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Full twenty hundred Scottish spears,
All marching in our sight;

All men of pleasant Tividale,

Fast by the river Tweed, &c.

The country of the Scotch warriors, described in these two last verses, has a fine romantic situation, and affords a couple of smooth words for verse. If the reader compares the foregoing six lines of the song with the following Latin verses, he will see how much they are written in the spirit of Virgil. Adversi campo apparent, hastasque reductis Protendunt longè dextris; et spicula vibrant : Quique altum Præneste viri, quique arva Gabinæ Junonis, gelidumque Anienem, et roscida rivis Hernica saxa colunt:- -qui rosea rura Velini, Qui Tetricæ horrentes rupes, montemque Severum, Casperiamque colunt, Forulosque et flumen Himellæ : Qui Tiberim Fabarimque bibunt.—

But proceed:

Earl Douglas, on a milk-white steed,

Most like a baron bold,

Rode foremost of the company,

Whose armour shone like gold.

Turnus ut antevolans tardum præcesserat agmen, &c.
Vidisti, quo Turnus equo, quibus ibat in armis
Aureus-

Our English archers bent their bows,
Their hearts were good and true;
At the first flight of arrows sent,
Full threescore Scots they slew.
They closed full fast on every side,
No slackness there was found;
And many a gallant gentleman
Lay gasping on the ground.

With that there came an arrow keen

Out of an English bow,

Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart

A deep and deadly blow.

Æneas was wounded after the same manner by an unknown hand in the midst of a parley.

Has inter voces, media inter talia verba,

Ecce viro stridens alis allapsa sagitta est,
Incertum quâ pulsa manu-

But of all the descriptive parts of this song, there are none more beautiful than the four following stanzas, which have a great force and spirit in them, and are filled with very natural circumstances. The thought in the third stanza was

never touched by any other poet, and is such an one as would have shined in Homer or in Virgil.

So thus did both these nobles die,
Whose courage none could stain :
An English archer then perceived
The noble Earl was slain.

He had a bow bent in his hand,
Made of a trusty tree,

An arrow of a cloth-yard long
Unto the head drew he.

Against Sir Hugh Montgomery
So right his shaft he set,

The gray-goose wing, that was thereon,
In his heart-blood was wet.

This fight did last from break of day
Till setting of the sun;

For when they rung the evening bell,
The battle scarce was done.

One may observe likewise, that in the catalogue of the slain, the author has followed the example of the greatest ancient poets, not only in giving a long list of the dead, but by diversifying it with little characters of particular persons.

And with Earl Douglas there was slain

Sir Hugh Montgomery;

Sir Charles Carrell, that from the field
One foot would never fly;

Sir Charles Murrel of Ratcliff too,
His sister's son was he;

Sir David Lamb, so well esteemed,
Yet saved could not be.

The familiar sound in these names destroys the majesty of the description: for this reason I do not mention this part of the poem but to show the natural cast of thought which appears in it, as the two last verses look almost like a translation of Virgil.

-Cadit et Ripheus justissimus unus
Qui fuit in Teucris et servantissimus æqui,
Diis aliter visum est.

In the catalogue of the English who fell, Witherington's
behaviour is in the same manner particularized very artfully,
as the reader is prepared for it by that account which is
given of him in the beginning of the battle; though I am
satisfied your
little buffoon readers (who have seen that pas-
sage ridiculed in Hudibras) will not be able to take the
beauty of it: for which reason I dare not so much as quote it.

Then stept a gallant squire forth,
Witherington was his name,
Who said, I would not have it told,

To Henry, our King, for shame,

That e'er my captain fought on foot,
And I stood looking on.

We meet with the same heroic sentiment in Virgil.

Non pudet, O Rutuli, cunctis pro talibus unam
Objectare animam? numerone an viribus æqui

Non sumus-?

What can be more natural, or more moving, than the cir-
cumstances in which he describes the behaviour of those wo-
men who had lost their husbands on this fatal day?
Next day did many widows come,
Their husbands to bewail:

They washed their wounds in brinish tears,
But all would not prevail.

Their bodies, bathed in purple blood,
They bore with them away:

They kissed them dead a thousand times

When they were clad in clay.

Thus we see how the thoughts of this poem, which naturally arise from the subject, are always simple, and sometimes exquisitely noble; that the language is often very sounding, and that the whole is written with a true poetical spirit.

If this song had been written in the Gothic manner, which is the delight of all our little wits, whether writers or readers, it would not have hit the taste of so many ages, and have pleased the readers of all ranks and conditions. I shall only beg pardon for such a profusion of Latin quotations; which I should not have made use of, but that I feared my own judgment would have looked too singular on such a subject, had not I supported it by the practice and authority of Virgil.1

1 It may be proper to observe, once for all, that Mr. Addison's critical papers discover his own good taste, and are calculated to improve that of his reader; but otherwise have no great merit. He rarely makes a wrong judgment of the passages he quotes, but does not tell us on what grounds (or at least in too general terms) that judgment was, or ought to have been, founded.

No. 81. SATURDAY, JUNE 2.

Qualis ubi audito venantum murmure tigris
Horruit in maculas-

STATIUS.

ABOUT the middle of last winter I went to see an opera at the theatre in the Haymarket, where I could not but take notice of two parties of very fine women, that had placed themselves in the opposite side boxes, and seemed drawn up in a kind of battle-array one against another. After a short survey of them, I found they were patched differently; the faces, on one hand, being spotted on the right side of the forehead, and those upon the other on the left: I quickly perceived that they cast hostile glances upon one another; and that their patches were placed in those different situations, as party-signals to distinguish friends from foes. In the middle boxes, between these two opposite bodies, were several ladies who patched indifferently on both sides of their faces, and seemed to sit there with no other intention but to see the opera. Upon inquiry I found, that the body of Amazons on my right hand were Whigs, and those on my left, Tories; and that those who had placed themselves in the middle boxes were a neutral party, whose faces had not yet declared themselves. These last, however, as I afterwards found, diminished daily, and took their party with one side or the other; insomuch that I observed in several of them, the patches, which were before dispersed equally, are now all gone over to the Whig or the Tory side of the face. The censorious say, that the men whose hearts are aimed at, are very often the occasions that one part of the face is thus dishonoured, and lies under a kind of disgrace, while the other is so much set off and adorned by the owner; and that the patches turn to the right or to the left, according to the principles of the man who is most in favour. But whatever may be the motives of a few fantastical coquettes, who do not patch for the public good so much as for their own private advantage, it is certain, that there are several women of honour who patch out of principle, and with an eye to the interest of their country. Nay, I am informed that some of them adhere so stedfastly to their party, and are so far from sacrificing their zeal for the public to their passions for any particular person, that in a late draught of marriage-articles

a lady has stipulated with her husband, that whatever his opinions are, she shall be at liberty to patch on which side she pleases.

I must here take notice, that Rosalinda, a famous Whig partisan, has most unfortunately a very beautiful mole on the Tory part of her forehead; which being very conspicuous, has occasioned many mistakes, and given an handle to her enemies to misrepresent her face, as though it had revolted from the Whig interest. But, whatever this natural patch may seem to insinuate, it is well known that her notions of government are still the same. This unlucky mole, however, has misled several coxcombs; and like the hanging out of false colours, made some of them converse with Rosalinda in what they thought the spirit of her party, when on a sudden she has given them an unexpected fire, that has sunk them all at once. If Rosalinda is unfortunate in her mole, Nigranilla is as unhappy in a pimple, which forces her, against her inclinations, to patch on the Whig side.

I am told that many virtuous matrons, who formerly have been taught to believe that this artificial spotting of the face was unlawful, are now reconciled by a zeal for their cause, to what they could not be prompted by a concern for their beauty. This way of declaring war upon one another, puts me in mind of what is reported of the tigress, that several spots rise in her skin when she is angry; or, as Mr. Cowley has imitated the verses that stand as the motto of this paper,

-She swells with angry pride,

And calls forth all her spots on every side.

When I was in the theatre the time above-mentioned, I had the curiosity to count the patches on both sides, and found the Tory patches to be about twenty stronger than the Whig; but to make amends for this small inequality, I the next morning found the whole puppet-show filled with faces spotted after the Whiggish manner. Whether or no the ladies had retreated hither in order to rally their forces, I cannot tell; but the next night they came in so great a body to the opera, that they outnumbered the enemy.

This account of party-patches will, I am afraid, appear improbable to those who live at a distance from the fashionable world; but as it is a distinction of a very singular nature, and what perhaps may never meet with a parallel, I think I

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