fequently of exciting pleasure and furprize rather than the fympathetic emotions.

IT is obfervable that it is this clafs alone which anfwers the idea Mr. Phillips gives of fong-writing in his little effay; and hence he has been betrayed into a little inconfiftency; for while he compares fong-writing in general to the gay and amorous fpecies of antient Lyric poetry, he refers us to the French fongs as examples of perfection, which are almost solely of the witty and ingenious kind, and totally different from most of the remains of antiquity. In particular the little epigrammatic fong which he there cites and tranflates, is fo entirely diffimilar to the celebrated piece of Sappho which he has fo happily made his own, that it is wonder, ful the diftinction did not strike him.

I SHALL juft farther remark with regard

to

to the proposed arrangement of our collection, that when genius is left to itself without fixed laws to conduct it, each different fpecies of writing is fo apt by imperceptible gradations to flide into the next in kindred, that it is frequently impoffible for the critic to preferve his claffes pure and free from mixture, without a too fcrupulous rejection of pieces really beautiful though somewhat faulty in regularity. The reader will easily perceive, and I hope make proper allowances for several instances of equivocal arrangement, which from this cause I have not been able to avoid.

II.

ESSAY

O N

BALLADS

AND

PASTORAL SONGS.

HE ballad may be confidered as the

TH

native species of poetry of this country. It very exactly anfwers the idea formerly given of original poetry, being the rude uncultivated verfe in which the Dopular tale of the times was recorded.

As

As our ancestors partook of the fierce warlike character of the northern nations, the fubjects of their poetry would chiefly consist of the martial exploits of their heroes, and the military events of national history, deeply tinctured with that paffion for the marvellous, and that fuperftitious credulity, which always attend a state of ignorance and barbarifm. Many of the antient ballads have been tranfmitted to the prefent times, and in them the character of the nation displays itself in ftriking colours. The boastful hiftory of her victories, the prowess of her favourite kings and captains, and the wonderful adventures of the legendary faint and knight errant, are the topics of the rough rhyme and unadorned narration which was ever the delight of the vulgar, and is now an object of curiofity to the antiquarian and man of taste. As it is not my defign to collect pieces of this fort, which is already done in a very

elegant

elegant manner by Dr. Percy, in his Reliques of antient English poetry, I fhall proceed to confider the ballad more as an artificial than a natural fpecies of compofition.

WHEN language became refined, and poetical taste elevated, by an acquaintance with the Greek and Latin authors, the fubjects of the Epic Mufe were no longer dreft in the homely garb of the popular ballad, but affumed the borrowed ornament and stately air of heroic poetry; and every poetical attempt in the sublime and beautiful caft was an imitation of the claffic models. The native poetry of the country was referved merely for the humorous and burlesque; and the term ballad was brought by cuftom to fignify a comic story, told in low familiar language, and accompanied with a droll trivial tune. It was much used by the wits of the time

as