mock the passer-by with satirical verses as they used to do in the old pagan days, and the peasants of the olive woods of Provence answer each other in amoebaean strains.  The Sicilian shepherd has not yet thrown his pipe aside, and the children of modern Greece sing the swallow-song through the villages in spring-time, though Theognis is more than two thousand years dead.  Nor is this popular poetry merely the rhythmic expression of joy and sorrow; it is in the highest degree imaginative; and taking its inspiration directly from nature it abounds in realistic metaphor and in picturesque and fantastic imagery.  It must, of course, be admitted that there is a conventionality of nature as there is a conventionality of art, and that certain forms of utterance are apt to become stereotyped by too constant use; yet, on the whole, it is impossible not to recognise in the Folk-songs that the Countess Martinengo has brought together one strong dominant note of fervent and flawless sincerity.  Indeed, it is only in the more terrible dramas of the Elizabethan age that we can find any parallel to the Corsican voceri with their shrill intensity of passion, their awful frenzies of grief and hate.  And yet, ardent as the feeling is, the form is nearly always beautiful.  Now and then, in the poems of the extreme South one meets with a curious crudity of realism, but, as a rule, the sense of beauty prevails.

Some of the Folk-poems in this book have all the lightness and loveliness of lyrics, all of them have that sweet simplicity of pure song by which mirth finds its own melody and mourning its own music, and even where there are conceits of thought and expression they are conceits born of fancy not of affectation.  Herrick himself might have envied that wonderful love-song of Provence: 

   If thou wilt be the falling dew
      And fall on me alway,
   Then I will be the white, white rose
      On yonder thorny spray. 
   If thou wilt be the white, white rose
      On yonder thorny spray,
   Then I will be the honey-bee
      And kiss thee all the day.

   If thou wilt be the honey-bee
      And kiss me all the day,
   Then I will be in yonder heaven
      The star of brightest ray. 
   If thou wilt be in yonder heaven
      The star of brightest ray,
   Then I will be the dawn, and we
      Shall meet at break of day.

How charming also is this lullaby by which the Corsican mother sings her babe to sleep!

   Gold and pearls my vessel lade,
      Silk and cloth the cargo be,
   All the sails are of brocade
      Coming from beyond the sea;
   And the helm of finest gold,
   Made a wonder to behold. 
      Fast awhile in slumber lie;
      Sleep, my child, and hushaby.

   After you were born full soon,
      You were christened all aright;
   Godmother she was the moon,
      Godfather the sun so bright. 
   All the stars in heaven told
   Wore their necklaces of gold. 
      Fast awhile in slumber lie;
      Sleep, my child, and hushaby.