general subject to which the satire referred, and shall detail the information with which we have been favoured, in a separate memoir at the end of the poem. THIS humorous song (as a former Editor* | we have been fortunate enough to learn the has well observed) is to old metrical romances and ballads of chivalry, what Don Quixote is to prose narratives of that kind:- -a 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 Collection of Historical Ballads in 3 vols. 1727. In handling his subject, the Author has brought in most of the common incidents which occur in Romance. The description of the dragon*-his outrages-the people flying to the knight for succour— r-his care in choosing his armour-his being dressed for See above, p. 352, and p. 390. Bevis blessed himselfe, and forthe yode, 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-huge long tayl-with stings-his cruel rending clawes-and yron teeth-his breath 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. 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 here printed from one in Roman letter, in the Pepys Collection, collated with such others as could be procured. |