The rise of the ballad in the eighteenth century . hich the popular poetry hasbeen transmitted to their posterity, it is nothing sur-prising that it should reach us in a mutilated and de-graded state, and that it should little correspond withthe ideas we are apt to form of the first productions ofnational genius; nay, it is more to be wondered at thatwe possess so many ballads of considerable merit than thatthe much greater number or thera which must have once existedshould have perished before our time. Scott, in his desire to retrieve from oblivionas much of our ancient poetry as there is no
The rise of the ballad in the eighteenth century . hich the popular poetry hasbeen transmitted to their posterity, it is nothing sur-prising that it should reach us in a mutilated and de-graded state, and that it should little correspond withthe ideas we are apt to form of the first productions ofnational genius; nay, it is more to be wondered at thatwe possess so many ballads of considerable merit than thatthe much greater number or thera which must have once existedshould have perished before our time. Scott, in his desire to retrieve from oblivionas much of our ancient poetry as there is nov/ any possibilityor doing, aided in making the old ballads popular, andalso in making the ballad form a literary form. Much mightbe said of the real ballad feeling shown by Scott in Jacko Hazeldean or by Coleridge in The ikncient Mariner, butwe would be looking loi-ward to the nineteenth century withits wealth or poetry due to ballad influence. We might speak also of the later critical studyof ballads, which has become a very important branch of. -GG- the large body or oriticisn. The establishment of balladand folk lore societies and tJie amount of material aboutfolk son^s and ballads, shows us that the half apologetic ^attitude of the eighteenth centurifi^ has given way to anenthusiastic appreciation. / In these two chapters we have shown what thecharacteristics of the ballad are, thus eliminating fromthe discussion any other than the folk ballad. A briefsurvey of the various miscellanies and collections duringthe eighteenth century showed that the grea-cest numoer,due evidently to an awakening interest in the subject,were published during the latter part of tne century. It would be impossible to say at what time in thecentury there was a beginning of ballad criticism. Theconsensus of opinion gives Adaison credit tor the first,most daring criticism; and from the time of the praiseOf Chevy Chase in the Spectator, there was a gradualand general change of front regarding the rud
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjecttheses, bookyear1911
