THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 79 



supped, I will get my friend Coridon to sing you a song for re- 

 quital. 



Cor. I will sing a song, if anybody will sing another ; else, to 

 be plain with you, I will sing none : I am none of those that sing 

 for meat, but for company : I say, " 'Tis merry in hall, when 

 men sing all."'* 



Pisc. I'll promise you I'll sing a song that was lately made at 

 my request, by Mr. William Basse,f one that hath made the 

 choice songs of the Hunter in his Career, and of Tom of Bedlam, 

 and many others of note ; and this that I will sing is in praise of 

 angling. 



* The old saw is, 



" When beards wag all." 



Hawkins says, i. e., " when all are eating." Why not laughing r — ^m. Ed. 



t William Basse. Sir Harris Nicholas, in his Life of Walton (cxx.), 

 calls Basse " an eminent composer," and in his note on the " Angler's 

 Song," says, " These initials (W. B.) occur in the first edition only, and 

 prove that Walton, in saying that this son^ ' was lately made at my re- 

 quest,' by that composer did not refer to the music only." It appears to 

 me that Walton did not refer to the music but the song itself, and this is 

 the more certain from the fact, that we have no trace of Basse as a musical 

 composer. Sir John Hawkins, in his History of Music, mikes no mention 

 of him in that character, as from his familiarity with Walton he would 

 have done, had he known him to be a composer. Bas?e was a poetical 

 writer, for, besides the songs, " The Hunter in his Career" (first reprinted 

 in Pickering's edition by Sir Harris, from a collection of ballads, 1625), 

 and " Tom of Bedlam " (which the reader will find in Percy's Reliques, 

 Series ii., B. 3, 17, but with a mistake in the third verse of" Pentrarchye" 

 for " Pentateuch "), Sir Harris tells us, that in Warton's Life oi Dean 

 Bathurst there are verses " To Mr. W. Basse on the intended publication 

 of his poems, Jan. 13, 1G31." Hawkins also says that the " Tom of Bed- 

 lam," beginning " From my sad and darksome cell," with the music set 

 to it by Hen. Lawes, is printed in a book entitled " Playford's Antidote 

 against Melancholy," Svo., 1G69, and afterwards in another collection, 

 1670. Yet Walton says Basse "made" that song as well as this. Be- 

 sides, the other angler's song (in chap, xvi.), " Man's Life is but Vain," 

 was published in the first edition of the Angler as set to music, " by Mr. H. 

 Lawes" probably at the request of Walton ; as this probably was. Indeed 

 it would be stranze if other music had been so soon substituted by Lawe3 

 in the place of the author's own. 



Of Lawes himself, more will be said in another note, and the music 

 placed in the Appendix. — Am. Ed. 



