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Sacred ‘Parody’ of Love Poetry, and Herbert

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Rosemond Tuve*
Affiliation:
Connecticut College
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Extract

Some conceptions held by Herbert and his predecessors of the relations between sacred and profane love poetry are the matter at issue in this essay—yet it is particularly directed to the attention of two kinds of special students not likely to be especially interested in that issue. I wish it might be read by those who know unpublished Renaissance music, and those who work with semantics and early dictionaries in various European languages. It is written with the hope that some one else may run across an unfound musical setting, and that some one else may adduce earlier uses of a puzzling word. Its main concern, however, is to present certain materials and ideas of rather broader interest to students of Renaissance poetry.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1961

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References

1 Herbert's model was printed by Grierson among poems attributed to Donne, in The Poetical Works (Oxford, 1912), 1, 429, with the heading ‘Song. Probably by the Earl of Pembroke’. Herbert's poem begins on p. 183 of F. E. Hutchinson's edition of The Works (Oxford, 1941).

2 Chambers thinks it Donne's. No more than did Hutchinson do I venture a sure attribution, not having access to all relevant data, but Chambers’ arguments are not of a kind to convince us unless there is a clear case on other grounds for denying the poem to Pembroke. It is printed as Donne's in editions 1635 through 1669 (see Grierson, II, cxxxv), is not in 1633, but is in the important O'Flaherty MS. (see Divine Poems, ed. H. Gardner, p. Ixxi on the character of O'F). Because the Dobell MS. at Harvard (Engl. 966.4) was not used by Grierson, nor, I believe, Engl. 966.7 (formerly Norton 4620*), I examined— without finding ‘Soules joy’ in any of them—these and other Harvard manuscripts containing or ascribing poems to Donne: Engl. 626 F* (formerly Phillipps 13187), Engl. 966 (with Coleridge notes), Engl. 966.2 (eighteenth-century copy from O'F), as well as Stephens, Carnaby, the newly acquired Gell Commonplace Book, and Engl. 686, a commonplace book formerly Phillipps 9235. The poem's ascription to Pembroke depends upon Lansdowne 777 and on its appearance (labelled ‘P.’) in Poems by Pembroke and Sir Benjamin Ruddier, ed. by Donne the younger (London, 1660); it appears without ascription in Stowe 962.

3 Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch VII (Basel, 1953). The Pasquier use of the verb is given the date c. 1580 (cited in von Wartburg, Hatzfeld-Darmsteter, admis Academy 1718); I used the 1723 Oeuvres, where the passage—in the long Lett. x. 5—may be found in col. 1422. In The Optick Glasse of Humors (London, 1607), p. 35, T. W. clearly intends a travesty when he prefaces Latin lines on the sad effects of surfeit with ‘all which in a parode, imitating Virgil we may set downe’.

4 Though obviously used in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the word is not in Cotgrave (1632 or 1673), not in Nicot's Thresor (1606), or in Monet's French-Latin Inventaire (163d) or in Miège's French-English one (1679), and is not listed in Cayrou's Francois classique. Incidentally, the Spanish equivalent is not in Covarrubias, 1611 (with add., 1674; ed. Martin de Riquer, Barcelona, 1943).

5 The Poetry of Meditation (New Haven, 1954), p. 186 n.; this is a note to the statement that ‘Sacred parody of love-poetry plays an essential part in much of Herbert's best work’ —a preoccupation which points the way to ‘a fundamental relation’ between him and Southwell (my italics).

6 The extracted and supposedly ‘neutral’ clause is: ‘Verses patched up from great poets, and turned into another sense than their author intended them’ (Essays, ed. Ker, II, 52). But this contains the same element which prevents all the other definitions from explaining Herbert's ‘neutral’ use—that the imitator's eye is primarily fixed on the sense and intent of the original author, upon which his imitation constitutes a comment. Travesty, which, it is universally agreed, is not present in Herbert, is but the extreme form of this. The issue is whether Herbert's attention is not otherwise engaged.

7 His brother Edward, baron Herbert of Cherbury bequeathed his lutes and viols to his daughter-in-law, the sister of the Lady of Comus; in 1626 this Mary Egerton married Richard (later second Baron of Cherbury), and their son Edward was Lord Edward's favorite; with her sister Alice she received the dedication of Lawes’ handsome 1653 publication. The much-travelled Lord Edward also was interested in the Roman liturgy, as remaining books of his show, and on his personal collection (largely in his hand) of lute music and his compositions (now in the Fitzwilliam), see T. Dart, ‘Lord Herbert of Cherbury's Lute-book’, Music & Letters XXXVIII (1957), 136-148.

8 Treatises of sufficient circulation to find place in musical histories or books on the relations between poetry and music (such as B. Pattison's Music and Poetry of the Renaissance, London, 1948; C. Ing's Elizabethan Lyrics, London, 1951; M. C. Boyd's Elizabethan Music and Music Criticism, Philadelphia, 1940). Grove's Dictionary of Music (5th ed., ed. E. Blom) treats only missa parodia, but Apel in The Harvard Dictionary of Music gives both, implying that the simpler use of the term is earlier. The usual definition cited is from Rousseau (1768). There is considerable information to the purpose in F. W. Sternfeld, Goethe and Music: a List of Parodies (N. Y., 1954, also in Bull. N. Y. Publ. Libr. LIV, 19S0; especially p. 108 on derivation, and numerous examples later seen to be pertinent, e.g.no.9,no. 52, et al.).

9 The likeliest ones lack the word parody: Cooper, 1578 (thus covering Elyot); Cotgrave, 1632 and 1673; Bullokar, 1641; Blount, 1656; Edward Phillips, 1658 (I give the date of the copy consulted, and omit precise titles, which may be found in Starnes and Noyes, The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson, Chapel Hill, 1946). Only late editions of Rider-Holy oke were seen, but in both 1639 and 1640 parodia occurs in the Latin list only, defined as ‘a turning of a verse into another signification by altering of some few words’. Yet both NED citations and the French dictionaries show the vernacular word to have been in use despite neglect of it by English lexicographers.

Of course country or language makes no difference when it comes to the musical use; what I hope some one will add to this information is precisely when, in any of the used tongues, this meaning of composing new words to a known air (usually employing a few of die original's phrases) could receive a first citation under the term parody. Herbert is not given to coinages. To be sure, the link, or the confusion, is all but made by the commonness of the practice itself plus the used term missa ‘parodia’. G. Reese's first citation of the latter term is 1587 (Music in the Renaissance, N. Y., 1959, p. 202). The indication by frequent inverted commas that I refer to practices by the use of terms which may have arisen later becomes so awkward that I must beg the reader to observe my reservations on this point and apply them himself as he reads.

10 Popular Music of the Olden Time (London, 1859), I, 215; an earlier tune, printed 1612. In various examples which follow, I do not attempt research into the historical accuracy of matters like ‘original tune’, ‘first setting’, and the like—not my affair here, and not relevant to my points so long as chronological limits and possibilities are regarded.

11 This is quite simply not what one hears when one listens. There is no reason to disbelieve the claim that Herbert set songs to music of his own composing, and sang them. This habitual exercise puts a different complexion on his probable interest and pleasure in the musician's form of parodying, as well as his skill and interest in what that requires of the writer of song-texts.

12 See Martz, op. cit., pp. 184-185, and following.

13 It is said by Martz to have ‘remained central to Herbert's poetry’ from the time of his two sonnets written at 17 (Hutchinson, p . 206) until the time he refers to his grey hair in ‘The Forerunners’. I see in the former typically youthful and jejune conceptions of both kinds of love (and both kinds of poetry), which Herbert certainly replaced with profound and humble ideas. I should think he must have turned—much as we do—an eye of mirth upon these fiery and arrogant compositions as he rejected them for his Temple.

14 The tunes meanwhile being flatly taken over from the frivolous songs; see Douen, O., Clément Marot et le psautier huguenot (Paris, 1878)Google Scholar, II, 363 for, e.g., Calvin's preface to Marot's psalter (1543 preface in English in Oliver Strunk, Source Readings in Music History, N. Y., 1950, pp. 345-348). The emphasis is less usual in Lutheran materials. Coverdale, in his Goostly Psalmes and Spirituall Songes, says to his book: ‘Geve them occasyon’ to ‘thrust under the borde | All other ballettes of fylthynes’, and to the Christian reader: ‘would God our minstrels’ had nothing else to play and our ploughmen nothing to whistle ‘save psalms, hymns, and godly songs’ like David's; he adds a sharp reference to women who as they spin can sing nothing but hey nony nony, hey troly My, and more in like vein (Remains, Cambridge, 1846, Parker Soc. XIV, pp. 534, 537). On the other hand, it is obvious that such motives did not dictate publication of all the ‘pieuses alouettes’ and ‘rossignols spirituels’, using airs mondains, which became popular (see Douen, 1, 689). The mere practice of'parody’ does not tell us an author's motive.

15 See G. Reese, Music in the Middle Ages (N. Y., 1940), p. 218, one example the drinking song set to the Christmas sequence Laetabundus; note also his point on p. 219 concerning the importance, to interpretation, of knowing both music and words, and cf. below pp. 274-275. But the volume of'spiritual’ parodies is truly vast; K. Hennig (Die geistliche Kontrafaktur imjrh. der Reformation, Halle, 1909) calls the sixteenth century the Blutezeit for the writing of sacred songs on secular models (using both words and tune), throughout Germany, and not only by the reformers. Since his extremely long list of analyzed pairs of examples frequently quotes stanzas of text from each, it is especially easy to find corroboration of points I make later with English materials (especially that touching the transformation of images, p . 264).

16 On these matters of double texts and simultaneous singing see G. Reese; Music in the Middle Ages (N. Y., 1940), p. 315 (that motets incorporating bits of original secular motet-words were probably not intended for church services); p. 357 (Pope John's bull, 1324/1325, virtually banning polyphony, but in abeyance before very long; translated in Oxford History of Music, 1920, 1, 294-296). See very many references in G. Reese, Music in the Renaissance (N. Y., 1959), especially p. 55, the motet-chanson as written by Dufay (secular French text for two upper voices and Latin text for lowest part); p. 89, incipits of a rondeau by Binchois that survives with both a secular and a sacred text; and passim. For the canon of 1562 see pp. 448-449; it is important to have a clear idea of the kind of musical excesses which provoked it.

17 In his edition of Calvin's First Psalter [1539] (London, 1932), p. vii; he recalls the popularity in Francis I's court of Marot's psalms set to popular airs, the Huguenot adapta tion of known tunes, and the use of Lutheran chorales, of which some of the best were ‘originally secular songs’, reminding us that equally ‘the “popish” origin of a tune’ was no obstacle to its use. There are comments in H. C. MacDougall, Early New England Psalmody (Brattleboro, Vt., 1940), p. 17, and some corrections of Terry's edition in W. S. Pratt, Music of the French Psalter of 1562 (N. Y., 1939), p. 15 n.

18 Douen, for example, though his massive volumes are a basic piece of research, has both a musical prejudice common at his date (‘ce deplorable tonalité gregorienne’, II, 364) and a pronounced Protestant bias; he is anxious to claim that the Huguenot psalter introduced no secular melodies ‘telles quelles’ into its pages, and to answer contemporary and later accusations concerning its lax and effeminate ‘Ionic’ and ‘Lydian’ airs, but he likes at one and the same time to score contemporaries who set German and Flemish and French Catholic spiritual songs to secular tunes, and he is very considerably shocked by some kinds of medieval Catholic contrafactum and parody masses. See both ch. 22 of 1 and ch. 24 of II.

19 The Kyrie is Philippe de Monte's, the Beza example is taken from Douen (1, 664-668, 680), where examples abound throughout 1, ch. 22 and II, ch. 24. The former chapter gives 30 of the first lines of secular tunes, one per psalm, singled out for use by the 1540 Flemish psalter, and they range from ‘J'avais fait choix d'un amant’ (for Psalm xii) to ‘J'ai perdu la tête’ (for Psalm xx; see pp. 682-683); cf. also other examples from the Antwerp psalter of 1541 (p. 712). Secular songs of Marot's own were reused (e.g. for Psalm ciii; see p. 687). Some of the examples most amusing to us with our own more rigid post-nineteenth-century ideas of decorum in religious music come from E. de Beaulieu's volume, Chrestienne reiouissance, 1546—a paternoster set to ‘Les Bourguignons ont mis le camp', or the doubtful ingenuity of continuing a love song ‘Puisqu’ en amours a si beau passe-temps’ by adding the clause ‘ … je veuil amer Dieu’ (Douen, 1,704 f., 708 ff.). A revealing example is the quattrocento Zachara da Teramo's conversion of his own macaronic ballata ‘enthusiastically’ addressed to Pluto into a credo (Reese, Renaissance, p. 33). For references to the sources of information on Luther's chorale see the treatments of it indexed in H. Glahn, Melodistudier til den Lutherske Salmesangs Historie fra 1524 til 1600 (Copenhagen, 1954), especially no. 58, p. 152, and no. 70, p . 181 (in the section'Verdsligt MelodistoP); this advantageously recent study is helpful because citations and corrections of earher work on the various tunes are full and convenient, and melodies with variants are transcribed in part II.

20 Patrick, M., Four Centuries of Scottish Psalmody (London, 1949), p. 5 Google Scholar. Of the book commonly known as Gude and Godlie Ballatis (here abbreviated GGB) I use the Scottish Text Soc. edition of the 1567 ed., A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs, ed. A. F. Mitchell, with copious notes and appendices (Edinburgh and London, 1897). L*ime examples which follow I deliberately keep to a few volumes—Chappell, the GGB, Rollins’ editions of miscellanies—even though the nineteenth-century editors write widiout benefit of much information found since, and the character of tunes is sometimes belied in early reprintings. I attempt thus to make it convenient for readers to look at long texts, and at portions of secular originals, or to test out the music—for points about incongruity and the like may not be accepted on the basis of a stanza or two. More up-to-date exam pies would not affect my points, and unless recent information and research would so do it is not cited. Music for the example next following (‘Into a mirthfull…’) is found in Forbes’ Cantus (2d ed., 1666, sig. A2); only the secular words appear

21 See the present author's A Reading of George Herbert, part 1, especially pp. 32 ff. The tomb image is probably immediate imitation of thought as well as form, whereas the motifs of ‘if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow’, of ‘love bought dear’, and the testament image, show the kinship with Good Friday complaints. It is quite possible that the secular complaint, composed late, had imitated some other religious poem of this special small ‘kind’, for the refrain fits best the familiar attitude of Christ in the religious planctus.

22 In the notes on p. 289 the editor dates early references, though the secular text quoted is late and there is much controversy about the tune. My points hold no matter what variants of the conventional medieval aubade images came directly under the eye of the parodist.

23 I would attach a warning against the idea that what is here noted is ‘same form, different content’. The entrance of figurative meaning is equally a formal element, and both have altered. What we have yet to devise is ways of distinguishing the differing kinds of contributions made, by formal elements which differ within their sameness, to meaning. We shall thereby arrive at firmer notions of what constitutes evidence for claims made on the basis of the true general statement, ‘Form is a component of meaning’. I would anticipate that the best route to this is careful historical study of poems, for it is only too easy to claim that some component we hope is there is ‘in the form’.

24 See Chappell, I, 60-62, and anodier appears in GGB, p. 174, notes on p. 283. John Thome's text which I have described was printed by Halliwell, The Moral Play of Wit and Science (1848, Shakespeare Soc. II).

25 The provision of such an interesting shock often seemed the chief reason for some of the interpretations offered during that decade or so when the Elizabethans were permitted to have no word which simply meant ‘die: to expire’.

26 I refer of course to the extreme form of musical double meaning in which abstractions, veritable concepts, are suggested by truly musical means—die riddles and hidden references apparent to a coterie of highly trained musicians. But even the two simpler forms of musical translation of texts—word-painting, and the suiting of pattern to mood —could not have been much attended to by composer, singer, or listener in the really popular borrowings. Only in case we find Pembroke-Herbert music can we examine the possibility of a composer's intended relations to Pembroke's text (of any of these three kinds familiar to musicians), and it would still be difficult to prove diat Herbert ironically made capital thereof, and was so heard. But I am interested to demonstrate the existence of an interchange between secular and sacred sung texts so habitual and so unself-conscious that we should need just such proof before we should have a right to conclude that Herbert's own imitation of secular lyrics was ambiguously significant. Yet this conclusion is taken for granted in Herbert criticism, and is what makes critics of the whole period think of ‘sacred parody’ as baroque. On the possibly different situation in other literatures, see E. M. Wilson's article in Jour, of Ecclesiastical Hist, IX (1958), 38-53, ‘Spanish and English Religious Poetry of the Seventeenth Century’.

27 His Goostly psalmes & spirituall songes, c. 1543 (STC 5892) was ordered burnt in 1546; see English Music, Bodleian exhibit of 1955. For a musical transcription and an examination of the unique copy at Queen's College, Oxford, I owe thanks to my friend James Dalton, fellow of Queen's; ‘Be glad now all ye Christen men’ occurs at ff. 13r-15v (sigg. DiT-iiiT). Words are given at p. 534 of Remains ofMyles Coverdale, ed. G. Pearson (1846, ParkerSoc.xrv). Seen. 19above; inThomisson'sDen danskePsalmebog (ed. of 1569) ‘Nu fryder eder’ appears on f. 51v (Glahn's index no. 109, p. 225; see also no. 58, p. 152). For the Wynkyn de Worde song mentioned in this paragraph see a page of music reproduced in App. m of GGB, and the sacred text given at p. 271 (compare that on p. 140 from the 1567 GGB); the British Museum copy is K.I.e.I, where the song beings on sig. Hiv and is attributed to John Gwynneth at the end on H4v.

28 I have not thought it worth while to search beyond the reprinted ‘godly ballad’ in CGB, p. 132, and Chappell, 1, 140-142; but for Richard Allison's setting with elaborate variations see Sydney Beck, The First Book of Consort Lessons (N. Y., 1959), no. 12, and Reese, Renaissance, pp. 874-875 and index. But if we wish to sing it, the godly words are scarcely to be preferred to those well-known ones in the Knight of the Burning Pestle m.v: ‘Go from my window, love go: | Go from my window my dear, | The wind and the rain will drive you back again, | You cannot be lodged here. | … Begon, begon my juggy, my puggy, begon my love my dear. | The weather is warm, ‘twill do thee no harm, thou canst not be lodged here.’

29 On the ballad and tune ‘Where is the life …’, see A Handful of Pleasant Delights, p. 88. For all these miscellanies I have used Hyder Rollins’ editions, with his helpful notes and cross references. On the third example, from p. 31, see Tottell's Miscellany, II, 283; a ‘moralization’ of the latter printed by J. P. Collier (Old Ballads from Early Printed Copies, 1840, Percy Soc. 1, p. 29) treats of the fight against the papists for ‘God's Fort’. John Ward treats the ‘Music for A Handefull of Pleasant Delites’ in four, of the Amer. Muskologkal Soc.x (I957). 151-180; on ‘Lusty Gallant’ and ‘Fain would I have …’, see pp. 169, 176—cf. Chappell, 1, 92; 16 of the tunes are now recoverable (p. 155).

30 For more careful examination of such relations and definitions with evidence from the poems, see the present writer's ‘George Herbert and Caritas’, Jour, of the Warburg and Courtauld Inst, XXII (1959), 303-331.

31 Select Musicall Ayres and Dialogues (1652, 1653, 1655, 1658, 1659, with slight variants in titles); the 1669 Treasury of Musick is important for Lawes. Both Lawes brothers’ names and Laniere's appear on the title page of the handsome 1653 ed. (the 1652 printings being without Lawes’ consent). See the interesting article by E. Ford Hart, ‘Introduction to Henry Lawes’, in Music & Letters XXXII (1951), 217-225, 328-344; and on various matters concerning him, Willa Evans, Henry Lawes, Musician and Friend of Poets (N. Y., 1941). We now have, in the relevant volume (i960) of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, V. Duckies’ article on this composer.

32 Nevertheless, considering the use of airs slightly altered for different sets of words, it seemed wise to look at copies when possible (B. M., Bodleian, Yale) to see if manuscript notes would add information; and for the same reason to look as often as one could at the manuscripts themselves in the case of indexed but unpublished songs. In any ‘first-line’ index, there are five possible headings for ‘Soules joy’ (each stanza or half-stanza, and the refrain), the manuscript musical miscellanies especially being content to take tag-lines from any of these places. Hence the request on my first page that musical students looking for other things will keep this text in mind.

33 By Miss M. Crum; to be added, for Bodleian music, is the music index in the Upper Reading Room. Hughes-Hughes’ Catalogue of MS. Music in the British Museum (1906-1909, and supplements) lists both by composer and first line; the Catalogue of Music belonging to the Music School (1854), and Arkwright's Catalogue of Music in the Library of Christ Church (1915) cover the most important Oxford collections not in Bodley. Squire's Catalogue of Printed Music at the Royal College of Music is by composers, hence that collection and the manuscripts at St. Michael's Tenbury (catalogued in 1924 by Fellowes, but predominantly church music) were inadequately covered. The B. M. Manuscript Students’ Room has a recent accessions handlist, and music manuscripts therein were looked at; but any hiatus in the Addit. and Egerton MSS. between the latter and Hughes-Hughes’ date is uncovered, since of course no ordinary manuscript catalogue can take care of this type of problem.

34 Laniere's music even for a masque by Jonson (Pembroke's friend), The Vision of Delight, has only recently been brought out into view, by J. P. Cutts in N. & Q. n.s. m (1956), 64-67. It is in MS. Egerton 2013, which says nothing of our song, but I attach this scrap of a ‘parody’ (in all senses): the famous ‘Hence all ye vain delights’ (f. 3r) from Fletcher's Nice Valour, with its ending ‘Then stretch our bones … Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy’ has its attached Vallegro on f. 5V: ‘Come all you deare delights … then stretch your selves uppon the Taverne Benches, there's nothinge dainty sweete but wine & wenches'. Images are travestied throughout; musical settings are related but not the same.

35 In which lie, for example, Porter, Peerson, Firmer—I have not seen the last. The F. Sambrooke whom musicologists will connect with the last-named Egerton MS., 3665, and with N. Y. P. L. Drexel 4302, was a chorister, in his forties, at Herbert's funeral (Aubrey); Herbert presumably knew those he went twice weekly to hear.

36 Touching music, the assumption would arise largely because actual experience shows that auditors vary greatly as to their translation of musical elements into this or that mood. This practically necessary neutrality of music (and for similar reasons of many rhetorical effects) must be taken into consideration when we interpret parodic writings, for the incongruities and tensions we care about are those that can be apprehended (in the Herbert example, those that would be inescapably detected by hearers who knew both songs).

37 Only one small facet of this is apparent in the fact that virtually no editor thinks of reprinted music as a necessary part of annotation, though none would dream of editing without providing variant readings. But the first can under certain circumstances present as important a line on the author's original conception as the second. Only one of the sixteenth-seventeenth-century lyrical writers can conveniently be taught by singing him; yet an easy test of the difference this makes to critical response can be made simply by confining all illustrations in a discourse on that one poet—Campion—to sung musical quotations.

38 The facts about Herbert's connections with Pembroke and Wiltshire may be found in Hutchinson's admirably succinct presentation in his introduction and his commentary on the letters, supplemented by J. H. Summers’ also admirable account. Those on Ruddyard, of whom much more of interest could be told, have here received additions from J. A. Manning, Memories of Sir Benj. Rudyerd (London, 1841). Of special interest, in 1628, in connection with alleged similar ideas of Herbert's, is Sir Benj. Rudierd his Speech in hehalfe of the Clergie, printed at Oxford, arguing vigorously for better-paid livings, and commenting on the shame of the fact that clerics are scorned for their poverty, and churches not maintained in dignity. Herbert's activities in the repair of both Leighton Church and Bemerton are well known; he evidently received ,£50 help, possibly double that, from Pembroke.

39 His poetic patronage has now been properly studied by Dick Taylor, Jr., in a series of articles, 1955 to 1959; titles may be found in that on ‘The Masque and the Lance’ in Tulane Stud, in English VIII (1958). ‘The Third Earl of Pembroke as a Patron of Poetry’, in the same Studies for 1955, although I had not seen it until my text was written, is especially welcome, gathering together the extremely numerous references to this famous patron and dedicatee of so many poets and dramatists, and confirming our realization that Herbert as poet could not have taken lightly such a kinsman's friendship. Taylor takes no stand on the attribution of ‘Soules joy’, but see in addition to my previous remarks Summers, op. cit., p . 205.

40 See W. M. Evans, Henry Lawes, ch. 1, also pp. 30, 37, with dates which support the assumption that Lawes the elder remained at Salisbury quite through Herbert's time. A preface by Henry Lawes in the 1653 Ayres & Dialogues shows that he got his texts from their authors directly (one of Pembroke's is included). His pupil and dedicatee Mary Egerton married Herbert's nephew (see n. 7 above).

41 Dowland's song is in Fellowes, The English School of Lutenist Song Writers, vol. XII. See on Hume P. Warlock's English Ayre (London, 1926). A useful book on the network of connections not present to the memory of a literary student is W. L. Woodfdl, Musicians in English Society (Princeton, 1953). J. H. Summers’ chapter on music is welcome for general connections with Herbert. One's hope that scraps of Herbert's own, or contemporary, settings of his verse might turn up in the manuscript indices I have mentioned is met with disappointing silence, though wordless tunes so often have a just recognizable tag that only scrutiny of the manuscripts is sure proof. When the Christmas anthem in dialogue mentioned in H. Davey's History of English Music (London, 1921), pp. 228, 211 as ‘by Herbert’ and set by Ford, is pursued, it turns out to have rather the words: ‘Look shepherds, look! | Why? where? | See you not yonder, there! | … The Angel: Fear not, Shepherds…’ (spelling modernized; from Bodleian MS. Rawlinson poet. 23, f. 151; also in Ashmole 36-7, f. 255 and Had. 6346, p. 175). As this goes to press, I am grateful to be told by Mr. Vincent Duckies of six three-part polyphonic settings by Jenkins of poems by Herbert (parts of Christmas, The Dawning, Ephes. iv. 30, The Starre) in Christ Church MS. 736-738.

42 The derogatory commonplaces are controverted by D. Taylor, Jr., in ‘The Earl of Pembroke and the Youth of Shakespeare's Sonnets', SPLVI (1959), 26-54, and another essay therein cited. I do not know who was Pembroke's chaplain at this date, not at any rate the one of 1624 whose epitaph adjures us to ‘Know! thou that treadst on learned Smyth inurn'd'—that man is but an unreversible hour-glass. I quote this from the most trustworthy of the manuscripts containing ‘Soules joy’, Lansdowne 777, f. 55. Its connections with William Browne would reward inquiry, for Wood and others stress his close association with Wilton from 1625; some doubt of Browne's autograph in it is registered in the B. M. copy of the catalogue. A certain ‘ T . C copied a well-known music manuscript, Addit. 11608, containing much Laniere and Lawes but not our Song. Whoever the T.C. of the sermon was, he calls himself, in a phrase oddly like the motto of Bemerton's parson, ‘I the least of all the least’, ‘minimorum minimus as Bernard speakes’.

43 That the train of requests and persuasions which ended in the Bemerton presentation deed of 16 April was started by William seems likelier than a rapid business assigned all to Philip—initiated, concluded, and officialized within the six days that included his brother's death and burial. Herbert's stature as a poet was known to his friends by 1630, yet no one stresses the fact that congeniality of tastes may have motivated the patron earl as well as the accepting parson; something of this sort probably lies behind Walton's overwritten story. Acceptance must have been at least expected when the deed was dated. Philip was a poor exchange, to any one who had thought the environs of Wilton would be frequently graced by William and by Ruddier.

44 Lans. 777, f. 73, the MS. with the crucial ascription to Pembroke, writes five unindented five-line stanzas in a series, thus completing the text but giving no hint that the seeming third stanza is repeated as a refrain. Actually, if there is music, this is how we copy too; we simply get down all the words. Stowe 962, f. 226, ends with Grierson's line 15, and here also there is no indication that the ‘refrain’ was felt as other than a third five-line verse. Other texts in this MS. are poor. But as an example of'parody’ in the sense we are not using it, I subjoin one on Jonson's famous lyric: ‘Have you seene but a blacke little maggott Come creepinge over a dead dogg | Or an old woeman with a fagott Smotheringe of an hedghogge … O soe blacke, o soe rough, o soe sower is shee.’

45 It is there presented, however, as a two-stanza piece, labelled ‘I’ and ‘Il’. But the indentation is not careful, lines 16-20 are missing entirely, and errors make some lines senseless. Its editor, the younger Donne, either got it from the composers as he says he got many, in his preface, or from a source that was not the one which put it among the Donne materials, and not either MS. mentioned in note 44. Of course he might have taken a longer text from the 1650 Donne which he had had connections with, but this would have included the embarrassment of finding out whether his father wrote it. Copying from music manuscripts would explain some of the vacillation copyists show, about what its stanzaic form is and what place to give to the five lines ‘O give …’. Unlabelled refrains are not visually clear to rapid copyists of song-words from music manuscripts, and there is also some excuse for shuffling a form to make it clear as a read poem.

46 On works by Morley parodying compositions by Croce and others, see J. Kerman, ‘Morley and “The Triumphs of Oriana” ‘, Music & Letters XXXIV (1953), 185-191, especially p. 188; there is further information in Reese, Renaissance, pp. 824 f., with citations (especially to Kerman's dissertation, to appear). I use without direct citation the following treatments: R. B. Lenaerts, ‘The Sixteenth Century Parody Mass in the Netherlands’, Mus. Quar., XXXVI (1950), 410-421; J. Schmidt-Goerg, ‘Vier Messen aus dem xvi Jhr.’ [by Palestrina, Lupus, Clemens, and le Roy, all on one motet by Lupus Hellinck], Kirchenmusikalischesjb., xxv (1930), 76-93; and P. Pisk, Das Parodieverfahren in der Messe desjac. Callus (Wien, 1918, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft). It would be impossible to cite all Benethe relevant information in Reese, and the reader is referred to the rich presentation of pertinent materials throughout that volume.

47 About half of the large number of Palestrina's masses and more of di Lasso's are parody masses, and all names I later include are important representatives of die practice. The four masses analyzed by Schmidt-Goerg were published in 1590, 1532 (Lupus's own), 1570, 1585; others were publishing at later dates, though the parody mass declined during the seventeenth century.

48 Of J. Gallus’ 20 masses printed in 1580, 16 are parody masses, and Pisk's analysis indicates no such differentiation in feeling between the 9 based on sacred motets, 3 on German songs, 2 on madrigals, and one with a combined chanson-madrigal base.

49 The nature of the distinctions made as this general parallel is forced to take care of divisions into Mannerist, early Mannerist, late Renaissance, Rococo (to give but one example, W. Sypher, Four Stages of Renaissance Style, N. Y., 1955, touching Milton), has so far at least seemed unsuitable to the peculiar relation between concept and form in a verbal art like literature. Where distinctions are by their nature inadequate to embrace the complexities of that relation criticism has no hope but to remain naive and often totally blind, so that I merely recognize here that many such attempts exist.

50 That men have this freedom will always make it impossible to equate literary works either with ‘the history behind them’ or ‘the expression of their times'. Yet modern fear of these equations sometimes results in another variant of the confusion between poetry and history. Hence it seems to me the duty of any one dealing even with small examples where all these principles come in question, to proclaim their relation to the ideas which are at stake, and to disregard the risk of overloading a small craft. The tendency to retreat from the intellectual rigors of historical criticism has taken on so many complicated forms during recent years, gaining strength and unexpected forms of adherence across the Atlantic while it weakens somewhat on this side, that one cannot but feel alarm for the future of literary criticism if, as the older forms of rebellious subjectivity fade, we face the growth of an ancient kind of literary pietism, staggered by the problem of relating history to poetry and ready to settle for inner voices (there are many signs of this). It is an evil to substitute knowing the history of something for apprehending it in its living intrinsic essence, and most good historical critics of late have tirelessly pointed out the danger, as they have pointed out the similar abuse of mistaking the irresponsible tracing of'patterns’ of symbolic imagery for the discovery of poets’ meanings, and as they have pointed out the manifest impossibility of our somehow through history getting out of our time into another to apprehend first hand an author's true quality in his habit as he lived. These are all forms of shrinking down poetry into history, and all are common. But it is the anti-intellectual and Romantic form of the same evil to let the uniqueness of artistic events obscure all subtler understandings of how authors, and indeed all men, are ‘in history’ but yet are not caught and pinned in their own unique moment of time—in other words produce something that is not only history.

51 Bourgeois, before he quitted Geneva in 1557, had set all but 62 psalms of the Huguenot psalter during the gradual process of its translation by Marot and Beza. Psalm xcvi had been among those sung to a twice-used tune (to cxviii) until the unknown continuator found or wrote melodies for these. The music here given is adapted from GoudimeFs 1565 setting of the Psalter melody for Psalm xcvi; there is no modern reprint of his 1565 settings, but it may be found in a New York Univ. master's thesis by August Ruut, The Genevan Psalm Melodies set by Claude Goudimel in Chordal Style, 1956. (There is a modern harmonization of the tune in J. Ver, Le psautier Huguenot harmonisé”, Réalville, 1918.) W. S. Pratt (op. cit. in II. 17), giving in modern notation the tune as in 1562, for text by Beza, notes its secular origin; see Douen, 1, 726, 716, where the initial phrase from its supposed original is given. This is found, ascribed to J. Arcadelt, in Chansons nouuellement composées . .. (Sixiesme livre, Paris, Le Roy and Ballard, both 1556 and 1559). The melody was very considerably altered; the secular words begin: ‘Le saint serviteur eshonte, Qui abusant de la bonte De sa dame, une autre pourchasse N'ha il merité qu'on le chasse?…'. Were the scheme of the Pembroke-Herbert stanzas not so extremely rare, I should have found music more capable of enhancing both sets of words, but this is perhaps sufficient to the restricted purpose of demonstration which it here serves.