use
of conventional epithets; "the red, red gold," "the good green wood,"
"the gray goose wing." Such are certain recurring terms of phrase like,

But out and spak their stepmother.

Such is, finally, a kind of sing-song repetition, which doubtless helped
the ballad singer to memorize his stock, as, for example,

She had'na pu'd a double rose,
A rose but only twae.

Or again,

And mony ane sings o' grass, o' grass,
And mony ane sings o' corn;
An mony ane sings o' Robin Hood,
Kens little whare he was born.

It was na in the ha', the ha',
Nor in the painted bower;
But it was in the gude green wood,
Amang the lily flower.

Copies of some of these old ballads were hawked about in the 16th
century, printed in black letter, "broadsides," or single sheets. Wynkyn
de Worde printed in 1489 _A Lytell Geste of Robin Hood_, which is a sort
of digest of earlier ballads on the subject. In the 17th century a few
of the English popular ballads were collected in miscellanies called
_Garlands_. Early in the 18th century the Scotch poet, Allan Ramsay,
published a number of Scotch ballads in the _Evergreen_ and _Tea-Table
Miscellany_. But no large and important collection was put forth until
Percy's _Reliques_ (1765), a book which had a powerful influence upon
Wordsworth and Walter Scott. In Scotland some excellent ballads in the
ancient manner were written in the 18th century, such as Jane Elliott's
_Lament for Flodden_, and the fine ballad of _Sir Patrick Spence_.
Walter Scott's _Proud Maisie is in the Wood_, is a perfect reproduction
of the pregnant, indirect method of the old ballad makers.

In 1453 Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and many Greek scholars,
with their manuscripts, fled into Italy, where they began teaching their
language and literature, and especially the philosophy of Plato. There
had been little or no knowledge of Greek in western Europe during the
Middle Ages, and only a very imperfect knowledge of the Latin classics.
Ovid and Statius were widely read, and so was the late Latin poet,
Boethius, whose _De Consolatione Philosophiae_ had been translated into
English by King Alfred and by Chaucer. Little was known of Vergil at
first hand, and he was popularly supposed to have been a mighty wizard,
who made sundry works of enchantment at Rome, such as a magic mirror and
statue. Caxton's so-called translation of the _Aeneid_ was in reality
nothing but a version of a Fren