No frost, no snow, no wind, I trow,
Can hurt me if I wold,
I am so wrapt and thoroughly lapt
Of jolly good ale and old.
Back and side go bare, go bare,
Both foot and hand go cold;
But, belly, God send thee good ale enough,
Whether it be new or old."

It would be superfluous to quote any of
Shakspeare's songs; snatches of divine melody
that rise here and there from his plays, like
larks starting singing from a beautiful
landscape. One is glad to know that he has
quoted from the old songs of the country
occasionally; fragments which roll down to
us on the surface of his great river of fame
from the heart of the old times. Desdemona's
melancholy chant of " the Willow," and lago's
roistering verses, were both derived from
old national ditties.

The song-writers who made their appearance
about the time of the extinction of the
minstrels, and whose lucubrations were
gathered into "Garlands," and into various
collections with fanciful names, have a more
conventional tone than the old singers. The
school of classical-pastoral now makes its
appearance—a school whose lucubrations
haunt us down to the days of Shenstone, and
beyond them. Corydon, Phyllis, and Amynta
were imported into our landscapes, and stood
shivering in them like so many foreign slaves
exposed for sale. Every lover was a "shepherd;"
but in our cold climate, these Arcadian
transplantations will not grow. We must
look for our best songs in the poems of original
writers after this. The productions of what
Dr. Johnson called the "Metaphysical Poets,"
read more natural, and look more honest,
than the theatrical amorousness of the sham-
pastoral writers.

The founder of that school of Metaphysical
Poets, so well known to us from Johnson's
"Life of Cowley," was Donne, born the year
before Ben Jonson. Donne, whose biography
by Izaak Walton is one of the most delightful
books we have, was a pious, learned man, of
great wit and intellectual subtlety. This is
the peculiarity of the man, and was of the
school. They were good loving men, like
their neighbours. Old Donne made a thorough
love-match; but when he celebrated the
passion of love in song, he and his disciples
did so in their caps and gowns, and robes.
When the heart of a "Metaphysical Poet"
was taken by storm, the intellect—like Archimedes,
when Syracuse was taken—remained
employed in the subtlest exercise in the very
heat of the capture. Fancy a lady being
addressed thus. We quote from Domie. He
is speaking of the souls of himself and his
lady-love.

"If they be two, they are two so,
As stiff twin-compasses are two;
My soul the fixed foot makes no show
To move, but doth if t'other do.

"And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect as that comes home.

"Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like t'other foot obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun."

In another poem he tells us that his
affection had grown "corpulent," and he
was obliged to limit it to " a sigh a-day!"

Donne was much admired, and by nobody
more than by Ben Jonson. Of Ben's own
songs, the famous one, beginning

"Drink to me only with thine eyes,"

is too well known to need repetition. The
first great name of Donne's school was Crashaw
—the pious wit who wrote of the holiest
subjects in epigrams. But here are two verv
sweet little stanzas of song by him:—

"Well does the May, that lies
Smiling in thy cheeks, confess
The April in thine eyes;
Mutual sweetness they express
No April e'er lent softer showers,
Nor May returned fairer flowers.

"We go not to seek
The darlings of Aurora's bed,
The rose's modest cheek,
Nor the violet's humble head;
No such thing; we go to meet
A worthier object, our Lord's feet."

Tennyson has, by a coincidence,

"April in her tender eyes,"

in his "In Memoriam." Crashaw was a
gentle, saintly spirit. He abandoned the
Protestant for the Catholic Church, without
losing the veneration of his friends, and died
at Loretto. Cowley wrote a beautiful poem
on his death, and was, indeed, himself one of
the same school.

Your Donnes and Crashaws, however, are
too weighty writers to swim. They loaded
their works with learning, wit, fancy,
cumbrously. Their great reputations have gone
down as the "Royal George " did, and only a
few adventurers dive occasionally to bring
something up from the wreck. We must
look at more genial men; at Herrick, Waller,
Suckling; the song-writers of the Civil War
days. These were more men of the world;
men of "wit and pleasure." Most of the song-
writers in that century were Cavaliers;
vivacious gentlemen, who, when the King's cause
grew desperate, fell with redoubled energy on
the bottle. Alexander Brome proceeded,
instanter, to call on that old friend for inspiration
and consolation, whenever the Royal party
suffered a reverse.

Waller ranks, by general consent, among
the earliest improvers of the music of our