make us certain offers and we accept them, but the offer made by the artist is simply the offer of expression; he professes form, and by form he must be judged, we can accept from him nothing less. Yet the difficulty is that in the study of art or literature one moves constantly from one field to another, from the field of scientific to that of æsthetic values. Criticism itself may be, often is, both science and art. Classification, for example, of authors and of works, is frequently found convenient, even necessary. It is convenient to place together for purposes of comparison the Iliad and Beowulf, Virgil and Milton, to discuss under the same title poems which resemble each other, have points in common, follow the same models, aim at giving the same kind of pleasure. Such a method has its uses and cannot be abandoned. In this field we exercise the logical judgment. But in a moment we may leave it to appraise the work of Homer or of Tasso as poetry, as art, and in this field the aesthetic judgment guides and controls us. For this reason literary criticism, which partakes of a double character, scientific and æsthetic, passes continually in the same volume and on the same page from one form of mental activity to another. Recognise that they are different forms, that the classifications or descriptions given have nothing philosophical about them, that nothing in the constitution of nature dictates or justifies their use, and we escape all dangers; we may continue to employ the customary definitions, the current and convenient classifications, to speak of epic or lyrical or elegiac poetry, of odes and ballads, of tragedies and sonnets. Such phrases are perfectly well understood and one needs no apology for their use. Only if when we employ definitions, often helpful, we imagine ourselves in search of an eternal law, imagine the distinction, for example, between epic and romance as something rigid and final, is the warning necessary. Meanwhile they serve their turn. Not until the last stone is laid is it time to knock away the scaffolding.

CHAPTER II

PRIMITIVE POETRY-THE BALLAD

THE matter of the authentic epic is usually traced to the earlier lays and ballads of the race from which it springs. In it the student discovers not the mind of one skilful artist only, but the minds of many previous makers. And not alone these minds, but the more general mind of a people, the diffused evidence of their creeds and customs, their traditions and experiences. The authentic epic, even in its finished and final form, is, in one sense, primitive poetry, the poetry of an age unlettered, and by contrast with our own uncivilised. But it suggests peoples still more primitive than those to whom it first gave pleasure, and periods more remote than that in which it was composed. It contains hints and references which open up vistas into epochs far withdrawn even from its own gaze, and we know it for a building whose walls were raised by men generations apart from those who laid its foundations. Stones cut from ancient and forgotten quarries, and smoothed with ruder instruments, half-effaced tracings that speak of earlier and superseded plans, fragments of primæval masonry-relate its history. Strictly true it is that—

"Learned commentators view

In Homer more than Homer knew."

The poets before Homer were in a measure the architects of his fame; artists, of whom the maker of Beowulf had never heard, laboured in his cause. But these again had their predecessors, and before the lays and sagas which the epic poet knew must have flourished a still earlier world of song. The epic-a highly developed form of art-could not have come to birth save for the cruder poems it took up and transformed, and these were in their turn more finely wrought than the earliest narratives and lyrics of men in the infancy of society. The history of poetry

is thus, like that of law and custom, a continuous and unbroken history, nor can it be supposed that when its curve dips out of sight, or we miss a connecting link, that the chain of development was severed. It is we who are at fault. The arts advance with the advance of civilisation, and they accompany it steadily back to the drawings by the cave-dwellers of elk or mammoth, and the choral dance of the savage tribe.

Yet one must acknowledge it too hard a task for criticism to trace, fully or exactly, the stages of the journey from choral dance to epic or drama in the story of any people. Criticism can but indicate at most the probable line of advance, piece imperfectly together records and observations of races often far separated in time and space-records and observations perhaps so widely sundered as excavations in Crete and the burial customs of the Hottentot. The scholar is involved, when he ponders the epic problem, in questions the most difficult and disputable of ethnology and philology. An equipment of learning, not rapidly nor easily acquired, is demanded even for their consideration, and they carry one far from the paths of pure literature. Take such a matter as the origins of our own English and Scottish ballad literature, by comparison simple, yet in sharp debate. Enter upon the far remoter field of the origins of Beowulf, one is instantly entangled in a forest of conjectures. No one will deny that ballad or epic-any selected ballad or epic-is part of a continuous whole, part of a national literature, yet to ascribe to it not merely its rank and dignity as a poem, but its true date and place in literary and social history, to determine its relations with the poetry that preceded and the poetry that followed, that is a task of real magnitude, more easily outlined than completed.

The earliest poetry of all races—it is not altogether a conjecture-appears to have been the ballad-dance. For in the earliest social gatherings the rude music and song were never dissevered, never practised apart. In rhythmical gesture, for a sense of rhythm appears to be as old as humanity, the village assembly gave expression to its pleasure or sorrow, and when words or cries were added to or accompanied the physical

movements, they fell, of nature and necessity, into the swing or beat of the dance. The earliest song, indisputably then, was simply a chorus, often indeed meaningless, but invariably rhythmical, for it followed a pattern already provided. The refrain or chorus of the modern song-linking civilisation with barbarism-leads back to the most primitive of social arts. Poetry for long in the history of mankind was produced and never otherwise produced than under social conditions, at a gathering of the community. The dancing, the singing, the music -these were one, and of the composing strands of the single art the language or words were originally of least import; emotion found expression before thought, and authorship is a phrase without meaning at this stage of human history. Speculation hardens to the inevitable conclusion-collect the evidence from the history of ancient Greece or of the Hebrews, from the observations of travellers among uncivilised races in the past or in the present-that the choral dance and its attendant music are the invariable and preceding conditions of song, the sources of poetry are in these communal efforts of the clan. "Sometimes they are magic incantations, sometimes they are war-songs, sometimes they are songs of marriage, sometimes they are dirges of death. In some the gestures predominate, and in others the rude music, in others the refrain of a few simple words. But the main points to be borne in mind are that these elements are confused together, and that the mere presentation of the words alone cannot enable us to imagine the true nature of primitive song." Poetry for long-who knows how long?-can have been little more than a repetition of words, names, phrases of some suggestive value to the group of dancers. Add to these reiterated cries the simplest improvised dialogue, or add to them the simplest improvised narrative, a mere reference to familiar facts and one has this primitive ballad.2 Narrative indeed 1 Posnett's Comparative Literature, p. 127.

2 As Barbour says of Sir John Soulis' feat of arms

66

Young women quhen thai will play

Syng it emang thame ilka day.”—Brus, xvi. 521, 522. Compare the way in which ballads are sung down to modern times in the Faröe Islands

"Their greatest amusement is dancing. Old and young take part in it. . . .

"1

by means of dialogue-the most ancient form of narrativepossesses advantages great and obvious. Of its age "we have proof," as Blair remarks, "in the books of the Old Testament, which, instead of narration, abound with speeches, with answers and replies. Thus in the Book of Genesis: Joseph said unto his brethren, Whence come ye? and they answered, From the land of Canaan we come to buy food. And Joseph said, Ye are spies; to see the nakedness of the land are ye come. And they said unto him, Nay, my lord, but to buy food are thy servants come: we are all one man's sons; we are true men, thy servants are no spies. And he said unto them, Nay, but to see the nakedness of the land you are come.' So in our own ballads, many of them, by way of question and of answer, by the way of conversation the story is told, a method old as the art of story-telling itself. In many of them are imbedded too, as in a glacier are imbedded the stones and debris of a distant region, the refrain or chorus which has travelled far, and links our own with the earliest forms of poetry. It would seem then that the history of the poetic art-by a gradual subordination of the chorus either to dialogue or narrative-relates the encroachment of the individual upon the public domain. He distinguishes, he asserts himself, and slowly the community withdraws into shadow; further and further it retires into obscurity till at last it becomes passive altogether, no longer itself the maker, merely now the audience to whom the poem is recited or sung. For long indeed it will hold its ground, a sharer in the mood, by participation in the refrain, but finally driven from its own, submits, as in the political sphere, to the superior person, to the ministry of the skilled, professional artist. "They lightened their labours by songs," says Mungo They use no instrumental music but dance to songs. It is now the one and now the other who leads the song, and all who can sing join in it, at least in the refrain.. The object of the song is not only like dancemusic, to regulate the steps, but at the same time to awaken certain feelings by its meanings. One can see by the dancers' behaviour that they are not indifferent to the matter of the song, but with their countenances and gestures take pains to express the various meaning of it... These songs in the Faröe district are so numerous that the same is seldom sung a second time the same winter. Most of them are pretty long, yet are never written down, but retained in the memory."-Prior's Ancient Danish Ballads.

1 Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric, vol. 3, pp. 173-174.