Ballad of "The Wars in France" (No. 20. p. 318.).—Your correspondent "NEMO" will find two versions of the ballad commencing,
"As our king lay musing on his bed,"
in appendices 20 and 21 to Sir Harris Nicolas's History of the Battle of Agincourt, 2nd edit. They are not, I believe, in the first edition. I have a copy of the ballad myself, which I took down a few years ago, together with the quaint air to which it is sung, from the lips of an old miner in Derbyshire. My copy does not differ very much from the first of those given by Sir H. Nicolas.
C.W.G.
["J.W." (Norwich), and "A.R." (Kenilworth), have each kindly sent us a copy of the ballad. "F.M." informs us that it exists as a broadside, printed and sold in Aldermary Church-yard, Bow Lane, London, under the title of "King Henry V., his Conquest of France, in Revenge for the Affront offered him by the French King, in sending him (instead of the tribute due) a ton of tennis balls." And, lastly, the "Rev. J.R. WREFORD" has called our attention to the fact that it is printed in the collection of Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England, edited by Mr. Dixon for the Percy Society in 1846.
Mr. Dixon's version was taken down from the singing of an eccentric character, known as the "Skipton Minstrel," and who used to sing it to the tune of "The Bold Pedlar and Robin Hood.">[
Monody on the Death of Sir John Moore (No. 20. p. 320.).—This Query has brought us a number of communications from "A.G.," "J.R.W.," "G.W.B.," "R.S.," and "The Rev. L. COOPER," who writes as follows:—
"The undoubted author is the late Rev. Charles Wolfe, a young Irishman, curate of Donoughmore, diocese of Armagh, who died 1823, in the 32nd year of his age. His Life and Remains were edited by the Archdeacon of Clogher; and a fifth edition of the vol., which is an 8vo., was published in 1832 by Hamilton, Adams, and Co., Paternoster Row. At the 25th page of the Memoir there is the narration of an interesting discussion between Lord Byron, Shelley, and others, as to the most perfect ode that had ever been produced. Shelley contended for Coleridge's on Switzerland; others named Campbell's Hohenlinden and Lord Byron's Invocation in Manfred. But Lord Byron left the dinner-table before the cloth was removed, and returned with a magazine, from which he read this monody, which just then appeared anonymously. After he had read it, he repeated the third stanza, and pronounced it perfect, and especially the lines:—
"'But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.'
"'I should have taken the whole,' said Shelley, 'for a rough sketch of Campbell's.'
"'No,' replied Lord Byron, 'Campbell would have claimed it, had it been his.'
"The Memoir contains the fullest details on the subject of the authorship, Mr. Wolfe's claim to which was also fully established by the Rev. Dr. Miller, late Fellow of Trinity, Dublin, and author of Lectures on the Philosophy of Modern History."
[With regard to the French translation, professing to be a monody on Lally Tollendal, and to be found in the Appendix to his Memoirs, it was only a clever hoax from the ready pen of Father Prout, and first appears in Bentley's Miscellany. No greater proof of the inconvenience of facetiæ of this peculiar nature can be required than the circumstance, that the fiction, after a time, gets mistaken for a fact: and, as we learn in the present case, the translation has been quoted in a French newspaper as if it was really what it pretends to be.]