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 texture was essential to the original form of every genuine Border ballad, and an examination of the MS. of the "Earl of Mar's Daughter" shows, by its innumerable alterations and reconsiderations of the text, that Swinburne laboured with the utmost courage and assiduity to recover the primitive diction and to remove what some one has called "the plague of marketable neatness" which disfigures the usual recast of a romantic ballad. Unfortunately, he did not in this case pursue his task to its conclusion.—E. G.]

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