between the materialistic lubber-fiend described in the

thirty-fourth canto of the "Inferno

Who bare upon his head three faces,

The tears adown three chins distilled: in bloody foam
At every mouth his teeth a sinner champed.

The difference is radical between this conception and that of Goethe, who, acting on the motto that "the prince of darkness is a gentleman," makes his fiend smooth, plausible, and unutterably base, so that to him no crime comes amiss, from the filching of a jewel to the destruction of a world.

As a final example of this different tone, I would draw your attention to the contrast offered by the two following poems. The first is an old ballad, entitled "The Twa Corbies," and describes the communings of two ravens as they sit watching the body of a murdered knight. It is very old:

As I was walking all alane,

I heard twa corbies making a mane;
The tane did to the tither say,
Where sall we gang an' dine the day?

In ahint yon auld fail dyke

I wot there lies a new slain knight,

And naebody kens that he lies there

But his hawk and his hound and his lady fair.

His hound is to the hunting gane,

His hawk doth fetch the wild fowl hame,

His lady's ta'en anither mate,

So we may mak' oor dinner sweet.

Ye'll sit on his white hause bane,

And I'll pyke oot his bonnie blue een;

Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair
We'll theek oor nest when it grows bare.

Mony a one for him makes moan,
But nane sall ken where he is gone;
O'er his white banes when he is bare

The wind sall blaw for evermair.

The contrast to this is a little poem by Arthur Hugh Clough, recently dead, and only beginning to be known. It is entitled the "Questioning Spirit," and runs thus :— The human spirits saw I on a day,

Sitting and looking each a different way,
And hardly tasking, subtly questioning,
Another spirit went around the ring,

To each and each—and, as he ceased his say,
Each after each I heard them singly sing,
Some querulously high, some softly, sadly low:
We know not, what avails to know?

We know not, wherefore should we know ?
And still this answer gave they to his suing:
We know not, let us do as we are doing.

Dost thou not know that these things only seem ?
I know not-let me dream my dream.

Are dust and ashes fit to make a treasure?

I know not, let me take my pleasure.

What shall avail the knowledge thou hast sought?

I know not, let me think my thought.

What is the end of strife ?

I know not, let me live my life.

How many days or that thou mindst to move?

I know not, let me love my love.

Were not things old, once new ?

I know not, let me do as others do.
And when the rest were overpast,

I know not, I will do my duty, said the last.

Thy duty do, rejoined the voice,

Ah! do it, do it, and rejoice;

But shalt thou then, when all is done,
Enjoy a love, embrace a beauty,
Like unto these that may be won,
In life whose course shall then be run,

Or shalt thou be where there is none ?
I know not, I will do my duty.

And taking up the word, around, above, below,
Some querulously high, some softly, sadly low,
We know not, sang they all, nor ever need to know ;
We know not, sang they, wherefore should we know?

Whereat the questioning spirit for a space,
Tho' unabashed, stood quiet in his place.
But when the echoing chorus died away,
And to their dreams the rest returned apace,
By the one spirit I saw him kneeling low,
And in a silvery whisper heard him say,

Truly thou know'st not, and thou need'st not know.
Hope, only hope thou, and believe alway;
I also know not, neither seek to know,
Only with questionings pass I to and fro,
Perplexing those who sleep, and in their folly
Imbreeding doubt and sceptic melancholy,
Till that their dreams deserting, they with me
Come all to that wise ignorance and thee.

These two poems are sufficiently akin, if not in purpose, at least in-effect, to admit of comparison. Both convey feelings of sadness and weariness; but the one shows forth the vanity of flesh, the other the vexation of spirit. Both excite feelings of gloom and hesitancy; but the one acts by showing the straits to which our bodies may be reduced, the other tells of the doubt, hesitation, and pain whereto our spirits are subject. The older poem is eminently descriptive, and draws its suggestions synthetically from external things; the other is eminently analytical, and depends for its effect on subjective appreciation of mental condition.

In thus directing your attention to the difference between modern and ancient poetry, I do so by way of accounting for the generally received notion that a ballad is peculiarly a thing of the past—a species of poetry impossible to our modern tone of thought; but I have already explained to you that this difference, though usual, is by no means absolute; and I must therefore beg you to dismiss the idea that when we speak of Ballad Literature we of necessity imply that we speak of ancient literature. Reverting to the analogy wherewith we started, and comparing national with individual existence, we may say that the thought of

a child and of an uncultured, that is to say of a young, people are so far similar that the tendency of both is objective. The child reasons upon what he sees, and is incapable of generalisation or of abstraction; and so it is with the poetical speech of an uncultured people. It has to do with particulars, not with generals-it tells of that which it sees and feels, not of what it thinks and knows : and that is equivalent to saying that its tendency is towards ballads. But we must not forget that even as the grown man has not less clear vision than the child—has even, indeed, a vision more clear, because more philosophicalso it is with nations-the freshness, vigour, simplicity, objectivity, if you will, which in a young nation find fitting expression in ballads, are not less enjoyed by that same nation because cultured; although being now tempered by wider experience and deeper philosophy, they may no longer be so marked a feature of the national literature. And because these faculties of insight and expression are of necessity perennial in national life, therefore it is that in national literature the ballad resulting from these faculties is ever present. I shall ask you to judge for yourselves, later on, concerning this, by calling to your recollection some of our most characteristic modern ballads. In the meantime, and having thus laid a foundation for our considerations, let us now examine Ballad Literature more in detail.

At the outset I confess that I am unable to give you, or to find for you, a definition of the word ballad which, being sufficiently terse, shall be at the same time sufficiently comprehensive. The dictionary meanings are not often the former, and are still less frequently the latter-mainly, I suppose, because the word has varied in signification with the exigency of nearly every user. The term would seem to be derived from the Italian verb "ballare," to dance, and this again appears to be connected with a Greek word signi

tions of gladness, as in the latter he is striving to express the contrasted feeling of melancholy. In both poems he does so, not by describing the feelings themselves as appreciated by his own mind, but by minutely and accurately portraying the objects, external to himself, which induced or maintained in him those feelings. You remember the opening stanza of the first-named poem :

Come, thou goddess fair and free,

In Heaven yclept Euphrosyne.

And here, in passing, observe how in these two lines, as in the whole piece, the sound of the verse is made to echo the sense. With exquisite taste the lively lilting measure, by its jocund and, so to speak, dancing progression, helps to induce in the mind the gladsome feeling of which the words are the vehicle. This, however, by the way. Turning again to the poem, recall how Milton, after the above invocation, goes on to tell how

was born.

Mirth, that lady fair,

So buxom, blythe, and debonair,

He relates how it fell that

Zephyr with Aurora playing,
As he met her once amaying,
There on beds of violets blue

And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,

-and so the measure goes tripping along, expressing the poet's joy, not directly, but by minute and careful descriptions of the material objects which induced in him that joy, or with which he associated it. We have this still better illustrated a few stanzas later.

When describing

the "unreproved pleasures free" of the mirth he sings, he specially dwells on these:

To hear the lark begin his flight,

And singing, startle the dull night,