"
The good clerk also made shoes, shaved and clipped hair, and practised
chirurgery also in the worming of dogs.
"Now was the long expected time arrived when the Psalms of King David
should be hymned unto the same tunes to which he played them upon his
harp, so I was informed by my singing-master, a man right cunning in
Psalmody. Now was our over-abundant quaver and trilling done away, and
in lieu thereof was instituted the sol-fa in such guise as is sung in
his Majesty's Chapel. We had London singing-masters sent into every
parish like unto excisemen."
P.P. was accused by his enemies of humming through his nostrils as a
sackbut, yet he would not forgo the harmony, it having been agreed by
the worthy clerks of London still to preserve the same. He tutored the
young men and maidens to tune their voices as it were a psaltery, and
the church on Sunday was filled with new Hallelujahs.
But the fame of the great is fleeting. Poor Paul Philips passed away,
and was forgotten. When his biographer went to see him, his place knew
him no more. No one could tell of his virtues, his career, his
excellences. Nothing remained but his epitaph:
"O reader, if that thou canst read,
Look down upon this stone;
Do all we can, Death is a man
That never spareth none."
CHAPTER VI
CLERKS TOO CLERICAL.
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