We are not disposed to touch upon Dibdin’s domestic story. A good deal is said in the words that his children loved, honoured, and reverenced their mother. His life led him too much, too far, and too long away from home for the fine domestic sympathies to have ardent play. Even before his melancholy death in 1814, his sons, Charles and Thomas, had distinguished themselves, but they lacked the grace and power of musical composition so remarkable in the father. But in dramatic composition they were his equals, and Tom especially was nearly equal with, though not so prolific as, his father in song-writing. How Charles the younger caught the ‘trick’ of his father may be seen in a song (published as his in ‘My Spouse and I’), of which here is one stanza:-- We tars have a maxim, your honours, d’ye see, To live in the same way we fight; We never give in, and when running a-lee, We pipe hands the vessel to right. It may do for a lubber to snivel and that, If by chance on a shoal he be cast, But a tar among breakers, or thrown on a flat, Pull away, tug and tug, to the last; With a yeo, yeo, yeo, &c. It was the old Dibdin philosophy of ‘Never say die.’ Tom Dibdin is generally supposed to have adopted the stage for a profession only after he had tried another calling--apprentice to an upholsterer. This is not quite correct. Tom made his first appearance on the stage before he went to school. He acted, or, rather, represented, Cupid in a pageant in which Mrs. Siddons sat as the goddess Venus. As the great actress took him in hand to rectify his dress, little Tom heard the first words from her lips that ever fell on his ear. They were directed to a female dresser, and they were solemnly enunciated: ‘Ma’am, could you favour me with a pin?’ Tom, as he sat at her feet in the pageant, felt a sort of stage-fright, but Sarah kept him under control by repeated murmured promises that if he were a good boy there was barley-sugar in store for him.