With a new fashion, when Christmas is drawing on, On a new journey to London straight we all must begone, And leave none to keep house, but our new porter John, Who relieves the poor with a thump on the back with a stone; Like a young courtier, &c. With a new gentleman usher, whose carriage is complete, With a new coachman, footmen, and pages to carry up the meat, With a waiting gentlewoman, whose dressing is very neat, Who, when her lady has dined, lets the servants not eat ; Like a young courtier, &c. With new titles of honour, bought with his father's old gold; GOD SAVE THE KING. 17TH CENTURY. THIS National Anthem is generally attributed to Dr. John Bull, 1591, professor of music, Oxford, and chamber musician to James I., but he could only have been the composer, and of this the proof is slight. Henry Carey's son claimed it as the composition of his father, whose granddaughter, Alice Carey, was the mother of Edmund Kean. The germ of the song is to be found in one which Sir Peter Carew used to sing before Henry VIII.; chorus [GEORGE WITHER was born in Hampshire in 1588, and, after studying at Oxford, entered Lincoln's Inn, where he wrote satires for which he was imprisoned. He afterwards joined the Parliamentarians, and was taken prisoner by the king's party, by whom he would have been put to death had not Denham interfered, under the jocose pretext that, so long as Wither lived, he himself could not be considered the worst poet in England. Wither was afterwards made Governor of Farnham Castle, and was enriched by the estates of the Royalists; but at the Restoration he was deprived of all his possessions, and sent to the Tower. When he angrily remonstrated, he was treated with great severity. released, and died in obscurity, in 1667. He was at length Most of his best productions were written while he was in confinement, and before he became imbued with puritanical ideas. His principal poem is "The Shepherd's Hunting," but his shorter pieces are better known.] O now is come our joyful'st feast; Let every man be jolly; Each room with ivy leaves is drest, And every post with holly. Though some churls at our mirth repine, Round your foreheads garlands twine, Drown sorrow in a cup of wine, And let us all be merry. Now all our neighbours' chimneys smoke, Now every lad is wondrous trim, Young men and maids, and girls and boys, And you anon shall by their noise Rank misers now do sparing shun; And dogs thence with whole shoulders run, The country folks themselves advance, And Jack shall pipe and Gill shall dance, And all the town be merry. Ned Squash hath fetcht his bands from pawn, And all his best apparel; Brisk Nell hath bought a ruff of lawn With dropping off the barrel. And those that hardly all the year Had bread to eat, or rags to wear, Will have both clothes and dainty fare, Now poor men to the justices With capons make their errants; And if they hap to fail of these, They plague them with their warrants: But now they feed them with good cheer, Good farmers in the country nurse The client now his suit forbears, Hark! now the wags abroad do call Anon you'll see them in the hall, Hark! how the roofs with laughter sound, The wenches with their wassail bowls Our honest neighbours come by flocks, |