Читать книгу The Book of Trinity College Dublin 1591-1891 онлайн

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Whose Isle to him her Freedom owes

And surely no Hibernian Muse

Can her Restorer’s praise refuse,

While Boyne and Shannon flows.

After this ode had been sung by the principal gentlemen of the Kingdom, there was a very diverting speech made in English by the Terræ Filius.[70] The night concluded with illuminations, not only in the College but in other places. Madam, this day being to be observed but once in a hundred years, was the reason why I troubled your ladyship with this account.

The sermon preached by Dr. St.-G. Ashe, who presently resigned the Provostship, is still extant;[71] so is the musical ode, but so scarce that there seems to be only one copy known, which the researches for the present feast have unearthed. Some of the text, which was composed by Nahum Tate, sometime (1672) a scholar of the House, is given above from Dunton; the rest, which is printed with the music, is of the same quality. It is chiefly a panegyric of the reigning sovereigns, William and Mary, justified by their recent indulgences to the College on account of its losses in the Revolution. The music of the ode was composed by no less a person than Henry Purcell, and would certainly have been repeated at our Tercentenary had it been equal to his standard works. But it is a curiously poor and perfunctory piece of work, whereas the anthem then recently composed by Blow, “I beheld, and lo, a great multitude,” still holds its place in our Chapel, and we gladly reproduce it in the present festival. The title-page of the score of the ode states that it was performed at Christ Church, whereas the accounts of the celebration speak of it in the College—a discrepancy which I cannot reconcile.