good song; except the above, and our homely,
familiar friend, by Carey, "Sally in. our
Alley," which Addison admired. At last,
the song, despite the easy melody of Collins,
reached its final degradation in Shenstone;
whose only decent poem is the least
Shenstonian thing he did. Shenstone's "songs " are
mere easy rhymes of feeble sentiment and
feeble epigram; songs about "Fulvia" and
"Daphne." From the Revolution, on through
the greater part of the century, our most
popular writers were didactic writers; men
who stand on the opposite pole to singers.
Our music, too, was at a low ebb. Our taste
in that matter was overridden by the Italian
Opera; of whose great musical authorities it
becomes me to speak respectfully; but they
did not inspire national song.

When we come to the days of Scott, and
Byron, and Shelley, not forgetting, en passant,
the "Toll for the Brave" of Cowper, too long
for quotation here, we find no dearth of good
songs. Scott's healthy chants; Byron's
passionate or plaintive ones; the exquisite
melody of such a song as Shelley's "Lines to
an Indian Air;"—these, "with the genuine
lark-notes of a Burns" (as Carlyle calls them),
remind us, once more, that we are English.

Moore's great fame makes me not omit his
charming "Irish Melodies." As musicians
set words to music, he sets music to words.
James Smith tells a friend, in a letter preserved
in his Memoirs, that Moore declared that "his
forte was music; that he was no poet apart
from that sensation." Doubtless, the chief
charm of his songs is their association with
the music to which they were written.
Separate them from that, they are merely
fanciful, clever, pretty. Yet there are English
songs, which are their own music, and which,
do what you will, you cannot separate from
melody. Pound their body (as old Anaxarchus
the philosopher told the tyrant), you cannot
pound their soul.

Dibdin, the naval song writer, gave us a
body of songs, entirely national. It is true
that the clever, witty, good Earl of Dorset
(Dryden's friend and patron), who served in
the Dutch war in Charles's days, as several
young gentlemen then did—has left us his—

"To all you ladies now on land
We men at sea indite,"

which the courtesy of England admits into all
collections of sea-songs. But this playful ditty
was intended for the "ladies now on land,"
and for all sorts of idle brave lounging fellows
about Pall Mall. It is not a sea-song: not
racy, salt, and hard, reeking of the ocean like
a lump of sea-weed, as Dibdin's songs are.
Dibdin gives you a song picturing the man-of-war
life—a homely, manly strain; which sets
all the trusting, sturdy courage, the jolly
companionship, and love of grog of the old-school
sailors to a rough music; as if you had set
their grog cans and their rude lower-deck
furniture a-jingling! His are such songs as
those rough storm-beaten tars sung in the
night-watches; lying huddled up in their
jackets in "the waist," on clear moonlight
nights, when the ship was jogging quietly
along, and there was no sail in sight. They
intensify the nautical life; they make all
sorts of teaching subservient to it; for, says
Dibdin:—

"D'ye mind me, a sailor should be every inch
All as one as a piece of the ship,
And with her brave the world, not offering to flinch,
From the moment the anchor's a-trip."

This was the perpetual upshot of all Dibdin
had to say. Jack had a complete creed and
code of morals set to music. Dibdin's songs
afford, as far as I know, the solitary case of a
man creating a literature; they were to Jack
a whole literature—and about as much literature
as Jack cared to have. Dibdin gave
comedy, song, ethics and tragedy to him
all in one. His "Helicon," like the ship's
"coppers," held beef, vegetables, and pudding,
in itself.

From the fo'castle to the drawing-room is
a wide step; but we are compelled to take it.
There was a time when sea-songs were the
"rage;" they were fashionable: but within
later years, a kind of drawing-room
sentimental school made its appearance, and
being well backed by composers, who rather
love mediocrity, beat away on "the drum of
the world's ear" with great success. We
"never mentioned her," for example, for
many a long night, till pianos groaned, and
the heart of man grew sick. To this class
belongs many a song still sung occasionally,
alternating between prettiness and drivel.
And yet our age has produced as noble songs
as ever the world heard. Witness the "Bugle
Song" from Tennyson's "Princess:"—

"The splendour fulls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps iu glory.
Blow! bugle, blow! set the wild echoes flying—
Blow, bugle! answer, echoes! dying, dying, dying!

"Oh hark! oh hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
Oh sweet and far, from cliff and scar,
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow! let us hear the purple glens replying--
Blow, bugle! answer, echoes! dying, dying, dying!

"Oh love, they die in your rich sky!
They faint on hill, on field, on river;
Our echos roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever!
Blow, bugle, blow! set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer! dying, dying, dying!"

These echoes will "roll from soul to soul"
long after we have ceased to hear them.

We have seen how the characters of songs
have varied in different atres with us.
Nobody can doubt that we have numbers of