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NOTES

These lines breathe the very spirit of piety and the perfection of motherhood. Swinburne said of them unspeakable in their loveliness they seem to my poor judgment.' 2 I have found it beyond my powers to modernise the spelling in this tender little poem. It is one of the lyrics in The Garland of Laurel, which Skelton wrote for his patroness the Countess of Surrey, mother of Henry Howard the poet, about 1520. Nepte is a kind of calamint ieloffer = gillyflower: enuwdenewed: sterre star:

morow = morning: make you sure assure you.
A contribution of Edwardes' own to The Paradise
of Dainty Devices, a popular Elizabethan, an-
thology of which he was the collector.

From the Shepheard's Calendar-December.
Faerie Queene, I. XII. vii.

Known as The Coventry Carol.

It is the second

of three songs belonging to the Pageant of the Shearmen and Taylors' Company in Coventry, the subject of which was the Birth of Christ and Offering of the Magi, with the Flight into Egypt and Murder of the Innocents. The first and third of the songs, telling of the shining of the Star and the coming of the Herald Angels, were sung by the Shepherds, the second (Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child) was sung by the Women, the mothers of the Innocents. Sharp's Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries anciently performed at Coventry. Coventry: MDCCCXXV. 6 9 Robert Southwell was trained at Douai and Paris, and entered the Society of Jesus in 1578. was thirteen times tortured on the rack by the Government of Elizabeth and put to death in 1595. This beautiful and fervent poem-a

Cf.

Не

special favourite of Ben Jonson's-was probably written during his imprisonment.

Winter's Tale, i. 2.

Midsummer Night's Dream, iii. 2, and As You
Like It, i. 3.

15 23

16

King John, iii. 4.

King Richard III. iv. 3.

The third of the seven sonnets called La Corona, each of which (after the first) begins with the last line of the preceding sonnet.

These lines are the epitaph in Hawsted Church in Suffolk of Dorothy Drury, daughter of Sir Robert Drury and niece of Francis Bacon. They have always been attributed to Donne, who wrote a Funeral Elegy upon her sister Elizabeth Drury, who died aged fifteen.

From A Pindaric Ode, to the immortal memory and
friendship of that noble pair, Sir Lucius Cary and
Sir H. Morison. Ben Jonson had unusual sym-
pathy with children. His little known elegy
Eupheme or The Faire Fame, left to posteritie of
that truly-noble Lady, the Lady Venetia Digby, late
wife of Sir Kenelme Digby, Knight: a gentleman
absolute in all numbers, which consists often
pieces,' begins with the dedication of her cradle.
I quote two stanzas from it:

For, though that rattles, timbrels, toyes,
Take little infants with their noyse,
As prop'rest gifts to girles and boyes,
Of light expense;

Their corrals, whistles, and prime coates,
Their painted maskes, their paper boates,
With sayles of silke, as the first notes
Surprise their sense.

The rich humanity and breadth of outlook which
distinguished Richard Corbet, Bishop of Oxford
and then of Norwich, are well displayed in this
little poem. Another of Corbet's poems is Fare-
well rewards and fairies.

These two sonnets are from a little group of scriptural poems, Floures of Sion. Drummond is not the only Elizabethan who owed much to Italian example, but he developed a form of his own out of the technique he inherited; his technical perfection is second only to that of Shakespeare, Sidney and Spenser, and his calm and spiritual exaltation are his own. If his friend Ben Jonson thought his poems smelled too much of the schooles,' to Charles Lamb his name carried a perfume in the mention,' and had a finer relish (Lamb confessed) than that of Milton or of Shakespeare,' and Palgrave has placed his fine ode Phoebus, arise! at the very threshold of the original Golden Treasury. 24 George Wither fought on both sides during the Civil War, and though he was made a Major

General by Cromwell, he earned by his inconstancy the contempt and reproach of Dryden and lesser partisans of the Restoration. He was 'discovered' by Charles Lamb, and highly praised by Swinburne. Prof. Saintsbury says of him, if genuine pastoral sweetness-the sense of the country and of country joys-is anywhere in English poetry, it is in Wither, who has much besides.'

Handsell New Year's gift, or earnest-money in token of a new beginning. There is a peculiar delicacy in Herrick's child poems, and attention is here drawn to his Christmas Caroll, sung to the King in the Presence at White-Hall, which contains the exquisite line

The Darling of the World is come.

Behither ill, behither is a preposition, meaning 'short of,'barring,'save.' The original and earlier use of the word was of space, on this side of.'

34 Daughter of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

37

Strode was chaplain to Richard Corbet, Bishop of Oxford-whose lines to his son Vincent appear in this volume. Strode's poems were collected from anthologies and manuscripts, and published by Bertram Dobell in 1907. Little Mistress Mary Prideaux was a daughter of Dr. John Prideaux, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, and Bishop of Worcester. There is an elegy by William Browne on another daughter, Anne, who died at the age of six. 38 This exquisitely simple poem was reprinted from Emily Taylor's Flowers and Fruits from Old English Gardens in the first edition of Beeching's Lyra Sacra, but omitted from the second. It is clearly the work of a scholar. 'Nevermore' was probably one word-as here printed. Protests used to be made against evermore as an Americanism. But some so-called Americanisms are in truth English expressions, which were taken westwards in the seventeenth century. These touching lines are taken from a brass in the chancel of Reigate Parish Church. The inscription above them is as follows:

39

39

'Here lyeth interred the body of Anne
Worly, the daughter of William Worly,
Esq., and of Alice his wife, who departed
this life the 3d. day of September Anno
1653 being about the age of 8 yeares.'

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42 I have omitted the second, third and fourth stanzas, which seem rather overweighted with classical conceits.

43

33 44

This beautiful hymn seems to me to be superior even to Milton's, perhaps because of its tender

ness.

It may be of interest to contrast the simplicity and directness of these lines with Crashaw's poem upon the birth of Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King Charles I. :

Rich, liberal Heaven, what, hath your treasure
store

Of such bright angels, that you give us more?
Witness this map of beauty; every part
Of which doth show the quintessence of art.
See! nothing's vulgar, every atom here
Speaks the great wisdom of th' Artificer.
Poor earth hath not enough perfection,
To shadow forth th' admirèd paragon.
Those sparkling twins of light should I now
style

Rich diamonds, set in a pure silver foil;
Or call her cheek a bed of new-blown roses;
And say that ivory her front composes;
Or should I say, that with a scarlet wave
Those plump soft rubies had been dressed so
brave;

Or that the dying lily did bestow

Upon her neck the whitest of his snow;

Or that the purple violets did lace

That hand of milky down all these are base;
Her glories I should dim with things so gross,
And foul the clear text with a muddy gloss.

35 45 Marvell, friend of Milton, tutor to Fairfax' daughter, secretary to the embassy at Constantinople, became Member for his native city of Hull just before the Restoration. He was like Milton in that his sweetness and intense love of beauty differentiated him from the bulk of the Puritans. This poem is a good example of his wit and delicacy, and also shows that he possessed that rare mystical feeling for flowers which, in The Nymph complaining for the death of her fawn, he displays for animals.

37

46 These poems of the poet-physician Vaughan
should be compared with Thomas Traherne's, and
with Wordsworth's great ode. A copy of Silex
Scintillans was in Wordsworth's library.
Vaughan is the first of our poets to reveal the
unseen and the eternal in childhood.
'Those white designs which children drive': the

38 47

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very vowel sounds of this splendid line enhance
the sense of purity and brightness, as they do in
the words And kings to the brightness of thy
rising.' A similar effect is achieved, less forcibly,
in the two opening lines of the preceding poem,
The Retreat.
'he

'Must live twice that would God's face see
cf. St. John iii. 3.

These charmingly playful lines are from Britannia Rediviva. The venerable infant' was destined to become the Old Pretender.

40 50 This poem, together with one Upon Young Mr. Rogers of Gloucestershire, was first published in 1704, after Dryden's death. Its history is unknown, but probably its subject is the same 'Young Mr. Rogers,' thought to be a member of the old family of Rogers of Dowdeswell, near Cheltenham. In the shorter poem Dryden says of him that he was his parent's only treasure,' and that 'More moderate gifts might have prolonged his date.'

42 52 Thomas Traherne is one of the corner-stones of our poetry on Infancy and Childhood. His attitude towards childhood is extraordinarily modern, and resembles that of his fellow-mystic Blake and of Wordsworth. Perhaps his Centuries of Meditations are even more remarkable than his poems. I quote from them the prose

version of Wonder:

All appeared new, and strange at first, inexpressibly rare and delightful and beautiful. My knowledge was Divine. My very ignorance was advantageous. I seemed as one brought into the Estate of Innocence. All things were spotless and pure and glorious: yea, and infinitely mine, and joyful and precious. I knew not that there were any sins, or complaints or laws. I dreamed not of poverties, contentions or vices. All tears and quarrels were hidden from mine eyes. Everything was at rest, free and immortal. I knew nothing of sickness or death or rents or exaction, either for tribute or bread. All Time was Eternity, and a perpetual Sabbath. Is it not strange, that an infant should be heir of the whole World, and see those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold ?

'The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were