Excerpt from Littell's Living Age: July, 1855 It must not avail him, that he has but quoted from the ballad of Chevy Chase. It is the most deformed stanza of the modern deformed ver sion which was composed in the eclipse of heart and taste, on the restoration of the Stuarts; and if such verses could then pass for serious poetry, they have ceased to sound in any ear as other than a burlesque; the associations which they arouse are only absurd, and they could only have continued to ring, in his mem ory through their ludicrous doggerel. When to these Offences of the Society we add, that in the long labored appendices and introductions, which fill up valuable space, which increase the expense of the edition, and into reading which many readers are, no doubt, betrayed, we have found nothing which assists the understanding of the stories which they are supposed to illustrate, when we have found what is most uncommon passed, without no tice, and what is most trite and familiar en cumbered with comment; we have unpacked our hearts of the bitterness which these vol umes have aroused in us, and can now take our leave of them and go on with our own more grateful subject. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.