Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/65

A BELT OF ASTEROIDS lovers of that soldierly canticle, "How Stands the Glass Around?" indignant that so lusty and winsome a child should be a foundling, have tried to fix its paternity upon Gen. James Wolfe, because that chivalrous Englisher delighted in it, and used to troll it melodiously across the board. This catch, more widely recognized by the second stanza—

is indeed the perfection of a soldier's banqueting song—not only pathetic and musical, but with cadences of rhythm so adjusted that it has a pulsing accent at intervals which relate to the drum-beat and the martial tread of ranks. Any poet might be glad to have composed it. We have it, as copied from a half-sheet of music printed about the year 1710. Perhaps it was brought over from the Low Countries by Marlborough's men; yet there is the ring of Dryden's measures about it, and a poet, whose instinct upon such matters is almost unfailing, has declared to me that he would venture to ascribe it to glorious John upon this internal evidence alone. The authors of a hundred comparatively modern ballads and ditties, like "The Children in the Wood," "Comin' Thro' the Rye," "When this old Cap was New," have left their voices alone behind them; yet each voice seems to have a distinctive quality of its own. Who wrote "The White Rose," that darling little conceit of a [51]