Evans's Old Ballads, vol. iii. p. 303, no. 51 (ed. 1784), vol. iv. p. 333, no. 51 (ed. 1810).

The Death of Earl Oswald I have not met with elsewhere than in Evans's Old Ballads, of which work the first edition, in 2 vols., appeared in 1777, and the second edition, in 4 vols., in 1784.

It has been asserted* that Mickle was the author of some dozen and a half of the sweetest ballads in this collection. The truth of this assertion, though questioned,† has on inquiry been fully confirmed.

In Pearch's collection of poetry, which was formed by Mickle, his ballad of Hengist and May was inserted under his own name. (ed. 1775.)

In 1782 the Prophecy of Queen Emma was published by Mickle, with an ironical preface, containing an account of its pretended author and discovery. This ballad was again published in Evans's Old Ballads, ed. 1784, vol. iii. p. 297, no. 50, and ed. 1810, vol. iv. p. 327, no. 50; and is in both editions attributed to Mickle. It is now found in Mickle's collected poems.

The Sorceress, or Wolfwold and Ulla, appears in the several editions of Mickle's poems.

The ballad of Cumnor Hall, first printed in Evans's collection (ed. 1784, vol. iv. p. 130, no. 9, ed. 1810, vol. iv. p. 94, no. 19), without Mickle's name, is not found in any edition of his poems; yet it was believed by Sir W. Scott that he was the author of it.

Of these five ballads, three are in the same metre as Mallet's William and Margaret and Edwin and Emma, with a slight variation as regards two of them. The numerous points of resemblance, moreover, in sentiment and expression which occur in these ballads, and in the two ballads of Mallet, afford such internal evidence as hardly to admit of its being questioned that Mickle was the sole author of them.

* Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxi. pp. 402, 628; Quarterly Review, vol.'iii. p. 486. Allan Cunningham's Songs of Scotland, vol. i. p. 226.

↑ Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 1xi. pp. 504, 801.

Scott's Poetical Works, ed. 1833, 12 vols. vol. i. pp. 68, 69.

From "The Fate of Amy."

1.

Beneath a sheltering wood's warm side,
Where many a tree expands

Its branches o'er the neighbouring brook,
A ruined cottage stands :

7.

There once a mother's only joy,
A daughter, lovely, fair,
As ever bloomed beneath the sun,
Was nurs'd and cherish'd there.

8.

The cottage then was known around;
The neighbouring village swains
Would often wander by to view

That charmer of the plains.

9.

Where softest blush of roses wild,
And hawthorn's fairest blow,

But meanly serve to paint her cheek,

And bosom's rival snow;

11.

Sweet Innocence! the beauty 's thine

That every bosom warms:

Fair as she was, she lived alone

A stranger to her charms.

12.

Unmov'd the praise of swains she heard,

Nor proud at their despair;

But thought they scoff'd her when they prais'd; And knew not she was fair.

*

39.

Lost was that sweet simplicity;

Her eye's bright lustre fled;

And o'er her cheeks, where roses bloom'd,

A sickly paleness spread.

40.

So fades the flower before its time,
Where canker-worms assail;

So droops the bud upon its stem,

Beneath the sickly gale.

Clare's Poems, 1820, p. 16.

John Clare, the humble poet of rural life, has shown, by a delicate imitation in the above poem, written at a very early age, his appreciation of Edwin and Emma.

A writer in the Quarterly Review (vol. xxiii. p. 168) remarks "that some of the ballad stanzas of Clare rival the native simplicity of Tickell or Mallet."