" The Master
replies--"I thanke you: and assure your selfe it will not be the
smallest part of my contentment to see my schollers go towardly
forward in their studies, which I doubt not but you will doe, if you
take but reasonable pains in practise."
Later on in the Third Part (p. 136) Phil.'s brother Polymathes comes
with him to Gnorimus for a lesson in Descant--_i.e._, the art of
extemporaneously adding a part to the written plainsong.[1] This
brother had had lessons formerly from a master who carried a plainsong
book in his pocket, and caused him to do the like; "and so walking in
the fields, hee would sing the plaine song, and cause me to sing the
descant, etc." Polymathes tells us also that his master had a friend,
a descanter himself, who used often to drop in--but "never came in my
maister's companie ... but they fell to contention.... What? (saith
the one), you keepe not time in your proportions: you sing them false
(saith the other), what proportion is this? (saith hee),
sesqui-_paltery_ (saith the other): nay (would the other say), you
sing you know not what, it shoulde seeme you came latelie from a
Barber's shop, where you had _Gregory Walker_ (derisive name for
'quadrant pavan,' 'which was most common 'mongst the Barbars and
Fidlers') or a _curranta_ plaide in the new proportions by them lately
found out, called sesqui-_blinda_, and sesqui-_harken-after_.
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