Note 894 — BOOK III.
Reading edition
A late writer has started a notion that the more modern copy "was written to be sung by a party of English, headed by a Douglas in the year 1524; which is the true reason why, at the same time that it gives the advantage to the English soldiers above the Scotch, it gives yet so lovely and so manifestly superior a character to the Scotch commander above the English." See Say's Essay on the Numbers of Paradise Lost, 4to. 1745, p. 167.
This appears to me a groundless conjecture: the language seems too modern for the date above-mentioned; and, had it been printed even so early as Queen Elizabeth's reign, I think I should have met with some copy wherein the first line would have been,
"God prosper long our noble queen,"
as was the case with the Blind Beggar of Bednal Green; see vol. ii. book ii. No. x. ver. 23.