The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
supply an abridged account of Robin Hood's
death at the hands of the treacherous prioress of
Kirkesly Abbey.
Although
it is true that the works of Homer
and Dante and Shakespeare are more important
than the facts of their author's lives, the critic of
literature has been discovering for some time past
that he cannot stand still. A time comes when
the possibilities of aesthetic examination are exhausted,
and the investigator must divert his
studies from manuscript or folio to history and
archaeology he must elucidate the conditions
;
under which the work was produced. However
askance the old school of literary
critics
may look
the handmaid offering her ser-
more and more that the
at anthropology
vices they are realising
stock from which literature sprang, insignificant
as it
may appear, is calling for study. Frazer, not
Person, is the type of scholar who now advances
our knowledge the theories of ;
Ridgeway provoke
the classical conservatives. Every day we
see this tendency increasing Miss
; Harrison,
Professor Murray, Dr. Farnell and others delve
in the origins of classical tragedy Mr. Cornford
;
does the same for Attic comedy ;
and Mr.
Chambers has set the feet of many a scholar
on fresh paths in the study of our English
drama. So also have the pioneers of balladstudy
opened the way for
60
research into a realm