Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/11

Rh most eminent Lyrical Poets of Scotland." In 1830 he completed for John Murray's Family Library, in six volumes, his "Lives of the most eminent British Painters, Sculptors and Architects." That was his most successful work in prose. His keen interest in Art as well as Literature was shown again by his editing, in 1834, a "Cabinet Gallery of Pictures by the first masters of the Foreign and English Schools;" and in 1843, the year after his death, appeared his "Life of Sir David Wilkie, with his Journals and Tours." In 1847 Allan Cunningham's "Poems and Songs" were collected and published with an Introduction, Glossary and Notes, by Peter Cunningham, his son.

Why reprint among the works of the great masters this book that bears witness only to a little gift though true? Allan Cunningham as a storyteller caught the now obsolete fashion of his time, and there are passages of phrase and sentiment, and even of incident—as in the first part of the Selbys—that although healthy in nature are conventional in tone, with conventions that were established in a day of broken health. The true love of Literature does not walk only on the mountain tops, it leads us also to the copse and meadow on the lower slopes, and gives us rest upon the moss beside the small rills of the valley. Wherever the voice is true, if there be but a little touch of the divine gift that makes man look below the outward shows with sympathetic insight, and give poetic form to the life common to us all, the right reader has a ready ear, and passes easily through accidental fault to the essential life with which he communes.

In another way also this book has interest for the student of literature. Allan Cunningham took pleasure from early childhood in the stories of the country-side, and he here puts