I have made no attempt at soften ing the harshness of the rhyme of this ancient ballad, or measuring its rude lines into more equal quantities. In regard to all the poetical communications of my friends, I imitated the scrupulous fidelity of that prince of editors, honest Joseph Ritson, and copied them without even hazarding those occasional emendations so usual with compilers. As it would be unfair to give a solitary ballad as a specimen of the rich and varied rhymes, which I have been instru mental in recovering, I shall transcribe another, which I am not alone in thinking is the ancient ballad of Bessie Bell and Mary Gray, modernized in its descent, by means of oral communication, from the days of the luckless heroines. BESSIE BELL AND MARY GRAY. O Bessie Bell, and Mary Gray, They have left their beds of driven-down Sweet Mary's breath came like the wind, She sung like the lark to the morning star, But Bessie's een were founts o' love, And her looks came, like the May-morn sun, To set the world a smiling! Where the moorland burn 'mang the yellow broom, Comes bright and gently pouring, There I maun roam by the light o' the moon, Those lovely ones adoring: And there one sits, and another sings, In a bower theeked o'er wi' rashes "O, kind love is a lightsome thing O can I e'er forget yon bower, The smiling o' those lovesome e'en, Nor to my garrulous Caledonian alone am I indebted for singular traditionary tales, and curious songs illustrative of departed days. From Eleanor Selby, an ancient dame, who resided in a cottage that resembled a hermitage, pertaining to the ducal castle of Naworth, I obtained much important information. She traced her descent from the second son of Sir Walter Seleby, who was slain in an incursion by the Scotch; and she detested that warlike and predatory people as much as she admired the Houses of Seleby, Dacre, and Howard. On every sabbath morn she made a pilgrimage to the old Abbey of Lanercost, in the romantic vale of Naworth, and, kneeling at the eastern entrance, offered up a prayer, which some supposed regarded the restoration of the priory to its ancient splendour, but which others, with more truth perhaps, believed to be an intercession for the repose of her ancestor's soul. The mountain ashes and wall-flowers, which flourished among the ruins, obtained more of her affec tion than the parish church, which stood, mean and squalid, in a lonely corner of the majestic pile. I won this aged dame's affection by a successful attempt to replace the mutilated font at the altar, and I have often since blessed my instinctive love for ruined houses of worship. Through this I became acquainted with many of those Cumbrian tales, which gladdened the winter evenings of the peasantry; and, by the kindness of Dame Selby, I shall be able to charm all lovers of true romance, with the history of the spectre steeds and warriors, who, in 1743, coursed, visible to the eyes of Daniel Stricket, and John Wren, of Wilton-hall, up Soutra-fell-a mountain five and twenty hundred feet perpendicular! Lammerlea, Cumberland. LETTERS OF FOOTE, GARRICK, &c. It is with pleasure that we introduce to our readers some Letters of Foote and Garrick, which have never been before made public. These letters (independently of such intrinsic interest as they may possess,) are agreeable, inasmuch as they furnish us with an excuse for bringing once more before the world two eminent persons, the works of one of whom have been too much neglected. Foote and Garrick were, each in their way, eminent men. Both were gentlemen by education; both were authors, both actors, both men of humour and gaiety, and one a writer of the most undoubted wit. They lived In the high and palmy state of Rome in intimacy with the great spirits of their time, the one dreaded, and both caressed. If not the first lights of the age, they were certainly conspicuous stars in the literary hemisphere (Sic fratres Helena, lucida sidera,) -forming two points of almost as bright a constellation as ever adorned the world of letters. Their period was not remarkable for that great poetical splendour, which illuminated the Elizabethan times, (yet there were Thomson and Collins,) but the prose of the last age was excellent : :- - And then, there were Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr. Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick, Foote, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Smollett, Hume, and many others, living about town, full of vivacity, and learning, and humour, letting their wit run over in all societies, to fertilize the community at large. We have included Reynolds as a prose writer, we may repeat him as an artist, with the inimitable Hogarth: they still stand pre-eminent in the history of English art. FOOTE was a clever, thoughtless, needy, and prodigal man. He sustained all the reverses of fortune well, rather from an insensibility to evil than from any philosophy of spirit. We do not wish to review his life, in which there is much to regret as well as to eulogize ;-yet it may be said, that (notwithstanding all accusations,) he seems never to have been mean in the midst of distresses, nor arrogant in his more prosperous hours; but to have risen and sunk on the wave of fortune, not only with equanimity, but with honour. His conduct towards servants, and actors placed under his management, (and this is no slight praise,) was invariably kind, and his generosity in pecuniary matters unquestioned. His dramatic writings possess a caustic and bitter humour; his characters are strikingly sketched, and sometimes exceedingly well developed: and though many of them were copied from individuals, he generalized them, while he retained the original likeness, in a manner to render them palatable to the many, while their peculiar pungency was relished only by the few. Dr. Jackson, and the Duchess of Kingston, are recorded in his dramas, as well as in the darker pages of history; and Dr. Dodd will live in Foote's writings, though he probably may not in his own. Foote was not only a comic writer, but a moral satirist. His aim was at the vices as well as at the weaknesses of his cotemporaries; and in his pursuit he was undaunted and unwearied. He was not to be frightened by high rank, nor turned aside by the known rancour of the person, if he thought that his object was good. The present writers of farce forget all this—or is it that they are too weak to do more than wrestle with the foibles of their fellows? They are generally content with being extravagantly comic: they push a joke to the very verge of decency or meaning: they entrap a passing folly, or seize hold of a manual jest; but they seldom give any character by which they can be remembered. We speak of this farce as being lively, and of Liston killing us with laughter in that; but we do not remind each other (as in the case of Foote,) of particular characters with whom we have formed acquaintance-we have nothing like Major Sturgeon, or the valiant Mayor of Garret, or Mr. Aircastle, or Shift, or Smirk, or Sir Thomas Lofty, or Lady Pentweazle: in short, we miss the whole host of rogues and blockheads, whom he delighted to expose. At present we recollect the actors only, and not the characters which they represented. In Foote's case the latter are stamped on our minds indelibly, and it is for this that he deserves to live. But we are keeping our readers from the letters. To such as are not acquainted with the history of Foote, it will be necessary, in the first place, to state, that he was a bon vivant, and much caressed for his wit and convivial qualities by (what are commonly called)" the great." Whe ther as guest at another man's house, or performing the graces of hospita lity at his own, he was equally de lightful; and it is recorded to his ho nour, that at home he made no dis tinction between peer and player, but showered his vivacity and kind goodhumour on all. Early in the year 1766, he was on a visit at the house of Lord Mexborough, accompanied by the (then) Duke of York, Sir Francis Delaval, and others; when some of the party, being desirous of returning a joke upon him who had flung so many on others, drew him into a conversation on horsemanship. All people have their foibles, and vanity was one of Foote's; and he accordingly said boldly, that "though he generally preferred the luxury of a postchaise, he could ride as well as most men he ever knew." The company, wishing for evidence of this, recommended him to hunt the next day; and to this he unwisely consented. He was mounted on a spirited horse belonging to the Duke of York, which, not being accustomed, perhaps, to the spur of a commoner, threw the unhappy satirist on the ground, with such violence, that his leg was fractured in two places. Under the pain arising from this accident, the following letters to Garrick were written.— There is nothing remarkable in the first, except the melancholy tone which this man of wit and of the world seems to have been reduced to, when cast upon a bed of sickness. It runs as follows: Weak and in anguish as I am, it is impossible for me to resist telling my dear Mr. Garrick, by my own hand, how sensibly I am affected by all the kind, humane, friendly things he sent to me by Mr. Bromfield. They do honour to the goodness of your own heart, at the same time that they are a cordial and a balm to mine. God for ever bless you, dear Sir: and, as a reward for your compassionate feelings of the misery of others-may you never be afflicted with any of your own. Cannon-park, Tuesday. Your ever obliged and affectionate servant, SAM. FOOTE. I dare say, my friend Holland felt for me..-Dear Sir, thank him in my name; it will be grateful to him from your mouth, for he loves you. of those well-dressed empirics. A rap of Sir Plume's snuff-box would have turned the current of admira tion, and a blow from Belinda's fan would have been considered decisive: Things are ordered differently now. Dear Sir,-Before I had the favour of your's I had discovered the blunder with regard to my letter-it is transmitted to you by this post. Davis's letter was a noble present indeed; pray can you conceive what he means by the necessity he now supposes me under of growing speedily rich. If one could suspect so grave, sententious, and respectable a character, of the vice of punning, I should imagine his insinuation to be, that now I have but one leg it won't be so easy for me to run out; but here, perhaps, like Warburton on Shakspeare, I have found out a meaning the author never had. I was ever of opinion, that you would find the Bath waters a specific. Sir Francis Delaval, and Lady Stanhope, are particularly happy, that you have chosen this time; for, say they, Cannon Park is between the two roads to Bath-Andover, and Newberry-to Bagshot, Basingstoke, Overton, then four miles to Cannon Park, where you dine and lie; then six miles to Newberry, and so on. I won't tell you what my wishes are upon this occasion, nor, indeed, any body here, for ever since I have been ill they have refused me every one thing that I have liked. I thank you for your comedy. Lady Stanhope has seen it, and is charmed; but I am determined not to look at a line till I am quite out of pain. You will have this letter by Captain Millbank, who is called to town by an appointment in Pye's squadron for the West Indies. I think I am something better than when I wrote you my last, though I have not been free from pain one minute since my cruel misfortune, nor slept a wink without the assistance of laudanum. The people below expect to see you on Wednesday. You must allow for, and, indeed, almost decypher my letters, but then consider, my dear Sir, thirty days upon my back, &c. &c. I assure you it is with great difficulty (and many shifts I am obliged to make), I am able to scribble at all. Little Derrick will give the etiquette of the Bath, and be exceedingly useful The next letter was addressed to Garrick, after Foote had suffered a relapse from the bursting of an artery. The most remarkable fact in it is, the sensitiveness which he betrays at having his drama of "The Commissary” abridged ;—yet we are not entirely without our sympathies, when we consider under whose hands he was about to suffer. The acting managers of Theatres (even of Theatres Royal,) seldom serve much of a literary apprenticeship, we believe; and when a favourite performer talks of "abridging" a play " for his own benefit, we can readily understand, that he means to be tender towards one character, and not very scrupulous towards the rest. There is one passage in the following letter which seems to require a little remark: it is the one where Foote speaks of some * " 端 * God bless you, Sir, SAM. FOOTE. epigrams, which Garrick's "pious - You receive, my dear Sir, this letter from your poor unfortunate friend, in the same situation as when I had first the honour of acknowledging your kindness and humanity to me in bed upon my back. I was taken up to thank you for your last favour, but had scarce got through a period, when, casting my eye on the ground, I discovered a deluge of blood; in short, an artery, by what means not even Bromfield can guess, unexpectedly burst, and, had it happened in the night, would, most probably have drained my veins of every drop; but, thank God, the damage is over-the bleeding has been stopped these four days, and my cure pro ceeds as before. We were grievously disappointed at not seeing you in your way to Bath; but we shall not so readily forgive (if we happen to be here) your neglecting us at your return.-What are bandboxes, servants, or friends-if you had with you twenty joblinwiskeys our house has stomach for them all. I saw by the papers, that the ingenious Mr. Smith, the Esopus of Covent Garden, had advertised my piece of the Commissary for his benefit, reduced into two acts-I could not help thinking that doing it at all, at this very particular time, was a little unkind, but that lopping my works at the same time that I was losing my limbs, was rather inhuman. I have remonstrated to Mr. Beard, and I believe with some warmth, intimating, that if my poetical limbs wanted amputation, the professors of his house were the very last people that I should choose for my surgeons-that I had formerly seen them treat some cases of a similar nature so very unskilfully, that I could not help considering them as a parcel of quacks, who impudently wanted to impose presumption for ability on the public. As Mr. Beard is, I believe, more used to matters of fact than metaphor, I gave the letters to Mr. Bromfield, to whom I have referred our modern Tigellius for the explanation of any puzzling passage; indeed this dirty affair flurried me greatÎy, which, at that critical juncture, might have been readily spared. You do, my dear Sir, but bare justice to my warm and worthy friends in calling them benevolent-one glance of your penetrating eye (why would you pass us by) would have instructed you, that there are virtues now in the world which have been long supposed to exist only in books: but this is not a time, nor am I in a condition (if I ever shall) to treat this subject with the force and dignity it deserves. I had read and raised an altar to my unknown friend, for the epigrams your pious pen had produced. I use that epithet, as it corresponds with one of your lines, where you have produced one of the first and strongest moral principles, clad in the true spirit of poetry, Misfortune's sacred bed. The author of that sentiment was the only one that I wanted or wished to know as to all the rest, they neither gave me uneasiness nor excited my curiosity. I supposed some of them to have been my acquaintance from Pope's principle, that each bad poet is as bad a friend. And now, Sir, let me say grace to your beverage. May the tepid streams, administered to you by the priestess of the Pump-room, restore you to your friends in the capital, as vigorous in body as you are in mind—and then, if we are to judge by your last production, your state of health was never more firmly esta blished. All here join in wishing you and Mrs. Garrick every human happiness. Dear Sir, Yours most sincerely and affectionately, We shall give one more letter from our modern Aristophanes, as he has been called. It is the best of the four, which we have transcribed; and bears a fair show of humour. His account of the apothecaries of those times is curious and amusing enough. He has a proper dread of them. We know of an apothecary now living, who administered, in one year, to an unhappy friend of ours (then rather an invalid) upwards of four hundred doses of medicine, which our said friend, in his young simplicity, actu ally took. If this be a system gene rally pursued, it accounts very satis |