knights under the walls at Acre; how the
condition of the minstrels improved after the
times of Richard the First. They remained a
distinct body for many ages after the Norman
conquest. They were, in fact, the literary
exponents of life, as the chroniclers were the
preservers of tradition; they did for the
nationality of their countrymen, what the
Church did for their religious belief. The
Church had its singers of the deeds of saints
while the minstrels sang the wars, adventures
and loves. We sing of imaginary pirates,
imaginary loves, of sentiments notoriously
contrary to the general feeling of society,
about every conceivable subject. The first
song was a winged fact; a kind of inspired
history. I confers, for this reason, to a liking
for the ballad of "Sweet William and Fair
Margaret;" those "noble lovers," as the old
titles call them. It is full of character, tenderness,
prettiness—of truth, in short. The
simple English village air breathes about it.
The two lovers are sitting together, and
William speaks:—

"I see no harm by you, Margaret,
And you see none by me;
Before to-morrow at eight o'clock
A rich wedding you shall see."

Of course, the artful villain "palters" in a
"double sense;" but neither Margaret nor
the "intelligent reader" (the fact is, that
entity was not extant then) are supposed to
see through it. You are to "shut your eyes,"
as the children say, "and wait what fortune
sends you." Accordingly, in the very next
stanza—

Fair Margaret sate in her bower window,
Combing her yellow hair;
There she spied sweet William and his bride,
As they were a-riding near."

It never seemed to enter Margaret's head
that anything but death remained; accordingly
it comes, and her spirit glides up
to William's feet:—

"Are you awake, sweet William, she said,
Or, sweet William, are you asleep?
God give you joy of your gay bride-bed,
And me of my winding sheet!"

William tells his bride of his bad dream;
and in one momentary glimpse of that
bride, we discern her to be a common-place
and, probably, a disagreeable woman. I
undertake to declare that Master William
married her for money. He goes off to his
Margaret's house, and, finding her dead, and
that

"She has lost her cherry red,"
he himself dies of sorrow. Margaret was
buried in the lower chancel, and William in
the higher. A rose sprang from her breast,
and a briar from his; and ultimately they
joined, above the church-spire, in a true-love
knot,

"Which made the people admire."

Bishop Percy gives, in his "Reliques," a
final stanza, narrating how the clerk cut it
down, which, as it is in rather a mocking tone,
I incline to hold spurious—added by somebody
personally hostile to clerks, and
intended to bring the whole fraternity into
ridicule.

The greater part of the genuine old songs
which the people loved must have perished,
as the Saturnian verses of Italy in old times
did. By Queen Elizabeth's time, the minstrels
had become "rogues and vagabonds," and
were so declared in an Act of Parliament.
The whole relations of the old life were altering.
Poor-laws were coming on; and the then
"minstrels," we may suppose—if they went on
churming over old stories, expressing a class of
feelings which belonged neither to them nor
their contemporaries—had become what we
call "bores"; having lost all the heart and
breath properly becoming their occupation,
and being idle wasters of their own and the
public time. Many a once noble order has
degenerated into a gang of ''rogues and
vagabonds!" The feudal minstrel became extinct.
Ancient literature, besides foreign contemporary
literature, were flowing into England
from the urns of the past, and from the courts
and cities of the South. Warton remarks
that "the revival of classical learning gave a
temporary check to vernacular composition."
Henceforth, poetry became part of literature,
and literature is only itself a part of life. It
would be a curious inquiry, how far the
character of those orders of the people,
to whom books were unknown objects for
generations afterwards, was affected by the
cessation of minstrelsy, and the confinement
of poetic expressions to books. Even in our
day, the people are only attaining—particularly
in rural districts—to any mental food
equal to the old ballads and songs of their
forefathers.

One of the first effects of the classical
studies must have been an increased attention
to prose; and they had very soon a palpable
effect on our language. The influence of
ancient literature is manifested by all English
song-writers after this. But let us not forget,
while speaking of this period, our earliest
good drinking-song—one of the most national
of all our songs—which first appeared in 1561.
It celebrates the praise of ale, and was written
by a bishop, John Still, Bishop of Bath and
Wells. There is some honesty in an Englishman's
writing in praise of ale. How can the
jublic at large sympathise with the mere
praise of wine? I quote one stanza from the
Right Reverend Prelate's production:—

"I love no roast but a nut-brown toast,
And a crab laid in the fire;
A little bread shall do me stead,
Much bread I don't desire.