the world was written. Most of them, however, are so thoroughly shot and veined with modern touches that no man can tell where to have them. For the actual spirit of mortal combat it is proba bly impossible to surpass the two stanzas in "Fair Helen." intention to insult them. There is good | date to most of the Border and other balfighting in Beowulf; but the average En- lads, we should be able to say when some glishman (I think not thereby forfeiting of the most admirable fighting poetry in his national claim to good sense) absolutely declines to regard as English a language scarcely a word of which he can understand. For my own part I cannot see why if I am to draw on this Jutish Saga (or whatever it is) I may not equally well reach my hand to the shelf behind me, take down my Corpus Poeticum Boreale," and draw on that; of which things there were no end. Therefore let these matters, and the song of Brunanburh, and all the rest of it, be uncontentiously declined, and let us start from what the plain man does recognize as English, that is to say from Chaucer. 66 As I went down the water side, I lighted down my sword to draw, For her sake that died for me! There is real Berserk-gang there; and yet the poem, and even the passage, distinctly shows the influence of the eighteenth century, to say no more. In its present cast and shape the whole of this ballad question is a mere labyrinth. I do not know a more disheartening study than that of Professor Child's magnificent volumes, with their endless variants which make a canonical text impossible. Therefore, despite the admirable fighting that there is in them, they will help us little. thor of "Elinor Rumming." The honor I have before now ventured to question the wisdom of making pretty philosophical explanations of literary phenomena, and I do not purpose to spend much time in asking why in the earliest English poetry (as just defined) there is hardly anything that comes within our subject. Five very simple and indisputable facts, - that our Norse ancestors fought and sang of fighting, both in the most admirable fashion; that the great heroes of the Hundred Years War did not apparently care to sing about fighting at all; that Elizabeth's wars gave us indirectly one of Skelton Skeltonizes in this as in other the few war-songs of the first class, Dray- styles; but the "Ballad of the Doughty ton's ballad of Agincourt; that the En- Duke of Albany and his Hundred Thou glish Tyrtæus during the desperate and sand Scots" is a mere piece of doggerel glorious War of the Spanish Succession brag, utterly unworthy of the singer of could get no further than Addison's .. My Maiden Isabel "or even of the auCampaign," and that the Revolutionary struggle drew from a poet, not of the first rank, three such masterpieces as "Hohenlinden," "Ye Mariners of England," and "The Battle of the Baltic" Posy of Gilloflowers," published in 1580, five such facts as these, I think, should just before the overture of the "melodideter any one who has not a mere mania ous bursts that fill the spacious times of for reason-making from indulging in that great Elizabeth," contains a quaint and process on this subject. The facts are rough but really spirited piece, "To Sol. the facts. There is much excellent liter-diers," in this remarkable measure:ary description of fighting in Chaucer, but it is distinctly literary; there is nothing The time of war is come, prepare your corslet, of the personal joy of battle in it. Eustache Deschamps was an infinitely inferior poet to Master Geoffrey, yet there is far more of the real thing in this particular way in "Ou temps jadis estoit-cy Angleterre," than in any poetical compatriot and contemporary of the conquerors of Cressy. In the next century we have, so far as I know, nothing at all to match the admirable anonymous "War-song of Ferrand de Vaudemont." The Scotch literary poets are a little better, though not very much; but if we could attach any definite spear, and shield; Methinks I hear the drum strike doleful Tantara, tantara the trumpets sound, which The warning guns are heard afar and every- Serve God, stand stout: bold courage brings Fear not, forth run: faint heart fair lady never won. This, it must be admitted, needs a good deal of licking into shape as regards form, is no doubt destitute enough of the last I do not know, however, that the real Fair stood the wind for France With Spanish yew so strong I always privately wish that he had writ Warwick in blood did wade, For some time it seemed as though the question with which the poem closes: Oh when shall English men was to be answered rather by the acts than by the pen. As few songs as triumphs wait on a civil war, and though Montrose might have done the thing he did not. The dishonest combats of the seventeenth century had to wait a couple of hundred years for their laureate and then he appeared on the wrong side. For even Mr. Browning's "Cavalier Tunes are not as good as "The Battle of Naseby " which, cavalier as I am, I wish I could think was "pinchbeck." No man perhaps ever lived who had more of the stuff of a Tyrtæus in him than Dryden; but his time gave him absolutely no subjects of an inspiriting nature and did not encourage him to try There is no precedent for that dash and any others. The "Annus Mirabilis" is rush of metre; and if we look for follow-fine enough in all conscience; but "Come ers it will bear the contrast as happily. The most graceful and scholarly poet of America, the greatest master of harmonies born in England during the present century, have both imitated it. If "The Skeleton in Armor is delightful," and "The Charge of the Light Brigade "(with its slight change of centre of gravity in the rhythm) consummate, what shall be said of this original of both? I know an enthusiast who declared that he would have rather written the single line "Lopped the French lilies " than any even in English poetry except a few of Shakespeare's. This was doubtless delirium, though not of the worst kind. But the intoxication of the whole piece is almost unmatched. The blood stirs all through as you read: if you dare," and parts of "Alexander's Feast" show what might have been if the course of events had been more favorable. To tell the honest truth, the cause was generally too bad in those fights with the Dutch, and the fights themselves (though we very properly call them victories) were too near being defeats, to breathe much vigor into the sacred bard; while for some fifty years of Glorious John's manhood, from the battle of the Dunes to his death, there was no land fighting that could at once cheer an Englishman and commend itself to a Jacobite. In luckier circumstances Dryden was the very man to have bettered Drayton and anticipated Campbell. When he was dead there was no more question of anything of the kind for a very not. Sing mighty Marlborough's story! He passes the Scheldt, Got off as best they cou'd At a still earlier period "The two Glorious Victories at Donawert and Hochstet had stirred up somebody to write, to a tune by Mr. Corbet, Pindaricks to this effect: Old Lewis, must thy frantic riot long time. The passage about the angel in Mr. Addison's poem is undoubtedly a very fine one. But the essence of a warsong or even a war-poem is that it should stir the blood; and this stirs it just to the extent that is necessary to secure a mild very good! very clever! It was really a pity. Cutts is not such a pretty name as Ferrers or Fanhope; but the Salamander did deeds of arms of which not the greatest of bards need have disdained to be laureate. Blenheim was most undoubtedly a famous victory; the battle, such as there was of it, at Ramillies was of the best kind; and as for Malplaquet, it ranks for sheer ding-dong fighting, and on a far larger scale, with Albuera or Inkerman. But sing these things our good fathers could Yet they tried in all conscience. It is a rough, but very sufficient test to take the copious anthology of anthologies which Mr. Bullen has recently edited in half-adozen volumes for the beginning of the seventeenth century and the last years of the sixteenth, the collections variously called "Musarum Deliciæ "and the "State Poems" for the middle of the seventeenth, and the odd sweeping together of poetry, sculduddery, music, doggerel verse of society and what-not which Tom D'Urfey made out of the songs of his time for the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth. In the first and second divisions we shall find hardly any warlike verse; the third bristles with it. The six but it is political rather than battailous; volumes of the "Pills to Purge Melan- and for a purely and wholly deplorable choly" lie beside me as I write, plumed failure of combined loyal and Bacchanalian with paper slips which I have put in them verse, I hardly know the equal of the fol to mark pieces of this sort. The badness lowing: of them (a few lines of Dryden's, and one or two not his, excepted) is simply astounding, even to those who have pretty well fathomed already the poetic depths of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth cen turies. They cover the whole period of William of Orange's stout if not successful fights, and of the almost unparalleled triumphs of Marlborough; yet there is never a touch of inspiration. The following is on the whole a really brilliant specimen: Methinks 'tis high time to be quiet There is a little more spirit in a ditty be- From Dunkirk one night they stole out in a fright Then welcome from Vigo And plundering the galleoons. And those who did meet At land by our gallant Commanders, Should be drunk for one year With their Generals' health in Flanders! I do not know how long the reader's patience will hold out against this appalling doggerel, which represents the efforts of the countrymen of Shakespeare and Shel. ley under the influence of victories which might have made a Campbell of "hoarse Fitzgerald." There is plenty more if any one likes it. I can tell him how the victory over the Turks proved that Christians thus with conquest crowned, Conquest with the glass goes round, Weak coffee can't keep its ground Against the force of claret. How The Duke then to the wood did come Fell at his Grace's feet. But turn your eyes and look! The conquering genius of our isle returns, Inspired by Ann the godlike hero burns. We are told of Marlborough himself: Thus as his sprightly infancy was still inured to harms, So was his noble figure still adorned with double charms. Ulm is gone, But basely won, ought to have sung of war even better than he did. As it is, there is as little mistake as possible about "Scots Wha Hae," as about " Agincourt," or "Ye Mariners of England; "while for compressed and undiluted fire it has the advantage of both. It is characteristic, however, of the unlucky rant about freedom which Burns had got into his head, that the "chains and slavery" (which really were very little ones) play an even more prominent part than that pure and generous desire to thrash the person opposed to you, because he is opposed to you, because he is not " your side," which is the true motive of all the best war-songs. This (though in neither example is there equal poetical merit) is more perceptible in the light but capital "I am a Son of Mars" of the "Jolly Beggars," and in those delightful verses of "Scotch Drink," which so did shock the delicate nerves of Mr. Matthew Arnold, and so do shock still the sensitive conscience of the modern Liberal, who thinks war a dreadful thing and carnage anything but God's daughter. Our chief writer of war-songs, however (for Dibdin's capital songs are not quite such capital poetry), is beyond doubt or question Thomas Campbell; and a very hard nut is the said Thomas for "scien And treacherous Bavaria there has buried his tific" criticism to crack. He certainly Few glories attended the British arms, on land and in Europe, from the setting of Corporal John's star to the rising of that of the duke; but the true singer, if he had been anywhere about, might have found plenty of employment with the navy. Unfortunately he was not, and his substitutes preferred to write "Admiral Hosier's Ghost," or else melancholy lines like those of Langhorne, which no human being would now remember if Scott had not as a boy remembered them in the presence of Burns. The last name brings us to a poet who belonged to a warlike family of a warlike. nation; but he shared this advantage with some millions of other Scotchmen, and some thousands of other Campbells. The esthopsychological" (Heaven save us!) determining cause of his temperament is not precisely or eminently apparent. He was not, as Burns was, of a romantic or adventurous disposition, being all his life a quiet literary gentleman. He was tolerably prosperous, despite his being an excessively bad arithmetician and husband of his money. He had, after early struggles, a nice little pension, a nicer little legacy, some lucrative appointments and commissions. He lived chiefly at Sydenham and Boulogne, though on his travels in Germany he did hear, and even perhaps see, shots fired in anger. He also possessed at one period three hundred pounds in bank-notes rolled up in his slippers. He was not ungenerously devoted to port wine, was somewhat less generously not devoted to his poetical rivals, was well looked after by his wife while she lived, and afterwards by a niece, and died on the verge of three score years and ten, if not an exceedingly happy or contented, yet on the whole a sufficiently fortunate man. He was especially fortunate in this. I ask you by our love to promise this that probably no man ever gained so early | before writing this I have not the dimmest and kept so long such high literary rank idea of what really happens. Theodric on the strength of so small a literary per- makes love to two young women, a most formance. In the very year of his reach- reprehensible though not uncommon pracing man's estate the "Pleasures of Hope" tice, and they both die. One is named seated him at once on the treasury bench Constance and the other Julia; and the in the contemporary session of the poets, last lines of Constance's last letter to and unlike most occupants of treasury Theodric are rather pretty. She bids him benches, he was never turned off. Many not despair : far greater poets appeared during the nearly fifty years which passed between that time and his death; but they were greater in perfectly different fashions. That what may be called his official, and what may be called his real titles to his position were not the same, may be very freely granted. But he had real titles. The curious thing is that even the official titles were so very modest in volume. Setting his "Specimens of the British Poets" aside, all his literary work (which is not in itself very large outside the covers of his poems) is as nearly as possible valueless. The poems themselves, the work of a long lifetime, do not fill three hundred small Even when we come to the shorter pages, and those of them which are really poems almost endless exclusions and alworth much, would not, I think, be very lowances have to be made. Campbell has tightly packed in thirty. The "Pleasures left some exceedingly pretty love-songs, of Hope" itself is beyond doubt the best not I think very generally known, the best of that which I should not include. It is of which are "Withdraw not yet those one of the very best school exercises ever Lips and Fingers," and "How Delicious written; it has touches which only a is the Winning." But there is no great schoolboy of genius could achieve. But originality about them, and they are such higher than a school exercise it cannot be things as almost any man with a good ear ranked. The other longer poems are far and an extensive knowledge of English below it. "Gertrude of Wyoming" has poetry could write nearly as well. Almost several famous and a smaller number of everything (I think everything) of his that excellent lines; but it is as much of an is really characteristic and really great is artificial conglomerate, and as little of an comprised in the dozen poems as his works original organism as the "Pleasures of are usually arranged (I quote the Aldine Hope," and the choice of the Spenserian Edition) between O'Connor's Child" and stanza is simply disastrous. "Iberian "The Soldier's Dream," with the addition seemed his boot," -the boot of the hero of the translated song of Hybrias the to the eyes of the heroine. To think that Cretan and, if anybody likes, "The Last a man should, in a stanza consecrated to Man." Even here the non-warlike poems the very quintessence of poetical poetry cannot approach the warlike ones in merit. -a stanza in which, far out of its own The fighting passages of "O'Connor's period and in mid-eighteenth century, Child" itself are much the best. "GleThomson had written the "Castle of In-nara (which by the way ends with a line of dolence," in which, before Campbell's own death, Mr. Tennyson was to write the "Lotus Eaters," - deliver himself of the phrase, "Iberian seemed his boot!" 66 But by so much as "Gertrude of Wy. oming" is worse than the "Pleasures of Hope," by as much is "Theodric worse than "Gertrude of Wyoming" and the Pilgrim of Glencoe worse again than "Theodric." There are not more than five or six hundred lines, including as usual some good ones, in the last-named poem; but though I have just re read it extraordinary imbecility) is not a very great thing except in the single touch, Each mantle unfolding a dagger displayed. "The Exile of Erin" is again merely pretty, and I should not myself care to preserve a line of "Lord Ullin's Daughter," except the really magnificent phrase, And in the scowl of Heaven each face As a whole the "Lines written on Revisiting a Scene in Argyleshire," with their |