It is my duty to commence this lecture with a twofold apology or explanation, if you prefer to call it so.

In the first place I would allow myself the usual privilege of construing the term Eighteenth Century in an elastic sense; in the second place I am bound to admit that in many cases it is all but impossible to give a date, even approximately, to some songs to which your attention is to be directed to-day. One may look through numbers of these “broadsides,” or leaflets, and find that not only are composers' and publishers' names wanting, but that the date and price are very seldom given.