and reconciliation, are alternately related.  The variety of invention in these tales is astonishing; the skill of the combinations and the final development surpasses all that hitherto has been known of popular poetry.  One of the most remarkable of them is a narrative of 1227 lines; which relates to the marriage of a young man, Maxim Tzernovitch, son of Ivan Tzernovitch, a wealthy and powerful Servian.  The father goes to Venice to ask in marriage for his son the daughter of the Doge.  He describes him as the handsomest of young men; but, when he comes home, he finds him metamorphosed by the smallpox into the ugliest.  By the advice of his wife, he substitutes another handsome young man to fetch home the bride with the procession of bridal guests; promising him the principal share in the bridal gifts; for he commits the fraud less from covetous views than from pride, being afraid of being put to shame as unable to keep his word before the haughty Venetians.  They succeed in bringing away the bride; but the cheat is discovered on the road; a contest arises, and the whole affair ends in a horrible slaughter.

Vuk Stephanovitch has heard this tale repeatedly, and with several variations; but the principal features, for instance a rich and elaborate description of the bridal gifts, were always recited exactly in the same words.  It was chanted in the most perfect manner by an old singer, named Milya, whom prince Milosh often had to sing it before him; and from whose lips Vuk at last took it down.

Another section of more modern ballads narrates events from the latest war between the Servians and Turks, between 1801 and 1815.  Who of our readers has not heard of Kara George?  His companions, Yanko Katitch, Stoyan Tchupitch, Milosh of Potzerye, are in Servia as well known and admired as Kara George himself.  They and their comrades are the heroes of these ballads.  The gallant Tchupitch rewarded the blind poet Philip, who chanted to him a long and beautiful poem of his own composition, with a white horse.  The subject of his narrative was the battle of Salash; where Tchupitch himself had been the Servian commander.[59]

The same ballad singer Philip is the author of most of the modern heroic poems.  Of others the authors are not known.  Little stress is laid on the art of poetry; exercised with such extraordinary power.  These productions of our day are by no means inferior to the ancient.  There is indeed no essential difference, either in their diction or in their conception; and it is easy to be perceived, that old and young have been nursed from their infancy on tales of “the days of yore.”  Some passages of Philip’s ballads are really Homeric.[51] Fortunately, the period is past when our admiration for hyperborean poetry needed to be justified by its similarity with the classics.  We have learned that real poetry is not spell-bound to names, nor to any nation or age; and the beautiful has obtained in our time an independent existence, no longer subject to certain forms and conditions, but resting on itself and its divine gifts.