[445] Lord Lovelace broke down the bridges about Oxford, at the beginning of the Revolution. See on this subject a Ballad in Smith's Poems, p. 102. London, 1713.
[446] It has been suggested by an ingenious correspondent that this was a popular subject at that time:--
Not carted bawd, or Dan de Foe, In wooden ruff ere bluster'd so.
[447] [perhaps a contraction of windhover, a kind of hawk.]
[448] See the account of Rolricht Stones, in Dr. Plott's _Hist. of_ _Oxfordshire_.
[449] Braburn, a gentleman commoner of Lincoln college, gave a silver arrow to be shot for by the archers of the university of Oxford.
[451] A one-eyed fellow, who pretended to make fiddles, as well as play on them; well known at that time in Oxford.
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 124, 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.
In a late publication, intitled, _The Friends_, &c. Lond. 1773, 2 vols. 12mo. (in the first volume, p. 71) 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.
[This ballad, more generally known as _William and Margaret_, is supposed to have been printed for the first time in Aaron Hill's _Plain Dealer_ (No. 36, July 24, 1724), when the author was a very young man. Hill introduced it to the reader as the work of an old poet, and wrote, "I am sorry I am not able to acquaint my readers with his name to whom we owe this melancholy piece of finished poetry under the humble title of a ballad." In the following month the editor announced that "he had discovered the author to be still alive." The verses were probably written in 1723, in the August of which year Mallet left Scotland, for Allan Ramsay, in his _Stanzas to Mr. David Mallock on his departure from Scotland_, alludes to them:--
