Add MS 38813

COPIES of Ballads, chiefly in the hand of John Payne Collier. A few (ff. 1-12 b) are taken from MSS. (the first four are printed in Halliwell's Wit and Science, Shakespeare Soc., 1848), three (ff. 13-16 b) from oral sources, and the majority from printed materials of the 16th and l7th centt. Collier himself printed ff. 17-35 b in A Book of Roxburghe Ballads (1847) and ff. 39-40 in Twenty-five old Ballads (1869). "The Dutchesse of Suffolkes Calamitie" (f. 48) is printed in his edition of Strange Histories (Perey Soc., 1841), and a version of "The fetching home of May" (f. 63) under another title in his reprint (1870) of An Antidole against Melancholy, p. 26. In the transcript of "Daintie come thou to me," f. 39, the printed original of which is in the Roxburghe Collection, Collier has made various alterations, and these are mostly followed in his printed version in Twenty-five Old Ballads. Similar alterations have been made in "The Tragical History of King Lear," f. 41 (original also in the Roxburghe Collection). At f. 96 are "Notes of Ballads in . . . the Roxburghe Collection [in the British Museum]," and at f. 115 "[Notes of] Ballads in the Pepys Collection [in Magdalene College, Cambridge] (Selected from a Catalogue of vol. i by Sir F. Madden)." At the end of the volume, f. 139, are some miscellaneous extracts (not entries of books) from the Stationers' Company's Registers, relating to the last half of the 16th cent. In 1848-1849 Collier published for the Shakespeare Society two volumes of extracts from the Stationers' Registers of works entered for publication between 1557 and 1587. For another collection of Ballads made by Collier see Add. MS. 32381 (see also 32380). Paper; ff.151. Folio. XIX cent.