in his own
apology for the "Simplicity of the Stile" there is sufficient
prescription for all those improvements that either a Ramsay or a Percy
were soon actually to undertake. And some of the Virgilian passages in
_Chevy Chase_ which Addison picked out for admiration were not what
Sidney had known but the literary invention of the more modern broadside
writer.

Nevertheless, the two _Spectators_ on _Chevy Chase_ and the sequel on
the _Children in the Wood_ were startling enough. The general
announcement was ample, unabashed, soaring--unmistakable evidence of a
new polite taste for the universally valid utterances of the primitive
heart. The accompanying measurement according to the epic rules and
models was not a qualification of the taste, but only a somewhat awkward
theoretical dimension and justification.

It is impossible that any thing should be universally tasted and
approved by a Multitude, tho' they are only the Rabble of a Nation,
which hath not in it some peculiar Aptness to please and gratify the
Mind of Man.... an ordinary Song or Ballad that is the Delight of
the common People, cannot fail to please all such Readers as are not
unqualified for the Entertainment by their Affectation or Ignorance.

Professor Clarence D. Thorpe is surely correct in his view of Addison as
a "grandfather" of such that would come in romantic aesthetics for the
next hundred years.[2] Not that Addison invents anything; but he catches
every current whisper and swells it to the journalistic audibility.
Here, if we take Addison at his word, are the key ideas for Wordsworth's
Preface on the language of rustic life, for Tolstoy's ruthless reduction
of taste to the peasant norm. Addison went on to urge what was perfectly
just, that the old popular ballads ought to be read and liked; at the
same time he pushed his praise to a rather wild extreme, and he made
some comic comparisons between _Chevy Chase_ and Virgil and Homer.

We know now that he was on the right track; he was riding the wave of
the future. It will be sufficient here merely to allude to that well
established topic of English literary history, the rise of the ballad
during the eighteenth century--in _A Collection of Old Ballads_
(1723-1725), in Ramsay's _Evergreen_ and _Tea-Table_, in Percy's
_Reliques_, and in all the opinions, the critiques, the imitations, the
modern ballads, and the forgeries of that era--in _Henry and Emma_,
_Colin and Lucy_, and _Hardy