No More Learning

He has, as many of you know, recently given us, in
a series of excellent essays, his opinion on the principles which
should guide us in the choice of books. Against that part of his
treatise which is occupied with specific recommendations of cer-
tain authors I have not a word to say. He has resisted all the
temptations to eccentricity which so easily beset the modern
critic. Every book which he praises deserves his praise, and has
long been praised by the world at large. I do not, indeed, hold
that the verdict of the world is necessarily binding on the indi-
vidual conscience. I admit to the full that there is an enormous
quantity of hollow devotion, of withered orthodoxy divorced
from living faith, in the eternal chorus of praise which goes up
from every literary altar to the memory of the immortal dead.
Nevertheless every critic is bound to recognize, as Mr. Harrison
recognizes, that he must put down to individual peculiarity any
difference he may have with the general verdict of the ages; he
must feel that mankind are not likely to be in a conspiracy of
error as to the kind of literary work which conveys to them the
highest literary enjoyment, and that in such cases at least securus
judicat orbis terrarum.
But it is quite possible to hold that any work recommended
by Mr. Harrison is worth repeated reading, and yet to reject
utterly the theory of study by which these recommendations are
prefaced. For Mr. Harrison is a ruthless censor. His index
expurgatorius includes, so far as I can discover, the whole cata-
logue of the British Museum, with the exception of a small rem-
nant which might easily be contained in about thirty or forty
volumes. The vast remainder he contemplates with feelings
apparently not merely of indifference, but of active aversion. He


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ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
1
surveys the boundless and ever-increasing waste of books with
emotions compounded of disgust and dismay. He is almost
tempted to say in his haste that the invention of printing has
been an evil one for humanity. In the habits of miscellaneous
reading, born of a too easy access to libraries, circulating and
other, he sees many soul-destroying tendencies; and his ideal
reader would appear to be a gentleman who rejects with a lofty
scorn all in history that does not pass for being first-rate in
importance, and all in literature that is not admitted to be first-
rate in quality.
Now, am far from denying that this theory is plausible. Of
all that has been written, it is certain that the professed student
can master but an infinitesimal fraction. Of that fraction the
ordinary reader can master but a very small part. What advice,
then, can be better than to select for study the few masterpieces
that have come down to us, and to treat as non-existent the huge
but undistinguished remainder? We are like travelers passing
hastily through some ancient city; filled with memorials of many
generations and more than one great civilization. Our time is
short. Of what may be seen we can only see at best but a
trifling fragment. Let us then take care that we waste none of
our precious moments upon that which is less than the most
excellent. So preaches Mr. Frederic Harrison; and when a doc-
trine which put thus may seem not only wise but obvious, is
further supported by such assertions that habits of miscellaneous
reading "close the mind to what is spiritually sustaining” by
« stuffing it with what is simply curious,” or that such methods
of study are worse than no habits of study at all because they
gorge
and enfeeble” the mind by “excess in that which cannot
nourish,” I almost feel that in venturing to dissent from it, I may
be attacking not merely the teaching of common sense but the
inspirations of a high morality.
Yet I am convinced that for most persons the views thus laid
down by Mr. Harrison are wrong; and that what he describes,
with characteristic vigor, as "an impotent voracity for desultory
information,” is in reality a most desirable and a not too com-
mon form of mental appetite. I have no sympathy whatever
with the horror he expresses at the incessant accumulation of
fresh books. " I am never tempted to regret that Gutenberg was
born into the world. I care not at all though the “cataract of
printed stuff,” as Mr. Harrison calls it, should flow and still flow
1
i


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on until the catalogues of our libraries should make libraries
themselves. I am prepared, indeed, to express sympathy almost
amounting to approbation for any one who would check all writ-
ing which was not intended for the printer. I pay no tribute of
grateful admiration to those who have oppressed mankind with
the dubious blessing of the penny post. But the ground of the
distinction is plain. We are always obliged to read our letters,
and are sometimes obliged to answer them. But who obliges us
to wade through the piled-up lumber of an ancient library, or to
skim more than we like off the frothy foolishness poured forth
in ceaseless streams by our circulating libraries ? Dead dunces
do not importune us; Grub Street does not ask for a reply by
return of post.
Even their living successors need hurt no
one who possesses the very moderate degree of social courage
required to make the admission that he has not read the last
new novel or the current number of a fashionable magazine.
But this is not the view of Mr. Harrison. To him the posi-
tion of any one having free access to a large library is fraught
with issues so tremendous that, in order adequately to describe
it, he has to seek for parallels in two of the most highly-wrought
episodes in fiction: the Ancient Mariner, becalmed and thirsting
on the tropic ocean; Bunyan's Christian in the crisis of spiritual
conflict. But there is here, surely, some error and some exagger-
ation. Has miscellaneous reading all the dreadful consequences
which Mr. Harrison depicts ? Has it any of them? His declara-
tion about the intellect being "gorged and enfeebled” by the
absorption of too much information, expresses no doubt with great
vigor an analogy, for which there is high authority, between the
human mind and the human stomach; but surely it is an analogy
which may be pressed too far. I have often heard of the indi-
vidual whose excellent natural gifts have been so overloaded with
huge masses of undigested and indigestible learning that they
have had no chance of healthy development. But though I have
often heard of this personage, I have never met him, and I
believe him to be mythical. It is true, no doubt, that many
learned people are dull; but there is no indication whatever that
they are dull because they are learned. True dullness is seldom
acquired; it is a natural grace, the manifestations of which, how-
ever modified by education, remain in substance the same. Fill
a dull man to the brim with knowledge, and he will not become
less dull, as the enthusiasts for education vainly imagine; but


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ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
neither will he become duller, as Mr. Harrison appears to sup-
pose. He will remain in essence what he always has been and
always must have been. But whereas his dullness would, if left
to itself, have been merely vacuous, it may have become, under
cureful cultivation, pretentious and pedantic.
I would further point out to you that while there is no ground
in experience for supposing that a keen interest in those facts
which Mr. Harrison describes as “merely curious” has any
stupefying effect upon the mind, or has any tendency to render
it insensible to the higher things of literature and art, there is
positive evidence that many of those who have most deeply felt
the charm of these higher things have been consumed by that
omnivorous appetite for knowledge which excites Mr. Harrison's
especial indignation. Dr. Johnson, for instance, though deaf to
some of the most delicate harmonies of verse, was without ques-
tion a very great critic. Yet in Dr. Johnson's opinion, literary
history, which is for the most part composed of facts which Mr.
Harrison would regard as insignificant, about authors whom he
would regard as pernicious, was the most delightful of studies.
Again, consider the case of Lord Macaulay. Lord Macaulay
did everything Mr. Harrison says he ought not to have done.
From youth to age he was continuously occupied in "gorging
and enfeebling” his intellect, by the unlimited consumption of
every species of literature, from the masterpieces of the age of
Pericles to the latest rubbish from the circulating library. It is
not told of him that his intellect suffered by the process; and
though it will hardly be claimed for him that he was a great
critic, none will deny that he possessed the keenest susceptibilities
for literary excellence in many languages and in every form.
English men and Scotchmen do not satisfy you, I will take a
Frenchman. The most accomplished critic whom France has
produced is, by general admission, Ste. -Beuve. His capacity for
appreciating supreme perfection in literature will be disputed by
none; yet the great bulk of his vast literary industry was expended
upon the lives and writings of authors whose lives Mr. Harrison
would desire us to forget, and whose writings almost wring from
him the wish that the art of printing had never been discovered.
I am even bold enough to hazard the conjecture (I trust he
will forgive me) that Mr. Harrison's life may be quoted against
Mr. Harrison's theory. I entirely decline to believe, without
further evidence, that the writings whose vigor of style and of


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thought have been the delight of us all are the product of his
own system. I hope I do him no wrong, but I cannot help
thinking that if we knew the truth, we should find that he fol-
lowed the practice of those worthy physicians who, after prescrib-
ing the most abstemious diet to their patients, may be seen
partaking freely, and to all appearances safely, of the most suc-
culent and the most unwholesome of the forbidden dishes.
It has to be noted that Mr. Harrison's list of the books which
deserve perusal would seem to indicate that in his opinion, the
pleasures to be derived from literature are chiefly pleasures of
the imagination. Poets, dramatists, and novelists form the chief
portion of the somewhat meagre fare which is specifically per-
mitted to his disciples. Now, though I have already stated that
the list is not one of which any person is likely to assert that it
contains books which ought to be excluded, yet, even from the
point of view of what may be termed æsthetic enjoyment, the
field in which we are allowed to take our pleasures seems to me
unduly restricted.
Contemporary poetry, for instance, on which Mr. Harrison
bestows a good deal of hard language, has and must have, for
the generation which produces it, certain qualities not likely to
be possessed by any other. Charles Lamb has somewhere de-
clared that a pun loses all its virtues as soon as the momentary
quality of the intellectual and social atmosphere in which it was
born has changed its character. What is true of this, the hum-
blest effort of verbal art, is true in a different measure and
degree of all, even of the highest, forms of literature. To some
extent every work requires interpretation to generations who
are separated by differences of thought or education from the
age in which it was originally produced. That this is so with
every book which depends for its interest upon feelings and
fashions which have utterly vanished, no one will be disposed,
I imagine, to deny. Butler's Hudibras,' for instance, which was
the delight of a gay and witty society, is to me at least not
unfrequently dull. Of some works, no doubt, which made a
noise in their day it seems impossible to detect the slightest
race of charm. But this is not the case with Hudibras. ' Its
merits are obvious. That they should have appealed to a gen-
eration sick of the reign of the Saints” is precisely what we
should have expected. But to us, who are not sick of the reign
of the Saints, they appeal but imperfectly. The attempt to


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ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
T
12
ya
reproduce artificially the frame of mind of those who first read
the poem is not only an effort, but is to most people, at all
events, an unsuccessful effort. What is true of Hudibras' is
true also, though in an inconceivably smaller degree, of those
great works of imagination which deal with the elemental facts
of human character and human passion.
Yet even
on these,
time does, though lightly, lay his hand. Wherever what may
be called “historic sympathy” is required, there will be some
diminution of the enjoyment which those must have felt who
were the poet's contemporaries. We look, so to speak, at the
same splendid landscape as they, but distance has made it neces-
sary for us to aid our natural vision with glasses, and some loss
of light will thus inevitably be produced, and some inconveni-
ence from the difficulty of truly adjusting the focus. Of all
authors, Homer would, I suppose, be thought to suffer least
from such drawbacks. But yet in order to listen to Homer's
accents with the ears of an ancient Greek, we must be able,
among other things, to enter into a view about the gods which
is as far removed from what we should describe as religious
sentiment, as it is from the frigid ingenuity of those later poets
who regarded the deities of Greek mythology as so many wheels
in the supernatural machinery with which it pleased them to
carry on the action of their pieces.
are to accept Mr.
Herbert Spencer's views as to the progress of our species,
,
changes of sentiment are likely to occur which will even more
seriously interfere with the world's delight in the Homeric
poems. When human beings become so nicely adjusted to their
environment” that courage and dexterity in battle will have be-
come as useless among civic virtues as an old helmet is among
the weapons of war; when fighting gets to be looked upon with
the sort of disgust excited in us by cannibalism; and when pub-
lic opinion shall regard a warrior much in the same light that
we regard a hangman,—I do not see how any fragment of that
vast and splendid literature which depends for its interest upon
deeds of heroism and the joy of battle is to retain its ancient
charm.
About these remote contingencies, however, I am glad to
think that neither you nor I need trouble our heads; and if I
parenthetically allude to them now, it is merely as an illustration
of a truth not always sufficiently remembered, and as an excuse
for those who find in the genuine, though possibly second-rate,
If we


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productions of their own age, a charm for which they search in
vain among the mighty monuments of the past.
But I leave this train of thought, which has perhaps already
taken me too far, in order to point out a more fundamental error,
as I think it, which arises from regarding literature solely from
this high æsthetic standpoint. The pleasures of imagination,
derived from the best literary models, form without doubt the
most exquisite portion of the enjoyment which we may extract
from books; but they do not, in my opinion, form the largest
portion if we take into account mass as well as quality in our
calculation. There is the literature which appeals to the imag-
ination or the fancy, some stray specimens of which Mr. Har-
rison will permit us to peruse; but is there not also the literature
which satisfies the curiosity? Is this vast storehouse of pleasure
to be thrown hastily aside because many of the facts which it
contains are alleged to be insignificant, because the appetite to
which they minister is said to be morbid ? Consider a little. We
are here dealing with one of the strongest intellectual impulses
of rational beings. Animals, as a rule, trouble themselves but
little about anything unless they want either to eat it or to run
away from it.
Interest in and wonder at the works of nature
and the doings of man are products of civilization, and excite
emotions which do not diminish but increase with increasing
knowledge and cultivation. Feed them and they grow; minister
to them and they will greatly multiply. We hear much indeed
of what is called “idle curiosity”; but I am loth to brand any
form of curiosity as necessarily idle. Take, for example, one of
the most singular, but in this age one of the most universal,
forms in which it is accustomed to manifest itself: I mean that
of an exhaustive study of the contents of the morning and even-
ing papers. It is certainly remarkable that any person who has
nothing to get by it should destroy his eyesight and confuse his
brain by a conscientious attempt to master the dull and doubtful
details of the European diary daily transmitted to us by Our
Special Correspondent. ” But it must be remembered that this
is only a somewhat unprofitable exercise of that disinterested love
of knowledge which moves men to penetrate the Polar snows,
to build up systems of philosophy, or to explore the secrets of
the remotest heavens. It has in it the rudiments of infinite and
varied delights. It can be turned, and it should be turned into a
curiosity for which nothing that has been done, or thought, or


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ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
suffered, or believed, no law which governs the world of matter
or the world of mind, can be wholly alien or uninteresting.
Truly it is a subject for astonishment that, instead of expand-
ing to the utmost the employment of this pleasure-giving faculty,
so many persons should set themselves to work to limit its
exercise by all kinds of arbitrary regulations. Some there are,
for example, who tell us that the acquisition of knowledge is all
very well, but that it must be useful knowledge; meaning usually
thereby that it must enable a man to get on in a profession,
pass an examination, shine in conversation, or obtain a reputa-
tion for learning. But even if they mean something higher than
this, even if they mean that knowledge to be worth anything
must subserve ultimately if not immediately the material or
spiritual interests of mankind, the doctrine is one which should
be energetically repudiated. I admit, of course, at once, that
discoveries the most apparently remote from human concerns
have often proved themselves of the utmost commercial or manu-
facturing value. But they require no such justification for their
existence, nor were they striven for with any such object. Navi-
gation is not the final cause of astronomy, nor telegraphy of
electro-dynamics, nor dye-works of chemistry. And if it be true
that the desire of knowledge for the sake of knowledge was the
animating motive of the great men who first wrested her secrets
from nature, why should it not also be enough for us, to whom
it is not given to discover, but only to learn as best we may
what has been discovered by others ?
Another maxim, more plausible but equally pernicious, is that
superficial knowledge is worse than no knowledge at all. That
"a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” is a saying which has
now got currency as a proverb stamped in the mint of Pope's
versification; of Pope, who with the most imperfect knowledge of
Greek translated Homer, with the most imperfect knowledge of
the Elizabethan drama edited Shakespeare, and with the most
imperfect knowledge of philosophy wrote the Essay on Man. '
But what is this little knowledge” which is supposed to be so
dangerous ? What is it "little in relation to ? If in relation to
what there is to know, then all human knowledge is little. If in
relation to what actually is known by somebody, then we must
condemn as "dangerous” the knowledge which Archimedes pos-
sessed of mechanics, or Copernicus of astronomy; for a shilling
primer and a few weeks' study will enable any student to


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outstrip in mere information some of the greatest teachers of the
past. No doubt, that little knowledge which thinks itself to be
great may possibly be a dangerous, as it certainly is a most
ridiculous thing. We have all suffered under that eminently
absurd individual who on the strength of one or two volumes,
imperfectly apprehended by himself, and long discredited in the
estimation of everyone else, is prepared to supply you on the
shortest notice with a dogmatic solution of every problem sug-
gested by this unintelligible world ”; or the political variety of
the same pernicious genus, whose statecraft consists in the ready
application to the most complex question of national interest of
some high-sounding commonplace which has done weary duty on
a thousand platforms, and which even in its palmiest days was
never fit for anything better than a peroration. But in our dis-
like of the individual, do not let us mistake the diagnosis of his
disease. He suffers not from ignorance but from stupidity. Give
him learning and you make him not wise, but only more pre-
tentious in his folly.
I say then that so far from a little knowledge being undesir-
able, a little knowledge is all that on most subjects any of us
can hope to attain; and that, as a source not of worldly profit
but of personal pleasure, it may be of incalculable value to its
possessor.
But it will naturally be asked, "How are we to select
from among the infinite number of things which may be known,
those which it is best worth while for us to know ? » We are
constantly being told to concern ourselves with learning what is
important, and not to waste our energies upon what is insignifi-
cant. But what are the marks by which we shall recognize the
important, and how is it to be distinguished from the insignifi-
cant. A precise and complete answer to this question which
shall be true for all men cannot be given. I am considering
knowledge, recollect, as it ministers to enjoyment; and from this
point of view each unit of information is obviously of importance
in proportion as it increases the general sum of enjoyment which
we obtain, or expect to obtain, from knowledge. This, of course,
makes it impossible to lay down precise rules which shall be an
equally sure guide to all sorts and conditions of men; for in this,
as in other matters, tastes must differ, and against real difference
of taste there is no appeal.
There is, however, one caution which it may be worth your
while to keep in view:- Do not be persuaded into applying any
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ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
general proposition on this subject with a foolish impartiality to
every kind of knowledge. There are those who tell you that it
is the broad generalities and the far-reaching principles which
govern the world, which are alone worthy of your attention. A
fact which is not an illustration of a law, in the opinion of these
persons appears to lose all its value. Incidents which do not fit
into some great generalization, events which are merely pictur-
esque, details which are merely curious, they dismiss as unworthy
the interest of a reasoning being. Now, even in science this
doctrine in its extreme form does not hold good. The most sci-
entific of men have taken profound interest in the investigation
of facts from the determination of which they do not anticipate
any material addition to our knowledge of the laws which regu-
late the Universe. In these matters, I need hardly say that I
speak wholly without authority. But I have always been under
the impression that an investigation which has cost hundreds of
thousands of pounds; which has stirred on three occasions the
whole scientific community throughout the civilized world; on
which has been expended the utmost skill in the construction of
instruments and their application to purposes of research (I refer
to the attempts made to determine the distance of the sun by
observation of the transit of Venus), — would, even if they had
been brought to a successful issue, have furnished mankind with
the knowledge of no new astronomical principle. The laws which
govern the motions of the solar system, the proportions which
the various elements in that system bear to one another, have
long been known. The distance of the sun itself is known
within limits of error relatively speaking not very considerable.
Were the measuring rod we apply to the heavens based on an
estimate of the sun's distance from the earth which was wrong
by (say) three per cent. , it would not to the lay mind seem to
affect very materially our view either of the distribution of the
heavenly bodies or of their motions. And yet this information,
this piece of celestial gossip, would seem to have been the chief
astronomical result expected from the successful prosecution of
an investigation in which whole nations have interested them-
selves.
But though no one can, I think, pretend that science does not
concern itself, and properly concern itself, with facts which are
not to all appearance illustrations of law, it is undoubtedly true
that for those who desire to extract the greatest pleasure from


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science, a knowledge, however elementary, of the leading prin-
ciples of investigation and the larger laws of nature, is the acqui-
sition most to be desired. To him who is not a specialist, a
comprehension of the broad outlines of the universe as it presents
itself to his scientific imagination is the thing most worth striving
to attain. But when we turn from science to what is rather
vaguely called history, the same principles of study do not, I
think, altogether apply, and mainly for this reason: that while
the recognition of the reign of law is the chief amongst the
pleasures imparted by science, our inevitable ignorance makes it
the least among the pleasures imparted by history.
It is no doubt true that we are surrounded by advisers who
tell us that all study of the past is barren, except in so far as it
enables us to determine the principles by which the evolution of
human societies is governed. How far such an investigation has
been up to the present time fruitful in results, it would be
unkind to inquire. That it will ever enable us to trace with
accuracy the course which States and nations are destined to pur-
sue in the future, or to account in detail for their history in the
past, I do not in the least believe. We are borne along like
travelers on some unexplored stream. We may know enough of
the general configuration of the globe to be sure that we are
making our way towards the ocean. We may know enough, by
experience or theory, of the laws regulating the flow of liquids,
to conjecture how the river will behave under the varying influ-
ences to which it may be subject. More than this we cannot
know. It will depend largely upon causes which, in relation to
any laws which we are even likely to discover may properly be
called accidental, whether we are destined sluggishly to drift
among fever-stricken swamps, to hurry down perilous rapids, or
to glide gently through fair scenes of peaceful cultivation.
But leaving on one side ambitious sociological speculations,
and even those more modest but hitherto more successful inves-
tigations into the causes which have in particular cases been
principally operative in producing great political changes, there
are still two modes in which we can derive what I may call
"spectacular” enjoyment from the study of history. There is
first the pleasure which arises from the contemplation of some
great historic drama, or some broad and well-marked phase of
social development. The story of the rise, greatness, and decay
of a nation is like some vast epic which contains as subsidiary


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ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
episodes the varied stories of the rise, greatness, and decay of
creeds, of parties, and of statesmen. The imagination is moved
by the slow unrolling of this great picture of human mutability,
as it is moved by the contrasted permanence of the abiding stars.
The ceaseless conflict, the strange echoes of long-forgotten contro-
versies, the confusion of purpose, the successes in which lay deep
the seeds of future evils, the failures that ultimately divert the
otherwise inevitable danger, the heroism which struggles to the
last for a cause foredoomed to defeat, the wickedness which sides
with right, and the wisdom which huzzas at the triumph of folly,
— fate, meanwhile, amidst this turmoil and perplexity, working
silently towards the predestined end, — all these form together a
subject the contemplation of which need surely never weary.
But yet there is another and very different species of enjoy-
ment to be derived from the records of the past, which requires
a somewhat different method of study in order that it may be
fully tasted. Instead of contemplating as it were from a distance
the larger aspects of the human drama, we may elect to move
in familiar fellowship amid the scenes and actors of special
periods. We may add to the interest we derive from the contem-
plation of contemporary politics, a similar interest derived from a
not less minute, and probably more accurate, knowledge of some
comparatively brief passage in the political history of the past.
We may extend the social circle in which we move, a circle per-
haps narrowed and restricted through circumstances beyond our
control, by making intimate acquaintances, perhaps even close
friends, among a society long departed, but which, when we
have once learnt the trick of it, we may, if it so pleases us,
revive.
It is this kind of historical reading which is usually branded
as frivolous and useless; and persons who indulge in it often
delude themselves into thinking that the real motive of their
investigation into bygone scenes and ancient scandals is philo-
sophic interest in an important historical episode, whereas in
truth it is not the philosophy which glorifies the details, but the
details which make tolerable the philosophy. Consider, for exam-
ple, the case of the French Revolution. The period from the
taking of the Bastile to the fall of Robespierre is about the same
as that which very commonly intervenes between two of our
general elections. On these comparatively few months, libraries
have been written. The incidents of every week are matters of


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familiar knowledge. The character and the biography of every
actor in the drama has been made the subject of minute study;
and by common admission there is no more fascinating page in
the history of the world. But the interest is not what is com-
monly called philosophic, it is personal. Because the Revolution
is the dominant fact in modern history, therefore people suppose
that the doings of this or that provincial lawyer, tossed into tem-
porary eminence and eternal infamy by some freak of the revo-
lutionary wave, or the atrocities committed by this or that mob,
half drunk with blood, rhetoric, and alcohol, are of transcendent
importance.
In truth their interest is great, but their import-
ance is small. What we are concerned to know as students of
the philosophy of history is, not the character of each turn and
eddy in the great social cataract, but the manner in which the
currents of the upper stream drew surely in towards the final
plunge, and slowly collected themselves after the catastrophe
again, to pursue at a different level their renewed and compara-
tively tranquil course.
Now, if so much of the interest of the French Revolution
depends upon our minute knowledge of each passing incident,
how much more necessary is such knowledge when we are deal-
ing with the quiet nooks and corners of history; when we are
seeking an introduction, let us say, into the literary society of
Johnson, or the fashionable society of Walpole. Society, dead or
alive, can have no charm without intimacy, and no intimacy
without interest in trifles which fear Mr. Har on would de-
scribe as merely curious. ” If we would feel at our ease in any
company, if we wish to find humor in its jokes, and point in its
repartees, we must know something of the beliefs and the preju-
dices of its various members, their loves and their hates, their
hopes and their fears, their maladies, their marriages, and their
flirtations. If these things are beneath our notice, we shall not
be the less qualified to serve our Queen and country, but need
make no attempt to extract pleasure from one of the most
delightful departments of literature.
That there is such a thing as trifling information I do not of
course question; but the frame of mind in which the reader is
constantly weighing the exact importance to the universe at
large of each circumstance which the author presents to his
notice, is not one conducive to the true enjoyment of a picture
whose effect depends upon a multitude of slight and seemingly


## p. 1302 (#92) ############################################

1 302
ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
insignificant touches, which impress the mind often without re-
maining in the memory. The best method of guarding against
the danger of reading what is useless is to read only what is
interesting; a truth which will seem a paradox to a whole class
of readers, fitting objects of our commiseration, who may be often
recognized by their habit of asking some adviser for a list of
books, and then marking out a scheme of study in the course of
which all are to be conscientiously perused. These unfortunate
persons apparently read a book principally with the object of
getting to the end of it. They reach the word Finis with the
same sensation of triumph as an Indian feels who strings a fresh
scalp to his girdle. They are not happy unless they mark by
some definite performance each step in the weary path of self-
improvement. To begin a volume and not to finish it would be
to deprive themselves of this satisfaction; it would be to lose all
the reward of their earlier self-denial by a lapse from virtue at
the end. To skip, according to their literary code, is a species
of cheating; it is a mode of obtaining credit for erudition on
false pretenses; a plan by which the advantages of learning are
surreptitiously obtained by those who have not won them by
honest toil. But all this is quite wrong.
In matters literary,
works have no saving efficacy. He has only half learnt the art
of reading who has not added to it the even more refined
accomplishments of skipping and of skimming; and the first step
has hardly been taken in the direction of making literature a
pleasure until interest in the subject, and not a desire to spare
(so to speak) the author's feelings, or to accomplish an appointed
task, is the prevailing motive of the reader.
I have now reached, not indeed the end of my subject, which
I have scarcely begun, but the limits inexorably set by the cir-
cumstances under which it is treated. Yet I am unwilling to
conclude without meeting an objection to my method of dealing
with it, which has I am sure been present to the minds of not a
few who have been good enough to listen to me with patience.
It will be said that I have ignored the higher functions of litera-
ture; that I have degraded it from its rightful place, by discussing
only certain ways in which it may minister to the entertainment
of an idle hour, leaving wholly out of sight its contributions to
what Mr. Harrison calls our "spiritual sustenance. ” Now, this
is partly because the first of these topics and not the second was
the avowed subject of my address; but it is partly because I am


## p. 1303 (#93) ############################################

ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
1303
deliberately of opinion that it is the pleasures and not the
profits, spiritual or temporal, of literature which most require to
be preached in the ear of the ordinary reader. I hold indeed
the faith that all such pleasures minister to the development of
much that is best in man— mental and moral; but the charm is
broken and the object lost if the remote consequence is con-
sciously pursued to the exclusion of the immediate end. It will
not, I suppose, be denied that the beauties of nature are at least
as well qualified to minister to our higher needs as are the beau-
ties of literature. Yet we do not say we are going to walk to
the top of such and such a hill in order to drink in “spiritual
sustenance. ” We say we are going to look at the view. And I
am convinced that this, which is the natural and simple way of
considering literature as well as nature, is also the true way.
The habit of always requiring some reward for knowledge
beyond the knowledge itself, be that reward some material prize
or be it what is vaguely called self-improvement, is one with
which I confess I have little sympathy, fostered though it is by
the whole scheme of our modern education.
Do not suppose
that I desire the impossible. I would not if I could destroy the
examination system. But there are times, I confess, when I feel
tempted somewhat to vary the prayer of the poet, and to ask
whether Heaven has not reserved, in pity to this much-educat-
ing generation, some peaceful desert of literature as yet unclaimed
by the crammer or the coach; where it might be possible for the
student to wander, even perhaps to stray, at his own pleasure
without finding every beauty labeled, every difficulty engineered,
every nook surveyed, and a professional cicerone standing at
every corner to guide each succeeding traveler along the same
well-worn round. If such a wish were granted, I would further
ask that the domain of knowledge thus “neutralized ” should be
the literature of our own country. I grant to the full that the
systematic study of some literature must be a principal element
in the education of youth. But why should that literature be
our own? Why should we brush off the bloom and freshness
from the works to which Englishmen and Scotchmen most nat-
urally turn for refreshment,- namely, those written in their own
language ? Why should we associate them with the memory of
hours spent in weary study; in the effort to remember for pur-
poses of examination what no human being would wish to
remember for any other; in the struggle to learn something,


## p. 1304 (#94) ############################################

1304
ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
not because the learner desires to know it, because he desires
some one else to know that he knows it? This is the dark side
of the examination system; a system necessary and therefore
excellent, but one which does, through the very efficiency and
thoroughness of the drill by which it imparts knowledge, to some
extent impair the most delicate pleasures by which the acquisi-
tion of knowledge should be attended.
How great those pleasures may be, I trust there are many
here who can testify. When I compare the position of the reader
of to-day with that of his predecessor of the sixteenth century,
I am amazed at the ingratitude of those who are tempted even
for a moment to regret the invention of printing and the multi-
plication of books. There is now no mood of mind to which a
man may not administer the appropriate nutriment or medicine
at the cost of reaching down a volume from his bookshelf. In
every department of knowledge infinitely more is known, and
what is known is incomparably more accessible, than it was to
our ancestors. The lighter forms of literature, good, bad, and
indifferent, which have added so vastly to the happiness of man-
kind, have increased beyond powers of computation; nor do I
believe that there is any reason to think that they have elbowed
out their more serious and important brethren. It is perfectly
possible for a man, not a professed student, and who only gives
to reading the leisure hours of a business life, to acquire such a
general knowledge of the laws of nature and the facts of history
that every great advance made in either department shall be to
him both intelligible and interesting; and he may besides have
among his familiar friends many a departed worthy whose mem-
ory is embalmed in the pages of memoir or biography. All this
is ours for the asking. All this we shall ask for, if only it be
our happy fortune to love for its own sake the beauty and the
knowledge to be gathered from books. And if this be our for-
tune, the world may be kind or unkind, it may seem to us to
be hastening on the wings of enlightenment and progress to an
imminent millennium, or it may weigh us down with the sense
of insoluble difficulty and irremediable wrong; but whatever else
it be, so long as we have good health and a good library, it can
hardly be dull.
1


## p. 1305 (#95) ############################################

1 305
THE BALLAD
(Popular or Communal)
BY F. B. GUMMERE
ex
He popular ballad, as it is understood for the purpose of these
selections, is a narrative in lyric form, with no traces of
individual authorship, and is preserved mainly by oral tra-
dition. In its earliest stages it was meant to be sung by a crowd,
and got its name from the dance to which it furnished the sole
musical accompaniment. In these primitive communities the ballad
was doubtless chanted by the entire folk, in festivals mainly of a
religious character. Explorers still meet something of the sort in
savage tribes: and children's games preserve among us some relics
of this protoplasmic form of verse-making, in which the single poet
or artist was practically unknown, and spontaneous, improvised verses
arose out of the occasion itself; in which the whole community took
part; and in which the beat of foot — along with the gesture which
expressed narrative elements of the song — was inseparable from the
words and the melody. This native growth of song, in which the
chorus or refrain, the dance of a festal multitude, and the spon-
taneous nature of the words, were vital conditions, gradually faded
away before the advance of cultivated verse and the vigor of pro-
duction in what one may call poetry of the schools. Very early in
the history of the ballad, a demand for more art must have called
out or at least emphasized the artist, the poet, who chanted new
verses while the throng kept up the refrain or burden. Moreover, as
interest was concentrated upon the words or story, people began to
feel that both dance and melody were separable if not alien features;
and thus they demanded the composed and recited ballad, to the
harm and ultimate ruin of that spontaneous song for the festal, dan-
cing crowd. Still, even when artistry had found a footing in ballad
verse, it long remained mere agent and mouthpiece for the folk; the
communal character of the ballad was maintained in form and
matter. Events of interest were sung in almost contemporary and
entirely improvised verse; and the resulting ballads, carried over the
borders of their community and passed down from generation to gen-
eration, served as newspaper to their own times and as chronicle to
posterity. It is the kind of song to which Tacitus bears witness as
the sole form of history among the early Germans; and it is evident
that such a stock of ballads must have furnished considerable raw
material to the epic. Ballads, in whatever original shape, went to


## p. 1306 (#96) ############################################

1306
THE BALLAD
the making of the English Béowulf,' of the German ‘Nibelungenlied. '
Moreover, a study of dramatic poetry leads one back to similar com-
munal origins. What is loosely called a “chorus," - originally, as the
name implies, a dance — out of which older forms of the drama were
developed, could be traced back to identity with primitive forms of
the ballad. The purely lyrical ballad, even, the chanson of the peo-
ple, so rare in English but so abundant among other races, is evi- '
dently a growth from the same root.
If, now, we assume for this root the name of communal poem,
and if we bear in mind the dominant importance of the individual,
the artist, in advancing stages of poetry, it is easy to understand
why for civilized and lettered communities the ballad has ceased to .
have any vitality whatever. Under modern conditions the making of
ballads is a closed account. For our times poetry means something
hvritten by a poet, and not something sung more or less spontaneously
by a dancing throng. Indeed, paper and ink, the agents of preserva-
tion in the case of ordinary verse, are for ballads the agents of
destruction. The broadside press of three centuries ago, while it
rescued here and there a genuine ballad, poured out a mass of vulgar
imitations which not only displaced and destroyed the ballad of oral
tradition, but brought contempt upon good and bad alike. Poetry of
the people, to which our ballad belongs, is a thing of the past. Even
rude and distant communities, like those of Afghanistan, cannot give
us the primitive conditions. The communal ballad is rescued, when
rescued at all, by the fragile chances of a written copy or of oral
tradition; and we are obliged to study it under terms of artistic
poetry,—that is, we are forced to take through the eye and the judg-
ment what was meant for the ear and immediate sensation. Poetry
for the people, however, “popular poetry” in the modern phrase, is
a very different affair. Street songs, vulgar rhymes, or even improv-
isations of the concert-halls, tawdry and sentimental stuff, -these
things are sundered by the world's width from poetry of the people,
from the folk in verse, whether it echo in a great epos which chants
the clash of empires or linger in a ballad of the countryside sung
under the village linden. For this ballad is a part of the poetry
which comes from the people as a whole, from a homogeneous folk,
large or small; while the song of street or concert-hall is deliberately
composed for a class, a section, of the community. It would there-
fore be better to use some other term than “popular” when we wish
to specify the ballad of tradition, and so avoid all taint of vulgarity
and the trivial. Nor must we go to the other extreme. Those high-
born people who figure in traditional ballads — Childe Waters, Lady
Maisry, and the rest — do not require us to assume composition in
aristocratic circles; for the lower classes of the people in ballad days


## p. 1307 (#97) ############################################

THE BALLAD
1307
had no separate literature, and a ballad of the folk belonged to the
community as a whole. The same habit of thought, the same stand-
ard of action, ruled alike the noble and his meanest retainer. Oral
transmission, the test of the ballad, is of course nowhere possible
save in such an unlettered community. Since all critics are at one
in regard to this homogeneous character of the folk with whom and
out of whom these songs had their birth, one is justified in removing
all doubt from the phrase by speaking not of the popular ballad but
of the communal ballad, the ballad of a community.
With regard to the making of a ballad, one must repeat a caution,
hinted already, and made doubly important by a vicious tendency in
the study of all phases of culture. It is a vital mistake to explain
primitive conditions by exact analogy with conditions of modern sav-
agery and barbarism. Certain conclusions, always guarded and cau-
tious to a degree, may indeed be drawn; but it is folly to insist that
what now goes on among shunted races, belated detachments in the
great march of culture, must have gone on among the dominant and
mounting peoples who had reached the same external conditions of
life. The homogeneous and unlettered state of the ballad-makers
is not to be put on a level with the ignorance of barbarism, nor
explained by the analogy of songs among modern savage tribes.
Fortunately we have better material. The making of a ballad by a
community can be illustrated from a case recorded by Pastor Lyngbye
in his invaluable account of life on the Faroe Islands a century ago.
Not only had the islanders used from most ancient times their tra-
ditional and narrative songs as music for the dance, but they had
also maintained the old fashion of making a ballad. In the winter,
says Lyngbye, dancing is their chief amusement and is an affair of
the entire community. At such a dance, one or more persons begin
to sing; then all who are present join in the ballad, or at least in
the refrain. As they dance, they show by their gestures and expres-
sion that they follow with eagerness the course of the story which
they are singing. More than this, the ballad is often a spontaneous
product of the occasion. A fisherman, who has had some recent mis-
hap with his boat, is pushed by stalwart comrades into the middle
of the throng, while the dancers sing verses about him and his lack
of skill, — verses improvised on the spot and with a catching and
clamorous refrain. If these verses win favor, says Lyngbye, they are
repeated from year to year, with slight additions or corrections, and
become a permanent ballad. Bearing in mind the extraordinary
readiness to improvise shown even in these days by peasants in
every part of Europe, we thus gain some definite notion about the
spontaneous and communal elements which went to the making of
the best type of primitive verse; for these Faroe islanders were
F
no


## p. 1308 (#98) ############################################

1308
THE BALLAD
savages, but simply a homeogeneous and isolated folk which still
held to the old ways of communal song.
Critics of the ballad, moreover, agree that it has little or no sub-
jective traits, an easy inference from the conditions just described.
There is no individuality lurking behind the words of the ballad, and
above all, no evidence of that individuality in the form of sentiment.
Sentiment and individuality are the very essence of modern poetry,
and the direct result of individualism in verse. Given a poet, senti-
ment- and it may be noble and precious enough — is sure to follow.
But the ballad, an epic in little, forces one's attention to the object,
the scene, the story, and away from the maker.
«The king sits in Dumferling town,
begins one of the noblest of all ballads; while one of the greatest of
modern poems opens with something personal and pathetic, keynote
to all that follows:
"My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense
Even when a great poet essays the ballad, either he puts sentiment
into it, or else he keeps sentiment out of it by a tour de force. Ad-
mirable and noble as one must call the conclusion of an artistic
ballad such as Tennyson's Revenge, it is altogether, different from
the conclusion of such a communal ballad as Sir Patrick Spens. ' That
subtle quality of the ballad which lies in solution with the story and
which -- as in “Child Maurice) or (Babylon) or (Edward' -- compels
in us sensations akin to those called out by the sentiment of the
poet, is a wholly impersonal if strangely effective quality, far removed
from the corresponding elements of the poem of art. At first sight,
one might say that Browning's dramatic lyrics had this impersonal
quality. But compare the close of Give a Rouse,' chorus and all,
with the close of Child Maurice,' that swift and relentless stroke of
pure tragedy which called out the enthusiasm of so great a critic as
Gray.
The narrative of the communal ballad is full of leaps and omis-
sions; the style is simple to a fault; the diction is spontaneous and
free. Assonance frequently takes the place of rhyme, and a word
often rhymes with itself. There is a lack of poetic adornment in the
style quite as conspicuous as the lack of reflection and moralizing in
the matter. Metaphor and simile are rare and when found are for
the most part standing phrases common to all the ballads; there is
never poetry for poetry's sake. Iteration is the chief mark of ballad
style; and the favorite form of this effective figure is what one may
call incremental repetition. The question is repeated with the an-
swer; each increment in a series of related facts has a stanza for


## p. 1309 (#99) ############################################

THE BALLAD
1309
itself, identical, save for the new fact, with the other stanzas. "Baby-
lon' furnishes good instances of this progressive iteration. Moreover,
the ballad differs from earlier English epics in that it invariably has
stanzas and rhyme; of the two forms of stanza, the two-line stanza
with a refrain is probably older than the stanza with four or six
lines.
This necessary quality of the stanza points to the origin of the
ballad in song; but longer ballads, such as those that make up the
(Gest of Robin Hood,' an epic in little, were not sung as lyrics or to
aid he dance ut were either chanted in a monotonous fashion or
else recited outright. Chappell, in his admirable work on old Eng
lish music (Music of the Olden Time,' ii. 790), names a third class of
«characteristic airs of England,” — the historical and very long bal-
lads,
invariably of simple construction, usually plaintive.
They were rarely if ever used for dancing. ” Most of the
longer ballads, however, were doubtless given by one person in a
sort of recitative; this is the case with modern ballads of Russia and
Servia, where the bystanders now and then join in a chorus. Pre-
cisely in the same way ballads were divorced from the dance, origin-
ally their vital condition; but in the refrain, which is attached to so
many ballads, one finds an element which has survived from those
earliest days of communal song.
Of oldest communal poetry no actual ballad has come down to
Hints and even fragments, however, are pointed out in ancient
records, mainly as the material of chronicle or legend. In the Bible
(Numbers xxi. 17), where “Israel sang this song. ” we are not going
too far when we regard the fragment as part of a communal ballad.
“Spring up, O well: sing ye unto it: the princes digged the well, the
nobles of the people digged it, by the direction of the lawgiver, with
their staves. ” Deborah's song has something of the communal note;
and when Miriam dances and sings with her maidens, one is reminded
of the many ballads made by dancing and singing bands of women
in mediæval Europe, — for instance, the song made in the seventh
century to the honor of St. Faro, and “sung by the women as they
danced and clapped their hands. ” The question of ancient Greek
ballads, and their relation to the epic, is not to be discussed here;
nor can we make more than an allusion to the theory of Niebuhr
that the early part of Livy is founded on old Roman ballads. A
popular discussion of this matter may be found in Macaulay's preface
to his own Lays of Ancient Rome. ) The ballads of modern Europe
are a survival of older communal poetry, more or less influenced by
artistic and individual conditions of authorship, but wholly imper-
sonal, and with an appeal to our interest which seems to come from
a throng and not from the solitary poet. Attention was early called
us.


## p. 1310 (#100) ###########################################

1310
THE BALLAD
to the ballads of Spain; printed at first as broadsides, they were
gathered into a volume as early as 1550. On the other hand, ballads
were neglected in France until very recent times; for specimens of
the French ballad, and for an account of it, the reader should consult
Professor Crane's Chansons Populaires de France,' New York, 1891.
It is with ballads of the Germanic race, however, that we are now
concerned. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, the Faroe Islands;
Scotland and England; the Netherlands and Germany: all of these
countries offer us admirable specimens of the ballad. Particularly,
the great collections of Grundtvig (Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser') for
Denmark, and of Child ('The English and Scottish Popular Ballads')
for our own tongue, show how common descent or borrowing con-
nects the individual ballads of these groups. “Almost every Nor-
wegian, Swedish, or Icelandic ballad,” says Grundtvig, is found in
a Danish version of Scandinavian ballads; moreover, a larger number
can be found in English and Scottish versions than in German or
Dutch versions. " Again, we find certain national preferences in the
character of the ballads which have come down to us. Scandinavia
kept the old heroic lays (Kæmpeviser); Germany wove them into her
epic, as witness the Nibelungen Lay; but England and Scotland have
hone of them in any shape. So, too, the mythic ballad, scantily rep-
resented in English, and practically unknown in Germany, abounds
in Scandinavian collections. The Faroe Islands and Norway, as
Grundtvig tells us, show the best record for ballads preserved by oral
tradition; while noble ladies of Denmark, three or four centuries ago,
did high service to ballad literature by making collections in manu-
script of the songs current then in the castle as in the cottage.
For England, one is compelled to begin the list of known ballads
with the thirteenth century. (The Battle of Maldon, composed in
the last decade of the tenth century, though spirited enough and full
of communal vigor, has no stanzaic structure, follows in metre and
style the rules of the Old English epic, and is only a ballad by
courtesy; about the ballads used a century or two later by historians
of England, we can do nothing but guess; and there is no firm ground
under the critic's foot until he comes to the Robin Hood ballads,
which Professor Child assigns to the thirteenth century. The Battle
of Otterburn (1388) opens a series of ballads based on actual events
and stretching into the eighteenth century. Barring the Robin Hood
cycle,- an epic constructed from this attractive material lies before
us in the famous "Gest of Robin Hood, printed as early as 1489,-
the chief sources of the collector are the Percy Manuscript, «written
just before 1650,"— on which, not without omissions and additions,
the bishop based his Reliques,' first published in 1765,— and the
oral traditions of Scotland, which Professor Child refers to the last


## p. 1311 (#101) ###########################################

THE BALLAD
1311
one hundred and thirty years. ) Information about the individual
ballads, their sources, history, literary connections, and above all,
their varying texts, must be sought in the noble work of Professor
F. J. Child. For present purposes, a word or two of general infor-
mation must suffice. As to origins, there is a wide range. The
church furnished its legend, as in "Śt. Stephen'; romance contributed
the story of Thomas Rymer); and the light, even cynical fabliau is
responsible for "The Boy and the Mantle. ' Ballads which occur in
many tongues either may have a common origin or else may owe
their manifold versions, as in the case of popular tales, to a love of
borrowing; and here, of course, we get the hint of wider issues. For
the most part, however, a ballad tells some moving story, preferably
of fighting and of love. Tragedy is the dominant note; and English
ballads of the best type deal with those elements of domestic disaster
so familiar in the great dramas of literature, in the story of Orestes,
or of Hamlet, or of the Cid. Such are Edward, Lord Randal,
(The Two Brothers,' 'The Two Sisters,' Child Maurice,' Bewick
and Graham, Clerk Colven,' 'Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard,'
(Glasgerion, and many others. Another group of ballads, represented
by the Baron of Brackley' and 'Captain Car,' give a faithful picture
of the feuds and ceaseless warfare in Scotland and on the border.
A few fine ballads — (Sweet William's Ghost,' The Wife of Usher's
Well'— touch upon the supernatural.
Of the romantic ballads,
Childe Waters? shows us the higher, and Young Beichan the
lower, but still sound and communal type. Incipient dramatic ten-
dencies mark (Edward' and 'Lord Randal); while, on the other
hand, a lyric note almost carries (Bonnie George Campbell' out of
balladry. Finally, it is to be noted that in the Nut-Brown Maid,'
which many would unhesitatingly refer to this class of poetry, we
have no ballad at all, but a dramatic lyric, probably written by a
woman, and with a special plea in the background.
(
lism
nere.


## p. 1312 (#102) ###########################################

1312
THE BALLAD
ROBIN HOOD AND GUY OF GISBORNE 1
1.
WHEN
'HEN shawes? beene sheene, and shradds * full
fayre,
And leeves both large and longe,
It is merry, walking in the fayre forrest,
To heare the small birds' songe.
2.
The woodweeleó sang, and wold not cease,
Amongst the leaves a lyne ;6
And it is by two wight? yeomen,
By deare God, that I meane.
3.
«Me thought they did me beate and binde,
And tooke my bow me fro;
If I bee Robin alive in this lande,
I'll be wrocken' on both them two. ”
10
4.
« Sweavens are swift, master, quoth John,
"As the wind that blowes ore a hill;
For if it be never soe lowde this night,
To-morrow it may be still. ”
5.
« Buske ye, bowne ye," my merry men all,
For John shall go with me;
For I'll goe seeke yond wight yeomen
In greenwood where they bee. ”
1 This ballad is a good specimen of the Robin Hood Cycle, and is remark-
able for its many proverbial and alliterative phrases. A few lines have been
lost between stanzas 2 and 3. Gisborne is a «market-town in the West Rid
ing of the County of York, on the borders of Lancashire. For the probable
tune of the ballad, see Chappell's (Popular Music of the Olden Time,) ii. 397.
2 Woods, groves. — This touch of description at the outset is common in
our old ballads, as well as in the mediæval German popular lyric, and may
perhaps spring from the old «summer-lays” and chorus of pagan times.
3 Beautiful; German, schön.
* Coppices or openings in a wood.
- In some glossaries the woodpecker, but here of course a song-bird, - per-
haps, as Chappell suggests, the woodlark.
6 A, on; lyne, lime or linden.
? Sturdy, brave.
* Robin now tells of a dream in which they” (-the two (wight yeomen,"
who are Guy and, as Professor Child suggests, the Sheriff of Nottingham)
maltreat him; and he thus foresees trouble from two quarters. ”
9 Revenged.
10 Dreams.
11 Tautological phrase, — "prepare and make ready.