Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/99

 Rh This privilege is, I think, most likely to be realised by the folklorist, who, if he have really penetrated to the inmost sanctum of our study, will have learned to grasp the manifold links that bind us to the remotest past, to sympathise with the rudest and most infantile manifestations of human energy, and to recognise in the formless germ the source of what may be mightiest and most beautiful in human effort. He will also have learned to observe with rigid fidelity, to preserve everything, faulty and trivial though much may be, to sympathise with everything, though much may offend or startle our present conventions. It is part of his task to hold up to English literature the duty of incorporating the souls of vanishing peoples, the privilege of transmitting them to future ages. Surveying as I did the past of our literature, and noting by what happy combination of circumstances it has been enabled to preserve so much beauty, imperishable now, otherwise lost, I am filled with confidence for the future. If we know the importance of our aim, if we but will to act upon our knowledge, surely we can accomplish what chance apparently enabled our forefathers to accomplish. Imperial England of the sixteenth century preserved for later ages shapes and visions that greet us from out the oldest wonder-world of Celts and Teutons; may not imperial Britain of our days seek from the lips of passing races, before they have wholly passed away, sustenance and embodiment for the creation of new types of significance and beauty? If such is a possible outcome of the folklorist's labours, directed though these may primarily be to other objects, may he not feel that he is working for mankind at large and for all time?

In dwelling as I did upon the import of folklore for English literature in the past, in dwelling as I have just done upon its possible import for British literature in the future, I have no wish to unduly magnify the literary aspect of our studies as against others. I merely talk of that which, I confess, interests me most in folklore, that at least