Such passages do not occur but in ballads that are
throughout on the level of the highest of their kind. "None but my
foe to be my guide" so distinguishes Helen of Kirconnell; the
exquisite stanza about the hats of birk, The Wife of Usher's Well;
its varied refrain, The Dowie Dens of Yarrow; the stanza spoken by
Margaret asking for room in the grave, Sweet William and Margaret;
and a number of passages, Sir Patrick Spens, such as that
beginning, "I saw the new moon late yestreen," the stanza beginning
"O laith, laith were our gude Scots lords," and almost all the
stanzas following. A Lyke Wake Dirge is of surpassing quality
throughout. I am sorry to have no room for Jamieson's version of
Fair Annie, for Edom o' Gordon, for The Daemon Lover, for Edward,
Edward, and for the Scottish edition of The Battle of Otterbourne.
MRS. ANNE KILLIGREW
This most majestic ode--one of the few greatest of its kind--is a
model of noble rhythm and especially of cadence. To print it whole
would be impossible, and one of the very few excisions in this book
is made in the midst of it. Dryden, so adult and so far from
simplicity, bears himself like a child who, having said something
fine, caps it with something foolish. The suppressed part of the
ode is silly with a silliness which Dryden's age chose to dodder in
when it would.
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