times called musica narrativa, or music in which a story could be told. Its introducer in England, and most eminent illustrator, was Nicholas Lanier. For example, a celebrated masque was written by Ben Jonson and Nicholas Lanier to be performed in the style of recitativo accompagnato. Not only was the music of this masque written by Lanier, but he performed the vocal part of it, reciting the poem in the musica narrativa way, with great effect. Lanier did not confine himself, however, to the recitative, but wrote many other musical compositions which appear in the later collections of the time. Besides his name, it would not be proper for me to omit mention of those of Cooper (who after a visit to Italy styled himself Coperario) and Ferabasco.

Secular instrumental music was usually one of the following three sorts. Where it was concerted for orchestral instruments, it was often the parts of part-songs merely played instead of being sung; as indicated in the title of one of William Bird's publications, printed in 1611: Psalms, Songs, and Sonets; some solemne, others joyfull, framed to the life of the words, fit for voices or viols, of 3, 4, 5, and 6 parts.

The music for the virginals was usually a melody of some sort a dance-tune or old air- played by one hand, while the other executed all manner of endless variations upon it. Several of these compositions of contemporary writers remain to us, notably a collection of them in what is known as Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book, and they show passages of such difficulty as must have required great technic for their execution upon the instruments of that time.

Shakspere's well-known sonnet on the virginals comes in most appropriately here:

CXXVIII

How oft when thou, my music, music play'st
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,

Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,

Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand?
To be so tickled they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips

O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips.
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,

Give them thy fingers, me thy lips, to kiss.

A third sort of instrumental music-and perhaps the most highly esteemed, as such-is indicated in the title of a publication by John Dowland, one of the most celebrated musicians of this period. This was called Lachrimae; or Seaven Teares figured in seaven passionate Pavans; with divers other Pavans, Galiards, and Almands, set forth for the Lute, Viols, or Violins, in five parts. These dances, the Pavan, the Galliard, etc., are highly characteristic of Shakspere's time, and merit some description.

The Pavan was a slow dance, always in time, or at any rate common time, and was so called from pavo, a peacock; the significance of the name being that the Pavan was a stately measure, and the spreading of the long trains of the ladies, or of the long gowns in which it was danced by noblemen, was like the spreading of the peacock's tail.

It was customary after the slow movement of the Pavan to follow it up with the livelier dance known as the

Galliard. Selden, in his "Table-talk," complains: "In Queen Elizabeth's time gravity and state were kept up; at a solemn dancing, first you had the grave measures; then the corantos and Galliards; and at length to Frenchmore and the cushion-dance." Here, you observe, the order was first, the Pavan, a slow and stately dance, in common time; then the Galliard, a livelier dance, in 34 (triple) time; then the cushion-dance, a still livelier measure, so called from the cushion which in one of the figures had to be brought for the dancer to kneel on. It will be interesting to musical people to remark here that the succession of movements in a sonata is supposed to be connected with this practice of following up a dance of slow time with one of faster movement, and the like; an idea which receives support when we think how much of the instrumental music of this time consisted of these dance tunes, or of what were called "fantasias" upon them.

In the Galliard, which thus followed the Pavan like a comedy after a tragedy, the dancer would make four steps forward, with the right and left foot alternately, and then spring into the air. This characteristic caper of the dance is mentioned by Shakspere: in Act I, Scene III, of Twelfth Night, Sir Toby is unmercifully quizzing Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who has just been bragging with his usual stupidity upon his marvellous strange delight in " masques and revels." Says Sir Toby:

What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight?

Sir And. Faith, I can cut a caper.

Sir Toby. And I can cut the mutton to 't.

Sir And. And I think I have the back-trick simply as strong as any man in Illyria.

Sir Toby. Wherefore are these things hid? wherefore have these gifts a curtain before them? are they like to take dust, like