Background
Wade was born in Dublin and worked as a surgeon before moving to London in 1821.
Wade was born in Dublin and worked as a surgeon before moving to London in 1821.
Wade was popular in his lifetime, and he was quoted in the 1919 Bartlett"s Familiar Quotations. Foreign a short period he was conductor at the King"s Theatre. He had some success with his oratorio The Prophecy (1824) and the comic opera The Two Houses of Grenada (1826).
Wade was known for his arrangement of Peter Gray as well as for popular songs that included I"ve Wandered in Dreams, Love was Once a Little Boy, A Woodland Life, and his most famous, Meet me by Moonlight.
Walt Whitman referred to Wade, having his eponymous hero in Samuel Sensitive sing a phrase of Wade"s Meet me by Moonlight. was also a composer. The Hand-Book to the Forte (London, 1844).