Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/39

 Rh translated into every European language. These followed in the wake of the Romances, for, when the romantic period had disappeared, knighthood was dead. Then slowly out of that mass of tales and fabliaux "novels" arose, as they were originally called, some of which are known to us through Chaucer, Lydgate, Govver, and others, and the more elaborate works of fiction, the modern "novel."

Following up this evolutionary series we are struck by a remarkable fact, as remarkable as unexpected, and to my mind so full of comfort, so full of satisfaction, that it outweighs every other scientific result. We are led now to recognise that great and invaluable truth that, whatever has been brought to light out of the depth of the human mind, whatever has been set in circulation as the achievement of the spirit, remains the permanent property of mankind. Nothing is lost. What holds good for matter holds equally good for spirit. The coal becomes a diamond, and the diamond coal; it is transformed into heat, and heat into light, and light into electricity, and electricity into force, and so on. But it is never lost. The same happens also in the spiritual world. The same changes take place in the literary evolution, and thus it comes to pass that Folklore, through its close relation to mediaeval literature, should hold the key to these treasures. Few perhaps are aware that all that the greatest modern poets have produced rests directly on popular literature. Shakespeare, Dante, and Goethe have borrowed their materials from mediaeval romances, novels, tales, and religious legends. The Divine Comedy, Faust, as well as many of the comedies of Shakespeare, are in their primitive forms simple popular legends and tales, told by the folk and believed in by the folk. The diamond was there, and the poet came and cut into it many facets and polished it. Is the Odyssey of our old friend Homer aught but another