vi PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. Poetry of action and passion are popular where action, and passion, and faith, and noble sentiments are still common. Poetry of reflection succeed them in a lower state of public feeling. It was a great achievement of Wordsworth te wed philosophy to the ballad; and to put a high moral purpose and large intellectual development into his ballad stories; but the ages that required only the simple passion and truth were ages of greater faith, worth, and heroism. Let us rejoice if we have not yet passed out of them In justice to our periodical literature, I ought to have stated in the Introduction, that the ballads by Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Murray were taken from the University Magazine; those by Mr. Mangan from the Irish Penny Journal; the "Fate of the Forties," by Mr. H. G. Curran, "My Connor," and the "Woods of Kylinoe," from the Citizen; Mr. Carleton's "Sir Turlough” from the Dublin Literary Gazette, and the ballads of Mr Davis, Mr. Walsh, Mr. Keegan, Mr. Mac Carthy, and Mr. Lane, as well as some of the anonymous ones, from the Nation. Rathmines, August, 26, 1845. |