At the same time that our poet shows a laudable partiality to his countrymen, he represents the Scots after a manner not unbecoming so bold and brave a people:
Earl Douglas on a milk-white steed, Most like a baron bold, Rode foremost of the company, Whose armour shone like gold.
His sentiments and actions are every way suitable to a hero. "One of us two," says he, "must die: I am an earl as well as yourself, so that you can have no pretence for refusing the combat; however,"says he, "it is pity, and indeed would be a sin, that so many innocent men should perish for our sakes: rather let you and I end our quarrel in single fight:""Ere thus I will out-braved be, One of us two shall die;I know thee well, an earl thou art, Lord Percy, so am I.
"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.""Accurst be he," Lord Percy said, "By whom this is deny'd."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 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 fellow-soldiers. A passage in the eleventh book of Virgil's "AEneid" 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 exspirans, &c.
VIRG., AEn. xi. 820.
A gath'ring 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."
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:
Lord Percy sees my fall.
Vicisti, et victum tendere palmas Ausonii videre.
VIRG., AEn. xii. 936.
The Latin chiefs have seen me beg my life.
DRYDEN.
Earl Percy's lamentation over his enemy is generous, 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, 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 AEneas'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, dextramqne tetendit.
VIRG., AEn. x. 821.
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?"DRYDEN.
I shall take another opportunity to consider the other parts of this old song.
NEXT ESSAY
Pendent opera interrupta.
VIRG., AEn. iv. 88.
The works unfinished and neglected lie.
In my last Monday's 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 "AEneid;" not that Iwould 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 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!
