_I'm_ feeling blue, _I_ don't know what to do, 'Cos _I_ love you And you don't love _me_. The above masterpiece is, as far as I am aware, imaginary. But it represents a sort of _reductio ad absurdum_ of thousands of lyrics which have been echoing over the post-war world. Nearly all these lyrics are melancholy, with the profound and primitive melancholy of the negro swamp, and they are all violently egotistical. Now this, in the long run, is an influence of far greater evil than one would be inclined at first to admit. If countless young men, every night, are to clasp countless young women to their bosoms, and rotate over countless dancing-floors, muttering "I'm feeling blue ... _I_ don't know what to do", it is not unreasonable to suppose that they will subconsciously apply some of the lyric's mournful egotism to themselves. Anybody who has even a nodding acquaintance with modern psychological science will be aware of the significance of "conditioning", as applied to the human temperament. The late M. Coué "conditioned" people into happiness by making them repeat, over and over again, the phrase "Every day in every way I grow better and better and better." The modern lyric-monger exactly reverses M. Coué's doctrine. He makes the patient repeat "Every night, with all my might, I grow worse and worse and worse." Of course the "I" of the lyric-writer is an imaginary "I", but if any man sings "_I'm_ feeling blue", often enough, to a catchy tune, he will be a superman if he does not eventually apply that "I" to himself. But the "blueness" is really beside the point. It is the _egotism_ of the modern ballad which is the trouble. Even when, as they occasionally do, the modern lyric-writers discover, to their astonishment, that they are feeling happy, they make the happiness such a personal issue that half its tonic value is destroyed. It is not, like the old ballads, just an outburst of delight, a sudden rapture at the warmth of the sun, or the song of the birds, or the glint of moonlight on a sword, or the dew in a woman's eyes. It is not an emotion so sweet and soaring that self is left behind, like a dull chrysalis, while the butterfly of the spirit flutters free. No ... the chrysalis is never left behind, the "I", "I", "I", continues, in a maddening monotone. And we get this sort of thing.... _I_ want to be happy, But _I_ can't be happy Till _I've_ made you happy too. And that, if you please, is one of the jolliest lyrics of the last decade! That was a song which made us all smile and set all our feet dancing! Even when their tale was woven out of the stuff of tragedy, the old ballads were not tarnished with such morbid speculations. Read the tale of the beggar's daughter of Bethnal Green. One shudders to think what a modern lyric-writer would make of it. We should all be in tears before the end of the first chorus.