uch difference
between them, and we must be charitable.

The sojourner in the green shade will find himself, as I have found
myself, more interested in people (but not those people) than in
books. We have too many books, as I discovered when I left London for
good. I sold six tons, and again another six, when, after two years in
West Sussex, I came home. Now I have collected about me the things I
can't do without, the things of which I read at least portions every
year, as well as a few which it is good to have handy in case of
accidents. Book-collecting is a foppery, a pastime of youth, when
spending money is as necessary as taking exercise, and you are better
for an object in each case. But I find that I now read with motives
other than those of old. I am now more interested in the author than
in his book. That must mean that I am more interested in life than
in art. I am reading at this moment Professor Child's edition of the
Ballads, and though I am occasionally moved to tears by the beauty
and tragic insight of things like _The Wife of Usher's Well_;
_Clerk Saunders_, or _Lord Thomas and Fair Annie_, I am sure that
considerations altogether unliterary move me more--such, for instance,
as curiosity to know who composed, and for whom they composed, these
lovely tales. I don't suppose that we shall ever know the name, or
anything of the personality of any one poet of them. Those poets were
as anonymous as our church-builders, and if they were content to be so
we should be content to have it so. But one would be happy to know of
what kind they were, and perhaps even happier (certainly I should) to
realise their auditors. Did they write for men or women? That is one
of my consuming quests. The staves of the _Iliad_ were for men: that
seems certain. Those of the _Odyssey_ not so certainly. But take this
from _May Collin_, and consider it.

You know the story, how "She fell in love with a false priest, and
rued it ever mair"? The priest followed her "butt and ben," and gave
her no peace. They took horses and money and rode out together "Until
they came to a rank river, Was raging like the sea." There the priest
declared his purpose:

"Light off, light off now, May Collin,
It's here that you must dee;
Here I have drown'd seven kings' daughters,
The eighth now you must be."

So her torture begins. He bids her cast off "her gown that's of the
green," because it is too good to rot in the sea-stream; next her