vered a wide variety of professional entertainers.
A modern comment (by E.K. Chambers, in _The Mediaeval Stage_, Vol. I,
p. 66) seems like an echo of Scott: "This general antithesis between
the higher and lower minstrelsy may now, perhaps, be regarded as
established. It was the neglect of it, surely, that led to that
curious and barren logomachy between Percy and Ritson, in which
neither of the disputants can be said to have had hold of more than a
bare half of the truth."]

[Footnote 44: Scott's theory as to the authorship of ballads is even
now held by Mr. Courthope. At the end of his chapter on Minstrelsy, in
_The History of English Poetry_, he thus sums up the matter: "All the
evidence cited in this chapter shows that, so far from the ballad
being a spontaneous product of popular imagination, it was a type of
poem adapted by the professors of the declining art of minstrelsy,
from the romances once in favour with the educated classes. Everything
in the ballad--matter, form, composition--is the work of the minstrel;
all that the people do is to remember and repeat what the minstrel has
put together." This statement represents a position which is actively
assailed by the adherents of the communal origin theory. Another
critical idea which originated in Germany, and in which Scott had no
interest, though he knew something about it, was the Wolffian
hypothesis in regard to the Homeric poems. He once heard Coleridge
expound the subject, but failed to join in the discussion. (_Journal_,
Vol. II, p. 164; _Lockhart_, Vol. V, p. 193.) He said the theory could
never be held by any _poet_. See a note by Lockhart on the essay on
_Popular Poetry_. Henderson's edition of _Minstrelsy_, Vol. I, p. 3.]

[Footnote 45: Review of Cromek's _Reliques of Burns_. _Quarterly
Review_, February, 1809.]

[Footnote 46: "No one but Burns ever succeeded in patching up old
Scottish songs with any good effect," Scott wrote in his _Journal_
(Vol. II, p. 25). And in his review of Cromek's _Reliques of Burns_ he
said on the same subject of Scottish songs: "Few, whether serious or
humorous, past through his hands without receiving some of those magic
touches which, without greatly altering the song, restored its
original spirit, or gave it more than it had ever possessed."
(_Quarterly_, February, 1809.)]

[Footnote 47: _Remarks on Popular Poetry_, Henderson's edition of
_Minst