The battle of the Baltic took place in the Baltic Sea before Copenhagen,
April 2, 1801, between the English and the Danish fleets. England had
accepted a declaration of the Armed Neutrality League (Russia, Denmark,
and Sweden) as being really in the interests of her enemy, France, and
the English fleet under Lord Parker was sent to the Baltic. Under Lord
Nelson, the second in command, a decisive victory was gained, largely
through the fact that Nelson refused to obey the orders of his superior
officer.
[105] 67. =Riou= was one of Nelson's officers.
CHARLES WOLFE
Charles Wolfe was born at Dublin, Ireland, in 1791 and died at
Queenstown in 1823. He graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1814 and
became curate of Donoughmore, Ireland. His _Remains_, with a brief
memoir, were published in 1825.
His only poem of any distinction is the one here printed, _The Burial of
Sir John Moore_.
THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA (Page 43)
First published in the _Newry Telegraph_, an Irish paper, in 1817, under
the initials C. W.
Sir John Moore (1761-1809) was commander of an English army of
twenty-four thousand men in Spain against a French force of eighty
thousand under Soult. At the battle of Corunna, January 16, 1809, the
English army won a doubtful victory in which their leader was killed.
After burying him at dead of night, the English troops embarked for
their own country.
[106] =Corunna= is a city in northwest Spain.
BYRON
George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born in London, January 22, 1788, and
died at Missolonghi, April 19, 1824, at the age of thirty-six. Byron's
father, a captain in the guards, after a romantic first marriage, wedded
Catharine Gordon, a wealthy girl, of Aberdeenshire, whom, after
squandering her fortune, he deserted shortly after young Byron's birth.
Byron's mother was a quick-tempered, impulsive woman, ill-fitted to
bring up a son who had a temperament almost exactly like her own. Once
when a companion said to Byron, "Your mother's a fool," the boy
answered, "I know it."
As a boy at school Byron formed passionate attachments, entered into the
games he played with an unusual fierceness of spirit, and exhibited that
sensitive pride which was the cause of much of his posing there and in
later life. He was club-footed, a deformity about which he was extremely
sensitive. Before entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1805, he had
attended Harrow for five years. At Cambridge he remained less than three
years, but in that time made some close friends and took an active part
in all sorts of sports, especially riding and swimming. His vacations he
spent at London or Southwell, generally quarrelling violently with his
mother.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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