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At length came the day when our lease did expire, And fam would I live where before lived my sire ; But, ah ' well-a-day, I was forced to retire, Erin, ma voureen ! slan leat go bragh!"
Compare this sorry stuff with Campbell's touch-ing poem, addressed to Anthony McCann, exiled for being implicated in the Irish rebellion of 1798. Campbell met him when staying in Hamburg:
" There came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin,
The dew on his thin robes was heavy and chill; For his country he sighed, when at twilight repairing
To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill. But the day-star atti acted his eyes' sad devotion, For it rose o' er his own native isle of the ocean, Where once, in the fire of his youthful emotion, He sang the bold anthem of Erin-go-bragh !"
All the same, it would not be fair to say that Reynolds did not write the " Exile of Erin" because he could not, because as a matter of fact he wrote many very tolerable though not super-excellent lyrics.
At one time, after the death of Reynolds, and while Campbell was still living, his friend Her-cules Ellis took up the cudgels, and did his utmost to prove that the Scotch poet had plagiarized, or rather stolen, the Irishman's work. Ellis himself was a voluminous rhymer
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