P. 169, No. cxli.--This is a party ballad, and, rightly to understand it, we must understand the circumstances of which it assumes on our part a knowledge. In 1727 Admiral Hosier blockaded Porto-Bello with twenty ships; but was not allowed to attack it, war not having actually broken out with Spain, and, a peace being patched up, his squadron was withdrawn. In 1740 Admiral Vernon took Porto-Bello with six ships. It was apparently a very creditable exploit; but Vernon being an enemy of Walpole’s, and a member of the Opposition, it was glorified by them beyond its merits. When they boasted that he with six ships had effected what Hosier had not been allowed to attempt with twenty, the statement was a perfectly true one, but in nothing dishonourable to him or to his employers. Glover is here the mouthpiece of the Opposition, who, while they exalted Vernon, affected to pity Hosier, who had died, as they declared, of a broken heart; and of whose losses by disease during the blockade they did not fail to make the most. It is a fine ballad, and will do for Glover what his _Leonidas_ would altogether have failed to do. This we may confidently affirm, whether we quite agree with Lord Stanhope or not, that it is ‘the noblest song perhaps ever called forth by any British victory, except Mr. Campbell’s _Battle of the Baltic_.’ P. 172, No. cxlii.--This poem was for a while supposed to be old, and an old line has been worked up into it. This was probably the refrain of an older as it is of the more modern poem, which has Miss Elliott, (1727-1805), an accomplished lady of the Minto family, for its author.--l. 1: ‘lilting,’ singing cheerfully.--l. 3: ‘loaning,’ broad lane.--l. 5: ‘scorning,’ rallying.--l. 6: ‘dowie’ dreary.--l. 8: ‘leglin,’ milkpail.--l. 9: ‘shearing’ reaping.--l. 10: ‘bandsters,’ sheaf-binders.--‘lyart,’ inclining to gray.--‘runkled,’ wrinkled.--l. 11: ‘fleeching,’ coaxing.--l. 14: ‘bogle,’ ghost. P. 176, No. cxlvi.--One who listens very attentively may catch in these pretty lines a faint prelude of Wordsworth’s immortal poem addressed to the same bird. P. 177, No. cxlvii.--There can scarcely be a severer trial of the poet’s power of musical expression, of his command of the arts by which melody is produced, than the unrhymed lyric, which very seldom perfectly satisfies the ear. That Collins has so completely succeeded here is itself a sufficient answer to Gray’s assertion that he ‘had a bad ear,’ to Johnson’s complaint, ‘his lines commonly are of slow motion; clogged and impeded with a cluster of consonants.’ Collins, in whom those lines of Wordsworth found only too literal a fulfilment, ‘We poets do begin our lives in gladness, But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness,’