That is why ballad-making is a lost art. Or almost a lost art. For even in this odd and musty world of phantoms which we call the twentieth century, there are times when a man finds himself in a certain place at a certain hour and something happens to him which takes him out of himself. And a song is born, simply and sweetly, a song which other men can sing, for all time, and forget themselves. Such a song was once written by a master at my old school, Marlborough. He was a Scot. But he loved Marlborough with the sort of love which the old ballad-mongers must have had-the sort of love which takes a man on wings, far from his foolish little body. He wrote a song called "The Scotch Marlburian". Here it is:-- Oh Marlborough, she's a toun o' touns We will say that and mair, We that ha' walked alang her douns And snuffed her Wiltshire air. A weary way ye'll hae to tramp Afore ye match the green O' Savernake and Barbery Camp And a' that lies atween! The infinite beauty of that phrase ... "and a' that lies atween"! The infinite beauty as it is roared by seven hundred young throats in unison! For in that phrase there drifts a whole pageant of boyhood--the sound of cheers as a race is run on a stormy day in March, the tolling of the Chapel bell, the crack of ball against bat, the sighs of sleep in a long white dormitory. But you may say "What is all this to me? I wasn't at Maryborough. I don't like schoolboys ... they strike me as dirty, noisy, and usually foul-minded. Why should I go into raptures about such a song, which seems only to express a highly debatable approval of a certain method of education?" If you are asking yourself that sort of question, you are obviously in very grave need of the tonic properties of this book. For after you have read it, you will wonder why you ever asked it. IV I go back and back to the same point, at the risk of boring you to distraction. For it is a point which has much more "to" it than the average modern will care to admit, unless he is forced to do so. You remember the generalization about the eyes ... how they used to look _out_, but now look _in_? Well, listen to this.... _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.