Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and Other Pieces (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and Other Pieces

The first of these that deserved notice was the Pepysian library at Magdalen College, Cambridge. Its founder, Sam. Pepys, * Esq., Secretary of the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. And James II., had made a large collection of ancient English ballads, near two thousand in number, which he has left pasted in five volumes in folio; besides Gar lands and other smaller miscellanies. This collection, he tells us, was begun by Mr. Selden; improved by the addition of many pieces elder thereto in time; and the whole continued down to the year 1700 when the form peculiar till then thereto, viz. Of the black letter with pictures, seems (for cheap ness sake) wholly laid aside for that of the white letter without pictures.

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