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CHAPTER XII
CONCERNING SOME FAVOURITE SONGS
"BLONDEL," "ANNABEL LEE," " MY PRETTY JANE," "THE LASS OF RICHMOND HILL," "SALLY IN OUR ALLEY," " THE ROAST BEEF OF OLD ENGLAND," "HEARTS OF OAK," AND "RULE BRITANNIA"
" GIVE," said Queen Elizabeth to Lord Bur-leigh, while Spenser knelt, poems in hand, " Give the youth one hundred pounds." " What," ex-claimed Burleigh, "all this for a song?" "Then give him what 's reason," said the queen, thus leaving him in the hands of Burleigh, who ended by making the bard indeed poet-laureate, but never bestowed the promised guerdon. Spen-ser's patience wearing out, he wrote these lines to the queen, which had the desired effect:
" I -was promised on a time,
To have Reason for my Rhyme ; From that tame until this season I've got neither Rhyme nor Reason."
But it has been the way of the world to keep the song and forget the singer, yet the greatest
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