d away;
Jock aye lo'ed a blink o' a bonnie girl's eye,
And she speer'd at the reiver his fortune to spae.

But Jock cam' to questions, and being a fallow
Stout, buirdly and sonsy, he soon pleased her taste,
And awa' went the twasome, haup-jaup in their daffin',
Thro' wynds and blind alleys no time for to waste."

Ancient ballad indeed! the minstrel who would venture to chant such a
ditty in the Cowgate, would be cheaply let off with a month's solitary
imprisonment on a diet of bread and water.

We pass with pleasure from this medley of balderdash and drivel to the
more sober tome of Mr Collier, because we know that whatever he gives us
will at least have the merit of being genuine. Out of the thousand
black-letter broadsides which constitute the Roxburghe collection, the
editor has selected upwards of fifty, and thus states the object of
their publication:--"The main purpose of the ensuing collection is to
show, in their most genuine state, the character and quality of
productions written expressly for the amusement of the lower orders, in
the reign of Elizabeth, James, and Charles. Our volume consists of such
ordinary materials as formed the stock of the English ballad-singer,
during a period not far short of a century. Many traces will be found in
them of the modes in which they were rendered acceptable to the crowd,
when sung in our most frequented thoroughfares." We need hardly say that
the volume is got up with great care; and it will doubtless be an
acceptable addition to the libraries of our literary epicures:
nevertheless, we are free to confess that we were somewhat disappointed
with its contents. We did not, it is true, expect to find, in this
quarto, any new historical, or even romantic ballads of the first or
highest class. The literature of Elizabeth and James is remarkably
sterile in productions of this nature; and the few which are
intrinsically excellent have long since become familiar and have lost
the gloss of novelty. But the didactic ballad and the canzonet were then
extensively practised, and, with the fugitive poetry of Peele, Marlowe,
Greene, and Lodge in our recollection, we had hoped to recover some
valuable specimens of their more obscure contemporaries. In the
voluminous records of the Elizabethan era, we find mention of many poets
who enjoyed a reasonable celebrity at the time, but whose works, devoid
of buoyancy, have since settled into oblivion. We find the