If enemies oppose us
   When England is at war
With any foreign nation,
   We'll fear not wound or scar;
Our roaring guns shall teach them
   Our valour for to know,
Whilst they reel on the keel
   And the stormy winds do blow.

Nearly a century and a half after its first
inception, this famous song became the
model of one still more famous by Thomas
Campbell, perhaps the most magnificent
lyric in the English or any other language,
Ye Mariners of England—a poem sufficient
to build up an enduring reputation for its
author, even if he had not written another
equally noble, The Battle of the Baltic, to
say nothing of such classical poems as
The Pleasures of Hope, and Gertrude of
Wyoming. At all events, we are not
indebted for this song to Mr.Hoare, an Irishman,
but to a Scotsman with an English
pen, and a true British heart. In this
immortal composition every word is effective,
every idea is grand, every sentiment
is patriotic, and the whole rings and swells
with such inherent and sonorous music, as
to scarcely need the aid of the musical
composer. What martial ardour it has
inspired, and what sea-battles it has helped
our sailors to win against odds, will never
be known. It was first published, seventy-
one years ago, in the Morning Chronicle,
and has certainly been worth, at a moderate
computation, if such moral values can
be computed, the strength of a thousand
men per annum to the fighting force of the
British navy.

After Martyn Parker's renowned lyric, the
next sea song, in point of date, that became
popular, was Lord Buckhurst's (afterwards
the Earl of Dorset) To All You
Ladies now on Land, We Men at Sea Indite.
Lord Buckhurst was a volunteer in the
Dutch war of 1665, and served with
Admiral the Duke of York, afterwards James
the Second, in the battle of June the 3rd,
off Harwich, when the Dutch were
defeated with the loss of eighteen ships
captured, and fourteen destroyed. The song
was written before the battle, and is a
weak and spiritless effusion, with a silly,
though then fashionable chorus of "Fal-
lal-la." Had it been written after, and in
celebration of the battle, it might have
worn a more heroic complexion, and been
longer and more honourably remembered.
The next in order was an infinitely better
song in celebration of the great battles
under Admiral Russell, in May, 1692, when,
after a fight that lasted off and on for five
days, he utterly routed, and all but
destroyed the French fleet off Cape La Hogue,
and inflicted the most serious blow on the
power of France that had been known
since Cressy and Agincourt. The song
appears in the song-books of the period
under the title of Thursday in the Morn,
and bears its own chronology in the first
stanza:

Thursday in the morn, the nineteenth of May,
    Recorded be for ever the famous 'ninety-two,
Brave Russell did discern by break of day
   The lofty sails of France, advancing to.
   "All hands aloft!" they cry;
      "Let English courage shine,
     Let fly a culverine,
     The signal of the line,
Let ev'ry man supply his gun.
     Follow me,
     You shall see
That the battle it will soon be won."

The poet who wrote this song was no
mellifluous, mincing, mealy-mouthed
minstrel, but one who spoke the words that .
came uppermost; those words the strongest
and the best he could have used, considering
that rough sailors and an unlettered
populace were to sing his song. It speedily
became a favourite, in consequence of its
simplicity and directness, of the admirable
old tune to which it was sung, and of its
adaptation to the patriotic passion and
excitement of the moment. A vivid account
of this battle, and of those minor struggles
which succeeded it, appears in Lord
Macaulay's History of England.

The next great sea song, to this day a
popular favourite, after the lapse of more
than a century and a half, was Black-eyed
Susan, by John Gay. This was a song of
love and not of war. It took captive the
hearts of all the sailors and young ladies of
the time, and has been familiarised in our
day and endowed with a new lease of life by
Douglas Jerrold's comedy, with the same
title, and by the remembrance of the
acting of Mr.T.P.Cooke in the character
of William. Few songs in any language
have had such a "run." It has had the
merit of being as agreeable in the drawing-
room among the ladies as among the
rough-handed, but tender-hearted, sailors
of the forecastle. About the same period
several genuine forecastle songs, inspired
by the gallantry and fate of Admiral
Benbow, came into vogue. These songs
were not intended to be fashionable, but
they took possession of the minds of the
men, and of the officers too sometimes, in
those days, when English officers and
gentlemen did not think it beneath their
dignity to sing at the mess-table after the
removal of the cloth. One of them began: