attractive Handful of short songs "to solace the minds of those who delighted in music."
Being thus intended for singing, there is not a true Sonnet in the Collection.
An important feature of these early printed ballads is that they gave the names—either from their title, their first line, their burden or some prominent words therein—to the tunes to which they were first sung; by which names, these tunes are frequently quoted in the writings of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
In the Literary History of England, this Collection is the Fifth of the Eight Poetical Miscellanies which appeared in London between 1557 and 1602 A.D. ; the whole of which it is our desire, sooner or later, to reprint. The First of them, Tottel's Miscellany of 1557, we have already accomplished in the English Reprints.
The external history of this Text is also interesting in that we are indebted for it to an unique imperfect copy; and from the jealousy with which that was for so many years guarded from the public eye: so that—excepting, recently, the favoured readers of the issues of the Spenser Society of Manchester—the present is its first reappearance with any degree of accuracy in modern times.
Two notable illustrative quotations are here given: but there is every likelihood that now the text is made generally available, other points of contact with the Literature of the time will reward the inquiries of Students.
II.
Here are two instances in which the influence of this Collection can be traced on the subsequent literature of our country.
1. Shakespeare is supposed to have had the first poem, the Nosegaie &c. in mind, where in Hamlet he makes the distracted Ophelia say—
