SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as have not teem reserved for Tarim in other forms.] Aurelian Townshend's Poems and Masks. Edited by E. K. Chambers. (Oxford University Press. 5s. net.)—The rather melancholy little collection of all that remains of the literary work of Aurelian Townshend amply justifies the world for having forgotten him. Mr. Chambers has performed his editorial task with his usual excellence. He gives textual reprints of the two masks which were printed in Townshend's lifetime, and from various song-books and manuscripts he has brought together about a score of lyrics. To these he has prefaced a short account of what is known of Townshend, together with a few of his letters which survive at Hatfield. There is, indeed, little enough to be said of him. Not even the dates of his birth and death are known, though they were approximately 1580 and 1640. He wrote agreeably and without distinction. A single verse from a shepherd's song will give a fair idea of his ability :— " Come not to me for scarfs nor plumes,
Nor from the needy look for gold ; Incense we have, but no perfumes,
Nor no sue.h fleece in all our fold,
As Jason won,
But wool home spun
To keep us from the winter's cold ; And when our garments should be thin, We leave the fleece and take the skin."
His two masks were produced in collaboration with Inigo Jones, and were performed at Whitehall in 1632, the King taking part in one of them and the Queen in the other. A contemporary letter explains that Townshend collaborated with Inigo Jones on this occasion in consequence of an intrigue, "Ben Jenson being for this time discarded, by reason of the predominant power of his antagonist Inigo Jones, who this twelvemonth was angry with him for putting his own name before his in the title-page." Inigo Jones seems to have had a very modern sense of the import- ance of the producer and the irrelevance of the author.
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