“On Linden when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.”
It has not much to do with the Danube, perhaps, but it may be pointed out here that Hohenlinden is about twenty miles as the crow flies from the nearest point on the Isar, and that the river nearest the battlefield is the Isen. Either Campbell misspelt the name of the river and was a little “out” in his geography, or else his printers made Isen into Iser—and since then the misprint has been generally adopted.
The poet’s sojourn in Bavaria in the year 1800, was indeed fruitful of several verses besides the famous “Hohenlinden,” which was written after his return to London, while three years earlier he had written “The Wounded Hussar” a piece of mechanical romanticism which was at one time widely popular—
“Alone to the banks of the dark rolling Danube
Fair Adelaide hied when the battle was o’er:
‘Oh, whither,’ she cried, ‘hast thou wandered, my lover?
Or here dost thou welter and bleed on the shore?’”