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69. Tell me where is Fancy bred

OM The Merchant of Venice, III. ii. Sung whilst Bassanio is posing between the caskets. Compare a poem attributed to W. Raleigh, A Poesy to prove Affection is not Love (Trench, usehold Book of English Poetry, p. 4), beginning

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Conceit, begotten by the eyes,

Is quickly born and quickly dies."

Metre.—See introductory note to No. 3.

. Fancy, i.e. Young Love,' as Mr. F. T. Palgrave rightly erprets it in the title which he has given to the song. Cp. for sense, "In maiden meditation, fancy-free," Midsummer ght's Dream, II. i. 164.

5. Cp. Sophocles, Antigone, 795, vikậ d' ¿vapyǹs ßrepápwv Yuepos ÉKтρоν vúμpаs ("Victorious is the clear love-light in the eyes the fair promised bride") and the quotations from Greek poets en in Jebb's note on that passage. Cp. also No. 71. 5, 23, 34.

70. Lady, when I behold the roses sprouting

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Oм John Wilbye's Madrigals, 1598. 'Gracefully paraased from an Italian madrigal of Celiano:

Quand' io miro le rose
Ch' in voi natura pose;
E quelle che v' ha l' arte
Nel vago seno sparte;
Non so conoscer poi

Se voi le rose, o sian le rose in voi.

ere is another version of this madrigal in Lodge's William ngbeard, 1593" (Mr. A. H. Bullen's note). The Italian ginal may be literally rendered thus: "When I behold the es That in you Nature places; | And those that Art | Has d in your beautiful breast; | Then know I not how to tell | If [are] the roses, or if the roses are in you."

Metre.-Iambic. The last line is scanned as follows:

nethér | the ró | ses bé | your lips | or your lips | the ró | ses.

71. Love in my bosom, like a bee

KE No. 19, this is from Euphues' Golden Legacy.

"Rosa

de's own madrigal, describing 'how many a fathom deep she

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Strike I my lute, If I strike my lute. Cp. Macbeth . 26, "Go not my horse the better, I must become a wer of the night.'

will ye? Another reading is still ye!

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fast it. This use of it with verbs, now only colloquial in expressions as fight it out," was common in Elizabethan ish. Cp. "Foot it featly," No. 3. 5;

See Abbott, S.G., § 226.

"bears it out," No. 31.

annoy. For the substantival use, see note on No. 46. 3 lieve my languish."

bower. A favourite word with the poets for 'dwelling,

le.'

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like of. Cp. Much Ado about Nothing, v. iv. 59, “I am husband, if you like of me. "The of after to like is per a result of the old impersonal use of the verb 'me liketh, liketh,' which might seem to disqualify the verb from g a direct object. Similarly 'it repents me of' becomes ' t of "" (Abbott, S. G., § 177).

so, provided that (Abbott, S. G., § 133).

72. Cupid and my Campaspé play'd

LYLY (1554?-1606), educated at Magdalen College, Oxford nous as the author of the novel called Euphues, published 579-1580. The work is tedious to modern readers, bu rically interesting in that it set the literary fashion o huism,' a continual straining after epigram and antithesis led by Shakespeare in Loves Labour's Lost. Lyly also e light plays to be performed at Court by the children' g companies of the Chapel Royal and St. Paul's. One o was Alexander and Campaspe; produced 1584. The lyri pid and Campaspe, founded on a song by the French poe ortes, is sung in the play by the painter Apelles. Lik s other songs, it does not appear in the original editions o ramas, but is first found in the collected edition of 1632. tre.-The easy freedom with which this is handled is very rkable, when we remember the probable date of the song

difference between verse-accent and sense-accent, as in th t word, Cupid.'

. Campaspe, in classical tradition, was a beautiful captive exander the Great. The king gave her to Apelles, who ha len in love with her as he painted her portrait.

. team of sparrows. Sparrows, doves, swans, and swallow re all sacred to Venus, and were often represented as drawin ⚫ chariot. Cp. No. 74. 63. So also Praed in The Belle of th ll-Room:

"Her every look, her every smile,

Shot right and left a score of arrows;

I thought 'twas Venus from her isle,

And wondered where she'd left her sparrows."

7. On's, on his.

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3. crystal, fairness' (F.T.P.). But this explanation mus t lead us to forget that the metaphor in crystal' is as disting in coral' and 'rose.' Cp. in another song by Lyly, "girl ith faces smug and round as pearls."

11. set, staked, i.e. put down as a deposit to be forfeited i e event of defeat.

73. Pack, clouds, away, and welcome day

Is bright and breezy song, full of the freshness of mornin d the open-air, is well known from Sir Henry Bishop's musica ting. It comes from The Rape of Lucrece, 1608, a play b HOMAS HEYWOOD. Little is known of the life of this dramatist o died about 1649. Lamb admired his work, and gives copiou tracts in his Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets.

1. Pack... away, an elliptical expression, "Pack up your good d be off."

4. Cp. Milton, L'Allegro (G. T., CXLIV. 41-46):

"To hear the lark begin his flight,

Then to come in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow.'

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7. prune, i.e. pick out superfluous or damaged feathers, a ees are 'pruned' by cutting away superfluous shoots. Cp erie Queene, II. iii., "She gins her feathers foul disfigure oudly to prune and set on every side"; Cymbeline, v. iv. 118 His royal bird Prunes the immortal wing. The verb preen

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ITTEN in London in 1596, this is the last complete poem UND SPENSER that we possess. It is a 'spousal verse our of "the two honourable and virtuous ladies, the La abeth and the Lady Catherine Somerset," and "the tv thie gentlemen, Mr. Henry Gilford and Mr. William Pete yers." Spenser seems to have invented the word Pr amion, which he gave as title to his poem, to signify I preceding nuptials.' It is a variation from the Gree Paláμos μvos, Latin Epithalamium, the strain sung ent times at the door of the bridal-chamber. Spenser ha ady written a joyous Epithalamium to commemorate h marriage in 1594. This was in itself a reason for finding title, as well as the fact that the new poem was written our of marriages that had not yet taken place.

etre.-The Prothalamion, like Milton's Nativity Ode (G.T xv.), is divided into regular stanzas of uniform structur verse reproduces the smooth melodious flow of 'soft] ing' water. The rapidity of the movement is helped b deft interweaving of the rhymes, and of long and sho , and by the frequent absence of pause from the end of th The rhymes may be represented thus: abba, acdcdo ffgg. In stanzas 1, 3, and 7, b and c are the same. Nowhere has Spenser more emphatically [than in the Pr mion] displayed himself as the very poet of beauty: Th issance impulse in England is here seen at its highest an st. The genius of Spenser, like Chaucer's, does itself justic in poems of some length. Hence it is impossible to repre it in this volume by other pieces of equal merit, but acticable dimensions" (F.T.P.). Even the Prothalamion ly on a sufficient scale to give us an idea of Spenser's genius it affords us a glimpse into the world of his imagining1 of beautiful knights and ladies and lovely landscape--an hetic contrast (11. 5-10, 140) of the real hard world that wa ove still more cruel to the gentle poet in the few years hat remained to him.

Zephyrus. See note on No. 4. 33, "Let Zephyr onl

he."

spirit. Spenser doubtless had in mind the etymologica ing, Lat. spiritus, 'breath.'

delay=retard, impede; and so, virtually, ward off (Hales

ecked darkness like a drunkard reels From forth day's pati nd Titan's fiery wheels,"

glister. Now almost entirely superseded by the form glitter.' Cp. Merchant of Venice, II. vii. 65, “All that glister s not gold.

5. whom, governed by afflict' in 1. 9; but the distanc etween the object and the verb makes it natural for Spenser t upply another and more closely defined object, in accordanc with an idiom often found in Greek poetry. Cp. (e.g.) Homer ρῶας δὲ τρόμος αἰνὸς ὑπήλυθε γυία (literally, " Over the Trojan here came a dread trembling, over their limbs ").

6. Cp. the impressive picture of the life of a Suitor at court i -penser's Mother Hubberd's Tale, 1. 893:

"Full little knowest thou that hast not tried
What hell it is in suing long to bide;

To loose good dayes, that might be better spent ;
To wast long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow;
To have thy Prince's grace, yet want her Peeres;
To have thy asking, yet waite manie yeeres;
To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares;
To eat thy heart through comfortless dispaires;
To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne.
Unhappie wight, born to disastrous end,
That doth his life in so long tendance spend !
Who ever leaves sweete home, where meane estate
In safe assurance, without strife or hate,

Findes all things needfull for contentment meeke,
And will to Court for shadows vaine to seek,
Or hope to gaine, himself will a daw trie;
That curse God send unto mine enemie!"

11. Thames. Canto XI. of Book IV. of the Faerie Queene levoted to a description of the marriage of the Thames and t Jedway.

12. rutty rooty, and so fruitful, flower-producing (Hales The word seems only to occur in Spenser. Might it not me seamed with the tracks of streams'? Chapman has "Fro ills rain waters headlong fall, That always eat huge ruts."

the which. See note on No. 28. 18.

13. painted. in the sense of the Lat. pictus, variegated, dive

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