(or Coddington,) which perhaps is still traditionally known
to the young gentlemen at Harvard. It is marked by a bold and ingenious
metrical novelty.

"Captain Cottington he went to sea,
Captain Cottington he went to sea,
Captain Cottington he went to sea-e-e,
Captain Cottington he went to sea."

The third verse of the next stanza announces that he didn't go to sea in a
schoo-oo-ooner,--of the next that he went to sea in a bri-i-ig,--and so
on. We learn that he got wrecked on the "Ba-ha-ha-hamys," that he swam
ashore with the papers in his hat, and, I believe, entered his protest at
the nearest "Counsel's" (_Anglice_. Consul's) dwelling.

For the amateur of genuine ballad verse, here is a field quite as fertile
as that which was reaped by Scott and Ritson amid the border peels and
farmhouses of Liddesdale. It is not unlikely that some treasures may thus
be brought to light. The genuine expression of popular feeling is always
forcible, not seldom poetic. And at any rate, these wild bits of verse are
redolent of the freshness of the sea-breeze, the damps of the clinging
fog, the strange odors of the caboose-cookery, of the curing of cod, and
of many another "ancient and fish-like smell." Who will tell us of these
songs, not indeed of the deep sea, but of soundings? What were the stanzas
which Luckie Mucklebackit sang along the Portanferry Sands? What is the
dredging-song which the oyster "come of a gentle kind" is said to love?

These random thoughts may serve to indicate to the true seeker new and
unworked mines of rhythmic ore. We are crying continually, that we have no
national literature, that we are a nation of imitators and plagiarists.
Why will not some one take the trouble to learn what we have? This does
not mean that amateurs should endeavor to write such ballad fragments and
popular songs,--because that cannot be done; such things grow,--they are
not made. If the sea wants songs, it will have them. It is only suggested
here that we look about us and ascertain of what lyric blessings we may
now be the unconscious possessors. Can it be that oars have risen and
fallen, sails flapped, waves broken in thunder upon our shores in vain?
that no whistle of the winds, or moan of the storm-foreboding seas has
waked a responsive chord in the heart of pilot or fisherman? If we are so
poor, let us know our poverty.

And now to bring these desultory remarks to a practical conclusion. I have
written these seemingl