Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 046.djvu/424

414 Leicester Square, I should not mind it so much, though it would still be bad enough. But this is, alas! far from being the case. Read a programme of a fashionable morning concert—the probability is, that you will not find one English song in the list. Walk into a fashionable drawing-room, and ask Miss Mary or Miss Caroline to favour you with a little music—fifty to one she strikes up some Italian rigmarole, of which you understand not a syllable, but which you are bound to pronounce the most beautiful thing you ever heard in your life, as you would escape being set down for a greater Goth than even Alaric himself. An English audience, "gaping for wonderment" at a modern morning concert, puts me strongly in mind of a congregation of Roman Catholics at their devotions. They are alike most admiring and devout listeners to a service, of the meaning of which nine-tenths of them have no more comprehension than a cow has of mathematics. But the evil does not stop at morning concerts and crowded soirées; like the frogs of Egypt, it invades our very chambers, and takes its station unresisted by our parlour firesides—those very citadels of John Bullism—our very children of ten years old practise bravuras, and prattle of Donizetti.

The honest old English song never was at a greater discount than in this most musical age. We do not get a decent one once a-year; and, when we have that luck, it endures only for a-week. Our modern fashionable ballads are the most execrable compounds of mawkish sentimentality that ever melted the soul of a nursery-maid—full of pale high brows, and dark flashing eyes, and long flowing tresses of raven blackness—strong spirit-yearnings, and heart-tempests of appalling violence. Unhappy music appears doomed henceforth to a perpetual state of ancient maidenhood; for there is no longer any "immortal verse" to marry her to. Even good music, when burthened with the trashy words with which these days are afflicted, is, to my thinking, three parts ruined; but this is a matter about which our modern musicians trouble their heads very little—words are made for tunes, not tunes for words; and one would think they were made by contract into the bargain; sometimes they rhyme, and for the most part scan; but as to any thing beyond, why, a black swan would be nothing to the rarity. Our list of modern song-writers (I do not mean mere "metre-ballad-mongers" and Haynes-Bayley-ites, but good honest song-writers) is small indeed; of living ones we have scarcely any. Moore seems to think he has done enough, and so he has, for fame; for there is immortality enough and to spare in the Irish melodies. Allan Cunningham has written several stirring strains—why is his pen idle? Poor Captain Morris is dead!—peace to his manes!—his songs (and so were Dibdin's) were superb in their way—that is, when men were reasonably well advanced in the second bottle. Of Burns, I fear I may say, little but the name is known in these parts, save to a few. Walter Scott has written some glorious songs, but who sings them? and last, "not least in our dear love," Felicia Hemans has penned some strains of passing beauty, which one would think the world would not willingly let die; yet, are all these passing away silently to their oblivion, to be recalled, now and then, only by such old-fashioned folks as myself and the mayoress.

We English, I suppose, neglect our own music more than any people upon the face of the earth, and with as little reason for so doing. We are the most loan-loving nation under the sun; we borrow pretty nearly every thing;—our dresses, our habits of life, and now, at last, our music. We are not an idle people, nor a foolish people; but somehow or other we have got hold of a notion that nothing of our own is worth a brass farthing, and that every thing belonging to every body else is worth its weight in gold. We go upon tick for taste, and we are put off with an inferior material into the bargain. I never yet heard an overture, or a fantasia, or a fugue, or an aria, that could stand any thing like a comparison with three-fourths of the old Irish and Scottish melodies, which one scarcely dares call for, for fear of being stared down by a parcel of people who never even heard of their existence. Those of Scotland, in particular, have to me, though I am no Scotchman, an inexpressible charm. I could listen to "Auld Robin Gray," and "Ye banks and braes," and "My love is like the red red rose," and