The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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From Edward Filmer, French Court Airs (1629), ‘To My Worthy Friend, Master Edward Filmer’

[From French Court Airs, 1629]

  To My Worthy Friend, Master Edward Filmer,
On His Work Published

What charming  peals are these,

That, while they bind the senses, do so please?

They are the marriage-rites

Of two, the choicest pair of man’s delights,

Music and poesy: 5

French air and English verse here wedded lie.

Who did this knot compose

Again hath brought the  lily to the rose;

And with their chainèd dance,

 Re-celebrates the joyful match with France. 10

They are a school to win

The fair French daughter to learn English in;

And, gracèd with her song,

 To make the language sweet upon her tongue.

On Master Edward Filmer First printed in Sir Edward Filmer’s French Court Airs (1629). Filmer, from East Sutton in Kent, was the father of Sir Robert Filmer, author of the staunchly royalist Patriarcha. He was born in 1566 and admitted fellow commoner of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, on 30 Apr. 1584, and knighted 23 July 1603. He became sheriff of Kent in 1614, and died in 1629 (Venn, 1897–1901, 1.19 and Venn and Venn, 1922–7, 2.137; further details are in Filmer, 1975, 10–11; previous editors have confused him with his grandson, Sir Robert Filmer’s son Edward). The work was dedicated to Queen Henrietta Maria, who was French. It includes English translations of French songs by Pierre Guedron and Antoine Boesset, with musical settings, and with the original French printed at the end of the volume. The main conceit of Jonson’s poem of a marriage between music and poetry and England and France takes it cue from a note on sig. B2v ‘To Anne the French Queen, new come from Spain, at her first meeting with the King her husband: and appliable to our Sacred marie, at his Majesty’s first sight of her at dover.’ The poem was printed in F2 after Epigr. 128, and was the only poem to be added to the Epigrams collection. It is not known on what authority it was added to the collection. [Editor: Colin Burrow]
1 peals The union between music and poetry is compared to wedding bells which celebrate the marriage of England and France.
8 lily . . . rose Flowers respectively of France and England.
10 Charles I married Henrietta Maria in May 1625.
14 Cf. Chaucer’s description of the Friar, ‘General Prologue’ to The Canterbury Tales, 264–5: ‘Somwhat he lipsed, for his wantownesse, / To make his Englissh sweete upon his tonge’, also echoed in New Inn, 1.3.68–9. See Love’s Tr., 171–2n.