The ballad to which I refer has for title _The Royal Courtly Garland, or Joy after Sorrow_: it is in ordinary type, and was "Printed and sold in Aldermary Churchyard, London." It has no date, and in appearance does not look older than from perhaps, 1690 to 1720; it may even be more recent, as at that period it is not easy to form a correct opinion either from typography or orthography: black-letter has a distinguishing character at various periods, so as to enable a judgment to be formed within, perhaps, ten years, as regards an undated production: but such is not the case with Roman type, or white-letter. What I suspect, however, is that this ballad is considerably older, and that my copy is only a comparatively modern reprint with some alterations; it requires no proof, at this time of day, to show that it was the constant habit of our old publishers of ephemeral literature to reprint ballads without the slightest notice that they had ever appeared before. This, in fact, is the point on which I want information, as to _The Royal Courtly Garland, or Joy after Sorrow_. Can any of your correspondents refer me to an older copy, or do they know of the existence of one which belongs to a later period? I cannot be ignorant of DR. RIMBAULT'S learning on such matters, and I make my appeal especially to him. It is very possible that it may bear a different title in other copies, and for the sake of identification I will furnish a few extracts from the various "parts" (no fewer than six) into which the ballad is divided; observing that they fill a closely printed broadside, and that the production is entirely different from Jordan's versification of the _Winter's Tale_, under the title of _The Jealous Duke and the injured Duchess_, which came out in his _Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie_, 8vo. 1664. It is singular that two ballads, hitherto wholly unknown, should have been written upon the same incidents of the same drama, although we are yet without evidence that Jordan's effusion was ever published as a broadside. Not a single name is given to any of the persons in my _Royal Courtly Garland_, but the places of action are reversed exactly in the same way as in Greene's novel of _Pandosto_, where what Shakspeare represents as passing in Sicily occurs in Bohemia, and _vice versa_; moreover, the error of representing Bohemia as a maritime country belongs to my ballad, as well as to the novelist and the dramatist. The King of Bohemia, jealous of an "outlandish prince," who he suspected had intrigued with his queen, employs his cup-bearer to poison the prince, who is informed by the cup-bearer of the design against his life. "For fear of the king the prince dare not stay: The wind being fair, he sailed away, Saying, I will escape from his blood-thirsty hand By steering away to my native land."