That communion of heart, and that parley of soul,
Which has lengthened our nights and illumined our bowl,
When they've asked me the manners, the mind, or the mien
Of some bard I had known, or some chief I had seen,
Whose glory, though distant, they long had adored,
Whose name often hallowe i the juice of their board!
And still as, with sympathy humble but true,

I told them each luminous trait that I knew,

They have listened, and sighed that the powerful stream
Of America's empire should pass, like a dream,
Without leaving one fragment of genius, to say
How sublime was the tide which had vanished away!
Farewell to the few-though we never may meet
On this planet again, it is soothing and sweet
To think that, whenever my song or my name
Shall recur to their ear, they'll recall me the same
I have been to them now, young, unthoughtful, and blest,
Ere hope had deceived me or sorrow depressed!
But, Douglas! while thus I endear to my mind
The elect of the land we shall soon leave behind,
I can read in the weather-wise glance of thine eye,
As it follows the rack flitting over the sky,
That the faint coming breeze will be fair for our flight,
And shall steal us away ere the falling of night.
Dear Douglas, thou knowest, with thee by my side,
With thy friendship to soothe me, thy courage to guide,
There's not a bleak isle in those summerless seas,

Where the day comes in darkness, or shines but to freeze,
Not a tract of the line, not a barbarous shore,

That I could not with patience, with pleasure explore!
Oh! think then how happy I follow thee now,

When hope smooths the billowy path of our prow,

And each prosperous sigh of the west-springing wind

Takes me nearer the home where my heart is enshrined;
Where the smile of a father shall meet me again,
And the tears of a mother turn bliss into pain;

Where the kind voice of sisters shall steal to my heart,
And ask it, in sighs, how we ever could part !—

But see-the bent top-sails are ready to swell
To the boat-I am with thee-Columbia, farewell!

TO LADY H—.

ON AN OLD RING FOUND AT TUNBRIDGE-WELLS.

'Tunnebrige est à la même distance de Londres que Fontainbleau l'est de Paris. Ce qu'il y a de beau et de galant dans l'un et dans l'autre sexe s'y rassemble au temps des eaux. La compagnie,' etc. etc.-See Mémoires de Grammont, seconde part. chap. iii.

Tunbridge Wells, August, 1805. WHEN Grammont graced these happy springs,

And Tunbridge saw, upon her Pantiles,

The merriest wight of all the kings

That ever ruled these gay gallant isles;

Like us by day they rode, they walked,
At eve they did as we may do,
And Grammont just like Spencer talked,
And lovely Stewart smiled like you!

The only different trait is this,

That woman then, if mau beset her,
Was rather given to saying 'yes,'
Because as yet she knew no better !

Each night they held a coterie,
Where, every fear to slumber charmed,
Lovers were all they ought to be,

And husbands not the least alarmed!

They called up all their school-day pranks,
Nor thought it much their sense beneath,
To play at riddles, quips, and cranks,

And lords showed wit, and ladies teeth.

As-'Why are husbands like the Mint ?'
Because, forsooth, a husband's duty
Is just to set the name and print
That give a currency to beauty.

'Why is a garden's wildered maze

Like a young widow, fresh and fair?'

Because it wants some hand to raise

The weeds, which have no business there!'

And thus they missed, and thus they hit,

And now they struck, and now they parried, And some lay-in of full-grown wit,

While others of a pun miscarried.

'Twas one of those facetious nights

That Grammont gave this forfeit ring, For breaking grave conundrum rites,

Or punning ill, or-some such thing;

From whence it can be fairly traced
Through many a branch and many a bough,
From twig to twig, until it graced

The snowy hand that wears it now.

All this I'll prove, and then to you,

Oh Tunbridge! and your springs ironical,
I swear by H-the-te's eye of blue,
To dedicate the important chronicle.

Long may your ancient inmates give
Their mantles to your modern lodgers,,
And Charles' loves in H-the-te live,
And Charles' bards revive in Rogers!

Let no pedantic fools be there,

For ever be those fops abolished, With heads as wooden as thy ware,

And, Heaven knows! not half so polished.

But still receive the mild, the gay,
The few, who know the rare delight

Of reading Grammont every day,
And acting Grammont every night!

ΤΟ

NEVER mind how the pedagogue proses,
You want not antiquity's stamp,
The lip that's so scented by roses,
Oh! never must smell of the lamp.

Old Cloe, whose withering kisses
Have long set the loves at defiance,
Now, done with the science of blisses,
May fly to the blisses of science!

Young Sappho, for want of employments,
Alone o'er her Ovid may melt,
Condemned but to read of enjoyments
Which wiser Corinna had felt.

But for you to be buried in books--
Oh, Fanny! they're pitiful sages,
Who could not in one of your looks
Read more than in millious of pages!

Astronomy finds in your eye

Better light than she studies above, And music must borrow your sigh

As the melody dearest to love.

In Ethics-'tis you that can check,

In a minute, their doubts and their quarrels ;

Oh! show but that mole on your neck,

And 'twill soon put an end to their morals.

Your Arithmetic only can trip

When to kiss and to count you endeavour; But eloquence glows on your lip

When you swear that you'll love me for ever.

Thus you see what a brilliant alliance
Of arts is assembled in you—

A course of more exquisite science
Man never need wish to go through!

And, oh !—if a fellow like me

May confer a diploma of hearts, With my lip thus I seal your degree, My divine little Mistress of Arts!

IRISH MELODIES.

FROM 1807 TO 1828.

PREFATORY LETTER ON MUSIC

It has often been remarked, and oftener felt, that our music is the truest of all comments upon our history. The tone of defiance, succeeded by the languor of despondency-a burst of turbulence dying away into softness-the sorrows of one moment lost in the levity of the next-and all that romantic mixture of mirth and sadness, which is naturally produced by the efforts of a lively temperament to shake off or forget the wrongs which lie upon it. Such are the features of our history and character, which we find strongly and faithfully reflected in our music; and there are many airs which, I think, it is difficult to listen to without recalling some period or event to which their expression seems peculiarly applicable. Sometimes, when the strain is open and spirited, yet shaded here and there by a mournful recollection, we can fancy that we behold the brave allies of Montrose1 marching to the aid of the royal cause, notwithstanding all the perfidy of Charles and his ministers, and remembering just enough of past sufferings to enhance the generosity of their present sacrifice. The plaintive melodies of Carolan take us back to the times in which he lived, when our poor countrymen were driven to worship their God in caves, or to quit for ever the land of their birth (like the bird that abandons the nest which human touch has violated); and in many a song do we hear the last farewell of the exile, mingling regret for the ties he leaves at home, with sanguine expectations of the honours that await him abroad—such honours as were won on the field of Fontenoy, where the valour of Irish Catholics turned the fortune of the day in favour of the French, and extorted from George II. that memorable exclamation, "Cursed be the laws which deprive me of such subjects!"

Though much has been said of the antiquity of our music, it is certain that our finest and most popular airs are modern; and perhaps we may look no further than the last disgraceful century for the origin of most of those wild and melancholy strains which were at once the offspring and solace of grief, and which were applied to the mind as music was formerly to the body, "decantare loca dolentia. Mr. Pinkerton is of opinion that none of the Scotch popular airs are as old as the middle of the sixteenth century; and though musical antiquaries refer us for some of our melodies to so early a period as the fifth century, I am persuaded that there are few of a civilized description (and by this I mean to exclude all the savage ceanans, cries, &c.) which can claim quite

1 There are some gratifying accounts of the gallantry of these Irish auxiliaries in The Complete History of the Wars in Scotland under Montrose (1660). Clarendon owns that the Marquis of Montrose was indebted for much of

his miraculous success to this small band of Irish heroes under Macdonnell.

2 Of which some genuine specimens may be found at the end of Mr. Walker's work upon the Irish Bards. Mr. Bunting has disfigured his

so ancient a date as Mr. Pinkerton allows to the Scotch. But music is not the only subject upon which our taste for antiquity is rather unreasonably indulged; and, however heretical it may be to dissent from these romantic speculations, I cannot help thinking that it is possible to love our country very zealously, and to feel deeply interested in her honour and happiness, without believing that Irish was the language spoken in Paradise-that our ancestors were kind enough to take the trouble of polishing the Greeksa— that Abaris, the Hyperborean, was a native of the north of Ireland. 3

4

By some of these archæologists it has been imagined that the Irish were early acquainted with counterpoint, and they endeavour to support this conjecture by a well-known passage in Giraldus, where he dilates with such elaborate praise upon the beauties of our national minstrelsy. But the terms of this eulogy are too vague, too deficient in technical accuracy, to prove that even Giraldus himself knew anything of the artifice of counterpoint. There are many expressions in the Greek and Latin writers which might be cited with much more plausibility to prove that they understood the arrangement of music in parts; yet I believe it is conceded in general by the learned, that however grand and pathetic the melody of the ancients may have been, it was reserved for the ingenuity of modern science to transmit the 'light of song' through the variegating prism of harmony.

Indeed the irregular scale of the early Irish (in which, as in the music of Scotland, the interval of the fourth was wanting) must have furnished but wild and refractory subjects to the harmonist. It was only when the invention of Guido began to be known, and the powers of the harp' were enlarged by

last splendid volume by too many of these barbarous rhapsodies.

See Advertisement to the Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin.

2 O'Halloran, vol. i. part i. chap. vi. 3 Id. ib., chap. vii.

It is also supposed, but with as little proof, that they understood the diésis, or enharmonic interval. The Greeks seem to have formed their ears to this delicate gradation of sound; and, whatever difficulties or objections may lie in the way of its practical use, we must agree with Mersenne (Préludes de l'Harmonie, quest. 7), that the theory of music would be imperfect without it; and, even in practice, as Tosi, among others, very justly remarks (Observations on Florid Song, chap. i. §16) there is no good performer on the violin who does not make a sensible difference between D sharp and E flat, though, from the imperfection of the instrument, they are the same notes upon the pianoforte. The effect of modulation by enharmonic transitions is also very striking and beautiful.

s'The words ποικιλια and έτεροφωνια, in a passage of Plato, and some expressions of Cicero, in fragment, lib. ii., De Republ., induced the Abbé Fraguier to maintain that the ancients had a knowledge of counterpoint. M. Burette, however, has answered him, I think satisfactorily ("Examen d'un Passage de Platon," in the third volume of Histoire de l'Acad). M. Huet is of opinion (Pensées Diverses) that what Cicero says of the music of the spheres, in his dream of Scipio, is sufficient to prove an acquaintance with harmony; but one of the strongest passages which I recollect in favour of the supposition

occurs in the Treatise, attributed to Aristotle, Περι Κοσμου-Μουσική δε οξεις αμα και βαρεις, K.T.A.

6 Another lawless peculiarity of our music is the frequency of what composers call consecutive fifths; but this is an irregularity which can hardly be avoided by persons not very conversant with the rules of composition; indeed, if I may venture to cite my own wild attempts in this way, it is a fault which I find myself continually committing, and which has sometimes appeared so pleasing to my car that I have surrendered it to the critic with considerable reluctance. May there not be a little pedantry in adhering too rigidly to this rule? I have been told that there are instances in Haydn of an undisguised succession of fifths; and Mr. Shield, in his Introduction to Harmony, seems to intimate that Handel has been sometimes guilty of the same irregularity.

7 A singular oversight occurs in an Essay on the Irish Harp by Mr. Beauford, which is inserted in the Appendix to Walker's Historical Memoirs. 'The Irish,' says he, according to Bromton, in the reign of Henry II., had two kinds of harps, "Hibernici tamen in duobus musici generis instrumentis, quamvis præcipitem et velocem, snavem tamen et jucundam," the one greatly bold. and quick, the other soft and pleasing. How a man of Mr. Beauford's learning could so mistake the meaning and mutilate the grammatical construction of this extract is unaccountable. The following is the passage as I find it entire in Bromton, and it requires but little Latin to perceive the injustice which has been done to the old chronicler:-"Et cum Scotia, hujus terræ,