Of the first, 'Napoleon and the British Sailor' (_The Pilgrim of Glencoe_, 1842), Campbell writes that the 'anecdote has been published in several public journals, both French and English.' 'My belief,' he continues, 'in its authenticity was confirmed by an Englishman, long resident in Boulogne, lately telling me that he remembered the circumstance to have been generally talked of in the place.' Authentic or not, I have preferred the story to _Hohenlinden_, as less hackneyed, for one thing, and, for another, less pretentious and rhetorical. The second (_Gertrude of Wyoming_, 1809) is truly one of 'the glories of our birth and state.' The third (_idem_) I have ventured to shorten by three stanzas: a proceeding which, however culpable it seem, at least gets rid of the chief who gave a country's wounds relief by stopping a battle, eliminates the mermaid and her song (the song that 'condoles'), and ends the lyric on as sonorous and romantic a word as even Shakespeare ever used. LXVIII _Corn Law Rhymes_, 1831. LXIX From that famous and successful forgery, Cromek's _Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song_ (1810), written when Allan was a working mason in Dumfriesshire. I have omitted a stanza as inferior to the rest. LXXI _English Songs and other Small Poems_, 1834. LXXII-LXXVIII The first is from the _Hebrew Melodies_ (1815); the next is selected from _The Siege of Corinth_ (1816), 22-33; _Alhama_ (_idem_) is a spirited yet faithful rendering of the _Romance muy Doloroso del Sitio y Toma de Alhama_, which existed both in Spanish and in Arabic, and whose effect was such that 'it was forbidden to be sung by the Moors on the pain of death in Granada' (Byron); No. LXXV., surely one of the bravest songs in the language, was addressed (_idem_) to Thomas Moore; the tremendous _Race with Death_ is lifted out of the _Ode in Venice_ (1819); for the next number see _Don Juan_, III. (1821); the last of all, 'Stanzas inscribed _On this day I completed my Thirty-sixth year_' (1824), is the last verse that Byron wrote. LXXIX Napier has described the terrific effect of Napoleon's pursuit; but in the operations before Corunna he was distanced, if not out-generalled, by Sir John Moore, and ere the first days of 1809 he gave his command to Soult, who pressed us vainly through the hill-country between Leon and Gallicia, and got beaten at Corunna for his pains. Wolfe, who was an Irish parson and died of consumption, wrote some spirited verses on the flight of Busaco, but this admirable elegy--'I will show you,' said Byron to Shelley (Medwin, ii. 154) 'one you have never seen, that I consider little if at all inferior to the best, the present prolific age has brought forth'--remains his passport to immortality. It was printed, not by the author, in an Irish newspaper; was copied all over Britain; was claimed by liar after liar in succession; and has been reprinted more often, perhaps, than any poem of the century. LXXX