St. James, or Saint Jago, is the Patron Saint of Spain. The shrine at Compostella, on the site of which the Apostle’s body was miraculously discovered in 800, became famous throughout Europe, and was for many ages the peculiar object of the liberality of the rich, and of the pilgrimages of the poor of all nations. In the year 1434, no less than 2460 English had license from the King to proceed thither, with considerable sums of money, as well for offerings as for their necessary expenses.
When Almanzor, the Moorish King of Seville, ravaged Gallicia, the divine interposition preserved, by a miraculous storm of lightning, the temple of Compostella from plunder and profanation. Is it too much to hope that the vengeance of Heaven may yet, in our days, visit invaders more rapacious, more cruel, more impious, than the Moors!
St. III. l. 20.—Thrice come they on.
I have taken the liberty of representing the three attacks on General Hill’s position to have been all made about midnight, and in immediate succession, though, in fact, the first occurred late in the evening, the second only at midnight, and the third about day-break on the 28th.
St. IV. l. 2.—Promiscuous death.
It is certain that in the confusion of the night-fight, much loss was occasioned on both parts, by mistaking friends for foes.
St. IV. l. 9.—The Bard’s enthusiast lay.
—— sed omnes illacrimabiles
Urguentur ignotique longâ
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.
Hor. Od. 9, lib. 4.
St. IV. l. 12.—Oh for a blaze.
A young and accomplished lady has discovered, as she fancies, a resemblance between the description of this night-fight, and that of the encounter of Tancred and Clorinda in the Gierusalemme Liberata. I am very far from agreeing with my fair critic in this notion, and any of my readers, who shall turn to the fifty-fourth and subsequent stanzas of the twelfth canto of the Jerusalem, will have the satisfaction, (not, I think, of detecting me in a presumptuous and unacknowledged imitation of Tasso,) but of reading one of the most striking passages of that splendid poem.