house again.--'Prose and Verse of Thomas Moore', edited by Richard Herne
Shepherd (London, 1878), p. 420. (But see Letters 62, 63, 64.) ]


[Footnote 4: By Dibdin, set to music by Shield. (See Moore's 'Life', p.
33.) Byron's love for simple ballad music lasted throughout his life. As
a boy at Harrow, he was famous for the vigour with which he sang "This
Bottle's the Sun of our Table" at Mother Barnard's. He liked the Welsh
air "Mary Anne," sung by Miss Chaworth; the songs in 'The Duenna'; "When
Time who steals our Years away," which he sang with Miss Pigot; or
"Robin Adair," in which he was accompanied by Miss Hanson on her harp.

"It is very odd," he said to Miss Pigot, "I sing much better to your
playing than to any one else's."

"That is," she answered, "because I play to your singing."

Moore ('Journal and Correspondence', vol. v. pp. 295, 296), speaking of
"Byron's chanting method of repeating poetry," says that "it is the men
who have the worst ears for music that 'sing' out poetry in this manner,
having no nice perception of the difference there ought to be between
animated reading and 'chant'." Rogers ('Table-Talk, etc.', pp. 224, 225)
expresses the same opinion, when he says, "I can discover from a poet's
versification whether or not he has an ear for music. To instance poets
of the present day:--from Bowles's and Moore's, I should know that they
had fine ears for music; from Southey's, Wordsworth's, and Byron's, that
they had no ears for it."]