* * * * * Were we to draw an inference from the summary way in which many modern authors have cut short the question with regard to Henry of Monmouth's character as Prince of Wales, we should conclude that all the evidence was on one side; that, whilst "it is unfair to distinguished merit to dwell on the blemishes which it has regretted and reformed," still no doubt can be entertained of his having, "from a too early initiation into military life, stooped to practise irregularities between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five."[306] Whereas the fact is, that no allusion to such irregularities is made where we might have expected to find it; and that, independently of those more formal proofs to the contrary which are embodied in these pages, and to which we have above briefly referred, contemporary writers and undisputed documents supply us with materials for judging of his temper of mind and early habit,--the character, in short, with which those who had the best (p. 326) opportunities of knowing him, were wont to associate his name. [Footnote 306: Turner.] All accounts agree in reporting him to have been devotedly fond of music. As the household expenses of his father informed us, he played upon the harp before he was ten years old; nor does he seem ever to have lost the habit of deriving gratification from the same art. It were easy to represent him prostituting this love of minstrelsy in the haunts of Eastcheap, and enjoying "through the sweetest morsel of the night" the songs of impurity in reckless Bacchanalian revels, self-condemned indeed, and therefore to be judged by others leniently: "I feel me much to blame So idly to profane the precious time:"[307] but nevertheless guilty of profaning the sacred art of music in the midst of worthless companions, and in the very sinks of low and dissolute profligacy. This it were easy to do, and this has been done. But history lends no countenance to such representations. The chroniclers, who refer again and again to his fondness for music, tell us that it showed itself in him under very different associations. "He delighted (as Stowe records) in songs, metres, and musical instruments; insomuch that in his chapel, among his private prayers he used our Lord's prayer, certain psalms of David, with divers hymns and canticles, all which _I_ have seen translated into English metre (p. 327) by John Lydgate, Monk of Bury." In this view we are strongly confirmed by several items of expense specified in the Pell Rolls, which record sums paid to organists and singers sent over for the use of Henry's chapel whilst he was in France; but this, being subsequent to his supposed conversion, cannot be alleged in evidence on the point at issue.[308] It only shows that his early acquired love of music never deserted him. [Footnote 307: Second Part of Henry IV, act ii. sc 4.]