Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/57

Rh INTRODUCTION. there is no poetizing, but poetry pure and simple ; and then, wishing to make himself clearer, he adds the phrase ** objective inspiration." ^ This was the young man ; but what have his maturer years to say about the problem ? In 1845, writing about the great Finnish epos, and in 1859 in his beautiful Discourse on Schiller,^ he reverts to this theme of early poetry in "more cautious and measured terms, we must admit, but substantially in the old spirit. " Epic poetry," he declares in the former essay, " can no more be made than history can be made." It is the "folk" which pours its own flood of poetry over far-off events, and so brings about the epos. In the Discourse on Schiller* one hears much the same ; events sing themselves in current of resistless poetry, " behincl which the poet utterly disap- pears." More significant yet is a passage in the Discourse on Lachmann, where Grimm clings as firmly as ever to his theory of poetry of the people and by the people, but allows a certain flexibility and range of interpretation in regard to the manner of this gregarious authorship. "Epic poetry," he says,* "is not produced by particular and recognized poets, but rather springs up and spreads a long time among the people themselves, in the mouth of the people, — however one may choose to understand this in a nearer application^ * Here, of course, is the weak joint of the armor, the fragile link in the chain of argument. Transmission from the communal mind, from the vague spirit of poetry felt by a homogeneous mass of men, into definite words 1 " Keine Erdichtung, sondern wahrhafte Dichtung." — " Objective Begeisterung." 2 &. Schr,, II, 75 ff. and I, 374 ff. ' See p. 380. ^ ** Wie man das nun n'aher fasse." Digitized by LjOOQIC
 * Kleinere Schriften^ I, 155.