Page:The cavalier songs and ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 (IA cavaliersongsbal00mack).pdf/11

their celebrity, their wit, their beauty, their historical interest, or the light they might happen to throw on the obscure biography of the most remarkable actors in the scenes which they describe. It would be too much to claim for these ballads the exalted title of poetry. They are not poetical in the highest sense of the word, and possibly would not have been so effective for the purpose which they were intended to serve, if their writers had been more fanciful and imaginative, or less intent upon what they had to say than upon the manner of saying it. But if not extremely poetical, they are extremely national, and racy of the soil; and some of them are certain to live as long as the language which produced them. For the convenience of reference and consultation they have been arranged chronologically; beginning with the discontents that inaugurated the reign of Charles I., and following regularly to the final, though short-lived, triumph of the Cavalier cause, in the accession of James II. After his ill-omened advent to the throne, the Cavalier became the Jacobite. In this collection no Jacobite songs, properly so called, are included, it being the intention of the publishers to issue a companion volume, of the Jacobite Ballads of England, from the accession of James II. to the battle of