from the Chronicles of
Froissart? Cannot they let the old warriors rest in peace, without
summoning them, like the Cid, from their honoured graves, again to put
on harness and to engage in feckless combat? For oh!--weak and most
washy are the battles which our esteemed young friends describe! Their
war-horses have for the most part a general resemblance to the hacks
hired out at seven-and-sixpence for the Sunday exhibition in the Park.
Their armour is of that kind more especially in vogue at Astley's, in
the composition of which tinfoil is a principal ingredient, and
pasteboard by no means awanting. Their heroes fight, after preliminary
parley which would do credit to the chivalry of the Hippodrome; and
their lances invariably splinter as frush as the texture of the
bullrush. Their dying chiefs all imitate Bayard, as we once saw
Widdecomb do it, when struck down by the infuriated Gomersal; and the
poem generally concludes with a devout petition to "Our Ladye," not only
to vouchsafe her grace to the defunct champion, but to grant that the
living minstrel may experience the same end--a prayer which, for the
sake of several respectable young members of society, we hope may be
utterly disregarded.

The truth is, that instead of being the easiest, the ballad is
incomparably the most difficult kind of all poetical composition. Many
men, who were not poets in the highest sense of the word, because they
wanted the inventive faculty, have nevertheless, by dint of
perseverance, great accomplishment, and dexterous use of those materials
which are ready to the hand of every artificer, gained a respectable
name in the roll of British literature--but never, in any single
instance, by attempting the construction of a ballad. That is the
Shibboleth, by which you can at once distinguish the true minstrel from
mere impostor or pretender. It is the simplest, and at the same time the
sublimest form of poetry, nor can it be written except under the
influence of that strong and absorbing emotion, which bears the poet
away far from the present time, makes him an actor and a participator in
the vivid scenes which he describes, and which is, in fact, inspiration
of the very loftiest kind. The few who enjoy the glorious privilege, not
often felt, nor long conferred, of surrendering themselves to the magic
of that spell, cease for the time to be artists; they take no thought of
ornament, or of any rhetorical artifice, but throw themselves headlo