NICHOLAS GRIMALD.

(1519?-1563.)

AN important fact in the literary history of the period immediately succeeding that of Wyatt and Surrey, and preceding that of Spenser and the later Elizabethans, was the publication, in 1557, of a little work known to us as Tottel's Miscellany. Its original title was as follows:

Songes and Sonnettes, written by the ryght honorable Lorde Henry Haward, late Earle of Surrey, and other. Apud Richardum Tottel. 1557. Cum privilegio.

This little book is, in its way, of consummate interest. Dug up from a dusty oblivion and reproduced in its genuine quaintness among the English Reprints of Mr. Arber, it appears like a landmark dividing the poetry of the early Tudors from that of Elizabeth's reign. Hitherto the process of publication in a printed form had been by no means a necessary completion of the act of composing a poem or a series of poems. To publish one's own productions, especially with one's name prefixed, appears to have been regarded in the early days of Elizabeth as an act demanding some courage, nay bold-facedness; and poets, long after printing was common and easy, were quite content that their most cherished verses should be handed about in manuscript and extolled or criticised among the initiated few who composed the reading world. In Tottel's Miscellany, the first collection of the kind made in England, we may observe how the habits of authors were gradually changing in obedience to the requirements of a reading public and of enterprising publishers. This was the first time that the poems of Surrey and Wyatt, the most popular poets of their age, had been printed in a collected form. Their verses occupy about one-third of the entire volume, Surrey's being placed first in order, probably in deference to his rank, but Wyatt's being twice Surrey's in quantity. After these Songes and Sonnettes come Songes written by Nicholas Grimald, chaplain to the Bishop of Ely, probably chief Editor of the Collection,1 if not the Originator. 1 See English Reprints, Introduction to Tottel's Miscellany.

The rest of the volume, constituting rather more than half of it, is made up of the songs and sonnets of "Uncertain Auctours." The names of some of these anonymous contributors have been ascertained. Among them were Sir Francis Bryan, a successful courtier in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., and a personal friend of the poet Wyatt, but dead since 1549; George Boleyn, Earl of Rochford, the graceful and accomplished brother of Queen Anna Boleyn, and whom Henry executed in 1536; Lord Thomas Vaux, still living when the Miscellany appeared, and a number of whose poems were afterwards printed in a later Miscellany called The Paradise of Dainty Devices, published in 1576; John Heywood (1507?-1565), author of Merry Interludes, a Roman Catholic and a great favourite with the court in Queen Mary's time; and also Thomas Churchyard (1520-1604), a voluminous and very egotistic versifier, who has, however, left nothing more memorable than his name. Eight early editions of this Miscellany were issued before the close of Elizabeth's reign, the first six by Tottel himself from his busy shop in Fleet Street, London; but after 1587, the date of the latest Elizabethan edition, the work was not reprinted for a hundred and thirty years.

FROM A FUNERAL SONG.

UPON THE DECEASE OF ANNES, THE POET'S MOTHER.

Yea, and a good cause why thus should I plain :
For what is he can quietly sustain

So great a grief with mouth as still as stone?
My love, my life, of joy my jewel, is gone!
This hearty zeal if any wight disprove1

...

As woman's work, whom feeble mind doth move,
He neither knows the mighty Nature's laws,
Nor touching elders' deeds hath seen old saws.
And should not I express my inward woe,
When you, most loving dam, so soon hence go?
I, in your fruitful womb conceived, borne was
While wandering moon ten months did overpass.
Me, brought to light, your tender arms sustained;
And with my lips your milky paps I strained.

1 Disapprove.

You me embraced; in bosom soft you me
Cherished, as I your only child had be.1

Ah, could you thus, dear mother, leave us all?
Now should you live, that yet, before your fall,
My songs you might have sung, have heard my voice,
And in commodities of your own rejoice.

My sisters, yet unwedded, who shall guide?
With whose good lessons shall they be applied?
Have, mother, monuments of our sore smart :
No costly tomb areared with curious art,
Nor mausolean mass hung in the air,
Nor lofty steeples that will once appair,2

But wailful verse and doleful song, accept!

FROM THE POEMS OF UNCERTAIN AUCTOURS

66

IN "TOTTEL'S MISCELLANY."

THE COMPLAINT OF HARPALUS, A SHEPHERD, THAT PHYLIDA HAS BESTOWED HER LOVE ON CORIN, WHO LOVES HER NOT.

1 Been

Phylida was a fair maid
And fresh as any flower,

Whom Harpalus the herdman prayed
To be his paramour.

Harpalus and eke Corin

Were herdmen, both yfere ;3

And Phylida could twist and spin,

And thereto sing full clear.

But Phylida was all too coy

For Harpalus to win;

For Corin was her only joy,

Who forced her not a pin.

How often would she flowers twine,

How often garlands make,

Of cowslips and of columbine,

And all for Corin's sake!

But Corin, he had hawks to lure,

And forced more the field;

Of lovers' law he took no cure,

For once he was beguiled.

Harpalus prevailèd nought;

His labour all was lost;

For he was farthest from her thoughts,

And yet he loved her most.

2 Some time decay. 3 Companions.

4 Cared for her.

5 Cared.

Therefore waxed he both pale and lean,

And dry as clot of clay;

His flesh it was consumèd clean,

His colour gone away.

His beasts he kept upon the hill,

And he sate in the dale;

And thus, with sighs and sorrows shrill,
He gan to tell his tale.

"O Harpalus," thus would he say— "Unhappiest under sun,

The cause of thine unhappy day
By love was first begun ! . . .

O Cupid, grant this my request,
And do not stop thine ears,
That she may feel within her breast
The pains of my despairs!

Of Corin that is careless,

That she may crave her fee,
As I have done in great distress,
That loved her faithfully!"

Barnaby Googe?

A POET'S SONG, IN PRAISE OF HIS LADY.

Give place, you Ladies, and begone;
Boast not yourselves at all;
For here at hand approacheth one
Whose face will stain you all!

The virtue of her lively looks
Excels the precious stone;
I wish to have none other books
To read or look upon.

In each of her two crystal eyes
Smileth a naked boy;

It would you all in heart suffice
To see that lamp of joy.

If all the world were sought so far,
Who could find such a wight?
Her beauty twinketh like a star
Within the frosty night.

Her rosial colour comes and goes
With such a comely grace,

More redier1 too than doth the rose,
Within her lively face.

At Bacchus' feast none shall her meet,
Ne at no wanton play,
Nor gazing in an open street,
Nor gadding as a stray.2

The modest mirth that she doth use
Is mixt with shamefacedness;
All vice she doth wholly refuse,
And hateth idleness.

O Lord, it is a world to see
How virtue can repair,
And deck in her such honesty,
Whom nature made so fair!

Truly she doth as far exceed
Our women now-a-days
As doth the gilli-flower a weed,
And more, a thousand ways!

How might I do to get a graff3
Of this unspotted tree?
For all the rest are plain but chaff,
Which seem good corn to be.

This gift alone I shall her give ;-
When Death doth what he can,
Her honest fame shall ever live
Within the mouth of man.

Heywood?

THOMAS TUSSER.

(1523?-1580.)

PUBLISHED in the same year with Tottel's Miscellany (1557), and also by Tottel, was the once popular poem of Thomas Tusser on Husbandry. Tusser was born in Henry VIII.'s `reign, and was a farmer as well as a poet. His poem about farming is full of practical advice, and, though scarcely meriting the name of poetry, is very readable on account of its sunshiny 8 Grafting or cutting.

1 Of richer colour.

2 Vagrant.