While the second Dutch war fills so large a place both in poetry and in the ballads, the third, which covers the period from March 1672 to February 1674, was left comparatively unsung. It was not a national war in the same sense that the first and the second had been, but rather the outcome of a diplomatic intrigue, and excited less public interest. It is represented in this collection by two ballads only, one on the battle of Solebay on May 28, 1672, the other on the capture of a Dutch frigate by an English one in 1674 (pp. 82, 83-6). On the other hand, the war produced a small crop of elegies on the officers who fell in different engagements. The fashion began in the first war. There is an elegy on Captain Henry Terne of the Triumph, killed in the four days’ battle in June 1666. Similarly there is an _Elegy on that grand Example of Loyalty, Valour, and Conduct, Sir Edward Spragge, unfortunately drowned (after incomparable proof of heroic gallantry) in the late engagement with the Dutch, August 11, 1673_. We have also _English Iliads, or a Sea-Fight reviewed, in a Poem occasioned by the death of a Person of Honour slain in the late War_ (Lord Maidstone, killed in the battle of Southwold Bay). Captain Francis Digby, who fell in the same battle, became more famous in ballads. Dryden wrote a song beginning ‘Farewell, fair Armida, my joy and my grief,’ which was meant to represent Digby’s farewell to the Duchess of Richmond, with whom he was passionately in love. This was expanded into a popular ballad entitled _Love and Honour_ (_Roxburghe Ballads_, vi. 36). Another ballad-writer produced a supplement, _The sorrowful Ladies Complaint, relating how a Damosel lamenteth the loss of her Lover, who behaved himself very valiantly in a late engagement at sea, but was unfortunately slain_ (_ib._ iv. 397). An abbreviated version of this, entitled _The Drowned Lover_, was still sung a few years ago (Baring Gould, _Songs of the West_, 4th edition, p. xxiii). Usually these elegies are rhetorical exercises of very little interest, but that on _The Death of the noble Knight, Sir John Harman, who died October 11, 1673_, contains an account of his career which deserves quotation: Britannia, Queen of the Ocean, bade me write Something memorial of this Noble Knight, It must be Great, or nothing. Nay, said I, Let Homers then, or Virgils Poetry Record his deeds. ’Tis not for meaner things To speak or think of Admirals or Kings. * * * * * When first in youth some voyages he made, To prosecute Experience or Trade, His worth disclos’d itself, and made men see, None was more English Mariner than he. Though hearty, sturdy Oak our ships do frame, Our Seamen too (if rightly stamp’d) the same, And such was this well-timber’d man, be sure, That such hard storms and bickerings could endure. * * * * *