_Potter Thompson_, the adaptation of the _Second Shepherds' Play_ from
the fifteenth-century _Towneley Mysteries_ followed each other in swift
succession; and the two first have, or will shortly have, been performed
either by University students or by school children of "the Ridings."(6)
This is not the place to attempt any critical account of them. But there
are few readers who will not have been struck by the simplicity with
which the themes--now pathetic, now humorous, now romantic--are handled,
and by the easy unconsciousness with which the Professor wears his
"singing robes."

The same qualities, perhaps in a yet higher degree, appear in the
dialect poems, written during the last three years of his life: _Songs
of the Ridings_. The inspiration of these was less literary; they sprang
straight from the soil and from his own heart. It was, no doubt, a
scholarly instinct which first turned his mind in this direction: the
desire of one who had studied the principles of the language and knew
every winding of its historical origins to trace their working in the
daily speech of the present. He has told us so himself, and we may
readily believe it. But, if he first came to the dales as learner and
scholar, he soon found his way back as welcome visitor and friend. The
more he saw of the dalesmen, the more his heart went out to them: the
more readily, as if by an inborn instinct, did he enter into their
manner of life, their mood and temper, their way of meeting the joys and
sorrows brought by each day as it passed. And so it was that the
scholar's curiosity, which had first carried him thither, rapidly gave
way to a feeling far deeper and more human. His interest in forms of
speech and fine shades of vowelling fell into the background; a simple
craving for friendly intercourse, inspired by a deep sense of human
brotherhood, took its place. And _Songs of the Ridings_(7) is the
spontaneous outgrowth of the fresh experience and the ever-widening