‘In council above rose the deity of war, Determined to give valour due renown, And soon on the brow of each hardy British tar Was placed a resplendent royal crown. ‘While the loud trump of fame on earth and ocean sounded With Howe, Jervis, Duncan, and Nelson’s name resounded; But the battle of the Nile was the foremost on the file, And all the Angel choirs sang the glories of that day.’ Of much greater interest than these is a long narrative ballad, said to have comprised about sixty verses, of which tradition has preserved merely a fragment. From the exactness of the details, it was probably written by some sailor in the fleet. All that survives is printed on p. 287. The battle of Copenhagen is the theme of two ballads of the ordinary type (pp. 295, 296). To these has been added the original version of Campbell’s _Battle of the Baltic_, which he enclosed in a letter to Sir Walter Scott written on March 27, 1805 (p. 290). ‘Though wanting,’ says Sir J. K. Laughton, ‘the polish which afterwards brought it to something like perfection, though many of the lines are bald, harsh, or tumid, some of the expressions are happier than in the finished work; and, though we do not go to a ballad for historical detail, it is fuller and more accurate’ (_The Nelson Memorial_, p. 196). Campbell was in a special sense the laureate of the war which resulted from the coalition known as the Armed Neutrality of 1801, and he published in the _Morning Chronicle_ of March 18, 1801, his ballad _Ye Mariners of England_ headed _On the Prospect of a Russian War_. The original of this, which differs only in a few unimportant phrases from the later version, is to be found in Laughton’s _Nelson Memorial_, p. 175, and in Beattie’s _Life of Campbell_. It is needless to reprint it here. Nelson’s next engagement was not against the Russians, as he expected, but against the French flotilla which lay in the harbour of Boulogne prepared for the invasion of England. This disastrous attempt was made on August 15, 1801, and is the subject of _A New Song composed by the wounded Tars_ (p. 297). It was evidently meant to appeal to the charitable, and the lines: ‘All you that relieve us the Lord will you bless For relieving poor sailors in times of distress’ are a too familiar ballad formula. There are many other ballads of the period ending with similar appeals. Two examples will suffice: ‘A splinter knocked my nose off, “My bowsprit’s gone!” I cries, “Yet well it kept their blows off, thank God ’twas not my eyes.” Scarce with these words I’d outed, glad for my eyes and limbs, A splinter burst and douted both my two precious glims. I’m blind and I’m a cripple, yet cheerful would I sing Were my disasters triple, ’cause why? ’twas for my king.’ (_The Blind Sailor._)