We commence with an assertion which will startle many—namely, that Dibdin's songs never were, are not, and never can be, popular with sailors. About six years ago—if we recollect rightly as to date—the Lords of the Admiralty, considering that Dibdin's songs had always been 'worth a dozen pressgangs,' as the common saying is, ordered that twenty of the best songs should be printed on strong paper, and presented to every man and boy in the royal navy. This act, however, is not so much to be regarded as a strong evidence of the private opinion of the nautical magnates in question—but the chief of them is invariably a landsman—as of their deference to the force of public estimation on the subject of the songs. Let it not be thought, from the tenor of our subsequent remarks, that we ourselves are at all prejudiced against Dibdin. So far is it the reverse, that we were brought up from childhood 'in belief' of that gifted lyrist: our father repeated to us in early life his finest songs, and we have never ceased to regard him with sincere admiration. He was a man of true genius in his peculiar walk, and it has been well and truly said of him, that, 'had he written merely to amuse, his reputation would have been great; but it stands the higher, because his writings always advocate the cause of virtue: charity, humanity, constancy, love of country, and courage, are the subjects of his song and of his praise.'
Dibdin himself was not a sailor, and his knowledge of sea-life, of seamen, and of sea-slang, is generally attributed to the instructions of his brother, the master of a ship. This brother was subsequently lost at sea, and Dibdin is said to have written Poor Tom Bowling as his elegy. Dibdin's sea-lore was, therefore, altogether second-hand and theoretical; and his songs, on the whole, present an idealised and exaggerated embodiment of the characteristics, life, and habits of seamen; but it is wonderful how accurately and skilfully he introduces allusions to sea-man[oe]uvres, and how very rarely he errs in nautical technicalities. They were written in war-time, when the nation was excited to a pitch of frenzied enthusiasm by a succession of unparalleled naval victories—when a prince of the blood trod the quarter-deck, and Nelson was 'Britannia's god of war.' Their popularity with landsmen was then incredible. Everybody sang Dibdin's sea-songs, deeming them a perfect mirror of sea-life and seamen's character. The truth is, he has exaggerated both the virtues and the follies of sailors to an absurd degree; and his blue-jacketed heroes are no more to be accepted as a fair type of sailors, than are Fenimore Cooper's Chingachgook and Leatherstocking as types of the Red Men and trappers of North America. Herein, we conceive, is the primary cause of Dibdin failing to enlist strongly the sympathies of real blue-water tars; and the very same reason, with some modifications, prevents all prose works, descriptive of sea-life, from being favourably received by practical mariners. We have heard the 'sailoring' portions of the finest works of Cooper and others scoffed at by seamen; and the very best book on sea-life ever written, Dana's Two Years before the Mast, is held in no sort of esteem by the very men for whose benefit the author avows he wrote it, and whose life he has so vividly, and, as we think, faithfully described. Every sailor we have questioned concerning that book—and there are few sailors who have not read it—declared that he 'thought nothing of it;' and that all his messmates laughed at it as much as himself. They say that Dana 'makes too much' of everything, and that he gives false and exaggerated notions of life on shipboard. We personally deny this; but sailors, as a body, are such prosaic people, that they will make no allowance whatever for the least amplification of bald matter of fact. If the author dilates at all on his own feelings and impressions, they chuckle and sneer; and if he errs in the least—or the compositor for him—in his nautical details, they cry out that he is a know-nothing, a marine, a horse-jockey, a humbug. To please seamen, any book about their profession must be written precisely in the lucid and highly-imaginative style of a log-book—their sole standard of literary excellence.
Sailors are shrewd and sensitive, enough in some respects. They do not like to be flattered, and cannot bear to be caricatured; and they feel that Dibdin has—unconsciously—been guilty of both towards them. According to his songs, sailors lead a life of unalloyed fun and frolic. He tells us nothing about their slavery when afloat, nothing about the tyranny they are frequently subjected to; and in his days, a man-o'-war was too often literally a floating pandemonium. He makes landsmen believe that Jack is the happiest, most enviable fellow in the world: storms and battles are mere pastime; lopped limbs and wounds are nothing more than jokes; there is the flowing can to 'sweethearts and wives' every Saturday night; and whenever the ship comes to port, the crew have guineas galore to spend on lasses and fiddles. In fine, both at sea and ashore, according to his theory, jolly Jack has little to do but make love, sing, dance, and drink—grog being 'his sheet-anchor, his compass, his cable, his log;' and in the True British Sailor, we are told that 'Jack is always content.' Now, Jack knows very well this is all 'long-shore palaver, and he gives a shy hail to such palpable lime-twigs. 'Let the land-lubbers sing it!' thinks he; 'I'll none on't!'
Dibdin takes the first sip of his Flowing Can with the ominous line—
'A sailor's life's a life of wo!'
But what follows?—
'Why, then, he takes it cheerily!'
A pleasant philosophy this; but we happen to know that sailors do not take cheerily to 'a life of wo'—they would be more than men if they did. He talks coolly about times at sea when 'no duty calls the gallant tars.' We should very much like to know on board what 'old barkey,' and in what latitude and longitude, this phenomenon happened, and would have no particular objection to sign articles for a voyage in such a Ph[oe]nix of a ship; for in all the vessels we ever were acquainted with, there was never such a thing heard of, as 'nothing to do.' As to 'Saturday nights' exclusively devoted to pledging 'sweethearts and wives' over a flowing can in the forecastle, we are sorry to say, we regard that as little better than a poetic myth.
Doubtless, at the time Dibdin's songs were written, sailors sang them to a considerable extent, for the public enthusiasm would in a way compel Jack to acquiesce in these eulogies on himself; but the said Jack never took them fairly to heart—how could he, when every voyage he made must have given the lie to many of these glowing pictures of life at sea? And from that time to the present, Dibdin's songs have gradually been forgotten among seamen, till, at this day, we question whether there is a foremast—Jack afloat who can sing half-a-dozen of them; and, probably, not many men aboard merchantmen know more than one or two songs of the hundred in question, although they may recollect fragments of several.
Dibdin's songs might be 'worth a dozen pressgangs' for manning the navy in war-time, and, for aught we can predicate to the contrary, they may be so again; but we reiterate our conviction, that they never caused sailors to ship aboard a man-o'-war. Landsmen might volunteer by scores through the influence of such stirring, patriotic ditties; but seamen, who 'knew the ropes,' would never be induced to ship through their agency.