PUBLISHERS' NOTE THE texts contained in the present volume are reprinted with very slight alterations from the English Garner issued in eight volumes (1877-1890, London, 8vo) by Professor Arber, whose name is sufficient guarantee for the accurate collation of the texts with the rare originals, the old spelling being in most cases carefully modernised. The contents of the original Garner have been rearranged and now for the first time classified, under the general editorial supervision of Mr. Thomas Seccombe. Certain lacunae have been filled by the interpolation of fresh matter. The Introductions are wholly new and have been written specially for this issue. Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty ། CONTENTS Psalms, Sonnets, and Songs of Sadness and Piety (1588). By William Byrd, one of the gentlemen of the Queen's 25 51 Musica Transalpina (Madrigals chosen out of divers excellent Authors), 1588. Edited by Nicholas Yonge, John Dowland's First Book of Songs or Airs, 1597, John Dowland's Second Book of Songs or Airs, 1600, . John Dowland's Third and Last Book of Songs or Airs, 1603, John Wilbye's First Set of Madrigals, 1598, . 59 79 ΙΟΙ The Triumphs of Oriana. Edited by Thomas Morley, 1601, Thomas Campion's Two Books of Airs [1613], Thomas Campion's Third and Fourth Books of Airs [1617-18], . Richard Alison's An Hour's Recreation in Music, 1606, What cunning can express (Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford), Conceipt begotten by the Eyes (Sir Walter Raleigh), . Love in my bosom like a bee (Thomas Lodge), The Hue and Cry after Cupid (Ben Jonson), I loved a lass, a fair one! (George Wither), . Sitting and drinking in the chair made out of the relics of A Dialogue between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure Love still has something of the sea (Sir Charles Sedley), Hears not, my Phillis! how the birds (Sir Charles Sedley), INTRODUCTION WHEN Elizabeth, of pious memory, entered on her glorious reign the prospects of English poetry were gloomy indeed. In 1557, the year before her accession, Tottel's Miscellany had been published; but Wyatt and Surrey, the chief contributors to that anthology, had long been dead. In Scotland there was one writer, Alexander Scott, who showed himself a not unworthy successor to Wyatt, but in the south the Muses were badly served. William Blake, deploring the evil state into which poetry had fallen in the second half of the eighteenth century, observed mournfully 'The languid strings do scarcely move: But Blake lived to see the return of the golden age; and the blank songless days of Elizabeth's early reign were to be succeeded by a joyous season of unexampled fecundity. The first tentative efforts of the Elizabethans are interesting to inquisitive students, but by ordinary readers have been relegated to that dim and derided limbo of literature where poetasters flutter and twitter (as bats in a cave) like the ghosts of Penelope's suitors in Homer. 'Flourishing' George Gascoigne, whose 'plentiful vein' was commended by Puttenham; Tom Churchyard, 'that sang so long until quite hoarse he grew'; George Turberville and Barnabe Googe, writers of 'eglogs,' epitaphs, sonnets, vii etc.; these and many more must, in the words of Sir Thomas Browne, 'be content to be as though they had not been.' A boke of very pleasaunte sonettes and storyes in myter, arranged by Clement Robinson, was licensed for publication in 1566, but no copy has been preserved. Its loss is to be regretted, for it would be interesting to know how many of the poems included in A Handefull of pleasant delites, the anthology issued by Robinson in 1584, are to be found in the earlier collection. If 'Lady Greensleaves' and the wooing-song, 'Maid, will ye love me, yea or no?' were written as early as 1566, there was at least one poet in that unpoetical age who had a genuine lyrical gift. Another light-handed lyrist was John Harington (flor. 1540-1578), father of the witty Rabelaisian Sir John Harington. It is hard to believe-but the fact is indisputable that his verses to Isabella Markham are preserved in a MS. dated 1564. Take the first of the three stanzas: 'Whence comes my love? O, heart disclose : In the absence of positive proof one would ridicule the suggestion that this stanza could have been composed as early as 1564.1 Carew might have written it in the days of Charles I. The Paradyse of Daynty Devises, 1576, proved a very It must have been written at least ten years earlier: John Harington married Isabella Markham in 1554. |