Selections from the Works of Joseph Addison

But trust me, Percy, pity it were,

And great offence, to kill

Any of these our harmless men,

For they have done no ill.

Let thou and I the battle try,
And set our men aside;
Accurs'd be he, Lord Percy said,

By whom this is denied.

When these brave men had distinguished themselves in the battle and in single combat with each other, in the midst of a generous parley, full of heroic sentiments, the Scotch earl falls; and with 5 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.

With that there came an arrow keen

Out of an English bow,

Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart

A deep and deadly blow.

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 IO fellow-soldiers. A passage in the eleventh book of Virgil's Eneids 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 15 (like the hero of whom we are now speaking) how the battle should be continued after her death.

Tum sic expirans, etc

A gathering mist o'erclouds her cheerful eyes;
And from her cheeks the rosy colour flies.
Then turns to her, whom, of her female train,
She trusted most, and thus she speaks with pain.
Acca, 'tis past! he swims before my sight,
Inexorable death; and claims his right.

Bear my last words to Turnus, fly with speed,
And bid him timely to my charge succeed:
Repel the Trojans, and the town relieve :
Farewell.-

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,

Lord Percy sees my fall.

Vicisti, et victum tendere palmas

Ausonii videre.

Earl Percy's lamentation over his enemy is generous, beautiful, and passionate; I must only cau- 5 tion 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,
And said, Earl Douglas, for thy life
Would I had lost my land.

O Christ! my very heart doth bleed
With sorrow for thy sake;

For sure a more renowned knight
Mischance did never take.

That 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 vero ut vultum vidit morientis, et ora,
Ora modis Anchisiades pallentia miris ;

Ingemuit miserans graviter, dextramque tetendit, etc.

The pious prince beheld young Lausus dead;

He grieved he wept; then grasped his hand, and said,
Poor hapless youth! what praises can be paid

To worth so great!

I shall take another opportunity to consider the other parts of this old song.

No. 74.

FRIDAY, MAY 25. [1711.]

Pendent opera interrupta.-VIRG.

In my last Monday's paper I gave some general instances of those beautiful strokes which please 1 the reader in the old song of Chevy Chase; I shall 10 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 20 several passages of it, in which the thought is altogether the same with what we meet in several passages of the Eneid; 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.

Had this old song been filled with epigrammatical 5 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 10 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 15 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 20 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 4

The hunting of that day!

This way of considering the misfortunes which this 25 battle would bring upon posterity, not only on those who were born immediately after the battle, and lost

1711,

numbers very sonorous.

1711, that was unborn.

their fathers in it, but on those also who perished in future battles which took their rise 5 from this quarrel of the two earls, is wonderfully beautiful, and conformable to the way of thinking among 5 the ancient poets.