte, men say.

Tell me who was thy nourse?

Freshe youthe, in sugred ioye,
What was thy meat and dayly food?
Sad syghes and great annoye.

What haddest thou than to drincke?
Unfayned lovers' teares.
What cradle wert thou rocked in?
In hope devoyde of feares.

What lulled thee to thy sleepe?

Sweet thoughtes which lyked one beste. And wher is now thy dwelling place? In gentle hearts I rest.

then

What thing doth please thee most?
To gaze on beauty still.

Whom dost thou think to be thy foe?
Disdayne of my good will.

Dothe companye displease?
It dothe in manye one.
Where would Desyre than chuse to be?
He loves to muse alone.
Will ever age or death

Bring thee unto decaye?

Noe, noe! Desyre both lives and dyes
A thousande tymes a daye.
Then, fond Desyre, farewell!
Thou art no mate for me;

I should be lothe methinks to dwell
With such a one as thee.

Another short poem runs thus:

then

Doth sorrow fret thy soule? O direfull spirit. Doth pleasure feed thy heart? O blessed man. Hast thou bene happie once? O heavy plight. Are thy mishaps forepast? O happie than. Or hast thou blisse in eld? O blisse too late. But hast thou blisse in youth? O sweet estate. Thomas Watson (1557?-1592) was author of Hecatompathia, or Passionate Centurie of Love (1582), a series of sonnets; Amynta Gaudia (in Latin, 1585); Italian Madrigals Englished (1590), one of which is quoted above at page 274; The Tears of Fancie (1593). He translated the Antigone of Sophocles into Latin. In the Hecatompathia, 'a hundred passions,' a hundred eighteen-line poems called 'sonnets,' describe each a several passion; two of these are given below. But the lovemaking was as artificial as the record of it; though Watson ranks high among the ‘amoretists.' Professor Arber reprinted the Hecatompathia, the Tears of Fancie, and some of Watson's other things (1870) in his English Reprints.'

When Maye is in his prime, and youthfull Spring
Doth cloath the tree with leaves and ground with flowres,
And time of yere reviveth every thing,

And lovely nature smiles and nothing lowres ;
Then Philomela most doth straine her brest
With night-complaints, and sits in litle rest.
This birds estate I may compare with mine,
To whom fond Love doth worke such wrongs by day,
That in the night my heart must needes repine,
And storm with sighes to ease me as I may;
Whilst others are becalm'd or lye them still,
Or sayle secure with tide and winde at will.
And as all those which heare this bird complaine
Conceive in all her tunes a sweete delight,
Without remorse or pitying her payne;
So she, for whom I wayle both day and night,
Doth sport her selfe in hearing my complaint;
A just reward for serving such a saint!

Time wasteth yeeres, and months, and howrs;
Time doth consume fame, honour, witt, and strength;
Time kills the greenest herbes and sweetest flow'rs;
Time weares out Youth and Beauties lookes at length;
Time doth convey to ground both foe and friend,
And each thing els but Love, which hath no end.

Time maketh every tree to die and rott;
Time turneth ofte our pleasures into paine;
Time causeth warres and wronges to be forgott;
Time cleares the skie which first hung full of rayne;
Time makes an end of all humane desire,
But onely this which setts my heart on fire.
Time turneth into naught each princely state;
Time brings a fludd from newe resolved snowe:
Time calmes the sea where tempest was of late
Time eates whate'er the moone can see belowe ;
And yet no time prevails in my behove,
Nor any time can make me cease to love!

;

Henry Constable (1562–1613), poet, the son of Sir Robert Constable of Newark, at sixteen entered St John's College, Cambridge, early turned Catholic, and betook himself to Paris. He was an active Catholic negotiator, conducted a mission to James VI. at Edinburgh (without result) on behalf of the papal powers, and was by-and-by pensioned by the French king. But he maintained his political loyalty, though on his return to England in 1604 he was for a few months confined in the Tower. He died at Liége. In 1592 was published his Diana, a collection of twenty-three sonnets; two years later, the second edition, containing seventysix, but some of these were by his friend Sir Philip Sidney and other poets. 'The Shepheards Song of Venus and Adonis,' one of four pastoral poems contributed by him to England's Helicon, was thought by Malone and others to have suggested Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. See W. C. Hazlitt's edition of his works (1859), and J. Gray's (1897). The following is one of Constable's sonnets: My ladies presence makes the Roses red,

because to see her lips they blush for shame;
the lyllies leaves for envie pale became,
and her white hands in them this envie bred.
The Marigold the leaves abroad doth spred,

because the sunnes and her power are the same;
the Violet of purple cullour came,

dyed in the blood shee made my hart to shed. In briefe all flowers from her their vertue take;

from her sweet breath their sweet smels do proceede; the living heate which her eye beames doth make warmeth the ground and quickeneth the seede : The raine wherewith shee watereth the flowers Falls from mine eyes which she dissolves in showers. Venus and Adonis begins thus:

Venus fair did ride,

Silver doves they drew her, By the pleasant lawnds

Ere the sun did rise; Vestas beauty rich

Open'd wide to view her; Philomel records

Pleasing harmonies.

Barnabe Barnes (1569?-1609), son of the Bishop of Durham, approved himself a true poet, but had been well-nigh forgotten when in 1875 Dr Grosart reprinted his poems-Parthenophil, containing 'sonnets, madrigals, elegies and odes,' by far his best work, and a collection of Spirituall Sonnetts. He also wrote an unpleasant tragedy,

The Devil's Charter, and a treatise on political offices and duties; as a friend and collaborator of Gabriel Harvey, he suffered at the hands of Nash and his allies; and see below at Shakespeare, page 364. Professor Arber included Parthenophil in his English Garner (vol. v. 1882). This 'echo sonnet from Parthenophil shows Barnes perhaps at his worst, but is a fair specimen of the uncouth and inartistic artificialities to which writers of really fine verse sometimes condescended (rew being a form of 'row,' and here presumably meaning 'rank'): What be those hairs dyed like the marigold?

Lord Vaux and Nicholas Grimoald were amongst the contributors to Tottel's 'Miscellany.' Other sonneteers and minor poets of the period were: William Percy (1575-1648), third son of the eighth Earl of Northumberland, a fellow-student at Oxford and close friend of Barnes's, who produced in 1594 a volume of sonnets called Calia.—Henry Lok, or Locke (1553?-1608?), son of a London mercer, published upwards of three hundred sonnets on Christian Passions, Conscience, and the like, which show more piety than poetry, and his sixty secular ones are hardly more valuable. He also versified Ecclesiastes and some of the Psalms.-B. Griffin-probably Bartholomew Griffin -who published in 1596 a collection of sixty-two sonnets called Fidessa, some of them admirable. He may have been an attorney, but the facts of his life are little known.-Richard Linche, or Lynche, who wrote two unimportant prose works, is believed to have been the R. L. who in 1596 published a collection of thirty-eight sonnets somewhat unequal in quality. — William Smith, another Spenserian sonneteer, is remembered chiefly for his collection of over fifty sonnets called Chloris, published in 1596.