m I.

"But trust me, Percy, pity it were
And great offence to kill
Any of these our harmless men,
For they have done no ill.

"Let thou and I the battle try,
And set our men aside."
"Accurst be he," Lord Percy said,
"By whom this is deny'd."

When these brave men had distinguished themselves in the battle and in
single combat with each other, in the midst of a generous parley, full of
heroic sentiments, the Scotch earl falls, and with his dying words
encourages his men to revenge his death, representing to them, as the
most bitter circumstance of it, that his rival saw him fall:

With that there came an arrow keen
Out of an English bow,
Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart
A deep and deadly blow.

Who never spoke more words than these,
"Fight on, my merry men all,
For why, my life is at an end,
Lord Percy sees my fall."

Merry men, in the language of those times, is no more than a cheerful
word for companions and fellow-soldiers. A passage in the eleventh book
of Virgil's "AEneid" is very much to be admired, where Camilla, in her
last agonies, instead of weeping over the wound she had received, as one
might have expected from a warrior of her sex, considers only, like the
hero of whom we are now speaking, how the battle should be continued
after her death:

_Tum sic exspirans_, &c.

VIRG., _AEn._ xi. 820.

A gath'ring mist o'erclouds her cheerful eyes;
And from her cheeks the rosy colour flies,
Then turns to her, whom of her female train
She trusted most, and thus she speaks with pain:
"Acca, 'tis past! he swims before my sight,
Inexorable Death, and claims his right.
Bear my last words to Turnus; fly with speed
And bid him timely to my charge succeed;
Repel the Trojans, and the town relieve:
Farewell."

DRYDEN.

Turnus did not die in so heroic a manner, though our poet seems to have
had his eye upon Turnus's speech in the last verse:

Lord Percy sees my fall.

--_Vicisti_, _et victum tendere palmas_
_Ausonii videre_.

VIRG., _AEn._ xii. 936.

The Latin chiefs have seen me beg my life.

DRYDEN.

Earl Percy's lamentation over his enemy is generous, beautiful, and
passionate. I must only caution the reader not to let the simplicity of
the style, which one may well pardon in so old a poet, prejudice him
against the greatness of the thought:

Then leaving lif