1661. Vide p. 107.
J. W. Ebsworth sc. 1876
Choyce Drollery.
Choyce
DROLLERY:
SONGS & SONNETS.
BEING
A Collection of Divers Excellent
Pieces of Poetry,
OF SEVERAL EMINENT AUTHORS.
Now First Reprinted from the Edition of 1656.
TO WHICH ARE ADDED THE EXTRA SONGS OF
MERRY DROLLERY, 1661,
AND AN
ANTIDOTE AGAINST MELANCHOLY, 1661:
EDITED,
With Special Introductions, and Appendices of Notes,
Illustrations, Emendations of Text, &c.,
By J. Woodfall Ebsworth, M.A., Cantab.
BOSTON, LINCOLNSHIRE:
Printed by Robert Roberts, Strait Bar-Gate.
M,DCCCLXXVI.
TO THOSE
STUDENTS OF ART,
AMONG WHOM HE FOUND
Friendship and Enthusiasm;
BEFORE HE LEFT THEM,
Winners of Unsullied Fame,
AND SOUGHT IN A QUIET NOOK
Content, instead of Renown:
THESE
“DROLLERIES OF THE RESTORATION”
ARE BY THE EDITOR
DEDICATED.
| PAGE | |
| DEDICATION | v |
| PRELUDE | ix |
| INTRODUCTION TO “CHOICE DROLLERY, 1656” | xi |
| § 1. HOW CHOICE DROLLERY WAS INHIBITED | xi |
| 2. THE TWO COURTS IN 1656 | xix |
| 3. SONGS OF LOVE AND WAR | xxvi |
| 4. CONCLUSION: THE PASTORALS | xxxiii |
| ORIGINAL “ADDRESS TO THE READER,” 1856 | |
| “CHOYCE DROLLERY,” 1656 | 1 |
| TABLE OF FIRST LINES TO DITTO | 101 |
| INTRODUCTION TO “ANTIDOTE AGAINST MELANCHOLY,” 1661 | |
| § 1. REPRINT OF “ANTIDOTE” | 105 |
| 2. INGREDIENTS OF “AN ANTIDOTE” | 108 |
| ORIGINAL ADDRESS “TO THE READER,” 1661 | 111 |
| ” CONTENTS (ENLARGED) | 112 |
| [viii]“ANTIDOTE AGAINST MELANCHOLY,” 1661 | 113 |
| EDITORIAL POSTSCRIPT TO DITTO: § 1. ON THE “AUTHOR” OF THE ANTIDOTE. 2. ARTHUR O’BRADLEY | 161 |
| “WESTMINSTER DROLLERIES,” EDITION 1674: EXTRA SONGS | 177 |
| “MERRY DROLLERY,” 1661: | |
| PART 1. EXTRA SONGS | 195 |
| ” 2. DITTO | 233 |
| APPENDIX OF NOTES, &c., ARRANGED IN FOUR PARTS: | |
| 1. “CHOICE DROLLERY” | 259 |
| 2. “ANTIDOTE AGAINST MELANCHOLY” | 305 |
| 3. “WESTMINSTER DROLLERY,” 1671-4 | 333 |
| 4. § 1. “MERRY DROLLERY,” 1661 | 345 |
| 2. ADDITIONAL NOTES TO “M. D.,” 1670 | 371 |
| 3. SESSIONS OF POETS | 405 |
| 4. TABLES OF FIRST LINES | 411 |
| FINALE | 423 |
J. W. E.
June 1st, 1876.
Charles.—“They say he is already in the forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England. They say many young gentlemen flock to him every day, and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.”
(As You Like It, Act i. sc. 1.)
We may be sure the memory of many a Cavalier went back to that sweetest of all Pastorals, Shakespeare’s Comedy of “As You Like It,” while he clutched to his breast the precious little volume of Choyce Drollery, Songs and Sonnets, which was newly published in the year 1656. He sought a covert amid the yellowing fronds of fern, in some old park that had not yet been wholly confiscated by the usurping Commonwealth; where, under the broad shadow of a beech-tree, with the squirrel[xii] watching him curiously from above, and timid fawns sniffing at him suspiciously a few yards distant, he might again yield himself to the enjoyment of reading “heroick Drayton’s” Dowsabell, the love-tale beginning with the magic words “Farre in the Forest of Arden”—an invocative name which summoned to his view the Rosalind whose praise was carved on many a tree. He also, be it remembered, had “a banished Lord;” even then remote from his native Court, associating with “co-mates and brothers in exile”—somewhat different in mood from Amiens or the melancholy Jacques; and, alas! not devoid of feminine companions. Enough resemblance was in the situation for a fanciful enthusiasm to lend enchantment to the name of Arden (p. 73), and recall scenes of shepherd-life with Celia, the songs that echoed “Under the greenwood-tree;” without needing the additional spell of seeing “Ingenious Shakespeare” mentioned among “the Time-Poets” on the fifth page of Choyce Drollery.
Not easily was the book obtained; every copy at that time being hunted after, and destroyed when found, by ruthless minions of the Commonwealth. A Parliamentary injunction had been passed against it. Commands were given for it to be burnt by the hangman. Few copies escaped, when spies and informers were numerous, and fines were levied upon[xiii] those who had secreted it. Greedy eyes, active fingers, were after the Choyce Drollery. Any fortunate possessor, even in those early days, knew well that he grasped a treasure which few persons save himself could boast. Therefore it is not strange, two hundred and twenty years having rolled away since then, that the book has grown to be among the rarest of the Drolleries. Probably not six perfect copies remain in the world. The British Museum holds not one. We congratulate ourselves on restoring it now to students, for many parts of it possess historical value, besides poetic grace; and the whole work forms an interesting relic of those troubled times.
Unlike our other Drolleries, reproduced verbatim et literatim in this series, we here find little describing the last days of Cromwell and the Commonwealth; except one graphic picture of a despoiled West-Countryman (p. 57), complaining against both Roundheads and “Cabbaleroes.” The poems were not only composed before hopes revived of speedy Restoration for the fugitive from Worcester-fight and Boscobel; they were, in great part, written before the Civil Wars began. Few of them, perhaps, were previously in print (the title-page asserts that none had been so, but we know this to be false). Publishers made such statements audaciously, then as now, and forced truth to limp behind them without chance of[xiv] overtaking. By far the greater number belonged to an early date in the reign of the murdered King, chiefly about the year 1637; two, at the least, were written in the time of James I. (viz., p. 40, a contemporary poem on the Gunpowder Plot of 1605; and, p. 10, the Ballad on King James I.), if not also the still earlier one, on the Defeat of the Scots at Muscleborough Field; which is probably corrupted from an original so remote as the reign of Edward VI. “Dowsabell” was certainly among the Pastorals of 1593, and “Down lay the Shepherd’s swain” (p. 65) bears token of belonging to an age when the Virgin Queen held sway. These facts guide to an understanding of the charm held by Choyce Drollery for adherents of the Monarchy; and of its obnoxiousness in the sight of the Parliament that had slain their King. It was not because of any exceptional immorality in this Choyce Drollery that it became denounced; although such might be declared in proclamations. Other books of the same year offended worse against morals: for example, the earliest edition known to us of Wit and Drollery, with the extremely “free” facetiæ of Sportive Wit, or Lusty Drollery (both works issued in 1656), held infinitely more to shock proprieties and call for repression. The Musarum Deliciæ of Sir J[ohn] M[ennis] and Dr. J[ames] S[mith], in the same year, 1656, cannot[xv] be held blameless. Yet the hatred shewn towards Choyce Drollery far exceeded all the rancour against these bolder sinners, or the previous year’s delightful miscellany of merriment and true poetry, the Wit’s Interpreter of industrious J[ohn] C[otgrave]; to whom, despite multitudinous typographical errors, we owe thanks, both for Wit’s Interpreter and for the wilderness of dramatic beauties, his Wit’s Treasury: bearing the same date of 1655.
It was not because of sins against taste and public or private morals, (although, we admit, it has some few of these, sufficient to afford a pretext for persecutors, who would have been equally bitter had it possessed virginal purity:) but in consequence of other and more dangerous ingredients, that Choyce Drollery aroused such a storm. Not disgust, but fear of its influence in reviving loyalty, prompted the order of its extermination. Readers at this later day, might easily fail to notice all that stirred the loyal sentiments of chivalric devotion, and consequently made the fierce Fifth-Monarchy men hate the small volume worse than the Apocrypha or Ikon Basilike. Herein was to be found the clever “Jack of Lent’s” account of loyal preparations made in London to receive the newly-wedded Queen, Henrietta Maria, when she came from France, in 1625, escorted by the Duke of Buckingham, who compromised her sister by his rash attentions: Buckingham,[xvi] whom King Charles loved so well that the favouritism shook his throne, even after Felton’s dagger in 1628 had rid the land of the despotic courtier. Here, also, a more grievous offence to the Regicides, was still recorded in austere grandeur of verse, from no common hireling pen, but of some scholar like unto Henry King, of Chichester, the loyal “New-Year’s Wish” (p. 48) presented to King Charles at the beginning of 1638, when the North was already in rebellion: wherein men read, what at that time had not been deemed profanity or blasphemy, the praise and faithful service of some hearts who held their monarch only second to their Saviour. Referring to their hope that the personal approach of the King might cure the evils of the disturbed realm, it is written:—
Here was a sincere, unflinching recognition of Divine Right, such as the faction in power could not possibly abide. Even the culpable weakness and ingratitude of Charles, in abandoning Strafford, Laud, and other champions to their unscrupulous destroyers, had not made true-hearted Cavaliers falter in their faith to him. As the best of moralists declares:—
These loyal sentiments being embodied in print within our Choyce Drollery, suitable to sustain the fealty of the defeated Cavaliers to the successor of the “Royal Martyr,” it was evident that the Restoration must be merely a question of time. “If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all!”
To more than one of those who had sat in the ill-constituted and miscalled High Court of Justice, during the closing days of 1648-9, there must have been, ever and anon, as the years rolled by, a shuddering recollection of the words written anew upon the wall in characters of living fire. They had shown themselves familiar, in one sense much too familiar, with the phraseology but not the teaching of Scripture. To them the Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin needed no[xviii] Daniel come to judgment for interpretation. The Banquet was not yet over; the subjugated people, whom they had seduced from their allegiance by a dream of winning freedom from exactions, were still sullenly submissive; the desecrated cups and challices of the Church they had despoiled, believing it overthrown for ever, had been, in many cases, melted down for plunder,—in others, sold as common merchandize: and yet no thunder heard. But, however defiantly they might bear themselves, however resolute to crush down every attempt at revolt against their own authority, the men in power could not disguise from one another that there were heavings of the earth on which they trod, coming from no reverberations of their footsteps, but telling of hollowness and insecurity below. They were already suspicious among themselves, no longer hiding personal spites and jealousies, the separate ambition of uncongenial factions, which had only united for a season against the monarchy and hierarchy, but now began to fall asunder, mutually envenomed and intolerant. Presbyterian, Independent, and Nondescript-Enthusiast, while combined together of late, had been acknowledged as a power invincible, a Three-fold Cord that bound the helpless Victim to an already bloody altar. The strands of it were now unwinding, and there scarcely needed much prophetic wisdom to discern that one by one they could soon be broken.
To us, from these considerations, there is intense attraction in the Choyce Drollery, since it so narrowly escaped from flames to which it had been judicially condemned.
At this date many a banished or self-exiled Royalist, dwelling in the Low Countries, but whose heart remained in England, drew a melancholy contrast between the remembered past of Whitehall and the gloomy present. With honest Touchstone, he could say, “Now am I in Arden! the more fool I. When I was at home I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.”
Meanwhile, in the beloved Warwickshire glades, herds of swine were routing noisily for acorns, dropped amid withered leaves under branches of the Royal Oaks. They were watched by boys, whose chins would not be past the first callow down of promissory beards when Restoration-day should come with shouts of welcome throughout the land.
In 1656 our Charles Stuart was at Bruges, now and then making a visit to Cologne, often getting into difficulties through the misconduct of his unruly followers, and already quite enslaved by Dalilahs, syrens against whom his own shrewd sense was powerless to defend him. For amusement he read his favourite[xx] French or Italian authors, not seldom took long walks, and indulged himself in field sports:
For he was only scantily supplied with money, which chiefly came from France, but if he had possessed the purse of Fortunatus it could barely have sufficed to meet demands from those who lived upon him. A year before, the Lady Byron had been spoken of as being his seventeenth Mistress abroad, and there was no deficiency of candidates for any vacant place within his heart. Sooth to say, the place was never vacant, for it yielded at all times unlimited accommodation to every beauty. Music and dances absorbed much of his attention. So long as the faces around him showed signs of happiness, he did not seriously afflict himself because he was in exile, and a little out at elbows.
Such was the “Banished Duke” in his Belgian Court; poor substitute for the Forest of Ardennes, not far distant. By all accounts, he felt “the penalty of Adam, the season’s difference,” and in no way relished the discomfort. He did not smile and say,
For, in truth, he much preferred avoiding such counsel,[xxi] and relished flattery too well to part with it on cheap terms. He never considered the “rural life more sweet than that of painted pomp,” and, if all tales of Cromwell’s machinations be held true, Charles by no means found the home of exile “more free from peril than the envious court.” On the other hand, his own proclamation, dated 3rd May, 1654, offering an annuity of five hundred pounds, a Colonelcy and Knighthood, to any person who should destroy the Usurper (“a certain mechanic fellow, by name Oliver Cromwell!”), took from him all moral right of complaint against reprisals: unless, as we half-believe, this proclamation were one of the many forgeries. As to any sweetness in “the uses of Adversity,” Charles might have pleaded, with a laugh, that he had known sufficient of them already to be cloyed with it.
The men around him were of similar opinion. A few, indeed, like Cowley and Crashaw, were loyal hearts, whose devotion was best shown in times of difficulty. Not many proved of such sound metal, but there lived some “faithful found among the faithless”; and
The Ladies of the party scarcely cared for anything beyond self-adornment, rivalry, languid day-dreams of future greatness, and the encouragement of gallantry.
There was not one among them who for a moment can bear comparison with the Protector’s daughter, Elizabeth Claypole—perhaps the loveliest female character of all recorded in those years. Everything concerning her speaks in praise. She was the good angel of the house. Her father loved her, with something approaching reverence, and feared to forfeit her conscientious approval more than the support of his companions in arms. In worship she shrank from the profane familiarity of the Sectaries, and devotedly held by the Church of England. She is recorded to have always used her powerful influence in behalf of the defeated Cavaliers, to obtain mercy and forbearance. Her name was whispered, with blessing implored upon it, in the prayers of many whom she alone had saved from death.[1] No personal ambition, no foolish pride and ostentation marked her short career. The searching glare of Court publicity could betray no flaw in her conduct or disposition; for the[xxiii] heart was sound within, her religion was devoid of all hypocrisy. Her Christian purity was too clearly stainless for detraction to dare raise one murmur. She is said to have warmly pleaded in behalf of Doctor Hewit, who died upon the scaffold with his Royalist companion, Sir Harry Slingsby, the 8th of June, 1658 (although she rejoiced in the defeat of their plot, as her extant letter proves). Cromwell resisted her solicitations, urged to obduracy by his more ruthless Ironsides, who called for terror to be stricken into the minds of all reactionists by wholesale slaughter of conspirators. Soon after this she faded. It was currently reported and believed that on her death-bed, amid the agonies and fever-fits, she bemoaned the blood that had been shed, and spoke reproaches to[xxiv] the father whom she loved, so that his conscience smote him, and the remembrance stayed with him for ever.[2] She was only twenty-nine when at Hampton Court she died, on the 6th of August, 1658. Less than a month afterwards stout Oliver’s heart broke. Something had gone from him, which no amount of power and authority could counter-balance. He was not a man to breathe his deeper sorrows into the ear of those political adventurers or sanctified enthusiasts whose glib tongues could rattle off the words of consolation.[xxv] While she was slowly dying he had still tried to grapple with his serious duties, as though undisturbed. Her prayers and her remonstrances had been powerless of late to make him swerve. But now, when she was gone, the hollow mockery of what power remained stood revealed to him plainly; and the Rest that was so near is not unlikely to have been the boon he most desired. It came to him upon his fatal day, his anniversary of still recurring success and happy fortune; came, as is well known, on September 3rd, 1658. The Destinies had nothing better left to give him, so they brought him death. What could be more welcome? Very few of these who reach the summit of ambition, as of those other who most lamentably failed, and became bankrupt of every hope, can feel much sadness when the messenger is seen who comes to lead them hence,—from a world wherein the jugglers’ tricks have all grown wearisome, and where the tawdry pomp or glare cannot disguise the sadness of Life’s masquerade.
It was still 1656, of which we write (the year of Choyce Drollery and Parnassus Biceps, of Wit and Drollery and of Sportive Wit); not 1658: but shadows of the coming end were to be seen. Already it was evident that Cromwell sate not firmly on the throne, uncrowned, indeed, but holding power of sovereignty. His health was no longer what it had been of old. The iron constitution was breaking up. Yet was he only nine months older than the century. In September his new Parliament met; if it can be called a Parliament in any sense, restricted and coerced alike from a free choice and from free speech, pledged beforehand to be servile to him, and holding a brief tenure of mock authority under his favour. They might declare his person sacred, and prohibit mention of Charles Stuart, whose regal title they denounced. But few cared what was said or done by such a knot of praters. More important was the renewed quarrel with Spain; and all parties rejoiced when gallant Blake and Montague fell in with eight Spanish ships off Cadiz, captured two of them and stranded others. There had been no love for that rival fleet since the Invincible Armada made its boast in 1588; but what had happened in “Bloody Mary’s” reign, after her union with Philip, and the later cruelties wrought under Alva against the patriots of the[xxvii] Netherlands, increased the national hatred. We see one trace of this renewed desire for naval warfare in the appearance of the Armada Ballad, “In eighty-eight ere I was born,” on page 38 of our Choyce Drollery: the earliest copy of it we have met in print. Some supposed connection of Spanish priestcraft with the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 (Guido Faux and several of the Jesuits being so accredited from the Low Country wars), may have caused the early poem on this subject to be placed immediately following.
But the chief interest of the book, for its admirers, lay not in temporary allusions to the current politics and gossip. Furnishing these were numerous pamphlets, more or less venomous, circulating stealthily, despite all watchfulness and penalties. Next year, 1657, “Killing no Murder” would come down, as if showered from the skies; but although hundreds wished that somebody else might act on the suggestions, already urged before this seditious tract appeared, not one volunteer felt called upon to immolate himself to certain death on the instant by standing forward as the required assassin. Cautious thinkers held it better to bide their time, and await the natural progress of events, allowing all the enemies of Charles and Monarchy to quarrel and consume each other. Probably the bulk of country farmers and their labourers cared not one jot how things fell[xxviii] out, so long as they were left without exorbitant oppression; always excepting those who dwelt where recently the hoof of war-horse trod, and whose fields and villages bore still the trace of havoc. Otherwise, the interference with the Maypole dance, and such innocent rural sports, by the grim enemies to social revelry, was felt to be a heavier sorrow than the slaughter of their King.[3] So long as wares were sold, and profits gained, Town-traders held few sentiments of favour towards either camp. It was (owing to the parsimony of Parliament, and his continual need of supplies to be obtained without their sanction,) the frequency of his exactions, the ship-money, the forced loans, and the uncertainty of ever gaining a repayment, which had turned many hearts against King Charles I., in his long years of difficulty, before shouts arose of “Privilege.” But for the cost of wasteful revels at Court, with gifts to favourites, the expense of foreign or domestic wars, there would have been no popular complaint against tyranny. Citizens care little about questions of Divine Right and Supremacy, pro or con, so long as they are left[xxix] unfettered from growing rich, and are not called on to disgorge the wealth they swallowed ravenously, perhaps also dishonestly. Some remembrance of this fact possessed the Cavaliers, even before George Monk came to burst the city gates and chains. The Restoration confirmed the same opinion, and the later comedies spoke manifold contempt against time-serving traders; who cheated gallant men of money and land, but in requital were treated like Acteon.
Although, in 1656, disquiet was general, amid contemporary records we may seek far before we meet a franker and more manly statement of the honest Englishman’s opinion, despising every phase of trickery in word, deed, or visage, than the poem found in Choyce Drollery, p. 85,—“The Doctor’s Touchstone.” There were, doubtless, many whose creed it stated rightly. A nation that could feel thus, would not long delay to pluck the mask from sanctimonious hypocrites, and drag “The Gang” from out their saddle.
Here, too, are the love-songs of a race of Poets who had known the glories of Whitehall before its desecration. Here are the courtly praises of such beauties as the Lady Elizabeth Dormer, 1st Countess of Carnarvon, who, while she held her infant in her arms, in 1642, was no less fascinating than she had been in her virgin bloom. The airy trifling, dallying[xxx] with conceits in verse, that spoke of a refinement and graceful idlesse more than passionate warmth, gave us these relics of such men as Thomas Carew, who died in 1638, before the Court dissolved into a Camp. Some of them recal the strains of dramatists, whose only actresses had been Ladies of high birth, condescending to adorn the Masques in palaces, winning applause from royal hands and voices. These, moreover, were “Songs and Sonnets” which the best musicians had laboured skilfully to clothe anew with melody: Poems already breathing their own music, as they do still, when lutes and virginals are broken, and the composer’s score has long been turned into gun-wadding.
What sweetness and true pathos are found among them, readers can study once more. The opening poem, by Davenant, is especially beautiful, where a Lover comforts himself with a thought of dying in his Lady’s presence, and being mourned thereafter by her, so that she shall deck his grave with tears, and, loving it, must come and join him there:—
Seeing, alongside of these tender pleadings from the worshipper of Beauty, some few pieces where the taint of foulness now awakens our disgust, we might feel wonder at the contrast in the same volume, and the taste of the original collector, were not such feeling of wonder long ago exhausted. Queen Elizabeth sate out the performance of Love’s Labour’s Lost (if tradition is to be believed), and was not shocked at some free expressions in that otherwise delightful play;—words and inuendoes, let us own, which were a little unsuited to a Virgin Queen. Again, if another tradition be trustworthy, she herself commissioned the comedy of Merry Wives of Windsor to be written and acted, in order that she might see Falstaffe in[xxxii] love: but after that Eastcheap Boar’s-Head Tavern scene, with rollicking Doll Tear-sheet, in the Second Part of Henry IV., surely her sedate Majesty might have been prepared to look for something very different from the proprieties of “Religious Courtship” or the refinements of Platonic affection in the Knight, who, having “more flesh than other men,” pleads this as an excuse for his also having more frailty.
Suppose we own at once, that there is a great deal of falsehood and mock-modesty in the talk which ever anon meets us, the Puritanical squeamishness of each extremely moral (undetected) Tartuffe, acting as Aristarchus; who cannot, one might think, be quite ignorant of what is current in the newspaper-literature of our own time.[5] The fact is this, people now-a-days keep their dishes of spiced meat and their Barmecide show-fasts separate. They sip the limpid spring before company, and keep hidden behind a[xxxiii] curtain the forbidden wine of Xeres, quietly iced, for private drinking. Our ancestors took a taste of both together, and without blushing. Their cup of nectar had some “allaying Tyber” to abate “the thirst complaint.” They did not label their books “Moral and Theological, for the public Ken,” or “Vice, sub rosa, for our locked-cabinet!” Parlons d’autres choses, Messieurs, s’il vous plâit.
There were good reasons for Court and country being associated ideas, if only in contrast. Thus Touchstone states, when drolling with Colin, as to a Pastoral employment:—“Truly, shepherd in respect of itself it is a good life; but in respect it is not in the Court, it is tedious.” The large proportion of pastoral songs and poems in Choyce Drollery is one other noticeable characteristic. Even as Utopian schemes, with dreams of an unrealized Republic where laws may be equally administered, and cultivation given to all highest arts or sciences, are found to be most popular in times of discontent and tyranny, when no encouragement[xxxiv] for hope appears in what the acting government is doing; even so, amid luxurious times, with artificial tastes predominant, there is always a tendency to dream of pastoral simplicity, and to sing or paint the joys of rural life. In the voluptuous languor of Miladi’s own boudoir, amid scented fumes of pastiles and flowers, hung round with curtains brought from Eastern palaces, Watteau, Greuze, Boucher, and Bachelier were employed to paint delicious panels of bare-feeted shepherdesses, herding their flocks with ribbon-knotted crooks and bursting bodices; while goatherd-swains, in satin breeches and rosetted pumps, languish at their side, and tell of tender passion through a rustic pipe. The contrast of a wimpling brook, birds twittering on the spray, and daintiest hint of hay-forks or of reaping-hooks, enhanced with piquancy, no doubt, the every-day delights of fashionable wantonness. And as it was in such later times with courtiers of La belle France surrounding Louis XV., so in the reign of either Charles of England—the Revolution Furies crept nearer unperceived.
Recurrence to Pastorals in Choyce Drollery is simply in accordance with a natural tendency of baffled Cavaliers, to look back again to all that had distinguished the earlier days of their dead monarch, before Puritanism had become rampant. Even Milton, in his[xxxv] youthful “Lycidas,” 1637, showed love for such Idyllic transformation of actual life into a Pastoral Eclogue. (A bitter spring of hatred against the Church was even then allowed to pollute the clear rill of Helicon: in him thereafter that Marah never turned to sweetness.) Some of these Pastorals remain undiscovered elsewhere. But there can be no mistaking the impression left upon them by the opening years of the seventeenth, if not more truly the close of the sixteenth, century. Dull, plodding critics have sneered at Pastorals, and wielded their sledge-hammers against the Dresden-china Shepherdesses, as though they struck down Dagon from his pedestal. What then? Are we forbidden to enjoy, because their taste is not consulted?——
Always will there be some smiling virtuosi, here or elsewhere, who can prize the unreal toys, and thank us for retrieving from dusty oblivion a few more of these early Pastorals. When too discordantly the factions jar around us, and denounce every one of moderate opinions or quiet habits, because he is unwilling to become enslaved as a partisan, and fight under the banner that he deems disgraced by falsehood[xxxvi] and intolerance, despite its ostentatious blazon of “Liberation” or “Equality,” it is not easy, even for such as “the melancholy Cowley,” to escape into his solitude without a slanderous mockery from those who hunger for division of the spoil. Recluse philosophers of science or of literature, men like Sir Thomas Browne, pursue their labour unremittingly, and keep apart from politics; but even for this abstinence harsh measure is dealt to them by contemporaries and posterity whom they labour to enrich. It is well, no doubt, that we should be convinced as to which side the truth is on, and fight for that unto the death. Woe to the recreant who shrinks from hazarding everything in life, and life itself, defending what he holds to be the Right. Yet there are times when, as in 1656, the fight has gone against our cause, and no further gain seems promised by waging single-handedly a warfare against the triumphant multitude. Patience, my child, and wait the inevitable turn of the already quivering balance!—such is Wisdom’s counsel. Butler knew the truth of Cavalier loyalty:—
Some partizans may find a paltry pleasure in dealing stealthy stabs, or buffoons’ sarcasms, against the foes they could not fairly conquer. Some hold a silent dignified reserve, and give no sign of what they hope or fear. But for another, and large class, there will be solace in the dreams of earlier days, such as the Poets loved to sing about a Golden Pastoral Age. Those who best learnt to tell its beauty were men unto whom Fortune seldom offered gifts, as though it were she envied them for having better treasure in their birthright of imagination. The dull, harsh, and uncongenial time intensified their visions: even as Hogarth’s “Distressed Poet”—amid the squalour of his garret, with his gentle uncomplaining wife dunned for a milk-score—revels in description of Potosi’s mines, and, while he writes in poverty, can feign himself possessor of uncounted riches. Such power of self-forgetfulness was grasped by the “Time-Poets,” of whom our little book keeps memorable record.
So be it, Cavaliers of 1656. Though Oliver’s troopers and a hated Parliament are still in the ascendant, let your thoughts find repose awhile, your hopes regain bright colouring, remembering the plaints of one despairing shepherd, from whom his Chloris fled; or of that other, “sober and demure,”[xxxviii] whose mistress had herself to blame, through freedoms being borne too far. We, also, love to seek a refuge from the exorbitant demands of myriad-handed interference with Church and State; so we come back to you, as you sit awhile in peace under the aged trees, remote from revellers and spies, “Farre in the Forest of Arden”—O take us thither!—reading of happy lovers in the pages of Choyce Drollery. Since their latest words are of our favourite Fletcher, let our invocation also be from him, in his own melodious verse:—
J. W. E.
September 2nd, 1875.
Choyce
DROLLERY:
SONGS & SONNETS.
BEING
A Collection of divers excellent
pieces of Poetry,
OF
Severall eminent Authors.
Never before printed.
LONDON,
Printed by J. G. for Robert Pollard, at the
Ben. Johnson’s head behind the Exchange,
and John Sweeting, at the
Angel in Popes-Head Alley.
1656.
Courteous Reader,
Thy grateful reception of our first Collection hath induced us to a second essay of the same nature; which, as we are confident, it is not inferioure to the former in worth, so we assure our selves, upon thy already experimented Candor, that it shall at least equall it in its fortunate acceptation. We serve up these Delicates by frugall Messes, as aiming at thy Satisfaction, not Saciety. But our designe being more upon thy judgement, than patience, more to delight thee, to detain thee in the portall of a tedious, seldome-read Epistle; we draw this displeasing Curtain, that intercepts thy (by this time) gravid, and almost teeming fancy, and subscribe,
R. P.
[On the welcoming of Queen Henrietta Maria, 1625].
FINIS.
| page. | |
| A Maiden of the Pure Society | 44 |
| A story strange I will you tell | 31 |
| A Stranger coming to the town | 16 |
| And will this wicked world never prove good? | 40 |
| As I went to Totnam | 45 |
| Blacke eyes, in your dark orbs do lye | 81 |
| Cloris, now thou art fled away | 63 |
| Come, my White-head, let our Muses | 10 |
| Deare Love, let me this evening dye | 1 |
| Down lay the Shepheards Swain | 65 |
| Drink boyes, drink boyes, drink and doe not spare | 42 |
| Farre in the Forrest of Arden | 73 |
| Fire! Fire! O, how I burn | 97 |
| Fuller of wish, than hope, methinks it is | 62 |
| He that a Tinker, a Tinker, a Tinker will be | 52 |
| Hide, oh hide those lovely Browes | 53 |
| How happy’s that Prisoner that conquers, &c. | 93 |
| I keep my horse, I keep my W | 60 |
| I love thee for thy curled hair | 49 |
| I never did hold, all that glisters is gold | 85 |
| [102]I tell you all, both great and small | 68 |
| Idol of our sex! Envy of thine own! | 55 |
| If at this time I am derided | 9 |
| In Celia a question did arise | 80 |
| In Eighty-eight, ere I was born | 38 |
| Let not, sweet saint, let not these eyes offend you | 92 |
| List, you Nobles, and attend | 20 |
| My Mother hath sold away her Cock | 43 |
| Never was humane soule so overgrown | 17 |
| No Gypsie nor no Blackamore | 88 |
| Nor Love, nor Fate dare I accuse | 4 |
| Oh fire, fire, fire, where? | 33 |
| On the twelfth day of December | 78 |
| One night the great Apollo, pleas’d with Ben | 5 |
| Shall I think, because some clouds | 15 |
| She’s not the fairest of her name | 99 |
| The Chandler grew neer his end | 72 |
| There is not halfe so warme a fire | 61 |
| This day inlarges every narrow mind | 48 |
| ’Tis late and cold, stir up the fire | 100 |
| ’Tis not how witty, nor how free | 98 |
| Trust no more a wanton Wh— | 90 |
| Uds bodykins, Chill work no more | 57 |
| We read of Kings, and Gods that kindly took | 83 |
| What ill luck had I, silly maid that I am | 84 |
| When first the magick of thine eye | 8 |
| When James in Scotland first began | 70 |
AN
ANTIDOTE
AGAINST
MELANCHOLY:
Made up in PILLS.
Compounded of Witty Ballads, Jovial
Songs, and Merry Catches.
Printed by Mer. Melancholicus, to be sold in London
and Westminster, 1661.
[Aprill, 18.]
Having found that sixty-five of our previous pages, in the second volume of the Drolleries Reprint, were filled with songs and poems that also appear in the Antidote against Melancholy, 1661; and that all the remaining songs and poems of the Antidote (several being only obtainable therein) exceed not the compass of three additional sheets, or forty-eight pages, the Editor determined to include this valuable[106] book. Thus in our three volumes are given four entire works, to exemplify this particular class of literature, the Cavalier Drolleries of the Restoration.[7]
To that portion of our present Appendix which is devoted to Notes to the Antidote against Melancholy, 1661, we refer the reader for the admirable brief Introduction written by John Payne Collier, Esq.; to whose handsome Reprint of the work we owe our first acquaintance with its pages. His knowledge of our old literature extends over nearly a century; his opportunities for inspecting private and public libraries have been peculiarly great; and he has always been most generous in communicating his knowledge to other students, showing throughout a freedom from jealousy and exclusiveness reminding us of the genial Sir Walter Scott. He states:—“We have never seen a copy of an ‘Antidote against Melancholy’ that was not either imperfect, or in some places illegible from dirt and rough usage, excepting the one we have employed: our single exemplar is as fresh as on the day it was issued from the press. There is an excellent and highly finished engraving on the title-page, of gentlemen and boors carousing; but as the repetition[107] of it for our purpose would cost more than double every other expense attending our reprint, we have necessarily omitted it. The same plate was afterwards used for one of Brathwayte’s pieces; and we have seen a much worn impression of it on a Drollery near the end of the seventeenth century. It does not at all add to our knowledge of the subject of our reprint. J. P. C.”
Nevertheless, the copper-plate illustration is so good, and connects so well with the Bacchanalian and sportive character of the “Antidote against Melancholy,” and other Drolleries, that the present Editor not unwillingly takes up the graver to reproduce this frontispiece for the adornment of the volume and the service of subscribers. Our own Reprint and our engraving are made from the perfect specimen contained in the Thomason Collection, and dated 1661 (with “Aprill 18” in MS.; see p. 161). We make a rule always to go to the fountain-head for our draughts, howsoever long and steep may be the ascent. Flowers and rare fossils reward us as we clamber up, and in good time other students learn to trust us, as being pains-taking and conscientiously exact. The first duty of one who aspires to be honoured as the Editor of early literature is to faithfully reproduce his text, unmutilated and undisguised. To amend it, and elucidate it, so far as lies in his power, can be done[108] befittingly in his notes and comments, while he gives his readers a representation of the original, so nearly in fac-simile as is compatible with additional beauty of typography. Throughout our labours we have held this principle steadily in view; and, whatever nobler work we may hereafter attempt, the same determination must guide us. There may be debate as to our wisdom in reproducing some questionable facetiæ, but there shall be none regarding our fidelity to the original text.
A pleasant book it appeared to Cavaliers and all who were not quite strait-laced. It is almost unobjectionable, except for a few ugly words, and bears comparison honourably with “Merry Drollery” or “Wit and Drollery,” both of the same date, 1661. Unlike the former, it is almost uninfected with political rancour or impurity. It is a jovial book, that roysters and revellers loved to sing their Catches from; nay, if some laughing nymphs did not drop their eyes over its pages we are no conjurors. A vulgar phrase or two did not frighten them. Lucy Hutchinson herself, the Colonel’s Puritan wife, fires many a volley of coarse epithets without blushing; and, indeed, the Saintly Crew occasionally indulged in foul language as freely as the Malignants, though it was condoned as being theologic zeal and controversial phraseology.
In “The Ex-Ale-tation of Ale” we forgive the verbosity, for the sake of one verse on the noted Ballad-writer (see note in Appendix):—
We find the character of the songs to be eminently festive: almost every one could be chanted over a cup of burnt Sack, and there was not entire forgetfulness of eating: witness “The Cold Chyne,” on page 55 (our p. 148). The Love-making is seldom visible. Such glimpses as we gain of Puritans (Bishop Corbet’s Hot-headed Zealot, Cleveland’s “Rotundos rot,”) are only suggestive of playful ridicule. The Sectaries, being no longer dangerous, are here laughed at, not calumniated. The odd jumble of nations brought together in those disturbed times is seen in the crowd of lovers around the “blith Lass of Falkland town” (p. 133) who is constant in her love of a Scottish blue bonnet:—“If ever I have a man, blew-Cap for me!” But, sitting at ease once more, not hunted into bye-ways or exile, and with enough of ready cash to wipe off tavern scores, or pay for braver garments than were lately flapping in the wind, the Cavaliers recall the exploits of their patron-saint, “St. George for England,” the gay wedding of Lord Broghill, as[110] described by Sir John Suckling in 1641, the still noisier marriage of Arthur o’ Bradley, or that imaginary banquet afforded to the Devil, by Ben Jonson’s Cook Lorrell, in the Peak of Derbyshire. Early contrasts, drawn by their own grandsires, between the Old Courtier of Queen Elizabeth and the New Courtier of King James, are welcomed to remembrance. They forgive “Old Noll,” while ridiculing his image as “The Brewer,” and they repeat the earlier Ulysses song of the “Blacksmith,” by Dr. James Smith, if only for its chorus, “Which no body can deny.” The grave solemnity wherewith Dr. Wilde’s “Combat of Cocks” was told; the light-hearted buffoonery of “Sir Eglamore’s Fight with the Dragon;” the spluttering grimaces of Ben Jonson’s “Welchman’s praise of Wales;” and the sustained humour as well as enthusiasm of Dr. Henry Edwards’s “On the Vertue of Sack” (“Fetch me Ben Jonson’s scull,” &c.), are all crowned by the musical outburst of “The Green Gown:”—
(see Appendix to Westminster Drollery, p. liv.) Our readers may thus additionally enjoy a full-flavoured bumper of the “Antidote against Melancholy.”
J. W. E.
August, 1875.
| Original: | Our | |||
| page. | vols, | page | ||
| 1. | The Exaltation of a Pot of Good Ale, | 1 | iii. | 113 |
| 2. | The Song of Cook-Lawrel, by Ben Johnson | 9 | ii. | 214 |
| 3. | The Ballad of The Black-smith, | 11 | 225 | |
| 4. | The Ballad of Old Courtier and the New | 14 | iii. | 125 |
| 5. | The Ballad of the Wedding of Arthur of Bradley, | 16 | ii. | 312 |
| 6. | The Ballad of the Green Gown, | 20 | i. | Ap. 54 |
| 7. | The Ballad of the Gelding of the Devil, | 21 | ii. | 200 |
| 8. | The Ballad of Sir Eglamore, | 25 | 257 | |
| 9. | The Ballad of St. George for England, | 26 | iii. | 129 |
| 10. | The Ballad of Blew Cap for me, | 29 | 133 | |
| 11. | The Ballad of the Several Caps, | 31 | 135 | |
| 12. | The Ballad of the Noses, | 33 | ii. | 143 |
| 13. | The Song of the Hot-headed Zealot, | 35 | 234 | |
| 14. | The Song of the Schismatick Rotundos, | 37 | iii. | 139 |
| 15. | A Glee in praise of Wine [Let souldiers], | 39 | ii. | 218 |
| 16. | Sir John Sucklin’s Ballad of the Ld. L. Wedding. | 40 | 101 | |
| 17. | The Combat of Cocks, | 44 | 242 | |
| 18. | The Welchman’s prayse of Wales, | 47 | iii. | 141 |
| 19. | The Cavaleer’s Complaint [and Answer], | 49 | ii. | 52 |
| 20. | Three several Songs in praise of Sack | |||
| [: Old Poets Hipocrin, &c. | 52 | iii. | 143 | |
| Hang the Presbyter’s Gill, | 53 | 144 | ||
| ’Tis Wine that inspires, | 54 | 145 | ||
| [A Glee to the Vicar, | W.D. Int. | |||
| [On a Cold Chyne of Beef, | 55 | iii. | 146 | |
| [A Song of Cupid Scorned, | 56 | 147 | ||
| 21. | On the Vertue of Sack, by Dr. Hen. Edwards | 57 | ii. | 293 |
| 22. | The Medly of Nations, to several tunes, | 59 | 127 | |
| 23. | The Ballad of the Brewer, | 62 | 221 | |
| 24. | A Collection of 40 [34] more Merry Catches and Songs. | 65-76 | iii. | 149 |
| [Of these 34, ten are given in Merry Drollery, Complete, on pages 296, 304, 308, 232, 337, 300, 280, 318, 348, and 341. The others are added in this volume | iii. | 52 | ||
[p. 1.]
[Followed by Ben Jonson’s Cook Lorrel, and by The Blacksmith: for which see Merry Drollery, Complete, pp. 214-17, 225-30.]
[p. 14.]
[Part Second.]
[Here follow, Arthur of Bradley (see Merry Drollery, Compleat, p. 312); The Green Gown: “Pan leave piping,” (see Westm. Droll., Appendix, p. 54); Gelding of the Devil: “Now listen a while, and I will you tell” (see Merry D., C., p. 200); Sir Egle More (ibid, p. 257); and St. George for England (ibid, p. 309). But, as the variations are great, in the last of these, it is here given from the Antidote ag. Mel., p. 26.]
[p. 26.]
[p. 30.]
[Next follow A Ballad of the Nose (see Merry Drollery, Compleat, p. 143), and A Song of the Hot-headed Zealot: to the tune of “Tom a Bedlam” (Dr. Richard Corbet’s, Ibid, p. 234).]
[p. 37.]
[The three next in the Antidote, respectively by Aurelian Townshend (?), Sir John Suckling, and “by T. R.” (or Dr. Thomas Wild?), are to be found also in our Merry Drollery, Compleat, pp. 218, 101, and 242. See Appendix Notes.]
[p. 47.]
[Followed, in An Antidote, by the excellent poems, The Cavalier’s Complaint; to the tune of (Suckling’s) I’le tell thee, Dick, &c., with The Answer. For these, see Merry Drollery, Compleat, pp. 52-56, and 367.]:
[p. 52.]
[p. 53.]
[p. 54.]
[Followed by A Glee to the Vicar, beginning, “Let the bells ring, and the boys sing:” for which see the Introduction to our edition of Westminster Drollery, pp. xxxvii-viii.]
[p. 55.]
[p. 56.]
[The three next are common to the Antidote and Merry Drollery, Compleat, with a few verbal differences: On the Vertue of Sack, by Dr. Henry Edwards; The Medley of the Nations; and The Brewer, A Ballad made in the Year 1657, To the Tune of The Blacksmith. For them, see M. D., C., pp. 293, 127, 221. These three poems are followed by “A Collection of Merry Catches,” thirty-four in number, of which only ten are found in Merry Drollery, Compleat, (viz., 3. “Now that the Spring;” 5. “Call George again;” 9. “She that will eat;” 13. “The Wise-men were but Seven;” 14. “Shew a room!” 15. “O! the wily wily Fox;” 17. “Now I am married;” 19. “There was three Cooks in Colebrook;” 22. “If any so wise is;” and 29. “What fortune had I,”) on pp. 296, 304, 308, 232, 337, 300, 280, 318, 348, and 341, respectively. See notes on them, also, in Appendix to M. D., C. One other, first in the Antidote, had appeared earlier in Choice Drollery, p. 52: “He that a Tinker,” &c., q.v.]
[p. 65.]
[p. 66.]
[p. 67.]
[p. 70.]
[p. 71.]
[p. 72.]
Translated out of Greek.
[p. 75.]
FINIS.
Thanks be to the worthy bookseller, George Thomason,[8] for prudence in laying aside the “tall copy” of this amusing book, from which we make our transcript of text and engraving. Probably it did not exceed two shillings, in price; (at least, we have seen[162] that Anthony à Wood’s uncropt copy of “Merry Drollery,” 1661, is marked in contemporary manuscript at “1s. 3d.,” each part). The title says:—
Who was the “N. D.” to whose light labours we are indebted for the compounding of these “Witty Ballads, jovial Songs, and merry Catches” in Pills warranted to cure the ills of Melancholy, had not hitherto been ascertained[9]; or whether he wrote anything beside the above couplet, and the humorous address To the Reader, beginning,
As we suspected (flowing though his verse might be), he was more of bookseller than ballad-maker. His injunctions for us to “be wise and buy, not borrow,” had a terribly tradesman-like sound. Yet he was right. Book-borrowing is an evil practice; and book-lending is not much better. Woeful chasms, in what should be the serried ranks of our Library companions, remind us pathetically, in too many cases (book-cases, especially,) of some Coleridge-like “lifter” of Lambs, who made a raid upon our borders, and carried off plunder, sometimes an unique quarto, on other days an irrecoverable duodecimo: With Schiller, we bewail the departed,—
The title of “Pills to Purge Melancholy” was by Playford and Tom D’Urfey afterwards employed, and kept alive before the public, in many a volume from before 1684 until 1720, if not later. Whether “N. D.” himself were the “Mer[cury] Melancholicus” whose name appears as printer, for the book to be “sold in London and Westminster,” is to us not doubtful. By April 18, 1661,[10] Thomason had secured his[164] copy, and there need be no question that it was for sport, and not through any fear of rigid censorship or malicious pettifogging interference by the law, that, instead of printer’s name, this pseudonym or nickname was adopted.
We believe that the mystery shrouding the personality of “N. D.” can be dispelled. The discovery helps us in more ways than one, and connects the Antidote against Melancholy, of 1661, in an intelligible and legitimate manner, with much jocular literature of later date. To us it seems clear that N. D. was no other than [He]n[ry] [Playfor]d. The triplets addressed in 1661 To the Reader, beginning “There’s no purge ’gainst Melancholy,” are repeated at commencement of the 1684 edition of “Wit and Mirth; or, an Antidote to Melancholy” (the third edition of “Pills to Purge Melancholy”) where they are entitled “The Stationer to the Reader,” and signed, not “N. D.,” but “H. P.;” for Henry Playford, whose name appears in full as publisher “near the Temple Church.” Thus, the repetition or alteration of the original title, “An Antidote against Melancholy, made up in Pills,” or, as the head-line puts it, “Pills to Purge Melancholy,” was, in all probability, a perfectly business-like reproduction of what Playford had himself originated. What relation Henry Playford was to John Playford, the publisher of “Select Ayres,”[165] “Choice Ayres,” 1652, &c., we are not yet certain. Thirteen of the longest and most important poems from the 1661 Antidote[11] re-appear in that of 1684, beside four of the Catches. Indeed, the transmission of many of these Lyrics (by the editions of 1699, 1700, 1706, 1707) to the six volume edition, superintended by Tom D’Urfey in 1719-20, is unbroken; though we have still to find the edition published between 1661 and 1684.
But even the 1661 Antidote is not entitled to bear the credit of originating the phrase: Pills to purge Melancholy. So far as we know, by personal search, this belongs to Robert Hayman, thirty years earlier. Among his Quodlibets, 1628, on p. 74, we find the following epigram:—
“To one of the elders of the Sanctified Parlour of Amsterdam.
(Merry Drollery, Compleat, p. 312, 395; Antidote ag. Mel., p. 16.)
So long ago as the Editor can remember, the words and music of “Arthur o’ Bradley’s Wedding” rang pleasantly in his ears. The jovial rollicking strain prepared him to feel interest in the bridal attire of Shakespeare’s Petruchio; who, not improbably, when about to be married unto “Kate the Curst,” borrowed the details of costume and demeanour from this popular hero of song. Or vice versa. To this day, the lilt of the tune holds a fascination, and we sometimes behold, under favourable planetary aspects, the long procession of dancing couples who have, during three centuries, footed the grass, the rashes, or chalked floor, to that jig-melody, accompanied by the[167] bagpipes or fiddle of some rustic Crowdero. Can it be possible? Yes, the line is headed by the venerable Queen Elizabeth, holding up her fardingale with tips of taper fingers, and looking preternaturally grim, to show that dancing is a serious undertaking for a virgin sovereign (especially when the Spanish Ambassador watches her, with comments of wonder that the Head of the Church can dance at all). Yet is there a sly under-glance that tells of fun, to those who are her Majesty’s familiars. Her “Cousin James” is not the neatest figure as a partner (which accounts for her having chosen Leicester instead, let alone chronology); but we see him, close behind, with Anne of Denmark, twirling his crooked little legs about in obedience to the music, until his round hose swell like hemispheres on school-maps. “Baby Charles and Steenie,” half mockingly, follow after with the Infanta. We did once catch a glimpse of handsome Carr and his wicked paramour, Frances Howard, trying to join the Terpsichorean revellers; but, beautiful as they both were, it was felt necessary to exclude them, “for the honour of Arthur o’ Bradley,” since they possessed none of their own. What a gallant assemblage of poets and dramatists covered the buckle and snapped their fingers gleefully to the merry notes! Foremost among them was rare Ben Jonson (unable to resist clothing Adam Overdo in Arthur’s own mantle); and[168] honest Thomas Dekker “followed after in a dream” (as had been memorably printed on our seventh page of Choyce Drollery), thinking of Bellafront’s repentance, and her quotation of the well-known burden, “O brave Arthur o’ Bradley, then!” A score of poets are junketting with merry milkmaids and Wives of Windsor. Richard Brathwaite (the creator of Drunken Barnaby) is not absent from among them; although he sees, outside the circle that for a moment has formed around a Maypole, an angry crowd of schismatic Puritans, who are scowling at them with malignant eyes, and denunciations misquoted from Scripture. Many a fair Precisian, nevertheless, yields to the honeyed pleading of a be-love-locked Cavalier, and the irresistible charms of “Arthur o’ Bradley, ho!” showing the prettiest pair of ankles, and the most delightful mixture of bashfulness and enjoyment; until the Roundhead Buff-coats prove too numerous, and whisk her off to a conventicle, where, the sexes sitting widely apart, for aught we know, the crop-eared rout sing unpoetic versions of the Psalmist to the tune of Arthur o’ Bradley, “godlified” and eke expurgated.
Cromwell, we know, loved music, withal, and it is not unlikely that those two ladies are his daughters, whom we behold dancing somewhat stiffly in John Hingston’s music-chamber; Mrs. Claypole and her sister, Mrs Rich: there are L’Estrange, who fiddles[169] to them, and Old Noll, smiling pleasantly, though the tune be Arthur o’ Bradley. Our Second Charles (not yet “Restored”) is also dancing to it, at the Hague (as we see in Janssen’s Windsor picture), with the Princess Palatine Elizabeth, and such a bevy of bright faces round them, that we lose our heart entirely. Can we not see him again—crowned now, and self-acknowledged as “Old Rowley”—at one of the many balls in Whitehall recorded by Samuel Pepys,[12] entering[170] gaily into all the mirth with that grave, swarthy face of his; not noticing the pouts of Catherine, who sits neglected while The Castlemaine laughs loudly, the fair Stewart simpers, and the little spaniels bark or caper through the palace, snapping at the dancers’ heels? Be sure that pretty Nelly and saucy Knipp were also well acquainted with the music of “rare Arthur o’ Bradley,” as indeed were thousands of the play-goers to whom the former once sold oranges.
And lower ranks delighted in it. Pierce, the Bagpiper, is himself the central figure, when we look again, “with cheeks as big as a mitre,” such time as that table-full of Restoration revellers (whom we catch sight of in our frontispiece to the Antidote, 1661) are beginning to shake a toe in honour of the music.
So it continues for two centuries more, with all varieties of costume and feature. Certain are we that plump Sir Richard Steele whistled the tune, and Dean Swift gave the Dublin ballad-singer a couple of thirteens for singing it. Dr. Johnson grunted an accompaniment whenever he heard the melody, and James Boswell insisted on dancing to it, though a little “overtaken,” and got his sword entangled betwixt his legs, which cost him a fall and a plastered head-piece, by no means for the only time on record. It is reported that good old George the Third was seen endeavouring to persuade Queen Charlotte to accompany[171] him on the Spinnet, while he set their numerous olive-branches jigging it delightedly “for the honour of Arthur o’ Bradley.” But whenever Dr. John Wolcot was reported to be prowling near at hand, with Peter Pindaresque eyes, the motion ceased. Well was it loved by honest Joseph Ritson, impiger, iracundus inexorabilis, acer—better than vegetable diet and eccentric spelling, or the flagellation of inexact antiquarian Bishops. We ourselves may have beheld him in high glee perusing the black-letter ballad, and rectifying its corrupt text by the Antidote against Melancholy’s. How lustily he skipped, shouting meanwhile the burden of “brave Arthur o’ Bradley!” so that unconsciously he joined the ten-mile train of dancers. They are still winding around us, some in a Nineteenth-Century garb (a little tattered, but it adds to the picturesqueness), blithe Hop-pickers of West-Bridge Deanery. There are a few New Zealanders, we understand, waiting to join the throng, (including Macaulay’s own particular circumnavigating meditator, yet unborn); so that as long as the world wags no welcome may be lacking to the mirth and melody, jigging and joustling,
Having relieved our feelings, for once, we resume the sober duties of Annotation in a chastened spirit:—
In Merry Drollery Compleat, Reprint (Appendix, p. 401), we gave the full quotation from a Sixteenth Century Interlude, The Contract of Marriage between Wit and Wisdom, the point being this:—
Arthur o’ Bradley is mentioned by Thomas Dekker, near the end of the first part of his Honest Whore, 1604; when Bellafront, assuming to be mad, hears that Mattheo is to marry her, she exclaims—
In Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, 1614, (which covers the Puritans with ridicule, for the delight of James 1st.), Act ii. Scene 1, when Adam Overdo, the Sectary, is disguised in a “garded coat” as Arthur o’ Bradley, to gesticulate outside a booth, Mooncalf salutes him thus:—“O Lord! do you not know him, Mistress? ’tis mad Arthur of Bradley that makes the orations.—Brave master, old Arthur of Bradley, how do you do? Welcome to the Fair! When shall we hear you again, to handle your matters, with your back against a booth, ha?”
In Richard Brathwaite’s Strappado for the Diuell, 1615, p. 225 (in a long poem, containing notices of Wakefield, Bradford, and Kendall, addressed “to all true-bred Northerne Sparks, of the generous Society of the Cottoneers,” &c.) is the following reference to this tune, and to other two, viz. “Wilson’s Delight,” and “Mal Dixon’s Round:”
(By the way: The same author, Richard Brathwaite, in his amusing Shepherds Tales, 1621, p. 211, mentions as other Dance-tunes,
Again, Thomas Gayton writes concerning the hero:—“’Tis not alwaies sure that ’tis merry in hall when beards Wag all, for these men’s beards wagg’d as fast as they could tag ’em, but mov’d no mirth at all: They were verifying that song of—
On pp. 540, 604, of William Chappell’s excellent work, The Popular Music of the Olden Time, are given two tunes, one for the Antidote version, and the other for the modern, as sung by Taylor, “Come neighbours, and listen a while.” He quotes the two lines from Gayton, and also this from Wm. Wycherley’s Gentleman Dancing Master, 1673, Act i, Sc. 2, where Gerrard says:—“Sing him ‘Arthur of Bradley,’ or ‘I am the Duke of Norfolk.’”
It is quite evident, from such passages, that during a long time a proverbial and popular character attached to this noisy personage: such has not yet passed away. The earliest complete imprint of “Arthur o’ Bradley” as a Song, (from a printed original, of 1656, beginning “All[174] you that desire to merry be,”) in our present Appendix, Part iv. Quite distinct from this hitherto unnoticed examplar, not already reprinted, is “Saw you not Pierce, the piper,” &c., the ballad reproduced by us, from Merry Drollery, 1661, Part 2nd., p. 124, (and ditto, Compleat 1670, 1691, p. 312); which agrees with the Antidote against Melancholy, same date, 1661, p. 16. More than a Century later, an inferior rendering was common, printed on broadsheets. It was mentioned, in 1797, by Joseph Ritson, as being a “much more modern ballad [than the Antidote version] upon this popular subject, in the same measure intitled Arthur o’ Bradley, and beginning ‘All in the merry month of May.’” (Robin Hood, 1797, ii. 211.) Of this we already gave two verses, (in Appendix to M. Drollery C., p. 400), but as we believe the ballad has not been reprinted in this century, we may give all that is extant, from the only copy within reach, of Arthur o’ Bradley:—
In this, doubtless, we detect two versions, garbed together. What is now the final verse is merely a variation of the sixth: probably the broadsheet-printer could not meet with a genuine eighth verse. Robert Bell denounced the whole as “a miserable composition” (even as he had declared against the amatory Lyrics of Charles the Second’s time): but then, he might have added, with Goldsmith, “My Bear dances to none but the werry genteelest of tunes.”
Far superior to this was the “Arthur o’ Bradley’s Wedding:
“Come, neighbours, and listen awhile, If ever you wished to smile,” &c.,[175] which was sung by ... Taylor, a comic actor, about the beginning of this century. It is not improbable that he wrote or adapted it, availing himself of such traditional scraps as he could meet with. Two copies of it, duplicate, on broadsheets, are in the Douce Collection at Oxford, vol. iv. pp. 18, 19. A copy, also, in J. H. Dixon’s Bds. and Sgs. of the Peasantry, Percy Soc., 1845, vol. xvii. (and in R. B.’s Annotated Ed. B. P., p. 138.)
There is still another “Arthur o’ Bradley,” but not much can, or need, be said in its favour; except that it contains only three verses. Yet even these are more than two which can be spared. Its only tolerable lines are borrowed from the Roxburghe Ballad. It is the nadir of Bradleyism, and has not even a title, beyond the burden “O rare Arthur o’ Bradley, O!” Let us, briefly, be in at the death: although Arthur makes not a Swan-like end, with the help of his Catnach poet. It begins thus:
Even Ophelia could not ask, after Arthur sinking so low, “And will he not come again?”
J. W. E.
September, 1875.
[So far as possible, to give completeness to our Reprint of Westminster Drollery of 1671-2, and Merry Drollery, Compleat, 1670-1691, we now add the Extra Songs belonging to the former work, edition 1674; and to the latter, in its earlier edition, 1661: with their respective title-pages.]
Westminster-Drollery.
Or, A Choice
COLLECTION
of the Newest
SONGS & POEMS
BOTH AT
Court and Theaters.
BY
A Person of Quality.
The third Edition, with many more
Additions.
LONDON,
Printed for H. Brome, at the Gun in St. Paul’s
Church Yard, near the West End.
MDCLXXIV.
[p. 111.]
[p. 113.]
[p. 114.]
[p. 120.]
[Here ends the 1674 edition; for account of which, and the 1661 Merry Drollery, see our present Appendix, Parts Third and Fourth.]
MERRY
DROLLERY,
OR,
A COLLECTION
| Of | { Jovial Poems, |
| { Merry Songs, | |
| { Witty Drolleries. |
Intermixed with Pleasant
Catches.
The First Part.
Collected by
W.N. C.B. R.S. J.G.
Lovers of Wit.
[1s. 3d.]
LONDON,
Printed by J. W. for P. H. and are to
be Sold at the New Exchange, Westminster-Hall,
Fleet Street, and Pauls
Church-Yard. [May
1661.]
[fol. 2.]
[page 11.]
[p. 14.]
[p. 27.]
[p. 32.]
[p. 56.]
[p. 64.]
[p. 85.]
[p. 88.]
[p. 95.]
[p. 134.]
[Some of these verses are evidently misplaced: We keep them unchanged, but add side-notes to rectify.]
[A song follows, beginning “There were three birds that built very low.” With other four, commencing respectively on pp. 146, 153, 161, and 168, it is degraded from position here; for substantial reasons; and (with a few others, afterwards to be specified,) given separately. Nothing but the absolute necessity of making this a genuine Antiquarian Reprint, worthy of the confidence of all mature students of our Early Literature, compels the Editor to admit such prurient and imbecile pieces at all. They are tokens of a debased taste that would be inconceivable, did we not remember that, not more than twenty years ago, crowds of MP.s, Lawyers, and Baronets listened with applause, and encored tumultuously, songs far more objectionable than these (if possible) in London Music Halls, and Supper Rooms. Those who recollect what R...s sang (such as “The Lock of Hair,” “My name it is Sam Hall, Chimbley Sweep,” &c.), and what “Judge N——” said at his Jury Court, need not be astonished at anything which was sung or written in the days of the Commonwealth and at the Restoration. A few words we suppress into dots in Supplement, &c.]
[p. 148.]
[Part First, 1661, ends on pages 171-175, with The new Medley of the Country man, Citizen, and Souldier (which in the 1670 and 1691 editions are on pp. 182-187). The 1661 edition of Second Part has a complete title-page of its own, in black and red, exactly agreeing with its own First Part, except that the words are prefixed “The || Second Part || of.” A contemporary MS. note in Ant. à Wood’s copy, says, of each part, “1s. 3d.” as the original price. There is also, in the 1661 edition (and in that only), another address, here, which runs as follows:—
“To the Reader:
“Courteous Reader,
“We do here present thee with the Second part of Merry Drollery, not doubting but it will find good Reception with the more Ingenious; The deficiency of this shall be supplied in a third, when time shall serve: In the mean time
Farewel.”
The Third Part, mentioned above, never appeared.
The woodcut Initial W represents Salome, the daughter of Herodias, receiving from the Roman-like Stratiotes the head of John the Baptist (whose body lies at their feet), she holding her charger. The Editor hopes to engrave it for the Introduction to this present volume.
The pagination commences afresh in the 1661 Second Part; but continues in the 1670, and the 1691 editions.]
[Part 2nd., p. 21.]
[p. 22.]
[p. 29.]
[p. 31.]
[p. 32.]
[A Droll of a Louse (p. 33.), seven verses of seven lines each, beginning “Discoveries of late have been made by adventures,” is reserved. Vide ante p. 230.]
[p. 38.]
[Following the above comes a group of more than usually objectionable Songs, viz., John and Joan, beginning “If you will give ear” (p. 46); “Full forty times over I have strived to win,” same title (p. 61); The Answer to it, “He is a fond Lover that doateth on scorn” (p. 62); Love’s Tenement, “If any one do want a house” (p. 64); and A New Year’s Gift, “Fair Lady, for your New Year’s Gift” (p. 81). These are all reserved for the Chamber of Horrors. Vide ante, p. 230.]
[p. 103.]
[p. 106.]
[Followed, in 1661 edition by “Now that the Spring,” &c., and the three other pieces which are to be found in succession, already printed in our Merry Drollery, Compleat of 1670, 1691, pp. 296-301: The last of these being the Song, “She lay all naked in her bed.” This begins on p. 115, of Part 2nd, 1661; p. 300, 1691. In the former edition it is followed by “The Answer,” beginning “She lay up to,” &c., which, like other extremely objectionable pieces, is kept apart. Next follow, in 1661 edition, The Louse, and the Concealment.]
[p. 149.]
[As already mentioned, this is followed, in the 1661 Part Second, page 151, by The Concealment, beginning “I loved a maid, she loved not me,” which is the last of the songs or poems peculiar to that edition. See the end of our Supplement: so paged that it may be either omitted or included, leaving no hiatus. We add, after the Supplement, the title-page of the 1670 edition of Merry Drollery, Compleat; when reissued in 1691, the same sheets held the fresh title-page prefixed, such as we gave in second Volume. Readers now possess the entire work, all three editions, comprehended in our Reprint: which is the Fourth Edition, but the first Annotated. J. W. E.]
Appendix.
(NOW FIRST ADDED.)
Arranged in Four Parts:—
1.—Choyce Drollery, 1656.
2.—Antidote against Melancholy, 1661.
3.—Westminster-Drollery, 1674.
4.—Merry Drollery, 1661; and Additional Notes to 1670-1691 editions: with Index.
Readers, who have accompanied the Editor both in text and comment throughout these three volumes of Reprints from the Drolleries of the Restoration, can scarcely have failed to see that he has desired to present the work for their study with such advantages as lay within his reach. Certainly, he never could have desired to assist in bringing these rare volumes into the hands of a fresh generation, if he believed not that their few faults were far outweighed by their merits; and that much may be learnt from both of these. Every antiquary is well aware that during the troubled days of the Civil War, and for the remaining years of the seventeenth century,[260] books were printed with such an abundance of typographical errors that a pure text of any author cannot easily be recovered. In the case of all unlicensed publications, such as anonymous pamphlets, facetiæ, broad-sheet Ballads, and the more portable Drolleries, these imperfections were innumerable. Dropt lines and omitted verses, corrupt readings and perversions of meaning, sometimes amounting to a total destruction of intelligibility, might drive an Editor to despair.
In regard to the Drolleries-literature, especially, if we remember, as we ought to do, the difficulties and dangers attendant on the printing of these political squibs and pasquinades, we shall be less inclined to rail at the original collector, or “author,” and printers. If we ourselves, as Editor, do our best to examine such other printed books and manuscripts of the time, as may assist in restoring what for awhile was corrupted or lost from the text (keeping these corrections and additions clearly distinguished, within square brackets, or in Appendix Notes to each successive volume), we shall find ourselves more usefully employed than in flinging stones at the Cavaliers of the Restoration, because they left behind them many a doubtful reading or an empty flaggon.
We have given back, to all who desire to study these invaluable records of a memorable time, four complete[261] unmutilated works (except twenty-seven necessarily dotted words): and we could gladly have furnished additional information regarding each and all of these, if further delay or increased bulk had not been equally inexpedient.
1.—In Choyce Drollery, 1656, are seen such fugitive pieces of poetry as belong chiefly to the reign of Charles 1st., and to the eight years after he had been judicially murdered.
2.—In Merry Drollery, 1661, and in the Antidote against Melancholy of the same date, we receive an abundant supply of such Cavalier songs, ballads, lampoons or pasquinades, social and political, as may serve to bring before us a clear knowledge of what was being thought, said, and done during the first year of the Restoration; and, indeed, a reflection of much that had gone recently before, as a preparation for it.
3.—In such additional matter as came to view in the Merry Drollery, Compleat, of 1670 (N.B., precisely the same work as what we have reprinted, from the 1691 edition, in our second volume); and still more in the delightful Westminster-Drolleries of 1671, 1672, and 1674, we enjoy the humours of the Cavaliers at a later date: Songs from theatres as well as those in favour at Court, and more than a few choice pastorals and ditties of much earlier date, lend variety to the collection.
We could easily have added another volume; but enough has surely been done in this series to show how rich are the materials. Let us increase the value of all, before entering in detail on our third series of Appendix Notes, by giving entirely the deeply-interesting Address to the Reader, written and published in 1656 (exactly contemporary with our Choyce Drollery), by Abraham Wright, for his rare collection of University Poems, known as “Parnassus Biceps.”
It is “An Epistle in the behalfe of those now doubly-secluded and sequestered Members, by one who himselfe is none.”
[Sheet sig. A 2.]
“To the Ingenuous
READER.
SIR,
These leaves present you with some few drops of that Ocean of Wit, which flowed from those two brests of this Nation, the Universities; and doth now (the sluces being puld up) overflow the whole Land: or rather like those Springs of Paradice, doth water and enrich the whole world; whilst the Fountains themselues are dryed up, and that Twin-Paradise become desart. For then were these Verses Composed, when Oxford and Camebridge were Universities, and a Colledge [A 2, reverso] more learned then a Town-Hall, when the Buttery and Kitchin could speak Latine, though not Preach; and the very irrational Turnspits had so much knowing modesty, as not to dare to come into a Chappel, or to mount any Pulpits but their own. Then were these Poems writ, when peace and plenty were the best Patriots and Mæcenasses to great Wits; when we could sit and make Verses under our own Figtrees, and be inspired from the juice of our own Vines: then,[263] when it was held no sin for the same man to be both a Poet, and a Prophet; and to draw predictions no lesse from his Verse then his Text. Thus you shall meet here St. Pauls Rapture in a Poem, and the fancy as high and as clear as the third Heaven, into which [A. 3] that Apostle was caught up: and this not onely in the ravishing expressions and extasies of amorous Composures and Love Songs; but in the more grave Dorick strains of sollid Divinity: Anthems that might have become Davids Harpe, and Asaphs Quire, to be sung, as they were made, with the Spirit of that chief Musitian. Againe, In this small Glasse you may behold your owne face, fit your own humors, however wound up and tuned; whether to the sad note, and melancholy look of a disconsolate Elegy, or those more sprightly jovial Aires of an Epithalamium, or Epinichion. Further, would you see a Mistresse of any age, or face, in her created, or uncreated complexion: this mirrour presents you with more shapes then a Conjurers [verso] Glasse, or a Limner’s Pencil. It will also teach you how to court that Mistresse, when her very washings and pargettings cannot flatter her; how to raise a beauty out of wrinkles fourscore years old, and to fall in love even with deformity and uglinesse. From your Mistresse it brings you to your God; and (as it were some new Master of the Ceremonies) instructs you how to woe, and court him likewise; but with approaches and distances, with gestures and expressions suitable to a Diety [Deity]; addresses clothed with such a sacred filial horror and reverence, as may invite and embolden the most despairing condition of the saddest gloomy Sinner; and withall dash out of countenance the greatest confidence of the most glorious Saint: and not with that blasphemous familiarity [A. 4] of our new enlightened and inspired men, who are as bold with the Majesty and glory of that Light that is unapproachable, as with their own ignes fatui; and account of the third Person in the blessed Trinity for no more then their Fellow-Ghost; thinking him as much bound to them for their vertiginous blasts and whi[r]le-winds, as they to him for his own most holy Spirit. Your Authors then of these few sheets[264] are Priests, as well as Poets; who can teach you to pray in verse, and (if there were not already too much phantasticknes in that Trade) to Preach likewise: while they turn Scripture-chapters into Odes, and both the Testaments into one book of Psalmes: making Parnassus as sacred as Mount Olivet, and the nine Muses no lesse religious then a Cloyster of Nuns. [verso.] But yet for all this I would not have thee, Courteous Reader, pass thy censure upon those two Fountains of Religion and Learning, the Universities, from these few small drops of wit, as hardly as some have done upon the late Assemblies three-half-penny Catechisme: as if all their publick and private Libraries, all their morning and evening watchings, all those pangs and throwes of their Studies, were now at length delivered but of a Verse, and brought to bed onely of five feet, and a Conceit. For although the judicious modesty of these men dares not look the world in the face with any of Theorau Johns Revelations, or those glaring New-lights that have muffled the Times and Nation with a greater confusion and darknes, then ever benighted [A. 5] the world since the first Chaos: yet would they please but to instruct this ignorant Age with those exact elaborate Pieces, which might reform Philosophy without a Civil War, and new modell even Divinity its selfe without the ruine of either Church, or State; probably that most prudent and learned Order of the Church of Rome, the Jesuite, should not boast more sollid, though more numerous Volum[e]s in this kind. And of this truth that Order was very sensible, when it felt the rational Divinity of one single Chillingworth to be an unanswerable twelve-years-task for all their English Colledges in Chrisendome. And therefore that Society did like its selfe, when it sent us over a War instead of an Answer, and proved us Hereticks by the Sword: which [verso] in the first place was to Rout the Universities, and to teach our two Fountains of Learning better manners, then for ever heareafter to bubble and swell against the Apostolick Sea. And yet I know not whether the depth of their Politicks might not have advised to have kept those Fountains within their own[265] banks, and there to have dammd them and choakd them up with the mud of the Times, rather then to have let those Protestant Streams run, which perchance may effect that now by the spreading Riverets, which they could never have done through the inclosed Spring: as it had been a deeper State-piece and Reach in that Sanedrim, the great Councell of the Jewish Nation, to have confined the Apostles to Jerusalem, and there to have muzzeld them [A 6] with Oaths, and Orders; rather then by a fruitful Persecution to scatter a few Gospel Seeds, that would spring up the Religion of the whole world: which had it been Coopd within the walls of that City, might (for all they knew) in few years have expired and given up the ghost upon the same Golgotha with its Master. And as then every Pair of Fishermen made a Church and caught the sixt part of the world in their Nets; so now every Pair of Ce[o]lledge-fellows make as many several Universityes; which are truly so call’d, in that they are Catholick, and spread over the face of the whole earth; which stand amazed, to see not onely Religion, but Learning also to come from beyond the Alpes; and that a poor despised Canton and nook of the world should contain as much of each [verso] as all the other Parts besides. But then, as when our single Jesus was made an universall Saviour, and his particular Gospel the Catholick Religion; though that Jesus and this Gospel did both take their rise from the holy City; yet now no City is more unholy and infidel then that; insomuch that there is at this day scarce any thing to be heard of a Christ at Jerusalem, more then that such a one was sometimes there, nor any thing to be seen of his Gospel, more then a Sepulcher: just so it is here with us; where though both Religion and Learning do owe their growth, as well as birth, to those Nurseryes of both, the Universityes; yet, since the Siens of those Nurseryes have been transplanted, there’s little remaines in them now (if they are not belyed) either of the old [A 7] Religion and Divinity, more then its empty Chair & Pulpit, or of the antient Learning & Arts, except bare Schools, and their gilded Superscriptions: so far have we[266] beggard our selves to enrich the whole world. And thus, Ingenuous Sir, have I given you the State and Condition of this Poetick Miscellany, as also of the Authors; it being no more then some few slips of the best Florists made up into a slender Garland, to crown them in their Pilgrimage, and refresh thee in thine: if yet their very Pilgrimage be not its selfe a Crown equall to that of Confessors, and their Academicall Dissolution a Resurrection to the greatest temporall glory: when they shall be approved of by men and Angels for a chosen Generation, a Royal Priesthood, a peculiar People. In the interim let this [verso] comfort be held out to you, our secluded University members, by him that is none; (and therefore what hath been here spoken must not be interpreted as out of passion to my self, but meer zeal to my Mother) that according to the generally received Principles and Axioms of Policy, and the soundest Judgment of the most prudential Statesmen upon those Principles, the date of your sad Ostracisme is expiring, and at an end; but yet such an end, as some of you will not embrace when it shall be offered; but will chuse rather to continue Peripateticks through the whole world, then to return, and be so in your own Colledges. For as that great Councell of Trent had a Form and Conclusion altogether contrary to the expectation and desires of them that procured it; so our great Councels of England [A 8] (our late Parliament) will have such a result, and Catastrophe, as shall no ways answer the Fasts and Prayers, the Humiliations, and Thanksgivings of their Plotters and Contrivers: such a result I say, that will strike a palsie through Mr. Pims ashes, make his cold Marble sweat; and put all those several Partyes, and Actors, that have as yet appeard upon our tragical bloudy Stage, to an amazed stand and gaze: when they shall confess themselves (but too late) to be those improvident axes and hammers in the hand of a subtle Workman; whereby he was enabled to beat down, and square out our Church and State into a Conformity with his own. And then it will appeare that the great Worke, and the holy Cause, and the naked Arme, so much talked of for [verso] these fifteen years, were but the work, and the[267] cause, and the arme of that Hand, which hath all this while reached us over the Alpes; dividing, and composing, winding us up, and letting us down, untill our very discords have set and tuned us to such notes, both in our Ecclesiastical, and Civill Government; as may soonest conduce to that most necessary Catholick Unison and Harmony, which is an essential part of Christs Church here upon Earth, and the very Church its selfe in Heaven. And thus far, Ingenuous Reader, suffer him to be a Poet in his Prediction, though not in his Verse; who desires to be known so far to thee, as that he is a friend to persecuted Truth and Peace; and thy most affectionate Christian Servant,
Ab: Wright.”
(From Parnassus Biceps: or, Severall Choice Pieces of Poetry, composed by the best Wits that were in both the Universities before their Dissolution. London: Printed for George Eversden at the Signe of the Maidenhead in St. Pauls Church-yard, 1656.)
The subscribed initials, “R. P.” are those of Robert Pollard; whose name appears on the title-page (which we reproduce), preceding his address. Excepting that he was a bookseller, dwelling and trading at the “Ben Jonson’s Head, behind the Exchange,” in business-connection with John Sweeting, of the Angel, in Pope’s Head Alley, in 1656; and that he had previously issued a somewhat similar Collection of Poems to the Choyce Drollery (successful, but not yet identified), we know nothing more of Robert Pollard. The books of that date, and of that special class, are extremely rare, and the few existing copies are so difficult of access (for the most part in private possession, almost totally inaccessible except to those who know not how to use them), that information can only be acquired piecemeal and laboriously. Five[268] years hence, if the Editor be still alive, he may be able to tell much more concerning the authors and the compilers of the Restoration Drolleries.
We are told that there is an extra leaf to Choyce Drollery, “only found in a few copies, containing ten lines of verse, beginning Fame’s windy trump, &c. This leaf occurs in one or two extant copies of England’s Parnassus, 1600. Many of the pieces found here are much older than the date of the book [viz., 1656]. It contains notices of many of our early poets, and, unlike some of its successors, is of intrinsic value. Only two or three copies have occurred.” (W. C. H.’s Handb. Pop. Lit. G. B., 1867, p. 168.) “Cromwell’s Government ordered this book to be burned.” (Ibid.) On this last item see our Introduction, section first. J. P. Collier, who prepared the Catalogue of Richard Heber’s Collection, Bibliotheca Heberiana, Pt. iv., 1834 (a rich storehouse for bibliographical students, but not often gratefully acknowledged by them), thus writes of Choyce Drollery:—“This is one of the most intrinsically valuable of the Drolleries, if only for the sake of the very interesting poem in which characters are given of all the following Poets: Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Chapman, Daborne, Sylvester, Quarles, May, Sands, Digges, Daniel, Drayton, Withers, Brown, Shirley, Ford, Middleton, Heywood, Churchyard, Dekker, Brome, Chaucer, Spencer, Basse, and finally John Shank, the Actor, who is said to have been famous for a jig. Other pieces are much older, and are here reprinted from previous collections” [mostly lost]. P. 90.
It is also known to J. O. Halliwell-Phillips; (but, truly, what is not known to him?) See Shakespeare Society’s Papers, iii. 172, 1847.
In our copy of England’s Parnassus (unindexed, save subjects), 1600, we sought to find “Fame’s windy trump.” [We hear that the leaf was in E. P. at Tite’s sale, 1874.]
As we have never seen a copy of Choyce Drollery containing the passage of “ten lines,” described as beginning “Fame’s Windy Trump,” we cannot be quite certain of[269] the following, from England’s Parnassus, 1600, being the one in question, but believe that it is so. Perhaps it ran, “Fame’s Windy Trump, whatever sound out-flies,” &c. There are twenty-seven lines in all. We distinguish the probable portion of “ten lines” by enclosing the other two parts in brackets:—
FAME.
This beautiful little love-poem re-appears, as Song 77, in Windsor Drollery, 1672, p. 63. (There had been a[270] previous edition of that work, in 1671, which we have examined: it is not noted by bibliographers, and is quite distinct.) A few variations occur. Verse 2. are wrack’d; 3. In love is not commended; only sweet, All praise, no pity; who fondly; 4. Shall shortly by dead Lovers lie; hallow’d; 5. He which all others els excels, That are; 6. Will, though thou; 7. the Bells shall ring; While all to black is; (last line but two in parenthesis;) Making, like Flowers, &c.
By Richard Brome, in his “Northerne Lasse,” 1632, Act ii., sc. 6. It is also given in Westminster-Drollery, 1671, i. 83 (the only song in common). But compare with it the less musical and tender, “Nor Love, nor Fate can I accuse of hate,” in same vol. ii. 90, with Appendix Note thereunto, p. lxiii.
This remarkable and little-known account of “The Time-Poets” is doubly interesting, as being a contemporary document, full of life-like portraiture of men whom no lapse of years can banish from us; welcome friends, whom we grow increasingly desirous of beholding intimately. Glad are we to give it back thus to the world; our chief gem, in its rough Drollery-setting: lifted once more into the light of day, from out the cobwebbed nooks where it so long-time had lain hidden. Our joy would have been greater, could we have restored authoritatively the lost sixteenth-line, by any genuine discovery among early manuscripts; or told something conclusive about the author of the poem, who has laid us under obligation for these vivid portraits of John Ford, Thomas Heywood, poor old Thomas Churchyard, and Ben’s courageous foeman, worthy of his steel, that Thomas Dekker who “followed after in a dream.”
In deep humility we must confess that nothing is yet learnt as to the authorship. Here, in the year 1656,[271] almost at fore-front of Choyce Drollery, the very strength of its van-guard, appeared the memorable poem. Whether it were then and there for the first time in print, or borrowed from some still more rare and now-lost volume, none of us can prove. Even at this hour, a possibility remains that our resuscitation of Choyce Drollery may help to bring the unearthing of explanatory facts from zealous students. We scarcely dare to cherish hope of this. Certainly we may not trust to it. For Gerard Langbaine knew the poem well, and quoted oft and largely from it in his 1691 Account of the English Dramatick Poets. But he met with it nowhere save in Choyce Drollery, and writes of it continually in language that proves how ignorant he was of whom we are to deem the author. Yet he wrote within five-and-thirty years behind the date of its appearance; and might easily have learnt, from men still far from aged, who had read the Drollery on its first publication, whatever they could tell of “The Time-Poets:” if, indeed, they could tell anything. Five years earlier, William Winstanley had given forth his Lives of the most famous English Poets, in June, 1686; but he quotes not from it, and leaves us without an Open Sesame. Even Oldys could not tell; or Thomas Hearne, who often had remembered whatever Time forgot.
As to the date: we believe it was certainly written between 1620 (inclusive) and 1636; nearer the former year.
We reconcile ourselves for the failure, by turning to such other and similar poetic groupings as survive. We listen unto Richard Barnfield, when he sings sweetly his “Remembrance of some English Poets,” in 1598. We cling delightedly to the words of our noble Michael Drayton—whose descriptive map of native England, Polyolbion, glitters with varie-coloured light, as though it were a mediæval missal: to whom, enditing his Epistle to friend Henry Reynolds—“A Censure of the Poets”—the Muses brought each bard by turn, so that the picture might be faithful: even as William Blake, idealist and spiritual Seer, believed of spirit-likenesses in his own experience. And, not without deep feeling (marvelling,[272] meanwhile, that still the task of printing them with Editorial care is unattempted), we peruse the folio manuscripts of that fair-haired minstrel of the Cavaliers, George Daniel of Beswick, while he also, in his “Vindication of Poesie,” sings in praise of those whose earlier lays are echoing now and always “through the corridors of Time:”—
Nor should we fail to thank the younger Evelyn, for such graphic sketches as he gives of Restoration-Dramatists, of Cowley, Dryden, Wycherley, “Sedley and easy Etherege;” a new world of wits, all of whose works we prize, without neglecting for their sakes the older Masters who “so did take Eliza, and our James.”
Something that we could gladly say, will come in befittingly on after-pages of this volume, in the “Additional Note on Sir John Suckling’s ‘Sessions of the Poets,’” as printed in our Merry Drollery, Compleat, page 72.
Are we stumbling at the threshold, absit omen! even amid our delight in perusing “the Time-Poets,” when we wonder at the precise meaning of the statement in our opening couplet?
By whom additional? Who is the lady, thus elevated? We see only one solution: namely, that furnished by the conclusion of the poem. It was the Faerie Queene herself whom the God lifted thus, in honour of her English Poets, to rank as the Tenth Muse, an equal with Urania, Clio, Euterpe, and their sisterhood. Yet something[273] seems wanting, next to it; for we never reach a full-stop until the end of the 39th (or query, the 40th) line; and all the confluent nominatives lack a common verbal-action. Our mind, it is true, accepts intelligibly the onward rush of each and all (but later, “with equal pace each of them softly creeps”). It may be only grammatical pedantry which craves some such phrase, absent from the text, as—
But, since a momentary rashness prompts us here to dare so much, as to imagine the hiatus filled, let us suppose that the lost sixteenth-line ran someway thus (each reader being free to try experiments himself, with chance of more success):—
It is with some timidity we let this stand: but, as the text is left intact, our friends will pardon us; and foes we never quail to meet. As to Ben Jonson, see our “Sessions,” in Part iv. Of Beaumont and Fletcher, we write in the note on final page of Choyce Drollery, p. 100. Of “Ingenious Shakespeare” we need say no more than give the lines of Richard Barnfield in his honour, from the Poems in diuers humors, 1598:—
A Remembrance of some English Poets.
The praise of Massinger will not seem overstrained; although he never affects us with the sense of supreme genius, as does Marlowe. The recognition of George Chapman’s grandeur, and the power with which this recognition is expressed, show how tame is the influence of Massinger in comparison. There need be little question that it was to Dekker’s mind and pen we owe the nobler portion of the Virgin Martyr. Massinger, when alongside of Marlow, Webster, and Dekker, is like Euripides contrasted with Æschylus and Sophocles. We think of him as a Playwright, and successful; but these others were Poets of Apollo’s own body-guard. Drayton sings:
Robert Daborne is chiefly interesting to us from his connection in misfortunes and dramatic labours with Massinger and Nat Field; and as joining them in the supplication for advance of money from Philip Henslow, while they lay in prison. The reference to Daborne’s clerical, as well as to his dramatic vocation, and to his having died (in Ireland, we believe, leaving behind him sermons,) “Amphibion by the Ministry,” confirms the general belief.
Jo: Sylvester’s translation of Du Bartas, 1621; Thomas May’s of Lucan’s Pharsalia, George Sandys’ of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, need little comment here; some being referred to, near the end of our volume.
Dudley Digges (1612-43), born at Chilham Castle, near Canterbury (now the seat of Charles S. Hardy, Esq.); son of Sir Dudley Digges, Master of the Rolls, wrote a reverent Elegy for Jonsonus Virbius, 1638. L[eonard] Digges had, fifteen years earlier, written the memorial lines beginning “Shake-speare, at length thy pious fellows give || The World thy Workes:” which appear at beginning of the first folio Shakespeare, 1623.
To Samuel Daniel’s high merits we have only lately awakened: his “Complaint of Rosamond” has a sustained dignity and pathos that deserve all Barnfield’s praise; the “Sonnets to Delia” are graceful and impressive in their purity; his “Civil Wars” may seem heavy, but the fault lies in ourselves, if unsteady readers, not the poet: thus we suspect, when we remember the true poetic fervour of his Pastoral,
and his Description of Beauty, from Marino.
Of “Heroick Drayton” we write more hereafter: He grows dearer to us with every year. His “Dowsabell” is on p. 73. Was his being coupled as a “Poet-Beadle,” in allusion to his numerous verse-epistles, showing an acquaintance with all the worthies of his day, even as his Polyolbion gives a roll-call of the men, and a gazetteer of the England they made illustrious? For, as shown in the Apophthegmmes of Erasmus, 1564, Booke 2nd, (p. 296 of the Boston Reprint,) it is “the proper office and dutie of soche biddelles (who were called in latin Nomenclators) to have perfecte knowlege and remembrance of the names, of the surnames, and of the titles of dignitees of all persones, to the ende that thei maie helpe the remembraunce of their maisters in the same when neede is.” To our day the office of an Esquire Beddell is esteemed in Cambridge University. But, we imagine, George Wither is styled a “Poets Beadle” with a very different significance. It was the[276] Bridewell-Beadles’ whip which he wielded vigorously, in flagellation of offenders, that may have earned him the title. See his “Abuses Stript and Whipt,” 1613, and turn to the rough wood-cut of cart’s-tail punishment shown in the frontispiece to A Caueat or Warening for Common Cursetors, vulgarly called Vagabones, set forth by Thomas Harman, Esquier for the utilitie and profit of his naturall country, &c., 1566, and later (Reprinted by E. E. Text Soc., and in O. B. Coll. Misc., i. No. 4, 1871).
George Wither was his own worst foe, when he descended to satiric invective and pious verbiage. True poet was he; as his description of the Muse in her visit to him while imprisoned in the Marshalsea, with almost the whole of his “Shepherd’s Hunting” and “Mistress of Phil’arete,” prove incontestibly. He is to be loved and pitied: although perversely he will argue as a schismatick, always wrong-headed and in trouble, whichever party reigns. To him, in his sectarian zeal or sermonizing platitudes—all for our good, alas!—we can but answer with the melancholy Jacques: “I do not desire you to please me. I do desire you to sing!”
“Pan’s Pastoral Brown” is, of course, Wm. Browne, author of “Britannia’s Pastorals.” Like James Shirley, last in the group of early Dramatists, his precocious genius is remembered in the text. Regretting that no painted or sculptured portrait of John Forde survives, we are thankful for this striking picture of him in his sombre meditation. We could part, willingly, with half of our dramatic possessions since the nineteenth century began, to recover one of the lost plays by Ford. No writer holds us more entirely captive to the tenderness of sorrow; no one’s hand more lightly, yet more powerfully, stirs the affections, while admitting the sadness, than he who gave us “The Broken Heart,” and “’Tis pity she’s a whore.”
Not unhappily chosen is the epithet “The Squibbing Middleton,” for he almost always fails to impress us fully by his great powers. He warms not, he enlightens not, with steady glow, but gives us fireworks instead of stars or altar-burnings. We except from this rebuke his[277] “Faire Quarrel,” 1622, which shows a much firmer grasp and purpose, fascinating us the while we read. Perhaps, with added knowledge of him will come higher esteem.
Of Thomas Heywood the portrait is complete, every word developing a feature: his fertility, his choice of subjects, and rubicund appearance.
Nor is the humourous sadness, of the figure shewn by the aged Thomas Churchyard, less touching because it is dashed in with burlesque. “Poverty and Poetry his Tomb doth enclose” (Camden’s Remains). His writings extend from the time of Edward VI. to early in the reign of James I. (he died in 1604); some of the poems in Tottel’s Miscellany, 1557, were claimed by him, but are not identified, and J. P. Collier thought him not unlikely to have partly edited the work, His “Tragedie of Shore’s Wife,” (best edit. 1698), in the Mirror for Magistrates, surpasses most of his other poems; yet are there biographical details in Churchyard’s Chips, 1575, that reward our perusal. Gascoigne and several other poets added Tam Marti quàm Mercurio after their names; but Churchyard could boast thus with more truth as a Soldier. He says:—
But, throughout, misfortune dogged him:—
Of Thomas Dekker, or Decker (about 1575-1638), “A priest in Apollo’s Temple, many yeares,” with his “Old[278] Fortunatus,” both parts of his “Honest Whore,” his “Satiromastix,” and “Gull’s Hornbook,” &c.,—which take us back to all the mirth and squabbling of the day—we need add no word but praise. We believe that a valuable clue is afforded by the allusion in our text to the pamphlet “Dekker his Dreame,” 1620, (reprinted by J. O. Halliwell, 1860.) We may be certain that “The Time-Poets” was not written earlier than 1620, or any later than 1636 (or probably than 1632), and before Jonson’s death.
In this 50th line the word “high” is evidently redundant (probably an error in printer’s MS., not erased when the true word “big” was added): we retain it, of course, though in smaller type; as in similar cases of excess. But who was “Rounce, Robble, Hobble?” Most certainly it was no other than Richard Stanyhurst (1547-1618), whose varied adventures, erudition, and eccentricities of verse combined to make him memorable. His Hexameter translation of the Æneis Books i-iv, appeared in 1583; not followed by any more during the thirty-five years succeeding. Gabriel Harvey praised him, in his “Foure Letters,” &c., although Thomas Nashe, in 1592, declares that “Master Stanyhurst (though otherwise learned) trod a foule, lumbring, boystrous, wallowing measure in his translation of Virgil. He had never been praised by Gabriel [Harvey] for his labour, if therein he had not been so famously absurd.” (Strange Newes.) This Æneid had a limited reprint in 1839. Warton in Hist. Eng. Poetry gives examples (misnaming him Robert) but Camden says “Eruditissimus ille nobilis Richardus Stanihurstus.” In his preface to Greene’s Arcadia, Nash quotes Stanyhurst’s description of a Tempest:—
and indicates his opinion of the poet, “as of some thrasonical[279] huffe-snuffe,” indulging in “that quarrelling kind of verse.” One more specimen, to justify our text, regarding “he that writ so big:” in the address to the winds, Æn., Bk. i., Neptune thus rails:—
The recent death of Stanyhurst, 1618, strengthens our belief that the Time-Poets was not later than 1620-32.
To William Basse we owe the beautiful epitaph on Shakespeare, printed in 1633, “Renowned Spencer, lye a thought more nigh To learned Chaucer,” etc., and at least two songs (beside “Great Brittaine’s Sunnes-set,” 1613), viz., the Hunter in his Career, beginning “Long ere the Morn,” and one of the best Tom o’ Bedlam’s; probably, “Forth from my sad and darksome cell.”
The name of John Shanke, here suggestively famous “for a jigg,” occurs in divers lists of players (see J. P. C.’s Annals of the Stage, passim), he having been one of Prince Henry’s Company in 1603. That he was also a singer, we have this verse in proof, written in the reign of James I. (Bibliog. Acc. i. 163):—
“Broom” is Richard Brome (died 1652), whose racy comedies have been, like Dekker’s, lately reprinted. The insinuation that Ben Jonson had “sent him before to sweep the way,” alludes, no doubt, to the fact of Brome having earlier been Jonson’s servant, and learning from his personal discourse much of dramatic art. Neither was it meant nor accepted as an insult, when, (printed 1632,) Jonson wrote (“according to Ben’s own nature and[280] custom, magisterial enough,” as their true friend Alexander Brome admits),
It is amusing to mark the survival of the old joke in our text, about sweeping (it came often enough, in Figaro in London, &c., at the time of the 1832 Reform Bill, as to Henry Brougham and Vaux); when we see it repeated, almost literally, in reference to Alexander Pope’s fellow-labourer on the Odyssey translation, the Rev. William Broome, of our St. John’s College, Cambridge:—
Leaving a few words on the matchless Ben himself for the “Sessions of the Poets” Additional Note, we end this commentary on our book’s chief poem with a few more stanzas from the Beswick Manuscript, by George Daniel, (written in great part before, part after, 1647,) in honour of Ben Jonson, but preceded by others relating to Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare, Beaumont, and Donne:—
This was written by Sir Simeon Steward, or Stewart. The numbers 1 and 2 of our text are twice incorrect in[282] original, viz. the 10th and 14th verses, each assigned to 1 (Red-head), whereas they certainly belong to 2 (White-head). From third verse the figure “1” has unfortunately dropt in printing. By aid of Addit. MS. No. 11, 811, p. 36, we are enabled to correct a few other errors, some being gross corruptions of sense; although, as a general rule, regarding poems that had appeared in print, the private MS. versions abound with blunders of the transcriber, additional to those of the original printer. It is, in the MS., entitled “A Dialogue between Pyrrotrichus and Leucothrix,” the latter taking verses 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and the final verse, 14 (marked Leuc). His earliest verse reads, in the MS., “And higher, Rufus, who would pass; were some; 3rd. v. ’Tis this that; 6th. The Roman King who; be lopt; Ruddy pates; 8th v. Red like unto; colour; 9th. Nay if; doth beare no; side looks as fair; other doth my; bear my [?]; 10th. Therefore, methinks; Besides, of all the; 12th. N.B.—Yet what thy head must buy with yeares, Crosses; That hath nature giv’n; 13th, be two friendly peeres; let us joyn; make one beauteous; 14th, [Leucothrix.] We joyn’d our heads; beat them to heart [i.e. to boot]; Was just but; of our head.” In the Reresby Memoirs, we believe, is mention of an ancestress, who, about 1619, married this (?) “Sir Simeon Steward.”
In Wm. Hickes his Oxford Drollery, 1671, in Part 3rd, (“Poems made at Oxford, long since”), p. 157, this Epigram appears, with variations. The second verse reads: But being there a little while, || He met with one so right || That upon the French Disease || It was his chance to light. The final couplet is:—The French-man’s Arms are the sign without, || But the French-man’s harms are within.
Throughout the first half of the Seventeenth century the abundance of Epigrams produced is enormous; whole volumes of them, divided into Books, like J. Heywood’s, being issued by poets of whom nothing else is known,[283] except the name, unless Anthony à Wood has fortunately preserved some record. These have not been systematically examined, as they deserve to be. Amid much rubbish good things lie hid. Perhaps the Editor may have more to say on them hereafter. Meanwhile, take this, by Robert Hayman, as alike a specimen and a summary:—
To the Reader:
This was (perhaps, by John Eliot,) certainly written in anticipatory celebration of the event described, the Reception of Queen Henrietta Maria by the citizens of London, 1625. The full title is this:—“The Author intending to write upon the Duke of Buckingham, when he went to fetch the Queen, prepared a new Ballad for the Fidlers, as might hold them to sing between Dover and Callice.” It is thus the poem reappears, with some variations (beginning “Now list, you Lordlings, and attend, || Unto a Ballad newly penned,” &c.,) among the “Choyce Poems, being Songs, Sonnets, Satyrs, and Elegies. By the Wits of both Universities, London,” &c., 1661, p. 83. This was merely the earlier edition (of June, 1658), reissued with an irregular extra sheet at beginning. The original title-page (two issued in 1658) was “Poems or Epigrams, Satyrs, Elegies, Songs and Sonnets, upon several persons and occasions. By no body must know whom, to be had every body knows where, and for any body knows what. [MS. The Author John Eliot.] London, Printed for Henry Brome, at the Gun in Ivie Lane, 1658.” It is mentioned that “These poems were given me neer sixteen years since [therefore about 1642] by a Friend of the Authors, with a desire they might be[284] printed, but I conceived the Age then too squeemish to endure the freedom which the Author useth, and therefore I have hitherto smothered them, but being desirous they should not perish, and the world be deprived of so much clean Wit and Fancy, I have adventured to expose them to thy view; ... The Author writes not pedantically, but like a gentleman; and if thou art a gentleman of thy own making thou wilt not mislike it.”
Verse 9th. Gondomar was the Spanish Ambassador at the Court of James I., to whom, with his “one word” of “Pyrates, Pyrates, Pyrates,” we in great part owe the slaughter of Raleigh. Of course, the date ’526, four lines lower, is a blunder. The rash visit to Madrid was in March, 1623.
Title, and verse 8th. A Jack-a-Lent was a stuffed puppet, set up to be thrown at, during Lent. Perhaps it was a substitute for a live Cock; or else the Cock-throwing may have been a later “improvement:” See Hone’s Every Day Book, for an illustrated account, i. 249. Trace of the habit survives in our modern “Old Aunt Sally,” by which yokels lose money at Races (although Dorset Rectors try to abolish Country Fairs, while encouragement is given to gambling at Chapel Bazaars with raffles for pious purposes). In the Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iii. sc. 3, Mrs. Page says to the boy, “You little Jack-a-Lent, have you been true to us?” Quarles alludes to the practice:—
John Taylor (the Water-Poet) wrote a whim-wham entitled “Jack a Lent: his Beginning and Entertainment,” about 1619, printed 1630; as “of the Jack of Jacks, great Jack a Lent.” And Cleveland devoted thus a Cavalier’s worn suit: “Thou shalt make Jack-a-Lents and Babies first.” (Poems, 1662, p. 56.)
Martin Llewellyn’s Song on Cock-throwing begins “Cock a doodle doe, ’tis the bravest game;” in his Men-Miracles, &c., 1646, p. 61.
As to the burden (since some folks are inquisitive about the etymology of Down derry down, or Ran-dan, &c.), we may note that in a queer book, The Loves of Hero and Leander, 1651, p. 3, is a six-line verse ending thus:
By which we may guess that the Rope-dancer’s Song, in our text, was probably written about, or even before, 1651. Some among us (the Editor for one) saw Madame Sacchi in 1855 mount the rope, although she was seventy years old, as nimbly as when the first Napoleon had been her chief spectator. During the Commonwealth, rope-dancing and tumbling were tolerated at the Red-Bull Theatre, while plays were prohibited. See (Note to p. 210) our Introduction to Westminster Drollery, pp. xv.-xx, and the Frontispiece reproduced from Kirkman’s “Wits,” 1673, representing sundry characters from different “Drolls,” grouped together, viz.: Falstaff and Dame Quickly, from “the Bouncing Knight;” the French Dancing-Master, from the Duke of Newcastle’s “Variety,” Clause, from Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Beggar’s Bush,” Tom Greene as Bubble the Clown uttering “Tu Quoque” from John Cooke’s “City Gallant” (peeping through the chief-entrance, reserved for dignitaries); also Simpleton the Smith, and the Changeling, from two of Robert Cox’s favourite Drolls. We add now, illustrative of practical suppression under the Commonwealth, a contemporary record:—
A Song.
One such raid on the poor actors (and probably at this very theatre, the Red Bull, St. John’s Street, Clerkenwell) is recorded, as of 20th December, 1649:—“Some Stage-players in St. John’s-Street were apprehended by troopers, their clothes taken away, and themselves carried to prison” (Whitelocke’s Memorials, 435, edit. 1733, cited by J. P. C., Annals, ii. 118). It was a serious business, as we see from the Ordinance of 11 Feb., 1647-8; the demolishing of seats and boxes, the actors “to be apprehended[287] and openly and publicly whipt in some market town ... to enter into recognizances with two sufficient sureties, never to act or play any Play or Interlude any more,” &c.
As for the Light-skirts, so elegantly referred to in the Song now reprinted (as far as we are aware, for the first time), they were certainly not actresses, but courtezans frequenting the place to ensnare visitors. Although English women did not publicly perform until after the Restoration, except on one occasion (of course, at Court Masques and private mansions, the Queen herself and her ladies had impersonated characters), yet so early as 8th November, 1629, some French professional actresses vainly attempted to get a hearing at Blackfriars Theatre, and a fortnight later at the Red Bull itself, as three weeks afterwards at the Fortune. Evidently, they were unsuccessful throughout. We hear a good deal about the far-more objectionable “Ladies of Pleasure,” who beset all places of amusement. Thomas Cranley, addressing one such, in his Amanda, 1635, describes her several alluring disguises and habits:—
Despite our repugnance to mutilate a text (see Introduction to Westminster Drollery, p. 6; ditto to Merry Drollery[288] Compleat, pp. 38, 39, 40; and that to our present volume, foot-note in section third), a few letters have been necessarily suppressed in this piece of coarse humour. Verse fourth, on p. 33, refers to Ben Jonson’s loss of valuable manuscripts by fire, and his consequent “Execration upon Vulcan,” before June, 1629; an event deeply to be regretted: also to the whimsical account of the fire on London Bridge (see Merry Drollery, Compleat, pp. 87, 369, and Additional Note in present volume, tracing the poem to 1651, and the event to 1633).
An amusing poem was written, by Thomas Randolph, on the destruction of the Mitre Tavern at Cambridge, about 1630; it begins, “Lament, lament, you scholars all.” (See A Crew of kind London Gossips, 1663, p. 72).
Also given later, in Merry Drollery, 1661, p. 77, and Ditto, Compleat, p. 82 and 369. Compare the Harleian MS. version, No. 791, fol. 59, given in our Appendix to Westminster Drollery, p. 38, with note. The romance of the Knight of the Sun is mentioned by Sir Tho. Overbury in his Characters, as fascinating a Chambermaid, and tempting her to turn lady-errant. “The book is better known under the title of The Mirror of Princely Deedes and Knighthood, wherein is shewed the worthinesse of The Knight of the Sunne, &c. It consists of nine parts, which appear to have been published at intervals between 1585, and 1601.” (Lucasta, &c., edit. 1864, p. 13.)
We never met this elsewhere: it was probably written either in 1605, or almost immediately afterwards. Among Robert Hayman’s Quodlibets, 1628, in Book Second, No. 49, is an Epigram (p. 27):—
Of the Gunpowder Holly-day, the 5th of November.
Jeremiah Wells has among his Poems on Several Occasions, 1667, one, at p. 9, “On Gunpowder Treason,” beginning “Hence dull pretenders unto villany,” which solemnly conjures up a picture of what might have ensued if (what even Baillie Nicol Jarvie would call) the “awfu’ bleeze” had taken place. [The same rare volume is interesting, as containing a Poem on the Rebuilding of London, after the fire of 1666, p. 112, beginning “What a Devouring Fire but t’other day!”]
With Charles Lamb, we have always regretted the failure of the Gunpowder Plot. It would have been a magnificent event, fully equal to Firmillian’s blowing up the Cathedral of St. Nicholas, at Badajoz; and the loss of life to all the Parliament Members would have been a cheap price, if paid, for such a remembrance. The worst of all is, that, having been attempted, there is no likelihood of any subsequent repetition meeting with better success. Hinc illæ lachrymæ! Faux, Vaux, or Fawkes must have been a noble, though slightly misguided, enthusiast; for he had intended to perish, like Samson, with his victims. All good Protestants now admire the Nazarite, although they bon-fire-raise poor Guido. But then he failed in his work, while the other slayer of Philistines attained success: which perhaps accounts for the different apotheosis. As Lady Macbeth puts it: “The attempt, and not the deed, confounds us!”
A version of this epigram is among the MSS. at end of a volume of “Various Poems,” in the British Museum: Press-mark, Case 39. a. These have been printed by Fred. J. Furnival, Esq., for the Ballad Society, as “Love Poems and Humorous Ones,” 1874. “A Puritane with one of hir societie,” is No. 26, p. 22.
This re-appears in the Antidote against Melancholy, 1661 p. 65; and, with music, in the 1719 Pills to p. Mel., iii. 52
This Lady Carnarvon was the wife of Robert Dormer, second Baron Dormer, created Visc. Ascott, or Herld, and Earl of Carnarvon, 2d Aug., 1628. Obiit 1643. He fell at the Battle of Newbury, 20th Sept. (See Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, Book vii. p. 350, edit. 1720, where his merits are recognized.) Her name was Anna-Sophia, daughter of Philip, Earl of Pembroke. The child mentioned in the poem was their son, Charles Dormer, who died in 1709, when the Viscounty and Earldom became extinct. The poem was written at his birth, on January 1st.
We find this, a year earlier, (an inferior version, lacking third verse, but longer,) as Cockbodykins, chill, &c., in Wit’s Interpreter, p. 143, 1655; and p. 247, 1671. It is a valuable, because trustworthy and graphic, record of the troubles falling upon those who tried to labour on, despite the stir of civil war. 4th verse, “that a vet,” seems corruption of that is fetched; horses in a hole (W. Int.); vange thy note, is take thy note. (do). Prob. date, 1647.
The Second Part.
This is, veritably, a “document in madness” of such civil wars and military licence. It reads like the genuine narratives of Prussian brutality and outrage during the occupation of Alsace and Lorraine: which is hereafter to be bitterly avenged.
This lively ditty is sung by Latrocinio in the comedy of “The Widow,” Act iii. sc. 1, produced about 1616, and written by John Fletcher, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton. The song bears trace of Fletcher’s hand (more, we believe, than of Jonson’s). It has a rollicking freedom that made it a favourite. We meet it in Wit’s Interpreter, 1655, p. 69; 1671, p. 175; and elsewhere. See Dyce’s Middleton, iii. 383, and Dodsley’s Old Plays, 1744, vi. 34.
This re-appears, with variations and twelve additional lines (inferior), in Westminster-Drollery, 1671, i. 102; where is the corrupt text “and daily pays us with what is.” Our present text gives us the true word, “dully.”
Fuller’s book, “A Pisgah sight of Palestine,” was published about 1649. The epitaph “Here lies Fuller’s earth,” is well known. He died in 1661.
The author of this song was Dr. Henry Hughes. Henry Lawes gives the music to it, in his “Ayres,” 1669, Bk. iii. p. 10. It is also in J. P.’s Sportive Wit, 1656, p. 15; the Loyal Garland (Percy Soc. Reprint of 1686 edit, xxix. 67); Pills to p. Mel., 1719, iii. 331. Sometimes attributed to Sir R[obert] A[ytoun].
In Sportive Wit there are variations as well as an Answer, which we here give. The different title seems consequent on the Answer presupposing that Amintas has not died, merely disappeared. It is “A Shepherd fallen in Love: A Pastoral.” The readings are: Lambkins follow; They’re gone, they’re; Dog howling lyes, While he laments with woful cryes; Oh Cloris, Cloris, I decay, And forced am to cry well, &c. Sixth verse there omitted. It has, however, on p. 16:—
The Answer.
[1656.]
Also in Captain William Hickes’ London Drollery, 1673, p. 179, where it is entitled “Queen Elizabeth’s Song.” The dance tune Sallanger’s (or more commonly Sellenger’s) Round is given in Chappell’s Pop. Music, O. T., p. 69. The name is corrupted from St. Leger’s Round; as in Yorkshire the Doncaster race is called the Sillinger, or Sellenger, to this day.
Not yet found elsewhere, in MS. or print. The sixth[295] verse refers to King James the First making so many Knights, on insufficient ground, that he incurred ridicule. Allusions are not infrequent in dramas and ballads. Here is the most noteworthy of the latter. It is in Additional MS. No. 5,832, fol. 205, British Museum.
Verses upon the order for making Knights of such persons
who had £46 per annum in King James I.’s time.
[Additional stanza from Mr. Hunter’s MS.]
(Shakespeare Soc., 1846, pp. 145-6, J. O. Halliwell’s Commentary on Merry Wives of Windsor, Act. ii. sc. 1, “These Knights will hack.” Also his notes in Tallis’s edit., of the same, n. d., pp. 122-3. William Chappell, in Pop. Music O. T., p. 327, gives the tune.)
Another tolerable Epigram on a Chandler meets us, beginning “How might his days end that made weeks [wicks]?” among the Epitaphs of Wits Recreations, 1640-5 (Reprint, p. 271).
This is one of Michael Drayton’s Pastorals, printed in 1593, in the Third Eclogue, and entitled Dowsabell. See Percy’s Reliques, vol. i. bk. 3, No. 8, 2nd edit. 1767, for remarks on variations, amounting to a remodelling, of this charming poem. We are glad to know that Mr. James Russell Smith is preparing a new edition of Michael Drayton’s voluminous works, to be included in the Library of Old Authors. Drayton suppressed his couplet poem of “Endimion and Phœbe:” Ideas Latmvs. It has no date, but was cited by Lodge in 1595, and has been reprinted by J. P. Collier; one of his handsome and carefully printed quartos, a welcome boon.
This ballad, a very early example of the Down down derry burden, is not yet found elsewhere. It refers to the expedition against Scotland (then in alliance with Henry II. of France) made by the Protector, Edward, Duke of Somerset, in 1547, the first (not “fourth”) year of Edward VIth’s reign. The battle was fought on the “Black Saturday,” as it was long remembered, the tenth day of September (not of “December,” as the ballad mis-states it to have been). Terrible and remorseless was the slaughter of the ill-armed Scots, after they had imprudently abandoned their excellent hilly position, by the well-appointed English horsemen. The prisoners taken amounted to about fifteen hundred (“we found above twenty of their villains to one of their gentlemen,” says Patten), among whom was the Earl of Huntley, Lord Chancellor of Scotland, who on the previous day had sent a personal challenge to Somerset, asking to decide the contest by single combat: an offer which was not unreasonably declined, the Protector declaring that he desired no peace but such as he might win by his sword. “And thou, trumpet,” he told Huntley’s herald, “say to thy master, he seemeth to lack wit to make this challenge to me, being of such estate by the sufferance of God as to have so weighty a charge of so precious a jewel, the government[298] of a King’s person, and then the protection of all his realms.” We learn that the Scots slain were tenfold the number of the prisoners taken. This battle of “Muskleburgh Field” (nearly the same locality as the battle of Prestonpans, wherein Prince Charles Edward in 1745 defeated Colonel Gardiner and his English troops), known also as of Fawside Brae, or of Pinkie, is described with unusual precision by an eye-witness: See The Expedition into Scotland of the most worthily-fortunate Prince Edward Duke of Somerset, uncle to our most noble Sovereign Lord the King’s Majesty Edward the VI., &c., made in the first year of his Majesty’s most prosperous reign, and set out by way of Diary, by W. Patten, Londoner. First published in 1548, this was reprinted in Dalyell’s Fragments of Scottish History, Edinburgh, 1798. This old ballad is not included by Dalyell, who probably knew not of its existence.
By Thomas Carew, written before 1638. In Addit. MSS. No. 11,811, fol. 10; No. 22,118, fol. 43; also in Wits Recreations (Repr., p. 19); Roxb. Libr. Carew, p. 6, &c.
By James Howell, Historiographer to Charles II., and author of the celebrated Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, 1645, 1647, 1650, and 1655. He died in November, 1666; according to Anthony à Wood, (whose account of him in the Athenæ Oxonienses, iii. 744, edit. 1817, is given by Edward Arber in his excellent English Reprints, vol. viii, 1869, with a welcome promise of editing the said Epistolæ). This poem of “Black eyes,” &c., occurs among Howell’s poems collected by Sergeant-Major Peter Fisher, p. 68, 1663; again re-issued (the same sheets) as Mr. Howell’s Poems upon divers Emergent Occasions; Printed by James Cottrel, and dated 1664.” It is also found in C. F.’s “Wit at a Venture; or, Clio’s Privy Garden, containing Songs and Poems on Several Occasions,[299] Never before in Print” (which statement is incorrect, as usual). Our text is the earliest we know in type. The only variations, in Howell’s Poems, are: 1st line, doth lie; 4th verse, And by those spells I am possest.
This is another of the charming poems by Thomas Carew, always a favourite with his own generation (few MS. or printed Collections being without many of them), and deserving of far more affectionate perusal in our own time than he generally meets. It is in Addit. MS. No. 11, 811, fol. 6b., entitled there “His Love Neglected.” Elsewhere, as “A Cruel Mistress.”
Although closely resembling the Catch “What Fortune had I, poor Maid as I am,” of 1661 Antidote ag. Melancholy, p, 74, and Merry Drollery ii. 152 (equal to p. 341 of editions 1670 and 1691), this song is virtually distinct, and probably was the earlier version in date. One has been evidently borrowed or adapted from the other.
This vigorous expression of opinion from a robust nature, uncorrupted amid a conventionalized, treacherous, and selfishly-cruel community, is a valuable record of the true Cavalier “all of the olden time.” We have never met it elsewhere. He has no half-likings, no undefined suspicions, and admits of no paltering with the truth, or shirking of one’s duty. As we read we behold the honest man before us, and remember that it was such as he who made our England what she is:—
The contemplation of such brave spirits may help to nerve fresh readers to emulate their virtues, despite the sickly[300] fancies or grovelling politics and social theories of degenerate days. The singer may be somewhat overbearing in announcement of his preferences:
But, if he errs at all, it is on the safe side.
Composers and arrangers of such collections as this Drollery seem to have often chosen pieces simply for contrast. Thus, after the manly directness of “The Doctor’s Touchstone,” we find the vilely mercenary husband here exhibited, and followed by the truthful description (justifiable, although coarsely outspoken) of “The baseness of Whores.” Such were they of old: such are they ever.
Like the three preceding poems, not yet found elsewhere, but worthy of preservation.
Written “by a Person of Quality:” whom we suspect to have been Sir Francis Wortley, but without evidence to substantiate the guess. This is the earliest appearance in print, known to us, of this characteristic outburst of Cavalier vivacity, which re-appears as the Musician’s Song, in “Cromwell’s Conspiracy,” 1660, Act iii. sc. 2; and Merry Drollery, 1661, p. 101. (See also M. D. C., pp. 107, 373). As to the introduction of the several ancient philosophers (referred to in former Appendix, p. 373), compare the delightful Chanson a Boire,
(The other twelve verses are given complete in “Brallaghan; or, the Deipnosophists,” 1845, pp. 198-203, with a clever verse-translation, by the foremost of linguistic scholars now alive—the friend of Talfourd and of Dr. W. Maginn—at whom many nowadays presume to scoff, and whom Benchers defame and banish themselves from.)
Also in Windsor Drollery, 1672, p. 126, as “Fire! Fire! lo here I burn in my desire,” &c. And in Henry Bold’s Latine Songs, 1685, p. 139, where it is inserted, to be alongside of this parody on it by him, song xlvii., or a
MOCK.
A year earlier, this had appeared in Wit’s Interpreter, 1655, p. 4 (1671, p. 108), entitled “What is most to be liked in a Mistress.” Robt. Jamieson quotes it, from Choyce Drollery, in his Pop. Bds., 1806, ii. 309. We believe it to be by the same author as the poem next following, and regret that they remain anonymous. Both are of a stately beauty, and recall to us those Cavalier Ladies with whose portraits Vandyck adorned many family mansions.
One clue, that may hereafter guide us to the authorship, we know the lady’s name. It was Freeman. This poem also had appeared a year earlier, at least, in Wit’s Interpreter, 1655, p. 55 (; 1671 ed., p. 161). Also in Wit and Drollery, 1661, p. 162; in Oxford Drollery, part ii. 1671, p. 87; and in Loyal Garland, 1686, as “The Platonick Lover” (reprinted by Percy Soc., xxix. 64). There should be a comma in fifth line, after the word Constancy. Various readings:—Verse 2, meanest wit; and yet a; 3, His dear addresses; walls be brick or stone.
This Song, by John Fletcher, in his Lover’s Progress, Act iii. sc. 1., before 1625. The music is found in Additional MS. No. 11,608 (written about 1656), fol. 20; there called “Myne Ost’s Song, sung in ye Mad Lover [wrong: a different play], set by Robt. Johnson.” It re-appears in Wit and Drollery 1661, p. 212; in the Academy of Complements, 1670, p. 175, &c. It is the Song of the Dead Host, whose return to wait upon his guests and ask their aid to have his body laid in consecrated ground, is so humorously described. His forewarnings of death to Cleander are, to our mind, of thrilling interest. These scenes were Sir Walter Scott’s favourites; but Leigh Hunt, perversely, could see no merit in them. We believe that the tinge of sepulchral dullness[303] in Mine Host enhances the vividness of the incidents, like the taciturnity of Don Guzman’s stony statue in Shadwell’s “Libertine.”
Thus the hundred-paged volume of Choyce Drollery, 1656,—“Delicates served up by frugall Messes, as aiming at thy satisfaction not saciety,”—comes to an end, with Beaumont and Fletcher. On them remembrance loves to rest, as the fitting representatives of that class of courtly gentlemen, poets, wits, and scholars, who were, to a great extent, even then, fading away from English society. To them had been visible no phase of the Rebellion, and they probably never conceived that it was near. Beaumont, with his statelier reserve, and his tendency to quiet musing, fostered “under the shade of melancholy boughs” at Grace-Dieu, had early passed away, honoured and lamented; a month before his friend Shakespeare went to rest: Shakespeare, who, having known half a century of busy life, felt contented, doubtless, to fulfil the wish that he had long before expressed, himself, almost prophetically:—
Fletcher survived nine years, and battled on with somewhat of spasmodic action; at once widowed and orphaned by the death of his close friend and work-fellow; winning fresh triumphs, it is true, and leaving many a trace of his bright genius like a gleam of heaven’s own light across the sadness and corruption of an imaginary world, that was not at all unreal in heroism or in wickedness. He also passed away while young; a few months later than the time when Charles the First came to the throne, suddenly elevated by the death of his father James, bringing abruptly to a consummation that marriage with the[304] French Princess which did so much to lead him and his country into ruin. The year 1625 was the separating date between the autumnal ripeness and the chill of fruitless winter. A sunny glow remains on Fletcher to the last. With him it fades, and the world that he had known is changed.
[End of Notes to Choyce Drollery.]
We have already, in a brief Introduction, (pp. 105-110), explained our reason for adding all that was necessary to complete this work; a large portion having been anticipated in Merry Drollery of the same year, 1661. In the Postscript (pp. 161-165), we endeavoured to trace the authorship of the entire collection; leaving to these following notes, and those attached to M. Drollery, Compleat, the search for separate poems or songs. Also, on pp. 166-175, we traced the history of “Arthur o’ Bradley,” delaying the important song of his Wedding (from an original of the date 1656), unto Part IV. of our Appendix.
To no other living writer are we lovers of old literature more deeply indebted than to the veteran John Payne Collier, who is now far advanced in his eighty-seventh year, and whose intellect and industry remain vigorously employed at this great age: one proof of the fact being his new edition of Shakespeare (each play in a separate quarto, issued to private subscribers), begun in January, 1875, and already the Comedies are finished, in the third volume. Among his numerous choice reprints of rare originals, his series of the more than “Seven Early Poetical Miscellanies” was a work of greatest value. To these, with his new “Shakespeare,” the interesting “Old Man’s Diary,” his “Bibliographical and Critical Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language,” his “Annals of the Stage,” “The Poetical Decameron,” his charming “Book of Roxburghe Ballads,” 1847, his “Broadside Black-Letter-Ballads,” 1868, and other labours, no less than to his warmth of heart and friendly encouragement by letters, the present Editor owes many happy hours, and for them makes grateful acknowledgment.
About the year 1870, J. P. Collier issued to private subscribers his very limited and elegant Reprint, in quarto, of “An Antidote against Melancholy,” 1661. This is already nearly as unattainable as the original.
J. P. Collier gave no notes to his Reprint of the “Antidote,” but, in the brief Introduction thereunto, he mentioned that:—“This poetical tract has been selected for our reprint on account of its rarity, the excellence of the greater part of its contents, the high antiquity of some of them, and from the fact that many of the ballads and humorous pieces of versification are either not met with elsewhere, or have been strangely corrupted in repetition through the press. Two or three of them are used by Shakespeare, and the word ‘incarnadine’ [see our p. 148] is only found in ‘Macbeth’ (A. ii., sc. 2), in Carew’s poems, and in this tract: here we have it as the name of a red wine; and nobody hitherto has noticed it in that sense.
“When Ritson published his ‘Robin Hood’ in 1795, he relied chiefly upon the text of the famous ballad of[307] ‘Arthur o’ Bradley,’ as he discovered it in the miscellany before us [See our Merry Drollery, Compleat, pp. 312, 399; also, in present volume, p. 166, and Additional Note]; but, learned in such matters as he undoubtedly was, he was not aware of the very early period at which ‘Arthur o’ Bradley’ was so popular as to be quoted in one of our Old Moralities, which may have been in existence in the reigns of Henry VI. or Henry VII., which was acted while Henry VIII. or Edward VI. were on the throne, and which is contained in a manuscript bearing the date of 1579.
“The few known copies of ‘An Antidote against Melancholy’ are dated 1661, the year after the Restoration, when lawless licence was allowed both to the press and in social intercourse; and, if we permitted ourselves to mutilate our originals, we might not have reproduced such coarseness; but still no words will be found which, even a century afterwards, were not sometimes used in private conversation, and which did not even make their appearance at full length in print. Mere words may be said to be comparatively harmless; but when, as in the time of Charles II, they were employed as incentives to vice and laxity of manners, they become dangerous. The repetition of them in our day, in a small number of reprints, can hardly be offensive to decorum, and unquestionably cannot be injurious to public morals. We always address ourselves to the students of our language and habits of life.”
Joseph Ritson gave this Bacchanalian chant in the second volume of his “English Songs,” p. 58, 1783. Forty-six verses, out of the seventy, had been repeated in the “Collection of Old Ballads,” 1723-25, (which Ambrose Philips and David Mallet may have edited,) “The Ex-Ale-tation of Ale” is in vol. iii. p. 166. Part, if not all, must have been in existence fully ten years before it appeared in the “Antidote,” as we find “O Ale ab alendo, thou Liquor of life!” with music by John Hilton, in his “Catch[308] that Catch Can,” p. 5, 1652. It is also in Wit’s Merriment; or, Lusty Drollery, 1656, p. 118; eight verses only. These are: 1. Not drunken; 2. But yet to commend it; 3. But yet, by your leave; 4. It makes a man merry; 5. The old wife whose teeth; 6. The Ploughman, the Lab’rer; 7. The man that hath a black blous to his wife; 8. With that my friend said, &c. Still earlier, the poem had appeared, imperfectly, in a four-paged quarto pamphlet, dated 1642 (along with “The Battle fought between the Norfolk Cock and the Wisbeach Cock,” see M. D. C., p. 242) as by Thomas Randall, i.e. Randolph. Accordingly, it has been included (34 verses only) in the 1875 edition of his Works, p. 662. We personally attach no weight to the pamphlet’s ascription of it to Randolph, (who died in March, 1634-5). It is far more likely to have been the work of Samuel Rowlands, in whose Crew of Kind London Gossips, 1663, we meet it, p. 129-141, and whose style it more closely resembles. Some poems duly assigned to Randolph are in the same volume, but the “Exaltation of Ale” is not thus distinguished. There are seventy-two verses given, and the motto is Tempus edax rerum, &c. We have not been able to consult an earlier edition of S. Rowland’s “Crew,” &c., about 1650.
So long afterwards as 1788, we find an abbreviated copy of the song, six verses, in Lackington’s “British Songster,” p. 202, entitled “A Tankard of Ale.” The first verse runs thus:—
Omitting all sequence of narrative, the other verses are adapted from the Antidote’s 21st, 19th, 10th, 26th, and 50th; concerning the hedger, beggar, widow, clerk, and amicable conclusion over a tankard of ale. In a Convivial Songster, of 1807, by Tegg, London, these six are given with addition of another as fifth:—
It had appeared in a Chap-book (circa 1794, according to Wm. Logan; see his amusing “Pedlar’s Pack,” pp. 224-6), with other five verses inserted before the Finale. We give them to complete the tale:—
Notice the characteristic mention of William Elderton, the Ballad-writer (who died before 1592), in the thirty-third verse (our p. 119):—
William Elderton’s “New Yorkshire Song, intituled Yorke, Yorke, for my Monie,” (entered at Stationers’ Hall, 16 November, 1582, and afterwards “Imprinted at London by Richard Iones; dwelling neere Holbourne Bridge: 1584),” has the place of honour in the Roxburghe Collection, being the first ballad in the first volume. It consequently takes the lead in the valuable “Roxburghe Bds.” of the Ballad Society, 1869, so ably edited by William Chappell, Esq., F.S.A. It also formed the commencement of Ritson’s Yorkshire Garland: York, 1788. It is believed that Elderton wrote the “excellent Ballad intituled The Constancy of Susanna” (Roxb. Coll., i. 60; Bagford, ii. 6; Pepys, i. 33, 496). A list of others was first given by Ritson; since, by W. C. Hazlitt, in his Handbook, p. 177. Elderton’s “Lenton Stuff ys come to the town” was reprinted by J. O. Halliwell, for the Shakespeare Society, in 1846 (p. 105). He gives Drayton’s allusion to Elderton in Notes to Mr. Hy. Huth’s “79 Black-Letter Ballads,” 1870, 274 (the “Praise of my Ladie Marquess,” by W. E., being on pp. 14-16). Elderton had been an actor in 1552; his earliest dated ballad is of 1559, and he had ceased to live by 1592. Camden gives an epitaph, which corroborates our text, in regard to the “thirst complaint” of the balladist:—
Thus freely rendered by Oldys:—
A MS., time of James I., possessed by J. P. Collier, mentions, in further confirmation:
(See Wm. Chappell’s Popular Music of the Olden Time, pp. 107, 815; and J. P. Collier’s Extracts from Reg. Stat. Comp., passim, Indices, art. Elderton; and his Bk. of Roxb. Bds., p. 139.)
The fashion of disparaging the present, by praising the customs and people of days that have passed away, is almost as old as the Deluge, if not older. Homer speaks of the degeneracy in his time, and aged Israel had long earlier lamented the few and evil days to which his own life extended, in comparison with those patriarchs who had gone before him. Even as we know not the full value of the Mistress or the friend whose affection had been given unto us, until separated from them, for ever, by estrangement or the grave, so does it seem to be with many customs and things. Robert Browning touchingly declares:—
Modified in succeeding reigns, the ballad of “The Queen [Elizabeth]’s Old Courtier, and A New Courtier of the King [James]” has already known two hundred and[312] fifty years’ popularity. The earliest printed copy was probably issued by T. Symcocke, by or after 1626. We find it in several books about the time of the Restoration, when parodies became frequent. It is in Le Prince d’Amour, 1660, p. 161; Wit and Drollery, 1682 (not in 1656, 1661 edits.), p. 278, “With an old Song,” &c.; Wit and Mirth, 1684, p. 43; Dryden’s Misc. Poems (ed. 1716, iv. 108); with the Music, in Pills, iii. 271; in Philomel, 130, 1744; Percy’s Reliques, ii. Bk. 3, No. 8, 1767; Ritson’s English Sgs., ii. 140, and Chappell’s Pop. Music, p. 300, to which refer for a good introduction, with extract from Pepys Diary of 16th June, 1668. Accompanying a Parody by T. Howard, Gent. (beginning similarly, “An Old Song made of an old aged pate”), it meets us in the Roxburghe Coll., iii. 72, printed for F. Coles (1646-74).
Among other parodies may be mentioned one entitled “An Old Souldier of the Queen’s” (in Merry Drollery, Compleat, 31, and in Wit and Drollery, 248, 1661); another, “The New Souldier” (Wit and Drollery, 282, 1682), beginning:—
In the same edition of Wit and Drollery, p. 165, is yet another parody, headed “Old Souldiers,” which runs thus (see Westminster-Drollery, ii. 24, 1672,):—
John Cleveland had a parody on the Queen’s Courtier, about 1648, entitled The Puritan, beginning “With face and fashion to be known, For one of sure election.”[313] Another, called The Tub-Preacher, is doubtfully attributed to Samuel Butler, and begins similarly, “With face and fashion to be known: With eyes all white, and many a groan” (in his Posthumous Works, p. 44, 3rd edit., 1730). The political parody, entitled “Saint George and the Dragon, anglicé Mercurius Poeticus,” to the same tune of “The Old Courtier,” is in the Kings Pamphlets, XVI., and has been reprinted by T. Wright for the Percy Soc., iii. 205. It bears Thomason’s date, 28 Feb., 1659-[60], and is on the overthrow of the Rump, by General Monk. It begins thus:—
Old songs have rarely, if ever, been modernized so successfully as “The Queen’s Old Courtier,” of which “The Fine Old English Gentleman” is no unworthy representative. Popular though it was, thirty or forty years ago, it is not easily met with now; thus we may be excused for adding it here:—
THE FINE OLD ENGLISH GENTLEMAN.
A series of eight Essays, each illustrated with a design by R. W. Buss, was devoted to “The Old and Young Courtier” in the Penny Magazine of the Society for Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, in 1842.
Charles Matthews used to sing (was it in “Patter versus Clatter”?) an amusing version of “The Fine Young English Gentleman,” of whom it was reported that,
T. R. Planché wrote a parody to the same tune, in his “Golden Fleece,” on the “Fine Young Grecian Gentleman,” Iason, as described by his deserted wife Medea: it begins, “I’ll tell you a sad tale of the life I’ve been led of late.” In Dinny Blake’s “Sprig of Shillelah,” p. 3, is found “The Rale Ould Irish Gintleman,” (5 verses) beginning, “I’ll sing you a dacent song, that was made by a Paddy’s pate,” and ending thus:—
(Or, as Wm. Hy. Murray, of Edinburgh, used to say, in his unequalled “Old Country Squire,” “A smile for a friend, a frown for a foe, and a full front for every one!”)
At the beginning of the Crimean War appeared another parody, ridiculing the Emperor Nicholas, as “The Fine Old Russian Gentleman” (it is in Berger’s Red, White, and Blue, 467); and clever Robert B. Brough, in one of his more bitter moods against “The Governing Classes,” misrepresented the “Fine Old English Gentleman” (Ibid., p. 733), as splenetically as Charles Dickens did in Barnaby Rudge, chapter 47.
Given already, in our Appendix to the Westminster Drollery, p. liv., with note of tune and locality. See Additional Note in Part 3 of present Appendix.
There are so many differences in the version printed in the Antidote agt. Melancholy from that already given in Merry Drollery, Compleat, p. 309, (cp. Note, p. 399), that we give the former uncurtailed.
Along with the music in Pills to p. Mel., iii. 116, 1719, are the extra verses (also in Wit and Mirth, 1684, p. 29?) agreeing with the Antidote; as does the version in Old Bds., i. 24, 1723.
Another old ballad, in the last-named collection, p. 153, is upon “King Edward and Jane Shore; in Imitation, and to the Tune of, St. George and the Dragon.” It begins (in better version):—
Roxb. Coll., iii. 258, printed in 1671. Also in Pills, with music, iv. 272. The authorship of it is ascribed to Samuel Butler, in the volume assuming to be his “Posthumous Works” (p. iii., 3rd edition, 1730); but this ascription is of no weight in general.
In Edm. Gayton’s Festivous Notes upon Don Quixot, 1654, p. 231, we read:—“’Twas very proper for these Saints to alight at the sign of St. George, who slew the Dragon which was to prey upon the Virgin: The truth of which story hath been abus’d by his own country-men, who almost deny all the particulars of it, as I have read in a scurrilous Epigram, very much impairing the credit and Legend of St. George; As followeth,
But it was smartly return’d to, in this manner,
Somewhat different is the earlier version, in Wit’s Recreations, 1640-45. (Reprint, p. 194, which see, “To save a maid,” &c.) The Answer to it is probably Gayton’s own.
Issued as a popular broadsheet, printed at London for Thomas Lambert, probably during the lifetime of Charles I., we find this lively ditty of “Blew Cap for Me!” in the Roxburghe Coll., i. 20, and in the Bd. Soc. Reprint, vol. i. pp. 74-9. Mr. Chappell mentions that the tune thus named “is included in the various editions of The Dancing Master from 1650 to 1690; and says, the reference to ‘when our good king was in Falkland town,’ [in the Antidote it reads “our good knight,” line 13] may supply an approximate date to the composition.” We believe that it must certainly have been before the Scots sold their king for the base bribe of money from the Parliamentarians, in 1648, when “Blew caps” became hateful to all true Cavaliers. The visit to Falkland was in 1633, so the date is narrowed in compass. From the Black-letter ballad we gain a few corrections: drowne, for dare, in 4th line; long lock’d, 26th line; for further exercises, 28th; Mistris (so we should read Maitresse, not a metrel), 29th; Pe gar me do love you (not “Dear”), 30th; she replide. The First Part ends with the Irishman. The Second Part begins with two verses not in the Antidote:—
In the Netherland Mariner’s Speech we find for the fifth line of verse, “Isk will make thee,” said he, “sole Lady,” &c. Another verse follows it, before the conclusion:—
The song is also reprinted for the Percy Society, (Fairholt’s Costume), xxvii. 130, as well as in Evans’ O. Bds., iii. 245. Compare John Cleavland’s “Square Cap,”—“Come hither, Apollo’s bouncing girl.”
In Harleian MS. No. 6931, where it is signed as by Dr. W. Strode.
The tune of this is “The Shaking of the Sheets,” according to a broadside printed for John Trundle (1605-24, before 1628, as by that date we believe his widow’s name would have been substituted). We find it reprinted by J. P. Collier in his Book of Roxburghe Ballads, p. 172, 1847, as “The Song of the Caps.” In an introductory note, we gather that “This spirited and humorous song seems to have been founded, in some of its points, upon the ‘Pleasant Dialogue or Disputation between the Cap and the Head,’ which prose satire went through two editions, in 1564 and 1565: (see the Bridgewater Catalogue, p. 46.) It is, however, more modern, and certainly cannot be placed earlier than the end of the reign of Elizabeth. It may be suspected that it underwent some changes, to adapt it to the times, when it was afterwards reprinted; and we finally meet with it, but in a rather corrupted state, in a work published in 1656, called ‘Sportive Wit: the Muses Merriment, a new Spring of Lusty Drollery,’ &c.” [p. 23.] It appears, with the music, in Pills, iv. 157; in Percy Society’s “Costume,” 1849, 115, with woodcuts of several of the caps mentioned.
In Sportive Wit, 1656, p. 23, is a second verse (coming before “The Monmouth Cap,” &c.):—
In our 3rd verse, it reads:—ever brought, The quilted, Furr’d; crewel; 4th verse, line 6, of (some say) a horn. 5th verse, crooked cause aright; Which, being round and endless, knows || To make as endless any cause [A better version]. 6th, findes a mouth; 7th, The Motley Man a Cap; [for lines 3, 4, compare Shakespeare, as to it taking a wise man to play the fool,] like the Gyant’s Crown. 8th, Sick-mans; When hats in Church drop off apace, This Cap ne’er leaves the head uncas’d, Though he be ill; [two next verses are expanded into three, in Sp. Wit.] 11th, none but Graduats [N.B.]; none covered are; But those that to; go bare. This Cap, of all the Caps that be, Is now; high degree.
This is in Thomas Weaver’s Songs and Poems of Love and Drollery, p. 16, 1654. Elsewhere attributed to John Cleveland (who died in 1658), and printed among his Poems “J. Cleavland Revived” (p. 106, 3rd edit. 1662), as “The Schismatick,” with a trashy fifth verse (not found elsewhere):—
It is likewise in the Rump collection, i. 223, 1662; Loyal Sgs., i. 131, 1731.
By Ben Jonson. This is the song of the Welshmen,[321] Evan, Howell, and Rheese, alternately, in Praise of Wales, sung in an Anti-Masque “For the Honour of Wales,” performed before King James I. on Shrove Tuesday, 1618-19. The final verse is omitted from the Antidote against Melancholy. It is this (sung by Rheese):—
(See Col. F. Cunningham’s “Mermaid” Ben Jonson, iii. 130-2, for Gifford’s Notes.) With a quaint old woodcut of a strutting Welshman, in cap and feather, the song reappears in “Recreations for Ingenious Head-pieces,” 1645 (Wits Recreations, Reprint, p. 387).
This is attributed to Thomas Randall, or Randolph (died 1634-5), in Wit and Mirth, 1684. p. 101: But to N. N., along with music by Hy. Lawes, in his Ayres, Book ii. p. 29, 1655. It is also in Parnassus Biceps, 1656, p. 158, “All Poets,” &c., and in Sportive Wit, p. 60.
With music in Pills, vi. 182; title, “The Presbyter’s Gill:” where we find three other verses, as 4th, 5th, and 7th:—
The accumulative progression, humourously exaggerated, is to be seen employed in other Drinking Songs; notably in “Here’s a Health to the Barley-Mow, my brave boys!” (still heard at rural festivals in East Yorkshire, and printed in J. H. Dixon’s Bds. & Sgs. of the Peasantry, Bell’s annotated edit., p. 159) and “Bacchus Overcome,” beginning “My Friend and I, we drank,” &c. (in Coll. Old Bds., iii. 145, 1725.)
With music by Henry Lawes, in his Select Ayres, i. 32, 1653, entitled “The Excellency of Wine:” the author was “Lord Broughall” [query, Broghill?].
See Introduction to our Westminster-Drollery Reprint, pp. xxxvii-viii. Although not printed in the first edition[323] of his “Spanish Curate,” it is so entirely in the spirit of John Fletcher that we need not hesitate to assign it to him: and he died in 1625.
With music, by Dr. John Wilson, in John Playford’s Select Ayres, 1659, p. 86, entitled Glee to the Cook. A poem attributed to Thomas Flatman, 1655, begins, “A Chine of Beef, God save us all!”
Given, with music by Henry Lawes, in his Select Ayres, Book iii. p. 5, 1669. The author of the words was Dr. Henry Hughes. We do not find the burden, “Come, fill’s a Cup,” along with the music.
See Choyce Drollery, 52, and note on p. 289.
This was written by Willm. Browne, author of “Britannia’s Pastorals,” and therefore dates before 1645. See Additional Note, late in Part IV., on p. 296 of M. D. C.
Given, with music by John Hilton, in his Catch that Catch Can, 1652, p. 7. Also in Walsh’s Catch-Club, ii. 13, No. 24.
By Sir John Suckling, in his unfinished tragedy “The Sad One,” Act iv. sc. 4, where it is sung by Signior Multecarni the Poet, and two of the actors; but without the final couplet, which recalls to memory Francis’s rejoinder in Henry IV., pt. i. Suckling was accustomed to[324] introduce Shakesperian phrases into his plays, and we believe these two lines are genuine. We find the Catch, with music by John Hilton in that composer’s Catch that Catch Can, 1652, p. 15. (Also in Playford’s Musical Companion, 1673, p. 24.)
Captain William Hicks has a dialogue of Two Parliamentary Troopers, beginning with the same first line, in Oxford Drollery, i. 21, 1671. Written before 1659, thus:
This should read “Waltham Cross.” By Richard Brome, in his comedy of “The Jovial Crew,” Act ii., 1641, wherein it is sung by Hearty, as “t’other old song for that” [the uselessness of sighing for a lass]; to the tune of “Taunton Dean,” (see Dodsley’s Old Plays, 1st edit., 1744, vi. 333). With music by John Hilton, it is given in J. H.’s Catch that Catch Can, 1652, p. 31. It is also in Walsh’s Catch Club (about 1705) ii. 17, No. 43.
In J. Hilton’s Catch that Catch Can, 1652, p. 55, with music by William Lawes; and in John Playford’s Musical Companion, 1673, p. 24.
With music by William Lawes, in Hilton’s Catch that Catch Can, 1652, p. 38.
With music by William Lawes, in Hilton’s Catch that[325] Catch Can, 1652, p. 37. Wm. Chappell gives the words of four lines, omitting fifth and sixth, to accompany the music of Ben Jonson’s “Cock Lorrell,” in Pop. Mus. of O. T., 161 (where date of the Antidote is accidentally misprinted 1651, for 1661).
With music by William Lawes, in Hilton’s Catch that Catch Can, 1652, p. 39. The words alone in Windsor Drollery, 140, 1672. Richard Climsall, or Climsell, has a long ballad, entitled “Joy and Sorrow Mixt Together,” which begins,
Poor fellow! he soon changes his tune, after marriage, although singing to the music of “Such a Rogue would be hang’d,”—better known as “Old Sir Simon the King.” Printed by John Wright the younger (1641-83), it survives in the Roxburghe Collection, i. 172, and is reprinted for the Bd. Soc., i. 515. As may be seen, it is totally different from the Catch in Hilton’s volume and the Antidote; which is also in Oxford Drollery, Pt. 3, p. 136, there entitled “A Cup of Sack:—“Hang Sorrow, cast,” &c.
It there has two more verses:—
This shows how a great man’s gifts are undervalued. Christopher Sly was truly wise (yet accounted a Sot and even a Rogue, though “the Slys are no rogues: look in the chronicles! We came in with Richard Conqueror!”) when, with all the wealth and luxury of the Duke at command, he demanded nothing so much as “a pot o’ the smallest ale.” He had good need of it.
This meets us earlier, in Hilton’s Catch that Catch Can, 1651, p. 64, with music by William Ellis. The missing first verse reappears (if, indeed, not a later addition) in Oxford Drollery, 1674, Part iii. p. 163, as “made at Oxford many years since”:—
It was popular before December, 1659; allusions to it are in the Rump, 1662, i. 369; ii. 62, 97.
Also in Windsor Drollery, 1672, p. 30.
With music by Edmund Nelham, in John Hilton’s Catch that Catch can, 1652, p. 78. The Answer, here beginning “Your Mare is lame,” &c., we have not met elsewhere. The Catch itself has always been a favourite. In a world wherein, amid much neighbourly kindness, there is more than a little of imposition, the sly cynicism of the verse could not fail to please. Folks do not object to doing a good turn, but dislike being deemed silly enough to have been taken at a disadvantage. So we laugh at the Catch, say something wise, and straightway let ourselves do good-natured things again with a clear conscience.
With music by William Howes, in Hilton’s Catch that Catch can, 1652, p. 84. Also in Walsh’s Catch-Club, ii. 77. We are told that the Symon here addressed, regarding his Bardolphian nose, was worthy Symon Wadloe,—“Old Sym, the King of Skinkers,” or Drawers. Possibly some jocular allusion to the same reveller animates the choice ditty (for which see the Percy Folio MS., iv. 124, and Pills, iii. 143),
We scarcely believe the ascription to be correct, and that “Old Symon the King” originally referred to Simon Wadloe, who kept the “Devil and St. Dunstan” Tavern, whereat Ben Jonson and his comrades held their meetings as The Apollo Club; for which the Leges Conviviales were written. Seeing that Wadloe died in 1626, or ’27, and there being a clear trace of “Old Simon the King” in 1575, in Laneham’s Kenilworth Letter (Reprinted for Ballad Society, 1871, p. cxxxi.), the song appears of too early a date to suit the theory. Tant pis pour les faits. But consult Chappell’s Pop. Mus., 263-5, 776-7.
In 1865 (see his Bibliog. Account, i. 25), J. P. Collier drew attention to the mention of Falstaff’s name in this Catch; also to the other Shakesperiana, viz., the complete song of “Jog on, jog on the footpath way,” (p. 156), and the burden of “Three merry boys,” to “The Wise-men were but Seven” (M. D. C., p. 232), which is connected with Sir Toby Belch’s joviality in Twelfth Night, Act ii. 3.
With the music, in Chappell’s Pop. Mus. O. T., p. 75. This favourite of our own day dates back so early, at least, as 1609, when it appeared in (Thomas Ravenscroft’s?) Deuteromelia; or, the Second Part of Musick’s Melodie, &c., p. 7. We therein find (what has dropped out, to the damage of our Antidote version), as the final couplet:—
Of course, it was the spice deserved blame, not the liquor (as Sam Weller observed, on a similar occasion, “Somehow it always is the salmon”). Those who remember (at the Johnson in Fleet Street, or among the Harmonist Society of Edinburgh) the suggestive lingering over the first syllable of the word “gin-ger,” when “this song is[329] well sung,” cannot willingly relinquish the half-line. It is a genuine relic, for it also occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Knight of the Burning Pestle,” about 1613, Act i. sc. 3; where chirping Old Merrythought, “who sings with never a penny in his purse,” gives it thus, while “singing and hoiting” [i.e., skipping]:—
And we know, by A Booke of Merrie Riddles, 1630, and 1631, that it was much sung:
Like Nos. 4, 21, 24, 31, &c., not yet found elsewhere.
With music by Thomas Holmes, in Hilton’s Catch that Catch can, 1652, p. 46.
The four earliest lines of this ditty are sung by Autolycus the Pedlar, and “picker up of unconsidered trifles,” in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale (about 1610), Act iv. sc. 2. Whether the latter portion of the song was also by him (nay, more, whether he actually wrote, or merely quoted even the four opening lines), cannot be determined. We prefer to believe that from his hand alone came the fragment, at least—this lively snatch of melody, with good philosophy, such as the Ascetics reject, to their own damage. No wrong is done in accepting the remainder of the song as genuine. The final verse is orthodox,[330] according to the Autolycusian rule of faith. It is in Windsor Drollery, p. 30; and our Introduction to Westminster-Drollery, p. xxxv.
Compare, with this lame paraphrase of Anacreon’s racy Ode, the more poetic version by Abraham Cowley, printed in Merry Drollery, Compleat, p. 22 (not in 1661 ed. Merry D.) All of Cowley’s Anacreontiques are graceful and melodious. He and Thomas Stanley fully entered into the spirit of them, arcades ambo.
We meet this, six years earlier, in Wits Interpreter, 1655 edit., p. 285; 1671, p. 290. Our text is the superior.
Also found in Wit and Mirth, 1684, p. 113.
By James Shirley, (1590-1666) in his comedy, “The Example,” 1637, Act v. sc. 3, where it is the Song of Sir Solitary Plot and Lady Plot. Repeated in the Academy of Complements, 1670, p. 209. Until after that date, for nearly a century, almost all the best songs had been written for stage plays. It forms an appropriate finale, from the last Dramatist of the old school, to the Restoration merriment, the Antidote against Melancholy, of 1661.
In one of the later “Sessions of the Poets” (vide postea Part 4, § 2)—probably, of 1664-5,—Shirley is referred to, ungenerously. He was then aged nearly seventy:—
He is also mentioned, with more reverence implied, by George Daniel of Beswick; and we may well conclude this second part of our Appendix with the final verses from the Beswick MS. (1636-53); insomuch as many Poets are therein mentioned, to whom we return in Section Fourth:—
End of Notes to Antidote.
Before concluding our present series, The Drolleries of the Restoration, we have gladly given in this volume the fourteen pages of Extra Songs contained in the 1674 edition of Westminster-Drollery, Part 1st. Sometimes reported as amounting to “nearly forty” (but, perhaps, this statement referred to the Second Part inclusive), it is satisfactory to have joined these six to their predecessors; especially insomuch that our readers do not, like the original purchasers, have to pay such a heavy price as losing an equal number of pages filled with far superior songs. For, the 1671 Part First contained exactly 124 pages, and the 1674 edition has precisely the same number, neither more nor less. The omissions are not immediately consecutive, (as are the additions, which are gathered in one group in the final sheet, pp. 111-124.) They were selected, with unwise discrimination, throughout the volume. Not fourteen pages of objectionable and relinquishable facetiæ; but ten songs,[334] from among the choicest of the poems. Our own readers are in better case, therefore: they gain the additions, without yielding any treasures of verse in exchange.
We add a list of what are thus relinquished from the 1674 edition, noting the pages of our Westm. D. on which they are to be found:—
| P. | 5. | Wm. Wycherley’s, A Wife I do hate | 1671 |
| — | 10. | Dryden’s, Phillis Unkind: Wherever I am | do. |
| — | 15. | Unknown, O you powerful gods, | ? do. |
| — | 28. | T. Shadwell’s, Thus all our life long, | 1669 |
| — | 30. | Dryden’s, Cellamina, of my heart, | 1671 |
| — | 31. | Ditto, Beneath a myrtle shade, | do. |
| — | 116. | Ditto, Ditto (almost duplicate), | do. |
| — | 47. | Ditto, Make ready, fair Lady, | 1668 |
| — | —. | Etherege’s, To little or no purpose, | do. |
| — | 91. | T. Carew’s, O my dearest, I shall, &c., | bef. 1638 |
| — | 100. | Ditto, or Cary’s, Farewell, fair Saint, | bef. 1652 |
Thus we see that most of these were quite new when the Westminster-Drollery first printed them (in four cases, at least, before the plays had appeared as books): they were rejected three years later for fresh novelties. But the removal of Carew’s tender poems was a worse offence against taste.
Except the odd Quakers’ Madrigall of “Wickham Wakened” (on p. 120; our p. 188), which is not improbably by Joe Haynes, we believe the whole of the other five new songs of 1674 came from one work. We are unable at once to state the name and author of the drama in which they occur. The five are given (severely mutilated, in two instances) in Wit at a Venture; or, Clio’s Privy-Garden, of the same date, 1674. Here, also, they form a group, pp. 33-42; with a few others that probably belong to the same play, viz., “Too weak are human eyes to pry;” “Oh that I ne’er had known the power of Love;” “Must I be silent? no, and yet forbear;” “Cease, wandering thought, and let her brain” (this is Shirley’s, in[335] the “Triumph of Beauty,” 1645); “How the vain world ambitiously aspires;” “Heaven guard my fair Dorinda:” and, perhaps, “Rise, golden Fame, and give thy name or birth.” Titles are added to most of these.
Page 179. So wretched are the sick of Love, is, on p. 37 of Wit at a Venture, entitled Distempered Love. The third verse is omitted.
Page 181. To Arms! To Arms! &c., on p. 39, entitled The Souldier’s Song; 13th line reads “Where we must try.”
Page 182. Beauty that it self can kill, on p. 35; reading, in 20th line, “When the fame and virtue falls || Careless courage,” &c.
Page 183. The young, the fair, &c., on p. 33, is entitled The Murdered Enemy; reading Clarissa for Camilla; and giving lines 17th and 19th, “Her beauties” and “Fierce Lions,” &c. Line 23rd is “And not to check it in the least.”
Called A Moral Song in Wit at a Venture, p. 41, which rightly reads “grovel,” not “gravel,” in line 6; but omits third verse, and all the Chorus.
We have not seen this elsewhere. Attributed to “the famous actor, Joseph Haines,” or “Joe Haynes,”
His portrait, as when riding on a Jack-ass, in 1697, is extant. He died 4th April, 1701, and was mourned by the Smithfield muses.
This is a parody or mock on a black-letter ballad in the Roxburghe Collection, ii. 102, entitled “The Deluded Lasses Lamentation: or, the False Youth’s Unkindness to his Beloved Mistress.” Its own tune. Printed for P. Brooksby, J. Deacon, J. Blare, J. Black. In four-line verses, beginning:—
The music to this is in Jn. Playford’s Musical Companion, 1673, p. 34 (as also to “Here lyes a woman,” &c. See Appendix to Westm. Droll., p. lviii).
See Choyce Drollery, 1656, p. 61, ante; and p. 293, for note correcting “daily” to “dully” in ninth line.
Not having had space at command, when giving a short Addit. Note on p. 408 of M. D. C., we now add a nursery rhyme (we should gladly have given another, which mentions catching the mare “Napping up a tree”). Perhaps the following may be the song reported as being sung in South Devon:—
As that prematurely wise young sceptic Paul Dombey declared, when a modern-antique Legend was proffered to him, “I don’t believe that story!” It is frightfully devoid of ærugo, even of æruca. It may do for South Devon, and for Aylesbury farmers over their “beer and bacca,” but not for us. The true Mosse found his genuine mare veritably “napping” (not dead), up a real tree.
In John Taylor’s “A Swarme of Sectaries and Schismatiqves,” 1641, his motto is (concerning Sam Howe lecturing from a tub),
(See Appendix to Westm. Droll., p. lxii.) The author of this frollicsome ditty was no other than Abraham Cowley (1618-67), dear to all who know his choice “Essays in Prose and Verse,” his unlaboured letters, the best of his smaller poems, or the story of his stainless life and gentleness. It is that noble thinker and poet, Walter Savage Landor, who writes, and in his finest mood:—
Yet while we yield unquestioningly the higher rank as Poet to John Milton, we hold the generous nature of his rival, Cowley, in more loving regard. He was not of the massive build in mind, or stern unflinching resolution needed for such times as those wherein his lot was cast. When the weakest goes to the wall, amid universal disturbance and selfish warring for supremacy, his was not the strong arm to beat back encroachment. Gentle, affectionate, and truthful, exceptionally pure and single-minded, although living as Queen Henrietta’s secretary in her French Court, where impurity of thought and lightness of conduct were scarcely visited with censure, the uncongenial scenes and company around him help to enhance the charm of his mild disposition. Heartless wits might lampoon him, stealthy foes defame him, lest he should gain one favour or reward that they were hankering after. To us he remains the lover of the “Old Patrician trees,” the friend of Crashaw and of Evelyn, the writer of the most delightful essays and familiar letters: alas! too few.
The “Song” in Westminster-Drollery, ii. 89, set by Pelham Humphrey, is the opening verse of Cowley’s “Ode: Sitting and Drinking in the Chair made out of the Reliques of Sir Francis Drake’s Ship.” [The chair was presented to the University Library, Oxford.]
Corrections: dull men are those who tarry; and spy too. Three verses follow. Of these we add the earliest, leaving uncopied the others, of 21 and 18 lines. They are to be found on p. 9 of Cowley’s “Verses written on Several Occasions,” folio ed., 1668. The idea of the shipwreck “in the wide Sea of Drink” had been early welcomed by him, and treated largely, Feb. 1638-9, in his Naufragium Joculare.
It must have been written before 1661, as it appears among the “Choyce Poems, being Songs, Sonnets, &c.”, printed for Henry Brome, (who ten years afterwards published Westm. Droll.) at the Gun in Ivie Lane, in that year. It is in the additional opening sheet, p. 13; not found in the 1658 editions of Choyce Poems.
Under the title “The Fetching Home of May,” we meet an early ballad-form copy in the Roxburghe Collection, i. 535, printed for J. Wright, junior, dwelling at the upper end of the Old Bailey. It begins “Now Pan leaves piping,” and is in two parts, each containing five verses. Three of these are not represented in the Antidote of 1661. Wm. Chappell, the safest of all guides in such matters, notes that “the publisher [of the broadside] flourished in and after 1635. No clue remains to the authorship.” (Bd. Soc. reprint, iii. 311, 1875.)
As in the case of the companion-ditty, “Come, Lasses and Lads” (Westm. Droll., ii. 80), we may feel satisfied that this lively song was written before the year 1642. No hint of the Puritanic suppression of Maypoles can be discerned in either of them. Such sports were soon[340] afterwards prohibited, and if ballads celebrating their past delights had then been newly written, the author must have yielded to the temptation to gird at the hypocrites and despots who desolated each village green. We cannot regard the Roxburghe Ballad as being superior to the Antidote version: But they mutually help one another in corrections. We note the chief: first verse, So lively it passes; Good lack, what paines; 2, Thus they so much; 3 (our 4), Came very lazily. It is after the five verses that differences are greatest. Our 6th verse is absent, and our 7th appears as the 8th; with new 6th, 7th, 9th, and 10th, which we here give, but print them to match our others:
THE FETCHING HOME OF MAY.
(The Second Part.)
FINIS.
We have a firm conviction that these verses (not including “The bright Apollo”) were unauthorized additions by an inferior hand, of a mere ballad-monger. We hold by the Antidote.
Here is the old ballad mentioned, from our own black-letter copy. Compare it with W. D.:—
The Devonshire Damsels’ Frollick.
Being an Account of nine or ten fair Maidens, who went one Evening lately, to wash themselves in a pleasant River, where they were discovered by several Young Men being their familiar Acquaintances, who took away their Gowns and Petticoats, with their Smocks and Wine and good Chear; leaving them a while in a most melancholly condition.
To a pleasant New Play-house Tune [music is given]: Or, Where’s my Shepherd?
This may be Printed. R[obt]. P[ocock, 1685-8].
Printed for P. Brooksby at the Golden Ball in Pye Corner [1672-95.]
O Love if e’er, &c. There is a parody or “Mock” to this, beginning “O Mars, if e’er thoult ease a blade,” and entitled “The Martial Lad,” in Wm. Hicks’ London Drollery, 1673, p. 116.
End of Notes to Westminster-Drollery.
(Not repeated in the 1670 and 1691 Editions.)
Collections of Songs, depending chiefly on the popularity of such as are already in vogue, or of others that promise fairly to please the reader, are necessarily of all books the most liable to receive alterations when re-issued. Thus we ourselves possess half-a-dozen editions of the Roundelay, and also of the Bullfinch, both undated eighteenth-century songsters; each copy containing a dozen or more of Songs not to be found in the others. Our Merry Drollery is a case in point. As already mentioned, there is absolutely no difference between the edition of 1670 and 1691 of Merry Drollery, Compleat, except the title-page. It was a well-understood trade stratagem, to re-issue the unsold sheets, those of 1670, with a freshly-dated title-page, as in 1691; so to catch the seekers after novelty by their most tempting lure. Even the two pages of “List of New Books” (reprinted conscientiously by ourselves in M. D., C., pp. 358, 359) are identical in both!
We take credit beforehand for the readers’ satisfaction at our providing such a Table of First Lines, as we hereafter give, that may enable him easily and convincedly to understand the alterations made from the 1661 edition of Merry Drollery, both parts, when it was re-issued in a single volume, paged consecutively, in 1670 and 1691. It is more difficult to understand why the changes were made, than thus to see what they were. 1. It could not have been from modesty: although some objectionable pieces were omitted, others, quite as open to censure, were newly admitted instead. 2. Scarcely could it have been that as political satires they were out of date (except in the case of the Triumph over The Gang—England’s Woe—and Admiral Dean’s Funeral: our pp. 198, 218, 206); for in the later volume are found other songs on events contemporary with these, which, being rightly considered to be of abiding interest, were retained. 3. It was not that the songs rejected were too common, and easily attainable; for they are almost all of extreme rarity, and now-a-days not procurable elsewhere. 4. It must have been a whim that ostracised them, and accepted novelties instead! At any rate, here they are! As in the case of the sheet from Westminster-Drollery, 1674 (see p. 177), readers possess the Extra Songs of both early and late editions, along with all that are common to both, and this without confusion.
Almost all of these Merry Drollery Extra Songs were written before the Restoration; of a few we know the precise date, as of 1653, 1650, 1623, &c. These are chiefly on political events, viz. the Funeral of Admiral Dean, so blithely commented on, with forgetfulness of the man’s courage and skill while remembering him only as an associate of rebels; the story of England’s Woe (certainly published before the close of 1648), with scorn against the cant of Prynne and Burton; the noisy, insensate revel of the song on the Goldsmith’s Committee (1647, p. 237), where we can see in the singers such unruly cavaliers as those who brought discredit and ruin; as also in the coarser “Letany” (on our page 241); and in the still earlier description of New England (before 1643), which forms a most important addition to the already rich material gathered from these contemporary records, shewing the views entertained of the nonconforming and irreconcileable zealots who held close connection with the discontented Dutchmen. Although caricatured and maliciously derisive, it is impossible to doubt that we have here a group of portraits sufficiently life-like to satisfy those who beheld the originals. As to the miscellaneous pieces, the Sham-Tinker, who comes to “Clout the Cauldron,” has genuine mirth to redeem the naughtiness. Dr. Corbet’s(?) “Merrie Journey into France” is crammed full of pleasantry, and while giving a record of sights[348] that met the traveller, enlivens it with airy gaiety that makes us willing companions. This, with variations, may be met with elsewhere in print; but not so the delightfully sportive invitation of The Insatiate Lover to his Sweetheart, “Come hither, my own Sweet Duck” (p. 247). To us it appears among the best of these thirty-five additions: musical and fervent, without coarseness, the song of an ardent lover, who fears nothing, and is ripe for any adventure that war may offer. One of Rupert’s reckless Cavaliers may have sung this to his Mistress. Of course it would be unfair to blame him for not being awake to the higher beauty of such a sentiment as Montrose felt and inspired:—
Or, as Lovelace nobly sings:—
C’est magnifique! mais ce n’est pas—L’amour. At least, and we imply no more, Lovelace and those who act on such high principles, find their Lux Casta marrying some neighbouring rival. But we may be sure that the singer of our Merry Drollery ditty won his Lass, literally in a canter.
Compare John Cleveland’s “Zealous Discourse between the Independent-Parson and Tabitha,” “Hail Sister,” &c. (J. C. Revived, 1662, p. 108); and also the superior piece of humour, beginning, “I came unto a Puritan to wooe,” M. D., C., p. 77. The following description of the earlier sort of Precisian, ridiculous but not yet dangerous, is by Richard Brathwaite, and was printed in 1615:—
To the Precisian.
The sixth line offers another illustration of what has been ably demonstrated by J. O. Halliwell, commenting on the “too-too solid flesh” of Hamlet, Act i. sc. 2, in Shakespeare Soc. Papers, i. 39-43, 1844.
By it being printed within double quotational commas, we see that the reference to a Puritan hanging his cat on a Monday, for having profanely caught a mouse on the Sabbath-Sunday, was already an old and familiar joke in 1615. James Hogg garbled a ballad in his Jacobite Relics, 1819, i. 37, as “There was a Cameronian Cat, Was hunting for a prey,” &c., but we have a printed copy of it, dated 1749, beginning “A Presbyterian Cat sat watching of her prey.” Also, in a poem “On Lute-strings, Cat-eaten,” we read:—
John Taylor, the Water-Poet, so early as 1620, writes of a Brownist:—
In the Percy Folio MS. (about 1650) p. 480; E. E. T. S., iv. 102, with a few variations, one of which we have noted in margin of p. 181. The industrious editors of the printed text of the Percy Folio MS. were not aware of the fact that many of the shorter pieces were already to be found in print; but this is no wonder. They are not easy to discover (see next p. 352), and although we ourselves note occasionally “not found elsewhere,” it is with the remembrance that a happy “find” may yet reward a continuous search hereafter. We do not despair of recovering even the lost line of “The Time-Poets.”
In the 1662 edit. of the Rump, i. 330, and in Loyal Sgs., 1731, i. 219. It may have been written so early as Jan. 15th, 1659-60, when Col. Lambert had submitted to the Parliament, on finding the troops disinclined to support him unanimously. Another ballad made this inuendo:—
Fairfax had returned to his house, and to Monk were given the thanks of the rescued Parliament. As M. de Bordeaux writes of him to Card. Mazarin, at this exact date, “he is now the most powerful subject in the whole nation. Fleetwood, Desborough, and all the others of the same faction are entirely out of employment” (Guizot’s Monk, 1851, p. 156). Although no mention or definite allusion seems made in the ballad to Monk’s attack on the London defences, Feb. 9th, we incline to think this may be nearer to the true date: if it refers to the oath of abjuration, of Feb. 4th, which was offered to Monk, as on March 1st. “Arthur’s Court” is an allusion to Sir Arthur Haselrig, “a rapacious, head-strong, and conceited agitator” (Ibid., p. 37). Monk had not publicly[352] declared himself for the King until May; but he was seen to be opposed to the Rump by 11th Feb., when its effigies were enthusiastically burnt. Richard Cromwell’s abdication had been, virtually, April 22nd, 1659.
This is another of the songs contained in the Percy Folio MS. (p. 460; iv. 92 of print); wrongly supposed to be otherwise lost, but imperfect there, our fourth and fifth verses being absent. We cannot accept “if that I may thy favour haue, thy bewtye to behold,” as the true reading; while we find “If that thy favour I may win With thee for to be bold:” which is much more in the Lover’s line of advance. Yet we avail ourselves of the “I am so mad” in 3rd verse, because it rhymes with “maidenhead,” in M. D., though not suiting with the “honestye” of the P. F. MS. The final half-verse is different.
Also in 1662 edition of the Rump, i. 308; and Loyal Songs, 1731, i. 192. The event referred to happened in June, 1653, the engagement between the English and Dutch fleets commencing on the 2nd, renewed the next day. Six of the Dutch ships were sunk, and twelve taken, with thirteen hundred prisoners. Blake, Monk, and Dean were the English commanders, until Dean was killed, the first day. Monk took the sole command on the next. Clarendon gives an account of the battle, and says: “Dean, one of the English Admirals, was killed by a cannon-shot from the Rear-Admiral of the Dutch,” before night parted them. “The loss of the English was greatest in their General Dean. There was, beside him, but one Captain, and about two hundred Common Sea-men killed: the number of the wounded was greater; nor did they lose one Ship, nor were they so disabled but that they followed with the whole fleet to the coast of Holland, whither the other fled; and being got into the Flie and the Texel, the English for some time blocked them[353] up in their own Harbors, taking all such Ships as came bound for those parts.” (His. Reb., B. iii. p. 487, ed. 1720.)
Verse 1. Nicholas Culpeper, of Spittle Fields, near London, published his New Method of Physick, and Alchemy, in 1654.
As to William Lilly, “the famous astrologer of those times, who in his yearly almanacks foretold victories for the Parliament with so much certainty as the preachers did in their sermons,” consult his letter written to Elias Ashmole, and the notes of Dr. Zachary Gray to Butler’s Hudibras, Part ii. Canto 3. “He lived to the year 1681, being then near eighty years of age, and published predicting almanacks to his death.” He was one of the close committee to consult about the King’s execution (Echard). He lost much of his repute in 1652; in 1655 he was indicted at Hickes Hall, but acquitted. He dwelt at Hersham, Walton-on-Thames, and elsewhere. Henry Coley followed him in almanack-making, and John Partridge next. In the Honble. Robt. Howard’s Comedy, “The Committee,” 1665, we find poor Teague has been consulting Lilly:—
Verse 12. The Master of the Rolls. This was Sir Dudley Digges, builder of Chilham Castle, near Canterbury, Kent, who had in 1627 moved the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham, and been rewarded with this Mastership.
Verse 18. Alludes to the rigorous suppression of the Play-houses (vide ante p. 285, for a descriptive Song); and as we see from verse 17, the Bear-garden, like Rope-dancers and Tumblers, met more tolerance than actors (except from Colonel Pride). Not heels were feared, but[354] heads and hands. Bears, moreover, could not stir up men to loyalty, but tragedy-speeches might. One Joshua Gisling, a Roundhead, kept bears at Paris Garden, Southwark.
23. “Goodman Lenthall,” “neither wise nor witty,” (“that creeps to the house by a backdoor,” Rump, ii. 185,) the Speaker of the Commons from 1640 to 1653; Alderman Allen, the dishonest and bankrupt goldsmith, both rebuked by Cromwell, when he forcibly expelled the Rump. (See the ballad on pp. 62-5 of M. D., C., verses 9 and 10, telling how “Allen the coppersmith was in great fear. He had done as [i.e. us] much hurt,” &c.; also 2, 15, for the dumb-foundered “Speaker without his Mace.”) This Downfall of the Rump had been on April 20th, 1653, not quite three months before the funeral of Dean. Whoever may have been the writer of this spirited ballad, we believe, wrote the other one also: judging solely by internal evidence.
24. Henry Ireton, who married Bridget Cromwell in January, 1646-7, and escaped from the Royalists after having been captured at Naseby, proved the worst foe of Charles, insatiably demanding his death, died in Ireland of the plague, 15th November, 1651. His body was brought to Bristol in December, and lay in state at Somerset House. Over the gate hung the “hatchment” with “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”—which one of the Cavaliers delightedly translated, “Good it is for his country that he is dead.” Like Dean’s, two years later, Ireton’s body was buried with ostentatious pomp in Henry VII.’s Chapel, (Feb. 6 or 7;) to be ignominiously treated at Tyburn after the Restoration. The choice of so royal a resting-place brought late insult on many another corpse. His widow was speedily married to Charles Fleetwood, before June, 1652.
In verse 26, we cannot with absolute certainty fill the blank. Yet, in the absence of disproof, we can scarcely doubt that the name suppressed was neither Sexby, “an active agitator,” who, in 1658, employed against Cromwell “all that restless industry which had formerly been exerted in his favour” (Hume’s Hist. Engd., cap. lxi.);[355] nor “Doomsday Sedgwick;” not Sidney, staunch Republican, Algernon Sidney, whose condemnation was in 1687 secured most iniquitously, and whose death more disgracefully stains the time than the slaughter of Russell, although sentimentalism chooses the latter, on account of his wife. Sidney was “but a young member” at the Dissolution of 20th April, 1653. Probably the word was Say, the notorious “Say and Seale,” “Crafty Say,” of whom we read:—
A MS. assertion gives the date of this Cantilena de Gallico itinere as 1623. There seems to us no good reason for doubting that the author was Dr. Richard Corbet (1582-1635), Bishop of Oxford, afterwards of Norwich. It is signed Rich. Corbett in Harl. MS. No. 6931, fol. 32, reverso, and appears among his printed poems, 3rd edit. 1672, p. 129. In Wit and Mirth, 1684, p. 76, it is entitled “Dr. Corbet’s Journey,” &c. But it is fair to mention that we have found it assigned to R. Goodwin, by the epistolary gossip of inaccurate old Aubrey (see Col. Franc. Cunningham’s “Mermaid edit.” of Ben Jonson, i. Memoirs, p. lvii. first note). In a recent edition of Sir John Suckling’s Works, 1874, it is printed as if by him (“There is little doubt that it is his”), i. 102, without any satisfactory external evidence being adduced in favour of Suckling. In fact, the external evidence goes wholly against the theory. The very MS. Harl. 367, which is used as authority, is both imperfect and corrupt throughout, as well as anonymous (ex. gratiæ, misreading the Bastern, for Bastile), and the date on it, 1623, will not suit Suckling at all: though Sir Hy. Ellis is guessed (by his supposed handwriting,) to[356] have attributed it to him. Could it be possible that he was otherwise unacquainted with the poem?
At earlier date than our own copy we find it, by Aug. 30th, 1656, in Musarum Deliciæ, p. 17, and in Parnassus Biceps, also 1656, p. 24. From this (as well as Harl. MS. 367) we gain corrections printed as our marginalia, pp. 214-6: deserv’d, for received; statue stairs, At Nôtre Dame; prate, doth please, &c. Harl. MS. 367 reads “The Indian Roc” [probably it is correct]; and “As great and wise as Luisuè” [Luines, who died 1622]. Parnassus Biceps has an extra verse, preceding the one beginning “His Queen,” (and Harl. 367 has it, but inferior):—
(A similar scandal meets us in other early French reigns: Diana de Poictiers had relations with Henry II., as well as with his father, Francis I., &c.) Compare West. Droll., i. 87, and its Appendix, pp. xxv-vi.
It may be a matter of personal taste, but we cannot recognize the genial Bishop in the “R. C., Gent.,” who wrote “The Times Whistle.” A reperusal of the E. E. T., 1871, almost convinces us that they were not the same person. We must look elsewhere for the author.
In MS., on fly leaf, prefixed to 1672 edition of Dr. Corbet’s poems, in the Brit. Mus. (press mark, 238, b. 56), we read:—
In the 1662 Rump, i. 39; and in Loyal Songs, 1731, i. 12. It is also in Parnassus Biceps so early as 1656, p. 159, where we obtain a few peculiar readings; even in the first line, which has “of England’s fate;” “Prin and Burton;” “wear Italian locks for their abuse (instead of “Stallion locks for a bush”); They’ll only have private keyes for their use,” &c. We are inclined to accept these as correct readings, although our text (agreeing with the Rump) holds an intelligible meaning. But those who have inspected the curiosities preserved in the Hôtel de Cluny, at Paris, can scarcely have forgotten “the Italian [pad-] Locks” which jealous husbands imposed upon their wives, as a preservative of chastity, whenever they themselves were obliged to leave their fair helpmates at home; and the insinuation that Prynne and Burton intended to introduce such rigorous precautions, nevertheless retaining “private keyes” for their own use, has a covert satire not improbable to have been intentional. Still, remembering the persistent war waged by these intolerant Puritans against “the unloveliness of love-locks,” there are sufficient claims for the text-reading: in their denunciation of curled ringlets “as Stallion locks” hung out “for a bush,” or sign of attraction, such as then dangled over the wine-shop door (and may still be seen throughout Italy), although “good wine needs no bush” to advertise it. Instead of “The brownings,” (i.e. The Brownists, a sect that arose in the reign of Elizabeth, founded by Robt. Browne), in final verse, Parnassus Biceps reads “The Roundheads.” The poem was evidently written between 1632 and 1642.[358] Strengthening the probability of “Italian locks” being the correct reading, we may mention in one of the Rump ballads, dated 26 January, 1660-1, we find “The Honest Mens Resolution” is to adopt this very expedient:—
Probably refers to the New Exchange, at Durham House stables (see Additional Note to page 134 of M. D., C.). Certainly written before 1656. Lines 15 and 32 lend some countenance, by similarity, to the received version in the previous song’s sixth verse.
With some trifling variations, this re-appears as “The Old Man and Young Wife,” beginning “There was an old man, and a jolly old man, come love me,” &c., in Wit and Mirth, 1684, p. 17. The tune and burden of “The Clean Contrary Way” held public favour for many years. See Pop. Mus. O. T., pp. 425, 426, 781. In the 1658 and 1661 editions of Choyce Poems [by John Eliot, and others], pp. 81, are a few lines of verse upon “The Fidler’s” that were committed for singing a song called, “The Clean Contrary Way”:—
Re-appears in Wit and Drollery, 1682, p. 291 (not in the 1656 and 1661 editions), as “The Jovial Tinker,” but with variations throughout, so numerous as to amount to absolute re-casting, not by any means an improvement: generally the contrary. Here are the second and following verses, of Wit and Drollery version:—
The words of a later Scottish version of “Clout the Cauldron,” beginning “Hae ye ony pots or pans, Or ony broken Chandlers?” (attributed by Allan Cunningham to one Gordon) retouched by Allan Ramsay, are in his Tea-Table Miscellany, 1724, Pt. i. (p. 96 of 17th edit., 1788.) Burns mentions a tradition that the song “was composed on one of the Kenmure family in the Cavalier time.” But the disguised wooer of the later version is repulsed by the lady. Ours is undoubtedly the earlier.
The music to this is given in Chappell’s Pop. Music of Olden Time [1855], p. 255, from the Dancing Master,[360] 1650-65, and Musick’s Delight on the Cithern, 1666, where the tune bears the title “Upon a Summer’s day.” In Pepy’s Collection, vol. i. are two other songs to the same tune.
Evidently a parody, or “Mock” of “Come hither, my own,” &c., for which, and note, see pp. 247, 367.
A different version of this same song, only half its length, in four-line stanzas, had appeared in J. Cotgrave’s Wit’s Interpreter, 1655, p. 124. It is also in the 1671 edition, p. 229; and in Wit and Drollery, 1682 edit., 287, entitled “The Tobacconist.” We prefer the briefer version, although bound to print the longer one; bad enough, but not nearly so gross as another On Tobacco, in Jovial Drollery, 1656, beginning “When I do smoak my nose with a pipe of Tobacco.”
In the Collection of Songs by the Wits of the Age, appended to Le Prince d’Amour, 1660, (but on broadsheet, 1641) we find the following far-superior lyric on
TOBACCO.
Audi alterem partem! Five years earlier (May 28th, 1655), William Winstanley had published “A Farewell to Tobacco,” beginning:—
The three pipes for two-pence was a cheapening of Tobacco since the days, not a century before, when for price it was weighed equally against gold. Our early friend Arthur Tennyson wrote in one of our (extant) Florentine sketch-books the following impromptu of his own:—
But even so early as 1639, Thomas Bancroft had printed, (written thirteen years before) in his First Booke of Epigrammes, the following,
ON TOBACCO TAKING.
We need merely refer to other Epigrams On Tobacco, as “Time’s great consumer, cause of idlenesse,” and “Nature’s Idea,” &c., in Wit’s Recreations, 1640-5, because they are accessible in the recent Reprint (would that it, Wit Restored and Musarum Deliciæ had been carefully edited, as they deserved and needed to be; but even the literal reprint of different issues jumbled together pell-mell is of temporary service): see vol. ii., pp. 45, 38; and 96, 97, 139, 161, 227, 271. Also p. 430, for the “Tryumph of Tobacco over Sack and Ale,” attributed to F. Beaumont, (if so, then before 1616) telling
and vol. i. p. 195, on “A Scholler that sold his Cussion” to buy tobacco. It is but an imperfect version on ii. 96, headed “A Tobacconist” (eight lines), of what we gave from Le Prince d’Amour: it begins “All dainty meats I doe defie, || Which feed men fat as swine.” Answered by No. 317, “On the Tobacconist,” p. 97. By the way: “Verrinus” in M. D., C., pp. 10, 364, consult History of Signboards, p. 354—“Puyk van Verinas en Virginia Tabac;” Englished, “Tip-Top Varinas,” &c.
Probably written by Thomas Weaver, and about 1646-8. It is in his collection entitled Love and Drollery, 1654, p. 13. Also in the 1662 Rump, i. 235; and the Loyal Garland, 1686 (Percy Soc. Reprint, xxix. 31). Compare a similar Song (probably founded on this one) by Sir Robt. Howard, in his Comedy, “The Committee,” Act iv., “Come, Drawer, some Wine, Let it sparkle and shine,”—or, the true beginning, “Now the Veil is thrown[363] off,” &c. The Committee of Sequestration of Estates belonging to the Cavaliers sat at Goldsmith’s Hall, while Charles was imprisoned at Carisbrook, in 1647. A ballad of that year, entitled “Prattle your pleasure under the Rose,” has this verse:—
(As Hamlet says, “You pray not well!”—but such provocation transfers the blame to those who caused the anger.)
Again, in another Ballad, “I thank you twice,” dated 21st August, same year, 1647:—
On our p. 239, it is amusing to find reference to “the Cannibals of Pym,” remembering how Lilburn and others of that party indulged in similar accusations of cannibalism, with specific details against “Bloody Bones, or Lunsford” (Hudibras, Pt. iii. canto 2), who was killed in 1644. Thus, “From Lunsford eke deliver us, || That eateth up children” (Rump i. 65); and Cleveland writes, “He swore he saw, when Lunsford fell, || A child’s arm in his pocket” (J. C. Revived, Poems, 1662, p. 110).
With the music, this reappears in Pills to p. Mel., 1719, iv. 84, entitled “The Glory of all Cuckolds.” Variations few, and unimportant: “The Man in Heaven’s” being a very doubtful reading. In the Douce Collection, iv. 41, 42, are two broadsides, A New Summons to Horn Fair, beginning “You horned fumbling Cuckolds, In City, court, or Town,” and (To the women) “Come, all you merry jades, who love to play the game,” with capital[364] wood-cuts: Jn Pitts, printer. They recal Butler’s description of the Skrimmington. The joke was much relished. Thus, in Lusty Drollery, 1656, p. 106, is a Pastorall Song, beginning:—
Three verses more, with the recurring witticism; repeated finally by his wife.
Also, earlier in Musarum Deliciæ, 1656, (Reprint, p. 48) as “The Louse’s Peregrinations,” but without the sixth verse. Breda, in the Netherlands, was beseiged by Spinola for ten months, and taken in 1625. Bergen, in our text, is a corrupt reading.
We do not understand whence it cometh that the most bitter non-conformity and un-Christian crazes of enthusiasm seem always to have thriven in Essex and the adjacent Eastern coast-counties, so far as Lincolnshire, but the fact is undeniable. Whether (before draining the fens, see “The Upland people are full of thoughts,” in A Crew of kind London Gossips, 1663, p. 65) this proceeded from their being low-lying, damp, dreary, and dismal, with agues prevalent, and hypochondria welcome as an amusement, we leave others to determine. Cabanis declared that Calvinism is a product of the small intestines; and persons with weak circulation and slow digestion are seldom orthodox, but incline towards fanaticism and uncompromising dissent. Your lean Cassius is a pre-ordained conspirator. Plain people, whether of features or dwelling-place, think too much of themselves. Mountaineers may often hold superstitions, but of the elemental forces and higher worship. They possess[365] moreover a patriotic love of their native hills, which makes them loth to quit, and eager to revisit them, with all their guardian powers: the nostalgia and amor patriæ are strongest in Highlanders, Switzers, Spanish muleteers, and even Welsh milkmaids. It was from flat-coasted Essex that most of the “peevish Puritans” emigrated to Holland, and thence to America, when discontented with every thing at home.
The form of a Le’tanty or Litany, for such mock-petitions as those in our text (not found elsewhere), and in M. D., C., p. 174, continued in favour from the uprise of the Independents (simply because they hated Liturgies), for more than a century. In the King’s Pamphlets, in the various collections of Loyal Songs, Songs on affairs of State, the Mughouse Diversions, Pills to purge State Melancholly, Tory Pills, &c., we possess them beyond counting, a few being attributed to Cleveland and to Butler. One, so early as 1600, “Good Mercury, defend us!” is the work of Ben Johnson.
Verse 1.—The “Brownist’s Veal” refers to Essex calves, and the scandal of one Green, who is said to have been a Brownist. 4.—“From her that creeps up Holbourne hill:” the cart journey from Newgate to the “tree with three corners” at Tyburn. Sic itur ad astra. When, Oct. 1654, Cromwell was thrown from the coach-box in driving through Hyde park, a ballad on “The Jolt on Michaelmas Day, 1654,” took care to point the moral:—
Thus also in M. D., C. p. 255:
5.—“Duke Humphrey’s hungry dinner” refers to the tomb popularly supposed to be of “the good Duke”[366] Humphrey of Gloucester (murdered 1447), but probably of Sir John Beauchamp (Guy of Warwick’s son), in Paul’s Walk, where loungers whiled away the dinner-hour if lacking money for an Ordinary, and “dined with Duke Humphrey.” See Dekker’s Gulls Horn Book, 1609, cap. iv. And Robt. Hayman writes:—
“An old Aunt”—this term used by Autolycus, had temporary significance apart from kinship, implying loose behaviour; even as “nunkle” or uncle, hails a mirthful companion. In Roxb. Coll., i. 384, by L[aur.] P[rice], printed 1641-83, is a description of three Aunts, “seldom cleanly,” but they were genuine relations, though “the best of all the three” seems well fitted by the Letany description: which may refer to her.
A version of this, slightly differing, is given with the music in Pills to p. Mell., iv. 191. It has the final couplet; which we borrow and add in square brackets.
Earlier by six years, but without the Answer, this had appeared in Wit and Drollery, 1656, p. 58; 1661, p. 60. It is also, as “written at Oxford,” in second part of Oxford Drollery, 1671, p. 97.
This, and the preceding, being superior to the other reserved songs might have been retained in the text but for the need to fill a separate sheet. This Answer is in Love and Mirth (i.e. Sportive Wit) 1650, p. 51.
Virtually the same (from the second verse onward) as “A Tenement to Let,” beginning “I have a Tenement,” &c., in Pills to p. Mel., 1720, vi. 355; and The Merry Musician (n. d. but about 1716), i. 43. Music in both.
Resembling this is “Ladies, here I do present you, With a dainty dish of fruit,” in Wit and Drollery, 1656, p. 103.
In Harl. MS. No. 6057, fol. 47. There it is entitled “The Puritans of New England.”
We come delightedly, as a relief, upon this racy and jovial Love-song, which redeems the close of the volume. It has the gaiety and abandon of John Fletcher’s and Richard Brome’s. We have never yet met it elsewhere. It was probably written about 1642. The reserved song in Part i., p. 153 (Supplement, p. 3), seems to be a vile parody on it, in the coarse fashion of those persons who disgraced the cause of the Cavaliers. The rank and file were often base, and their brutality is evidenced in the songs which we have been obliged to degrade to the Supplement.
It was certainly popular before 1659, for we find it quoted as furnishing the tune to “A proper new ballad (25 verses) on the Old Parliament,” beginning “Good Morrow, my neighbours all,” with a varying burden:—
The music is in Playford’s English Dancing Master, 1686.
Five years earlier, in Wit and Drollery, 1656, p. 56; 1661, p. 58. With the original, in M. D., C., p. 300, compare the similar disappointment, by Cleveland, “The Myrtle-Grove” (Poems, p. 160, edit. 1661.)
This is the same, except a few variations, as “Will you please to hear a new ditty?” in our Westminster-Drollery, 1671, i. 88; Appendix to ditto, pp. xxxvi-vii (compare the coarser verses, p. 368 in present volume, and “Upon the biting of Fleas,” in Musarum Deliciæ, 1656; Reprint, p. 64.)
[We here close our Notes to the “Extra Songs” of Merry Drollery, 1661. But we have still some Additional Notes, on what is common to the editions of 1661, 1670, and 1691 (as promised in M. D., C., p. 363).]
(Common to all editions, 1661, ’70, ’91, and 1875.)
MERRY
DROLLERY,
Complete.
OR,
A COLLECTION
| Of | { Jovial POEMS, |
| { Merry SONGS, | |
| { Witty DROLLERIES, |
Intermixed with Pleasant Catches.
The First Part.
Collected by
W.N. C.B. R.S. J.G.
LOVERS of WIT.
LONDON,
Printed for Simon Miller, at the Star, at
the West End of St. Pauls, 1670.
We here give the title-page of the 1670 Edition of Merry Drollery, Compleat, Part 1st. As mentioned on our p. 231, the 1670 edition was reissued as a new edition in 1691, but with no alteration except the fresh title-page, with its date and statement of William Miller’s stock in trade.
Of the four “Lovers of Wit,” 1661, we believe we have unearthed one, viz. “R. S.,” in Ralph Sleigh, who wrote a song beginning, “Cupid, Cupid, makes men stupid; I’ll no more of such boys’ play;” (Sportive Wit,) Jovial Drollery, 1656, p. 22.
Verse 6. “Mahomet’s pidgeon,” that was taught to pick seeds from out his ear, so that it might be thought to whisper to him. The “mad fellow clad alwaies in yellow,” i.e., in his military Buff-coat—“And somewhat his nose is blew, boys,” certainly[372] alludes to Oliver Cromwell: His being “King and no King,” to his refusing the Crown offered by the notables whom he had summoned in 1657. As the “New Peers,” his sons Henry and Richard among them, insulted and contemned by the later and mixed Parliament of January 20th, 1658, were “turned out” along with their foes the recalcitrant Commons, on Feb. 4th, we have the date of this ballad established closely.
Two other “Messes of Nonsense” may be found in Recreations for Ingenious Headpieces, 1645 (Reprint, Wit’s Recreations, pp. 400, 401); beginning “When Neptune’s blasts,” and “Like to the tone of unspoke speeches.” The latter we believe to have been written by Bishop Corbet. In Wit’s Merriment (i.e. Sportive Wit), 1656, is the following: A FANCY:—
These lines furnish a clue to the date of this ballad, (and its “Answer” quickly followed): “Honest Dick” being Richard Cromwell, whose Protectorate lasted only eight months, beginning in September, 1658. “The name with an L—” refers to his unscrupulous rival Lambert; with his spasmodic attempts at supremacy, urged on by his own ambition and that of his wife (accustomed too long to rule Oliver himself, during a close intimacy, not without exciting scandal, while she insisted on displacing Lady Dysart). For an account of Lambert’s twenty-one[373] years of captivity, first at Guernsey and later at Plymouth, see Choice Notes on History, from N. and Q., 1858, pp. 155-163. Lambert played a selfish game, lost it, and needs no pity for having had to pay the stakes. But for “Honest Dick,” “Tumble down Dick,” who had warmly pleaded with his father to save the king’s life in the fatal January of 1649, we keep a hearty liking. Carlyle stigmatizes him as “poor, idle, trivial,” &c., but let that pass. Had Richard been crafty or cruel, like those who removed him from power, his reign might have been prolonged. But “what a wounded name” he would have then left behind, compared with his now stainless character: and, in any case, his ultimate fall was certain.
An allusion to Middleton’s Comedy, “Blurt, Master Constable,” 1602.
The important event here described took place April 20th, 1653, and the ballad immediately followed. (Compare “Cheer up, kind country men,” by S. S., “Rebellion hath broken up house,” and “This Christmas time,” in the Percy Soc. Pol. Bds., iii. 126; 180 Loyal Songs, 149, 1694; Rump, ii. 52.) At this date the strife between the fag-end of the Rump and Oliver, who was supported by his council of officers, came to open violence. Fearing his increased power, it was proposed to strengthen the Parliamentarians by admitting a body of “neutrals,” Presbyterians, to act in direct opposition against the army-leaders. With a pretence of dissolving themselves there would have ensued a virtual extension of rule. Anxious and lengthy meetings had been held by Cromwell’s adherents at Whitehall, one notably on the 19th, and continued throughout the night. Despite a promise, or half promise, of delay made to him, the Rump was meantime hurrying onward the objectionable measure, clearly with intention of limiting his influence: among[374] the leaders being Sir Hy. Vane, Harry Marten, and Algernon Sidney. They knew it to be a struggle for life or death. From the beginning, this Long Parliament cherished the mistaken idea that they were everything supreme: providence, strength, virtue, and wisdom, etc., etc. If mere empty talk could be all this, such representative wind-bags might deserve some credit. Their doom was sealed; not alone for their incompetence, but also for proved malignity, and the attempt to perpetuate their own mischief, destroying the only power that seemed able to bring order out of chaos.
Cromwell received intelligence, from his adherents within the house, of the efforts being made to hurry the measure for settling the new representation, and then to dissolve for re-election. Major Harrison talked against time; until Cromwell could arrive after breaking up the Whitehall meeting. Ingoldsby, as the second or third messenger, had shown to him the urgent need of action. Followed by Lambert and some half-dozen officers, the General took with him a party of soldiers, reached the house, and found himself not too soon. Surrounding the chamber, and guarding the doors, the troopers remained outside. Clad in plain black, unattended and resolute, Oliver entered, stood looking on his discomfitted foes, and then sat down, speaking to no one except “dusky tough St. John, whose abstruse fanaticisms, crabbed logics, and dark ambitions issue all, as was natural, in decided avarice” (Carlyle’s Cromwell, iii. 168, 1671 edit.). Vane must have felt the peril, but held on unflinchingly, imploring the house to dispense with everything that might delay the measure, such as engrossing. The Speaker had risen at last to put the question, before the General started up, uncovered, and began his address. Something of stately commendation for past work he gave them. Perhaps at first his words were uttered solely to obtain a momentary pause, the whilst he gathered up his strength, and measured all the chances, before he broke with them for ever. Soon the tone changed into that of anger and contempt. He heaped reproaches on them: Ludlow says: “He spoke with so much passion and discomposure[375] of mind, as if he had been distracted.” “Your time is come!” he told them: “The Lord has done with you. He has chosen other instruments for the carrying on his work, that are more worthy.”
Vane, Marten, and Sir Peter Wentworth tried to interrupt him, but it was almost beyond their power. Wentworth could but irritate him by indignant censure. He crushed his hat on, sprang from his place, shouting that he would put an end to their prating, and, while he strode noisily along the room, railed at them to their face, not naming them, but with gestures giving point to his invectives. He told them to begone: “I say you are no Parliament! I’ll put an end to your sitting. Begone! Give way to honester men.” A stamp of his foot followed, as a signal; the door flies open, “five or six files of musqueteers” are seen with weapons ready. Resistance (so prompt, with less provocation, in 1642) is felt to be useless, and, except mere feminine scolding, none is attempted. Not one dares to struggle. Afraid of violence, their swords hang idly at their side. As they pass out in turn, they meet the scathing of Oliver’s rebuke. His control of himself is gone. Their crimes are not forgotten. He denounces Challoner as a drunkard, Wentworth for his adultery, Alderman Allen for his embezzlement of public military money, and Bulstrode Whitelock of injustice. Harry Marten is asked whether a whore-master is fit to sit and govern. Vane is unable to resist a feeble protest, availing nothing—“This is not honest: Yea! it is against morality and honesty.” In the absence of such crimes or flagrant sins of his companions, as his own frozen nature made him incapable of committing, there are remembered against him his interminable harangues, his hair-splitting, his self-sufficiency; and all that early deliberate treachery in ransacking his father’s papers, which he employed to cause the death of Strafford. To all posterity recorded, came the ejaculation of Cromwell: “Sir Harry Vane, Sir Harry Vane—the Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!” And, excepting a few dissentient voices, the said posterity echoes the words approvingly. The “bauble” mace had been[376] borne off ignominiously, the documents were seized, including that of the unpassed measure, the room was cleared, the doors were locked, and all was over. The Long Parliament thus fell, unlamented.
Written and published in 1659; as we see by the references to “Dick (Oliver’s Heir) that pitiful slow-thing, Who was once invested with purple clothing,”—his retirement being in April, 1659. Bradshaw, the bitter Regicide (whose harsh vindictiveness to Charles I. during the trial has left his memory exceptionally hateful), died 22nd November, 1659. Hewson the Cobbler was one of Oliver’s new peers, summoned in January, 1658.
The music to this, by Dr. John Wilson, is in his Chearfull Ayres, 1659-60, p. 126.
Gule is misprint for “Goal,” and refers to the Bishops who, having been molested and hindered from attending to vote among the peers, were, on 30th December, 1642, committed to the Tower for publishing their protest against Acts passed during their unwilling absence. Finch, Lord Keeper; who, to save his life, fled beyond sea, and did not return until after the Restoration.
To avoid a too-long interruption, our Additional Note to the “Sessions of the Poets” is slightly displaced from here, and follows later as Section Third.
We have traced this burlesque narrative of the Fire on London Bridge ten years earlier than Merry Drollery, 1661, p. 81. It appeared (probably for the first time in[377] print) on April 28th, 1651, at the end of a volume of facetiæ, entitled The Loves of Hero and Leander (in the 1677 edition, following Ovid de Arte Amandi, it is on p. 142). The event referred to, we suspect, was a destructive fire which broke out on London Bridge, 13th Feb. 1632-3. It is thus described:—“At the latter end of the year 1632, viz., on the 13th Feb., between eleven and twelve at night, there happened in the house of one Briggs, a needle-maker, near St. Magnus Church, at the north end of the bridge, by the carelessness of a maid-servant, setting a tub of hot sea-coal ashes under a pair of stairs, a sad and lamentable fire, which consumed all the buildings before eight of the clock the next morning, from the north end of the bridge, to the first vacancy on both sides, containing forty-two houses; water being then very scarce, the Thames being almost frozen over. Beneath, in the vaults and cellars, the fire remained burning and glowing a whole week after. After which fire, the north end of the bridge lay unbuilt for many years; only deal boards were set up on both sides, to prevent people’s falling into the Thames, many of which deals were, by high winds, blown down, which made it very dangerous in the nights, although there were lanthorns and candles hung upon all the cross-beams that held the pales together.” (Tho. Allen’s Hist. and Antiq. of London, vol. ii. p. 468, 1828.) Details and list of houses burnt are given (as in Gent. Mag. Nov. 1824), from the MS. Record of the Mercies of God; or, a Thankfull Remembrance, 1618-1635 (since printed), kept by the Puritan Nehemiah Wallington, citizen and turner, of London, a friend of Prynn and Bastwick. He gives the date as Monday, 11th February, 1633. Our ballad mentions the river being frozen over, and “all on the tenth of January;” but nothing is more common than a traditional blunder of the month, so long as the rhythm is kept. (Compare Choyce Drollery, p. 78, and Appendix p. 297).
Another Fire-ballad (in addition to the coarse squib in present vol., pp. 33-7,) is “Zeal over-heated;” telling of a fire at Oxford, 1642; tune, Chivey Chace; and beginning, “Attend, you brethren every one.” It is not[378] improbably by Thomas Weaver, being in his Love and Drollery, 1654, p. 21.
Of this song, from Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Beggar’s Bush,” bef. 1625, the music set by Dr. John Wilson is in his Cheerfull Ayres, 1659-60, p. 22.
“Mahomet’s Pigeon,” a frequent allusion: compare M. D. C., pp. 11, 192; and present appendix, p. 356.
See Additional Note in this vol. § 3, post, for a few words on D’Avenant. Since printing M. D. C., we have been enabled (thanks to W. F. Fowle, Esq., possessor of) to consult the very rare Second Satire, 1655, mentioned on p. 371. It is entitled, “The Incomparable Poem Gondibert Vindicated from the Wit-Combats of Four Esquires, Clinias, Dametas, Sancho, and Jack Pudding.” [With this three-fold motto:—]
Printed in the year 1655.” It begins on p. 3, with a poetical address to Sir Willm. Davenant, asking pardon beforehand in case his “yet-unhurt Reputation” should suffer more through the champion than from the attack made by the four “Cyclops, or Wit-Centaurs,” two of whom he unhesitatingly names as “Denham and Jack Donne,” or “Jack Straw.” But even thus early we notice the sarcasm against D’Avenant himself: when in reference to the never-forgotten “flaws” in his face, the Defender writes:—
The third poem, p. 8, again to the Poet, mocks him as well as his assailants’ lines (our M. D. C., p. 108) with twenty triplets:—
Next comes a poem “Upon the continuation of Gondibert,” “Ovid to Patmos pris’ner sent.” (Later, we extract the chief lines for the “Sessions” Add. Note.) He is told,
After five others, came one Upon the Author, beginning,
Ending thus:—
A burlesque of Gondibert on same p. 18, as “Canto the Second, or rather Cento the first;” begins “All in the Land of Bembo and of Bubb.” One stanza partly anticipates Sam. Butler:—
P. 23 gives “To Daphne on his incomparable (and by the Critick incomprehended) Poem, Gondibert,” this consolation:[380] “Chear up, dear friend, a Laureat thou must be,” &c. Hobbes comes in for notice, on p. 24, and Denham with his Cooper’s Hill has another slap. The final poem, on p. 27, is “Upon the Author’s writing his name, as in the Title of his Booke, D’Avenant:”—
(Finis.)”
Here, finally, are Waller, Denham, [Bro]de[rick], and Donne clearly indicated. They receive harder measure, on the whole, than D’avenant himself; so that the Second Volume of Satires, 1655, is neither by the author of “Gondibert,” nor by those who penned the “Certain Verses” of 1653. Q. E. D.
As already mentioned, the popularity of Suckling’s “Ballad on a Wedding” (probably written in 1642) caused innumerable imitations. Some of these we have indicated. In Folly in Print, 1667, is another, “On a Friend’s Wedding,” to the same tune, beginning, “Now Tom, if Suckling were alive, And knew who Harry were to wive.” In D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1699, p. 81: ed. 1719, iii, 65, is a different “New Ballad[381] upon a Wedding” [at Lambeth], with the music, to same tune and model, beginning, “The sleeping Thames one morn I cross’d, By two contending Charons tost.” Like Cleveland’s poem, as an imitation it possesses merit, each having some good verses.
Among the references herein to Cambridge Taverns is one (3rd verse) to the Myter: part of which fell down before 1635, and was celebrated in verse by that “darling of the Muses,” Thomas Randolph. His lines begin “Lament, lament, ye scholars all!” He mentions other Taverns and the Mitre-landlord, Sam:—
The mention, on pp. 116, of “our bold Army” turning out the “black Synod,” refers less probably to Colonel “Pride’s Purge” of the Presbyterians, on 6th December, 1648, than to the events of April 20, 1653; and helps to fix the date to the same year. In 6th verse the blanks are to be thus filled, “Arms of the Rump or the King;” “C. R., or O. P.;” the joke of “the breeches” being a supposed misunderstanding of the Commonwealth-Arms on current coin (viz., the joined shields of England and Ireland) for the impression made by Noll’s posteriors. Compare “Saw you the States-Money,” in Rump Coll., i. 289. On one side they marked “God with us!”
This song is almost certainly by Thomas Jordan, the City-Poet. With many differences he reprints it later[382] in his London in Luster, as sung at the Banquet given by the Drapers Company, October 29th, 1679; where it is entitled “The Coronation of Canary,” and thus begins (in place of our first verse):—
In sixth verse, “If a Cooper we With a red nose see,” refers to Oliver Cromwell; and proves it to have been written before September, 1658.
The date of this ballad seems to have been 1656, rather than 1658. The despotism of the sword here so powerfully described, was under those persons who are on p. 254 of M. D. C. designated “Oliver’s myrmidons,” meaning, probably, chiefly the major-generals of the military districts, into which the country was divided after Penruddock’s downfall in 1655. They were Desborough, Whalley, Goffe, Fleetwood, “downright” Skippon, Kelsey, Butler, Worseley, and Berry; to these ten were added Barkstead. Compare Hallam’s account:—“These were eleven in number, men bitterly hostile to the royalist party, and insolent to all civil authority.[383] They were employed to secure the payment of a tax of ten per cent., imposed by Cromwell’s arbitrary will on those who had ever sided with the King during the late wars, where their estates exceeded £100 per annum. The major-generals, in their correspondence printed among Thurloe’s papers, display a rapacity and oppression greater than their master’s. They complain that the number of those exempted is too great; they press for harsher measures; they incline to the unfavourable construction in every doubtful case; they dwell on the growth of malignancy and the general disaffection. It was not indeed likely to be mitigated by this unparalleled tyranny. All illusion was now gone as to the pretended benefits of the civil war. It had ended in a despotism, compared to which all the illegal practices of former kings, all that had cost Charles his life and crown, appeared as dust in the balance. For what was Ship-money, a general burthen, by the side of the present decimation of a single class, whose offence had long been expiated by a composition and effaced by an act of indemnity? or were the excessive punishments of the Star Chamber so odious as the capital executions inflicted without trial by peers, whenever it suited the usurper to erect his high court of justice [by which Gerard and Vowel in 1654, Slingsby and Dr. Hewit in 1658 fell]? A sense of present evils not only excited a burning desire to live again under the ancient monarchy, but obliterated, especially in the new generation, that had no distinct remembrance of them, the apprehension of its former abuses.” (Constitutional Hist. England, cap. x. vol. ii. p. 252, edit. 1872.) This from a writer unprejudiced and discriminating.
Tower hill and Tyburn. The date of this ferocious ballad is not likely to have been long before the execution of the regicides Harrison, Hacker, Cook, and Hew Peters, in October, 1660; some on the 13th, others on the 16th. Probably, shortly before the trial of Harry[384] Marten, on the 10th of the same month. The second verse indicates a considerable lapse of time since Monk’s arrival and the downfall of the Rump (burnt in effigy, Febr. 11, 1659-60); so we may be certain that it was written late, about September, if not actually at beginning of October.
Sir Robert Tichbourne, Commissioner for sale of State-lands, Alderman, Regulator of Customs, and Lord Mayor in 1658, was named in the King’s Proclamation, 6th June, 1660, as one of those who had fled, and who were summoned to appear within fourteen days, on penalty of being exempted from any pardon. His name occurs again, among the exceptions to the Act of Indemnity; along with those of Thos. Harrison, Hy. Marten, John Hewson, Jn. Cook, Hew Peters, Francis Hacker, and other forty-five. Nineteen of these fifty-one surrendered themselves: Tichbourne and Marten among them. None of them were executed; although Scoop was, who also had yielded. The trial of the regicides commenced on 9th October, at Hick’s Hall, Clerkenwell.
Hugh Peters suffered, along with John Cook (the Counsel against Charles I.) “that read the King’s charge,” on the 16th October. He was depressed in spirits at the last, but there was dignity in his reply to one who insulted him in passing—“Friend, you do not well to trample on a dying man;” and his sending a token to his daughter awakens pity. Physically he had failed in courage, and no wonder, to face all that was arrayed to terrify him: or he might have justified anticipations and “made a pulpit of the place.” His last sermon at Newgate is said to have been “incoherent.”
Harry Marten’s private life is so generally declared to have been licentious (dozens of ballads referring to his “harem,” “Marten’s girl that was neither sweet nor sound,” “Marten, back and leave your wench,” &c.), and his old friend Cromwell when become a foe openly taxing him as a “whoremaster,” that it is better for us to think of him with reference to his unswerving faithfulness in Republican opinions; his gay spirit (more resembling the reckless indifference of Cavaliers than his own[385] associates can have esteemed befitting); his successful exertions on many occasions to save the shedding of blood; and his gallant bearing in the final hours of trial. The living death to which he was condemned, of his twenty years imprisonment at Chepstow Castle, has been recorded (mistakenly as thirty) by that devoted student Robert Southey, clarum et venerabilem nomen! in a poem which can never pass into oblivion, although cleverly mocked by Canning in the Anti-Jacobin, Nov. 20, 1797:—
John Forster has written his memoir, and, in one of his best moments, Wallis painted him. Here are his own last words, sad yet firm, the old humour still apparent, if only in the choice of verse, it being the anagram of his name:—
As to Thomas Harrison, fifth-monarchy enthusiast, firm to the end in his adversity, he who had been ruthless in[386] prosperity, we have already briefly referred to his closing hours in our Introduction to Merry Drollery, Compleat, p. xxix.
John Hewson, Cobbler and Colonel, who had sat in the illegal mockery of Judgment on King Charles, was for the after years ridiculed by ballad-singers as a one-eyed spoiler of good leather. He escaped the doom of Tyburn by flight to Amsterdam, where he died in 1662. In default of his person, his picture was hung on a gibbet in Cheapside, 25th January, 1660-61. (See Pepys’ Diary of that date.) His appearance was not undignified. One ballad specially devoted to him, at his flight, is “A Hymne to the Gentle Craft; or, Hewson’s Lamentation”:—
Verse 14. Dr. John Hewit with Sir Harry Slingsby had been executed for conspiracy against Cromwell, 8th June, 1658. The Earl of Strafford’s death was May 12th, 1641; and that of Laud, January 10th, 1644.
Verse 15. Dun was the name of the Hangman at this time, frequently mentioned in the Rump ballads. Jack Ketch was his successor: Gregory had been Hangman in 1652.
The first Royal Exchange, Sir Thomas Gresham’s Bourse, was opened by Queen Elizabeth, January 23rd, 1570, and destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. The second was commenced on May 6th, 1667, and burnt on January 10th, 1838. The present building, the third,[387] was opened by Queen Victoria Oct., 28th, 1844. The “Old Exchange,” often referred to in ballads, was Gresham’s. But the “New Exchange” was one, erected where the stables of Durham House in the Strand had stood: opened April 11th, 1609, and removed in 1737. King James I. had named it “Britain’s Bourse.” Built on the model of the established Royal Exchange, it had “cellars, a walk, and a row of shops, filled with milliners, seamstresses, and those of similar occupations; and was a place of fashionable resort. What, however, was intended to rival the Royal Exchange, dwindled into frivolity and ruin, and the site is at present [1829] occupied by a range of handsome houses facing the Strand” (T. Allen’s Hist. and Antiq. of London, iv. 254). In the ballad it is sung of as “Haberdashers’ Hall.” Cp. Roxb. Coll., ii., 230.
This is an imperfect version of “A Woman’s Birth,” merely the beginning, four stanzas. The whole fifteen (eleven following ours) are reprinted by Wm. Chappell, in the Ballad Society’s Roxburghe Bds., iii. 94, 1875, from a broadside in Roxb. Coll., i. 466, originally printed for Francis Grove [1620-55]. 2nd verse reads:—Her husband Hymen; 4th. Wandring eye; insatiate. The gifts of Juno, Flora, and Diana follow; with woman’s employment of them.
We find this in MS. Harleian, No. 6396, fol. 13. Also two printed copies, in Parnassus Biceps, 1656, 124; and in Sportive Wit, same year, p. 39. We gained the corrections, which we inserted as marginalia, from the MS.; “Ceres in hir Garland” having been corrupted into “Cealus in his.” “Aglaura,” Sir John Suckling’s play, (printed originally in 4to. 1639, with a broad margin of blank, on which the wits made merry with epigrammes, “By this wide margent,” &c.), appeared on April 18th,[388] 1638, and is here referred to. Probably the date of the poem is nearly as early. On p. 175 the “Pilgrimage up Holborn Hill” refers to a journey from Newgate to Tyburn. (See p. 365).
The Mad-Man’s Morrice; written by Humfrey Crouch: For the second part of the broad-sheet version we must refer readers to vol. ii. page 153, of the Ballad Society’s reprint of the Roxburghe Ballads (now happily arrived at completion of the first massive folio vol. of Major Pearson’s original pair; the bulky third and slim fourth vols. being afterwards added). We promised to give it, and gladly would have done so, if we had space: for it is a trustworthy picture of a Bedlamite’s sufferings, under the harsh treatment of former days. Date about 1635-42.
To our enumeration of mad songs (Westm. Droll. App. p. 9) we may add Thomas Jordan’s “I am the woefullest madman.”
“I’ll drink to thee a brace of quarts || Whose Anagram is called True Hearts.” The Anagram of True Hearts gives us “Stuart here!” which, like drinking “to the King—over the water!” in later days by the Jacobites, would be well understood by suspected cavaliers.
In March 1659-60 appeared the anagram “Charles Stuart: Arts Chast Rule.” Later: Awld fool, Rob the Jews’ Shop.
Like “How happy’s the prisoner,” Ibid. p. 107, we trace this so early as 1656. It is in Sportive Wit, p. 12, as “When I go to revel in the night,” The Drunkard’s Song.
The Bow Goose. We have found this, (15 verses of[389] our 18,) five years earlier, in Sportive Wit, 1656, p. 35. It there begins, “The best of Poets write of Hogs, And of Ulysses barking Dogs; Others of Sparrows, Flies, and Hogs.” Our text, though later, seems to be the better, and has three more verses: “Frogs,” in connection with “the Best of Poets,” referring to Homer and to Batrachomyomachia; supposed to be his, and translated by George Chapman, about 1623 (of whom A. C. Swinburne has recently written so glowing a eulogium, coupling with it the noblest praise of Marlowe).
Of course, the words displayed by dashes are Crown, Bishop, King. To this same tune are later songs (1659-60) in the Rump, ii. 193-200, “What a reprobate crew is here,” &c. Wilkins prints an inferior version of 7th line in 3rd verse, as “Take Prynne and his clubs, or Say and his tubs,” referring to William, Viscount “Say and Seal.” Ours reads “club, or Smec and his tub,” the allusion being to Smectymnuus, a name compounded, like the word Cabal in Charles II.’s time, of the initials of five personal names: Ste. Marshall, Edm. Calamy, Thos. Young, Matth. Newcomen, and Willm. Spurstow; all preachers, who united in a book against Episcopacy and the Liturgy. Milton, in 1641 published his Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence against Smectymnuus; and in 1642, An Apology for Smectymnuus. John Cleveland devotes a poem to “The Club Divines,” beginning “Smectymnuus! the Goblin makes me start.” (Poems, p. 38, 1661; also in the Rump Coll., i. 57.)
Correction:—Instead of the words “Choyce Drollery, p. 31,” in first line of note (M. D., C., p. 382), read “Jovial Drollery (i.e., Sportive Wit), p. 59.” The same date, viz. 1656.
The reference here is to the proposed expedition of disheartened[390] Cavaliers (among whom was Wm. D’Avenant) from France and England to the Virginian plantations. It was defeated in 1650, the vessels having been intercepted in the channel by the Commonwealth’s fleet. By the way, the infamous sale into slavery of the royalist prisoners during the war in previous years by the intolerant Parliament, deserves the sternest reprobation.
An appropriate dower, as Sea-coal Lane in the Old Bailey bore a similar evil repute to Turnball Street, Drury Lane, and Kent Street, for the bona-roba tribe: as “the suburbs” always did.
Written when Oliver rejected the title of King, 8th May, 1657. (See next note, on p. 254.)
After Cromwell’s designating the Battle of Worcester, 3rd September, 1651, his “crowning victory” many of his more uncompromising Republicans kept a stealthy eye upon him. Our ballad evidently refers itself to the date of the “purified” Parliament’s “Petition and Advice,” March 26, 1656, when Cromwell hesitated before accepting or declining the offered title of King; thinking (mistakenly, as we deem probable) that his position would become more unsafe, from the jealousy and prejudices of the army, than if he seemed contented with the name of Protector to the Commonwealth, while holding the actual power of sovereignty. His refusal was in April, 1657. Hallam thinks it was not until after Worcester fight that “he began to fix his thoughts, if not on the dignity of royalty, yet on an equivalent right of command. Two remarkable conversations, in which Whitelock bore a part, seem to place beyond controversy the nature of his designs. About the end of 1651, Whitelock himself,[391] St. John, Widdrington, Lenthall, Harrison, Desborough, Fleetwood, and Whalley met Cromwell, at his own request to consider the settlement of the nation,” &c. (Constit. Hist. England, cap. x. p. 237, edit. 1872.) “Twelve months after this time in a more confidential discourse with Whitelock alone, the general took occasion to complain both of the chief officers of the army and of the parliament,” &c. (Ibid. p. 238). The conference not being satisfactory to Cromwell, on each occasion ended abruptly; and Whitelock (if we may trust his own account, which perhaps is asking too much) was little consulted afterwards. When they had conferred the title of Lord Protector, the right of appointing his successor was added on 22nd May.
“With upsie freeze I line my head,” of our text, is in the play “Cromwell’s Coronation” printed “With tipsy frenzie.” But we often find the other phrase; sometimes, as in the ballad of “The Good Fellow’s Best Beloved” (i.e. strong drink) varied thus, “With good ipse he,” (about 1633). See Bd. Soc. Roxb. Bds. iii. 248, where is W. Chappell’s note, quoting Nares:—“It has been said that op-zee, in Dutch, means ‘over sea,’ which cones near to another English phrase for drunkenness, being ‘half-seas over.’ But op-zyn-fries means, ‘in the Dutch fashion,’ or à la mode de Frise, which perhaps is the best interpretation of the phrase.” In Massinger and Decker’s “Virgin Martyr,” 1622, Act ii. sc. 1, we find the vile Spungius saying, “Bacchus, the God of brewed wine and sugar, grand patron of rob-pots, upsie freesie tipplers, and super-naculum takers,” &c. Probably Badham’s conjecture is right, and in Hamlet, i. 4, we should read not “up-spring,” but
(Cambr. Essays, 1656; Cambr. Shakesp. viii. 30). T. Caldecott had so early as 1620 (in Spec. new edit. Shakesp. Hamlet) anticipated the guess, but not boldly.[392] He brings forward from T. Lodge’s Wit’s Miserie, 4to, 1596, p. 20, “Dance, leap, sing, drink, upsefrize.” And again:—
A new Spring shadowed in sundrie pithie Poems by Musophilus, 4to. 1619, signat. l. b., where “Upsefreese” is the name of the frier. Like “Wassael” and “Trinkael,” the phrase upsie-friese, or vrijster, seems to have been used as a toast, perhaps for “To your sweetheart.”
The exact date of this ballad’s publication was 31st December, 1659: in Thomason Collection, Numero xxii., folio, Brit. Mus.
Probably written in 1659-60, when Monk was bridling the Commons. “Cooks” alludes to John Cook, the Solicitor for the Commonwealth, who at the trial of Charles Ist. exhibited the charge of high treason. After the Restoration, Cook was executed along with Hugh Peters, 16th Oct., 1660, at Charing Cross.
“Hyrens” (as earlier printed in Wit and Drollery, 1656, p. 26), instead of “Syrens” of our text, is probably correct. Ancient Pistol twice asks “Have we not Hirens here?” (Henry IV., Part 2nd, Act ii. sc. 4). George Peele had a play, now lost, on “The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the fair Greek” [1594?] In the Spiritual Navigator, 1615, we learn, is a passage, “There be Syrens in the sea of the world. Syrens? Hirens, as[393] they are now called. What a number of these syrens, hirens, cockatrices, courteghians—in plain English, harlots—swimme amongst us!”
An unfortunate misprint crept in, detected too late: for “Feasts” read properly “Jeasts:” the old fashioned initial J being barred across like F.
This must have been an established jest. Compare Introd. to M. D., C., pp. xxxi-ii. and T. Randolph’s “Fall of the Mitre Tavern,” Cambridge, before 1635,
“He that gave the King a hundred horse,” refers, no doubt, to Sir John Suckling and his loyal service in 1642. See introduction to M. D., C., pp. xix. xx. The Answer to “I tell thee, Jack, thou gavest the King,” there mentioned, and probably referring to Sir John Mennis, a carping rival although a Cavalier, has a smack of Cleveland about it (it certainly is not Suckling’s):—
This is by Willm. Browne, author of “Britannia’s Pastorals.” The date is probably about fifteen years before 1645. It is one among the “Odes, Songs, and[395] Sonnets of Wm. Browne,” in the Lansdowne MS. 777, fol. 4 reverso and 5, with extra verses not used in the Catch.
A Rounde. [1st verse sung by] All.
All.
“Noe hoggs are in my grounds” may refer to the Catch (if it be equally old):—
In 1641 this was printed separately and anonymously as “A Preparative to Studie; or, the Vertue of Sack,” 4to. Ben Jonson had died in August, 1637. Line 9 reads: dull Hynde; 21, Genius-making; 28, Welcome, by; after the word “scapes” these additional lines:—
Line 46, instead of “long since,” reads “of late” (referring to whom?); 38, tempt a Saint; 44, farther bliss; 53, against thy foes (N.B.); That would; and, additional, after “horse,” in line 56, this historical allusion to David Lesley, of the Scotch rebellion:—
By this we are guided to the true date: between May, 1639, and August, 1640.
Compare pp. 129, 315, of present volume, for the Antidote version and note upon it. Brief references must suffice for annotation here. See Mallory’s “Morte d’Arthur,” the French Lancelot du Lac, and Sir Tristram. Three MSS., the Auchinlech, Cambridge University, and Caius College, preserve the romance of Sir Bevis of Hamptoun, with his slaying the wild boar; his sword Morglay is often mentioned, like Arthur’s Excalibur: Ascapard, the thirty-feet-long giant, who after a fierce battle becomes page to Sir Bevis. Caius Coll. MS. and others have the story Richard Cœur de Leon, but the street-ballad served equally to keep alive his fame among[397] the populace, Coll. Old. Bds. iii. 17. Wm. Ellis gives abstracts of romances on Arthur, Guy of Warwick, Sir Bevis, Richard Lion-heart, Sir Eglamour of Artoys, Sir Isumbras, the Seven Wise Masters, Charlemagne and Roland, &c., in his Spec. Early English Metrical Romances; of which J. O. Halliwell writes, in 1848:—“Ellis did for ancient romance what Percy had previously accomplished for early poetry.” In passing, we must not neglect to express the debt of gratitude due to the managers of the E. E. Text Soc., for giving scholarly and trustworthy prints of so many MSS., hitherto almost beyond reach. For Orlando Inamorato and Orlando Furioso we must go to Boiardo and Ariosto, or the translators, Sir John Harrington and W. Stewart Rose. Dunlop’s Hist. of Fiction gives a slight notice of some of this ballad’s heroes, including Huon of Bordeaux, the French Livre de Jason, Prince of the Myrmidons, the Vie de Hercule, the Cléopâtre, &c. Valentine and Orson is said to have been written in the reign of Charles VIII., and first printed at Lyons in 1495. SS. David, James, and Patrick, with the rest of the Seven Champions, like the Four Sons of Aymon, are of easy access. Cp. Warton.
(Merry Droll., Com., pp. 312, 395; Antidote ag. Mel., 16).
Here is the five years’ earlier Song of “Arthur o’ Bradley,” (vide ante, pp. 166-175) never before reprinted, we believe, and not mentioned by J. P. Collier, W. Chappell, &c., when they referred to “Saw ye not Pierce the Piper” of Antidote and M. D., C., 1661. But ours is the earliest-known complete version [before 1642?]:—
A SONG. [p. 81.]
The often mentioned “Arthur o’ Bradley’s Wedding,” a modern version attributed to Mr. Taylor, the actor and singer, is given, not only in Songs and Ballads of the Peasantry, &c., (p. 139 of R. Bell’s Annot. ed.), collected by J. H. Dixon; but also in Berger’s Red, White, and Blue Monster Songbook, p. 394, where the music arranged by S. Hale is stated to be “at Walker’s.”
The reference to “Goldsmith’s Hall” (see p. 363), where[403] a Roundhead Committee sate in 1647, and later, for the spoliation of Royalists’ estates, levying of fines and acceptance of “Compounders” money, dates the song.
If we are to reckon the “twelve years together by the ears” from January 4, 1641-2, the abortive attempt of Charles I. to arrest at the House “the Five Members” (Pym, Hampden, Haslerig, Denzil Holles, and Strode), we may guess the date of this ballad to be 1653-4. Verse 14 mentions Oliver breaking the Long Parliament (20th April, 1653); and verses 15, 16 refer to the Little, or “Barebones Parliament” July 4, to 2nd December, 1653, (when power was resigned into the hands of Cromwell). Shortly after this, but certainly before Sept. 3rd, 1654 (when the next Parliament, more impracticable and persecuting, met), must be the true date of the ballad. “Robin the Fool” is “Robin Wisdom,” Robert Andrews. “Fair” is Thomas Lord Fairfax the “Croysado-General.” “Cowardly W——” is probably Philip, Lord Wharton, a Puritan, and Derby-House committee-man; of inferior renown to Atkins in unsavoury matters; but whose own regiment ran away at Edgehill: Wharton then took refuge in a saw-pit. President Bradshaw died 22nd Nov., 1659. Dr. Isaac Dorislaus, Professor of History at Cambridge, and of Gresham College, apostatized from Charles I., and was sent as agent by the Commons to the Hague, where he was in June, 1649, assassinated by some cavaliers, falsely reported to be commissioned by the gallant Montrose (see the ballad “What though lamented, curst,” &c., in King’s Pamphlets, Brit. Mus.).
“Askew,” is “one Ascham a Scholar, who had been concerned in drawing up the King’s Tryal, and had written a book,” &c., (Clarendon, iii. 369, 1720). This Anthony Ascham, sent as Envoy to Spain from the Parliament in 1649, was slain at Madrid by some Irish officers, (Rapin:) of whom only one, a Protestant, was executed. See Harl. Misc. vi. 236-47. All which helped to cause the war with Spain in 1656.
Harry Marten’s evil repute as to women, and lawyer Oliver St. John’s building his house with stones plundered from Peterborough Cathedral, were common topics. “The women’s war,” often referred to as the “bodkin and thimble army,” of 1647, was so called because the “Silly women,” influenced by those who “crept into their houses,” gave up their rings, silver bodkins, spoons and thimbles for support of Parliamentary troops.
We should for Our read Only.
An allusion to William Lilly’s predictive almanacks, shewing that this Catch was not much earlier in date than Hilton’s book, 1652. Lilly was the original of Butler’s “Cunning man, hight Sidrophel” in Hudibras, Part 2nd, Canto 3. Compare note, p. 353.
For misprint alterem, read alteram.
References should be added to the Rump Coll., 1662, i. 95, and Loyal Songs, 1731, i. 92. “Isaack,” is probably Isaac Pennington. Hampden and others were meditating this journey to New England, until stopped, most injudiciously, by an order in Council, dated April 6, 1638.
We here give our additional Note, on the “Sessions of the Poets,” reserved from p. 376.
We believe that Sir John Suckling’s Poem, sometimes called “A Sessions of Wit,” was written in 1636-7; almost certainly before the death of Ben Jonson (6th August, 1637). Among its predecessors were Richard Barnfield’s “Remembrance of some English Poets,” 1598 (given in present volume, p. 273); and Michael Drayton’s “Censure of the Poets,” being a Letter in couplets, addressed to his friend Henry Reynolds; and the striking lines, “On the Time-Poets,” pp. 5-7 of Choyce Drollery, 1656. The latter we have seen to be anonymous; but they were not impossibly by that very Henry Reynolds, friend of Drayton; although of this authorship no evidence has yet arisen. Of George Daniel’s unprinted “Vindication of Poesie,” 1636-47, we have given specimens on pp. 272, 280-1, and 331-2. Later than Suckling (who died in 1642), another author gave in print “The Great Assizes Holden in Parnassus by Apollo and his Assessors:” at which Sessions are arraigned Mercurius Britannicus, &c., Feb. 11th, 1644-5. This has been attributed to George Wither; most erroneously, as we believe. The mis-appropriation has arisen, probably, from the fact of Wither’s name being earliest on the roll of Jurymen summoned:
George Wither was quite capable of placing himself first on the list, in such a manner, we admit; but it is incredible to us that, if he had been the author, he could[406] have described himself so insultingly as we find in the following lines, and elsewhere:—
Two much more sparkling and interesting “Sessions of Poets” afterwards appeared, to the tune of Ben Jonson’s “Cook Laurel.” The first of these begins:—
The author did not avow himself. It must have been written, we hold, in 1664-5. The second is variously attributed to John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, being printed in the works of both. It begins:—
Assembled near Parnassus, Dryden, Etherege, Wycherley, Shadwell, Nat Lee, Settle, Otway, Crowne, Mrs. Aphra Behn, Rawlins, Tom D’Urfey, and Betterton, are in the other verses sketched with point and vivacity; but in malicious satire. It was probably written in 1677. Clever as are these two later “Sessions,” they do not equal Suckling’s, in genial spirit and unforced cheerfulness.
We need not here linger over the whimsical Trial of Tom D’Urfey and Tom Brown (who squabbled between themselves, by the bye), in a still later “Sessions of the Poets Holden at the foot of Parnassus Hill, July the 9th, 1696: London, printed for E. Whitlock, near Stationers’ Hall, 1696”:—a mirthful squib, which does not lay claim to be called poetry. Nor need we do more than mention “A Trip to Parnassus; or, the Judgment of Apollo on Dramatic Authors and Performers. A Poem. London, 1788”—which deals with the two George Colmans, Macklin, Macnally, Lewis, &c. Coming to our own century, it is enough to particularize Leigh Hunt’s “Feast of the Poets;” printed in his “Reflector,” December, 1811, and afterwards much altered, generally with improvement (especially in the exclusion of the spiteful attack on Walter Scott). It begins—“’Tother day as Apollo sat pitching his darts,” &c. In 1837 Leigh Hunt wrote another such versical review, viz., “Blue-Stocking Revels; or, The Feast of the Violets.” This was on the numerous “poetesses,” but it cannot be deemed successful. Far superior to it is the clever and interesting “Fable for Critics,” since written by James Russell Lowell in America.
Both as regards its own merit, and as being the parent of many others (none of which has surpassed, or even equalled it), Sir John Suckling’s “Sessions of Poets” must always remain famous. We have not space remaining at command to annotate it with the fulness it deserves.
The type-ornaments in Choyce Drollery reprint are merely substitutes for the ruder originals, and are not in fac-simile, as were the Initial Letters on pages 5 and 7 of our Merry Drollery, Compleat reprint.
Page 42, line 6, “a Lockeram Band:” Lockram, a cheap sort of linen, see J. O. Halliwell’s valuable Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, p. 525, edit. 1874. To this, and to the same author’s 1876 edition of Archdeacon Nares Glossary, we refer readers for other words.
Page 73-77, 297, Marchpine, or Marchpane, biscuits often made in fantastic figures of birds or flowers, of sweetened almonds, &c. Scettuall, or Setiwall, the Garden Valerian. Bausons, i.e. badgers. Cockers; boots. Verse fifth omitted from Choyce Drollery, runs:—
A few typographical errors crept into sheet G (owing to an accident in the Editor’s final collation with original). P. 81, line 2, read Blacke; line 20, Shaft; p. 85, line 3, Unlesse; p. 86, line 5, Physitian; line 17, that Lawyer’s; p. 87, line 9, That wil stick to the Laws; p. 88, line 8, O that’s a companion; p. 90, first line, basenesse; line 23, nature; p. 91, line 13, add a comma after the word blot; p. 94, line 13, Scepter; p. 96, line 10, Of this; p. 97, line 15, For feare; p. 99, line 6, add a comma; p. 100, line 13, finde. These are all single-letter misprints.
Page 269, line 14, for encreasing, read encreaseth; and end line 28 with a comma.
I. H. in line 35, are the initials of the author, “Iohn Higins.”
Page 270, line 9, add the words—“It is by Sir Wm. Davenant, and entitled ‘The Dying Lover.’”
Page 275, penultimate line, read Poet-Beadle. P. 277, l. 17, for 1698 read 1598.
Page 281, line 20, for liveth, read lives; claime.
Page 289, after line 35, add—“Page 45, ‘As I went to Totnam.’ This is given with the music, in Tom D’Urfey’s Pills to purge Melancholy, p. 180, of 1700 and 1719 (vol. iv.) editions; beginning ‘As I came from Tottingham.’ The tune is named ‘Abroad as I was walking.’ Page 52, He that a Tinker; Music by Dr. Jn. Wilson.”
Page 330, after line 10, add—“Fly, boy, fly: Music by Simon Ives, in Playford’s Select Ayres, 1659, p. 90.”
The date of “The Zealous Puritan,” M. D. C., p. 95, was 1639. “He that intends,” &c., Ibid., p. 342, is the Vituperium Uxoris, by John Cleveland, written before 1658 (Poems, 1661, p. 169).
“Love should take no wrong,” in Westminster-Drollery, 1671, i. 90, dates back seventy years, to 1601: with music by Robert Jones, in his Second Book of Songs, Song 5.
Introduction to Merry Drollery (our second volume) p. xxii. lines 20, 21. Since writing the above, we have had the pleasure of reading the excellent “Memoir of Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland,” and the “Althorp Memoirs,” by G. Steinman Steinman, Esq., F. S. A., (printed for Private Circulation, 1871, 1869); by the former work, p. 22, we are led to discredit Mrs. Jameson’s assertion that the night of May 29, 1660, was spent by Charles II. in the house of Sir Samuel Morland at Vauxhall. “This knight and friend of the King’s may have had a residence in the parish of Lambeth before the Restoration, but as he was an Under Secretary of State at the time, it is more probable that he lived in London; and as he did not obtain from the Crown a lease of Vauxhall mansion and grounds until April 19, 1675, the foundations of a very improbable story, whoever originated it, are considerably shaken.” Mr. Steinman inclines to believe the real place of meeting was Whitehall. He has given a list of Charles II.’s male companions in the Court at Bruges, with short biographies, in the Archæologia, xxxv. pp. 335-349. We knew not of this list when writing our Introduction to Choyce Drollery.
The Phœnix (emblematical of the Restoration) is adapted from Spenser’s Works, 1611.
[The Songs and Poems peculiar to the first edition, 1661 (having been afterwards omitted), are here distinguished by being printed in Roman type. They are all contained in the present volume. Those that were added, in the later editions only, have no number attached to them in our first column of pages, viz. for 1661. The third edition, in 1691, was no more than a re-issue of the 1670 edition, with a fresh title-page to disguise it, in pretence of novelty (see p. 345, ante). The outside column refers to our Reprint of the “Drolleries;” but where the middle column is blank, as shewing the song was not repeated in 1670 and 1691, our Reprint-page belongs to the present volume. The “Reserved Pieces,” given only in Supplement, bear the letter “R” (for the extra sheet, signed R*).—Ed.]
| First Lines. | [In Editions] | 1661 | 1670 | 1875 |
| A Brewer may be a Burgess | ii. | 70 | 252 | 252 |
| A fig for Care, why should we | 217 | 217 | ||
| A Fox, a Fox, up gallants | 29 | 38 | 38 | |
| A Maiden of late, whose name | 160 | 170 | 170 | |
| A Pox on the Jaylor, and on his | 289 | 289 | ||
| A Puritan of late | 2 | 195 | ||
| A Session was held the other day | 68 | 72 | 72 | |
| A Story strange I will you tell | ii. | 12 | 200 | 200 |
| [412]A young man of late | 27 | 201 | ||
| A young man that’s in love | 34 | 42 | 42 | |
| A young man walking all alone | 32 | 204 | ||
| After so many sad mishaps | 112 | 118 | 118 | |
| After the pains of a desperate Lover | 171 | 171 | ||
| Ah, ah, come see what’s | 30 | 40 | 40 | |
| All in the Land of Essex | 48 | 56 | 56 | |
| Am I mad, O noble Festus? | ii. | 50 | 234 | 234 |
| Amarillis told her swain | 8 | 10 | ||
| Among the Purifidian sect | ii. | 103 | 243 | |
| Are you grown so melancholy? | ii. | 101 | 286 | 286 |
| Aske me no more why there appears | 62 | 70 | 70 | |
| Bacchus I am, come from | 61 | 69 | 69 | |
| Be merry in sorrow | 1b | 6 | 8 | |
| Be not thou so foolish nice | 61 | 69 | 69 | |
| Blind Fortune, if thou want’st | 163 | 172 | 172 | |
| Bring forth your Cunny-skins | ii. | 8 | 196 | 196 |
| But since it was lately enacted | ii. | 24 | 212 | 212 |
| Call for the Master, oh, this | 9 | 11 | ||
| Call George again, boy | ii. | 118 | 304 | 304 |
| Calm was the evening, and clear | 220 | 220 | ||
| Calm was the evening, and clear | 292 | 292 | ||
| Cast your caps and cares aside | 87 | 92 | 92 | |
| Come, Drawer, and fill us about | ii. | 80 | 263 | 263 |
| Come, Drawer, some wine | ii. | 29 | 237 | |
| Come, Drawer, turn about the b. | ii. | 86 | 268 | 268 |
| Come, Drawer, come, fill us | ii. | 3 | 190 | 190 |
| Come, faith, let’s frolick | ii. | 65 | 246 | 246 |
| Come, hither, my own sweet | ii. | 106 | 247 | |
| Come, Imp Royal, come away | ii. | 45 | 231 | 231 |
| Come, Jack, let’s drink a pot of Ale | 45 | 52 | 52 | |
| [413]Come, let us drink, the time invites | 93 | 97 | 97 | |
| Come, let’s purge our brains | 114 | 121 | 121 | |
| Come, my dainty Doxies, my Dove | ii. | 44 | 230 | 230 |
| Come, my Daphne, come away | 86 | 91 | 91 | |
| Come, my delicate, bonny sweet | 23 | 34 | 34 | |
| Cook Laurel would needs have | ii. | 26 | 214 | 14 |
| Discoveries of late have been | ii. | 33 | Rf | |
| Doctors, lay by your irkesome | 41 | 48 | 48 | |
| Fair Lady, for your New Year’s | ii. | 81 | Rn | |
| Fetch me Ben Johnson’s scull | 293 | 293 | ||
| From Essex Anabaptist Laws | ii. | 38 | 241 | |
| From hunger and cold, who lives | ii. | 9 | 197 | 197 |
| From Mahomet and Paganisme | 164 | 174 | 174 | |
| From the fair Lavinian shore | 291 | 291 | ||
| From what you call’t Town | 191 | 182 | 182 | |
| Full forty times over I have, &c. | ii. | 61 | Ri | |
| Gather your rosebuds while | ii. | 11 | 199 | 199 |
| Go, you tame Gallants | ii. | 57 | 242 | 242 |
| God bless my good Lord Bishop | 166 | 176 | 176 | |
| Good Lord, what a pass is this | 75 | 79 | 79 | |
| Had she not care enough | 211 | 211 | ||
| Hang Chastity! it is | 88 | 220 | ||
| Have you observed the Wench | ii. | 141 | 332 | 332 |
| He is a fond Lover, that doateth | ii. | 62 | Rl | |
| He that a happy life would lead | ii. | 147 | 339 | 339 |
| He that intends to take a wife | ii. | 153 | 342 | 342 |
| Heard you not lately of a man | 169 | 180 | 180 | |
| Here’s a health unto his Majesty | 212 | 212 | ||
| Hey, ho, have at all! | 168 | Re | ||
| Hold, quaff no more | ii. | 19 | 210 | 210 |
| How happy is the Prisoner | 101 | 107 | 107 | |
| [414]How poor is his spirit | ii. | 48 | 232 | 232 |
| I am a bonny Scot, Sir | 119 | 127 | 127 | |
| I am a Rogue, and a stout one | ii. | 16 | 204 | 204 |
| I came unto a Puritan to woo | 73 | 77 | 77 | |
| I doat, I doat, but am a sot | ii. | 53 | 237 | 237 |
| I dreamt my Love lay in her bed | 11 | 197 | ||
| I have reason to fly thee | ii. | 97 | 281 | 281 |
| I have the fairest Non-perel | ii. | 99 | 283 | 283 |
| I loved a maid—she loved not me | ii. | 151 | Rp | |
| I marvel, Dick, that having been | 46 | 54 | 54 | |
| I mean to speak of England’s | 85 | 218 | ||
| I met with the Divel in the shape | 103 | 109 | 109 | |
| I pray thee, Drunkard, get thee | ii. | 119 | 306 | 306 |
| I tell thee, Kit, where I have been | 317 | 317 | ||
| I went from England into France | 64 | 213 | ||
| If any one do want a House | ii. | 64 | Rm | |
| If any so wise is, that Sack | ii. | 157 | 348 | 348 |
| If every woman were served in her | 80 | 85 | 85 | |
| If none be offended with the scent | ii. | 77 | 259 | 259 |
| If that you will hear of a ditty | ii. | 149 | 253 | |
| If thou wilt know how to chuse | 21 | 32 | 32 | |
| If you will give ear | ii. | 46 | Rg | |
| I’ll go no more to the Old Exchange | 126 | 134 | 134 | |
| I’ll sing you a sonnet, that ne’er | 66 | 66 | ||
| I’ll tell thee, Dick, where I have | 97 | 101 | 101 | |
| I’ll tell you a story, that never w. t. | 123 | 131 | 131 | |
| In Eighty-eight, e’er I was born | 77 | 82 | 82 | |
| In the merry month of May | 99 | 99 | ||
| It chanced not long ago, as I was | ii. | 82 | 264 | 264 |
| It was a man, and a jolly old man | 95 | 222 | ||
| Ladies, I do here present you | ii. | 55 | 240 | 240 |
| [415]Lay by your pleading, Law | 118 | 125 | 125 | |
| Lay by your pleading, Love lies a | ii. | 4 | 191 | 191 |
| Let dogs and divels die | 31 | 41 | 41 | |
| Let Souldiers fight for praise | ii. | 31 | 218 | 218 |
| Let the Trumpet sound | ii. | 142 | 333 | 333 |
| Let’s call, and drink the cellar dry | 130 | 138 | 138 | |
| Listen, lordings, to my story | ii. | 32 | 240 | |
| Mine own sweet honey bird | 153 | Rc | ||
| My bretheren all attend | 91 | 95 | 95 | |
| My Lodging is on the cold ground | 290 | 290 | ||
| My Masters, give audience | ii. | 91 | 275 | 275 |
| My Mistris is a shittle-cock | 51 | 60 | 60 | |
| My Mistris is in Musick | 154 | 163 | 163 | |
| My Mistris, whom in heart | 107 | 113 | 113 | |
| Nay, out upon this fooling | 79 | 84 | 84 | |
| Nay, prithee, don’t fly me | 25 | 36 | 36 | |
| Ne’er trouble thy self at the times | 219 | 219 | ||
| Nick Culpepper and William Lilly | 56 | 190 | ||
| No man Love’s fiery passion | ii. | 1 | 187 | 187 |
| No sooner were the doubtful people | ii. | 58 | 243 | 243 |
| Now, gentlemen, if you will hear | 18 | 29 | 29 | |
| Now I am married, Sir John | ii. | 96 | 280 | 280 |
| Now, I confess, I am in love | 1 | 5 | 7 | |
| Now Lambert’s sunk, and gallant | 12 | 198 | ||
| Now thanks to the Powers below | 156 | 166 | 166 | |
| Now that the Spring has filled | ii. | 110 | 296 | 296 |
| Now we are met in a knot | ii. | 138 | 328 | 328 |
| O that I could by any Chymick | ii. | 31 | 239 | |
| O the wily, wily Fox | ii. | 114 | 300 | 300 |
| Of all the Crafts that I do know | 7 | 17 | 17 | |
| Of all the rare juices | 178 | 178 | ||
| [416]Of all the Recreations, which | 146 | 146 | ||
| Of all the Sciences beneath the Sun | ii. | 129 | 319 | 319 |
| Of all the Sports the world doth | ii. | 111 | 296 | 296 |
| Of all the Trades that ever I see | ii. | 40 | 225 | 225 |
| Of an old Souldier of the Queen’s | 20 | 31 | 31 | |
| Oliver, Oliver, take up thy Crown | ii. | 72 | 254 | 254 |
| Once was I sad, till I grew to be | 2b | 10 | 12 | |
| Pox take you, Mistris, I’ll be gone | ii. | 118 | 304 | 304 |
| Pray, why should any man | ii. | 87 | 270 | 270 |
| Riding to London, in Dunstable | 14 | 200 | ||
| Room for a Gamester | ii. | 10 | 197 | 197 |
| Room for the best Poets heroick! | 96 | 100 | 100 | |
| Saw you not Pierce the piper | ii. | 124 | 312 | 312 |
| She lay all naked in her bed | ii. | 115 | 300 | 300 |
| She lay up to the navel bare | ii. | 116 | Ro | |
| She that will eat her breakfast | ii. | 120 | 308 | 308 |
| Shew a room, shew a room | ii. | 145 | 337 | 337 |
| Sir Eglamore, that valiant knight | ii. | 75 | 257 | 257 |
| Some Christian people all give ear | 81 | 87 | 87 | |
| Some wives are good, and some | 302 | 302 | ||
| Stay, shut the gate! | ii. | 18 | 207 | 207 |
| Sublimest discretions have club’d | 287 | 287 | ||
| The Aphorisms of Galen | ii. | 94 | 277 | 277 |
| The best of Poets write of F. | 141 | 153 | 153 | |
| The Hunt is up, the Hunt is up | 20 | 30 | 30 | |
| The Proctors are two, and no more | 105 | 111 | 111 | |
| The Spring is coming on | 40 | 47 | 47 | |
| The thirsty Earth drinks up | 22 | 22 | ||
| The Turk in linnen wraps | 13 | 25 | 25 | |
| The Wise Men were but seven | 232 | 232 | ||
| The World’s a bubble, and the life | 104 | 110 | 110 | |
| [417]There dwelt a Maid in the C. g. | 37 | 46 | 46 | |
| There is a certain idle kind of cr. | 140 | 152 | 152 | |
| There was a jovial Tinker | 17 | 27 | 27 | |
| There was a Lady in this land | 134 | 223 | ||
| There was an old man had an acre | 44 | 52 | 52 | |
| There was three birds that built | 139 | Ra | ||
| There was three Cooks in C | ii. | 129 | 318 | 318 |
| There’s a lusty liquor which | 132 | 140 | 140 | |
| There’s many a blinking verse | ii. | 35 | 221 | 221 |
| Three merry Boys came out | 220 | 220 | ||
| Three merry Lads met at the Rose | 143 | 143 | ||
| ’Tis not the Silver nor Gold | 109 | 115 | 115 | |
| To friend and to foe | 38 | 23 | 23 | |
| Tobacco that is wither’d quite | 16 | 26 | 26 | |
| Tom and Will were Shepherd | 149 | 149 | ||
| Upon a certain time | 146 | Rb | ||
| Upon a Summer’s day | 148 | 230 | ||
| Wake all you Dead, what ho! | 151 | 151 | ||
| Walking abroad in the m. | 76 | 81 | 81 | |
| We Seamen are the honest boys | 152 | 162 | 162 | |
| What an Ass is he, Waits, &c. | ii. | 90 | 273 | 273 |
| What Fortune had I, poor Maid | ii. | 152 | 341 | 341 |
| What is that you call a Maid. | ii. | 68 | 249 | 249 |
| What though the ill times do run | 116 | 124 | 124 | |
| What though the times produce | 161 | Rd | ||
| When blind god Cupid, all in an | ii. | 2 | 188 | 188 |
| When first Mardike was made | 4 | 12 | 12 | |
| When first the Scottishwar | 89 | 93 | 93 | |
| When I a Lady do intend to flatter | ii. | 158 | 348 | 348 |
| When I do travel in the night | ii. | 73 | 255 | 255 |
| When I’se came first to London | ii. | 133 | 323 | 323 |
| [418]When Phœbus had drest | ii. | 69 | 250 | 250 |
| When the chill Charokoe blows | 155 | 164 | 164 | |
| White bears have lately come | 149 | 159 | 159 | |
| Why should a man care | ii. | 146 | 337 | 337 |
| Why should we boast of Arthur | ii. | 122 | 309 | 309 |
| Why should we not laugh | ii. | 136 | 326 | 326 |
| Will you hear a strange thing | 53 | 62 | 62 | |
| You Gods, that rule upon | ii. | 21 | 233 | |
| You talk of New England | ii. | 84 | 266 | 266 |
| You that in love do mean to sport | ii. | 22 | 235 |
| [Present Reprint,] | Page |
| A Man of Wales, a little before Easter | 157 |
| An old house end | 153 |
| Bring out the [c]old Chyne | 146 |
| Come, come away to the Tavern, I say | 150 |
| Come hither, thou merriest of all the Nine | 133 |
| Come, let us cast dice who shall drink | 151 |
| Drink, drink, all you that think | 158 |
| Fly boy, fly boy, to the cellar’s bottom | 157 |
| Good Symon, how comes it | 154 |
| Hang Sorrow, and cast away Care | 152 |
| Hang the Presbyter’s Gill | 144 |
| He that a Tinker, a tinker will be | 52 |
| In love? away! you do me wrong | 147 |
| I’s not come here to tauke of Prut | 141 |
| Jog on, jog on the foot-path-way | 156 |
| Let’s cast away Care | 152 |
| Mongst all the pleasant juices | 150 |
| My Lady and her Maid | 152 |
| Never let a man take heavily | 151 |
| Not drunken nor sober | 113 |
| [420]Of all the birds that ever I see | 155 |
| Old Poets Hypocrin admire | 143 |
| Once I a curious eye did fix | 139 |
| The parcht earth drinks the rain | 157 |
| The wit hath long beholden been | 135 |
| There was an old man at Walton Cross | 151 |
| This Ale, my bonny lads | 155 |
| ’Tis Wine that inspires | 145 |
| Welcome, welcome, again to thy wit | 159 |
| What are we met? Come, let’s see | 156 |
| Why should we boast of Arthur | 129 |
| Wilt thou be fat? I’ll tell thee how | 154 |
| Wilt thou lend me thy mare | 153 |
| With an old song made by an old a. p. | 125 |
| You merry Poets, old boyes | 149 |
| Your mare is lame, she halts outright | 153 |
Here the Editor closes his willing toil, (after having added a Table of First Lines, and a Finale,) and offers a completed work to the friendly acceptance of Readers. They are no vague abstractions to him, but a crowd of well-distinguished faces, many among them being renowned scholars and genial critics. To approach them at all might be deemed temerity, were it not that such men are the least to be feared by an honest worker. On the other hand, it were easy for ill-natured persons to insinuate accusations against any one who meddles with Re-prints of Facetiæ. Blots and stains are upon such old books, which he has made no attempt to disguise or palliate. Let them bear their own blame. There are dullards and bigots in the world, nevertheless, who decry all antiquarian and historical research. A defence is unnecessary: “Let them rave!”
He thanks those who heartily welcomed the earlier Volumes, and trusts that no unworthy successor is to[422] be found in the present Conclusion, which holds many rare verses. Hereafter may ensue another meeting. Our olden Dramatists and Poets open their cellars, full of such vintage as Dan Phœbus had warmed. Leaving these “Drolleries of the Restoration” behind him, as a Nest-Egg, the Editor bids his Readers cheerfully
FAREWELL!
“Laudator temporis acti” cantat:—
J. W. E.
Biblioth. Ashmol., Cantium, 1876.
[End of “The ‘Drolleries’ of the Restoration.”]
Uniform with “Choice Drollery.”
Published at 10s. 6d. to Subscribers, now raised to 21s; large paper, published at £1 1s, now raised to £2 2s.
A RE-PRINT
OF THE
Westminster Drollery,
1671, 1672.
To those who are already acquainted with the two parts of the Westminster Drollery, published in 1671 and 1672, it must have appeared strange that no attempt has hitherto been made to bring these delightful volumes within reach of the students of our early literature. The originals are of extreme rarity, a perfect copy seldom being attainable at any public sale, and then fetching a price that makes a book-hunter almost despair of its acquisition. So great a favourite was it in the Cavalier times, that most copies have been literally worn to pieces in the hands of its many admirers, as they chanted forth a merry stave from the pages. There is no collection of songs surpassing it in the language, and as representative of the lyrics of the first twelve years after the Restoration it is unequalled: by far the greater number are elsewhere unattainable.
The Westminster Drolleries are reprinted with the utmost fidelity, page for page, and line for line, not a word being altered, or a single letter departing from the original spelling.
DROLLERY RE-PRINTS.
NOW READY.
“Merry Drollery, Complete,”
1661, 1691.
Merry Drollery, Complete is not only amusing, but as an historical document is of great value. It is here reproduced, with the utmost exactitude, for students of our old literature, from the edition of 1691. The few rectifications of a corrupt text are invariably held within square brackets, when not reserved for the Appendix of Notes, Illustrations, and Emendations. Thirty-four Songs, additional, that appeared only in the 1661 edition, will be given separately; the intermediate edition of 1670 being also collated. A special Introduction has been prefixed, drawing attention to the political events of the time referred to, and some account of the authors of the Songs in this Merry Drollery.
The work is quite distinct in character from the Westminster Drolleries, 1671-72, but forms an indispensable companion to that ten-years-later volume. Twenty-five songs and poems, that had not appeared in the 1661 edition, were added to the after editions of Merry Drollery; but without important change to the book. It was essentially an offspring of the Restoration, the year 1660-61, and it thus gives us a genuine record of the Cavaliers in their festivity. Whatever is offensive, therefore, is still of historical importance. Even the bitterness of sarcasm against the Rump Parliament, under whose rule so many families had long groaned; the personal invective, and unsparing ridicule of leading Republicans and Puritans; were such as not unnaturally had found favour during the recent Civil War and Usurpation. The preponderance of Songs in praise of Sack and loose revelry is not without significance. A few pieces of coarse humour, double entendre, and breaches of decorum attest the fact that already among the Cavaliers were spread immorality and licentiousness. The fault of an impaired discipline had home evil fruit, beyond defeat in the field and exile from positions of power. Mockery and impurity had been welcomed as allies, during the warfare against bigotry, hypocrisy, and selfish ambition. We find, it is true, few of the sweeter graces of poetry in Choice Drollery and in Merry Drollery; but, instead, much that helps us to a sounder understanding of the social, military, and political life of those disturbed times immediately preceding the Restoration.
Of the more than two hundred pieces, contained in Merry Drollery, fully a third are elsewhere unattainable, and the rest are scarce. Among the numerous attractions we may mention the rare Song of “Love lies a bleeding” (p. 191), an earnest protest against the evils of the day; the revelations of intolerant military violence, such as The Power of the Sword (125), Mardyke (12), Pym’s Anarchy (70), The Scotch War (93), The New Medley of the Country-man, Citizen, and Soldier (182), The Rebel Red-Coat (190), and “Cromwell’s Coronation” (254), with the masterly description of Oliver’s Routing the Rump (62). Several Anti-Puritan Songs about New England are here, and provincial descriptions of London (95, 275, 323). Rollicking staves meet us, as from the Vagabond (204), The Tinker of Turvey (27), The Jovial Loyallist, with the Answer to it, in a nobler strain, by one who sees the ruinous vileness of debauchery (pp. 207, 209); and a multitude of Bacchanalian Catches. The two songs on the Blacksmith (225, 319), and both of those on The Brewer (221, 252), referring to Cromwell, are here; as well as the ferocious exultation over the Regicides in a dialogue betwixt Tower-hill and Tyburn (131). More than a few of the spirited Mad-songs were favourites. Nor are absent such ditties as tell of gallantry, though few are of refined affection and exalted heroism. The absurd impossibilities of a Medicine for the Quartan Ague (277, cf. 170), the sly humour of the delightful “How to woo a Zealous Lady” (77), the stately description of a Cock-fight (242), the Praise of Chocolate (48), the Power of Money (115), and the innocent merriment of rare Arthur o’ Bradley’s Wedding (312), are certain to please. Added, are some of the choicest poems by Suckling, Cartwright, Ben Jonson, Alexander Brome, Fletcher, D’Avenant, Dryden, Bishop Corbet, and others. “The Cavalier’s Complaint,” with the Answer to it, has true dramatic force. The character of a Mistress (60), shows one of the seductive Dalilahs who were ever ready to betray. The lampoons on D’Avenant’s “Gondibert” (100, 118) are memorials of unscrupulous ridicule from malicious wits. “News, that’s No News” (159), with the grave buffoonery of “The Bow Goose” (153), and the account of a Fire on London Bridge (87), in the manner of pious ballad-mongers (the original of our modern “Three Children Sliding on the Ice”), are enough to make Heraclitus laugh. Some of the dialogues, such as “Resolved not to Part” (113), “The Bull’s Feather” (i.e. the Horn, p. 264), and that between a Hare and the hounds that are chasing him (296), lend variety to the volume; which contains, moreover, some whimsical stories in verse, (one being “A Merry Song” of a Husbandman whose wife gets him off a bad bargain, p. 17: compare p. 200), told in a manner that would have delighted Mat Prior in later days.
It is printed on Ribbed Toned paper, and the Impression is limited to 400 copies, fcap. 8vo. 10s. 6d.; and 50 copies large paper, demy 8vo. 21s. Subscribers’ names should be sent at once to the Publisher,
Robert Roberts, Boston, Lincolnshire.
Every copy is numbered and sent out in the order of Subscription.
☞ This series of Re-prints from the rare Drolleries is now completed in Three Volumes (of which the first published was the Westminster Drollery): that number being sufficient to afford a correct picture of the times preceding and following the Restoration 1660, without repetition. The third volume contains “Choice Drollery,” 1656, and all of the “Antidote against Melancholy,” 1661, which has not been already included in the two previous volumes; with separate Notes, and Illustrations drawn from other contemporary Drolleries.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS, &c.
“Strafford Lodge, Oatlands Park,
Surrey, Feb. 4, 1875.
Dear Sir,
I received the “Westminster Drolleries” yesterday evening. I have spent nearly the whole of this day in reading it. I can but give unqualified praise to the editor, both for his extensive knowledge and for his admirable style. The printing and the paper do great credit to your press.... I enclose a post-office order to pay for my copy.
Yours truly,
Wm. Chappell.”
Mr. Robert Roberts.
From J. O. Halliwell, Esqre.
“No. 11, Tregunter Road, West Brompton,
London, S. W.,
25th Feby. 1875.
Dear Sir,
I am charmed with the edition of the “Westminster Drollery.” One half of the reprints of the present day are rendered nearly useless to exact students either by alterations or omissions, or by attempts to make eclectic texts out of more than one edition. By all means let us have introductions and notes, especially when as good as Mr. Ebsworth’s, but it is essential for objects of reference that one edition only of the old text be accurately reproduced. The book is certainly admirably edited.
Yours truly,
J. O. Phillipps.”
To Mr. R. Roberts.
From F. J. Furnivall, Esq.
“3, St. George’s Square, Primrose Hill, London, N.W.,
2nd February, 1875.
My Dear Sir,
I have received the handsome large paper copy of your “Westminster Drolleries.” I am very glad to see that the book is really edited, and that well, by a man so thoroughly up in the subject as Mr. Ebsworth.
Truly yours,
F. J. F.”
From the Editor of the “Fuller’s Worthies Library,” “Wordsworth’s Prose Works,” &c.
“Park View, Blackburn,
Lancashire, 13th July, 1875.
Dear Sir,
I got the “Westminster Drolleries” at once, and I will see after the “Merry Drollery” when published.
Go on and prosper. Mr. Ebsworth is a splendid fellow, evidently.
Yours,
A. B. Grosart.”
J. P. Collier, Esqre., has also written warmly commending the work, in private letters to the Editor, which he holds in especial honour.
From the “Academy” July 10th, 1875.
“It would be a curious though perhaps an unprofitable speculation, how far the ‘Conservative reaction’ has been reflected in our literature.... Reprints are an important part of modern literature, and in them there is a perceptible relaxation of severity. Their interest is no longer mainly philological. Of late, the Restoration has been the favourite period for revival. Its dramatists are marching down upon us from Edinburgh, and the invasion is seconded by a royalist movement in Lincolnshire. A Boston publisher has begun a series of drolleries—intended, not for the general public, but for those students who can afford to pay handsomely for their predilection for the byways of letters.
“The Introduction is delightful reading, with quaint fancies here and there, as in the ‘imagined limbo of unfinished books.’ ... There is truth and pathos in his excuses for the royalist versifiers who ‘snatched hastily, recklessly, at such pleasures as came within their reach, heedless of price or consequences.’ We may not admit that they were ‘outcasts without degradation,’ but we can hardly help allowing that ‘there is a manhood visible in their failures, a generosity in their profusion and unrest. They are not stainless, but they affect no concealment of faults. Our heart goes to the losing side, even when the loss has been in great part deserved.’ ... The fact is, that in his contemplation of the follies and vices of ‘that very distant time’ he loses all apprehension of their grosser elements, and retains only an appreciation of their wit, their elegance, and their vivacity. Without offence be it said, in Lancelot’s phrase, ‘he does something smack, something grow to; he has a kind of taste,’—and so have we too, as we read him. These trite and ticklish themes he touches with so charming a liberality that his generous allowance is contagious. We feel in thoroughly honest company, and are ready to be heartily charitable along with him. For his is no unworthy tolerance of vice, still less any desire to polish its hardness into such factitious brilliancy as glistens in Grammont. It is a manly pity for human weakness, and an unwillingness to see, much less to pry into, human depravity. ‘It would have been a joy for us to know that these songs were wholly speck must go hungry through many an orchard, even unobjectionable; but he who waits to eat of fruit without past the apples of the Hesperides.’ ... The little book is well worth the attention of any one desirous to have a bird’s-eye view of the Restoration ‘Society.’ Its scope is far wider than its title would indicate. The ‘Drolleries’ include not only the rollicking rouse of the staggering blades who ‘love their humour well, boys,’ the burlesque of the Olympian revels in ‘Hunting the Hare,’ the wild vagary of Tom of Bedlam, and the gibes of the Benedicks of that day against the holy estate, but lays of a delicate and airy beauty, a dirge or two of exquisite pathos, homely ditties awaking patriotic memories of the Armada and the Low Country wars, and ‘loyal cantons’ sung to the praise and glory of King Charles. The ‘late and true story of a furious scold’ might have enriched the budget of Autolycus, and Feste would have found here a store of ‘love-songs,’ and a few ‘songs of good life.’ The collection is of course highly miscellaneous. After the stately measure may come a jig with homely ‘duck and nod,’ or even a dissonant strain from the ‘riot and ill-managed merriment’ of Comus,
From the “Bookseller,” March, 1875.
“If we wish to read the history of public opinion we must read the songs of the times: and those who help us to do this confer a real favour. Mr. Thomas Wright has done enormous service in this way by his collections of political songs. Mr. Chappell has done better by giving us the music with them; but much remains to be done. On examining the volume before us, we are surprised to find so many really beautiful pieces, and so few of the coarse and vulgar. Even the latter will compare favourably with the songs in vogue amongst the fast men in the early part of the present century.
The “Westminster Drolleries” consist of two collections of poems and songs sung at Court and theatres, the first published in 1671, and the second in 1672. Now for the first time reprinted. The editor, Mr. J. Woodfall Ebsworth, has prefaced the volume with an interesting introduction ... and, in an appendix of nearly eighty pages at the end, has collected a considerable amount of bibliographical and anecdotical literature. Altogether, we think this may be pronounced the best edited of all the reprints of old literature, which are now pretty numerous. A word of commendation must also be given to Mr. Roberts, of Boston, the publisher and printer—the volume is a credit to his press, and could have been produced in its all but perfect condition only by the most careful attention and watchful oversight.”
From the “Athenæum,” April 10th, 1875.
“Mr. Ebsworth has, we think, made out a fair case in his Introduction for reprinting the volume without excision. The book is not intended virginibus puerisque, but to convey to grown men a sufficient idea of the manners and ideas which pervaded all classes in society at the time of the reaction from the Puritan domination.... Mr. Ebsworth’s Introduction is well written. He speaks with zest of the pleasant aspects of the Restoration period, and has some words of praise to bestow upon the ‘Merry Monarch’ himself.... Let us add that his own “Prelude,” “Entr’ Acte,” and “Finale” are fair specimens of versification.”
[1] Elizabeth Cromwell.—A contemporary writes, “How many of the Royalist prisoners got she not freed? How many did she not save from death whom the Laws had condemned? How many persecuted Christians hath she not snatched out of the hands of the tormentors; quite contrary unto that [daughter of] Herodias who could do anything with her [step] father? She imployed her Prayers even with Tears to spare such men whose ill fortune had designed them to suffer,” &c. (S. Carrington’s History of the Life and Death of His most Serene Highness OLIVER, Late Lord Protector. 1659. p. 264.)
Elizabeth Cromwell, here contrasted with Salome, more resembled the Celia of As you Like It, in that she, through prizing truth and justice, showed loving care of those whom her father treated as enemies.
By the way, our initial-letter W. on opening page 11 (representing Salome receiving from the Σπεκουλάτωρ, sent by Herod, the head of S. John the Baptist)—is copied from the Address to the Reader prefixed to Part II. of Merry Drollery, 1661. Vide postea, p. 232.
Our initial letters in M. D., C., pp. 3, 5, are in fac simile of the original.
[2] Cromwell “seemed much afflicted at the death of his Friend the Earl of Warwick; with whom he had a fast friendship, though neither their humours, nor their natures, were like. And the Heir of that House, who had married his youngest Daughter [Frances], died about the same time [or, rather, two months earlier]; so that all his relation to, or confidence in that Family was at an end; the other branches of it abhorring his Alliance. His domestick delights were lessened every day; he plainly discovered that his son [in-law, who had married Mary Cromwell,] Falconbridge’s heart was set upon an Interest destructive to his, and grew to hate him perfectly. But that which chiefly broke his Peace was the death of his daughter [Elizabeth] Claypole; who had been always his greatest joy, and who, in her sickness, which was of a nature the Physicians knew not how to deal with, had several Conferences with him, which exceedingly perplexed him. Though no body was near enough to hear the particulars, yet her often mentioning, in the pains she endured, the blood her Father had spilt, made people conclude, that she had presented his worst Actions to his consideration. And though he never made the least show of remorse for any of those Actions, it is very certain, that either what she said, or her death, affected him wonderfully.” (Clarendon’s Hist. of the Rebellion. Book xv., p. 647, edit. 1720.)
[3] John Cleveland wrote a satirical address to Mr. Hammond, the Puritan preacher of Beudley, who had exerted himself “for the Pulling down of the Maypole.” It begins, in mock praise, “The mighty zeal which thou hast put on,” &c.; and is printed in Parnassus Biceps, 1656, p. 18; and among “J. Cleveland Revived: Poems,” 1662, p. 96.
[4] Here the thought is enveloped amid tender fancies. Compare the more passionate and solemn earnestness of the loyal churchman, Henry King, Bishop of Chichester, in his poem of The Exequy, addressed “To his never-to-be-forgotten Friend,” wherein he says:—
[5] For special reasons, the Editor felt it nearly impossible to avoid the omission of a few letters in one of the most objectionable of these pieces, the twelfth in order, of Choyce Drollery. He mentions this at once, because he holds to his confirmed opinion that in Reprints of scarce and valuable historical memorials no tampering with the original is permissible. (But see Appendix, Part IV. and pp. 230, 288.) He incurs blame from judicious antiquaries by even this small and acknowledged violation of exactitude. Probably, he might have given pleasure to the general public if he had omitted much more, not thirty letters only, but entire poems or songs; as the books deserved in punishment. But he leaves others to produce expurgated editions, suitable for unlearned triflers. Any reader can here erase from the Reprint what offends his individual taste (as we know that Ann, Countess of Strafford, cut out the poem of “Woman” from our copy of Dryden’s Miscellany Poems, Pt. 6, 1709). No Editor has any business to thus mutilate every printed copy.
[6] Haut goust.
[7] Prefixed to “The Ex-Ale-tation of Ale” is given a Table of Contents (on page 112), enlarged from the one in the original “Antidote against Melancholy, made up in Pills,” 1661, by references to such pages of “Merry Drollery, Compleat,” 1670, 1691, as bear songs or poems in common with the “Antidote.”
[8] George Thomason. It was in 1640 that this bookseller commenced systematically to preserve a copy of every pamphlet, broadside, and printed book connected with the political disturbances. Until after the Restoration in 1660, he continued his valuable collection, so far as possible without omission, but not without danger and interruption. In his will he speaks of it as “not to be paralleled,” and it was intact at Oxford when he died in 1666. Charles II. had too many feminine claimants on his money and time to allow him to purchase the invaluable series of printed documents, as it had been desired that he should do. The sum of £4,000 was refused for this collection of 30,000 pamphlets, bound in 2,000 volumes; but, after several changes of ownership, they were ultimately purchased by King George the Third, for only three or four hundred pounds, and were presented by him to the nation. They are in the British Museum, known as the King’s Pamphlets, and the Antidote against Melancholy is among the small quartos. See Isaac D’Israeli’s Amenities of Literature, for an interesting account of the difficulties and perils attending their collection: article Pamphlets, pp. 685-691, edition 1868.
[9] J. P. Collier, in his invaluable “Bibliographical and Critical Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language,” 1865, acknowledges, in reference to “An Antidote against Melancholy,” that “We are without information by whom this collection of Poems, Ballads, Songs, and Catches was made; but Thomas Durfey, about sixty years afterwards, imitated the title, when he called his six volumes ‘Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy,’ 8vo., 1719-20.” (Bibliog. & Crit. Account, vol. i. p. 26.) Again, “If N. D., whose initials are at the end of the rhyming address ‘to the Reader,’ were the person who made the selection, we are without any other clue to his name. There is no ground for imputing it to Thomas Jordan, excepting that he was accustomed to deal in productions of this class; but the songs and ballads he printed were usually of his own composition, and not the works of anterior versifyers.” (Ibid., i. 27.)
[10] It was a week of supreme rejoicing and frollic, being five days before the Coronation of Charles II. in Westminster Abbey, April 23rd. On the 19th were the ceremonies of the Knights of the Bath, at the Painted Chamber, and in the Chapel at Whitehall. On the 22nd, Charles went from the Tower to Whitehall, through well-built triumphal arches, and amid enthusiasm.
[11] These are the Blacksmith, the Brewer, Suckling’s Parley between two West Countrymen concerning a Wedding, St. George and the Dragon, the Gelding of the Devil, the Old and Young Courtier, the Welchman’s Praise of Wales, Ben Jonson’s Cook Lorrel, “Fetch me Ben Jonson’s scull,” a Combat of Cocks, “Am I mad, O noble Festus?” “Old Poets Hypocrin admire,” and “’Tis Wine that inspires.” The Catches are “Drink, drink, all you that think;” “If any so wise is,” “What are we met?” and “The thirsty earth drinks up the rain.”
[12] Ball at Court.—“31st. [December, 1662.] Mr. Povy and I to White Hall; he taking me thither on purpose to carry me into the ball this night before the King. He brought me first to the Duke [of York]’s chamber, where I saw him and the Duchesse at supper; and thence into the room where the ball was to be; crammed with fine ladies, the greatest of the Court. By and by, comes the King and Queene, the Duke and Duchesse, and all the great ones; and after seating themselves, the King takes out the Duchesse of York; and the Duke, the Duchesse of Buckingham; the Duke of Monmouth, my Lady Castlemaine; and so other lords other ladies: and they danced the Brantle [? Braule]. After that the King led a lady a single Coranto; and then the rest of the lords, one after another, other ladies: very noble it was, and great pleasure to see. Then to country dances; the King leading the first, which he called for, which was, says he, ‘Cuckolds all awry [a-row],’ the old dance of England. Of the ladies that danced, the Duke of Monmouth’s mistress, and my Lady Castlemaine, and a daughter of Sir Harry de Vicke’s, were the best. The manner was, when the King dances, all the ladies in the room, and the Queene herself, stand up: and indeed he dances rarely, and much better than the Duke of York. Having staid here as long as I thought fit, to my infinite content, it being the greatest pleasure I could wish now to see at Court, I went home, leaving them dancing.”—(Diary of Samuel Pepys, Esq., F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty, &c.)
[13] [In margin, a later-inserted line reads:
In a book of this kind, it can be hard to tell when something is a misprint or misspelling, and for the most part this e-text errs on the side of caution and preserves the original printing with all its inconsistencies. Only the following probable errors have been corrected.
We do not have the Supplement containing the songs the editor thought too immodest to include.
Page 4, duplicate word “him” removed (Oh do not censure him for this)
Page 14, duplicate word “am” removed (And all shall say when I am dead)
Page 40, stanza number “3.” added
Page 46, “Aed” changed to “And” (And took her up with speed)
Page 79, “tewelfth” changed to “twelfth” (On the twelfth day all in the morn)
Page 101, “keeep” changed to “keep” (I keep my horse)
Page 102, “Gysie” changed to “Gypsie” (No Gypsie nor no Blackamore)
Page 108, “befitingly” changed to “befittingly” (befittingly in his notes and comments)
Page 125, “and” changed to “an” (With an old Lady whose anger)
Page 168, “stifly” changed to “stiffly” (dancing somewhat stiffly)
Page 189, the original page number [p. 121] has been added in what seems closest to the correct place.
Pages 240 and 243, reference to “p. 213” changed to “p. 230”, where the matter referenced will actually be found; it is the paragraph starting “[A song follows, beginning”
Page 241, “domine” changed to “Domine” in second verse (Libera nos Domine)
Page 244, duplicate word “as” removed (As big as Estriges)
Page 284, “8th.” changed to “9th.” (Verse 9th. Gondomar was)
Page 330, “encouragment” changed to “encouragement” (encouragement is given to gambling)
Page 360, “Collectiom” changed to “Collection” (In Pepy’s Collection, vol. i.)
Page 364, “sheephcrd” changed to “sheepherd” (A silly poor sheepherd was folding his sheep)
Page 384, “fify” changed to “fifty” (Nineteen of these fifty-one surrendered)
Page 384, “refering” changed to “referring” (dozens of ballads referring to)
Page 387, “Viotcria” changed to “Victoria” (was opened by Queen Victoria)
Page 397, “trustworty” changed to “trustworthy” (trustworthy prints of so many MSS.)
Evident errors such as u for n were changed without further note.