dmiral Hosier's Ghost" was written by Richard Glover in 1740 to rouse
national feeling. Vice-Admiral Vernon with only six men-of-war had taken
the town of Portobello, and levelled its fortifications. The place has
so dangerous a climate that it is now almost deserted. Admiral Hosier
in 1726 had been, in the same port, with twenty ships, restrained from
attack, while he and his men were dying of fever. He was to blockade the
Spanish ports in the West Indies and capture any Spanish galleons that
came out. He left Porto Bello for Carthagena, where he cruised about
while his men were being swept away by disease. His ships were made
powerless through death of his best officers and men. He himself at last
died, it was said, of a broken heart. Dyer's ballad pointed the contrast
as a reproach to the Government for half-hearted support of the war,
and was meant for suggestion of the success that would reward vigorous
action.

"Jemmy Dawson" was a ballad written by William Shenstone on a young
officer of Manchester volunteers who was hanged, drawn, and quartered
in 1746 on Kennington Common for having served the Pretender. He was
engaged to a young lady, who came to the execution, and when it was over
fell back dead in her coach.

"William and Margaret," by David Mallet, published in 1727, is another
example of the tendency to the revival of the ballad in the eighteenth
century.

"Elfinland Wood," by the Scottish poet William Motherwell, who died in
1835, aged thirty-seven, is a modern imitation of the ancient Scottish
ballad. Mrs. Hemans, who wrote "Casabianca," died also in 1835. But the
last ballad in this bundle, Lady Anne Barnard's "Auld Robin Gray," was
written in 1771, and owes its place to a desire that this volume, which
begins with the best of the old ballads, should end with the best of the
new. Lady Anne, eldest daughter of the fifth Earl of Balcarres, married
Sir Andrew Barnard, librarian to George III., and survived her husband
eighteen years. While the authorship of the piece remained a secret
there were some who attributed it to Rizzio, the favourite of Mary Queen
of Scots. Lady Anne Barnard acknowledged the authorship to Walter Scott
in 1823, and told how she came to write it to an old air of which she
was passionately fond, "Bridegroom grat when the sun gaed down." When
she had heaped many troubles on her heroine, and called to a little
sister to suggest another, the suggestion came promptly, "Steal the cow,