RULE BRITANNIA

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 51, 28 August 1926, Page 20

RULE BRITANNIA

ITS ORIGIN.

As a lyric poet, however, though not negligible, James Thomson is inconspi cuous. Yet curiously, it is by a single couplet in a single and not otherwise remarkable lyric that he became part of the common consciousness of the whole nation; and more curiously still, this couplet, which has . been on all men's lips for nearly two hundred years, is seldom associated with his name, and even his authorship of it las been questioned,' and cannot be said to be demon - strably certain (writes Professor J. W. Mackail in "Studies, of English Poets"). On Ist August, 1740, a fete was given by Frederick Prince of Wales at Clifden. For it, a masque on the subject of King Alfred was command ed; the music for it was written by Arno, and the libretto was produced in collaboration by Thomson and Mallet, his friend, contemporary, asd compatriot, who then held a salaried post ia the Prince's household. One of the songs in it became at once and by common spontaneous instinct the national anthem. The chorus ending each of its six stanzas ran:—

Eule, Britannia, rule the waves; Britons' never will be slaves. Misquoted as they usually (like so man; famous phrases) are, the words have, from then until now, been known, it may be said, by every man, woman, and child in England. Such universal and prolonged currency is, to be sure, no hall-mark of high poetry; yet few of bur poets can put such a feather in their cap. Tor the authorship of this couplet there is no direct and unimpoaehable evidence. Mallet was in some respocts a feebler Thomson, and wrote very like hini v The particular song in question may have been a joint product But on a view of the internal evidence and of the arguments that have bee* brought forward on both sides, there seoms sufficient reason to assign the song to Thomson 'a pen.