So many opinions have been hazarded, by cavillers, on the subject of the following songs, that it would be almost a tacit acquiescence in the folly, ignorance, and absurdity of such opinions, were I to do myself and the public so much injustice as to let this oppor­tunity pass without giving them their merited no­tice.

Were I disposed to pleasantry, I might say with my Irishman, that ‘"the proper notice would be no notice at all:"’—and, indeed, were it not for the sake of simple truth and common justice, such calum­niators might as well pass unregarded; for envy is as natural to dunces as hunger, and what should they seek to satisfy but the cravings of their appetites?

As, however, there is something seriously material in attending to whatever in the slightest degree re­gards the public, I shall go a little into this business, [Page ii] if it be only to shew how tiny and ineffectual are the yelpings of these literary curs, who, like true mon­grels, never open but to do mischief.

It is remarkable that, throughout my whole public career, I have been nibbled at the heel by these mon­grels of the muses, these slinking snarlers, who, the reverse of the dogs that guarded the fane of Diana, fawn upon vice, and cherish every thing but virtue.

When I composed the music of the Padlock, the cry was that I employed some Italian, for fifty pounds, to do that of which I was incapable. I smiled with contempt at the rumour, and the public very soon did me justice.

After this I had the temerity to write for myself. The villany of such an action was unpardonable; and it was immediately resolved to brand me with an as­persion as false as it was invidious. Here I was obliged to assert my claim to a public hearing; and the consequence was, the town chose to allow that I [Page iii] had as much right as any other person to the privi­leges of a subject, and the feelings of a man.

This terrible disappointment to the snarlers awed them into a kind of sulky growl, which has never since broke out but very partially; and as petulance and soreness generally interpret every thing the wrong way, and defeat their own ends, so the malig­nity of their sarcasms have not been more remarkable than their folly. They have attributed my sea songs to men who knew no more of nautical terms than an English sailor does of art or hypocrisy; they have made more blunders in detecting my Irish songs than the songs contain themselves; and in the investigation of my hunting songs they have been perpetually at fault.

A friend of mine, one evening, dropt in at a coffee-house where a number of these literary jurymen were holding an inquest over my murdered reputation.—He humoured the jest, and, before he had finished, proved, to the satisfaction of every one present, that [Page iv] Poor Jack was a posthumous work of Dr. Johnson, that the Race Horse was written by the jockey who rode the famous Flying Childers, and that Blow high Blow low was the production of Admiral Keppel, who dictated the words to his secretary as he lay in his cot, after the memorable battle of the twenty-seventh of July, waiting for the French to try their force with him handsomely the next morning.

But the mischief of it is, these poor devils cannot discern that all they do to injure me gives me real consequence. The public are always sure to take up a man at whom the shafts of rancour are levelled.—If his efforts be nothing more than inoffensive, he is secure of protection in favour of his intentions; if meritorious, they know too well their own dignity not to rank him according to his deserts.

To that public I would make a solemn declaration that I am the sole author of every thing this book contains, but that they too well know the hue of truth [Page v] to need an elucidation of it by any light I can place it in.

As however I do not wish to crush this vermin—on the contrary, I would have them crawl and nibble, for vermin are as necessary in the system of literature as in the system of the creation—I am willing to allow that there are plenty of faults in this work.

Yet, lest such reptiles should extend any fang with pleasure at these delicious tidings, I must insist that I could very often have written better had it not been for musical necessity, which, in some instances, precludes nerve, and, in others, requires it, when the reverse would probably have made the poetry read better.

All these considerations are very safe with the public at large, to whom I never can address myself without confessing more incapacity of expression than is attributed to me by the sourness of my heart-burnt enemies.

[Page vi] To these poor creatures, did I wish their deserts, I should be more cruel and injurious than they have it in their power to be to me.