There are other provincial poets, besides Mr. Barnes, of whom it might be proper to say something, notably Mr. Waugh, whose beautiful lyric 'Come Home to the Children and Me,' has made its way into the hearts of his keen-minded Lancashire fellow-countrymen. It is not, however, so easy to read off into English as the Dorsetshire idylls of Mr. Barnes, and therefore I shall not attempt it; the rather that I wish to call your attention to a much older ballad, which connects itself with some interesting speculations as to the manner in which epic poetry is born, and grows. I mean the well-known legend of Chevy Chase. Not only is this a provincial poem, but it is written, says Bishop Percy, in the broadest and coarsest northern dialect; at a time, too, when that northern half of England, if compared with the southern and western counties, was insignificant in point of wealth and population. And yet men found these rugged verses so full of fire and authentic force—so gallantly do they appeal to the strong English pulses that beat in Northumberland and in Cornwall alike, so rich are they in all those qualities which make war noble-that in a hundred years or so after its first publication, this rough Border lay was stirring the heart of Sir Philip Sidney like a trumpet, and taking its place, no longer

provincial, among the recognised trophies of our English literature. I say of our English literature, because, though I am aware that there exists a Scottish version of the tale, for me a single stanza decides the proprietorship at once:—

'Our Scottish archers bent their bows,

Their hearts were good and true,

At the first flight of arrows sent

They four-score English slew.'

Now this is a manifest, I may add a most unskilful adaptation and distortion of the lines. The spear or the axe, not the bow, was notoriously the Scottish weapon. We all must remember the gasp of patriotic despair through which Sir Walter Scott describes the pitiable equipment of his Hebridean archers, before the fight of Flodden :

'but oh!

Short was the shaft and weak the bow

To that which England bore.'

Again, when Marmion, the grave and cautious ambassador from England, is taunted by James IV, and endeavours, in his answer, to check those unbridled passions of the king which are hurrying him to instant war, how does he proceed? Why, his warning begins, his warning ends, with an ominous allusion to the invincible arrows of England:

'Much honoured were my humble home,
If thither brave King James should come;
But Nottingham has archers good,

And Yorkshire men are stern of mood,
Northumbrian prickers wild and rude;
And many a banner shall be torn,
And many a knight to earth be borne,
And many a sheaf of arrows spent,

Ere Scotland's king shall cross the Trent.'

Whether, however, this stern old song be in its original form Scotch or English, matters little. Both nations have a right to be proud of it. Earl Douglas frankly offers to peril his life, so that the blood of meaner men may not be spilt in his private quarrel. Earl Percy leans upon his hand

And sees the Douglas de;

Then takes the dead man by the hand,

And says, woe is me for thee.

To have saved thy life, I'd have parted with
My landés for years three;

For a better man, nor of heart, nor of hand,
Was not in all the north-countree.'

And so these two champions stand always together on the same level in our affections. They represent equally the highest form of middle-age chivalry, the highest type, I hope I may add, of our English chaNor has that type, I trust, died out as yet upon our English soil.

racter.

I have heard, on the authority of an eye-witness, how in one of the fiercest and most dubious of our Peninsular struggles, a young French officer, superb of stature and brilliant in horsemanship, after rallying and remodelling his scattered brigade, came down, with the aspect of Henry of Navarre, waving a white handkerchief two lengths in front of that plunging cloud of cavalry which threatened to sweep the motionless battalions before it-into headlong ruin. But no, the English squares were too firmly rooted, the English volleys too true. Among the first who dropped, under their withering impact, was the gallant Frenchman. His baffled followers at once melted away into defeat. Still, even then, our advancing soldiers, with the light of victory on their brows, and the white heat of battle burning in their veins, bent for a moment in sadness over the stately form of their fallen foe, and muttered gloomily to each other, 'Poor gentleman, what a pity!' I could not but feel, when this anecdote was first told to me, that these men also, though the technical period of chivalry may be gone for ever-that these men also were born English knights, spiritual heirs, as we well may call them, to the generous Percy, and his high-hearted Northumbrian bard. It was not, however, so much to remind you of the merits of this

familiar poem, merits which the criticism of Addison in the Spectator' has ratified for all generations of Englishmen, as to make some remarks upon its epic character, that I have referred to it here. In the first place, we shall find that it sprung as it were from the soil, among the ancestral woodlands of those knights whose heroism it proclaims, whilst it deplores their untimely fate. In the next place, we may remark that the author, though he deals with real men and real manners, is careless altogether about the actual truth of his facts; he kills people who were not killed, confuses one skirmish with another, and treats accurate chronology with placid contempt. And yet how wrong we should be, (having historical access to other sources of information, we are sure of that,) if we denied that there was a substantial basis of well-grounded belief below this old Border song. The persons introduced into it, the events described, the known national results with which it manages to connect itself, all inform us that there lurks a vanished history beneath, as certainly as the rose-tinted clouds, that hang over the sunken sun, testify to the previous existence of daylight.

And here, if I may be permitted to digress for a moment, I would add that the same conclusion is to be arrived at, through mistier labyrinths of doubt, and