Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/51

Rh INTRODUCTION, xlv Much the same is to be said of Goethe's influence upon the study of ballads. Spurred on by Herder at Strassburg, he collected a few Alsatian songs, and pres- ently began to show their influence upon his own lyric. On various occasions, mainly in later life, he made critical comments on ballads as a class, or on poetry of the people as Herder meant the phrase.^ In 1823 he remarks on the fashion in which people " use this word volkslieder so much, and do not know just what is meant by it." Such poems should really be made, if not among savages, "at least among uncultivated masses. . . ." Surely, we shall now have a definition ? All he does, however, is to change volkslieder into lieder des volks, and so emphasize the note of nationality. One famous saying of his may, nevertheless, be quoted as evidence that he did not favor the nebular hypothesis for the making of ballads. He is speaking of some Lithu- anian ballads, which must be regarded, he says, as coming directly from the people, who stand much nearer to nature, and thus to poetry, than the educated world, — surely the voice is the voice of Herder ; but presently he adds his own clear-cut dictum : " When I think of it in quiet, it seems wonderful enough that people make so much of folksongs and rate them so high. There is only one poetry, the real and the true ; all else is approxima- tion and show. Poetic talent is given to the peasant as well as to the knight ; it depends whether each one lays hold upon his own condition and treats it as it deserves, in which case the simplest relations will be the most advantageous." In many respects, a good pendant to Goethe is 1 Thus to Eckermann (3 May, 1827) : It was not the authors of Greek tragedies that really composed them, but, rather, " the time and the nation." And he goes on to speak in the same way of Bums. Digitized by LjOOQIC