PREFACE
and something of what Sir Walter Scott meant by "elegance of sentiment." It seems to be certain that the ballads of Swinburne which we print in this collection, were regarded by Rossetti, and probably by Morris also, as too rough and bare for publication, and that only such as possessed a pre-Raphaelite colouring or costume were permitted to pass the ordeal. But Swinburne persisted in his private conviction that a kind of poetry much closer to the old rievers' and freebooters' loosely-jointed and rambling folk-poems might be attempted, and he carefully preserved the ballads which we have the privilege of publishing to-day. There can be little doubt that in such rugged pieces as "The Worm of Spindlestonheugh" and "Duriesdyke," the aboriginal Northumbrian accent is more closely reproduced than in any other "imitation" border ballad.
With regard to Swinburne's unequalled skill in reproducing the texture of style, a craft of which he has left a wide range of examples, Mr. Sydney C. Cockerell tells me that William Morris, when he was dying, started making a selection of border ballads, which he declared were the finest poems in the English language, to be printed at the Kelmscott Press. The difficulties of gaps and various readings were too great for Morris in his enfeebled condition, and
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