shire, a dozen priests were munificently rewarded with fourpence each, for chaunting a dirge; while the like number of minstrels received each two shillings and four-pence, to say nothing of food for themselves and their horses; thus insinuating that they were at least seven times more valuable than the dealers in theology: somewhat of a profane conclusion to arrive at. On another occasion, at the celebration of an annual obit at Maxtoke priory, eight priests were engaged from the neighbouring town of Coventry, and six minstrels, called mimi, attached to the service of Lord Clinton, and residing with him at his castle of Maxtoke, to sing and play during the refection of the monks in the hall of the monastery; the minstrels received double the remuneration of the priests (four shillings for two shillings), besides the honour of supping in the "painted chamber" of the monastery with the sub-prior,-an advantage which it is not recorded that the priests were permitted to share.

Mr. Chappell claims for the English the invention of counter-point, which, if it can be substantiated, is matter of infinite honour; for counter-point to music is of as much importance as printing to literature, rendering its resources boundless, its variety never-ending; and, in fact, forming the grand basis of composition, and the most important feature in the education of a musician.

Though Henry VIII was not only a great patron, but (according to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, author of the "Religio Gentilium," that singular pot-pourri of piety and infidelity) a composer of ability, distinguishing himself by "setting songs and making of ballads," yet the minstrels and their compositions, strange to say, fell into utter contempt during his reign. A grievous picture of their condition, in the person of Richard Sheale, to whom we owe the preservation of the celebrated ballad of "Chevy Chase," beloved of Ben Jonson and Sir Philip Sidney, can hardly be perused without compassion. This unlucky minstrel having been robbed on Dunsmore-heath of sixty pounds, was unable to persuade the public that a person of his now-despised profession could ever have been master of so extravagant a sum. His account of the depression of spirits caused by this unworthy scepticism is amusing, from the quaint humour and melancholy combined which it displays.

"After my robbery my memory was so decayde,

That I colde neather syng nor talke, my wytts wer so dismayde.

My audacitic was gone, and all my myrry tawk,

Ther is sum heare have sene me as myrry as a hawke;
But nowe I am so troublyde with phansis in my mind,

That I cannot play the myrry knave, according to my kynd.
Yet to tak thought, I perseve is not the next waye

To bring me out of det, my creditors to paye.

I may well say that I hade but evil hape,
For to lose about threscore pounds at a clape.
The losse of my mony did not greve me so sore,
But the talke of the pyple dyd greve me moch mor.
Sum sayde I was not robde, I was but a lyeing knave.
Yt was not possible for a mynstrell so much mony to have.
In dede, to say the truthe, that ys ryght well knowene,
That I never had so moche mony of myn owene,

But I had frendds in London, whos namys I can declare,
That at all tyms wolde lende me cc. 1. d. s. worth of ware,
And sum agayn such frendship I founde,

That thei wold lend me in money nyn or ten pownde."*—&c. &c. In another place, Richard Sheale tells us that he had trusted in his harp, and to the acknowledged poverty of such as played on that instrument, for taking him safely over Dunsmore-heath. A sad change indeed from the comfortable independence and "fruitful havings" of the more ancient of the craft, once

now

"Menstralles of moche honours."

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Beggars they are with one consent
And rogues by Act of Parliament."

From the ashes of dead minstrelsy arose the music of the Church; and with it rests England's undeniable claims to musical pre-eminence among other nations.

To give any just idea of Mr. Chappell's "Remarks on the Tunes," would require more space than we can well appropriate; we shall therefore content ourselves with selecting the accounts of some of the tunes most interesting from their extreme popularity, and about which Mr. Chappell may have brought forward any fresh incidents from the dust and darkness in which centuries have enveloped them.

"My lodging is on the cold ground," if only for its extreme beauty, is an air of peculiar interest to all whose feelings are susceptible of impressions from musical sounds. It is, however, equally an object of interest from the claims which both

"Chant of Richard Sheale."-British Bibliographer, vol. iv. p. 100.

England and Ireland have laid to the honour of having produced it. Mr. Moore having published it in his Irish Melodies, fresh impetus was given among Irish musicians to the opinion that the air was originally Irish. In fairness, however, we must give Mr. Chappell's account of the song:

"This song is taken from Sir William Davenant's comedy of the Rivals, acted by His Highness the Duke of York's servants, in 1668, and printed by William Cademan, at the Pope's Head, in the lower walk of the new Exchange, in the same year. Downes, in his Roscius Anglicanus, or an Historical View of the Stage, relates that King Charles II was so pleased on hearing Mrs. Davis sing this song in the character of Celania, the shepherdess mad for love, that he took her off the stage, and had a daughter by her, who was named Mary Tudor, and was married to Francis, Lord Ratcliffe, afterwards Earl of Derwentwater. Mrs. Davis (better known as Moll Davis) was one of the actresses who boarded with Sir William Davenant, and was the first who played that part. The air as it is usually played is very different from any of the old printed copies, which are interspersed with a number of paltry symphonies and imitations, detracting very much from the beauty of the melody."

He says nothing about the origin of the music, but informs us in a note that it is the opinion of Mr. Bunting (the wellknown collector of the ancient music of Ireland), of Dr. Crotch, Professor Taylor, and other gentlemen of respected talents, that, from internal evidence of the tune itself, it is not Irish, but English; and he also adds that he (Mr. Chappell) has hitherto met with no difference of opinion among musicians upon the subject.

The quaint and melancholy old "Turkeylony" turns out to be a dance tune,-we must confess, much to our surprise; we should rather have imagined it to be the sad love-ditty of some forlorn maiden; and Mr. Macfarren, who has harmonized it, seems to have felt the same thing, if we may judge from his mode of arranging the air. The term "lively" prefixed to it, appears a strange misnomer. It is, however, mentioned by Nashe as a dance tune in his "Have with you to Saffron Walden; or doo as Dick Harvey did, that having preacht and beat downe three pulpits in inveighing against dauncing, one Sunday evening, when his wench or friskin was footing it aloft on the greene, with foote out and foote in, and as busy as might be at Rogero,' 'Basilino,' Turkelony,' All the flowers of the bloom,' Pepper is black,'Green Sleeves,' Peggie Ramsay,' he came sneaking behind a tree, and lookt on; and though he was loth to be seene to countenance the sport, having laid God's word

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against it so dreadfully,—yet to shew his good will to it in heart, hee sent her eighteen pence in hugger mugger to pay the fiddlers." Turkeylony" is also mentioned in Stephen Gosson's Schoole of Abuse, 1579; and the figure of the dance, Mr. Chappell informs us, is in a MS. in the Bodleian Library, written about the year 1570.

"Tom Tinker's my true love," known better as "Which way shall I turn me," as sung in the Beggar's Opera, is contained in D'Urfey's Pills to purge Melancholy," a very storehouse of melody. It is also mentioned in a black-letter tract, entitled The World's Folly. "A pot of strong ale, which was often at his nose, kept his face in so good a coulour, and his braine in so kinde a heete, as, forgetting part of his forepassed pride, in the good humor of grieving patience, made him, with a hemming sigh, ilfavouredly singe the ballad of Whilom I was,' to the tune of Tom Tinker.'" The song begins thus:

"Tom Tinker 's my true love, and I am his dear;

And I will go with him his budget to bear,

For of all the young men he has the best way;
All the day he will fiddle, at night he will play,—
This way, that way, which way you will,

I'm sure I say nothing that you can take ill."-&c.

From the same source out of which Mr. Chappell derives his account of "My lodging is on the cold ground," viz. Downes' Roscius Anglicanus, he has extracted an amusing passage about Tom Nokes, whose name has been affixed to a popular old English air.* Tom Nokes, it appears, was a favourite actor in the time of Charles the Second. The following is the passage we allude to:

"At the Duke's theatre Nokes appeared in a hat larger than Pistol's, which took the town wonderful, and supported a bad play by its pure effect. Dryden, piqued at this, caused a hat to be made, the circumference of a hinder coach-wheel; and as Nelly (Nell Gwynn) was low of stature, and what the French call mignonne and piquante, he made her speak under the umbrella of that hat, the brims thereof being spread out horizontally, to their full extension. The whole theatre was in a convulsion of applause; nay the very actors giggled, a circumstance none had observed before. Judge, therefore, what a condition the merriest Prince alive was in, at such a conjuncture! 'Twas beyond odso and odsfish, for he wanted little of being suffocated with laughter."

*Tom Nokes' jig.

The dramatic authors of the present day would seem to have taken a leaf out of Dryden's book on this occasion, and with little less success; for a modern audience resembles very much a conglomeration of Charles the Seconds; being as easily excited by the most senseless bombast, or the vilest ribaldry in the place of wit, as the laughter-loving, emptyheaded monarch himself.

On the subject of "The Carman's Whistle," Mr. Chappell has brought to bear a store of quotations from printed books and MSS. long since buried in the dust of oblivion, to prove what an essential thing was music to the lower classes, in the golden days of good queen Bess. Barbers, cobblers, ploughmen, and even beggars, seem to have considered music a necessary item in their education. Everything of interest, every remarkable occurrence, was immediately manufactured into a ballad, and chaunted by the "great unwashed" about the public streets with never-tiring zest. "In a word," says an old author, 66 scarce a cat can looke out of a gutter, but out starts a halfepenny chronicler, and presently a propper new ballet of a straunge sight is endited." We doubt, however, if our "swinish" predecessors had arrived at the perfection of advertising in ballads, which is one of the characteristics of to-day; as the innumerable "wants" registered in musical notes and nonsense verses can testify.* "The Car

man's Whistle" is alluded to in a letter, with the signature of T. N. to his good friend A(nthony) M(unday), prefixed to the latter's translation of Gerileon of England, part п. 1592, 4to. black-letter. "I should hardly be persuaded that anie professor," says the epistolizer, "of so excellent a science (as printing), would be so impudent, to print such ribaulderie as Watkin's Ale,' The Carman's Whistle,' and sundrie such other." This is somewhat over particular, when we consider that the letter was addressed by T. N. to his good friend Anthony Munday, who deluged the country with more licentious trash and extravagant rubbish in the shape of bad translations of wretched and indecent French and Spanish romances, than any single individual before or after him. This same Anthony Munday (for a pleasant castigation of whom we refer our readers to the preface of Southey's

*"Wanted a Governess," "Wanted a Wife," " Wanted a Lion,” and, odder than all, "Wanted an Ass." Can the latter commodity be scarce in 1841?

A better instance could scarcely be given than the very romance, in the translation of which T. N.'s methodistical letter appears, "Gerileon of England;" a most insane, impious, and immoral mass of nonsense.