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blank verse in several of his epistles, but he was fonder of the octave measure, which he used without too much heaviness, though he was laughed at as antediluvian by the wits of 1600. Many of his so-called "sonnets" are love lyrics of varying metres.

The first tentative efforts of the Elizabethans are interesting to inquisitive students, but by ordinary readers have been relegated to the "dim and derided limbo of literature where poetasters flutter and twitter (as bats in a cave) like the ghosts of Penelope's suitors in Homer." Fortunately for us these croaking days are succeeded in the late seventies, culminating in 1579, by a joyous season of unexampled fecundity, a vocal chorus of singing-birds who answer each other from every brake and covert. Many exquisite notes and trills must have been lost before a system of registry was developed by means of the poetical miscellany in the second half of the sixteenth century. The following is a list of the seven best known of these anthologies (excluding The Mirror for Magistrates) between 1557 and 1602:—

(1) Tottel's Miscellany, brought out by the well-known. printer, Richard Tottel, under the title Songes and Sonettes written by the ryght honorable lorde Henry Howard, late Earle of Surrey, and other, in June, 1557, went through numerous editions, six at least in Elizabeth's reign; it included among its contributors, besides Wyatt and Surrey, Lord Vaux, and Nicholas Grimald. Grimald, an Oxford graduate and son of an Italian-born employé of Empson and Dudley, may have been the original editor. The first edition contained forty pieces by Wyatt, ninetysix by Surrey, forty by Grimald, ninety-five by Vaux, Bryan, Churchyard, and others; in the second edition, of July, 1557, thirty of Grimald's pieces were omitted, but other anonymous pieces were added, making the total up to 280 (in place of 271).

(2) The Paradyse of Daynty Devices, published by Henry Disle in 1576; it contained poems which, as in Tottel, were mostly signed, and among the known contributors were Lord Vaux; Francis Kinwelmersh, a friend and collaborator of George Gascoigne; and the two musicians, William Hunnis and Richard Edwardes, Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal; Edwardes was reputed the best fiddler, the best mimic, and the best sonneteer of the age. This miscellany became almost as popular as its predecessor.

(3) A Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions, made by Thomas Proctor, and brought out by Richard James in 1578; the writers in this are indicated by a few initials only.

(4) The Phonix Nest, brought out by John Jackson in 1593. The poems in this, which are mostly anonymous, are edited by R. S., of the Inner Temple. Among the known contributors are Thomas Lodge, Nicholas Breton, George Peele, and Sir Walter Raleigh, and there are many exquisite poems by anonymous writers. Later still in date

are:

(5) England's Helicon, published by John Flasket in 1600. This was a delightful collection of pastoral poetry planned by John Bodenham and edited by an anonymous A. B., most of the contributions being fortunately signed. Helicon was issued in a revised form in 1614. A better anthology than this did not appear in Britain before The Golden Treasury. Among the contributors are Sidney, Spenser, Drayton, Lodge, Greene, Peele, Shakespeare, Breton, and Bamfield.

(6) England's Parnassus, brought out by N. Ling and others in 1600, and edited by R. A., is rather a treasury of quotations, the references to which are often wrongly given, than a miscellany proper.

(7) Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, published by John Baily in 1602, and edited by Francis, the son of Secretary

Davison. This is exceptionally valuable for the amount of unprinted verse it contains.1

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1 In addition to these, there were a number of minor miscellanies, such as Clement Robinson's Handful of Pleasant Delights (1584), containing the ballad of "Lady Greensleeves " and the wooing song Maid, will ye love me, yea or no?"; Anthony Munday's Banquet of Dainty Conceits (1588); The Passionate Pilgrim, absurdly ascribed by a too enterprising publisher to William Shakespeare; Wit's Commonwealth; and Bodenham's Belvedere. The seven collections named above are, however, perhaps the most important, as they are certainly the most easily referred to, having been reprinted as Seven English Miscellanies under the editorship of J. Payne Collier in 1867. The three volumes of Park's Heliconia, 1815, contain Nos. 3, 4, and 6 in the list above, in addition to Robinson's Handful of Delights. Nos. 5 and 7 have been admirably edited by A. H. Bullen. In addition to the above, A. H. Bullen has collected two delightful volumes of lyrics from the Elizabethan songbooks, brought out by such well-known musicans as William Byrd, John Dowland, Thomas Campion, Philip Rosseter, Robert Jones, Thomas Ford, N. Yonge, and the madrigalists Weelkes, Morley, Wilbye, Ravenscroft, and others. William Byrd's three song-books came out respectively in 1588, 1589, and 1611. The three song-books of the excellent lutenist John Dowland appeared similarly in 1597, 1600, and 1603. Thomas Weelkes was organist successively at Winchester and Chichester, and the composer of a rich diversity of Ballets, Madrigals, and Fantastick Airs. The verses in his song-books are never heavy or laboured, but always "bright, cheerful, and arch." Thomas Morley, a pupil of Byrd, is noted as the author of the first systematic Introduction to Practical Music (1597) ever printed in England. John Wilbye is generally regarded as the primus inter pares of the glorious band of English madrigal writers. "Love me not for comely grace" is one of the exquisite songs to which he gave a worthy musical setting in his "Second Set" of Madrigals (1608-9). Thomas Ravenscroft was a rare collector of "rounds, catches, and canons," given to the world in Pammelia, Deuteromelia, and Melismata. Jones and Rosseter were alike famous as lutenists and teachers, Ford and Yonge as composers and students of foreign music. Yonge was a singing man at Paul's, and a clever collector of strange

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madrigals. John Dowland studied in France and Italy before taking his Mus. Bac, at Oxford in 1588. He was a wonderful lutenist, and was eagerly welcomed at the Danish court in 1600, but he appeals to us most as a connoisseur of song. William Byrd (1539-1623), another Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, who ranks with Tallis in the van of old English music, made his reputation as Organist at Lincoln. His taste was rather Puritan, and he shows an undue fondness for squaretoed psalmody, yet he also set some delightful pastoral songs. The volume of all this collected verse is enormous, not to speak of the dainty verselets "in private chambers that encloistered are." To the lover of word-music these composers are a race apart, inasmuch as they were not content to regard the words of a song as a mere peg on which to hang the music, but sought the services of true-born lyrists." And it is "not too much to say that, for delicate perfection of form" some of these obscure librettists come within measurable distance of the choicest epigrams in the Greek Anthology. For the musical side of the subject the student should consult the Fourth and Fifth Chapters of Henry Davey's extremely interesting History of English Music. The contents of the best of the song-books, with comments on the more notable songs, are given in Shorter English Poems (An English Garner, 1903). There, too, will be found a copious collection of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Posies for Rings, Handkerchers and Gloves (1624). "Taken a few at a time," says Mr. Bullen, "these suckets have a pleasant relish."

CHAPTER III

RELIGION AND LETTERS FROM THE AGE OF
CHAUCER DOWN TO 1611

"Wyclif, Langland, and Chaucer are the three great figures of English literature in the Middle Ages."-JUSSERAND.

John Wyclif-Piers Plowman-William Langland-William Tyndale-John Foxe -The English Prayer Book-The Metrical Psalms-The Authorised Version of the Bible.

THE text we have put at the head of this chapter is one that strikes home with the vigour of what seems almost a familiar truth. Langland, who taught the people by poetic allegory in an old alliterative verse which takes us back to the days before the speech of the people was disdained as vile, and forms a kind of bridge between Anglo-Saxon and English; Chaucer, who naturalised Italian story and French verse in the new "mother-tongue," as Midland English began to be called from about the time of the Black Death; Wyclif, who formed the conception of a popular Bible in the vulgar tongue or English of the commonalty. These three sum up what is of most pith and moment to the twentieth century in what remained of the Middle Ages to England in 1475.

John Wyclif belonged to the rich and respectable family of the Wyclifs, lords of the manor of that name in the Richmond district of Yorkshire. He was born from ten to twenty years before Langland and Chaucer, somewhere about 1322. He studied at Oxford, probably at Balliol, and soon attracted notice, being one of those men who occupy from the beginning of their lives without seeking for it, but being, as it were, born to it, a place apart and aloof from the limp multitude of men. When he was

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