pertinently, about
them; yet he would keep none, but would give them to his
friends, telling them (for he was exemplarily modest and
humble) that he had neither learning nor sagacity enough to
explain and illustrate them, and that therefore it was more
proper they should be in the possession of some able
persons. He would have done any thing to retrieve a Roman
author, and would have given any price for so much as a
single fragment (not yet discovered) of the learned
commentaries, written by Agrippina, mother to Nero, touching
the fortunes of her house, which are (as I much fear) now
utterly lost, excepting the fragment or two cited out of
them by Pliny the elder and Cornelius Tacitus; as he would
also have stuck at no price for a grammar _printed at
Tavistock_, commonly called =The long Grammar=. When he went
abroad he was never idle, but if he could not meet with
things of a better character, he would divert himself with
looking over _Ballads_, and he was always mightily pleased
if he met with any that were old. Anthony a Wood made good
collections, with respect to ballads, but he was far outdone
by Mr. Bagford. Our modern ballads are, for the most part,
romantic; but the old ones contain matters of fact, and were
generally written by good scholars. In these old ones were
couched the transactions of our great heroes: they were a
sort of Chronicles. So that the wise founder of New College
permitted them to be sung, by the fellows of that college,
upon extraordinary days. In those times, the poets thought
they had done their duty when they had observed truth, and
put the accounts they undertook to write, into rhythm,
without extravagantly indulging their fancies. Nobody knew
this better than Mr. Bagford; for which reason he always
seemed almost ravished when he happened to light upon old
rhythms, though they might not, perhaps, be so properly
ranged under the title of ballads," &c., pp. 656-663. Being
unable to furnish a portrait of Bagford (although I took
some little trouble to procure one) I hope the reader--if
his patience be not quite exhausted--will endeavour to
console himself, in lieu thereof, with a specimen of
Bagford's epistolary composition; which I have faithfully
copied from the original among the _Sloanian MSS._