Napoleon for his brother Joseph." The cover is ornamented not with a
diamond J, but with a map of the Peninsula. Inside is the portrait of a
lady. I do not doubt that this is the watch to which Sir Arthur Ellis
alluded.]

XXVIII

SONGS, PATRIOTIC AND NATIONAL

_"The Spectator," September 13, 1913_

All historians are agreed that contemporary ballads and broadsheets
constitute a priceless storehouse from which to draw a picture of the
society existing at the period whose history they seek to relate. Some
of those which have survived to become generally known to later ages
show such poverty of imagination and such total absence of literary
merit as to evoke the surprise of posterity at the ephemeral success
which they unquestionably achieved. An instance in point is the
celebrated poem "Lillibullero," or, as it is sometimes written, "Lilli
Burlero." Here is the final stanza of the pitiful doggerel with which
Wharton boasted that he had "sung a king out of three kingdoms":

There was an old prophecy found in a bog:
Ireland shall be ruled by an ass and a dog;
And now this prophecy is come to pass,
For Talbot's the dog, and James is the ass.
Lillibullero, Bullen-a-la.

Doggerel as this was, it survived the special occasion for which it was
written. When Queen Anne's reign was well advanced balladmongers were
singing:

So God bless the Queen and the House of Hanover,
And never may Pope or Pretender come over.
Lillibullero, Bullen-a-la.

If the song is still remembered by other than historical students, it is
probably more because Uncle Toby, when he was hard pressed in argument,
"had accustomed himself, in such attacks, to whistle Lillibullero," than
for any other reason.

But whether it be doggerel or dignified verse, popular poetry almost
invariably possesses one great merit. When we read the outpourings of
the seventeenth and eighteenth century poets to the innumerable Julias,
Sacharissas, and Celias whom they celebrated in verse, we cannot but
feel that we are often in contact with a display of spurious passion
which is the outcome of the head rather than of the heart. Thus Johnson
tells us that Prior's Chloe "was probably sometimes ideal, but the woman
with whom he cohabited was a despicable drab of the lowest species." The
case of popular and patriotic poetry is very different. It is wholly
devoid of affectation. Whatever be its literary merits or de