calls him a ‘stinking tarbarrel,’ he terms her a ‘dirty dowdy’ (Act iii. sc. vi. vii.). But if Ben has not the gallantry of a stage sailor, he has the aggressive honesty. ‘Don’t think I’m false-hearted like a landsman,’ he tells another lady. ‘A sailor will be honest, tho’ perhaps he has never a penny of money in his pocket. Mayhap I have not so fair a face as a citizen or a courtier, but for all that I’ve as good blood in my veins and a heart as sound as a biscuit’ (Act iii. sc. xv.). The reign of Queen Anne, compared to that of William III., is rather barren in naval ballads. Pepys died in May 1703, and later collectors who took less interest in maritime affairs allowed the songs written about them to perish. Yet the history of the reign, if marked by no victory equal in magnitude to La Hogue, was distinguished by the victories of Rooke and Leake and many minor successes. The finest ballad of the time is that which records Benbow’s disastrous battle with Ducasse, of which it has been possible to discover a longer and better version than that given in Halliwell’s collection (p. 149). Fortune was less kind to the fame of Rooke than to that of Benbow. There is, it is true, a poem addressed _To the right honourable Sir George Rooke at his Return from his glorious Enterprise near Vigo_. It celebrates his success in forcing the Danes to make peace with Sweden in 1700: ‘To jarring Crowns repose Thy Navy brings, And Quiet broods beneath Her Halcyon wings. Those Gathering Clouds, which not long since broke forth In Storms, and threaten’d to lay waste the North, Thou at Thy first approach didst drive away, And on their Wintry Climes let in the Southern day.’ It goes on to refer to the unsuccessful attempt on Cadiz in 1702, and to say that ‘auspicious Heaven’ pointed out to England a nobler quarry than the town first aimed at, and one more worthy of Rooke’s arms: ‘Shows Her, on wing retiring from the Main, The Wealth of India and the Pride of Spain. This Prize was worthy Thee; and less had been Too mean a Present for an English Queen.’ The attack on the allied fleet on Oct. 12, 1702, is related at length in a ballad called _The Sailor’s Account of the Action at Vigo_ (p. 151). But contemporary poetasters in general attribute the victory to Ormonde and the army rather than Rooke and the navy (_Poems on State Affairs_, ii. 409, 415; _Pills to Purge Melancholy_, v. 115). Added to this, Rooke’s battle with Toulouse off Malaga on August 13, 1704, gained him neither credit nor popularity, and afforded an opportunity to the satirists, of which they made the most (_ib._ iv. 112, 113). Specimens of their satires are given on pp. 153, 154.