I do not know whether what I mean is fully clear, and it is of course difficult to give examples where the matter is so subtle. It is certain, however, that any reader of early literature must be conscious how in the simplicity and naïveté of the best old authors we find things which are now hackneyed and all but commonplace said with a freshness and conviction which makes them for the first time real to us. Many emotions have been so long recognized and expressed in literature that there seems hardly to be a conceivable phase in which they have not been shown, and hardly a conceivable phrase in which they have not been embodied. It appears impossible to express them now with the freshness and sincerity which belonged to them when they were first imprisoned in words. So true is this that were it not that the personal impress of genius and the experience of the imaginative writer always give vitality, literature would cease from the face of the earth, and become a lost art. It is the persuasion and vividness of first discovery which impart to the folk-song its charm and force. The early ballads often put to shame the poetry of later days. The unsophisticated singers of these lays had never been told that it was proper for them to have any especial emotions; they had never heard talk about this feeling or that, and art did not consciously exist for them as other than the spontaneous and sincere expression of what really moved them. That which they felt too strongly to repress, they said without any self-consciousness. Their artistic forms were so simple as to impose no hindrance to the instinctive desire for revealing to others what swelled in their very hearts. The result is that impressiveness and that convincingness which can come from nothing but perfect sincerity. Innumerable poets have put into verse the sentiments of the familiar folk-song, "Waly, waly;" yet it is not easy to find in all the list the same thing said with a certain childlike directness which goes to the heart that one finds in passages like this:-- O waly, waly, but love be bonny A little time while it is new; But when 'tis auld, it waxeth cauld, And fades awa' like morning dew! What later singer is there who has surpassed in pathos that makes the heart ache the exquisite beauty of "Fair Helen"? I would I were where Helen lies; Night and day on me she cries; Oh, that I were where Helen lies On fair Kirconnell Lea!... I would I were where Helen lies; Night and day on me she cries; And I am weary of the skies, Since my love died for me.