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Updated: June 1, 2025
The engraving from this picture, in Dibdin's Ædes Althorpianæ, lies before us. We think the better of kings and queens who prized a woman with eyes so clear, and an expression of such honesty and truth. The original is said to be masterly in its drawing and execution. Sofonisba is represented in a simple black dress, and wears no jewels.
As soon as she found that Bob really could not sing, she tried me; and, as I was considered to have a very tolerable voice, I immediately complied, giving her "Tom Bowling" and a few more of Dibdin's fine old sea-songs, as well as one or two more frequently heard in a drawing- room, which I had learnt under my sister's able tuition.
Not Dibdin's; not Barry Cornwall's; not Tom Campbell's; not any of the "Pirate's Serenades" and "I'm afloats!" which appear in the music-shop- windows, illustrated by lithographic vignettes of impossible ships in impracticable positions.
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.
I do not unite with a high critical authority in considering Dibdin's ditties as "slang songs," for most of them breathe the very poetry of the ocean.
It turns the prose of our life into poetry; it flings showers of sunshine over the darksome wood in which we are travelling; it touches with light even our sleep, which is no more the image of death, but gemmed with dreams that are the shadows of immortality. But our song, like Dibdin's, 'means more than it says; for a man, as we have stated, may laugh, and yet the cachinnation be wanting.
He was not alone in this view, for it would be difficult to give the uninitiated a conception of the importance attached to this mechanical department of book-making by the adepts. About a third of Dibdin's Bibliographical Decameron is, if I recollect rightly, devoted to bindings.
Ballad singers, especially those who could troll forth one of Dibdin's new songs, were collecting a good harvest from eager listeners, and the apple-stall women were driving a thriving trade; as were the shopkeepers of high and low degree, judging by their smiling countenances, while the sound of revelry which came forth from the numerous inns showed that the landlords were rejoicing in the abundance of custom: in short, there was little chance of grass growing in Portsmouth streets in those days.
Arne's delicious "Blow! blow! thou Winter's wind," and "Under the green-wood tree." "Oh!" as Jaques says, "I can suck melancholy from the recollection of these songs as a weasel sucks eggs." Then follow Jackson of Exeter's "Lord of the Manor," and Dibdin's "Quaker" and "Waterman;" pieces after Incledon's own heart; all free, rich, clear melody, without glitter.
Some who were musically inclined occasionally sung; but he listened with peculiar pleasure to the sailor at the helm, who hummed over Dibdin's characteristic air: 'They say there's a Providence sits up aloft, To keep watch for the life of poor Jack. The weather had been very gentle all night, and, about four in the morning of the 18th, the Smeaton anchored.
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