Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/68

lxii Ixii INTRODUCTION. fication of the origins of the ballad with the origins of poetry as a thing of literature, barring the facts of environment at the outset and oral tradition in reaching a later public. In both cases the artist is a final cause. Yet all able critics of our day are not on this side. Leaving out of sight for the moment the question of gre- garious or communal authorship for itself, we find that a few of our best scholars are unwilling to concede so much to the artist. They wish to keep the ballad, not only in its fate and accidents, but in its origins and its essence, apart from the poem of literature. They may not support Grimm's theory as laid bare by criticism ; but they take up ground not far removed from it. These men are in the first instance Grundtvig and ten Brink. Grundtvig we have already quoted,^ and ten Brink is presently to be considered. Professor Child, the best living authority on our subject, has devoted his main energies thus far to the editing and comparing of actual ballads, with such result that it is impossible to praise too highly his great collection, now nearly completed ; he has had little to say on the subject of origins.* Professor Steenstrup, whose clear and admirable study of Danish ballads ^ ^ See above, p. xicxv. Pp. xxi-xxiv of the Introduction quoted are surely unequivocal enough ; and we know of no passage in other works where Grundtvig has changed his opinion. His Udsigt ever den Nordiske Oldtids Heroiske Digtning (1867) protests, it is true, against the German tendency to myth, and against the Scandinavian tendency to find history in everything ; but that is quite apart from our question. Moreover, he is talking of the Eddas and the Sagas. 2 In Johnson's Cyclopadia, 1893, " Ballad Poetry," he names absence of subjectivity and of self-consciousness as prime trait of the ballad, and adds : " Though they do not * write themselves * as William Grimm has said, though a man and not a people has com- posed them, still the author counts for nothing, and it is not by mere accident, but with the best reason, that they have come down to us anonymous." 8 Vore Folkeviser fra Middelalderen, Copenhagen, 1891. Digitized by LjOOQIC