We pass with pleasure from this medley of balderdash and drivel to the more sober tome of Mr Collier, because we know that whatever he gives us will at least have the merit of being genuine. Out of the thousand black-letter broadsides which constitute the Roxburghe collection, the editor has selected upwards of fifty, and thus states the object of their publication:--"The main purpose of the ensuing collection is to show, in their most genuine state, the character and quality of productions written expressly for the amusement of the lower orders, in the reign of Elizabeth, James, and Charles. Our volume consists of such ordinary materials as formed the stock of the English ballad-singer, during a period not far short of a century. Many traces will be found in them of the modes in which they were rendered acceptable to the crowd, when sung in our most frequented thoroughfares." We need hardly say that the volume is got up with great care; and it will doubtless be an acceptable addition to the libraries of our literary epicures: nevertheless, we are free to confess that we were somewhat disappointed with its contents. We did not, it is true, expect to find, in this quarto, any new historical, or even romantic ballads of the first or highest class. The literature of Elizabeth and James is remarkably sterile in productions of this nature; and the few which are intrinsically excellent have long since become familiar and have lost the gloss of novelty. But the didactic ballad and the canzonet were then extensively practised, and, with the fugitive poetry of Peele, Marlowe, Greene, and Lodge in our recollection, we had hoped to recover some valuable specimens of their more obscure contemporaries. In the voluminous records of the Elizabethan era, we find mention of many poets who enjoyed a reasonable celebrity at the time, but whose works, devoid of buoyancy, have since settled into oblivion. We find the names of some of these persons, such as Thomas Churchyard, who is spoken of in "The Return from Parnassus," attached to poems in Mr Collier's collection; but we are compelled on perusal to acknowledge that there is much justice in the critical decrees of time, and that very little which is at all worthy of preservation has been silently permitted to perish. In an aesthetical point of view, therefore, we cannot expect to derive much advantage from this reprint of the Roxburghe broadsides. But the antiquary, who has a natural taste for the cast-off raiment of the world, will doubtless fasten upon the volume; and the critical commentator may glean from it some scraps of obsolete information. To them accordingly we leave it, and pass into the glades of Sherwood.