"Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Will, when looking well can't move her, Prythee, why so pale? Why so dull and mute, young sinner? Prythee, why so mute? Will, when speaking well can't win her, Saying nothing do't? Prythee, why so mute? Quit, quit, for shame! this will not move, This cannot take her; If, of herself, she will not love, Nothing can make her; The devil take her !" While Suckling and Dryden wrote, translations from the classics had been going on. Most gentlemen of literary tastes tried their hands at turning out versions of Anacreon, Horace, or Catullus. "Coelia" and "Chloris" are the prevailing names of the period. And there is always visible the tendency to make wit take the place of heart, which corrupts all writing, and that of songs particularly. This tendency advanced. In Congreve, the song became a mere epigram. Parnell hammered away at "Coelia " and "Anacreontics." The songs of Anne's time were not inspired melodies, like the old Shakspearean ones; nor deep fantastic love-rhymes, like Donne's and Cowley's; nor gay pagan flights of Epicureanism, like the songs of the Cavalier days. They were wretched pieces of rhymed artificial sentiment. Gay's are witty enough, and his "Blackeyed Susan" has nature in it, as Gay himself had, but is an exception to his fellows. I doubt if that time produced a 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 they 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 mch And with her brave the world, not offering to flinch, 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. We แ "the never 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 drum of the world's ear" with great success. 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 splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story; And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow! bugle, blow! set the wild echoes flying— "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- "Oh love, they die in your rich sky! They faint on hill, on field, on river: 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 in different ages with us. numbers of beautiful ones. is, that composers and song-writers have no harmony in their work. The songs circulated among the people are inferior to the tone of the country's thought and the English mind, and attract chiefly by the jingle to which they are set. characters of songs have varied Nobody can doubt that we have But the complaint at present |