of moralising in a ballad as in the midst of a charge of cavalry.
If you are a Cavalier, write with the zeal of a Cavalier combating for
his king at Naseby, and do not disgust us with melancholy whinings about
the desolate hearths of the Ironsides. Forget for a time that you are a
shareholder in a Life Assurance Company, and cleave to your immediate
business of emptying as many saddles as possible. If you are out--as
perhaps your great-grandfather was--with Prince Charles at Prestonpans,
do not, we beseech you, desert the charging column of the Camerons, to
cry the coronach over poor old Colonel Gardiner, fetched down from his
horse by the Lochaber axe of the grim Miller of Invernahyle. Let him
have the honourable burial of a brave man when the battle is over;
but--whilst the shouts of victory are ringing in our ears, and the tail
of Cope's horse is still visible over the knowe which rises upon the
Berwick road--leave the excellent Seceder upon the sod, and toss up your
bonnet decorated with the White Rose, to the glory and triumph of the
clans! If you are a Covenanter and a Whig, we need not entreat you to
pepper Claverhouse and his guardsmen to the best of your ability at
Drumclog. You are not likely to waste much of your time in lamentations
over the slaughtered Archbishop: and if you must needs try your hand at
the execution of Argyle, do not mince the matter, but make a regular
martyr of him at once. In this way should all ballads be written; and
such indeed is the true secret of the craft as transmitted to us by the
masters of old.

We have warned you against moralising: let us now say a word or two on
the subjects of description and declamation. Upon one or other of these
rocks, have most of our modern ballad-writers struck and foundered. What
can be in worse taste than the introduction of an elaborate landscape
into the midst of a poem of action, or an elaborate account of a man's
accoutrements when he is fighting for life or death? A single epithet,
if it be a choice one, can indicate the scene of action as vividly and
far more effectively than ten thousand stanzas; and, unless you are a
tailor and proud of your handiwork, what is the use of dilating upon the
complexion of a warrior's breeches, when the claymore is whistling
around his ears? Nevertheless, even our best ballad-writers, when their
soul was not in their task, have fallen into this palpable error. None
of Sir Walter's ballads commences more finely