

CHAP, iv.] THE THIRD DAY. 81 



VENATOR. Trust me, master, it is a choice song, and sweetly 

 sung by honest Maudlin. 4 I now see it was not without cause 

 that our good queen Elizabeth did so often wish herself a milkmaid 

 all the month of May, because they are not troubled with fears 

 and cares, but sing sweetly all the day, and sleep securely all the 

 night : and without doubt, honest, innocent, pretty Maudlin does 

 so. I'll bestow Sir Thomas Overbury's milkmaid's wish upon 



VARIATION. 



* Viator. Trust me, master, it is a choice song, and sweetly sung by honest Maudlin : 

 I'll bestow Sir Thomas Overbury's milkmaid's wish upon her, That she may die in the 

 Spring, and have good store of flowers stuck round about her winding-sheet. ist edit, 



"Thou in whose groves by Dis above, 

 Shall live with me, and be my love." 



The fact that Walton calls it Marlowe's song, is entitled to very little weight in deciding 

 by whom it was written, because it is certain that his authority for the assertion was 

 his finding Marlowe's name attached to it in " England's Helicon." In the second, and 

 every subsequent edition of the Angler, however, he added the sixth stanza, which, 

 as has been well observed, contains images that destroy the simplicity and pastoral 

 character of the piece. The " Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," or as Walton calls it, 

 "The Milkmaid's Mother's Answer," which is assigned by Walton to Sir Walter 

 Raleigh, was also taken from "England's Helicon," where it was printed with the sig- 

 nature, " S. W. R-," but in most copies of that work those initials were pasted over, 

 and "Ignoto" substituted for them, which tends to prove that it was not written by 

 Raleigh; and Walton's error probably arose from using a copy in which the alteration 

 had not been made. It is impossible to say who was the author of the "Nymph's 

 Reply ;" but as the first stanza occurs in the poems attributed by Jaggard to Shake- 

 speare, at the end of "Come, live with me," entitled " Love's Answer," the evidence is 

 as strong in favour of his having written so much of it, as that he was the author of 

 "Come, live with me." Walton, it appears, also added the sixth stanza of the Reply 

 in the second and subsequent editions of the Angler. 



If the popularity of a song is to be estimated by the number of imitations of it, 

 " Come, live with me," must have been eminently popular, one of these beginning 



" Come, live with me, and be my dear," 



will be found in "England's Helicon." Dr Donne has imitated it in a poem, entitled 

 "The Bait," commencing 



" Come, live with me, and be my love, 



And we will some new pleasures prove," 

 which Walton has introduced in the text, Chap. XII. 



Herrick, in his Hesperides, vol. i. p. 269, ed. 1825 



"Live, live with me, and thou shalt see." 



The late editor of Marlowe's Works has printed the song, vol. iii. p. 419, apparently 

 from a different copy, in which there are few variations. The following is perhaps for 

 the better, 1. 10 



"And twine a thousand fragrant posies." 



This ballad, Steevens remarks, appears to have furnished Milton with the hint for the 

 last lines of L'Allegro and Penseroso. 



The tune to which "Come, live with me" was sung, Sir John Hawkins discovered in 

 a MS. which he says is as old as Shakespeare's time, and will be found in Johnson and 

 Steevens's Shakespeare, ed. 1793, vol. iii. p. 402. 



A ballad, entitled Queen Elinor, to the tune of " Come, live with me," is printed in 

 Dcloney's "Strange Histories, or Songes and Sonnets," i2mo, 1607. 



Nicolas Breton, in his " Poste with a Packet of Mad Letters," 1637, 410, alludes to 

 it in these words: 



"You shall heare the old song that you were wont to like well of, sung by the black 

 browes with the cherrie-cheeke, under the side of the pide-cowe : Come, live with me, 

 and be my love : you know the rest, and so I rest." 



F 



