Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
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| Partner: | buecher.de |
| Hersteller: | Forgotten Books (Percy, Thomas) |
| Stand: | 2015-08-04 03:50:33 |
Produktbeschreibung
Excerpt from Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and Other Pieces English Minstrels ; and the artless productions of these old rhapsodists are occasionally confronted with specimen of the composition of contemporary poets of a higher class ; of those who had all the advantages of learning in the times in which they lived, and who wrote for fame and for posterity. Yet perhaps the palm will be frequently due to the old strolling Minstrels, who composed their rhymes to be sung to their harps, and who looked no farther than for present applause, and present subsistence. The reader will find this class of men occasionally described in the following volumes, and some particulars relating to their history in an Essay subjoined to this preface. It will be proper here to give a short account of the other collections that were consulted, and to make my acknowledgments to those gentlemen who were so kind as to impart extracts from them ; for, while this selection was making, a great number of ingenious friends took a share in the work and explored many large repositories in its favour. The first of these that deserved notice was the Pepysian library at Magdalen College, Cambridge. Its founder, Sam. Pepys, Esq., Secretary of the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., had made a large collection of ancient English ballads, near two thousand in number, which he has left pasted in five volumes in folio ; besides Garlands and other smaller miscellanies. This collection, he tells us, was "begun by Mr. Selden ; improved by the addition of many pieces elder thereto in time ; and the whole continued down to the year 1700 ; when the form peculiar till then thereto, viz. of the black letter with pictures, seems (for cheapness sake) wholly laid aside for that of the white letter without pictures." In the Ashmole Library at Oxford is a small collection of Ballads made by Anthony Wood in the year 1676, containing somewhat more than two hundred. Many ancient popular poems are also preserved in the Bodleyan Library. The archives of the Antiquarian Society at London contain a multitude of curious political poems in large folio volumes, digested under the several reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, Elizabeth, James I., &c. In the British Museum is preserved a large treasure of ancient English poems in MS., besides one folio volume of printed ballads. From all these some of the best pieces were selected ; and from many private collections, as well printed as manuscript, particularly from one large folio volume which was lent by a lady. Amid such a fund of materials, the Editor is afraid he has been sometimes led to make too great a parade of his authorities. The desire of being accurate has perhaps seduced him into too minute and trifling an exactness ; and in pursuit of information he may have been drawn into many a petty and frivolous research. It was however necessary to give some account of the old copies ; though often, for the sake of brevity, one or two of these only are mentioned, where yet assistance was received from several. Where anything was altered that deserved particular notice, the passage is generally distinguished by two inverted ´commas´. And the Editor has endeavoured to be as faithful as the imperfect state of his materials would admit. For these old popular rhymes being many of them copied only from illiterate transcripts, or the imperfect recitation of itinerant ballad-singers, have, as might be expected, been handed down to us with less care than any other writings in the world. And the old copies, whether Ms. or printed, were often so defective or corrupted, that a scrupulous adherence to their wretched readings would only have exhibited unintelligible nonsense, or such poor meag
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