Sharp says in his
preface was said at the beginning of the century by Wordsworth, only
where Wordsworth called us back to nature, Mr. Sharp invites us to woo
romance. Romance, he tells us, is 'in the air.' A new romantic movement
is imminent; 'I anticipate,' he says, 'that many of our poets, especially
those of the youngest generation, will shortly turn towards the "ballad"
as a poetic vehicle: and that the next year or two will see much romantic
poetry.'

The ballad! Well, Mr. Andrew Lang, some months ago, signed the death-
warrant of the ballade, and--though I hope that in this respect Mr. Lang
resembles the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, whose bloodthirsty orders
were by general consent never carried into execution--it must be admitted
that the number of ballades given to us by some of our poets was,
perhaps, a little excessive. But the ballad? Sir Patrick Spens, Clerk
Saunders, Thomas the Rhymer--are these to be our archetypes, our models,
the sources of our inspiration? They are certainly great imaginative
poems. In Chatterton's Ballad of Charity, Coleridge's Rhyme of the
Ancient Mariner, the La Belle Dame sans Merci of Keats, the Sister Helen
of Rossetti, we can see what marvellous works of art the spirit of old
romance may fashion. But to preach a spirit is one thing, to propose a
form is another. It is true that Mr. Sharp warns the rising generation
against imitation. A ballad, he reminds them, does not necessarily
denote a poem in quatrains and in antique language. But his own poems,
as I think will be seen later, are, in their way, warnings, and show the
danger of suggesting any definite 'poetic vehicle.' And, further, are
simplicity and directness of utterance really the dominant
characteristics of these old imaginative ballads that Mr. Sharp so
enthusiastically, and, in some particulars, so wisely praises? It does
not seem to me to be so. We are always apt to think that the voices
which sang at the dawn of poetry were simpler, fresher, and more natural
than ours, and that the world which the early poets looked at, and
through which they walked, had a kind of poetical quality of its own, and
could pass, almost without changing, into song. The snow lies thick now
upon Olympus, and its scarped sides are bleak and barren, but once, we
fancy, the white feet of the Muses brushed the dew from the anemones in
the morning, and at evening came Apollo to sing to the shepherds in the
vale. But in this we are merely lending to other ages what we desire, or
think we desire, for our own. Our historical sense is at fault. Every
century that produces poetry is, so far, an artificial century, and the
work that seems to us the most natural and simple product of its time is
probably the result of the most deliberate and self-conscious effort. For
Nature is always behind the age. It takes a great artist to be
thoroughly modern.

Let us turn to the poems, which have really only the preface to blame for
their somewhat late appearance.