trumpet; it is only nature that can have this effect, and please those taftes which are the most unprejudiced, or the most refined. I must however beg leave to diffent from fo great an authority as that of Sir Philip Sidney, in the judgment which he has pafled as to the rude file and evil apparel of this antiquated Song; for there are feveral parts in it where not only the thought but the language is majestic, and the numbers fonorous*; at leaft, the apparel is much more gorgeous than many of the pocts made ufe of in Queen Elizabeth's time, as the reader will fee in feveral of the following quotations. What can be greater than either the thought or the expreffion in that stanza, This 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! way of confidering the misfortunes which this battle would bring upon pofterity, not only on those who were born immediately after the battle, and loft their fathers in it, but on those alfo who perifhed in future battles which took their rife from this quarrel of the two Earls, is wonderfully beautiful, and conformable to the way of thinking among the ancient poets. Audiet pugnas vitio parentum HOR. 1 Od. ii. 23. *See Dr. Blackwell's "Enquiry into the Life and Writ"ings of Homer," fecond edit. Svo. 1736, fect. v. p. 59, 60. Pofterity, Posterity, thinn'd by their fathers' crimes, Shall read with grief, the ftory of their times. What can be more founding and poetical, or refemble more the majestic fimplicity of the ancients, than the following ftanzas? The ftout Earl of Northumberland With fifteen hundred bowmen bold, Who knew full well, in time of need, The hounds ran fwiftly through the woods The nimble deer to take, And with their cries the hills and dales Vocat ingenti clamore Citharon Taygetique canes, domitrixque Epidaurus equorum: · Et vox affenfu nemorum ingeminata remugit. Citharon loudly calls me to my way; GEORG. iii. 43. Thy hounds, Taygetus, open, and purfue the prey: Fam'd for his hills, and for his horses breed: Lo, yonder doth Earl Douglas come, Full twenty hundred Scottish spears, All men of pleasant Tividale, DRYDEN. The The country of the Scotch warriors, defcribed in these two laft verfes, has a fine romantic fituation, and affords a couple of fmooth words for verfe. If the reader compares the foregoing fix lines of the fong with the following Latin verfes, he will fee how much they are written in the fpirit of Virgil. Adverfi campo apparent, haftafque reductis Æn. xi. 6o5. vii. 682, 712. Advancing in a line, they couch their fpears- With thofe who plow Saturnia's Gabine land: But to proceed: Earl Douglas on a milk-white steed, Rode foremost of the company, DRYDEN. Turnus Turnus ut antevolans tardum præcefferat agmen, &c. Our English archers bent their bows, They clos'd full faft on ev'ry fide, With that there came an arrow keen Which ftruck Earl Douglas to the heart, A deep and deadly blow. Æneas was wounded after the fame manner by an unknown hand in the midst of a parley. Has inter voces, media inter talia verba, Æn. xii. 918. Thus, while he fpake, unmindful of defence, DRYDEN. But of all the defcriptive parts of this Song, there are none more beautiful than the four following ftanzas, which have a great force and fpirit in them, and are filled with very natural circumftances. The thought in the third ftanza was Ff3 never never touched by any other poet, and is fuch an one as would have fhined in Homer or in Virgil. So thus did both thefe nobles die, He had a bow bent in his hand, An arrow of a cloth-yard long Unto the head drew he. Against Sir Hugh Montgomery So right his fhaft he fet, The grey-goofe wing that was thereon This fight did laft from break of day For when they rung the ev'ning bell One may obferve likewife, that in the catalogue of the flain, the author has followed the example of the great ancient poets, not only in giving a long lift of the dead, but by diverfifying it with little characters of particular perfons. And with Earl Douglas there was flain Sir Charles Carrel, that from the field Sir Charles Murrel of Ratcliff too, |