We find the character of the songs to be eminently festive: almost every one could be chanted over a cup of burnt Sack, and there was not entire forgetfulness of eating: witness “The Cold Chyne,” on page 55 (our p. 148). The Love-making is seldom visible. Such glimpses as we gain of Puritans (Bishop Corbet’s Hot-headed Zealot, Cleveland’s “Rotundos rot,”) are only suggestive of playful ridicule. The Sectaries, being no longer dangerous, are here laughed at, not calumniated. The odd jumble of nations brought together in those disturbed times is seen in the crowd of lovers around the “blith Lass of Falkland town” (p. 133) who is constant in her love of a Scottish blue bonnet:—“_If ever I have a man, blew-Cap for me!_” But, sitting at ease once more, not hunted into bye-ways or exile, and with enough of ready cash to wipe off tavern scores, or pay for braver garments than were lately flapping in the wind, the Cavaliers recall the exploits of their patron-saint, “St. George for England,” the gay wedding of Lord Broghill, as described by Sir John Suckling in 1641, the still noisier marriage of Arthur o’ Bradley, or that imaginary banquet afforded to the Devil, by Ben Jonson’s Cook Lorrell, in the Peak of Derbyshire. Early contrasts, drawn by their own grandsires, between the Old Courtier of Queen Elizabeth and the New Courtier of King James, are welcomed to remembrance. They forgive “Old Noll,” while ridiculing his image as “The Brewer,” and they repeat the earlier Ulysses song of the “Blacksmith,” by Dr. James Smith, if only for its chorus, “Which no body can deny.” The grave solemnity wherewith Dr. Wilde’s “Combat of Cocks” was told; the light-hearted buffoonery of “Sir Eglamore’s Fight with the Dragon;” the spluttering grimaces of Ben Jonson’s “Welchman’s praise of Wales;” and the sustained humour as well as enthusiasm of Dr. Henry Edwards’s “On the Vertue of Sack” (“Fetch me Ben Jonson’s scull,” &c.), are all crowned by the musical outburst of “The Green Gown:”— “Pan leave piping, the Gods have done feasting, There’s never a goddess a hunting to-day,” &c. (see Appendix to _Westminster Drollery_, p. liv.) Our readers may thus additionally enjoy a full-flavoured bumper of the “_Antidote against Melancholy_.” J. W. E. August, 1875. _To the Reader._ There’s no Purge ’gainst _Melancholly_, But with _Bacchus_ to be jolly: All else are but Dreggs of Folly. _Paracelsus_ wanted skill When he sought to cure that Ill: No _Pectorals_ like the _Poets_ quill. Here are _Pills_ of every sort, For the _Country_, _City_, _Court_, Compounded and made up of sport. If ’gainst _Sleep_ and _Fumes_ impure, Thou, thy _Senses_ would’st secure; Take this, Coffee’s not half so sure. Want’st thou _Stomack_ to thy Meat, And would’st fain restore the heat, This does it more than _Choccolet_.