Note 83 — CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS: (continued 3)
Reading edition
A long list of Elderton’s popular rhymes is given by Ritson in his “Bibliographia Poetica.” One of them, on the “King of Scots and Andrew Browne,” is published in Percy’s “Reliques,” who speaks of him as “a facetious fuddling companion, whose tippling and whose rhymes rendered him famous among his contemporaries.” Ritson is more condensed and less civil in his analysis; he simply describes him as “a ballad-maker by profession, and drunkard by habit.”—Ed.