28 NOVEMBER 1846, Page 17

SHELDON'S MINSTRELSY OF THE ENGLISH BORDER. Jr has been observed

that in the decline of art recourse is had to me- chanical means to supply a deficiency of genius and observation. In the darker ages, verses were written in various forms, which indicated pains at least, since it involved no little care to construct a poem like a pyramid or any other arbitrary shape. In our age, the author discards the mechanical trouble altogether, and calls in extraneous assistance. When this system first began, the resort was to pictures ; and the pur- chaser, if dissatisfied with the letterpress, might still get his money's worth out of the plates, as in the case of the early Annuals and some fictions. Paintings, however, any more than works of the belles lettres, cannot be had for asking fur, and the value of the plates has very much declined, if not their number. The printer and bookbinder have lately been called in, to throw the form of antiquity over modern antiques, or Orientalism over the Anglo-Asiatic or Anglo-Morisco style ; and the writer conceives he has infused an additional appropriateness into his subject when the printer has presented his lucubrations in imitative missal or black-letter types, and the binder has adorned the cover with "tooling," which if not always ancient is not modern.

As an elegant piece of furniture, this is well enough for books in con- stant public use, such as the Prayer-book, or editions designed for the drawingroom-table in works of established reputation. For the library, the desirableness of this artistico-mechanics may be doubted ; illustra- tion, not imitation, being the proper limit of bibliopolic art. In new books, it may generally be suspected that these extraneous effects are designed to cover literary deficiency, and to give to covert counterfeits, clever imitations, or respectable mediocrity, a distinction by gorgeous dress which a simpler garb would never have attained for them.

Such is the case with this Minstrelsy of the English Border. Pub- lished in a plain volume, it would have excited little attention for its intrinsic merits ; but its peculiar type, its old-fashioned paging, its head-lines and initial letters, all say, "Look at me," and challenge examination of the contents. These profess to be—first, genuine ballads of the Border, derived from the memory of the peasantry, from the "broadside," (ballads print- ed on one side of a sheet,) or from family repositories ; second, ballads taken from other collections, of questionable origin ; third, original ballads by Mr. Sheldon himself. And, if we rightly interpret the notes of Mr. Sheldon, and the internal evidence of the ballads, his own productions very greatly predominate. This, of course, militates against the value of the work. The imitative verses may not only be "founded on fact," but may accurately represent the tradition as it now stands ; names of places, old phraseology, and Border slang, may all be cleverly reproduced, with the Border feeling, or what the poems of Scott and Hogg induce us to take for such, though often with a pretty full infusion of modern poetical terms : but their value as ballads is nil. The subjects of ballad poetry are often offensive, the treatment coarse, the narrative tediously minute, and the morals of an unsophisticated if not of a very indifferent kind : but if the poem be authentic, and its age known, it has a value quite apart from its literary merit. Manners and opinions may be represented in its verses ; those of the people undoubtedly are; it preserves the belief of the age in the facts it records, and it furnishes materials for the history of the language and literature of the country. For all such purposes imitative ballads are obviously useless. Mr. Sheldon's own ballads, and those which have been composed by men writing long after the time in which the ballad professed to have appeared, have no value beyond the pleasure they impart to the reader. A trial or even a law-deed of a re- mote age has importance simply as a fact; its imitation has none what- ever. It is the simple difference between truth and falsehood. The more ancient ballads in this volume seem to us few in number ; and few as they are, they are generally imperfect, or have received various touches to qualify them for the perusal of this generation. In that interest which exists in the work as a fiction, apart from any evidence or illustration it furnishes, the volume is deficient. Ws may be attributed to the inherent feebleness of imitation in the case of the mo- dern ballads : after the investigations of Scott and others, the beat and

most striking Border poems have already appeared, and only leavings remain for present inquirers ; a fact which Mr. Sheldon affirms in one sentence of his preface and contradicts in the next. It may be, too, that some of the fashionable interest in ballad literature is declining,--as

Jeffrey, at an early period of Scott's tide of success, predicted it would,—

from the local narrowness and barbarous character of the events, the peculiarity of the manners, and the low criminality of many of the inci- dents. It must be borne in mind, too, that Scott's were not so much imitations of the ballads, as a species of tale whose subjects and style were derived from the ballads. The artist was at work, not the imitator.

The low morality, the offensive crime, the tedious narrative, were all avoided in Scott's own poems. Mr. Sheldon has stuck to the facts of tradition, and the treatment of his prototypes, as well as to their general style. Here is an example, from "Lord Hepburn," one of the " origi- nal " ballads. The subjects of the poem are an abduction, a rape, and the murder of the victim, when the ravisher, Bertram, is pursued by Lord Hepburn as a friend of the family, to whom the lady is promised by her father if he rescue her. We take the denouement.

"Bat never stayed Sir Bertram bold,

But nrg'd his failing beast, To win the shore, where his trim sea. boat Might bear him to the East.

"His poor lade stagger'd to and fro;

V., oh his knife he drew its blade,

And prick'd it on—black Ringan ran In courage unsubdued.

"Lord Hepburn he rode him fairly down, As his charger wat his feet, And with one thrust of his heavy spear He cast him out ours his seat.

"Sir Bertram struggled fearfully, But faint was his breath and limb; When his foeman stern his arms did bind, For the strength was gone from him.

"Lord Hepburn his eye tlash'd sparks of fire, But never a word be said; Grimly he look'd on his enemy, Then drew his battle blade.

"His face was as dark as the lift in Yule, And his stony brow he kept; Tho' after a time he bow'd his head, And syne a wee he wept "Then with a voice which trembled with A husky inward throe, Quo he, 'That hand of thine this morn Ilath struck a dastard's blow.

"'Did ever knight or warrior A woman slay in strife?

Wae worth the man who struck a maid

I meant to make my wife!

"But But like a grim wolf on a fauld My wee pet ravishing; And for that deed I mean to hack Thy right hand from its limb.'

"His trenchant weapon flash'd thro' air, And Bertram's right hand lopped off; He held it up intill his face, And madden'd him wr bitter scoff.

"A stone or a stake, and a gibbett I'll make For a caitiff vile as thou; Here shalt thou stand upon the sand Till the waters over thee flow.'

"He bound Sir Bertram 'till his spear, Then thrust it in the ground; The rising waves wi' snowy faem Stole silently around.

"Lord Hepburn mounted his black steed, And spurrit itfuhl wool; Around the spear Sir Bertram twin'd, Like an ether or an eel.

"The sea flowed to Sir Bertram's waist, And oh, he shriek'd an sore; And every wash of the poppling wave His gasping lip cam' o'er.

"Three times before the flood-tide's height, A shriek o' agony was heard, In Amble Grange, in Felton huts,

And the peasants o' Warkworth with fright were seaed.

• • • •

"The waves ebb'd past lone Coquet's Isle, The sun o'er Cheviot glory flung, When fasten'd to Lord Ilepburn's spear The body of Sir Bertram hung."