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BENNETT, HULLAH, AND HATTON 119
it better," writes Kingsley, "to find the music first and set the words to them, as dear Tom Moore did, and that I should like to have done. But as you can understand my words, and I cannot understand your music, I fear that I must write, and you must set to music afterwards."
After saying that he would be perfectly willing, should any alteration be required, to do what he was told, "which most poets are not," he goes on : " Mind you, I am not a poet; and therefore I do not demand absolute right, as poets do nowadays. If you choose to enter into partnership with me, I can give the firm an ear practised in all sorts of metres and in the meaning thereof—having made time a study, which I have often hoped to reduce to a science. I can give the power of finding a sonorous word or vowel whenever you want one, and I hope sense worthy of us and our audience." All of which may be said, perhaps, to express the art of lyric-writing to a nicety.
Of the many musical people with whom Bennett contracted a warm friendship during his busy life, none was a greater admirer of his than Jenny Lind. A rather pathetic little souvenir of this friendship was found among her papers after her death. This was the stump of a pencil, wrapped in paper, on which was written in Swedish : " Dr. |
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