with his dying words encourages his men to revenge his death, representing to them, as the most bitter circumstance of it, that his rival saw him fall: wod "With that there came an arrow keen Out of an English bow, Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart "Who never spoke more words than these Fight on my merry-men all, For why, my life is at an end, Lord Percy sees my fall." Merry-men in the language of those times, is no more than a cheerful word for companions and fellow-soldiers. A passage in the eleventh book of Virgil's Æneid is very much to be admired, where Camilla, in her last agonies, instead of weeping over the wound she had received, as one might have expected from a warrior of her sex, considers only (like the hero of whom we are now speaking) how the battle should be continued after her death: Tum sic expirans Accam ex æqualibus unam En. xi. 820. A gathering mist o'erclouds her cheerful eyes; Then turns to her, whom, of her female train, Repel the Trojans, and the town relieve: Dryden. Turnus did not die in so heroic a manner; though our poet seems to have had his eye upon Turnus's speech in the last verse: nerous, beautiful, and passionate: I must only caution the reader not to let the simplicity of the style, which one may well pardon in so old a poet, prejudice him against the greatness of the thought: "Then leaving life, Earl Percy took The dead man by the hand, "O Christ! my very heart doth bleed For sure a more renowned knight The beautiful line, "Taking the dead man by the hand," will put the reader in mind of Æneas's behaviour towards Lausus, whom he himself had slain as he came to the rescue of his aged father: : At verò ut vultum vidit morientis, et ora, Ora modis Anchisiades pallentia miris; Ingemuit, miserans graviter, dextramque tetendit. Æn. x. 822. The pious prince beheld young Lausus dead; He griev'd, he wept, than grasp'd his hand and said, &c. Dryden. I shall take another opportunity to consider the other parts of this old song.. In the foregoing paper I gave some general instances of those beautiful strokes which please the reader in the old song of Chevy-chase; I shall here, according to my promise, be more particular, and show that the sentiments in that ballad are extremely natural and poetical, and full of the majestic simplicity which we admire in the greatest of the ancient poets: for which reason I shall quote several passages of it, in which the thought is altogether the same with what we meet in several passages of the Æneid; not that I would infer from thence that the poet (whoever he was) proposed to himself any imitation of those passages, but that he was directed to them in general by the same kind of poetical genius, and by the same copyings after nature. 13 Had this old song been filled with epigrammatical turns and points of wit, it might perhaps have pleased the wrong taste of some readers; but it would never have become the delight of the common people, nor have warmed the heart of Sir Philip Sidney like the sound of a trumpet; it is only nature that can have this effect, and please those tastes which are the most unprejudiced, or the most refined. I must however beg leave to dissent from so great an authority as that of Sir Philip Sidney, in the judgment which he has passed as to the rude style and evil apparel of this antiquated song; for there are several parts in it where not only the thought but the language is majestic, and the numbers sonorous; at least the apparel is much more gorgeous than many of the poets made use of in Queen Elizabeth's time, as the reader will see in several of the following quotations. What can be greater than either the thought or the expression in that stanza, "To drive the deer with hound and horn Earl Percy took his way; The child may rue that is unborn The hunting of that day!" This way of considering the misfortunes which this battle would bring upon posterity, not only on those who were born immediately after the battle, and lost their fathers in it, but on those also who perished in future battles which took their rise |