Page:Political ballads of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (IA politicalballads01wilk).pdf/13

 definitely ettled. There is a chim among critics on its nature and character. It is a compound of delicate eences and incommunicable graces which bids defiance to definition. But we know that popular ongs mut be the energetic and faithful trancripts of general experience and feelings. Their neceary characteritics are fancy, paion, dramatic effect, rapidity, and pathos. They are not transferable; the popular atire and humour of one country cannot be adequately relihed by another; nor, in the fame country, are uch productions o influential on public opinion in ubequent periods of its hitory, as when they firt appeared. Time blunts the intrument, and deadens the national perceptions of the witty and ridiculous.”

The real value and importance of uch ephemeral productions may be bet dicerned in the volumes of the late Lord Macaulay, the only native hitorian who has thought them worthy of his particular tudy and ue. It is no diparagement to the literary fame of that ditinguihed writer, to affirm that they have imparted to his pages a vitality which the profoundet knowledge of the principles of human action, combined with the greatet erudi-