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Who never spoke more Words than these,
Fight on, my merry Men all,
For why, my Life is at an End,
Lord Piercy 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, etc.

A gathering Mist overclouds her chearful Eyes;
And from her Cheeks the rosie 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:
Farewel …

Turnus did not die in so heroic a Manner; tho’ our Poet seems to have had his Eye upon Turnus’s Speech in the last Verse,

Lord Piercy sees my Fall.
… Vicisti, et victum tendere palmas
Ausonii videre …

Earl Piercy’s Lamentation over his Enemy is generous, beautiful, and passionate; I must only caution the Reader not to let the Simplicity of the Stile, which one may well pardon in so old a Poet, prejudice him against the Greatness of the Thought.

Then leaving Life, Earl Piercy 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, 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 Part of this old Song.

[Footnote 1: a little]

[Footnote 2: that]

[Footnote 3: Besides the old woman, Moliere is said to have relied on the children of the Comedians, read his pieces to them, and corrected passages at which they did not show themselves to be amused.]

[Footnote 4: ‘Defence of Poesy’.]

[Footnote 5: The author of Chevy Chase was not contemporary with the dissensions of the Barons, even if the ballad of the ‘Hunting of the Cheviot’ was a celebration of the Battle of Otterbourne, fought in 1388, some 30 miles from Newcastle. The battle of Chevy Chase, between the Percy and the Douglas, was fought in Teviotdale, and the ballad which moved Philip Sidney’s heart was written in the fifteenth century. It may have referred to a Battle of Pepperden, fought near the Cheviot Hills, between the Earl of Northumberland and Earl William Douglas of Angus, in 1436. The ballad quoted by Addison is not that of which Sidney spoke, but a version of it, written after Sidney’s death, and after the best plays of Shakespeare had been written.]

[Footnote 6: that]

[Footnote 7: that]

[Footnote 8: received]

[Footnote 9: by a single Combat.]