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THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD.

[THIS charming song was originally printed (with the exception of the fourth and sixth stanzas) in The Passionate Pilgrim, a miscellany of poems written by different persons, although fraudulently ascribed on the title-page to Shakspeare. -See Shakspeare's Poems, An. Ed., p. 237. The Passionate Pilgrim was published in 1599, and in the following year the song, as it is here given, with the exception of the stanza in brackets, appeared under Marlowe's name in England's Helicon. In 1653, Isaak Walton reprinted it, with the additional stanza, in his Complete Angler. Few compositions of this kind have enjoyed a wider or more enduring popularity, or suggested more remarkable imitations. The music to which it was sung was discovered by Sir John Hawkins in a MS. of the age of Elizabeth, and will be found in Boswell's edition of Malone's Shakspeare, and in Chappell's collection of National English Airs. Numerous ballads and songs were composed to the air of 'Come live with me and be my love;' and there is some ground for believing that Marlowe's words had displaced a still earlier song, ‘Adieu, my dear,' to the same tune. See Chappell's National Songs, ii. 139. Shakspeare quotes The Passionate Shepherd in the Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 1, and Raleigh, Herrick, and Donne have either written answers to it, or constructed poems on the plan of which it may be regarded as the model.* Sir John Hawkins, who considers the song to be a beautiful one,' nevertheless objects to the want of truthfulness in its pastoral images. 'Buckles of gold,' he observes, coral clasps, and amber studs, silver

* Raleigh's answer, from the Nymph to the Shepherd, is printed immediately after Marlowe's poem in England's Helicon. It is said that in the earliest copies the initials W. R. were subscribed to the verses, but that the common signature, Ignoto, was afterwards pasted over them, because, as it has been generally supposed, Raleigh did not desire to be known. For the full consideration of the question of authorship, see the Rev. John Hannah's careful edition of the poems of Walton, Raleigh, and others, p. 125. The following is the answer, with an additional stanza from the Second Edition of the Complate

dishes and ivory tables are luxurious, and consist not with the parsimony and simplicity of rural life and manners.' This criticism would be more just if it were not quite so literal. Allowance should be made for the fanciful treatment of the subject; nor is it at all certain that the silver dishes and ivory tables, which carry the luxuries of the Shepherd's life to the last excess of inconsistency, are really chargeable upon Marlowe. The rest of the poem breathes the pure air of the country, even to the coral clasps and

Angler, interpolated, possibly by Walton himself. Walton's stanza is enclosed in brackets :

THE NYMPH'S REPLY TO THE SHEPHERD.
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee, and be thy love.
But time drives flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,

Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,-
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,

Thy coral clasps and amber studs,―

All these in me no means can move

To come to thee and be thy love.

[What should we talk of dainties, then,-
Of better meats than's fit for men?
These are but vain; that's only good,
Which God hath blest, and sent for food.]

But could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need ;

Then those delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.

Still more beautiful than this ingenious reply, and presenting a more expanded picture of rural delights than the original poem, is a second piece signed Ignoto in England's Helicon, professedly founded on Marlowe's song. It is entitled Another of the same nature made

amber studs, which Sir John Hawkins takes to be veritable jewellery, but which, being found in association with a girdle of straw and ivy buds, were apparently intended to typify the blossoms of flowers. For a passage in one of the plays attributed to Marlowe closely resembling the stanza objected to by Hawkins, see Lamb's Dram. Spec., i. 18.]

OME live with me, and be my love;

COME

And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies;

A

cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool

Which from our pretty lambs we pull;

since, and begins with the following stanza, in which Marlowe's opening is reproduced:

Come live with me, and be my dear,

And we will revel all the year,

In plains and groves, on hills and dales,

Where fragrant air breeds sweetest gales.

Donne's imitation, called The Bait, also resumes Marlowe's opening, but takes the subject out of the region of nature into that of artifices and conceits. The following is the first verse :

Come live with me, and be my love,

And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,

With silken lines, and silver hooks.

Herrick's poem,

which has more of the true rustic nature than any of the others, follows its model almost as closely in the opening stanza :—

Live, live with me, and thou shalt see

The pleasures I'll prepare for thee;

What sweets the country can afford

Shall bless thy bed, and bless thy board.

I

Fair-lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold,
A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And, if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
[Thy silver dishes for thy meat,
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be

Prepared each day for thee and me.]*
The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

FRAGMENT.†

WALKED along a stream, for pureness rare,

Brighter than sun-shine; for it did acquaint The dullest sight with all the glorious prey That in the pebble-pavèd channel lay.

No molten crystal, but a richer mine,

Even Nature's rarest alchemy ran there,Diamonds resolved, and substance more divine, Through whose bright-gliding current might appear A thousand naked nymphs, whose ivory shine, Enamelling the banks, made them more dear Than ever was that glorious palace' gate Where the day-shining Sun in triumph sate. Upon this brim the eglantine and rose,

The tamarisk, olive, and the almond tree, As kind companions, in one union grows,

Folding their twining arms, as oft we see

* This stanza is taken from the reprint of the poem in the Second Edition of Walton's Complete Angler. From what source Walton obtained it is unknown. In the same way, it will be seen from the previous note, he supplies an additional stanza to Raleigh's Answer. † Extracted from England's Parnassus, 1600.

Turtle-taught lovers either other close,
Lending to dulness feeling sympathy;
And as a costly valance o'er a bed,

So did their garland-tops the brook o'erspread.
Their leaves, that differed both in shape and show,
Though all were green, yet difference such in green,
Like to the checkered bent of Iris' bow,
Prided the running main, as it had been—

DIALOGUE IN VERSE.

[THIS Dialogue was first published by Mr. Collier in his volume of Alleyn Papers, edited for the Shakspeare Society. The original MS., found amongst the documents of Dulwich College, was written in prose on one side of a sheet of paper, with the name 'Kitt Marlowe' inscribed in a modern hand on the back. What connexion, if any, he may have had with it,' says Mr. Collier, it is impossible to determine, but it was obviously worthy of preservation, as a curious stage relic of an early date, and unlike anything else of the kind that has come down to us.' The words in brackets were deficient in the original, and have been supplied by Mr. Collier. The Dialogue was probably intended as an interlude in a play, or as an entertainment, terminating with a dance, after a play. It is essentially dramatic in character; but it would be rash to speculate upon the authorship from the internal evidence.]