The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
poems, known to be by that one author, and in
the state in which they left his brain, can by a
deductive process work out a system of the poet's
characteristic methods of expression, and say
" this is Milton's style." The ballad-scholar, on
with a number of
the other hand, has to grapple
poems, each extant in several versions, but uniform
in certain characters as aforesaid, and
attempt to apply an inductive method. Now,
without pausing at present to enquire how likely
it is that he will be able to find an individual
author for poems of no fixed content, which yet
are obviously the favourites of many nations and
many ages, let us consider a problem that forms
a kind of half-way house between these two extremes.
Imagine a literary scholar selecting for
study one of the many poets who flourished when
England was a nest of singing birds say John
Donne, who has been so selected more than once.
No connoisseur will deny that a number of poems
are by Donne and no one else but the " com-
;
monplace books " of his time are full of verses
" attributed
" to Donne, and here can be no
such absolute knowledge of their authenticity.
At this point the scholar's inductive function
begins it is his business to ;
apply to these " doubtful
" poems the touchstone of Donne's style,
which he has formed by deduction from the
authentic works. That is the test of his scholarship.
A good scholar knows that one poem
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is in