WILLIAM BASSE AND HIS POEMS.
I read with great pleasure Mr. Collier's interesting paper on "William Basse and his Poems," inserted in your 13th Number. Very little is known of this once popular poet, but it is very desirable that that little should be collected together, which cannot be better effected than through the friendly system of inter-communication established by your valuable journal.
From my limited researches upon this subject, it appears that there were two poets of the name of William Basse. Anthony Wood (Athen. Oxon., edit. Bliss, iv. 222.) speaks of one William Basse, of Moreton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, who was some time a retainer of Lord Wenman, of Thame Park, i. e. Richard Viscount Wenman, in the peerage of Ireland. And I find among my MS. biographical collections that a William Basse, of Suffolk, was admitted a sizar of Emanuel College, Cambridge, in 1629, A.B. 1632, and A.M. in 1636. The William Basse who wrote Great Brittaines Sunnes-set in 1613, was also the author of the MS. collection of poems entitled Polyhymnia, mentioned by Mr. Collier. In proof of this it is merely necessary to notice the dedication of the former "To his Honourable Master, Sir Richard Wenman, Knight," and the verses and acrostics in the MS. "To the Right Hon. the Lady Aungier Wenman, Mrs. Jane Wenman, and the truly noble, vertuous, and learned Lady, the Lady Agnes Wenman." Basse's Poems were evidently intended for the press, but we may conjecture that the confusion of the times prevented them from appearing. Thomas Warton, in his Life and Literary Remains of Ralph Bathurst, M.D., has a copy of verses by the Dr. "To Mr. W. Basse, upon the intended publication of his Poems, January 13. 1651;" to which the learned editor adds, "I find no account of this writer or his poems." The whole consists of forty-four verses, from which I extract the beginning and the end:—
"Basse, whose rich mine of wit we here behold
As porcelain earth, more precious, 'cause more old;
Who, like an aged oak, so long hath stood,
And art religion now as well as food:
Though thy grey Muse grew up with elder times,
And our deceased grandsires lisp'd thy rhymes;
Yet we can sing thee too, and make the lays
Which deck thy brow look fresher with thy praise.
*****
Though these, your happy births, have silent past
More years than some abortive wits shall last;
He still writes new, who once so well hath sung:
That Muse can ne'er be old, which ne'er was young."
These verses are valuable as showing that Basse was living in 1651, and that he was then an aged man. The Emanuelian of the same name, who took his M.A. degree in 1636, might possibly be his son. At any rate, the latter was a poet. There are some of his pieces among the MSS. in the Public Library, Cambridge; and I have a small MS. volume of his rhymes, scarcely soaring above mediocrity, which was presented to me by an ancient family residing in Suffolk.
A poem by William Basse is inserted in the Annalia Dubrensia, 1636, in praise of Robert Dover and his revival of the Cotswold games; but it is not clear to which of the two poets we may ascribe it. Malone attributes two rare volumes to one or other of these poets. The first, a translation or paraphrase of Juvenal's tenth satire, entitled That which seems Best is Worst, 12mo., 1617; the second, "A Miscellany of Merriment," entitled A Helpe to Discourse, 2nd edit. 8vo., 1620: but the former is more probably the work of William Barkstead. I may mention that a copy of Basse's Sword and Buckler, or Serving Man's Defence, 1602, is among Malone's books in the Bodleian.
Izaac Walton speaks of William Basse, "one that hath made the choice songs of the Hunter in his Career, and of Tom of Bedlam, and many others of note." The ballad mentioned by Mr. Collier, "Maister Basse his Career, or the Hunting of the Hare," is undoubtedly the one alluded to by Walton. I may add, that it is printed in Wit and Drollery, edit. 1682, p. 64.; and also in Old Ballads, 1725, vol. iii. p. 196. The tune is contained in the Skene MS., a curious collection of old tunes in the Advocate's Library, Edinburgh; and a ballad entitled Hubert's Ghost, to the tune of Basse's Carrier, is preserved among the Bagford Collection of Old Ballads in the British Museum. With regard to the second ballad mentioned by Walton, our knowledge is not so perfect. Sir John Hawkins in a note (Complete Angler, 5th edit. p. 73.) says:
"This song, beginning—
'Forth from my dark and dismal cell,'
with the music to it, set by Hen. Lawes, is printed in a book, entitled Choice Ayres, Songs and Dialogues, to sing to the Theorbo Lute, and Bass Viol, folio. 1675, and in Playfield's Antidote against Melancholy, 8vo. 1669, and also in Dr. Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 350; but in the latter with a mistake in the last line of the third stanza, of the word Pentarchy for Pentateuch."
A copy of the Choice Ayres, 1675, is now before me, but Henry Lawes's name does not appear to the song in question. Sir John has evidently made a mistake; the air of Mad Tom was composed by John Cooper, alias Giovanni Coperario, for one of the Masques performed by the Gentlemen of Gray's Inn. (See The English Dancing Master, 1651, in the British Museum, and Additional MS. 10,444, in the same repository.) With regard to the ballad itself, there is an early copy (of the latter part of the sixteenth century) pre-
