| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
PREFACE. |
xxiii |
||
|
I have been induced thus to continue down to the very verge of the warning outbreak of 1798, the slight sketch of my early days which I ventured to commence in the First Volume of this Collection r nor could I have furnished the Irish Melodies with toy more pregnant illustration, as it was in those times, and among the events then stirring, that the; feeling which afterwards found a voice in my country's music, was born and nurtured. • I shall now string together such detached notices and memoranda respecting this work, as I think may be likely to interest my readers. . Of the few songs written with a concealed political feeling, — such as " When he who adores thee," and one or two more,—the most successful, in its day, was "When first I met thee warm and young," which alluded, in its hidden sense, to the Prince Regent's desertion of his political friends. It was little less, I own, than profanation to disturb the sentiment of so beautiful an air by any connexion with such a subject. The great success of this song, soon after I wrote it, among a large party staying at Chatsworth, is thus alluded to in one of Lord Byron's
informing against his college companions; that his own speeches in the debating society had been ill construed, when the worst that could be said of them was, if truth had been spoken, that they were patriotic .... that he was aware of the high-minded nobleman he had the honour of appealing to, and if his lordship could for a moment condescend to step from his high station and place himself in his situation, then say how he would act under such circumstances, — it would be his guidance."—Herbert's Irish Varieties. London, 1836. |
|||