This humorous song (as a former Editor has well observed) is to old metrical romances and ballads of chivalry, what Don Quixote is to prose narratives of that kinda lively satire on their extravagant fictions. But although the satire is thus general, the subject of this ballad is local and peculiar; so that many of the finest strokes of humour are lost for want of our knowing the minute circumstances to which they allude. Many of them can hardly now be recovered, although we have been fortunate enough to learn the general subject to which the satire referred, and shall detail the information with which we have been favoured, in a seperate memoir at the end of the poem.

succour

In handling his subject, the Author has brought in most of the common incidents which occur in Romance. The description of the dragon this outrages -the people flying to the knight for -his care in choosing his armourbeing drest for fight by a young damselmost of the circumstances of the battle and victory (allowing for the burlesque turn given to them) are what occur in every book of chivalry, whether in

prose or verse.

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If any one piece, more than other, is more particularly levelled at, it seems to be the old rhyming legend of Sir Bevis. There a Dragon is attacked from a well in a manner not very remote from this of the ballad:

There was a well, so have I wynne,
And Bevis stumbled ryght therein.

Than was he glad without fayle,
And rested a whyle for his avayle;
And dranke of that water his fyll;
And than he lepte out, with good wyll,
And with Morglay his brande

He assayled the dragon, I understande:
On the dragon he smote so faste,
Where that he hit the scales braste :
The dragon then faynted sore,
And cast a galon and more

• Collection of Historical Ballads in 3 vol. 1727. ↑ See above, p. 221, and p. 249.

Out of his mouthe of venim strong, And on Syr Bevis he it flong:

It was venymous y-wis.

This seems to be meant by the Dragon of Wantley's stink, ver. 110. As the politic knight's creeping out, and attacking the dragon, &c. seems evidently to allude to the following:

Bevis blessed himselfe, and forth vode,
And lepte out with haste full good;
And Bevis unto the dragon gone is;
And the dragon also to Bevis.
Longe and harde was that fyght
Betwene the dragon and that knyght
But ever whan Syr Bevis was hurt sore,
He went to the well, and washed him thore;
He was as hole as any man,

Ever freshe as whan he began.

The dragon sawe it might not avayle
Besyde the well to hold batayle;
He thought he would, wyth some wyle,
Out of that place Bevis begyle;
He woulde have flowen then awaye,
But Bevis lepte after with good Morglaye,
And hyt him under the wynge,
As he was in his flyenge, &c.

Sign. M. jv. L. j. &c.

After all, perhaps the writer of this ballad was acquainted with the above incidents only through the medium of Spenser, who has assumed most of them in his "Faery Queen." At least some particulars in the description of the Dragon, &c. seem evidently borrowed from the latter. See Book I. Canto 11, where the Dragon's "two wynges like sayls -buge long tayl with stings. cruel rending clawes and yron teethbreath of smothering smoke and sulphur"-and the duration of the fight for upwards of two days, bear a great resemblance to passages in the following ballad; though it must be confessed that these particulars are common to all old writers of romance.

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Although this ballad must have been written early in the last century, we have met with none but such as were comparatively modern copies. It is