the notion of vulgarity. Yet the lower classes among themselves are
never vulgar; they only become so when they copy the manners of those
above them, and their poetry is the very reverse of what we understand
by that word. The _Volkslied_ exhales the very perfume of nature.
It may be uncouth, harsh, weather-beaten, but the perfume remains, and
it is never offensive like the modern music-hall song, which is the
_Volkslied_ of a class that tries to ape its social superiors.

All, or nearly all, our foremost English poets of recent times have
been products of that system of public school and university education
which is justly the pride of modern English upper-class life.
Admirable in many ways as this system is, it is essentially one of
artificial forcing. The routine is rigidly prescribed by fashion, and
is so devised as entirely to exclude all intimate fellowship with the
common people. Nature and reality have no part in English scholastic
life; "good form" and "sound scholarship" count for more than the
heart of man. That such a system fosters character and produces
first-rate men of action and rulers is undeniable, but it is fatal to
poetry, and the poetry which we produce is what might be
expected--refined, highly polished, but artificial and wanting in
sincerity. It bears the same relation to true poetry that etiquette
and polished manners do to truth and nature. To realize the difference
between the poetry of the school and the poetry of nature compare the
faultless English and elegant sweetness of the Idylls of the King with
the vigorous and expressive, but often ungrammatical, prose of
Mallory, or compare Virgil with Homer, Horace with Sappho, a chorale
by Mendelssohn with a chorale by Bach. Or compare a modern refrain
dragged in for no other reason than because the poet has felt that the
form requires a refrain of some kind and has tried to find one that is
suitable--compare such a refrain by Morris or Rossetti with