Publications (1853)

Seitenzahl:

356

Gewicht:

522 g

Erschienen bei:

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Kurzbeschreibung

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Thus endes here Orfeo the kyng, God graunte us all hys blyssing ! And all that this wyll here or rede, God foregyff them ther mysded, To the blysse of hevyn that thei may come, And ever more therin to woune ! And that it may so be, Prey we all fore charyte"! Explicet Orfew. III. THOMAS AND THE FAIRY QUEEN. The connexion between the purgatory and paradise of the monks, and the fairy-lands of the people, observes Mr. Wright, is perhaps nowhere so fully exhibited as in the following ballad, which is besides no unfavourable specimen of early poetry. There is something exceedingly graceful in the commencement of it, and a taste displayed which we vainly look for in most contemporary pieces of the kind; and the wild and fanciful tale on which the prophecies are engrafted impart interest to the whole composition. Thomas of Erceldoune, whose adventures with the fairy queen are here narrated, was a legendary character, to whom were ascribed several prophecies, which passed for a long time under his name, similar to those of Merlin. Sir W. Scott and others have endeavoured to prove that the English romance of Tristem was written by Thomas of Erceldoune; but the translator merely alludes to him at the commencement in a fanciful manner, and I think it, with Mr. Wright, most probable that, finding the name Thomas in the French original, and not understanding it, he was induced to take a character, then so famous, to add some popularity to the subject. The language both of Sir Tristem and the followingpiece is certainly English; and, indeed, the whole of the Auchiuleck MS. was doubtlessly written in England. Five early MS. copies of the following ballad exist in our public libraries, and there are probably others. We have taken the earliest and best of these f...

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Mehr von:  Shakespeare Society (Great Britain), Cambridge Scholars Publishing