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
From _Snarleyow, or the Dog Fiend_ (1837). Compare Nelson to
Collingwood: '_Victory_, 25th June, 1805,--May God bless you
and send you alongside the _Santissima Trinidad_.'
LXXXI, LXXXII
The story of Casabianca is, I believe, untrue; but the intention
of the singer, alike in this number and in the next, is excellent.
Each indeed is, in its way, a classic. The _Mayflower_ sailed
from Southampton in 1626.
LXXXIII
This magnificent sonnet, _On First Reading Chapman's Homer_,
was printed in 1817. The 'Cortez' of the eleventh verse is a
mistake; the discoverer of the Pacific being Nunez de Balboa.
LXXXIV-LXXXVII
The _Lays_ are dated 1824; they have passed through edition
after edition; and if Matthew Arnold disliked and contemned them
(see Sir F.
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