its uses, its tribulation. In the time of Horace it was enough to sit in
Lalage's bower and weave roses; of the communion of souls none had ever
thought. Let us speak of the soul! This is the great dividing line
between the pagan and Christian world, and St Augustine is the great
landmark. In literature he discovered that man had a soul, and that man
had grown interested in its story, had grown tired of the exquisite
externality of the nymph-haunted forest and the waves where the Triton
blows his plaintive blast.

"The whole theory and practice of modern literature is found in the
'Confessions of St Augustine;' and from hence flows the great current of
psychological analysis which, with the development of the modern novel,
grows daily greater in volume and more penetrating in essence.... Is not
the fretful desire of the Balzac novel to tell of the soul's anguish an
obvious development of the 'Confessions'?"

"In like manner I trace the origin of the ballad, most particularly the
English ballad, to Prudentius, a contemporary of Claudian."

"You don't mean to say that you trace back our north-country ballads
to, what do you call him?"

"Prudentius. I show that there is much in his hymns that recalls the
English ballads."

"In his hymns?"

"Yes; in the poems that come under such denomination. I confess it is
not a little puzzling to find a narrative poem of some five hundred
lines or more included under the heading of hymns; it would seem that