language of those times, when words had not yet been divided into
nobles, middle-class, and plebeians, was, he said, the richest for
poetical purposes. "Our tongue, compared with the idiom of the
savage, seems adapted rather for reflection than for the senses or
imagination. The rhythm of popular verse is so delicate, so rapid,
so precise, that it is no easy matter to defect it with our eyes;
but do not imagine it to have been equally difficult for those
living populations who listened to, instead of reading it; who were
accustomed to the sound of it from their infancy; who themselves
sang it, and whose ear had been formed by its cadence." This
conception of poetry as arising in the hearts of the people and
taking form on their lips is still more definitely and strikingly
expressed in two sentences, which let us into, the heart of Herder's
philosophy of poetry: "Poetry in those happy days lived in the ears
of the people, on the lips and in the harps of living bards; it sang
of history, of the events of the day, of mysteries, miracles, and
signs. It was the flower of a nation's character, language, and
country; of its occupations, its prejudices, its passions, its
aspirations, and its soul." In these words, at once comprehensive
and vague, after the manner of Herder, we find ourselves face to
face with that conception not only of popular song in all its forms,
but with literature as a whole, which has revolutionized literary
study in this century, and revitalized it as well. For Herder was a
man of prophetic instinct; he sometimes felt more clearly than he saw;
he divined where he could not reach results by analysis. He was often
vague, fragmentary, and inconclusive, like all men of his type; but he
had a genius for getting at the heart of things. His statements often
need qualification, but he is almost always on the tight track. When he
says that the great traditions, in which both the memory and the
imagination of a race were engaged, and which were still living in