of Milton's time. "I have heard," wrote Addison, "that the late Lord
Dorset, who had the greatest wit tempered with the greatest candor, and
was one of the finest critics as well as the best poets of his age, had a
numerous collection of old English ballads, and a particular pleasure in
the reading of them. I can affirm the same of Mr. Dryden." Dryden's
"Miscellany Poems" (1684) gave "Gilderoy," "Johnnie Armstrong," "Chevy
Chase," "The Miller and the King's Daughter," and "Little Musgrave and
the Lady Barnard." The last named, as well as "Lady Anne Bothwell's
Lament" and "Fair Margaret and Sweet William,"[34] was quoted in Beaumont
and Fletcher's "Knight of the Burning Pestle," (1611). Scraps of them
are sung by one of the _dramatis personae_, old Merrythought, whose
speciality is a damnable iteration of ballad fragments. References to
old ballads are numerous in the Elizabethan plays. Percy devoted the
second book of his first series to "Ballads that Illustrate Shakspere."
In the seventeenth century a few ballads were printed entire in poetic
miscellanies entitled "Garlands," higgledy-piggledy with pieces of all
kinds. Professor Child enumerates nine ballad collections before
Percy's. The only ones of any importance among these were "A Collection
of Old Ballads" (Vols I. and II. in 1723, Vol III. In 1725), ascribed to
Ambrose Philips; and the Scotch poet, Allan Ramsay's, "Tea Table
Miscellany," (in 4 vols., 1714-40) and "Evergreen" (2 vols., 1724). The
first of these collections was illustrated with copperplate engravings
and supplied with introductions which were humorous in intention. The
editor treated his ballads as trifles, though he described them as
"corrected from the best and most ancient copies extant"; and said that
Homer himself was nothing more than a blind ballad-singer, whose songs
had been subsequently joined together and formed into an epic poem.
Ramsay's ballads were taken in part from a manuscript collection of some
eight hundred pages, made by George Bannatyne about 1570 and still
preserved in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh.

In Nos. 70, 74, and 85, of the _Spectator_, Addison had praised the
naturalness and simplicity of the popular ballads, selecting for special
mention "Chevy Chase"--the later version--"which," he wrote, "is the
favorite ballad of the common people of England; and Ben Jonson used to
say he had rather have been the author of it than of all his works"; and
"the 'Two