The king disclaims all desire to appropriate the article in question, which is destined to bring the tanner to grief, for as he mounts, marvelling much whether the stirrup be of gold or brass, the generous courser, admiring neither the hoofs nor the horns of the hide which the tanner has pitched upon his back, bolts with him, throws him, and he is glad to recover his mare by paying back the boot he has had with her. Then the king, Robin Hood like, blows a blast on his bugle; the courtiers come trooping up; the tanner, expecting a halter, gets an estate, and concludes the ballad by a promise to his Majesty that if ever he cometh to merry Tamworth neat's leather shall clout his shoon.

Another variety of the humorous ballad, of which "As it befell one Saturday" is a good example, is the Tom o' Bedlam ballad, formed by stringing together a medley of lines from different pieces, with no regard to anything but rhyme and metre. The effect somewhat resembles that of Pope's Song by a Person of Quality.

The most remarkable pieces which remain to be noticed belong in general to one of two classes, ballads founded on legends outside the cycles of chivalric romance, or ballads treating of events of the day. Both for the most part appear to belong to a later period than that at which we have arrived, and must be reserved for notice along with the poetry of the late sixteenth century. Among those which have the best claim to antiquity is the tragic history of Glasgerion, the Arion of Scottish legend, who

Could harp a fish out of saut water,

Or water out of a stane,

Or milk out of a maiden's breasts

That bairn had never nane.

Glasgerion has an amour with a lady of high degree; his page personates him; the lady discovers the deceit, and kills herself:

But home then went Glasgerion,

A woeful man was he :

Says, "Come hither, thou Jack, my boy,

Come thou hither to me.

"If I had killed a man to-night,

Jack, I would tell it thee:

But if I have not killed a man to-night,

Jack, thou hast killed three."

And he pulled out his bright brown sword,

And dried it on his sleeve,

And he smote off that lither1 lad's head,

And asked no man no leave.

He set the sword's point to his breast,

The pummel to a stone.

Through the falseness of that lither lad

Those three lives were all gone.

One famous ballad stands out prominently from the rest as being, so far as

1 Treacherous.

known, the invention of the anonymous writer. It is The Nut Brown Maid, probably written towards 1500, and so falling within our present scope. It was first printed in Antwerp in 1502. It is a rare instance of a ballad in dialogue, but more than this, an Amoebean idyll. A lover, whose state of mind nothing but its absolute necessity to the poem could induce us to tolerate, puts his sweetheart's affection to the proof by pretending to be an outlaw. Never were the tenderness and truth of womanhood more beautifully displayed than in her acceptance of the supposed situation, which is even carried so far that she does not shrink when informed that he has already a mistress, whose servant she will have to be. There can of course be only one issue from such a situation. The metre is as exceptional as the theme, and more musical and sonorous than that of any previous lyric in the language, and the pair of refrains running through the piece are managed with extreme skill. The following four stanzas are a fair specimen of the prolonged but never tedious dialogue.

HE.

I counsel you, remember how

It is no maiden's law

Nothing to doubt, but to run out

To wood with an outlaw.

For ye must there in your hand bear

A bow, ready to draw:

And as a thief, thus must you live

Ever in dread and awe.

Whereby to you great harm might grow:

Yet had I lever then

That I unto the green wood go

Alone, a banished man.

SHE.

I think not nay, but as ye say,

It is no maiden's lore;

But love may make me for your sake,

As I have said before,

To come on foot, to hunt and shoot,

To get us meat in store.

For so that I your company

May have, I ask no more:

From which to part, it makes my heart

As cold as any stone;

For in my mind, of all mankind,

I love but you alone.

HE.

For an outlaw this is the law

That men him take and bind
Without pity, hanged to be,

And waver with the wind.
If I had need (as God forbede!)
What rescue could ye find?
Forsooth I trow, you and your bow
For fear would draw behind;

(Topap at theferp for a man and his bagage.üÿj.mit? Item a hoes the man and his bagage.i.g).

Frem an emp hos onlpid,

B, the broker shal haueý.gs.

Biokers to paprot a cloth under p.

Estem for a doth aboue xl. 6.the broker hath üÿj g).
Etem C.ells Cotton doth papth (yke a docheuÿ.g}.xc.

Eit right or wrog.thefemē a mong.on womē docōplaiue Affermpng this.how that it is.alabour spent in vaine To loue the wele.forneuer a dele.thep loue a man agapne For lerea man do.what hecan.ther fouour to attapne Perpfanewe.to them pursue.therfucût trew louer than Jaboureth for nought and from her though, he is a bånniffhed má

Sapnotnay.bat that all dap.it is bothe wit and sapde That womans faych, is as who sapche.all utterly decapets But neitheles, right good wrtues,í this case might be lap Thatthep lone trewe.vcôtpnew.recoideý Kuibiwne maide Whiche from her loue, whâ her to proue.he cam to makehis mone Woldenol denarte, for in her herte.skeloupd buthipin allone

Gerwenethem too. wewpl allo.telle all chep pepne in fere, That she was in.now Jbegynne.loo thatpe me answere. W berfoie pe.chat present be. I prap pougeue an eare Fam the knpght. Fcum be upght.assecret as I can Sapugalas.thus londpth the cause. Jam a bannished man

Edyourwylle.for to fulfplle.in this wpl'not refuse Trufling to shewe.in wordis fewe.ý men haue an ille vse Tothcrownefhame wpmē.to blame. cauleles thê accuse. Therfore to pon. J answere now.alle wymen to ercule. pnownehert dere. w you what chiere. I prep pou telle a noon For in’up ipnde,of all mankynde J loue bur pon alion

i

Taedithlo. a dede is do.wherfore mocheharme hal gøms Mp deftenp.is for ro dep.a hamfuldethe trowe Diellis to Äee.the ton must bee.none other wep Ilinowe. Buttox drawe, as au outlaw.and take me co wybore

The Nut Brown Maid

From Richard Arnold's "Chronicle," circ. 1503

And no mervaile, for little availe

Were in your counsel then ;
Wherefore I'll to the green wood go
Alone, a banished man.

SHE.

Right well know ye that women be

But feeble for to fight;

No woman hede it is indede

To be as bold as Knight:

Yet in such fere if that you were
With enemies day and night,
I would withstand, with bow in hand,
To grieve them as I might,
And you to save, as women have,

From death men many a one;

For in my mind, of all mankind,

I love but you alone.

The Nut Brown Maid is indeed a pearl of song, and the same may be said of many other British ballads, especially those of Scotland, of which, in general, we shall have to speak later. Their greatest importance, however, does not consist in the merit of individual pieces, but in the revival of European poetry of which they were in such large measure the instruments. The popular poetry of Germany, Scandinavia, and Spain is not inferior to that of the British Isles, but the study of these came later, and the impulse to it proceeded from Britain. The Romantic School, in so far as popular poetry was an element in it, dates from the day when the future Irish Bishop picked the torn and dirty manuscript out of the bureau in the little Shropshire town.

CHAPTER X

THE AGE OF THE FIRST TUDORS

We have now arrived at the verge of an epochal period in English letters, when, no longer oscillating between contending forces as in the middle ages, or plunged into torpor when it ought to be going on to victory, literature presents itself as the expression of the thought and language of a united nation, and at the same time as a growing organism, continually developing new phases of activity, and augmenting simultaneously in depth and in breadth. The character of unity, indeed, had belonged to it for more than a century; but just when the amalgamation of Saxon and Norman was perfected, a blight seemed to wither the promise of their union. Enough has been said upon this subject; it need only be added that the paralysis of literary productiveness in England cannot, as in Italy, be ascribed in any degree to the enlistment of the best minds in the service of classical studies. Civil strife may be alleged as a reason, and it is certainly true that the Wars of the Roses were dynastic contests involving no principle, and powerless to fire the imagination and create impassioned feeling as war waged for freedom or even for conquest might have done. But no single cause will account for a phenomenon manifested simultaneously in almost every country in Europe, especially at a time when light was breaking in on all sides, and the arts were flourishing beyond previous example. The reawakening of lulled genius near the close of the fifteenth century is not so mysterious as its slumber; yet of the two great intellectual movements which apparently called it into being it may be said that the Renaissance was rather its nurse than its parent, and the Reformation rather its consequence than its cause.

The literary Renaissance dates from Petrarch, and had consequently long preceded the revival at the end of the fifteenth century. It had, as we have seen, been rather detrimental than favourable to original power; but when original power awoke of itself, it found that the Renaissance had greatly expanded and enriched its field of operation. The English author at the end of the fifteenth century addressed a different public from that which he would have encountered at the end of the fourteenth. Although actual literary production had been sparse and unimportant in the intervening period, literature itself was more widely and highly esteemed. The idea of its being the special property of the clerical or even of the scholarly class had been given up. English prose, which no one before Mandeville's translator had written except in devotional treatises, now claimed by far the largest share of