[In the following excerpt, Evans shows that Lawes set to music a version of Charles Cotton's poem “The Picture.”]

Hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton and pious Izaak Walton shared enthusiasms other than their common devotion to angling.¹ Both of these seventeenth-century fishermen had some proficiency in singing, and wrote verse to be set to music. Walton, it will be recalled, “made a conversion of an old ketch, and added more to it,”² for which Henry Lawes composed the melody of The Angler's Song.³ Charles Cotton in imitation of Walton's verse, or out of admiration for Lawes' music, wrote The Angler's Ballad, which can be sung to the tune for Walton's ketch. But Cotton's song writing was not limited to the fitting of new words to old measures. A number of his poems were set by Mr. Coleman,⁴ and one, The Picture, received the distinction of being “Set by Mr. Laws,” the composer who had provided the music not only for Walton's Angler's Song, but for Milton's Comus songs,⁵ for Shakespeare's sonnet CXVI,⁶ and for a great many other sixteenth and seventeenth century lyrics.⁷

The existence of Lawes' music for Cotton's poem, The Picture, has apparently not been known to Cotton's editors and biographers, so that the collaboration of the poet and the musician has received but little comment. The score is found in the manuscript commonplace book of John Gamble, in the New York City Public Library.⁸ The dates of the composition and copying of the song are uncertain; but its position on folio 2079⁹ in the latter part of the volume indicates that it was among the last chosen by the copyist.¹⁰ Lines one and two of the second stanza¹¹ in which the poet declares that he is about to “go / Into another Clime” point to the year 1655 as the date of the composition of the words; for on October 19, 1655, the Protector and Council issued a warrant “for Fras. Chalmondeley and Chas. Cotton to France, for the improvement of their studies.”¹² The music apparently was written after 1655 and obviously before 1662, the year of Lawes' death.

The text of the version which Lawes set to music consists of but one of Cotton's four stanzas. The tune could be repeated for the remaining three, which the copyist did not set down. But this one stanza, set to music at least twenty-seven years before the first publication of the Poems, brings to light new facts about the unknown editor and early texts of the verse.¹³

The first collection of Cotton's lyrics was edited in a perfunctory fashion; some of the poems appeared twice in the one volume. The Picture was printed on page 9 as well as on page 344, so that there has always been a problem as to which is authentic.¹⁴

A comparison of the text on page 9 with that of Lawes' song reveals variations in spelling, punctuation, and capitalization; and in line three of the printed text the use of yours instead of you. The poem is entitled The Picture, and no further information is supplied. But a comparison of the text on page 344 with that of Lawes' song reveals not only the same kind of variations as those just mentioned, but also a structural change in line five, in which the words t' whom, in the printed version become that in the song and in the page 9 version. Beneath the title on page 344 are the words, Set by Mr. Laws. Thus as the text on page 9 follows more closely the one which Lawes actually set to music, the first editor appears to have erred in labelling the poem on page 344 as Set by Mr. Laws. It is probable that the latter was Cotton's original draft, whereas the version on page 9 was the one modified for vocalization. Anyone who reads aloud or sings the fifth line of the page 344 version, “To him your Shadow, t' whom, to chuse,” can realize how awkward the line is, and how much smoother the line, “To him your shadow, that to chuse.” …

THE PICTURE

I.

How, Chloris, can I e'er believe
                                                  The Vows of Women kind,
                                                  Since yours I faithless find,
So faithless, that you can refuse
To him your shadow, that to chuse
You swore you could the substance give?

THE PICTURE.

SET BY MR. LAWS.

How, Chloris, can I e're believe
                                                            The Vows of Woman kind,
                                                            Since yours I faithless find,
                                        So faithless, that you can refuse
                                        To him your Shadow, t'whom, to chuse,
You swore you could the Substance give.

The theme of the song is the complaint of a disillusioned lover. His wretchedness had been caused by his mistress, the fair Chloris, who had refused to give him her portrait. His grief is the more poignant in that he is about to embark for foreign shores, where, he fears, his frail hopes will turn to despair. He might even be tempted to love some other lady! From other poems which Cotton addressed to Chloris one gathers that the lover admired her for her beauty, praised her for her goodness, cursed her for her fickleness, and by turns extolled and berated her for her unattainableness. One of the poems¹⁵ implies that Chloris finally relented about the picture; for the poet addressed her from France, where, he swore, he worshipped her picture as if it were a saint, and boasted, fairly convincingly, that he lived in Paris as if he were an anchorite.

Chloris, according to one of Cotton's biographers,¹⁶ was Isabella Hutchinson, who married Charles Cotton on his return from France in 1656. She may have been the lady who became Cotton's bride, or she may have been the lovely and dangerous Isabella Thynne, whose beauty was celebrated by poets and painted on canvas by Sir Peter Lely. That Cotton was much taken by Isabella Thynne's portrait is evidenced by his long poem, “To my Friend, Mr. Lely, on his picture of the Excellently Virtuous Lady, the Lady Isabella Thynne.”¹⁷ At any rate, some beautiful lady, whether Isabella by name or otherwise, gave Cotton cause for a melancholy humor, which he expressed more or less sincerely in The Picture.

At the time of the writing of the poem in 1655, Cotton was twenty-five years old; Henry Lawes, sixty. To Lawes—who had experienced the horrors and privations of the Civil Wars, suffered the loss of his brother, William, shot in the Siege of Chester, the loss of his Royal Master, Charles I—Chloris's behavior must have seemed slight cause for grief. By this time, Lawes had expressed in music the amatory adventures of half-a-century of poets—their passions, admirations, laments and complaints, rivalries, jealousies, and triumphs. To the composer, Cotton's state of mind as well as his poem must have seemed lacking in the seriousness and selflessness of a grande passion.

Because Cotton's emotion seemed trivial or pretended, or because the love affair ended happily, or whatever the reason, Lawes departed from his usual pattern for setting to music the despair of a lover. The song begins in orthodox fashion in the minor, and progresses along its lachrymose way through two measures. Then the melody takes a brighter turn, and continues wavering toward the major, until finally in the fifth measure it modulates into a definitely major key. The rest of the song plainly indicates that Lawes regarded Cotton's words as more suitably accompanied by a cheerful tune than by the mournful strains to which he usually resorted for lovers' laments.¹⁸ At length, however, the melody concludes, quite properly, as it began, on a doleful D minor. Thus by suggesting sadness in the beginning and ending, and by directing the melody into frequent happy phrases, Lawes has interpreted Cotton's love affair, if a bit callously, certainly more truthfully than the poet himself had expressed it.

The result, so far as the song is concerned, is a peculiarly pleasing melody, yet a melody lacking the definite characteristics of a single emotional impression. It is neither very melancholy nor very gay. It lacks the genial, good-natured appeal of Walton's Angler's Song. But to the ear initiated to Lawes' progressions, the measures are subtly ingratiating, haunting. If further excuse or explanation is needed for the composer's somewhat unfeeling treatment of Cotton's lament, it could be added that Lawes probably possessed greater felicity in sharing the philosophical banter of his contemporary, Izaak Walton, than in setting to music what must have seemed the but simulated dolour of young Charles Cotton.

Notes

1. Richard Le Gallienne in his Introduction to The Compleat Angler (London, 1904), pages lxxvi and lxxvii, quotes Dr. Bethume and James Russell Lowell to support the theory that “the incongruity of the friendship [that of Walton and Cotton] is obvious.” Perhaps these editors, critics, and biographers of Cotton failed to take into account, in spite of differences in social background, age, and temperament, that few friends have had more in common: a mutual love of sport, music, and verse making.

2. Izaak Walton, The Complete Angler (1653), p. 125.

3. Printed for two voices in the first edition of Walton's Complete Angler (1653), and reprinted in various collections containing Henry Lawes' songs, such as Ayres and Dialogues (1659), Musick's Delight upon the Citheron (1666), The Musical Companion (1667), etc.

4. For a brief account of Cotton's collaboration with Coleman, see John Beresford's edition of the Poems of Charles Cotton (London, 1923), p. 408.

5. A good modern edition of the music for Milton's Masque of Comus is contained in the Comus edited by E. H. Visiak and Herbert J. Foss (Nonesuch Press, 1937).

6. A facsimile reproduction of the music for this sonnet is printed in the present author's article, “Lawes' Version of Shakespeare's Sonnet CXVI,” PMLA, LI, 120.

7. Lawes' various volumes of Ayres and Dialogues (published in the years 1653, 1655, and 1658, respectively) bear ample evidence of the number of lyrics which the composer set to music.

8. For an account of the condition and nature of Gamble's manuscript see the article referred to in footnote 6.

9. The copyist sometimes used four figures when but three were required, so that folio 2079 is actually folio 279.

10. There are approximately 340 pages in the volume, some of them numbered, some not numbered; folio 279 is near the end of the collection.

11. Stanza II begins: “Is't not enough that I must go / Into another Clime,”—Poems (1689), p. 344.

12. Cal. S. P. Dom. 1655. Quoted also by Beresford, p. 23.

13. The circumstances of publication are not known. The title-page runs: “Poems on Several Occasions. Written by Charles Cotton, Esq.; London, Printed for Tho. Basset, at the George in Fleet Street; Will Hensman and Tho. Fox, in Westminster Hall, 1689.”

14. Alexander Chalmers in his Works of the English Poets, Vol. VI (1810), reprinted the text from page 9; whereas John Beresford in his Poems of Charles Cotton (1923), reprinted the text from page 344.

15. Ode. To Chloris from France, Beresford's edition, p. 197.

16. Charles J. Sembower, The Life and Poetry of Charles Cotton (1911), p. 25.

17. Beresford's edition, p. 275.

18. Fuller details concerning Lawes' methods of composition are included in the present author's work on the life of Henry Lawes, now in progress.