John Grubb, the facetious writer of the foregoing song, makes a distinguished figure among the Oxford wits so humorously enumerated in the following distich:

Alma novem genuit célebres Rhedycina poetas Bub, Stubb, Grubb, Crabb, Trap, Young, Carey, Tickel, Evans.

These were Bub Dodington (the late Lord Me!combe,) Dr. Stubbes, our poet Grubb, Mr. Crabb, Dr. Trapp, the poetry-professor, Dr. Edw. Young, the author of Night-Thoughts, Walter Carey,

Thomas Tickel, Esq. and Dr. Evans the epigrammatist.

As for our poet Grubb, all that we can learn further of him, is contained in a few extracts from the University Register, and from bis epitaph. It appears from the former that he was matriculated in 1667, being the son of John Grubb, de Acton Burnel in comitatu Salop. pauperis." He took his degree of Bachelor of Arts, June 28, 1671: and became Master of Arts, June 28, 1675. He was appointed Head Master of the Grammar School at Christ Church; and afterwards chosen into the same employment at Gloucester, where he died in 1697, as a pears from his monument in the church of St. Mary de Crypt in Gloucester, which is inscribed with the following epitaph:

H. S. E.

JOHANNES GRUBB, A.M.

Natus apud Acton Burnel in agro Salopiensi Anno Dom. 1645.

Cujus variam in linguis notitiam, et felicem erudiendis pueris industriam, gratà adhuc memoria testatur Oxonium. Ibi enim Ædi Christi initiatus, artes excoluit:

Pueros ad easdem mox excolendas
accuratè formavit:

Huc demum

unanimi omnium consensu accitus,
eandem suscepit provinciam,
quam feliciter adeo absolvit,
ut nihil optandum si

nisi ut diutius nobis interfuisset?
Fuit enim

propter festivam ingenii suavitatem, simplicem morum candorem, et præcipuam erga cognatos benevolentiani omnibus desideratissimus, Obiit 2do die Aprilis, Anno D'ni, 1697, Etatis suæ 51.

This ballad, which appeared in some of the public newspapers in or before the year 1724, came from the pen of David Mallet, Esq. who in the edition of his poems, 3 vols. 1759, informs us that the plan was suggested by the four verses quoted above in page 225, which he supposed to be the beginning of some ballad now lost.

"These lines, says he, naked of ornament and simple as they are, struck my fancy; and bringing fresh into my mind an unhappy adventure much talked of formerly, gave birth to the following poem, which was written many years ago."

The two introductory lines (and one or two others elsewhere) had originally more of the ballad simplicity, viz.

"When all was wrapt in dark midnight,
And all were fast asleep," &c.

The name of St. George's sword.

Et love had, like the canker-worm,

Consum'd her early prime:

The rose grew pale, and left her cheek;

She dy'd before her time.

"Awake!" she cry'd, thy true love calls, Come from her midnight grave;

Now let thy pity hear the maid

Thy love refus'd to save.

"This is the dark and dreary hour

When injur'd ghosts complain;

Now yawning graves give up their dead,
To haunt the faithless swain.

"Bethink thee, William, of thy fault,
Thy pledge and broken oath:

And give me back my maiden vow,
And give me back my troth.

"Why did you promise love to me,
And not that promise keep?

Why did you swear mine eyes were bright, Yet leave those eyes to weep?

"How could you say my face was fair,
And yet that face forsake?

How could you win my virgin heart,
Yet leave that heart to break?

"Why did you say my lip was sweet,
And made the scarlet pale?

And why did I, young witless maid
Believe the flattering tale?

"That face, alas! no more is fair;

These lips no longer red:

Dark are my eyes, now clos'd in death,
And every charm is fled.

35

330

And raving left his bed.

He hyed him to the fatal place Where Margaret's body lay:

60

And stretch'd him on the grass-green turf, That wrapt her breathless clay:

35

And thrice he call'd on Margaret's name, And thrice he wept full sore:

65

40

45

Then laid his cheek to her cold grave,
And word spake never more.

In a late publication, intitled "The Friends, &c." Lond. 1773, 2 vols. 12mo, (in the first volume) is inserted a copy of the foregoing ballad, with very great variations, which the Editor of that work contends was the original; and that Mallet adopted it for his own, and altered it, as here given.-But the superior beauty and simplicity of the present copy gives it so much more the air of an original, that it will rather be believed that some transcriber altered it from Mallet's, and adapted the lines to his own taste; than which nothing is more common in popular songs and ballads

-was written by Thomas Tickell, Esq. the celebrated friend of Mr. Addison, and Editor of his works. He was the son of a Clergyman in the North of England; had his education at Queen's College, Oxon; was under-secretary to Mr. Addison and Mr. Craggs, when successively secretaries of state; and was lastly (in June 1724) appointed secretary to the Lords Justices in Ireland, which place he held till his death in 1740. He acquired Mr. Addison's patronage by a poem in praise of the opera of Rosamond, written while he was at the University.

It is a tradition in Ireland, that this song was written at Castletown, in the county of Kildare, at the request of the then Mrs. Conolly-probably on some event recent in that neighbourhood.

OF Leinster, fam'd for maidens fair,
Bright Lucy was the grace;

Nor e'er did Liffy's limpid stream

Reflect so fair a face.

Till luckless love and pining care
Impair'd her rosy hue,

Her coral lip, and damask cheek,
And eyes of glossy blue.

5

Mr. Warton, in his ingenious Observations on Spenser, has given his opinion, that the fiction of the "Boy and the Mantle "is taken from an old French piece entitled "Le Court Mantel," quoted by M. de St. Palaye, in his curious "Memoires sur l'ancienne Chevalerie," Paris, 1759, 2 tom. 12mo; who tells us the story resembles that of Ariosto's inchanted cup. 'Tis possible our English poet may have taken the hint of this subject from that old French romance; but he does not appear to have copied it in the manner of execution to which (if one may judge from the specimen given in the Memoires) that of the Ballad does not bear the least resemblance. After all, 'tis most likely that all the old stories concerning King Arthur are originally of British growth, and that what the French and other Southern nations have of this kind were at first exported from this island. See Memoires de l'Acad. des. Inscrip. tom. xx. p. 352.

:

In the "Fabliaux ou Contes," 1781, 5 tom. 12mo, of M. Le Grand (tom. I. p. 54), is printed a modern Version of the Old Tale Le Court Mantel, under a new title, Le Manteau maltaillé, which contains the story of this Ballad much enlarged, so far as regards the Mantle, but without any mention of the Knife or the Horn.

IN Carleile dwelt King Arthur,

A prince of passing might;

And there maintain'd his table round,
Beset with many a knight.

And there he kept his Christmas

With mirth and princely cheare, When, lo! a straunge and cunning boy Before him did appeare.

A kirtle and a mantle
This boy had him upon,
With brooches, rings, and owches,
Full daintily bedone.

He had a sarke of silk

About his middle meet; And thus, with seemely curtesy, He did King Arthur greet.

"God speed thee, brave King Arthur,
Thus feasting in thy bowre;
And Guenever thy goodly queen,
That fair and peerlesse flowre.

"Ye gallant lords, and lordings,
I wish you all take heed,
Lest, what you deem a blooming 10se
Should prove a cankred weed."

Then straitway from his bosome
A little wand he drew;
And with it eke a mantle

Of wondrous shape and hew.

170

"All frolick light and wanton

She hath her carriage borne:

And given thee for a kingly crown To wear a cuckold's horne."

The Rev. Evan Evans, editor of the Specimens of Welsh Poetry, 4to, affirmed that the story of the "Boy and the Mantle," is taken from what is related in some of the old Welsh MSS, of Tegan Earfron, one of King Arthur's mistresses. She is said to have possessed a mantle that would not fit any immodest or incontinent woman; this (which the old writers say, was reckoned among the curiosities of Britain) is frequently alluded, to by the old Welsh Bards.

CARLEILE, SO often mentioned in the Ballads of King Arthur, the editor once thought might probably be a corruption of CAER-LEON, an ancient British eity on the river Uske, in Monmouthshire, which was one of the places of King Arthurs chief residence; but he is now convinced that it is no other than Carlisle, in Cumberland; the old English Minstrels, being most of them Northern men, naturally represented the Hero of Romance as residing in the North and many of the places mentioned in the Old Ballads are still to be found there; as TearneWadling, &c.

Near Penrith is still seen a large circle, surrounded by a mound of earth, which retains the name of Arthur's Round Table.

The Second Poem in the third Series, intitled "The Marriage of Sir Gawaine, having been offered to the Reader with large conjectural Supplements and Corrections, the old Fragment itself is here literally, and exactly printed from the Editor's folio MS.

with all its defects, inaccuracies, and errata; that such austere Antiquaries as complain that the ancient copies have not been always rigidly adhered to may see how unfit for publication many of the pieces would have been if all the blunders, corruptions, and