consequence; that they had been the
solace of sailors in long voyages, in
storms, and in battles," and that "they
had been quoted in mutinies to the restoration
of order and discipline." Dibdin's sea
songs, as has been observed by the editor
of the Illustrated Book of English Songs,
"are intensely and entirely English. They
are English in their sound feeling, in their
contempt of danger, in their rude gaiety,
and in their true-heartedness. They are
quite as English even in their prejudices,
and would not suit the sailors of any other
nation. Every reader and hearer knows,
though he may never have been at sea,
though he may not have mixed with sailors,
and though he may have received only the
old traditionary or stage notions of their
character, that the pictures are true, that
the feelings are real, and such as no stranger
could have invented, just as sometimes in
a portrait we know it to be a likeness from
those little peculiar traits, which carry
conviction, though we may never have seen
the individual represented. Who can
mistake the character of Poor Jack? Who
does not feel that he is a genuine Englishman
and a true-hearted sailor, and that
there is no sailor like him on the ocean,
either for his peculiar virtues or his peculiar
failings? Every page of Charles Dibdin's
excellent songs supplies a new variety, and
though every song seems the genuine
experience of the sentiment of a British sailor
that lived and moved and had his being
among us, and not a stage sailor made up
for show, to captivate the imagination of
the groundlings, there is but little
repetition of sentiment or imagery."

The songs of Charles Dibdin, if not in
every library, as they ought to be, are too
well known to justify large quotation.
Space only allows me to specify as being
the most admirable, Poor Jack; Tom
Bowling; Lovely Nan; Blow High, Blow
Low; Nothing Like Grog; The Jolly Young
Waterman; Yeo! Heave, Ho; The Flowing
Can; The Sailor's Journal; The Carfindo;
Tom Tough; and last, and perhaps greatest,
the immortal song of True Courage, with its
racy commencement:

"Why, what's that to you, if my eyes I'm a wiping?
    A tear is a pleasure d'ye see in its way;
'Tis nonsense for trifles, I own, to be piping,
    But they that han't pity, why I pities they!

Dibdin wrote in the plain vernacular,
always well—always to the point; and if
he had a fault, which I am loth even to
hint at in so admirable a lyrist—it was
that he pitched his note, notwithstanding all
his plainness of style, a little too high in
tone for the taste and the intellect of the
audience for which he wrote. Indeed, it has
been doubted whether sailors ever actually
sang Dibdin's songs to such an extent as
to justify the assertion that they were
popular among the class for which they
were intended. But popular or not popular,
their merit is none the less; and were it
only for his good intentions, his patriotic
spirit, and his brave performance at a time
when, without an all-conquering navy,
Great Britain would have lost her high
place in the commonwealth of Christian
nations, Charles Dibdin, alive, deserved
greater national reward and recognition
than he received. At best he was but shabbily
compensated, if such a ghost of
gratitude can be called compensation, by the
posthumous admiration of his countrymen.

His son Thomas, who like too many
men of genius, "lived neglected and died
forlorn," partly because he could do
nothing but write songs which nobody wanted,
deserves the poor reward, if reward it be,
of recognition from the age that followed
him, for his songs, The Right little, Tight
little Island; When Vulcan forged the
Bolts of Jove; and All's Well. His
contemporaries did not find this poor fellow
bread. Posterity has not even given him
a stone.

Among the best, perhaps it is the very
best, of the noble sea songs of England, is
the Battle of the Baltic, by Thomas Campbell,
a resounding chant of triumph,
worthy alike of the subject and the singer,
and fit to rank on the same high level of
excellence as Ye Mariners of England.
Everybody knows and has read it, though
few may have heard it sung. It requires
a poet to put such fiery stanzas to music as
noble as the poetry, and the two have not
yet come together. The poetry lives, and
will live for ever. The music to wed it to
a true and sympathetic melody has yet to
be born.

The revolution in naval architecture
produced by steam, and the construction
of ships of iron, instead of the Hearts of
Oak of our ancestors, has as yet given
birth, as far as the present writer is aware,
to but one song. I quote a single stanza
from the Iron Ship:

        The hammer fell, the anvil rang,
         As she to shape and beauty sprang,
         In mimic lightnings she was nursed,
         And cradled in their thunder-burst.
            And now we launch her fair and free,
         To brave alike the tempest stroke
         And fire that slays the heart of oak,
         The iron conqueror of the main;
         May danger track her path in vain,
             The queen and glory of the sea!