[443] [In the Folio MS. is the following note by Percy:—"Since I first transcribed this song for the press part of the leaf has been worne away. It was once exactly as I have represented it in my book." Ed. Hales and Furnivall, vol. iii. p. 526.]
[444] [R. J. King's Sketches and Studies, 1874, p. 262.]
[445] [Mr. Furnivall suggests a prey.]
[446] Three of the following stanzas have been finely paraphrased by Dr. Goldsmith, in his charming ballad of Edwin and Emma; the reader of taste will have a pleasure in comparing them with the original.
"'And' still I try'd each fickle art,
Importunate and vain;
And while his passion touch'd my heart,
I triumph'd in his pain.
"'Till quite dejected with my scorn,
He left me to my pride,
And sought a solitude forlorn,
In secret, where he dy'd.
"But mine the sorrow, mine the fault,
And well my life shall pay;
I'll seek the solitude he sought,
And stretch me where he lay.
"And there forlorn despairing hid,
I'll lay me down and die:
'Twas so for me that Edwin did
And so for him will I."
[Goldsmith did not follow the last two verses, but made his ending much more sentimental than that of the old ballad.]
XV.
K. EDWARD IV. AND TANNER OF TAMWORTH
Was a story of great fame among our ancestors. The author of the Art of English poesie, 1589, 4to, seems to speak of it as a real fact.—Describing that vicious mode of speech, which the Greeks called Acyron, i.e. "When we use a dark and obscure word, utterly repugnant to that we should express;" he adds, "Such manner of uncouth speech did the Tanner of Tamworth use to king Edward the fourth; which Tanner, having a great while mistaken him, and used very broad talke with him, at length perceiving by his traine that it was the king, was afraide he should be punished for it, [and] said thus, with a certain rude repentance,