Memoir of John Howe Peyton Part 29

An angel's heart, an angel's mouth, (_Not Homer's_) could alone for me Hymn forth the great Confederate South; Virginia first--then Lee.

Permit me to say that you are in error in attributing these lines to the late Earl of Derby. Lord Derby was an eminent statesman, as well as distinguished scholar, and during the whole period of the civil war in our country was the leader of the opposition, or Tory party in the British Parliament. Never during this time did he criticise adversely the policy of Lord Palmerston in refusing recognition to the Confederate government. So far from it, he distinctly and repeatedly announced his concurrence in the course of the British cabinet. Had he been at the head of her majesty's government at that period I am satisfied that he would have adhered strictly to the policy of Palmerston and Gladstone in this particular. This was his firm position, though urged to use his influence to secure Confederate recognition by many influential gentlemen of the Tory party, among them Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, the present governor of Bombay; Mr. Beresford Hope, M. P.; Mr. Gregory, M.

P. for Galway, and others not so well known in this country.

Such was Lord Derby's anxiety to relieve the distress arising from the cotton famine in Lancas.h.i.+re, lest it might lead to popular agitation in favor of a recognition of the Southern States, that he made a single subscription to the relief fund of 5,000. Not only in this case, but in many others throughout the war, he showed himself anything else than what was styled in those days in England "a friend and sympathizer with the South."

It is not at all likely, then, that his lords.h.i.+p would, whatever his admiration of the character and military genius of General Lee, have addressed him the foregoing lines, nor is it true. The lines were written by a young and gifted English poet, now no more, _Philip Stanhope Worsely_. Mr. W. was a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and died about ten years since. He gave the world in 1861 a translation of the Odyssey in the Gregorian stanza--one of the most pleasing hitherto produced--and in 1865 published a translation of the Iliad in the Spenserian stanza. A copy of this latter work he sent to General Lee, with a little poem of presentation written on the fly-leaf.

It was seen by the General's friends, who requested a transcript of the verses for publication, but he would never permit them to be printed, his native modesty shrinking from the warm panegyric they embodied. Now that both poet and soldier have pa.s.sed away there is no good reason why they should be withheld from the public eye, and I must express my gratification at seeing them in _The Gazette_. At the same time it is due to the memories of both that the error into which you have unconsciously fallen should be corrected, and this is the sole motive with which I have addressed you this brief and hasty note.

J. LEWIS PEYTON.