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BISHOP AND "HOME, SWEET HOME" 97
Thomas Haynes Bayly, the symphonies and accompaniments by Sir Henry Bishop," which looks as though the latter had made an arrangement of someone else's melody, possibly Lee's, but more probably Bayly's own, as he often composed the melodies to his songs without being able to harmonise them or write them down correctly. Lee wrote a song with Bayly entitled "Oh no, we never name her," which may have led to the confusion mentioned above. Other lyrics of Bayly's set by Lee were "The Soldier's Tear," and an "answer" to it, "The Soldier's Return," and a song called "The Rover's Bride."
The indefatigable Bayly also wrote, in collaboration with Bishop, "The Mistletoe Bough," "I have sent back every token," and "I'm saddest when I sing," a song whose title so tickled Artemus Ward, and is referred to in his famous "lecture," where he says: "I am saddest when I sing. So are the people who hear me. In fact they are generally sadder than I am ! "
Of Bishop's other songs which are still being sung to-day are his settings of Shakespeare songs, the best known of which are "Should he upbraid?" "Bid me discourse," and " Lo, here the gentle lark," a great favourite of Melba's.
The following little pen picture of Bishop by the late Willett Beale, in his book The Light of Other Days, may fitly serve to close this chapter.
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