THE ASCENT OF BALLADS 125

antiquity or more recent eras, received their just rhetorical develop-
ment. His Handschuh is happier than his Toucher, since it is the
less pompous. The elaboration and theatricality of the latter are
an ill-fitting frame for a very simple anecdote. Goethe cast an eye
on 'Morlakian' balladry also, and Wilhelm Miiller's Lieder der
Griechen (1821-6) made the style of the 'tragoudia' accessible to
Germans.1

The appearance of Arnim and Brentano's Des Knaben Wunder-
horn in 1805-8 opened a new era, by giving a greater precision to
the notion * ballad'. Despite a few foreign pieces like Herr Olof
(Elveskud again), the collection is genuinely German. Herder and
Goethe's internationalism has gone, and in its place there are a
greater number of traditional German songs, with fewer erudite
intrusions. The emphasis is on narrative. The Wunderhorn thus
comes to define the notion 'Ballade', as a short narrative poem
touched with lyrical imagination, and so distinct from the purely
narrative 'Romanze'. A third term, 'Lied', indicated a third tradi-
tional influence on the German artistic lyric. The influence of
Brentano and Arnim was all the more effective as, like Scott and
Almeida Garrett, they were not primarily concerned to produce
faithful texts. Their pieces had the simplicity of ballads, without
their imperfections. Thus a schism arose between the recon-
structed and the palaeographic way of presenting this matter, like
that which had already arisen with Ritson in England. The
demands of scholars were more exacting, especially after Grundt-
vig's great Danish collection began to appear, and the critical style
of editing appears tentatively in Uhland, to be confirmed by Erk,
Bohme, Liliencron, John Meier. On the other hand, the ballad as
poetry has descended through Uhland and Heine to Blunck in our
own age. Uhland's Balladen und Romanzen, mostly composed
between 1805 and 1815, were of a more pronounced narrative cast
than those of Goethe, more objective and dispassionate. They
do not sing themselves so well, but they have learned to avoid
the sensationalism of Schiller. The styles employed are the
lyrical narrative and the straight narrative, the latter without any
second intention. It is in supplying this second intention, in Die
spanischen Atreiden and other pieces, that Heine raises the
'Romanze' to its height of perfection. Under the surface of a

1 A convenient anthology illustrating these points is J. T. Hatfield's German
Lyrics and Ballads, New York, 1900, 1924.