Verse of this quality needs no apology. But of many of the ballads, Dennis' taunt, repeated by Dr. Johnson, is true; they are not merely rude, but weak and creeping in style. Percy knew that the best of them would savor better to the palates of his contemporaries if he dressed them with modern sauces. Yet he must have loved them, himself, in their native simplicity, and it seems almost incredible that he could have spoken as he did about Prior's insipid paraphrase of the "Nut Brown Maid." "If it had no other merit," he says of that most lovely ballad, "than the having afforded the ground-work to Prior's 'Henry and Emma,' this ought to preserve it from oblivion." Prior was a charming writer of epigram, society verse, and the humorous _conte_ in the manner of La Fontaine; but to see how incapable he was of the depth and sweetness of romantic poetry, compare a few lines of the original with the "hubbub of words" in his modernized version, in heroic couplets: "O Lord, what is this worldes blisse That changeth as the mone! The somer's day in lusty May Is derked before the none. I hear you say farewel. Nay, nay, We departe not so soon: Why say ye so? Wheder wyle ye goo? Alas! what have ye done? Alle my welfare to sorrow and care Shulde change if ye were gon; For in my minde, of all mankynde, I love but you alone." Now hear Prior, with his Venus and flames and god of love: "What is our bliss that changeth with the moon, And day of life that darkens ere 'tis noon? What is true passion, if unblest it dies? And where is Emma's joy, if Henry flies? If love, alas! be pain, the pain I bear No thought can figure and no tongue declare. Ne'er faithful woman felt, nor false one feigned The flames which long have in my bosom reigned. The god of love himself inhabits there With all his rage and dread and grief and care, His complement of stores and total war, O cease then coldly to suspect my love And let my deed at least my faith approve. Alas! no youth shall my endearments share Nor day nor night shall interrupt my care; No future story shall with truth upbraid The cold indifference of the nut-brown maid; Nor to hard banishment shall Henry run While careless Emma sleeps on beds of down. View me resolved, where'er thou lead'st, to go: Friend to thy pain and partner of thy woe; For I attest fair Venus and her son That I, of all mankind, will love but thee alone." There could be no more striking object lesson than this of the plethora from which English poetic diction was suffering, and of the sanative value of a book like the "Reliques."