MR. FURNIVALL ON HISTORIC BALLADS.*

THESE ballads, as they are called for want of a better name, belong seemingly to periods when decency, spelling, and scansion

were uninvented or unintroduced, and form a series of the most trashy rigmaroles that have ever occupied a skilful, painstaking, and serious editor. Perhaps even Mr. Furnivall has felt tired of them occasionally, especially of one that extends to 2,570 lines ; but the grand aim in which he perseveres is to make them serviceable for realising the condition of England

in past times. He refreshes himself only by short excursions— here a freakish attack on the Saturday Review and its late editor,

there an explosion of Dutch-English, like the heading " Fore-

words," there an unprovoked quotation of " Chaucer's worst ribaldry," or " beastly Skelton ; " and so he returns patiently to water his tender plants of historic theory with these streams of rhyme, which never sprang from the hoof of Pegasus. Into the old sins of the monks and clergy he has entered—not here slighting

Mr. Froude's alliance—to an extent that we care not to examine.

"The world knows as much of such matters as can be wholesome to it ; and for a fuller apprehension of them we should scarcely trust the voluble ribaldry of the " Ymage of Ypocresie." But on the economical condition of England the ballad " Nowadayes " seems a comparatively sober and serious utterance of wide-spread popular grievances, and our editor has found weighty and inter- esting documents to confirm its evidence. Herewith he trusts " to correct most usefully Mr. Froude's glowing picture, in his History, of the state of England in Henry VIII.'s early time," and it is against this author that he has entered into his most determined controversy. Here he commences with a choice

extract from the Utopia of Sir T. More, who speaks of the dread.. ful frequency of executions for robbery as being inefficacious, because multitudes of men were in the meantime utterly deprived of the means of earning their livelihood. Their distresses are referred

in great part to the progress of sheep-breeding and the multiplica- tion of inelosures, the very things which are now said to have depopulated the Highlands of Scotland. In 1519, the year after this

waspubliehed, a somewhat violent Act was passed for the restoration of .tillage lands that had been turned to pasture, and the re- edifying of decayed towns. Other statutes to a similar effect appear after eighteen years, and complaints about inclosures and sheep-breeding continue to be heard at intervals till the reign of

the last Stuart ends. These are mingled, of course, with manifold animadversions on the apathy and luxury of the gentry, and with hints of reforming schemes, which the editor is not disinclined to approve, but which seem to us too deficient in Malthusiau elements. As to one of Mr. Fronde's most important documents,

a State paper of 1515, which asks the question, " What comyn folke in all this world may compare with the comyns of England in riches, in fredom, in lyberty, welfare, and in all prosperity ?" it is found necessary to observe that the author of it is comparing England with Ireland, and most concerned with the latter country. Mr. Furnivall has also discussed the prices of this period, and come to different conclusions from the historian of the Tudors.

After a number of Protestant invectives, we have a specimen of the opposite party's views in the "Blaspheming English Lutherans," on which the editor, though little relishing it, has commented with impartial diligence ; witness the following passage, which may occasion some surprise on account of its describing the partisans of Luther as railing at church music :—

"Deuyne servyce with armonye Of songs and other melodye-

Howlyng thei ytt call, Bearebaytyng and busseyng, Fozhalowyng and husseyng- Thus rayle thei at you all."

Here, by the way, halowyng must mean hallooing, and husseyng, we suppose, huzzaing, though the words quoted in a note from Wedgwood are more out of the way, and busseyng is not explained

satisfactorily. But as for the irreverent application of the word howlyng," it has been fairly found due to the authority of the great Reformer, through the following passage in his "Table-Talk :"

"Prayer in Popedom is mere tongue-threshing ; not prayer, but a work of obedience. Thence a confused sea of Hors Canonicce,

• Ballads from Manuscripts: Vol. 1 Ballads on the Condition of England in Henry 1711.1.'s and Edward VI.'s Reigns, on Wolsey, Anne Boleyn, ,tc. Edited by Frederick J. Furnivall, M.A. London: Taylor and Co. 1866-72. the howling and babbling in cells and monasteries, where they read and sing the Psalms and Collects without any spiritual devo- tion, understanding neither the words, sentences, nor meaning. 'It is quite true.' adds the editor, 'that Luther loved music, and has a fine passage about it ; but then doubtless it was Protestant music, hymns in

the mother-tongue, sung by a whole congregation Popish music was "howling," as Popish prayer was tongue-threshing "; and so some of it was, no doubt. God forbid we should think all of it was.'" In the " Exhortation" addressed to the rebels of the Northern counties in 1536, Thomas Cromwell is a special object of attack, and the line stating, " The arte of a Shermane [cloth-shearer], it was hys begynnyug," is used to confirm a tradition to which Mr. Fronde has been somewhat censured for adhering. Among the other poems, one prompted by the sweating sickness, and trans- lated from the Latin of Dr. Haddon, is not devoid of eloquence, and the treatment which was most successful against this disease appears to have been so simple, that the description may perhaps still merit the attention of our medical men. We have poems aldressel to Wolsey, both satirical and syco- phantic, which have brought to remembrance curious particulars about the pomp with which he surrounded himself ; and we have various Latin and English verses which were recited at the coronation of Anne Boleyn, into whose history Mr. Furnivall enters with keen interest. Wynkyn do Worde's " Treatise of this Galauut " is a well-meant satire on contemporary dandyism, but a very hugger-mugger composition. There is some shrewdness and spirit in the " Warning to Queen Mary, 1553," as may appear by the stanzas :- "What great presumpsion doth apere Thus in a weeke or twayne

To worke mere shame then in vij yens Can be redressyd agayne.

"All is donne without a laws, For wyll it workethe in place,

And thus all men mays see and knowe The wyckednes of yowr case.

" That myserable maskyng masse, Which all good men doth hatte, Is now by yow brought in agayn, The sotto of all debate.

"And yet yow woldo seme mersyfnll In the mydes of yowr torrany, And hollie where, as yow mayntayne, Most vylle idollatryo."

We have no intention to disparage Mr. Furnivall's verbal annota- tions by the one or two we have ventured to add ; the former are always diligently supplied, but the stuff written by such doggrelists and their copyists must largely outrun the interpretations of the learned. Taking the volume as a whole, we think Mr. Furni- vall may look back on his share in its compilation with real satisfaction. But we cannot help marvelling how a Ballad Society has been led to expend its funds on the printing of such matter. Was it never formed of men anxious to pick up pretty poems hitherto unnoticed ? and if it was, how have the members endured to read that no "high imagination, deep pathos, or sweet fancy " is likely to be yet discovered in any manuscripts that have not been printed and reprinted ? Or has the intelligence produced an appalling effect on their minds, and exasperated the most delicate readers into polemicians, or petrified the most refined into political economists ?