Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/26

 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.

not invite you, as on the last occasion, on a visit to Fairyland, but ask you to descend with me from the heights of classical literature and of refined society to the depths of popular literature and to that layer of society of which the education has apparently been neglected, and of the inner life of which only a glimpse is allowed to reach the sympathetic eye from time to time. We will descend to the masses, and turn to the unwritten lore of the people.

Classical literature, as the name denotes, is the literature of the class, often demanding for its growth a special atmosphere and a peculiar refinement, obtained by leisure, wealth, or luxury, and by detachment from the immediate cares of the day. It represents a world of its own imagination, appealing to the selected few who, through a process of self-deception and from that remarkable ignorance which still prevails among the so-called classes, fondly assume that all the treasures of poetry, and all that goes towards elevating the mind, are the privileged property of the few. But the bounties of this world have not been set apart for the few, nor has the sole enjoyment of its beauty been granted to the select. On the contrary, the gift of poetical imagination and the power of giving expression to the deepest emotion belong to the whole of mankind.

The people have also poetry, but this is a poetry of