PREFACE.

THE

HE following poems are selected from a voluminous miscellany compiled by one Ballantine in 1568, and now belonging to the Earl of Hyndford.

This is the MS. which the editor of the Evergreen used: but he has omitted some stanzas, and added others; has modernized the versification, and varied the ancient manner of spelling. Hence, they who look in the Evergreen for the state of language and poetry among us during the sixteenth century, will be misled, or disap-. pointed.

The many and obvious inaccuracies of the Evergreen, suggested the idea of this new collection. In it the MS. has been fairly copied; no liberties in amending or interpolating have been taken: The reader will find the language, versification, and spelling, in the same state as they were in 1568.

It may be proper to observe, that the letter which the MS. expresses by the character Z, is here expressed by the character Y. Indeed this is not so much an innovation in spelling, as a correction of a general error into which printers have fallen, by using Z instead of the Y