rth Harry, our King,
That Lord Perse, Lyfftenant of Marches,
Lay slain Cheviot hills within.
'God have mercy on his soul!' said Kyng Harry,
'Good Lord, if thy will it be.
I have a hondrith Captains in Englonde
As good as ever was he;
But Perse, and I brook my lyffe
Thy death well quit shall be.'
This was the honting off the Cheviot
'That tear beganne this spurn:'
Old men that known the ground well enough
Call it the battle of Otterburn.
At Otterburn began this spurn
Upon a Monnynday;
There was the doughtie Douglas slain,
The Perse went captive away."

But of every species of poetry none are so rife with life and beauty as
the song. It conjoins music with words, and brevity with sweetness.
There is no position in which man does not sing,--in joy to express it,
and in woe to relieve it: in company in chorus, and alone for
companionship. Sir Walter Scott has imagined the minstrel to sing:--

"I have song of war for knight,
Lay of love for ladye bright,
Fairie tale to lull the heir,
Goblin grim the maid to scare.
If you pity kith or kin,
Take the wandering harper in."

But songs are like the flowers of the field: each age hath its own,
which fade and perish and make way for another crop, and every age
claims its own. For melody, terseness, and beauty of words, the song
excels more than any other form of poetry; and they are wise who have a
private collection of the songs which, like swallows, come and
disappear.

It may appear strange to print the Fables of Gay, and say no word of our
author; but the truth is that it is unkind to withdraw the veil of
privacy from any man's life. Doctor Johnson did an unkind deed when he
wrote the 'Lives of the Poets;' for which he was fully repaid when
Boswell flayed him bare as ever Apollo flayed Marsyas, and exposed all
the quivering nerves to the light of day. Of all classes of men, the
class of poets most need the concealing veil: the greatest have been
blind; the next greatest halt, and the remainder weak or deformed of
frame. Debarred the healthier paths of life, man rushes for employment
to the refuging muse; and rightly so, for he finds an employment
ornamental and useful still. But solitude does not nurture the virtues
of the soul more than physical defect does that of the body, and the
withdrawal of the curtain divulges a very sad sight of discontent and
envy.