kind of superior poetry; and modern literature draws from it more and more as the years go by. Even in such strange compositions as the "Kalevala" of the Finns, an epic totally unlike any other ever written in this world, the one really beautiful passage in an emotional sense is the coming back of the dead mother to comfort the wicked son, which is a dream study, though not so represented in the poem.

Yet one thing more. Our dreams of heaven, what are they in literature but reflections in us of the more beautiful class of dreams? In the world of sleep all the dead people we loved meet us again; the father recovers his long-buried child, the husband his lost wife, separated lovers find the union that was impossible in this world, those whom we lost sight of in early years-dead sisters, brothers, friendsall come back to us just as they were then, just as loving, and as young, and perhaps even more beautiful than they could really have been. In the world of sleep there is no growing old; there is immortality, there is everlasting youth. And again how soft, how happy everything is; even the persons unkind to us in waking life become affectionate to us in dreams. Well, what is heaven but this? Religion in painting perfect happiness for the good, only describes the best of our dream life, which is also the best of our waking life; and I think you will find that the closer religion has kept to dream experience in these descriptions, the happier has been the result. Perhaps you will say that I have forgotten how religion teaches the apparition of supernatural powers of a very peculiar kind. But I think that you will find the suggestion for these powers also in dream life. Do we not pass through the air in dreams, pass through solid substances, perform all kinds of miracles, achieve all sorts of impossible things? I think we do. At all events, I am certain that when, as men-of-letters, you have to deal with any form of supernatural subject-whether terrible, or tender, or pathetic, or splendid-you will do well, if you have a good imagination, not to trust to books for your in

spiration. Trust to your own dream-life; study it carefully, and draw your inspiration from that. For dreams are the primary source of almost everything that is beautiful in the literature which treats of what lies beyond mere daily experience.

CHAPTER VI

ENGLISH BALLADS

FIRST of all let us attempt to define what a ballad is. In different languages the word has not the same meaning. A French man of letters uses the word ballad in a much narrower sense than the German; and even the German does not always give to it the same breadth of meaning that the English poets attached to it. Furthermore, exact scholars give narrower interpretations to the name than do men of letters generally. But we can not restrict the significance of the word as certain scholars would have us do, simply because all attempts to establish a sharp line between ballads proper and other forms of poetry closely resembling them, have proved futile. The best way for us to do will be to take the word "ballad" in its very largest English meaning, as signifying a short narrative story in simple verse. Although the majority of ballads take certain forms, many do not; and it would not be correct to say that a poem is not a ballad because it happens to be in one kind of verse rather than another. It has been among my own pupils a matter of difficulty sometimes to distinguish a long narrative poem or epic from a ballad; they have observed with good reason that certain English ballads are very long. But they are not so long as to be compared with other forms of narrative poetry; and in a general way it may be stated that a ballad tells one simple story or incident only. Epics, in some cases, not only tell a great many different stories related to each other, but form what we might call a romance or a novel in verse.

It

We may at once attempt to state what a ballad is not. is not a romance, nor is it necessarily a complete story. It

deals rather with incidents than with complete or full narratives. When we have one great collection of ballads, possessing a fixed order, and all dealing with or relating to one subject, as in the English cycle of Robin Hood, or in the Persian cycle of Kurroglou, then we have what has been called a ballad-epic; but it is really an epic too. With this view of the case you might ask if the Song of Roland might not be called a ballad-epic. It is indeed divided into a number of distinct parts, each independent of the other, arranged for singing, and having a burden or chorus. Were the term ballad-epic really admissible, I should say yes; but for the sake of definiteness we had better say no especially as the style and tone are a little too high for what we usually call a ballad.

A ballad is not to be confounded either with a song or with a lyric of any sort, although the line of demarcation may sometimes be hard to draw. A song does not necessarily do more than express an emotion, independent of any story or incident. A lyric is any poem expressing one single feeling or thought of an emotional kind, and not composed in any classic or severe form of verse.

Now let us consider the general characteristics of the ballad. The word itself gives some hint of the character of the composition. It is derived from the low Latin, from a verb signifying to dance. In the Italian ballare, Spanish bailar (both meaning to dance), the English word ball, a dancing party; and the English word, adopted from the French, ballet, meaning the artistic professional dances performed in theatres,-we have the survival in modified form of the ancient low Latin verb. Originally the ballad was a song accompanied with dancing. But do not let this derivation cause any confusion in the mind between song proper and the ballad. The earliest forms of song were necessarily religious or military; they celebrated incidents. They were not really lyrics. The history of the term carries us back to very primitive forms of poetical

composition, made in the days before writing was known, and learned by heart generation after generation, each generation probably improving a little upon the oral text. It is even probable that all the great epics of all countries grew out of beginnings like this. Primitive races kept alive the memories of their traditions, of their glories and their sorrows, by song; and the songs were publicly sung on certain occasions, accompanied with religious or war-like or other dances. Not all the people would be equally capable of singing; there would be famous singers or professional singers, like what are called the ondo-tori in Japan. These would do the difficult part of the singing; but the people would join in the more familiar parts of the song. Later there would arise an orderly distinction between the parts to be sung by professional singers, and the shorter or more simple parts to be sung by the crowd. The part to be sung by the crowd eventually took in English the name of "burthen" (burden). The word "chorus," sometimes meaning the same thing, is from the Greek; but the Greek word is of dramatic origin, and strictly speaking means much more than a simple burthen. The word "refrain" (from the French) is a better equivalent for our English burthen.

Now the first characteristic of the true ballad, even in modern times, is the refrain or burthen. It may be quite impossible to sing, but it represents the survival of the ancient burthen. Nevertheless, remember that not all ballads have burthens,-though the burthen is the peculiar mark of such compositions. Furthermore, remember that many songs have a chorus or burthen, by which they very much resemble ballads, although they can not always be classed as ballads.

A second characteristic of ballads is their simplicity. A perfect ballad ought always to be so simple that everybody, no matter how ignorant, can understand it; and its emotion