286 THE COMPLETE ANGLEK. PART I. 



fitting them to be sung by us anglers. Come, master ! 

 you can sing well; you must sing a part of it as it 

 is in this paper. 



who is waiting for his turn, is playing on the lute; and on the side of the 

 shop, hangs another instrument of the lute or cittern kind. The inference 

 I draw from hence is : that, formerly, a lute was considered as a necessary 

 part of the furniture of a barber's shop, and answered the end of a news- 

 paper, the now common amusement of waiting customers; which it 

 would never have done, if musick had not, as is above observed, been ge- 

 nerally known and practised. 



In an old comedy of Dekker's, entitled, " The second part of the ho- 

 * nest Whore," printed in Dodsley's Collection, vol. iii. edit. 1780, Matheo 

 speaking of his wife, terms her, " a barber's eitterne for every serving-man 

 ' to play upon." 



This instrument grew into disuse about the beginning of this century. 

 Dr. King, taking occasion to mention the barbers, of his time, says, " that 

 *' turning themselves to perriwig-making, they had forgot their cittern 

 " and their musick." Works of Dr. William King, vol. ii. p. 79. 



And the knowledge of this fact will enable us to explain and justify a 

 passage in Ben Jonson's comedy of The Silent Woman, which none of his 

 annotators seem to have understood. Morose, in act III. scene 5. of that 

 play after he has discovered that his supposed wife can talk, and that to 

 the purpose too cries out, of Cutberd, " That cursed barber; -I have 

 " married his Cittern that's common to all men." Mr. Upton, in his 

 Notes on that play, supposes we should read Cistern, i. e. the common sink, 

 the common sewer, cistern, or receptacle : or, he says, we may read 

 Cittern in a sense that has no relation to a barber's shop. But whe- 

 ther the circumstance above-mentioned, does not render any such conjec- 

 tures needless, the ingenious reader will determine. 



Mr. Henry La-wes, who composed the musick to this song, was the Pur- 

 cell of the age he lived in : Mr. Waller has honoured him with a Copy of 

 Verses, inscribed " To Mr. Henry Lawes, who had then new set a song of 

 " mine, in the year 163.5." And Milton has celebrated his merit in an ele- 

 gant sonnet, " to Mr. H. Lawes, on his airs." Milton was an excellent 

 judge, and performer, of musick; a particular which, as it has been very 

 superficially mentioned by the many writers of his life, it may not be amiss 

 to enlarge on here. And, first, we are to know, that his affection to this art 

 was, in some sort, hereditary; for his father was not only a lover, but a 

 composer of musick : the common melody, known by the name of Tort 

 psalm-tune, which most country chimes play, and half the nurses in thi^ 

 kingdom sing by way of lullaby, was of his composition, as appears by Ra- 

 venscroft's Collection of Psalm-tunes, and other evidences. He also composed 

 many Madrigals, in four and five parts t some of which are to be seen in the 

 Triumphs of Oriana ; a collection of madrigals to five and six voices, com- 



Eosed by divers authors, 4to. Lond. 1601 ; and in other collections. And 

 istly, it appears from the Life of Milton, by his nephew Philips, prefixed 

 to a Translation of some of his Letters of State, printed in 12mo. 1694, 

 that Milton the father, composed an In Nomine, of forty parts ; for 

 which he was rewarded, by a Polish prince to whom he presented it, 

 with a gold medal and chain. And we are also told, by the above 

 mentioned nephew of Milton, that when he was upon his travels* 

 he collected, a chest or two of choice musiek-books of the best masters 



