There are, I suppose, no two English madrigals more universally known than “Sweet honey-sucking bees” and “Flora gave me fairest flowers.” Small as is the proportion of first-rate English Madrigals which has been rescued from the regions of oblivion to which these splendid compositions were consigned as early as the seventeenth century, yet these two at least, in company with a tiny handful gleaned from other composers belonging to the same school, have achieved a very wide and permanent popularity, with the result that the name of their composer, John Wilbye, is known wherever English vocal music is practised at all. So far, so good. But at this point we are faced with a surprising reflection. Who was this John Wilbye ? And what else did he write besides these two popular masterpieces? To the first of these questions the only available answer until recently was, that but one trivial detail of this composer's life and circumstances was known; to the second, that though many madrigal enthusiasts (themselves a small minority among musicians) might know, or know of, another ten or twelve of Wilbye's compositions, at a very liberal estimate, yet our ignorance of the rest of his work was on a par with our ignorance of his personal history. This is indeed a strange reflection, when it is stated as a fact that in his two published Sets alone, Wilbye produced as many as sixty-four madrigals, scarcely any of which fall below the very highest standard of excellence, characterized, as they are, by a polished style, a keen sense of imagination and a seriousness of purpose, showing also that their composer had a rare skill in all the musical devices known at the period in which he lived.