Bradford reporter. [volume] (Towanda, Pa.) 1844-1884, 1855-02-24

OF Iher power III the street and not upon the
shelf.
1t is the way of saying things that is learn
ed by commerce with men, and the best wri-
ters have mixed mnch with the world 1t is
there only that the language of feeling can be
acquired
The ballads are models of narrative poetry.
They are not concerned with the utterance of
thought, but only of sentiment or passion, and
1t is as illustrating poetic diction that | shall
chiefly cite them. If they moraze it is always
by picture and not by preachment. What dis
course OF Inconsistency has the force and biting
pathoS of this grim old song of the iva Cor
bies ~
As | was walking all alone,
heard twa corbes making moan,
The one unto the other did say,
Where shall we gang and dine to-day?
In beyond that old turf dyke,
w0t there lies a new-sain knight
And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk and his hound and his lady fair.
His hound is to the hunting gone,
His hawk to fetch the wildfowl hame,
His ladys taen anither mate
Sac may make dinner sweet,
You'll sit upon his white neck bone
And I'll pick out his bonny blue cen;
With lock of his golden hair
Wen thatch nest when it grows bare.
Many u for him makes moan
But sail ken where he is gone;
Der his white bones when they grow bare
The wind shall blow forevermare.
Observe, the wind simply blows That is
enough-but a modern poet would have sought
to intensity by making the wind moan, or shrek,
or sob, or something of the kind
TNTr 7 ouyolI hove ,,uo+o1 , I,l n,
story of child-murder. 1t begins:
Fair lady Anne safe in her bower
Down by the greenwood side,
And the flowers did spring, and the birds did sing
Twas the pleasant Mayday tide,l
The ballad singers had all the advantage of
that spur of the moment which the excitement
of speaking gives, and they also received the
magnetism which came from the sympathy of
their hearers They knew what told, for they
had their hand upon the living pulse of feeling
There was no time to palayer, they must come
to the point.
The Percy out of Northumberland
And a vow TO God made he
That he would hunt in the mountains
OF Cheviot within days three,
In the maugre of doughty Douglas
And all that ever with him be.
They plunge into deep water at once. And
there is never any filling up. The transitions
are abrupt. You canno more foretell the swift
wheel of the feeling than that of falcon, and
the phrases fash forth sharp-edged and deadly
like sword drawn i'll wrath. The passions
speak out sayagcly and without any delicacies
of circumlocution.
1t is worth thinking of whether the press
!, L Ill q Il
tuition be not weakening the fibre and damag-
ing the sincerity of our English, and our think
ing quite as fast as it difflses intelligence Con-
slider the meaning Of Xpression-something
wrung from us by the grip of thought or pas
sion whether we will or no. But the editor is
quite as often compelled to write that he may
fill an empty column, as that he may relieve an
oyertilled brain. And in a country like ours,
where newspapers are the only reading Of the
mass Of the people there is danger Of general
contentedness in common place. For we al
ways become what we habitually read. We
let our newspapers think for US argue for U.S.
criticisc for us, remember for us, do every thing
for Us, in short that will save us from the mis-
fortune of being 0urseires And so, instead of
men and women we find ourselves in world
inhabited bv inCarnated leaders or paragraphs,
or items of this or. that Journal We are apt
to wonder at the scholarship of the men of two
centuries ago. They scholars because they
did not read so much as we do. We spend
more time over print than they did, but instead
of communing with the choice thought of choice
spirits, and inScnsbly acquiring the grand man
ner of that supreme society, we diligently in
form ourselves of such facts as that fine horse
belonging to Mr. Smith ran away on Wednes-
day, and that son of Mr. Brown fell into the
canal on Thursday, or that gravel-bank cav
ed in and buried alive Patrick OCallahan on
Friday. And it is our own Iault and not that
of the editor For 1Ce make the newspapers,
and the editor would be glad to give us better
| stuff if we did not demaM such as this.
Another evil Of this state Of things is the
watering or milk and watering of our English
Writing to which there is no higher compelling
destiny than the coming of the printers devi
must end in this at last The paragraphs
must make bis paragraph, and the longer he
makes it, the better for him and worse for US
| The virtue of words becomes wholly a matter
of length. Accordingly we have now no long
er any fires, but disastrous confiagrations; |;
nobody dies, but deceases" or demiseS;" mel
do not fall from houses, but are precipitateC
from mansions or editices; convict is not hang
| ed, but suffers the extreme penalty Of the OF
Tended law, &c.
The old ballad makers lived in better day
They did not hear of so many events that nom
of them made any impression. They did no
live as we do in world that seems great ca
of Dionysius, where, if scandal is whispered
in Pekin we hear Of it in New-York. The min
strels had no metaphysical bees in their bon
nets. They did not speculate about this worl'
or the next. They had not made the grea