Page:Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age (1896).djvu/18

xiv born churl who could be offended at such an exhortation as the following:—

No musician of the Elizabethan age was more famous than John Dowland, whose "heavenly touch upon the lute" was commended in a well-known sonnet (long attributed to Shakespeare) by Richard Barnfield. Dowland was born at Westminister in 1562. At the age of twenty, or thereabouts, he started on his travels; and, after rambling through "the chiefest parts of France, a nation furnished with great variety of music," he bent his course "towards the famous province of Germany," where he found "both excellent masters and most honourable patrons of music." In the course of his travels he visited Venice, Padua, Genoa, Ferrara and Florence, gaining applause everywhere by his musical skill. On his return to England he took his degree at Oxford as Bachelor of Music in 1588. In 1597 he published "The First Book of Songs or Airs of four parts, with Tableture for the