But Sir Thomas Mallory was not his only diet at this time. He discovered that the old-book corner of A.C. McClurg & Co.'s book-store was a veritable mine of old British ballads, and he began sipping at that spring which in a few years was to exercise such a potent influence on his own verse. It was from this source that he learned the power of simple words and thoughts, when wedded to rhyme, to reach the human heart. His "Little Book of Western Verse" would never have possessed its popular charm had not its author taken his cue from the "Grand Old Masters." He caught his inspiration and faultless touch from studying the construction and the purpose of the early ballads and songs, illustrative of the history, traditions, and customs of the knights and peasantry of England. Where others were content to judge of these in such famous specimens as "Chevy Chase" and "The Nut Brown Maid," Field delved for the true gold in the neglected pages of Anglo-Saxon chronicle and song. He did not waste much time on the unhealthy productions of the courtiers of the time of Queen Elizabeth, but chose the ruder songs of the bards, whose hearts were pure even if their thoughts were sometimes crude, their speech blunt, and their metre queer. Who cannot find suggestions for a dozen of Field's poems in this single stanza from "Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament": _Balow, my babe, lye still and sleipe! It grieves me sair to see thee weipe: If thoust be silent Ise be glad, Thy maining maks my heart ful sad. Balow, my boy, thy mother's joy, Thy father breides me great annoy. Balow, my babe, ly still and sleipe, It grieves me sair, to see thee weipe._ Or where could writer go to a better source for inspiration than to ballads preserving in homely setting such gems as this, from "Bartham's Dirge": _They buried him at mirk midnight, When the dew fell cold and still, When the aspin gray forgot to play, And the mist clung to the hill._