The Pepys Ballads by Hyder Edward RollinsReview by: G. Thorn-DruryThe Modern Language Review, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Apr., 1930), pp. 198-201Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3716384 .

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interesting as showing many instances of modernising words used by Chaucer which had become obsolete or archaic.

The Notes (pp. 337-41) and Glossary are not so satisfactory as the careful and thoroughgoing analysis of the MSS. Many words are not included in the Glossary, and the meaning has often to be sought by comparing the variants in the footnotes. Sometimes the spellings used in Glossary and text vary, as when Glossary gives 'schenship' for 'schenschip,' 9/1; 'parelouse' for 'perelous,' 17/8; 'prive' for 'priue' 103/7. The Index of Names is much more complete, but even here all the variants are not noted and references are omitted.

The volume concludes with an Appendix giving the prose commen- taries from the 1525 edition, which leaves the impression that Dr Science has omitted nothing connected with any of the previous versions of Walton's work.

We have noticed one or two printer's errors, e.g., Preface, 1. 6, 'indicted' should be 'indicated': p. x, 1. 10, for 'test' read 'text'; p. xl, 1. 7, for 'ease' read 'case'; p. xl, 1. 18, for 'qninis' read 'quinis'; p. xlvii, end of first line of footnote inaccurate; p. lx, 1. 16, delete 'but.'

Dr Science's book is an able and thorough piece of text-editing and a valuable addition to the E.E.T.S. series.

ANN KIRKMAN. MANCHESTER.

The Pepys Ballads. Edited by HYDER EDWARD ROLLINS. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: H. Milford. 1929. xix + 273, ix + 257 pp. Each 16s.

Those who are interested in English Ballads are already under a deep obligation to Mr Rollins for the material which his labours in this kind have already made accessible to them, but to the serious student at least this obligation will be very considerably increased when he has completed the undertaking of which these two volumes are the first instalment. The contents of his previous publications were derived from various sources, and though it is probably impracticable to publish to- gether all the surviving ballads that were issued down even to the year 1700, it is most desirable that the contents of well-known collections should be reproduced in their entirety. This has been already attempted, however unsatisfactorily, in the cases of the Roxburghe and Bagford Ballads, and Mr Rollins now purposes to reprint, without including such of them as are contained in the two last-mentioned collections or his own books, all those that are to be found in the famous collection begun by Selden and continued by Pepys. To this end he has obtained the permission of the authorities of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and he hopes to complete his task by the issue of four additional volumes. The two under notice contain ninety ballads from the first volume of the Pepys Collection, the originals of which appeared between 1535 and 1640; they are of great variety and interest, and happily include no more than two examples of that most tiresome class, pieces inspired by

interesting as showing many instances of modernising words used by Chaucer which had become obsolete or archaic.

The Notes (pp. 337-41) and Glossary are not so satisfactory as the careful and thoroughgoing analysis of the MSS. Many words are not included in the Glossary, and the meaning has often to be sought by comparing the variants in the footnotes. Sometimes the spellings used in Glossary and text vary, as when Glossary gives 'schenship' for 'schenschip,' 9/1; 'parelouse' for 'perelous,' 17/8; 'prive' for 'priue' 103/7. The Index of Names is much more complete, but even here all the variants are not noted and references are omitted.

The volume concludes with an Appendix giving the prose commen- taries from the 1525 edition, which leaves the impression that Dr Science has omitted nothing connected with any of the previous versions of Walton's work.

We have noticed one or two printer's errors, e.g., Preface, 1. 6, 'indicted' should be 'indicated': p. x, 1. 10, for 'test' read 'text'; p. xl, 1. 7, for 'ease' read 'case'; p. xl, 1. 18, for 'qninis' read 'quinis'; p. xlvii, end of first line of footnote inaccurate; p. lx, 1. 16, delete 'but.'

Dr Science's book is an able and thorough piece of text-editing and a valuable addition to the E.E.T.S. series.

ANN KIRKMAN. MANCHESTER.

The Pepys Ballads. Edited by HYDER EDWARD ROLLINS. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: H. Milford. 1929. xix + 273, ix + 257 pp. Each 16s.

Those who are interested in English Ballads are already under a deep obligation to Mr Rollins for the material which his labours in this kind have already made accessible to them, but to the serious student at least this obligation will be very considerably increased when he has completed the undertaking of which these two volumes are the first instalment. The contents of his previous publications were derived from various sources, and though it is probably impracticable to publish to- gether all the surviving ballads that were issued down even to the year 1700, it is most desirable that the contents of well-known collections should be reproduced in their entirety. This has been already attempted, however unsatisfactorily, in the cases of the Roxburghe and Bagford Ballads, and Mr Rollins now purposes to reprint, without including such of them as are contained in the two last-mentioned collections or his own books, all those that are to be found in the famous collection begun by Selden and continued by Pepys. To this end he has obtained the permission of the authorities of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and he hopes to complete his task by the issue of four additional volumes. The two under notice contain ninety ballads from the first volume of the Pepys Collection, the originals of which appeared between 1535 and 1640; they are of great variety and interest, and happily include no more than two examples of that most tiresome class, pieces inspired by

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religious differences; the others present such matters as commonly appealed to the ballad-writer, though, as the editor points out, there is here a rather conspicuous absence of 'monsters' and 'prodigies'; love and marriage with their usual vicissitudes are most frequently the subjects, but unusual interest is lent to this instalment by the presence in it of the story of Gernutus and the pound of flesh, by other dramatic references and perhaps more than all by the ballad of The Two Faithful Friends which preserves the story of a lost Elizabethan play, Alexander and Lodowick. Mr Rollins's task as editor has been one of great diffi- culty, demanding, among other qualities, unwearied patience, a tena- cious memory and a capacity for tiresome investigation to establish minute points; he has discharged it admirably; his short introductions to each ballad contain just what is wanted, and he has happily avoided impertinent observations, such as have made some parts of the Ballad Society's issue of the Roxburghe and all the Bagford Ballads too exaspe- rating for the use of ordinary folk. He permits himself to make what he frankly describes, with various qualifying epithets, as 'guesses' at the dates of some dozen or so of his pieces, and if these may perhaps be regarded as superfluous, they do no harm, and his readers on turning to the text will find reason to congratulate him and themselves on his conservative attitude; his emendations, both those adopted and those only suggested in footnotes, are few and judicious. Here and there, as it seems to the writer, a little more or a little less might have been done in this direction, e.g., at i, p. 70, st. 18, one would suggest 'froward' for 'forward'; p. 236, st. 8, 'off' for 'of'; p. 243, st. 4, 'Bordello' for 'Bandello'; p. 244, st. 15, 'A' for 'From'; p. 245, st. 22, 'An' for 'A, 'and' for 'an'; ii, p. 5, st. 8, 'ofspring are' for 'ofspringer'; p. 41, st. 2, 'gentle' for 'Gelding'; p. 98, st. 15, 'on' for 'one'; p. 178, st. 14, Lawne' for 'Lawen'; and although vagaries in punctuation must remain, at i, p. 125, st. 12, the removal of the colon after 'takes' seems called for; p. 233, st. 2, the comma should immediately follow 'he' instead of 'not'; p. 244, st. 10, a bracket-mark should be inserted before 'Truth'; and at ii, p. 103, st. 15, the comma after 'money's' should come out: of the emendations suggested by the editor it seems at least questionable whether that at i, p. 185, st. 16, 'try me' should not be 'try. thee'; at p. 221, st. 6, 'ship' seems more likely than 'flit'; and p. 270, st. 1, 'Lass's' than 'lassie's': the text readings 'cured' at ii, p. 5, st. 5, and 'friend' at p. 120, st. 13, may well be correct and 'Doe,' i.e., 'that doe,' p. 72, st. 4, almost certainly is. In several cases he has suggested that words should be made plural to agree with those with which they are rhymed, but it would be easy to produce from ballads a sufficient number of such discrepancies to demonstrate that they are due not to the printer but the slovenly and uneducated author.

Although the editor himself makes no reference to the matter, the publishers' note upon the wrappers promises, one assumes at the end of the sixth and last volume, to appear 'later,' various indexes, and among them an index of words. It is perhaps unavoidable that we should be subjected to the inconvenience of having to wait till 'later' for an

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explanation of various matters which one is afraid will strike the general reader, whom it is hoped to attract, as not being quite obvious, but it is to be desired that Mr Rollins may see his way to provide something rather fuller than the indexes in his other ballad-books. It seems odd to find the name 'Bullen, A. H.' in what in one of them is described as a 'Glossarial Index,' and unlikely that even Americans are in need of an explanation of the word which immediately follows it. Meanwhile it is respectfully suggested that these, among other things, call for ex- planation or illustration: 'flayes' i, p. 5, 'excurse p. 6,' Ben-rowles' p. 44, 'Tawers' p. 52, 'Laymen' p. 53, Concluders, with Scanners' p. 57, 'boulted' p. 81, 'bushes' p. 93, 'weed' p. 138, 'winkhorne' p. 145, 'Garden-ally' p. 153, 'Saint Katharns' p. 154, 'giue the squeake' p. 160, 'rigge' ibid., 'tricke and trime' ibid., 'sith, or sob' p. 171, 'a cry all' p. 174, 'carnall' p. 185, 'sheere' p. 203, 'hogged' p. 204, 'pictures' p. 211, 'descry' p. 219 (see also ii, p. 214). 'considerence' (? 'confidence') p. 220, 'stauers' p. 234, 'Doublets' p. 238, 'Rimer' p. 239 (see also ii, p. 46), 'new Bridewell' p. 240, 'peazing' p. 248, 'high-lawyer' p. 253, 'Reddockes' p. 260, 'Pidging-holes' p. 265 (see also ii, p. 121), 'tran- spire' ii, p. 4, 'kisse the post' p. 32, 'Cobs' ibid., 'Retriefe' p. 42, 'sniffed' p. 44, 'spoule' p. 46, 'coring' p. 69 (not a misprint), 'squib' p. 74, 'Dutch in Kent street' p. 92, 'in feare' p. 95, 'procolle' p. 96, 'nody new cut and penieth, wid ruff' p. 98. 'Cauilleere' p. 121, 'Races in Hide Parke' p. 149, 'Slidethrifth' (i.e., 'Slide-thrift,' which Mr Rollins does not apparently recognise as a variant of 'shove-groat'), 'Kator and Size' ibid., 'dodkin' p. 178, 'foyled' p. 181, 'inlure' p. 195.

Some detached comments here and there might possibly mislead a casual reader as to the editor's opinion of the literary quality of his subject-matter; in the Preface some of the verses are described as 'pretty,' 'tuneful,' 'musical' or 'melodious,' and more than once Mr Rollins allows himself to speak of them as 'poetry,' although in A Pepy- sian Garland he had said that to judge ballads as such would be unfair, that the great Elizabethans did not dream of so judging them, and that he would be a bold man who would. It is not by their high quality as literature but by their quaintness, their simplicity and their pictures of a world remote from ours that these ballads must attract the general reader, but some who may hope in their company to escape from the devastating effects of jazz-bands, 'movies' and 'talkies' may perhaps be disconcerted to learn that even Mr Rollins sees in the scene of one of them a model that might be used for 'present-day moving-picture Comedies,' and they are hardly likely to be completely reassured by his opinion that 'the balladists often had a lyric gift that made their ditties superior to the average American ragtime songs.' These observations, both of the editor and the writer, have reference, of course, to the pro- fessional balladists, such as Martin Parker, whose title to be considered a poet excited the scorn of Samuel Sheppard so long ago as 1646, when he inserted the initials M. P. by way of contemptuous comment in the margin of his Times Display'd. Here, as was frequently the case in the Miscellanies of the seventeenth century, some pieces by writers of

200 Reviews

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recognised though not of the first rank appear side by side with those of obscure or unknown authors, and Basse, Barnfield, Dyer and Wither are represented by well-known poems upon which no comment need be made, except perhaps in the case of Wither's Shall I wasting in despair, in the note upon which Mr Rollins refers to and quotes, not quite accu- rately, two stanzas from the Answer, which has been attributed to Ben Jonson and which he says appeared in A Description of Love, 1625: this issue is of the fifth edition, and though the date of the first has not, so far as is generally known, been ascertained, the book was entered in the Stationers Register, June 14, 1618, and the second edition appeared in 1620.

As is well known ballads of this period (1535-1640) were usually headed by one or more woodcuts of more or, oftener, less relevance to their subjects. Some of those appearing with the ballads here reprinted are reproduced, and having regard to the fact that the same adornments were again and again repeated in different situations, it is perhaps asking too much, however strong one's passion for completeness, to expect to see them all. It would have been pleasant however to have had a little history of some of the blocks, e.g., that of part of the portrait of Prince Henry apparently copied from Hole's copper-plate, an impression of which ought to be in Drayton's Polyolbion, and of the figure (i, p. 191) which represented Gabriel Harvey in Have vith you to Saffron Walden, 1596.

A word ought to be said as to the beauty of these two volumes which the editor very properly recognises; paper, type and binding are alike admirable, and the press-work is far in advance of anything which the present writer has met with in books of a similar character of American origin. It is the more regrettable to find that Mr Rollins speaks of the expense of production, no doubt considerable, having been undertaken with no possibility of material gain. It would be deplorable indeed if those who have made themselves responsible for the cost of putting such material within reach of students and the general public were to fail to meet with that encouragemient which their unselfish enterprise in this undertaking most thoroughly deserves.

G. THORN-DRURY. LONDON.

Marlowe and his Circle. A Biographical Survey by FREDERICK S. BOAS. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1929. 159 pp. 7s. 6d.

This book, to say the least of it, is as useful as it is opportune. Properly to understand how far the study of Marlowe's life has advanced in the last quarter-century, both in discovery of fact and in scientific inter- pretation, one need but set Dr Boas's Marlowve and his Circle beside Mr Ingram's Marlowe and his Associates (1904). The scholar of to-day not only has many more facts to deal with, but his expert knowledge of Elizabethan life makes realism and shrewd caution replace the romance and the luxuriant flowering of the 'probably,' the 'doubtless,'

recognised though not of the first rank appear side by side with those of obscure or unknown authors, and Basse, Barnfield, Dyer and Wither are represented by well-known poems upon which no comment need be made, except perhaps in the case of Wither's Shall I wasting in despair, in the note upon which Mr Rollins refers to and quotes, not quite accu- rately, two stanzas from the Answer, which has been attributed to Ben Jonson and which he says appeared in A Description of Love, 1625: this issue is of the fifth edition, and though the date of the first has not, so far as is generally known, been ascertained, the book was entered in the Stationers Register, June 14, 1618, and the second edition appeared in 1620.

As is well known ballads of this period (1535-1640) were usually headed by one or more woodcuts of more or, oftener, less relevance to their subjects. Some of those appearing with the ballads here reprinted are reproduced, and having regard to the fact that the same adornments were again and again repeated in different situations, it is perhaps asking too much, however strong one's passion for completeness, to expect to see them all. It would have been pleasant however to have had a little history of some of the blocks, e.g., that of part of the portrait of Prince Henry apparently copied from Hole's copper-plate, an impression of which ought to be in Drayton's Polyolbion, and of the figure (i, p. 191) which represented Gabriel Harvey in Have vith you to Saffron Walden, 1596.

A word ought to be said as to the beauty of these two volumes which the editor very properly recognises; paper, type and binding are alike admirable, and the press-work is far in advance of anything which the present writer has met with in books of a similar character of American origin. It is the more regrettable to find that Mr Rollins speaks of the expense of production, no doubt considerable, having been undertaken with no possibility of material gain. It would be deplorable indeed if those who have made themselves responsible for the cost of putting such material within reach of students and the general public were to fail to meet with that encouragemient which their unselfish enterprise in this undertaking most thoroughly deserves.

G. THORN-DRURY. LONDON.

Marlowe and his Circle. A Biographical Survey by FREDERICK S. BOAS. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1929. 159 pp. 7s. 6d.

This book, to say the least of it, is as useful as it is opportune. Properly to understand how far the study of Marlowe's life has advanced in the last quarter-century, both in discovery of fact and in scientific inter- pretation, one need but set Dr Boas's Marlowve and his Circle beside Mr Ingram's Marlowe and his Associates (1904). The scholar of to-day not only has many more facts to deal with, but his expert knowledge of Elizabethan life makes realism and shrewd caution replace the romance and the luxuriant flowering of the 'probably,' the 'doubtless,'

Reviews Reviews 201 201

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