the year 1909 amounts, according to Mr. Sauerbeck's index number, to over 20 per cent., or to the Board of Trade weighted index number to 18 per cent. In the United States the index number of Bradstreet's shows a rise of 47 per cent. In Canada the Department of Labour estimates the increase at 26 per cent. In Germany the increase in the cost of living from 1896 to 1908 has been computed at 27 per cent. In the other countries it is probably greater than the general increase in wholesale prices, and we are thus confronted with the same phenomenon in all countries. We are not at present concerned with the causes of it, though one potent influence has already been mentioned. But in Germany, in France, in North and South America, Governments are being asked by the working classes to do something' to deal with the problem. A hungry proletariate looks with critical eyes at frontiers closed to foreign cattle, at tariffs which shut out chilled and frozen meats and cheaper food supplies, and at trusts which it believes to be sheltered by the tariff walls. Our own politicians think it necessary to give assurances that their fiscal proposals will not increase the cost of living of the working classes or cause any addition to the working-man's budget. But what is the cost of living? How is it to be ascertained? And what portion of it represents taxation?

Evidently we cannot answer these questions until we know how the working classes spend their money. The one-fourth of their outgoings unexplored by the Board of Trade includes expenditure on alcohol and tobacco. The figures of the German Blue Book are complete, but they represent the experience of the very elect. The 3575 account books were, no doubt, distributed to steady families, who had no objection to making a full disclosure of their expenditure and were not unwilling to undertake to keep a continuous record. But the 852 who persisted for a whole year are a band of Gideon possessed of the force of character, regularity, method, and industry required to keep a full record of their housekeeping accounts for twelve months. Such families are not average families. They are above the average in the moral qualities which are associated with rational and well-ordered expenditure, and the discipline of account-keeping has in itself a tendency to fortify such a disposition. If may, however, be fairly urged that such budgets as these are the most important, both for the student and the statesman. The fantasies and caprices of wasteful expenditure belong to the morbid side of social pathology. Time may be wasted as well as money, and may result in a contraction of expenditure by diminishing income.

A short Monday is the rule in many Belgian towns. At Liège hundreds of coal-miners keep pigeons in their attics or lumber

rooms.

'Almost every week-end races take place, organised by the pigeonflyers' clubs. Prizes are offered for different classes of birds and much betting takes place among the members. The birds are timed to reach home on Sunday morning, and the club meets in the afternoon or evening to ascertain the winners and distribute the prizes. If, however, the weather is bad the pigeons are delayed and the miners wait for their return on Monday, instead of going to work.'

Budgets which are deflected from the normal in this way are not the best standard for international comparison. What is important is to know how the regular, steady workman is able to provide for his family. If we confine ourselves to food and rent we know but a part of the story. Comfort depends perhaps still more upon the manner in which the rest of the income, the less clamorous fourth of expenditure, is disposed of. Vitality may be depressed by insufficient clothing as well as by underfeeding. The minimum of food required by a shivering man is higher than if he were warmly clad. Many factors of expenditure interact upon each other.

Imagine two families with approximately the same income, and the same expenditure on food and rent. The first family may have a well-furnished home, attend church or chapel regularly, be well provided with books and papers and clothes, and take an annual holiday at the seaside. Of the second it may be sufficient to say that most of its other expenditure' goes in drink. The partial budget will reveal no difference between the two.

Complete returns are essential for complete comparison. All the budget for all the year is a counsel of perfection, but not impossible of attainment. We want normal budgets not only for different countries but for different localities. Cork, Aberdeen, Norwich will present greater variations than exist between some French and Belgian towns. And the differences between Lille, Paris, Toulouse, and Marseilles will be wider than between some French and German, Spanish, or Italian centres. The heart of the investigator may sink when he finds himself after so much labour unable to offer more precise conclusions. Experience will bring nearer approximation to that exact measurement without which science is a vain thing. The work of the Board of Trade has been immense. It is worth while to continue it and improve it, in view of the supreme importance of the subject.

ART. VII.-MODERN DEVELOPEMENTS IN BALLAD ᎪᎡᎢ .

1. The Oxford Book of Ballads. Chosen and edited by ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1910.

2. Ballads and Metrical Tales. By R. SOUTHEY. London. 1838. 3. The Defence of Guenevere and other Poems. 1st ed., 1858, Vol. I. of the Collected Works of William Morris. London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1910.

4. Ballads and Songs (1894), New Ballads (1897), The Last Ballad (1899). JOHN DAVIDSON. London: John Lane. etc. etc.

IN N the classification of poetry many difficulties arise. Negative rather than positive qualities determine, more often than not, the lines of demarcation. Overlapping characteristics of works, consigned by their general tendency to separate schools and categories, confuse, almost obliterate, theoretical distinctions, and the division into separate groups is frequently a question of the preponderance, not of the exclusive possession, of certain aesthetic elements. So far as ballads are concerned Mr. Quiller-Couch simplifies the question by adopting Professor Ker's definition: A Ballad is The Milldams of Binnorie and Sir Patrick Spens and The Douglas Tragedy ' and Lord Randal and Childe Maurice and things of that sort,' but he does not thereby greatly elucidate what lies beneath 'the Idea, a Poetical Form, which can take up any matter ' and does not leave that matter as it was.'

As a fact the term denominating this special class of verse has been applied so indiscriminatingly that it is difficult to win acceptance for any formal definition. Yet in spite of widest divergences it will generally be allowed that the root of ballad art-according to popular acceptation-lies in the telling of a story; the versification bears the same relation to the story as music bears to the drama in the world of opera. Apart, however, from this broad conception of the fundamental narrative character attached to the ballad, complications of many kinds have been induced by the technical use of the term both in connexion with musical and verse form and with particular verse metres-ballad form and ballad metre indicating certain specialised structural characteristics. On the other hand, the vaguest possible ideas resulted from the circumstance that in earlier days all songs, dissimilar as they

might be in feeling, expression, and structure, passed muster under one heading. Ballad-a song' is Johnson's terse definition. And the designation included the Song of Solomon ('The 'Ballad of Ballads'), the rhymed chronicles of Chevy Chase, and the comic-dialogue stanzas of 'Bell my Wife and her Goodman.' Recent poets have availed themselves of the same latitude of nomenclature: Goethe's most famous lyric, Kennst du das 'Land,' where the narrative element is totally absent, appears amongst his Balladen. The hybrid title of Lyrical Ballads has covered many equally non-narrative nineteenth-century ballad-variants. Mr. Mr. Swinburne's volume, Poems and 'Ballads' contains only two strictly narrative poems, 'Les 'Noyades' and 'The Leper' and some few translated or imitative folk-ballads, the Ballad of Life' and the Ballad of Death,' with their allegoric figures, recalling in form and atmosphere the canzoni of early Italian poets and belonging as little to the English ballad convention as the Italian ballata or the ballade of French verse.

Nor, if, with minds perplexed by divers interpretations, it is difficult to give a positive definition, to say what a ballad is, is it a much easier matter to say what ballads are not. Obviously they are not epic in tone. Professor W. P. Ker * devoted a chapter to the distinction in kind existing between the simplest of northern epics and the most dignified of northern ballads; between the statuesque majesty of the spirit of epic and the coloured vitality of popular narrative; between the statelier rhetoric of the one and the graphic homeliness of the other. But the themes of epic and ballad are often identical, and the distinction, on close analysis, remains a matter of style, temper, and of the general effect induced by the use of facile rhymes and metres and by-to some extent-the condensation required in ballads, of which the length, although indeterminate, tends to greater brevity. Again, if ballads are alien in spirit to the epic, it is not admissible to rank them amongst lyrics. Sentiment ornate or simple, as in pastoral poetry, is an essential lyric motive, and subjectivity is as clearly a feature of lyrical as the converse quality is of ballad poetry. Nevertheless the strain of lyricism in many a ballad prevails over the narrative quality, and once more the group-division is obscured. From other poetic forms, from the Ode, the Sonnet, which lend themselves to the expression of thought and exclude the narrative element, the ballad

* Epic and Romance,' W. P. Ker. Macmillan & Co., London, 1897.

stands manifestly apart. Yet in modern days thought and reflexion, the psychology of human lives and events, have insinuated themselves into the balladist's art, and not seldom he tells his story only to make known to his readers what he thinks about it.

Popular instinct, however, indifferent as always to the exact scholarship of learning, has in the main evolved a fixed ideal derived from the primitive ballad literature of the people, where the normal convention was rhythmical narrative, plentifully interspersed with dialogue. The folk-ballad was usually a story told from without, concrete, objective, dealing with events real, imaginary, or traditional, as chronicles of the irrevocable past.* More rarely the ballad of direct narrative was superseded by the ballad of dramatic action, where dialogue or monologue constituted the sole fabric of the verse, where the action was transposed from past to present and the scene gained the acuteness of accent belonging, not to the unchangeable page of the 'has been,' but to the poignant expectation of the moment's happenings and the sharp suspense of the uncertain end.† More rarely still the lyrical ballad (defined as ballads where sentiment dominates, though without supplanting, incident and action) was represented in verses where fictitious personages recounted the fortune, ill or good, of their life-days.‡ Themes, treatment, length, metre varied; the method ranged from narrative pure and simple to dramatic or lyric presentment, but a story by direct statement, or by lucid implication, was the necessary basis of the ballad-maker's verse. It should be added that the appeal in the mass (ballad-dirges, laments, and coronachs were exceptions to the rule) was the elementary appeal not primarily to sympathy but to curiosity. What the story was about, what happened, how it ended, not what poet or audience felt in recounting or hearing it, was the groundwork of the interest. Attention was concentrated upon actions, their causes and consequences; there was little or no inclination, save when the lyric tendency gained supremacy, to dwell upon passive emotions. Further, the attitude towards the outward framework, the scenery and background of events and persons,

*Sir Patrick Spens,' No. 75, book iii.; Clerke Saunders,' No. 27, book i.; Thomas the Rhymer,' No. 1, book i. etc.

† 'Edward, Edward,' No. 65; Lord Randal, my son,' No. 66, etc.

etc.

Helen of Kirconnel,' No 152; 'O Waly, Waly,' No. 87,