lifting it up to the highest level of romantic poetry. He did this especially by collecting all the peasant songs and legends that he could find, writing thèm down from the lips of the peasants themselves, and afterwards publishing them in the "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border." Southey did much work in the same direction. Shelley was almost a fairy himself; and though in no page in his work will you find a real fairy poem, the spirit of all his composition is strongly coloured and etherealized by the study of fairy beliefs. Keats produced the most beautiful original fairy ballad of his time, perhaps the most beautiful of all modern time, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." Even Byron attempted fairy stories in verse, but his genius did not lie in that field, and his work in that kind only served to show how the spirit of Scott had affected him. Minor writers did a great deal towards fairy literature during the same period; and Lewis's "Tales of Wonder" embodied much valuable research in regard to fairy beliefs. With the new poetry of Tennyson, and the Tennyson group, there was a change, but a change of method rather than of substance. Tennyson himself has touched fairy topics with extraordinary skill, and all through his idyls, as well as in his earlier poems, you will find evidence of the manner in which he comprehended the romantic side of fairy superstition. Rossetti has embodied many of the superstitions in his extraordinary work, for instance in the story of "Rose Mary." Browning shows fairy lights here and there, and very weird ones; perhaps the most notable example of his skill in this field is the wonderful tale of the "Pied Piper of Hamlin," an old German goblin-story, which he put into poetical form for the sake of a child friend. Swinburne has used some fairy literature in imitation of the Northern dialect ballads; but one of his most notable compositions, "Laus Veneris," though not avowedly what is called commonly a fairy tale, really is a fairy tale, perhaps stranger and more touching than all the fairy tales of the

Middle Ages. Then in William Morris's "Earthly Paradise" you will find an immense collection of fairy legends beautifully told; and numerous other such legends are scattered through other volumes of his, about which I hope to give you a short lecture before long. Previously I spoke to you about what several of the later minor poets, notably Miss Rossetti, had done in the fairy tale. You will see from such brief notes as these how large is still the relation of the fairy superstitions to English literature. Even such grave critics as Edmund Gosse and Stopford Brooke have condescended to sing fairy songs. And perhaps among the now living poets of genius the best imitator of fairy ballads is Rudyard Kipling. Whenever Kipling writes a poem or a ballad, however, he usually has a larger purpose than at first appears, and his "Last Rhyme of True Thomas" deserves mentioning here, not simply because of its wonderful excellence as weird poetry, but because it expresses the nobility and the power of the poet as a teacher and an artist. It was written when there was some discussion about calling Kipling to the laureateship, which you know was given to Alfred Austen, a very low fourth or fifth class poet. It then occurred to Kipling to express his thought about that matter in the form of a ballad. A king comes to make a knight of "True Thomas," the famous hero of many old Scotch ballads. But Thomas laughs at the offer of such honour. He takes his fairy harp and sings, and the king weeps. He plays again, and the king laughs. A third time he plays, and the king wants to go to war; a fourth time he plays, and the king becomes humble and gentle like a little child. Then says Thomas, "I can make you do whatever I wish, can make you laugh or weep or rage at my will; is it not ridiculous for you to talk about making me a knight?" I need scarcely explain the excellent irony concealed behind these quaint verses. Were they not written in dialect, I should like to quote them.

Now you may be interested to know that even today

serious fairy dramas are written. Of course, on the Celtic stage a great deal is borrowed from fairy tales, and operas and the most extravagant of what are called spectacular dramas are made more interesting by the introduction of fairy personages and fairy dancers. The dark side of the belief is less often dealt with. But the "Land of Heart's Desire" is the name of a fairy drama recently composed by William Butler Yeats which has been acted with some success, and which is interesting as showing you some new possibilities. It is a very short composition treating only of a single episode. A family at night, seated about the fire, are startled by the entrance of a little child who appears to have lost her way. In the house there is a priest, who at once suspects that the child is not a human being. The interest of the whole action is made to lie in the way this fairy child deludes priest, parents, husband, and servants successively, in order to steal away the daughter-in-law, the new bride. Though the conditions are supernatural, the play of emotions is purely and intensely human and thus an impossible situation is made to become intensely interesting. For example, the strange child observes a crucifix upon the wall of the room as she enters, and she makes them take it way. The method by which she obliges them to take it away, notwithstanding their zealous belief in its power to protect them, is delightfully managed.

C.-What is that ugly thing on the black cross?

P.-You can not know how naughty your words are! that is our Blessed Lord!

C.-Hide it away.

P.

That would be wickedness.

C. The tortured thing!-hide it away.

This and what follows is supremely natural, and we are not at all surprised when the priest is eventually overcome by the appeal to his human and paternal side. The single expression "tortured thing" is here sufficient to show the artist.

You may ask perhaps why I give so much time to a discussion of foreign superstition in foreign literature. This is really worth while. I am quite sure that it is, but not because the superstition happens to be Western. When you can judge of the value that such ideas have been to European poetry and romance, you will be better able to understand the possible future value to your own literature of Eastern beliefs that are now passing or likely to pass away. To an unimaginative and dryly practical man such things are simply superstition, absurd rubbish. But to the true poet or dramatist or story-teller they are all, or nearly all, of priceless value. The whole question is or should be how to use them.

CHAPTER XXI

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ROMANCE OF THE

MIDDLE AGES

THE value of romantic literature, which has been, so far as the Middle Ages are concerned, unjustly depreciated, does not depend upon beauty of words or beauty of fact. Today the immense debt of modern literature to the literature of the Middle Ages is better understood; and we are generally beginning to recognize what we owe to the imagination of the Middle Ages, in spite of the ignorance, the superstition and the cruelty of that time. If the evils of the Middle Ages had really been universal, those ages could not have imparted to us lessons of beauty and lessons of nobility having nothing to do with literary form in themselves, yet profoundly affecting modern poetry of the highest class. No; there was very much of moral goodness, as well as of moral badness in the Middle Ages; and what was good happened to be very good indeed. Commonly it used to be said (though I do not think any good critic would say it now) that the fervid faith of the time made the moral beauty. Unless we modify this statement a great deal, we cannot now accept it at all. There was indeed a religious beauty, particularly mediaeval, but it was not that which created the romance of the period. Indeed, that romantic literature was something of a reaction against the religious restraint upon imagination. But if we mean by mediaeval faith only that which is very much older than any European civilization, and which does not belong to the West any more than to the East-the profound belief in human moral experience-then I think that the statement is true enough. At no time in European history were men more sincere believers in the value of certain virtues than