Samuel Lover

{{Short description|Irish composer, writer and painter}}

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Image:samuel lover.jpg

Samuel Lover (24 February 1797 – 6 July 1868), also known as "Ben Trovato" ("well invented"), was an Irish songwriter, composer and novelist, and a portrait painter, chiefly in miniatures. He was the grandfather of Victor Herbert.

==Life==

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|quote =

The Angel's Whisper

A baby was sleeping;

Its mother was weeping;

For her husband was far on the wild raging sea;

And the tempest was swelling

Round the fisherman's dwelling;

And she cried, "Dermot, darling, O come back

to me!"

Her beads while she numbered,

The baby still slumbered,

And smiled in her face as she bended her knee;

"O, blest be that warning,

My child, thy sleep adorning,

For I know that the angels are whispering with

thee.

"And while they are keeping

Bright watch o'er thy sleeping,

O, pray to them softly, my baby, with me!

And say thou wouldst rather

They'd watch o'er thy father!

For I know that the angels are whispering to

thee."

The dawn of the morning

Saw Dermot returning,

And the wife wept with joy her babe's father to see;

And closely caressing

Her child with a blessing,

Said, "I knew that the angels were whispering

with thee."

|source =By Samuel Lover[https://books.google.com/books?id=kXd4bRr71a4C&dq=Oliver+Wendell+Holmes+Katydid&pg=PA7 A Library of Poetry and Song: Being Choice Selections from The Best Poets. With An Introduction by William Cullen Bryant], New York, J.B. Ford and Company, 1871, p. 7.}}

Lover was born at No. 60 Grafton Street, Dublin and went to school at Samuel Whyte's at No. 79, which now houses Bewley's Café. By 1830 he was Secretary of the Royal Hibernian Academy and living at No. 9 D'Olier Street. In 1835 he moved to London and began composing music for a series of comic stage works.David Larkin: "Lover, Samuel", The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland, ed. H. White & B. Boydell (Dublin: UCD Press, 2013, vol. 2, pp. 600–601. For some, like the operetta Il Paddy Whack in Italia (1841), he contributed libretto and music, for others just a few songs. Before committing himself to a literary career, he enjoyed considerable success as a miniature painter.{{Cite news |date=14 February 1900 |title=Lover’s Irish Stories |work=The Manchester Guardian |pages=7}}

Lover produced many Irish songs, of which several, such as The Angel's Whisper, Molly Bawn, and The Four-leaved Shamrock, gained popularity. He also wrote novels, of which Rory O'Moore (in its first form a ballad), and Handy Andy are best known, and short Irish sketches, which with his songs he combined into a popular entertainment called Irish Nights or Irish Evenings, with which he toured North America in 1846–1848. He joined Charles Dickens in founding Bentley's Magazine.

"When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen." – Samuel Lover

Lover's daughter Fanny was mother to Victor Herbert, a composer remembered for many musicals and operettas premièred on Broadway. As a child he lived with the Lovers in a musical environment after the divorce of his mother.Marion R. Casey,[https://www.historyireland.com/volume-25/victor-herbert-irish "Was Victor Herbert Irish?"], History Ireland, issue 1 (January/February 2017), Volume 25