"The Last Buccaneer," "The Sands of Dee," "The Three
Fishers," and the like. But there are the same fire and swing in many of
his romantic ballads on historical or legendary subjects, such as "The
Swan-Neck," "The Red King," "Ballad of Earl Haldan's Daughter," "The Song
of the Little Baltung," and a dozen more. Without the imaginative
witchery of Coleridge, Keats, and Rossetti, in the ballad of action
Kingsley ranks very close to Scott. The same manly delight in outdoor
life and bold adventure, love of the old Teutonic freedom and strong
feeling of English nationality inspire his historical romances, only one
of which, however, "Hereward the Wake" (1866), has to do with the period
of the Middle Ages.

[1] "It is almost superfluous to mention that the appellation 'Childe,'
as 'Childe Waters,' 'Childe Childers,' etc., is used as more consonant
with the old structure of versification which I have adopted."--Preface
to "Childe Harold." Byron appeals to a letter of Beattie relating to
"The Minstrel," to justify his choice of the stanza.

[2] See vol. i., p. 98.

[3] For Byron's and Shelley's dealings with Dante, _vide supra_, pp.
99-102.

[4] For the type of prose romance essayed by Shelley, see Vol. i., p. 403.

[5] "Mary, the Maid of the Inn."

[6] Duran's great collection, begun in 1828, embraces nearly two thousand
pieces.

[7] It is hardly necessary to mention early English translations of
"Palmerin of England" (1616) and "Amadis de Gaul" (1580), or to point out
the influence of Montemayor's "Diana Enamorada" upon Sidney, Shakspere,
and English pastoral romance in general.

[8] "The English and Scotch ballads, with which they may most naturally
be compared, belong to a ruder state of society, where a personal
violence and coarseness prevailed which did not, indeed, prevent the
poetry it produced from being full of energy, and sometimes of
tenderness; but which necessarily had less dignity and elevation than
belong to the character, if not the condition, of a people who, like the
Spanish, were for centuries engaged in a contest ennobled by a sense of
religion and loyalty--a contest which could not fail sometimes to raise
the minds and thoughts of those engaged in it far above such an
atmosphere as settled round the bloody feuds of rival barons or the gross
maraudings of a border warfare. The truth of this will at once be felt,
if we compare the striking series of ballads on Robin Hood with those on
the C