[293]. Oral and communal literature, it is almost superfluous to point out, are not one and the same thing. See Max Müller on “Literature before Letters,” Nineteenth Century, November, 1899, pp. 798 f.
[294]. Such an assumption takes most of the value from Berger’s detailed account of the controversy over popular song, “Volksdichtung und Kunstdichtung,” Nord and Süd, LXVIII. (1894), 76 ff., an account which is often inaccurate and quite incomplete. Berger’s conclusion that there is no essential difference between poetry of the people and poetry of art confuses, as is usual in this school of Germans, the poetic impulse with the poetic product.
[295]. As direct, unqualified fact. One is dealing here with no phrases, no illustrations, such as the editor of Brantôme employs when he says (preface to the Vie des Dames Galantes, p. x), “dans un siècle, il y a deux choses, l’histoire et la comédie: l’histoire, c’est le peuple, la comédie, c’est l’homme.”
[296]. La Vie Littéraire, II. 173.
[297]. Work quoted, p. 340.
[298]. For the psychological study of individuality in art and letters, see Dilthey, “Beiträge zum Studium der Individualität,” Sitzungsberichte, Berlin Academy, 1896, I. 295 ff. For a historical study, with sociological leanings, see the admirable work of Burckhardt, Cultur der Renaissance in Italien, ed. 1898, I. 143 ff. (“der Mensch wird geistiges Individuum”), 154 f., 178; II. 29 f., 48; and Brunetière, Évolution des Genres, pp. 39, 167 (Rousseau and individualism), and Nouveaux Essais, pp. 66, 150, 194.
[299]. If one had the materials, a similar emancipation of the poet could be noted in Latin, beginning, perhaps, with Ennius—volito vivus per ora virum—and Naevius, down to Horace, his fountain made famous me dicente, and the non omnis moriar.
[300]. Vossler, Poetische Theorien in der italienischen Frührenaissance, Berlin, 1900, p. 3: “Im Mittelalter hatte jede Gesellschaftsklasse ihren eigenen zünftigen Sänger (rimatore oder dicitore per rima), der nur von ihr verstanden und anerkannt wurde.”
[301]. Lounsbury, Chaucer, III. 14.
[302]. Nyrop, Den oldfranske Heltedigtning, p. 288.