Page:Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age (1896).djvu/20

xvi his last work, "A Pilgrim's Solace." He is supposed to have died about 1615, leaving a son, Robert Dowland, who gained credit as a composer. Some modern critics have judged that Dowland's music was overrated by his contemporaries, and that he is wanting in variety and originality. Whether these critics are right or wrong, it would be difficult to overrate the poetry. In attempting to select representative lyrics one is embarrassed by the wealth of material. The rich clusters of golden verse hang so temptingly that it is hard to cease plucking when once we have begun.

Byrd and Dowland are distinguished names in the annals of Elizabethan song, but unquestionably Dr. Thomas Campion is greater than either. Campion wrote not only the music, but the poetry for his songs—he was at once an eminent composer and a lyric poet of the first rank. He published a volume of Latin verse which displays fluency and elegance and wit; as a masque-writer he was hardly inferior to Ben Jonson: and he was the author of treatises on music and poetry. We first hear of him in 1586, when he was admitted a member of Gray's Inn (Harl. MS. 1912, "Admittances to Gray's Inn"). Conceiving a distaste for legal studies, he applied himself to medicine and practised with success as a physician. His earliest work was