... PAGE 275. — Mr. Aldis Wright, in Fitzgerald's Letters and Literary Remains, prefaces "Bird-Parliament" with a note by Professor Cowell, from which the following is taken: "Fitzgerald was first interested in Attar's Mantik-ut-tair' by the extracts given in De Sacy's notes to his edition of that poet's Pandnâmah, and in 1856 he began to read the original in a MS. lent to him by Mr. Newton of Hertford. . . . De Tassy subsequently published in 1863 a French prose translation of the poem ; but the previous analysis was, I believe, Fitzgerald's only help in mastering the difficulties of the original. He often wrote to me in India, describing the pleasure he found in his new discovery, and he used to mention how the more striking apologues were gradually shaping themselves into verse, as he thought them over in his lonely walks. At last, in 1862, he sent me the following translation, intending at first to offer it for publication in the Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society; but he soon felt that it was too free a version for the pages of a scientific journal. He then talked of publishing it by itself, but the project never assumed a definite shape, though I often urged him to print the 'BirdParliament." PAGE 286.- A part of Walton's Life of Herbert is in the Sixth of The Heart of Oak Books. PAGE 300. "The imperishable My Mind to Me a Kingdom is " first appeared in Psalms, Sonnets, and Songs of Sadness and Piety, which William Byrd published in 1588. Because Byrd was a song-writer and because the poem appeared first in his "music of sundry sort and to content divers humors," the poem has been ascribed to him. The longest and apparently earliest version is signed "E. Dier," in MS. Rawlinson, in the Bodleian Library, reprinted by J. Hannah, D.C.L., in The Courtly Poets, from Raleigh to Montrose, London, 1870. Rev. A. B. Grosart, in the Fuller Worthies' Library, 1872, prints in Dyer's Works, a version from a contemporary MS. The popular version here given is from Percy's Reliques, 4th ed., 1794, vol. i. p. 307. Dyer was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1596. He was a friend of Sir Walter Raleigh and of Sir Philip Sidney, and was, with Fulke Greville, the legatee of "the other half" of Sidney's books. PAGE 304. — Anthony à Wood says, in Athenæ Oxonienses, that Shirley was "the most noted dramatic poet of his time." He found his grammar school in St. Albans "uneasy to him, and retiring to the metropolis, lived in Grey's-Inn, and set up for a play-maker, and gained not only a considerable livelyhood, but also very great respect and encouragement from persons of quality, especially from Henrietta Maria, the Queen Consort. When the Rebellion broke out . . . and the ... King's Cause declined ... following his old trade of teaching school he not only gained a comfortable subsistence (for the acting of plays was then silenced), but educated many ingenious youths who afterwards proved most eminent in divers faculties." PAGE 306.Of Donne, Walton writes in his Life: "He was of stature moderately tall, of a straight and well-proportioned body; to which all his words and actions gave an unexpressible addition of comeliness. "The melancholy and pleasant humor were in him so tempered that each gave advantage to the other, and made his company one of the delights of mankind. "His fancy was unimitably high, equalled only by his great wit; both being made useful by a commanding judgment. "His aspect was cheerful, and such as gave a silent testimony of a clear, knowing soul, and of a conscience at peace with itself. "He was ... a great lover of the offices of humanity, and of so merciful a spirit that he never beheld the miseries of mankind without pity and relief." And in An Elegie upon Dr. Donne: "Our Donne is dead; England should mourn, may sa, We had a man where language chose to stay And shew her graceful power. I would not praise That and his vast wit (which in these vain days Make many proud) but, as they serv'd to unlock A monument, great as Donne's matchless worth." PAGE 309. -"A great critic (Aikin) on songs," writes Burns to Mr. Thomson, in January, 1795, "says that love and wine are the exclusive themes for song-writing. The following [‘For a' that and a' that'] is on neither subject, and consequently is no song, but will be allowed, I think, to be two or three pretty good, pure thoughts inverted into rhyme." PAGE 319. From Campion and Rosseter's Book of Airs. "In 1601," says Bullen in Lyrics from Elizabethan Song-Books, Campion and Philip Rosseter published jointly A Book of Airs. The music was partly written by Campion and partly by Rosseter; but the whole of the poetry belongs to Campion." 66 PAGE 332.-The gaiety and life of this old song foreran William of Orange in the graces of the London public about a year and a half, it having been published in 1687. |