Dibdin

Dibdin, CHARLES, musician and poet, was born at Sonthampton in 1745. He early attracted notice by his singing, and, still a boy, made his literary début in London, by writing and composing an opera called The Shepherd's Artifice, produced at Covent Garden Theatre in 1762. He subsequently lived an unsettled life as an actor and composer of stage-music. In 1788 he commenced giving a series of musical entertainments in the city, which acquired a great celebrity; the first of these was entitled The Whim of the Moment. After several vicissitudes he withdrew from public life in 1805, the government in 1803 having granted him, in consideration of his literary merits, a pension of £200. The pension was afterwards withdrawn by the Grenville government in 1807, which occasioned Dibdin to return to public life with unfortunate financial results. He died 25th July 1814. Dibdin was an admirable writer of sea-songs, of which he composed nearly a hundred. Neptune, and not Apollo, seems to have inspired him. Though his work nowhere reaches the higher regions of poetry, and even his seamanship has been impugned, yet it is hardly too much to say that he is our first writer of sea-songs, one or two of which have even been taken to the heart by the mariners of England. His verses smack of the briny deep, and reflect with astonishing felicity the easy, childlike virtues and the fearless courage of the conventional British tar. It is known that they helped to man the navy during the great struggle with France, and as he himself says in his autobiography, 'they have been quoted in mutinies to the restoration of order and discipline.' Among Dibdin's happiest pieces are Poor Jack and Tom Bowling, or Poor Tom as it was originally called. See his Professional Life (4 vols. 1803), and for his songs the inaccurate edition by G. H. Davidson, with Life by George Hogarth (1842). Dibdin wrote nearly seventy dramatic pieces.—Two of his sons, CHARLES DIBDIN (1768–1833) and THOMAS JOHN DIBDIN (1771–1841) wrote songs and dramas. See The Dibdins, by E. R. Dibdin (1888).