As for the Welsh, they have notoriously gone harping on from time immemorial, and they have their harp-contests still So different were the notions of the ancient Cambrian legislators from those of Lord Chesterfield, who allowed his son to pay for fiddlers, provided he did not fiddle himself, that, by the Leges Wallica, the possession of a harp and ability to play on it belonged to the essential attributes of a gentlemen. He who was not a gentleman could not own a harp, as he would thus have been unduly exalted; he who was a gentleman, could not be deprived of the instrument on account of debt, as he would thus have been unduly degraded.

a series of soirées and matinées sufficient history of popular music-and, we may to occupy his mind with instrumental add, of popular lyrical poetry-in Engmusic of the most recherché kind for at land, expands into a bulky chronicle of least three months in every year. The facts the simple proposition that this is lover of sacred music is content to pass naturally the most musical of lands. We three summer hours in a large uncomfort- cannot go back far enough to ascertain able room, as one of a dense crowd that when the English love of music began; listens to an Oratorio by Handel or by we must come down to a very modern Mendelssohn. The humblest connoisseur period before we find it in a lukewarm who frequents music-halls, where smoking state. and drinking season the pleasure afforded by song, would not be content unless some specimen of a higher class of composition varied the ordinary Irish air and Nigger melody. Nor are people content to be hearers only; they want to play themselves and to sing themselves, after another fashion than that of their fathers, who loved what was called a good song' with a lusty chorus, after the now obsolete supper. The fashionable young gentlemen, who lounge and simper about drawing-rooms in the London season, are commonly proficient in more than one musical instrument, and often make a respectable figure in part-singing. The masses that constantly flock to receive instruction in the classes of Mr. John Hullah, prove how deeply a desire to become accomplished in music has penetrated the less opulent portion of the community. Music is at present the art that, par excellence, is loved and respected by all conditions of Englishmen and though, of course, the love is in some cases affected, such affectation is only analogous to the proverbial homage paid by vice to virtue in the shape of hypocrisy.

All this looks very odd to people who fancy that the English character is to be tested by the evidence of the last seventy years; but the antiquary, who carries his glance farther back, is perfectly aware that the phenomenon, far from being a modern innovation, is the revival of a musical taste that existed in this country for centuries without interruption, and that the anti-musical tendencies which were so highly developed in the last century simply denoted an exceptional state of the British mind. As well might the Frenchman, born during the prevalence of the Revolutionary Calendar, regard the substitution of 1805' for XIV., and the transformation of the 10th Nivose into the 31st of December, as the introduction of an unheard-of novelty, as the Briton express astonishment at the passion for music manifested in his native island about the middle of the nineteenth century.

The very valuable and copious addition which Mr. W. Chappell has made to the

Among the Anglo-Saxons, the connexion between the harp and the pedigree was equally close. The poet Cadmon, being of lowly origin, was unable to play the noble instrument. On one occasion, when in high company, he was expected to take his turn and accompany his song with tuneful strings; he left the feast; and going out, went home. So says the Venerable Bede:- Surgebat e medià cœnâ, et egressus ad suam domum repedabat.' But this cold narrative of the fact did not satisfy King Alfred, who, in his Saxon paraphrase of Bede,' states the poet's feelings as well as his retreat. Aras he for sceome' (he rose for shame), said the royal translator, himself a perfect musician for his age.

But we have no need of more anecdotes to show the proficiency of the AngloSaxons, as Mr. Chappell's well-attested account of Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury, who died in 709, will amply prove:

The first specimen of musical notation given by the learned Abbot Gerbert, in his De Cantu et Musica Sacra, a prima ecclesiæ ætate (i. 202), is to a poem by St. Aldhelm, in Latin hexameters, the use of Anglo-Saxon nuns. in praise of virginity. This was written for The manuscript from which it is taken is, or was, in the monastery of St. Blaise, in the Black Forest, and Gerbert dates it as of the ninth or tenth century. It contains various poems of St. Aldhelm, all of which are with music, and the Paschale Carmen of Sedulius, one of the early Irish Christians, which is without music. Many very early English and Irish manuscripts were, without

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Every one of gentle blood was instructed in harp and song," but it was only thought necessary for those who were to be priests or minstrels to be taught to read and write.'

Nor were the Danes a whit behind the Saxons. About sixty years after Alfred's well-known visit to the Danish camp, Anlaff, king of the Danes, retaliated the stratagem on King Athelstan, and, though he was discovered in spite of his disguise, this was not on account of any musical short-comings, but through the very unprofessional circumstance that he buried the money which had been given him as a reward. The Norman, Taillefer, who marched in front of the army at the battle of Hastings, gained for himself a broad re

doubt, taken to Germany by the English and Irish priests, who assisted in converting the Germans to Christianity. St. Boniface, "the apostle of Germany," and first Archbishop of Mentz (Mayence), who was killed in the discharge of his duties in the year 755, was an Anglo-Saxon whose name had been changed from Winfred to Boniface by Pope Gregory II. "Boniface seems always to have had a strong prejudice in favour of the purity of the doctrines of the church of his native country, as they had been handed down by St. Augustine: in points of controversy he sought the opinions of the Anglo-Saxon bishops, even in opposition to those inculcated by the Pope; and he sent for multitudes of Anglo-Saxons, of both sexes, to assist him in his labours." (Biog. Brit. Lit., i. 315.) He placed English nuns over his monastic foundations, and selected his bishops and abbots from among his countrymen. His successor in the Archbishoprick was also an Eng-nown; but the fact is not to be overlishman. To revert to St. Aldhelm-Faricius (a foreign monk of Malmsbury), who wrote his life about the year 1100, tells us that he exercised himself daily in playing upon the various musical instruments then in use, whether with strings, pipes, or any other variety by which melody could be produced. The words are, "Musicæ autem artis omnia instrumenta quæ fidibus vel fistulis aut aliis varietatibus melodia fieri possunt, et memoria tenuit et in cotidiano usui habuit." (Faricius, Col. 140, vo.) The

anecdote of Aldhelm's stationing himself on the bridge in the character of a glee-man or minstrel, to arrest the attention of his countrymen who were in the habit of hurrying home from church when the singing was over, instead of waiting for the exhortation, or sermon; and of his singing poetry of a popular character to them in order to induce them gradually to listen to more serious subjects,-was derived by William of Malmsbury from an entry made by King Alfred in his manual or note-book. Aldhelm died in 705, and King Alfred in 901-yet William of Malinsbury, who flourished about 1140, tells us, that one of the "trivial songs" to which Alfred alludes as written by Aldhelm for one of these occasions, was still sung by the common people. The literary education of youth, even of the upper classes, in Anglo-Saxon times, was limited to the being taught to commit the songs and literature of their country to memory.

* Nativæ quoque linguæ non negligebat carmina; adeo ut, testo libro Elfredi de quo superius dixi, nulla unquam ætate par ei fuit quispiam, poesim Anglicam posse facere, tantum componere, eadem apposite vel canere vel dicere. Denique commemorat Elfridus carmen triviale, quod adhuc vulgo cantitatur, Aldhelinus fecisse; adjiciens causam qua probat rationabiliter tantum virum his quæ videntur frivola institisse: populum eo tempore semi-barbarum, parum divinis sermonibus intentum, statim cantatis missis domos cursitare solitum; ideoque sanctum virum super pontem qui rura et urbem. continuat, abeuntibus se opposuisse obicem, quasi artem cantandi professum. Eo plus quam hoc commento, sensim inter ludicra verbis scripturarum insertis, cives ad sanitatem reduxisse; qui si severe et cum excommunicatione agendum putasset, profecte profecisset nihil." Biog. Brit. Lit., i. 215.

looked, that on the evidence of Fordun, the English spent the night before the battle in singing and drinking.

Under the Kings who immediately followed the Norman Conquest minstrelsy flourished much-so much, indeed, that the more rigid monks began to be jealous of the honours lavished upon the professors of the seemingly frivolous science. Henry II. and still more notoriously Richard I. were patrons of the kindred arts, poetry and music, and in the reign of John one party of minstrels did such good service, that their posterity retained an honourable name long after minstrelsy in general, fallen from its high estate, had degenerated into a calling for the lowest Vagabonds, Ranulph, Earl of Chester, being besieged in his castle of Rothlan, in the year 1212, sent for help to de Lacy, constable of Chester, who making use of the minstrels assembled at Chester fair, brought together a vast number of persons, who under the conduct of a gallant youth, named Dutton, so completely terrified the Welsh besiegers, that the siege was speedily raised. As far down as the reign of Elizabeth, this Timotheus-like use of music was held in such honourable remembrance, that when minstrelsy was treated by legislators as a vulgar nuisance, only fit to be put down, an exception was made in favour of the Dutton family.

Although the very doubtful tradition that Edward I. extirpated the Welsh bards, and drew down upon his head the imprecations of the wordy old gentleman immortalized by Gray, places him in no favourable relation to the harper's profession, one of the most satisfactory records on the subject of old English minstrelsy refers to an event that occurred during his reign. This is a roll (printed for the Roxburghe club), containing the names of

The music that occupied these various amateurs was naturally of a popular kind; for, in the scholastic compositions of the age, harmony alone was considered, and that of a recondite kind that did not appeal to the uncultivated-we may almost say-the unsophisticated ear.

While the music of the learned shrank

one merry ditty will come from him; nothing but The Thunderbolt against swearers, Repent, England, repent, and the Strange Judgments of | God.'

The literary poets were not content merely to shun the ballad-writer's art and to avoid his metre,-they pursued him with acrimonious censure, reviled his habit of life, ridiculed the expedients by which he sought to make his line fit the melody. The termination a,' that has now long sunk into disuse, but of which there is still a monument on the stage in the shape of Autolycus's song,

tion.

'Jog on, jog on the footpath way,
And merrily hent the stile-a,'

from all contact with that of the people, was regarded with especial abominathe literary poets carefully avoided all similitude to the ballad-writers, whom they regarded with an uneasiness similar to that experienced by Wilhelm Meister, when, having embraced the profession of an actor, he watched the evolutions of a party of low acrobats in the street, and could not help the unpleasant thought that they were a sort of fellow-craftsmen after all. The most celebrated poets of the people in the days of Queen Elizabeth were Elderton and Deloney; and the representatives of the old minstrels were blind harpers and fiddlers, who sang words composed by others, and made themselves useful by playing dances. Both Elderton and Deloney were famed imbibers of ale; the former is thus described in a MS. poem possessed by Mr. J. P. Collier:

Of Deloney, Nashe says:

'He hath rhyme enough for all miracles, and wit to make a Garland of Good Will, &c., but whereas his muse, from the first peeping forth, hath stood at livery at an ale-house wisp, never exceeding a penny a quart, day or night—and this dear year, together with the silencing of his looms, scarce that he is constrained to betake himself to carded ale' (i. e., ale mixed with small beer) whence it proceedeth that since Candlemas, or his jigg of John for the king, not

'If I let passe the un-countable rabble of ryming ballet-mongers, and compylers of sencelesse sonets (who be most busy to stuff every stall full of grosse devises and unlearned pamphlets), I trust I shall with the best sort be held excused. For though many such can frame an ale-house song of five or six score verses, hobbling uppon some tune of a Northern Jugge, or Robyn Hode, or La Lulba, &c., and perhappes observe just number of sillables, eight in one line, sixe in an other, and therewithall an "a" to make a jercke in the end: yet if these might make means to be promoted to the lawrell), be accounted poets (as it is sayde some of them surely we shall shortly have whole swarmes of poets; and many are that can frame a booke in ryme, though, for want of matter it be but in commendations of coffee-rooms or bottle ale, wyll catch at the garlande due to poets, whose potticall (poeticall I should say) heades I would wyshe, at their worshipfull commencement, ished with fayre greene barley, in token of their might, in steede of lawrell, be gorgiously garngood affection to our Englishe malt.'

So spoke William Webbe, in 'A Discourse of English Poetrie,' dated 1586; but the songsters who used the objectionable appendage could write with ease and liveliness, as may be proved by these stanzas from a popular song of the seventeenth century, written by Martin Parker, and sung to the tune that is now associated with the far-famed 'Sally in our Alley ':

'Although I am a country lass,
A lotty mind I bear-a,

I think myself as good as those
That gay apparel wear-a:
My coat is made of comely gray,
Yet is my skin as soft-a

As those that with the choicest wines
Do bathe their bodies oft-a.

What though I keep my father's sheep,
A thing that must be done-a,
A garland of the fairest flow'rs
Shall shield me from the sun-a.