finest lyrics. The heroism of that long tragedy in which the _Revenge_, Grenville, and his crew of one hundred and fifty men bore their unflinching part has been made the subject of accumulated legends. The entire hostile force of fifty-three ships and ten thousand men is said to have been employed, but the facts seem to be that a large number of the Spanish vessels were supply ships, and that of the twenty ships of war they had, some fifteen, with five thousand men, were engaged in battering the English ship. That is heroism sufficient, without needing exaggeration; one against fifteen, to return shot for shot in a fifteen hours’ battle. Tennyson, however, accepts the still more marvellous story: “He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight, And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight, With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather-bow. ‘Shall we fight, or shall we fly? Good Sir Richard, let us know; For to fight is but to die! There’ll be little of us left by the time this sun be set.’ And Sir Richard said again, ‘We be all good Englishmen; Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil, For I never turned my back on Don or devil yet.’ * * * * * “And the sun went down and the stars came out, far over the summer sea, But never for a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three. Ship after ship, the whole night long, those high-built galleons came, Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle, thunder, and flame; Ship after ship, the whole night long, then back with her dead and her shame, For some were sunk and many were shattered, and so could fight us no more-- God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?” The _Revenge_ yielded only when, of all her men, there were left only twenty alive, and most of them grievously wounded, the ship herself a wreck, and the ammunition expended. Such were the Elizabethans! “All the powder to the last barrell was now spent, all her pikes broken, the masts all beaten over board, all her tackle cut asunder, her upper worke altogether rased, and in effect euened shee was with the water, and but the verie foundacion or bottom of a ship, pierced with eight hundred shot of great artillerie.” Grenville, himself mortally wounded, would have sunk the poor remains of his ship: “Sink me the ship, Master Gunner--sink her, split her in twain, Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!”