[58] Published in three volumes small octavo in 1794. "Printed by John Nichols for F. and C. Rivington."
[59] [Fol. MS.] Page [130], ver. 117. (This must have been copied from a reciter.)
[60] [Fol. MS.] Page [139], ver. 164, viz.
"his visage waxed pan and wale."
[THE PREFACE]
The reader is here presented with select remains of our ancient English bards and minstrels, an order of men, who were once greatly respected by our ancestors, and contributed to soften the roughness of a martial and unlettered people by their songs and by their music.
The greater part of them are extracted from an ancient folio manuscript, in the editor's possession, which contains near 200 poems, songs, and metrical romances. This MS. was written about the middle of the last century; but contains compositions of all times and dates, from the ages prior to Chaucer, to the conclusion of the reign of Charles I.[61]
This manuscript was shewn to several learned and ingenious friends, who thought the contents too curious to be consigned to oblivion, and importuned the possessor to select some of them, and give them to the press. As most of them are of great simplicity, and seem to have been merely written for the people, he was long in doubt, whether, in the present state of improved literature, they could be deemed worthy the attention of the public. At length the importunity of his friends prevailed, and he could refuse nothing to such judges as the author of the Rambler and the late Mr. Shenstone.