In this discourse, far be it we should mean
Spirits by meat are fatted made, or lean;
Yet certain 'tis, by God's permission, they
May, over goods extorted, bear like sway.
All such as study fraud, and practise evil,
Do only starve themselves to plumpe the devill.
Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels, p. 577.
ERLINTON. NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED.
This ballad is published from the collation of two copies, obtained from recitation. It seems to be the rude original, or perhaps a corrupted and imperfect copy, of The Child of Elle, a beautiful legendary tale, published in the Reliques of Ancient Poetry. It is singular, that this charming ballad should have been translated, or imitated, by the celebrated Bürger, without acknowledgment of the English original. As The Child of Elle avowedly received corrections, we may ascribe its greatest beauties to the poetical taste of the ingenious editor. They are in the truest stile of Gothic embellishment. We may compare, for example, the following beautiful verse, with the same idea in an old romance: