prove, many of
the theories advanced concerning the laws of literature as evinced in
the ballads of the old world.

Such learned matter as this, however, is not so surely within my
province, who have made no technical study of literary origins, as is
the other consideration which made me feel, from my first knowledge of
these ballads, that they are beyond dispute valuable and important. In
the ballads of the old world, it is not historical or philological
considerations which most readers care for. It is the wonderful,
robust vividness of their artless yet supremely true utterance; it is
the natural vigor of their surgent, unsophisticated human rhythm. It
is the sense, derived one can hardly explain how, that here is
expression straight from the heart of humanity; that here is something
like the sturdy root from which the finer, though not always more
lovely, flowers of polite literature have sprung. At times when we
yearn for polite grace, ballads may seem rude; at times when polite
grace seems tedious, sophisticated, corrupt, or mendacious, their very
rudeness refreshes us with a new sense of brimming life. To
compare the songs collected by Professor Lomax with the immortalities
of olden time is doubtless like comparing the literature of America
with that of all Europe together. Neither he nor any of us would
pretend these verses to be of supreme power and beauty. None the less,
they seem to me, and to many who have had a glimpse of them,
sufficiently powerful, and near enough beauty, to give us some such
wholesome and enduring pleasure as comes from work of this kind proved
and acknowledged to be masterly.

What I mean may best be implied, perhaps, by a brief statement of
fact. Four or five years ago, Professor Lomax, at my request, read
some of these ballads to one of my classes at Harvard, then engaged in
studying the literary history of America. From that hour to the
present, the men who heard these verses, during the cheerless progress
of a course of study, have constantly spoken of them and written of
them, as of something sure to linger happily in memory. As such I
commend them to all who care for the native poetry of America.

BARRETT WENDELL.
Nahant, Massachusetts,
July 11, 1910.

COLLECTOR'S NOTE

Out in the wild, far-away places of the big and still unpeopled
west,--in the canons along the Rocky Mountains, among the mining camps
of Nevada and Mont