The Elizabethan Lyric

The Elizabethan poets 1 to a very great extent learned their art, and in turn communicated it to their readers, by means of the song collections which issued in a constant stream from “Tottel’s Miscellany” in 1557 to Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody in 1602. 2 So much in demand were they that one or another of them was being published or reprinted in almost every year of this long period. Most of them now touch the fancy chiefly by their charming titles: A Handful of Pleasant Delights, A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions, The Paradise of Dainty Devices, The Phoenix Nest, etc ., but in their time they were read so avidly that perfect copies rank among the very rarest of sixteenth-century books, and we shall never know how many have altogether perished.