"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.

It was stated in an English paper, published in France some few years back, that Wolfe had taken the lines from a poem at the end of the Memoirs of Lally Tollendal, the French governor of Pondicherry, in 1756, and subsequently executed in 1766. In this paper the French poem was given, 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 appeared 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: as, in the present case, a statement having been made in the Morning Chronicle that Wolfe was the author of the poem. There shortly afterwards appeared the following letter in The Courier, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 1824.

ODE ON THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE.

To the Editor of the Courier:

SIR,-Permit me, through the medium of your highly respectable journal (which I have chosen as the channel of this communication, from my having been a subscriber to it for the last fifteen years), to observe, that the statement lately published in the Morning Chronicle, the writer of which ascribes the lines on the Burial of Sir John Moore to Woolf, is false, and as barefaced a fabrication as ever was foisted on the public. The lines in question were not written by Woolf, nor by Hailey, nor is Deacoll the author, but they were composed by me. I published them originally some years ago in the Durham County Advertiser, a journal in which I have at different times inserted several poetical trifles, as the "Prisoner's Prayer to Sleep," "Lines on the lamented Death of Benjamin Galley, Esq.," and some other little effusions.

I should not, sir, have thought the lines on Sir John Moore's funeral worth

owning, had not the false statement of the Chronicle met my eye. I can prove, by the most incontestable evidence, the truth of what I have asserted. The first copy of my lines was given by me to my friend and relation Captain Bell, and it is in his possession at present. It agrees perfectly with the copy now in circulation, with this exception, it does not contain the stanzas commencing with "Few and Short," which I added afterwards at the suggestion of the Rev. Dr. Alderson of Butterby.

I am, sir, yours, &c.,

South Street, Durham, Nov. 1, 1824.

H. MARSHALL, M. D.

This letter was a mere hoax, and was so shown to be two or three days after its publication, by an authenticated statement that "Dr. Marshall, of South street, Durham," was a horse-doctor of dissipated rather than literary habits, and not even a graduate of the Veterinary College. He had of course nothing to do with the letter. Benjamin Galley, who is termed esquire in the letter, was a poor Durham idiot; and by the Rev. Dr. Alderson, of Butterby, was meant Hutchinson Alderson, the bellman of Durham.

The paragraph in the Morning Chronicle, to which Dr. Marshall's letter refers, had been inserted by John Sidney Taylor, a bosom-friend of the Rev. Charles Wolfe, the author of the monody. Mr. Taylor replied to the Doctor's letter in an angry philippic; wherein, after allusions to Celsus and Galen, he informs the Doctor he is not ambitious of taking his medicine, and advises him, instead of claiming verses which do not belong to him, to content himself with writing verses on the tombstones of his patients. Mr. Taylor evidently thought he was dealing with the genuine letter of a real M. D., though he insinuates that he was a quack.

It will be seen by the Doctor's letter, that he not only claimed the authorship of the "Monody on the Death of Sir John Moore," but also of "The Prisoner's Prayer to Sleep." Professor Wilson, of Edinburgh, thereupon avowed himself the author of the

latter poem, and was probably as much deceived by the Doctor's letter as Mr. Taylor had been.

These particulars are derived from an amusing article entitled "The Wags of Durham," in Richardson's Borderer's Table Book, vii. 199-205; but in that article the Doctor's letter is stated to have appeared in the Courier, of December 30th, 1824. It is probable, however, that the date, November 3d, 1824, is

correct.

In and about 1824, many hoaxing letters (some displaying much humor), appeared. The late Dr. Chaffy, master of Sidney College, and Mr. Coulburn, were the subjects of some of these letters. One of the ablest was from Dr. Chaffey to The Times, followed by another declaring it to be a forgery which could hardly require denial, as "everybody must be aware that the Chaffys of Lincolnshire spell their name without the e.” Notwithstanding this exquisite piece of internal evidence, the second letter was as fictitious as the first.

Shortly after the publication of "Dr. Marshall's " letter, and its exposure, appeared a parody on the monody, which was ascribed to Praed and others until the Rev. Richard Harris Barham, the author of the Ingoldsby Legends, acknowledged them, in the first volume of that work, in the following manner :—

In the autumn of 1824, Captain Medwin having hinted that certain beautiful lines on the burial of this gallant officer might have been the production of Lord Byron's muse, the late Mr. Sidney Taylor, somewhat indignantly, claimed them for their rightful owner, the late Rev. Charles Wolfe. During the controversy a third claimant started up in the person of a soi-disant Doctor Marshall, who turned out to be a Durham blacksmith, and his pretensions a hoax. It was then that a certain Doctor Peppercorn put forth his pretensions to what he averred was the only "true and original" version, viz. :—

Not a sous had he got-not a guinea or note;
And he look'd most confoundedly flurried,
As he bolted away without paying his shot,
And the landlady after him hurried.

We saw him again at dead of night,

When home from the club returning;
We twigg'd the Doctor beneath the light

Of the gas-lamps brilliantly burning.

All bare and exposed to the midnight dews,
Reclin'd in the gutter we found him;
And he look'd like a gentleman taking a snooze,
With his Marshall cloak around him.

'The Doctor was drunk as the devil,' we said,

And we managed a shutter to borrow;

We rais'd him, and sigh'd at the thought that his head
Would consumedly ache on the morrow.

We bore him home, and we put him to bed,
And we told his wife and his daughter
To give him next morning a couple of red-
Herrings and soda-water.

Loudly they talk of his money that's gone,
And his lady began to upbraid him;
But little he reck'd, so they let him snore on,
'Neath the counterpane just as we laid him.

We tuck'd him in, and had hardly done,
When under the window calling,
We heard the rough voice of a son of a gun
Of a watchman 'one o'clock' bawling.

Slowly and sadly we all walked down

From his room in the uppermost story;

A rush-light we placed on the cold hearth-stone,

And we left him alone in his glory.

"Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores."-Virgil.

"I wrote the lines-M- --1 owned them-he told stories!"--Thomas Ingoldsby.

The clergyman who officiated on the occasion of Moore's burial was the Rev. H. J. Symons, at present vicar of St. Martin's, Hereford, who gives the following account of the ceremony in answer to some inquiries :

I am the clergyman alluded to, who officiated on that memorable occasion. I was chaplain to the brigade of Guards attached to the army under the command of the late Sir John Moore, and it fell to my lot to attend him in his last moments. During the battle he was conveyed from the field by a sergeant of the 42d, and some soldiers of that regiment and of the Guards, and I

followed them into the quarters of the general, on the quay at Corunna, where he was laid on a mattress on the floor; and I remained with him till his death, when I was kneeling by his side. After which, it was the subject of deliberation whether his corpse should be conveyed to England, or be buried on the spot; which was not determined before I left the general's quarters. I determined, therefore, not to embark with the troops, but remained on shore till the morning, when, on going to his quarters, I found that his body had been removed during the night to the quarters of Col. Graham, in the citadel, by the officers of his staff, from whence it was borne by them, assisted by myself, to the grave which had been prepared for it, on one of the bastions of the citadel. It now being daylight, the enemy discovered that the troops had been withdrawn and embarked during the night. A fire was opened by them shortly after upon the ships which were still in the harbor. The funeral service was therefore performed without delay, as we were exposed to the fire of the enemy's guns; and after having shed a tear over the remains of the departed general, whose body was wrapt

With his martial cloak around him,

there having been no means to provide a coffin, the earth closed upon him, and We left him alone in his glory!

A full and authenticated account of this interesting event will be found in The Narrative of the Campaign of the British army in Spain commanded by His Excellency Sir John Moore, K. B., &c., authenticated by Official Papers and Original Letters. By James Moore, Esq.

I trust that I have satisfactorily answered the inquiries of your correspondent, and shall be happy to reply to any farther inquiries which he may wish to make relating to that interesting event. H. J. SYMONS, Vicar of St. Martin's, Hereford.

Hereford, Sept., 1852.

SMOLLETT'S HUGH STRAP

The following is an extract from an old newspaper of April, 1809:

SMOLLETT'S CELEBRATED HUGH STRAP.

On Sunday was interred, in the burial-ground of St. Martin's-in-theFields, the remains of Hugh Hewson, who died at the age of eighty-five. The deceased was a man of no mean celebrity. He had passed more than forty years in the parish of St. Martin's, and kept a hair-dresser's shop, being no less a personage than the identical Hugh Strap, whom Dr. Smollett rendered so