The melody is given in _English Country Songs_ edited by Miss Broadwood and Mr Fuller Maitland, allied to some amusing words. Although we cannot claim the elder Milton as a musician who did much to advance the art, I think I may be forgiven for having included his name in my list. So little is said about him in musical histories, and I have been able, I think, to get together some comparatively unknown matter regarding him, that I hope I have done right in giving a place among my Twelve Good Musicians to John Milton the elder. {71} VIII. HENRY LAWES 1595--1662 In Henry Lawes we have a subject of particular interest. No musician of the 17th or probably of any century, has been so praised by the poets, and few musicians of reputation have been so disdainfully treated by the old musical historians. I think we shall find Henry Lawes worthy of inclusion amongst the Twelve Good Musicians with whom I am dealing. His life was a chequered one. He lived in troublous days, and in an era of great changes in the political and musical worlds. Born in 1595, at Dinton, in Wiltshire, he became a pupil of Giovanni Coperario (or John Cooper, to give him his English name), and I think this had a considerable influence on the direction which his compositions took, and about which I shall say more later. We find him a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1625, and later on a Gentleman of the Private Music to King Charles the First. On the breaking out of the Rebellion, he lost his {72} posts, and employed himself principally in teaching singing. He lived a long life; long enough to see the Restoration, and to compose the Coronation Anthem for King Charles the Second, dying in 1662. Lawes' contributions to English music begin with the Masque. The earliest date seems to be 1633-4, when he set the songs in a Masque written by Thomas Carew, entitled _Coelum Britannicum_. This was written at the particular invitation of the King, and performed for the first time at Whitehall.