I leads a jovial life;
In ev’ry mess I finds a friend,
In ev’ry port a wife.
To our thinking, Charles Dibdin, celebrated as he was for his sea songs, deserves far higher praise for quite another sort of country song, of which we will give an example. His sailors are too much addicted, when storms rage and billows roll, to sling the flowing bowl; landsmen might fancy that Jack’s life consisted of thinking of Nancy afloat, hugging her ashore, drinking to her health unceasingly, and taking a turn of duty with a hornpipe sort of air, as if the galleries were clapping him enthusiastically. It is all good and picturesque in its way, but tuneful Charley is more to our liking when he gets into an English corn-field, strolls down an English lane, or sits at the door of an English cottage. He is then as natural as Moreland treating the same subjects on canvas. The fragrance of the fields comes on the wings of his song, and his English home and peasant are still more truly English than his English ships and sailors. Take, for example:—
THE LABOURER’S WELCOME HOME.
The ploughman whistles o’er the furrow,
The hedger joins the vacant strain,
The woodman sings the woodland thorough,
The shepherd’s pipe delights the plain.
Where’er the anxious eye can roam,