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PREFACE. |
XXV |
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The fancy of the " Origin of the Irish Harp " was (as I have elsewhere acknowledged*) suggested by a drawing, made under peculiarly painful circumstances, by the friend so often mentioned in this sketch, Edward Hudson.
In connexion with another of these matchless airs, — one that defies all poetry to do it justice, — I find the following singular and touching statement in an article of the Quarterly Review. Speaking of a young and promising poetess, Lucretia Davidson, who died very early from nervous excitement, the Reviewer says, " She was particularly sensitive to music. There was one song (it was Moore's Farewell to his Harp) to which she took a special fancy. She wished to hear it only at twilight, — thus (with that same perilous love of excitement which made her place the .ZEolian harp in the window when she was composing), seeking to increase the effect which the song produced upon a nervous system, already dis-easedly susceptible ; for it is said that, whenever she heard this song, she became cold, pale, and almost
* " When, in consequence of the compact entered into between government and the chief leaders of the conspiracy, the State Prisoners, before proceeding into exile, were allowed to see their friends, I paid a visit to Edward Hudson, in the jail of Kilmainham, where he had then lain immured for four or five months, hearing of friend after friend being led out to death, and expecting every week his own turn to come. I found that to amuse his solitude he had made a large drawing with charcoal on the wall of his prison, representing that fancied origin of the Irish Harp which, some years after, I adopted as the subject of one of the ' Melodies.'"—Life and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, vol. i.
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