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FAMOUS SONGS
was a genius, and of course one must call him something; what right has a man to possess what you don't ?
Fame seems a very capricious sort of thing to achieve, and while many strive with the weightiest works for the benefit of their kind, a small thing like Mrs. Brewer's
" Little drops of water, Little grains of sand, Make the mighty ocean And the beautious land."
secures at once to its incubator a popularity and audience amongst all the world's millions of English speaking people! And the best of it is that it does not boast one spark of originality, Shakespeare having long ago given us the same idea in beautiful language, which has been imi-tated by hundreds of poets since. As a child's song, however, it is not easily matched. The authoress, Mrs. Brewer, does not appear to have written anything else.
That "pious" song, "The Vicar of Bray," written about 1720, to an older air, called " The Country Garden" (1690), was occasioned by the following circumstances. The Vicar of Bray, in Berkshire, was a papist under the reign of Henry VIIL, and a protestant under Edward
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