Page:Political ballads of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (IA politicalballads01wilk).pdf/11

 intereting in themelves, or that offer more valuable material to the hitorical inquirer, than thee ephemeral productions. Referring to an age les fatidious in its tates and expreions than our own, too many of them, it cannot be denied, are not only faulty in contruction, but alo objectionable in matter. Yet thee are not the only criteria by which they hould be judged. The ordinary rules of criticim, indeed, do not apply to them. They are the emphatic ongs of a liberty-loving people; they contain the out-pourings of unconquerable spirits, the unequivocal entiments of reolute men; in a word, they are the rude but mot expreive monuments of the great political truggles in which our jealous ancetors were engaged; and on that account they merit, if not our critical admiration, at all events deliverance from abolute oblivion. In the abence of thee artless effuions, our ocial hitory would be incomplete. They exhibit as well the manners as the feelings of pat generations. The tudent, by looking narrowly into them, may oftentimes be enabled to deduce mot important concluions repecting the origin and iue of former inurrections and factions; jut in the ame manner as the geologit, who, detecting on the urface of