toward the end of the sixteenth century. If Ritson really credited it, either as history or biography, a very great balladist was lost in him.

Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind

Believed the magic wonders which he sung."

That Robin Hood was an inhabitant of the world of fiction, and not of history, is now generally believed, and it is beginning to be believed that he was the popular survival of some mythological personage. The grounds of this last belief are his intimate connection with the May games of the English people, and the bestowment of his name upon flowers, wells, moors, hills, and other natural objects in different parts of England. It is not likely (it is argued) that all these names should have been given since his exploits became famous in balladry, and it is still less likely (it is argued) that so much time and money should have been spent in representing his feats unless he filled the place of some degraded deity. "The ballads themselves give us a picture of a brave, merry-hearted rascal, such as appears in the later stories of many a hero. Not till a tale is very old and world-worn does the chief character in a popular romance sink from the position of a universal conqueror to that of the defeated champion in a bout at quarter-staff. We know that the Charlemagne of the later romances is but a feeble or comic representative of the great emperor of the earlier stories, so, in all likelihood, the Robin Hood of our English ballads takes the place of some long-forgotten god."

The charm which attached to the old ballads as long as they continued to be composed and sung in the old way, departed from balladry when it was reduced to

writing, and made marketable in print. It ceased to deal with heroic or romantic themes, or dealt with them ignobly, and expended its feebleness upon trivial and contemporary events. To what depths it had descended in the days of Shakespeare we see in the fourth Act of the Winter's Tale, in the dialogue between Autolychus, Mopsa, Dorcas, and the Clown.

Clo. What hast here? ballads?

Mop. Pray now, buy some: I do love a ballad in print, a'-life; for then we are sure they are true.

Aut. Here's one to a very doleful tune, How a usurer's wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden; and how she longed to eat adders' heads and toads carbonadoed.

Mop. Is it true, think you?

Aut. Very true; and but a month old.

Dor. Bless me from marrying a usurer!

Aut. Here's the midwife's name to it, one mistress Taleporter: and five or six honest wives that were present. Why should I carry lies abroad?

Mop. Pray you now, buy it.

Clo. Come on, lay it by: And let's first see more ballads: we'll buy the other things anon.

Aut. Here's another ballad, Of a fish, that appeared upon the coast, on Wednesday the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathoms above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts of maids; it was thought she was a woman, and was turned into a cold fish, for she would not exchange flesh with one who loved her: The ballad is very pitiful, and as true. Dor. Is it true too, think you?

Aut. Five justices' hands at it; and witnesses, more than my pack will hold.

Clo. Lay it by too: Another.

Aut. This is a merry ballad, but a very pretty one.

Mop. Let's have some merry ones.

Aut. Why, this is a passing merry one; and goes to the tune of 'Two maids wooing a man: ' there is scarce a maid westward, but she sings it: 'tis in request, I can tell you.

Mop. We can both sing it: if thou'lt bear a part, thou shalt hear; tis in three parts.

Dor. We had the tune on't a month ago.

Aut. I can bear my part; you must know, 'tis my occupation; have at it with you.

English balladry was so abundant in the sixteenth century that four years before the birth of Shakespeare the entries at Stationers' Hall show an average of nearly twenty ballads to one book. "Most of these, however, were doubtless of that inferior London ballad literature written for the press, those broad sheets whereof the Roxburghe collection almost entirely consists, those Garlands and Penny Merriments so numerous in their day, a literature interesting in other ways, but not as poetry, saving some rare exceptions. Why comparatively so few of our finest ballads are found early in print may be accounted for thus, that the printing-press itself gave rise to this new school of balladmakers, whose really very inferior compositions had a novelty, and, in a low sense, completeness of form and style which brought them into favour, especially in the cities and the more polished and progressive parts of the country. Ballad making, through the dingiest kind of printing-offices, has been continued from that day to this, when it finds its issues in a Seven Dials Court, a Dublin Lane near Thomas Street, or some similar alley of Cork or Glasgow. Meanwhile the nobler or wild-flower sort of popular ballad still sprang up here and there till about the time, we should guess, of Pope and Swift; chiefly, if not exclusively, in the ruder Northern parts of the kingdom, which all along have been the most prolific in this kind, owing perhaps to the wild, moory, and mountainous scenery, the adventurous and martial habits, the old-world customs, and the close connection with ballad-loving Scandinavia."

The literature that has grown out of Old English Ballads in the collections which have been made of them during the last two and a quarter centuries, and the Introductions, Dissertations, and Notes which have illustrated these collections, is too extensive to be dwelt upon in a sketch like this. Of the bibliography of this literature, which will be found in the first volume of Childs's English and Scottish Ballads (1857), it is sufficient to say that it contains the names of one hundred and fifty different works, not including the thirty volumes of the publications of the Percy Society, of which the most important in the history of English Verse, in that they revealed a mine of forgotten poetic wealth to eighteenth century readers, and that they were a source of vital inspiration to young nineteenth century poets, were The Evergreen of Allan Ramsay and the famous Reliques of Bishop Percy. What the last was to Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, is known to all students of English Literature.

All that has been attempted in this volume is to indicate the wealth of English balladry, and the corresponding wealth of English romantic verse, the writers of which, if they had lived in the olden time, would no doubt have won distinction as balladists. If the effect of these compositions is what it should be, it will recall the happy verdict of old Izaak Walton:- 'They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good, I think much better than the strong lines that are now in fashion in this critical age."

THE CENTURY,

NEW YORK, October 22, 1883.

66

R. H. STODDARD.