LYRICS

FROM THE SONG BOOKS OF THE ELIZABETHAN AGE.

Edited by A. H. BULLEN.

Post 8vo, cloth, gilt top, price 10s. 6d. net; large paper copies, half German calf.

Saturday Review.

"With Mr. Bullen's latest and perhaps most delightful contribution, there is hardly any fault to be found. He has chosen, and rightly chosen, as an epigraph for his book the following charming lines by an entirely unknown writer:

O, love, they wrong thee much
Who say thy sweet is bitter :
When thy rich fruit is such
As nothing can be sweeter.
Fair house of joy and bliss
Where truest pleasure is,
I do adore thee.

I know thee what thou art,
I serve thee from my heart
And fall before thee.

Mr. Bullen has got together a most delightful sheaf of songs, not a tenth of which is known even to men well acquainted with the period, and nine-tenths of which displays in the most vivid colours that indescribable and exquisite quality of artlessness and "woodnote wild" in which, except in Blake, Burns, and Shelley, with a very few touches elsewhere, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been usually barren, admirable as has been in other respects their contribution to our poetical literature."

Spectator.

"The pieces selected for this book are chiefly love-songs. In the best of them there breathes that fresh beauty of morning and spring-time, which form the charm of the wellknown Elizabethan songs, snatches of which surprise and delight us in Shakespeare's plays, This is by an unknown hand :

Brown is my Love, but graceful:

And each renowned whiteness

Match'd with that lovely brown loseth its brightness,

Fair is my Love, but scornful,

Yet have I seen despised

Dainty white lilies, and sad flowers well prizèd.

Mr. Bullen is to be thanked for giving us this delightful garland of song, made of no faded flowers, though most of them have lain between the leaves of untouched books for a century at least."

Scotsman.

"Mr. Bullen has fully equipped himself in spirit and knowledge for an expedition of discovery back into the Golden Age of English song and music, and his "Lyrics from Elizabethan Song Books is a richly freighted argosy of the spoils he has found. Some of the lyrics he has gathered are to be met with in the earlier poetical miscellanies of the period, or in the modern collections, extending over a longer period, of Linton and others; but many of them he believes to be unknown to those who have made a special study of Elizabethan poetry. They have been brought together after a careful overhaul of the Books of Songs and Madrigals published between 1588-when the first noteworthy volume of the kind made its appearance and 1622, as these are preserved in the library of the British Museum, and he has given specimens from two books of which there is no copy in the national collection."

Notes and Queries.

"The chips from Mr. Bullen's workshop are not less valuable and acceptable than the results of his regular labours. While engaged upon his all-important task of re-editing our Elizabethan dramatists he finds time to collect the lyrics of the same age which are not included in the various poetical miscellanies published at the close of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries. The result is a volume which every lover of poetry will hug to his heart. In using the expression "chips" we do, indeed, Mr. Bullen an injustice. Only in the sense which the mention of Mr. Bullen's chief labour denotes can its employment be defended. In all respects this anthology is a substantive and an important work. Quite justified is Mr. Bullen in asserting that many of the poems he quotes are "unknown even to those who have made a special study of Elizabethan poetry." All the song-books in the British Museum have been carefully examined, and two which are not to be found in the national library are also laid under contribution. The volume thus composed is priceless, and Mr. Bullen's praise of the lyrics, that, "for delicate perfection of form some of the Elizabethan songs can compare with the choicest epigrams in the Greek anthology," is not overstrained or excessive. The whole volume is, indeed, a mine of poetic wealth."

North British Daily Mail.

"A little nosegay of flowers from the great Elizabethan garden is here gathered by a discriminating hand. No modern editor has drawn so much attention to Campion as Mr. Bullen has in this volume. For this he deserves the best thanks of every one interested in our early literature."

LONDON: JOHN C. NIMMO.

14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.

FROM THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT TIME.

Edited by A. H. BULLEN, B.A.

Post 8vo, cloth, gilt top, price 5s.; Large Paper Edition, cloth or
half parchment.

SOME PRESS NOTICES.
Saturday Review.

"Since the publication of Mr. Sandys' collection there have been many books issued on carols; but the most complete by far that we have met with is Mr. Bullen's new volume, Carols and Poems from the Fifteenth Century to the Present Time.' The preface contains an interesting account of Christmas festivities and the use of carols."

Spectator.

“Mr. Bullen divides his 'Carols and Poems from the Fifteenth Century to the Present Time' into three parts, 'Christmas Chants and Carols,' 'Carmina Sacra,' and 'Christmas Customs and Christmas Cheer.' These make up together between seventy and eighty poems of one kind and another. The selection has been carefully made from a wide range of authors. Indeed, it is curious to see the very mixed company which the subject of Christmas has brought together-as, indeed, it is quite right that it should. Altogether the result is a very interesting book."

Morning Post.

"Good Christian people all, and more especially those of artistic or poetic inclinations, will feel indebted to the editor and publisher of this fascinating volume."

Notes and Queries.

"Mr. Bullen does not indeed pretend to cater for those who regard carols from a purely antiquarian point of view. His book is intended to be popular rather than scholarly. Scholarly none the less it is, and representative also, including as it does every form of Christmas strain, from early mysteries down to poems so modern as not previously to have seen the light.'

The Times.

"Is very exceptionally a Christmas book, and a book at which we may cut and come again through this sentimentally festive season. It forms a 'Christmas Garland' of the sweetest or the quaintest carols, ancient and modern.”

Athenæum.

"Is an excellent collection of ancient and modern verse, mostly religious and sentimental, formed with much learning, research, and taste by Mr. A. H. Bullen."

Illustrated London News.

"The atmosphere of these plain-speaking songs is of the rarest purity. They come from the heart, and appeal to it, when the way is not choked up by the thorns and briers of conventional propriety. The reader accustomed to more artificial strains may not see the beauty of these songs at first, but it will grow upon him by degrees; and possibly he will look with something like regret to the old-world days when verses so pure and quaint were household words in England."

LONDON: JOHN C. NIMMO.