Page:Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript. Ballads and Romances.djvu/35

 been left undone, the ridding ourselves of a well-deserved reproach. It is something to have helped to secure the MS. for the nation, something that ballads like The Child of Elle, Sir Caivline, Sir Andrew Bartton (iii. 403), Old Robin of Portingale (i. 235), can be read without Percy's tawdry touches, something that "Robin Hood and Handle Erle of Chestre" get fresh clearness to our view, that a new Sir Lionell (i. 74) lives for us, and Balowe (iii. 518) is restored to its English home.

It is more that we have now for the first time Eger & Grime in its earlier state, Sir Lambewell (i. 142) besides, the Cavilere's praise of his hawking (iii. 369), the complete version of Scottish Feilde (i. 199), and Kinge Arthur's Death (i. 487), the fullest of Flodden Feilde (i. 313), and the verse Merline (i. 417), the Earle of Westmorlande (i. 292), Bosworth Feilde (iii. 233), the curious poem of John de Reeve (ii. 550), and the fine alliterative one of Death and Liffe (iii. 56), with its gracious picture of Lady dame Life, awakening life and love in grass and tree, in bird and man, as she speeds to her conquest over Death.

Real gains to our literature are among these. Let any one contrast the contents of this Percy MS. with those of the other great Ballad-Book of our day, the volume of purloined Helmingham ballads, selected by Mr. Daniel, and bought (and rightly and generously printed) by Mr. Huth, but not containing even one third-rate work, and he will then have a better notion of the value he should put on the pieces that are good in our book. Some are for all time ; others witness only that the neglect they have met with is more or less deserved. Yet of them even may be repeated what has been said elsewhere of one of the romances or novels of our ancestors "made, al trew louers for to glade"... Though, we may often be tempted to smile at the plots and incidents of the books of its class, we must yet remember that those who once delighted in them were men