poem on the occasion his hero, representing Lancashire in dialect and common-sense, decides, in spite of patriotic taunts, to look after his own carcass and leave Highlanders and redcoats to fight it out. Byrom obviously approves. Nobody, as other poems prove, could be less given to the worship of Jingo. He tried vainly to save some young friends, less prudent than himself, convicted of joining the rebels—and, of course, wrote his petition in verse. He protested, too, in verse, and with equal want of success, against the denunciators of Admiral Byng. He died a few years later (1763). He was not buried as the law directed, in woollen. His executors had to pay £5 as a fine. As Byrom does not appear to have left any verses to justify the failure, we may perhaps assume that the omission was not due to any final whim of his own. He would hardly have missed such a chance for a poem. Few kindlier men have been buried either in woollen or linen.
