matter
of Scottish ballads, and was nourished from his boyhood on the
_Reliques_, printed for the first time many ballads which still are the
best of their class, and was gifted with consummate skill and taste.
Both, moreover, did their work scientifically, according to their
lights; and both have left at least some of their originals behind them.
There is, perhaps, one more exception to the general condemnation. Of
William Allingham's _Ballad Book_, as truly a _vade mecum_ as Palgrave's
lyrical anthology in the same 'Golden Treasury' series, I would speak,
perhaps only for sentimental reasons, always with respect, admiring the
results of his editing while looking askance at the method, for he mixed
his ingredients and left no recipe.

But in the majority of cases there is no obvious excuse for this 'omnium
gatherum' process. The self-imposed function of most ballad editors
appears to have been the compilation of _rifacimenti_ in accordance with
their private ideas of what a ballad should be. And that such a state of
things was permissible is doubtless an indication of the then prevalent
attitude of half-interested tolerance assumed towards these memorials of
antiquity.

To-day, however, the ballad editor is confronted with the results of the
labours, still unfinished, of a comparatively recent school in literary
science. These have lately culminated in _The English and Scottish
Popular Ballads_, edited by the late Professor Francis James Child of
Harvard University. This work, in five large volumes, issued in ten
parts at intervals from 1882 to 1898, and left by the editor at his
death complete but for the Introduction--_valde deflendus_--gives in
full all known variants of the three hundred and five ballads adjudged
by its editor to be genuinely 'popular,' with an essay, prefixed to each
ballad, on its history, origin, folklore, etc., and notes, glossary,
bibliographies, appendices, etc.; exhibiting as a whole unrivalled
special knowledge, great scholarly intuition, and years of patient
research, aided by correspondents, students, and transcribers in all
parts of the world, Lacking Professor Child's Introduction, we cannot
exactly tell what his definition of a 'popular' ballad was, or what
qualities in a ballad implied exclusion from his collection--_e.g._ he
does not admit _The Children in the Wood_: otherwise one can find in
this monumental work the whole history and all the versions of nearly
all the ballads.