t to America, and wrote home saying he was always singing
'Ale Columbia.' In his _American Notes_ Dickens tells about a
Cleveland newspaper which announced that America had 'whipped
England twice, and that soon they would sing "Yankee Doodle"
in Hyde Park and "Hail Columbia" in the scarlet courts of
Westminster.'

II.--_Songs from 1780-1840_

We then come to a group of songs dating, roughly, from
1780. This includes several popular sea songs by Charles Dibdin
and others, some ballad opera airs, the _Irish Melodies_ and
other songs by Thomas Moore, and a few sentimental ditties.
Following these we have the songs of the early Victorian
period, consisting of more sentimental ditties of a somewhat
feebler type, with a few comic and nigger minstrel songs.
The task of identifying the numerous songs referred to has
been interesting, but by no means easy. No one who has not had
occasion to refer to them can have any idea of the hundreds,
nay, of the thousands, of song-books that were turned out from
the various presses under an infinitude of titles during the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. There is nothing like
them at the present day, and the reasons for their publication
have long ceased to exist. It should be explained that the
great majority of these books contained the words only, very
few of them being furnished with the musical notes. Dickens has
made use of considerably over a hundred different songs. In
some cases the references are somewhat obscure, but their
elucidation is necessary to a proper understanding of the
text. An example of this occurs in Chapter IX of _Martin
Chuzzlewit_, where we are told the history of the various
names given to the young red-haired boy at Mrs. Todgers'
commercial boarding-house. When the Pecksniffs visited the house

he was generally known among the gentlemen as Bailey
Junior, a name bestowed upon him in contradistinction
perhaps to Old Bailey, and possibly as involving the
recollection of an unfortunate lady of the same name,
who perished by her own hand early in life and has
been immortalized in a ballad.

The song referred to here is 'Unfortunate Miss Bailey,' by
George Colman, and sung by Mr. Mathews in the comic opera of
_Love Laughs at Locksmiths_. It tells the story of a maid who
hung herself, while her persecutor took to drinking ratafia.

Dickens often refers to these old song-books, either under
real or imaginary names. Captain