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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Thomas Campion was a gifted pioneer in the polished and sophisticated seventeenth-century lyric that freed English poetry from the adoration of conventional sonnet mistresses. But the significance of his contribution is obscured when his authentic work is weighted down with the worn-out motifs and frequently slipshod workmanship of the poems appearing in Part ii of A Booke of Ayres. This songbook was brought out in 1601 by Philip Rosseter, lutenist, later King's Musician and Manager of the Children of the Queen's Revels, and Campion's lifelong friend. It was divided, as Rosseter took pains to make clear, into two parts, the first consisting of twenty-one songs by Campion, the second of twenty-one more—“the rest of the Songs contained in this Booke, made by Philip Rosseter.” No one has denied to Rosseter the musical settings of this second part, several of them among the most charming of the period; but almost everyone has kidnaped the lyrics from those settings and presented them as a free gift to Campion, who, I think, might not greatly relish the honor.
page 938 note 1 The Works of Dr. Thomas Campion (1889), p. xiv.
page 938 note 2 Campion's Works (1909), pp. lii-liii.
page 938 note 3 England's Musical Poet, Thomas Campion (1938), pp. 68–69.
page 939 note 4 The Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. iv, pp. 146–147.
page 939 note 5 A count in nine anthologies—Palgrave's Golden Treasury (1921 ed.), Arthur Quitler-Couch's The Golden Pomp (1894) and Oxford Book of English Verse (1924), Frederic Ives Carpenter's English Lyric Poetry (The Warwick Library, 1897), Ernest Rhys's The New Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics (Everyman's), Edward Thompson's selection for the Augustan Books of English Poetry (1926), J. William Hebel and Hoyt H. Hudson's Poetry of the English Renaissance (1929), E. K. Chambers‘ Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse (1932), and Richard Aldington's Viking Book of Poetry (1941)—shows in a total of 180 selections from Campion's works: from A Booke of Ayres, Part i, 57; Part ii, 5; from Two Bookes of Ayres, Book i, 23; Book ii, 14; from The Third and Fourth Booke of Ayres, Book iii, 37; Book iv, 16; and from the masques, Observations, and miscellaneous lyrics, 28. Each of the six books of ayres contains 21 songs, except for Book iii (29) and Book iv (24). Of the five selections from Part ii, three occur in Chambers’ collection; he remarks, “It has been conjectured that Campion may have written the words for Rosseter's settings, as well as for his own” (p. 888), but prints them as “Anonymous: Songs set by Philip Rosseter.”
page 940 note 6 Vivian and Fellowes point out a half-dozen cases in which Campion's words had been borrowed for settings by such musicians as Pilkington, Alison, Ferrabosco, and Dowland.
page 940 note 7 Vivian draws attention to Latin versions of vin and xii (Part i) in Campion's Poemata (1595); Bullen mentions two versions of xii in Harl. MS 6910, which he dates 1596; xix appears among the added poems in Newman's surreptitious edition of Astrophel and Stella (1591). There is no trace of any of the lyrics of Part ii before their appearance in A Booke of Ayres.
page 941 note 8 It has not been remarked how large a proportion of Campion's songs are for women—certainly a deliberate turnabout of the Petrarchan convention of the languishing lover. The list includes ix, xv, and xix of Book ii; i, iii, xvi, xxviii, and probably xxvi of Book iii; ix, xiii, xviii, and xxiii of Book iv. Jonson uses the same device in The Forrest (iiii) and in Under-wood (9 and 10 of the Charis lyrics and “Hang vp those dull, and envious fooles”); so does Donne in Breake of day and the fragment “He that cannot chuse but loue.”
page 941 note 9 It cannot be justly said that Campion had completely freed himself of the Petrarchan tradition. He touches it lightly in iii and x of Part i, and more obviously in ix, xi, xiii, and xvi, though in the first of these the poet's grief is not explained. There are examples elsewhere, too, particularly in the Third Booke of Ayres. But of the anti-Petrarchan naturalism most characteristic of Campion's lyrics there is not a sign in Part ii.
page 942 note 10 This epigrammatic incisiveness, so popular in the early seventeenth century and so rare in the more expansive Elizabethan verse, is one of the most distinctive of Campion's poetic traits. Some of the clearest examples occur in xi, xii, and xviii of Book iii and ix, xii, xvii, and xxii of Book iv.
page 942 note 11 See particularly xi, xiii, xx, and xxi, though all the songs of Part ii make use of traditional sentenliae. Campion is not guiltless in this respect, obvious examples being Songs viii and xix in Book ii, iii and xv in Book iii, iiii and xviii in Book iv. But his characteristic tone is direct and immediate; nowhere does he yield so abjectly to this convention of the songbooks as does the poet of Part ii. From the extensive use of antithesis as a purely rhetorical device, with which Courthope also charges him, Campion will be found almost free if Part ii be omitted from consideration. There seems to me little basis for Courthope's statement, to which Vivian also agrees, that George Peele recognized Campion as “an eminent Euphuist” by celebrating him in the Prologue to The Honour of the Garter as “thou That richly cloth'st conceite with well made words.” It is curious, but doubtless helpful to his argument, that Courthope should print only Song xxi of Part ii, the inferior Song xi of Book iii, and one song from a masque to illustrate his criticism of Campion (A History of English Poetry, 1897–1903, vol. iii, pp. 170–173).
page 944 note 12 Songs iii, vi, x, xix, and xx of Part i. Kastendieck has the fullest discussion of metrical equivalence in Campion's poetry. In Vivian's edition, by the way, there is an unsymmetric printing of Song xiii, Part i, which, following Bullen's earlier printing, appears in one 11-line and one 12-line stanza. Combination of ll. 18 and 19 into a single line, “Though, when her sad planet raignes, froward she bee,” restores the pattern.
page 944 note 13 Of this ninth song Vivian remarks that except for the first line of stanzas 1, 3, and 4 “hardly any two corresponding lines in the rest of the poem are metrically similar” (Cambridge History, iv, 147).
page 944 note 14 The poet of Part ii frequently leaves unrhymed lines, a privilege of which Campion, despite his strictures upon rhyme in Obseruations in the Art of English Poesie, rarely avails himself. A lack of readiness is suggested by frequent recourse to the old “desire-fire” rhyme, an ancestor in conventionality of the “June-moon” of more recent vintage; it is used in five poems in Part ii. In Part i it occurs once (and there desire is a verb), and only three times in Campion's other four books of ayres. The very high percentage of quatrain stanzas in Part ii (9 poems in 21, as compared with 20 in 116 in Campion's five books) may be explained by the exigencies of the settings; yet it is odd that seven of these nine poems select the form aabb, which in the other books is used less frequently than the alternating and enclosed forms, while the other two are written in quadruplets, of which there is no example anywhere in Campion's unchallenged work. No stanza in Part ii approaches the complexity of those in vii or xiii of Part i.
page 945 note 15 The citations are from Book i, Song x; Book iii, Song viii; Book i, Song xix. Cf. also iii and v of Book iv.
page 946 note 16 Songs xviii, v, vi. See also xi, xxi, and xx, the last the most tuneful of the lyrics in Part ii, though its matter is commonplace enough.
page 946 note 17 The number of appearances in, first, Part i and, second, the four later books of ayres (comprising 95 lyrics) is woo, 5 and 9; lips, 4 and 7; maid, 2 and 10; wanton, 3 and 4. None of these words appears in Part ii except wanton, once, in the sense of playful, which is not Campion's sense elsewhere. Sweet appears in Part i 12 times, in Part ii 6, in the later books 37; fair appears 10, 4, and 36 times. Despair and desperate are used 7 times in Part ii, not at all in Part i, and only 8 times in the later books; happy has 7 appearances in Part ii, none in Part i, nine in the later books. Flowery, used three times in Part ii, is used only once elsewhere in the songbooks. Roses and rosy appear in 12 other poems in the later books. The line quoted is from Song vii of Book ii.
page 946 note 18 Song xviii as ii of Book i; xvi and xvii as xxii and xxiii of Book iv; several lines of vii in x of Book ii.
page 947 note 19 In The Phoenix Nest (1593), the poem A most rare, and excellent Dreame, generally attributed to Robert Greene, has the Une, “Hir cheekes resembleth right a garden plot.”
page 947 note 20 The most complete analysis of Campion's debt to Catullus appears in John B. Emperor's The Catullian Influence in English Lyric Poetry circa 1600–50. University of Missouri Studies, iii, no. 3 (1928), pp. 21–28.
page 947 note 21 Thus the similar idea in Book i, Song vii, that to express earthly pomp and beauty “Is but to carue in snow, on waues to write” is inadequate evidence that the same poet must have written the song in Part ii.
page 948 note 22 In his edition of the miscellany Hyder Rollins also suggests the possibility that the signature in the edition of 1602 may have been an editorial error (ii, 180).