Ballad Book

Probably no teacher of English literature in our schools or colleges would gainsay the statement that the chief aim of such instruction is to awaken in the student a genuine love and enthusiasm for the higher forms of prose, and more especially for poetry. For love is the surest guarantee of extended and independent study, and we teachers are the first to admit that the class-room is but the vestibule to education. So in beginning the critical study of English poetry it seems reasonable to use as a starting-point the early ballads, belonging as they do to the youth of our literature, to the youth of our English race, and hence appealing with especial power to the youth of the human heart.