penny: : he being bound for one of the great universities, of whose learning the world has heard; for Oxford or Cambridge, or for Paris, or, farther yet, for Bologna, for Salerno. The roads of Europe are full of his like. No one quite knows how it has happened. The schools of Remigius and of William of Champeaux (we will say) have given Paris a certain prestige when a mysterious word, a rumour, spreads along the great routes, of a certain great teacher called Abelard whose voice will persuade a man's soul almost out of his body. The fame of it spreads almost as pollen is wafted on the wind: but spreads, and alights, and fertilizes. Forthwith, in all the far corners of Europe, young men are packing their knapsacks, bidding good-bye to their homes, waving back to the family at the gate as they dare the great adventure and fare (say) for Paris, intellectual queen of Europe.

The desire of the moth for the star! The ineffable spell of those great names-Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna, Salamanca! These young men reach at length the city which has been shining in their imagination. The light fades down its visionary spires to a narrow noisome medieval street in which the new-comer is one of a crowd, a turbulent crowd of the wantonest morals. But youth is there, and friendship: to be kept green through the years of later life, when all this young blood is dispersed, and the boys have shaken hands, not to meet again, and nothing remains in common to Dick of York and Hans of Hungary but a memory of the old class-room where they blew on their fingers, and took notes by the light of unglazed windows, and shuffled their numb feet in the straw.

Let me instance one such scholar-William Dunbar, the great fifteenth-century poet of Scotland. He was born about 1460, went to St Andrews and there graduated

Master of Arts in 1479: at once became an Observantine Friar of the Franciscan Order, and started to travel: very likely took ship first from Leith to the Thames, but anyhow crossed to France-the little passenger ships of those days carrying a hundred besides their crew. Says the old ballad: Men may leve alle gamys,

That saylen to seynt Jamys!

(that is, to St James of Compostella)

Ffor many a man hit gramys (vexes),
When they begyn to sayle.

Ffor when they have take the see,
At Sandwyche, or at Wynchylsee,
At Brystow, or where that hit bee,

Theyr hertes begyn to fayle.

Then follows an extremely moving picture of the crowded sea-sickness on board. We will not dwell on it. Somehow, Dunbar gets to France; roves Picardy; is in Paris in 1491 and mingles with the scholars of the Sorbonne; returns home by way of London (and be it remembered that the kingdoms of England and his native Scotland were more often antagonistic than not in those days); on his way pauses to muse on London Bridge-that Bridge of which I spoke to you a few minutes ago-'lusty Brigge of pylers white' he calls it and breaks into this noble praise of our City: London, thou art of townes A per se.

Soveraign of cities, semeliest in sight,

Of high renoun, riches and royaltie;

Of lordis, barons, and many a goodly knyght;
Of most delectable lusty ladies bright;

Of famous prelatis, in habitis clericall;

Of merchauntis full of substaunce and of myght:
London, thou art the flour of Cities all.

Above all ryvers thy Ryver hath renowne,

Whose beryall streamys, pleasaunt and preclare, Under thy lusty wallys renneth down,

Where many a swanne doth swymme with wyngis fair; Where many a barge doth saile, and row with are (oars); Where many a ship doth rest with toppe-royall.

O, towne of townes! patrone and not compare, London, thou art the floure of Cities all.

My discourse, like many a better one, shall end with a moral. I have often observed in life, and especially in matters of education-you too, doubtless, have observed -that what folks get cheaply or for nothing they are disposed to undervalue. Indeed I suspect we all like to think ourselves clever, and it helps our sense of being clever to adjust the worth of a thing to the price we have paid for it. Now the medieval scholar I have been trying to depict for you was poor, even bitterly poor, yet bought his learning dear. Listen to Chaucer's account of him when he had attained to be a Clerk of Oxenford, and to enough money to hire a horse: As leene was his hors as is a rake,

And he nas nat right fat, I undertake,
But looked holwe, and ther-to sobrely;
Ful thredbare was his overeste courtepy;
For he hadde geten hym yet no benefice
Ne was so worldly for to have office;
For hym was levere have at his beddes heed
Twenty bookės clad in blak or reed
Of Aristotle and his philosophie,

Than robės riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie:
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre;
But al that he myghte of his freendes hente
On bookes and his lernynge he it spente,
And bisily gan for the soules preye

Of hem that yaf hym wher-with to scoleye.

How happy would such a poor scholar deem us, who have printed books cheap and plenty, who have newspapers brought to our door for a groat, who can get in less than an hour and a half to Oxford, to Cambridge, in a very few hours to Paris, to Rome-cities of his desire, shining in a land that is very far off! Nevertheless I tell you, who have listened so kindly to me for an hour, that in the commerce and transmission of thought the true carrier is neither the linotype machine, nor the telegraph at the nearest post office, nor the telephone at your elbow, nor any such invented convenience: but even such a wind as carries the seed, ‘it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain': the old, subtle, winding, caressing, omnipresent wind of man's aspiration. For the secret—which is also the reward of all learning lies in the passion for the search.

BALLADS

I

"HE Ballad is, of all forms of poetry, about the most mysterious and singular: singular in its nature, mysterious not only in this but in its origin and its history.

We need not, here, today, trouble ourselves overmuch with its origin, which is much the same as Melchizedek's. Yet we may not wholly neglect the question. There are, as you probably know, two conflicting theories about it; and the supporters of each talk like men ready to shed blood, though for my part I hold that a very little common sense might reconcile them; since each theory contains a modicum of truth, and each, when pushed to the extreme, becomes frantically absurd.

On the one hand we have the theory-invented or pioneered by Herder, elaborated and oracularly preached by James Grimm—that these 'folk songs' were made by the 'folk'; that they burst into existence by a kind of natural and spontaneous generation in a tribe or nation, at that stage of culture when it is 'for all practical purposes an individual'; that a ballad comes, or came, into being much as the floating matter of a nebula condenses to form a

star.

Now there is much truth in this. A tribe meets together to celebrate some occasion of common interest-a successful hunt, a prosperous foray, the wedding of its chief, the return of the god who brings summer, the end of a religious