PREFACE
Minstrelsy of 1802-3, an examination of which will show that it contains, then published for the first time, all the ballads which most powerfully affected Swinburne's imagination. "Kinmont Willie," "The Lament of the Border Widow," "Johnnie of Braidislee," and a dozen others which peculiarly attracted Swinburne were unknown until Scott printed them in the Border Minstrelsy.
But that invaluable miscellany also contained a large number of "Imitations,"' towards which Scott was only a little less lenient than had been Percy and the other editors of the eighteenth century. Both Leyden and Scott, who did so much to enlarge and to ensure our knowledge of ballad literature, continued to believe the true border volkslied to be a thing too rough for direct imitation. Modern ballads were defined by Sir Walter Scott as "supposed capable of uniting the vigorous numbers and wild fiction, which occasionally charm us in the ancient ballad, with a greater equality of versification, and elegance of sentiment, than we can expect to find in the works of a rude age." The conviction that the original ballads were barbarous productions, without art or skill of any kind, but agreeable only when polished and improved, went so far and so late that even in 1859 Robert Chambers, a very thoughtful and practised critic
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