P. 85. Is an Evening Service to the Virgin.*

At morn and eve to thee I pray, &c.

Oh! shower thy choicest blessings down, &c.

This is Roman Catholic Idolatry.

III. In a Collection declaring against all indecency I should not have expected to have found the Song of The Storm, (No. 10. p. 28.) with the four first lines of the third verse as they were originally written. It appeared to me necessary to alter them in my Collection, which I, accordingly, did. Nor should I have inserted the Song No. 11. p. 44.

IV. To the head of levity, vulgarity and nonsense, may be referred several of the passages already noticed, especially "Mistaken fair, lay Sherlock by," and The Wife of Bath. To these I add "Oh! what a pain it is to love;" No. 76. p. 65.

V. Of Bacchanalian songs we have the conclusion of The Storm, where, after their

* In the third Canto of The Lady of the Lake is an Hymn to the Virgin, and this has been selected by a Composer to set to music. I consider this as objectionable in the place in which it stands in the poem, where it is in some measure modified by the character and the time in which the action of the poem is supposed to pass; but when it is separated from those circumstances and performed at a concert or in a private room, I cannot but consider it as worse.

deliverance," the danger's drown'd in wine." This I altered in my Collection: and I must notice that here, instead of " Since kind Fortune sav'd our lives," the Editor has put "kind Heav'n", an alteration which I likewise have made, which I think highly proper, and which example I wish had been followed in other instances. See p. 357.

No. 76. p. 44. We have "Tho' Bacchus may boast of his care-killing bowl". This song gives a decided preference to the pleasures of Love over those of Wine: and so far I cannot but approve, provided chaste love be intended; on which point we are left in an ambiguous darkness, which is not uncommon. But the is also Bacchanalian in several passages, song in the 5th and 6th lines, in the 3d line of the 5th verse, and particularly in the concluding

verse.

P. 68. Are" Drunk as a dragon sure is he,' and If life like a bubble evaporates fast," which are direct Bacchanalian songs.

P. 70. Is "Wine does wonders every day," and p. 82. "How stands the glass around?" This last is called General Wolfe's Song; and, in some copies I have seen of it, is said to have been sung by him the night before the battle in which he fell. If this be not true, it is belying

him much to attribute it to him. If it be, how different was his employment at such a crisis to what it ought to have been, and from what has been the conduct of many brave and pious generals, and how bad an example is it to hold up to view.

VI. Though I do not agree with the Editor in all he says respecting war, in his Advertisement, where he calls it, " (that crime and scourge of nations, that business of ambition, that disgrace of the human kind, that profession of butchery)," as I conceive there may be just and necessary war, in which, under certain restrictions, honour and glory may be sought; yet I allow that it is too frequently, too generally what he there represents it, and of Songs setting it in a false light I conceive are those in No. 76. p. 79 and 82. "He was fam'd for deeds of arms," in which Honour and Conquest seem to be too exclusively the soldier's motive, instead of redressing the injured, and repelling the oppressor. "How stands the glass around?"

I have noticed before, p. 358.

VII. No. 76. p. 31. we have a Hunting Song, "How sweet in the woodlands". With this I shall conclude my remarks on the Songs in The Literary Miscellany.

As many of the Songs noticed in these three works are contained in the Collection in the ELEGANT EXTRACTS (one of the professed objects of which is "the improvement of Youth" "in thinking" and " in the conduct of life",) the remarks made upon them of course apply to that part of that work; and the same principles will, of course, apply to poetry in general, under whatever form it may appear, from the Epic Poem to the Epigram.

LETTER VII.

ON INGENIOUS, WITTY AND HUMOUROUS SONGS.

SIR,

November 20, 1810.

As one of the Essays and Classes of Songs in your original work is of Ingenious and Witty Songs, I shall take this opportunity of saying something upon that head, or rather upon the Humourous, or what, now, generally goes by the name of the COMIC Song, a class of Songs very numerous in these days, and which appears to me to stand in need of great amendment and regulation. Of these you have exhibited very few specimens, your's being chiefly the ingenious, rather than the witty; as the former word, in its present acceptation, appears to apply to luminous or brilliant ideas, and the latter to those which excite ludicrous associations, and from their surprise occasion laughter. Much might be said in the way of dissertation upon Wit and Humour, but having treated this subject before, in the third of my Discourses on the Stage, and in the Notes annexed, and as