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diff --git a/5159-h/5159-h.htm b/5159-h/5159-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c9f17e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/5159-h/5159-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4743 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Celtic Literature, by Matthew Arnold</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Celtic Literature, by Matthew Arnold + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Celtic Literature + + +Author: Matthew Arnold + + + +Release Date: July 20, 2014 [eBook #5159] +[This file was first posted on May 20, 2002] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CELTIC LITERATURE*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1891 Smith, Elder and Co. edition by +David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/coverb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Book cover" +title= +"Book cover" +src="images/covers.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h1>THE STUDY<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">OF</span><br /> +CELTIC LITERATURE</h1> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">BY</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center">MATTHEW ARNOLD</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><b>Popular Edition</b></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">LONDON</p> +<p style="text-align: center">SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 +WATERLOO PLACE<br /> +1891</p> +<p style="text-align: center">[<i>All rights reserved</i>]</p> +<h2>INTRODUCTION.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> following remarks on the study +of Celtic Literature formed the substance of four lectures given +by me in the chair of poetry at Oxford. They were first +published in the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>, and are now reprinted +from thence. Again and again, in the course of them, I have +marked the very humble scope intended; which is, not to treat any +special branch of scientific Celtic studies (a task for which I +am quite incompetent), but to point out the many directions in +which the results of those studies offer matter of general +interest, and to insist on the benefit we may all derive from +knowing the Celt and things Celtic more thoroughly. It was +impossible, however, to avoid touching on certain points of +ethnology and philology, which can be securely handled only by +those who have made these sciences the object of special +study. Here the mere literary critic must owe his whole +safety to his tact in choosing authorities to follow, and +whatever he advances must be understood as advanced with a sense +of the insecurity which, after all, attaches to such a mode of +proceeding, and as put forward provisionally, by way of +hypothesis rather than of confident assertion.</p> +<p>To mark clearly to the reader both this provisional character +of much which I advance, and my own sense of it, I have inserted, +as a check upon some of the positions adopted in the text, notes +and comments with which Lord Strangford has kindly furnished +me. Lord Strangford is hardly less distinguished for +knowing ethnology and languages so scientifically than for +knowing so much of them; and his interest, even from the +vantage-ground of his scientific knowledge, and after making all +due reserves on points of scientific detail, in my +treatment,—with merely the resources and point of view of a +literary critic at my command,—of such a subject as the +study of Celtic Literature, is the most encouraging assurance I +could have received that my attempt is not altogether a vain +one.</p> +<p>Both Lord Strangford and others whose opinion I respect have +said that I am unjust in calling Mr. Nash, the acute and learned +author of <i>Taliesin</i>, <i>or the Bards and Druids of +Britain</i>, a ‘Celt-hater.’ ‘He is a +denouncer,’ says Lord Strangford in a note on this +expression, ‘of Celtic extravagance, that is all; he is an +anti-Philocelt, a very different thing from an anti-Celt, and +quite indispensable in scientific inquiry. As Philoceltism +has hitherto,—hitherto, remember,—meant nothing but +uncritical acceptance and irrational admiration of the beloved +object’s sayings and doings, without reference to truth one +way or the other, it is surely in the interest of science to +support him in the main. In tracing the workings of old +Celtic leaven in poems which embody the Celtic soul of all time +in a mediæval form, I do not see that you come into any +necessary opposition with him, for your concern is with the +spirit, his with the substance only.’ I entirely +agree with almost all which Lord Strangford here urges, and +indeed, so sincere is my respect for Mr. Nash’s critical +discernment and learning, and so unhesitating my recognition of +the usefulness, in many respects, of the work of demolition +performed by him, that in originally designating him as a +Celt-hater, I hastened to add, as the reader will see by +referring to the passage, <a name="citation0a"></a><a +href="#footnote0a" class="citation">[0a]</a> words of explanation +and apology for so calling him. But I thought then, and I +think still, that Mr. Nash, in pursuing his work of demolition, +too much puts out of sight the positive and constructive +performance for which this work of demolition is to clear the +ground. I thought then, and I think still, that in this +Celtic controversy, as in other controversies, it is most +desirable both to believe and to profess that the work of +construction is the fruitful and important work, and that we are +demolishing only to prepare for it. Mr. Nash’s +scepticism seems to me,—in the aspect in which his work, on +the whole, shows it,—too absolute, too stationary, too much +without a future; and this tends to make it, for the non-Celtic +part of his readers, less fruitful than it otherwise would be, +and for his Celtic readers, harsh and repellent. I have +therefore suffered my remarks on Mr. Nash still to stand, though +with a little modification; but I hope he will read them by the +light of these explanations, and that he will believe my sense of +esteem for his work to be a thousand times stronger than my sense +of difference from it.</p> +<p>To lead towards solid ground, where the Celt may with +legitimate satisfaction point to traces of the gifts and workings +of his race, and where the Englishman may find himself induced to +sympathise with that satisfaction and to feel an interest in it, +is the design of all the considerations urged in the following +essay. Kindly taking the will for the deed, a Welshman and +an old acquaintance of mine, Mr. Hugh Owen, received my remarks +with so much cordiality, that he asked me to come to the +Eisteddfod last summer at Chester, and there to read a paper on +some topic of Celtic literature or antiquities. In answer +to this flattering proposal of Mr. Owen’s, I wrote him a +letter which appeared at the time in several newspapers, and of +which the following extract preserves all that is of any +importance:—</p> +<p>‘My knowledge of Welsh matters is so utterly +insignificant that it would be impertinence in me, under any +circumstances, to talk about those matters to an assemblage of +persons, many of whom have passed their lives in studying +them.</p> +<p>‘Your gathering acquires more interest every year. +Let me venture to say that you have to avoid two dangers in order +to work all the good which your friends could desire. You +have to avoid the danger of giving offence to practical men by +retarding the spread of the English language in the +principality. I believe that to preserve and honour the +Welsh language and literature is quite compatible with not +thwarting or delaying for a single hour the introduction, so +undeniably useful, of a knowledge of English among all classes in +Wales. You have to avoid, again, the danger of alienating +men of science by a blind partial, and uncritical treatment of +your national antiquities. Mr. Stephens’s excellent +book, <i>The Literature of the Cymry</i>, shows how perfectly +Welshmen can avoid this danger if they will.</p> +<p>‘When I see the enthusiasm these Eisteddfods can awaken +in your whole people, and then think of the tastes, the +literature, the amusements, of our own lower and middle class, I +am filled with admiration for you. It is a consoling +thought, and one which history allows us to entertain, that +nations disinherited of political success may yet leave their +mark on the world’s progress, and contribute powerfully to +the civilisation of mankind. We in England have come to +that point when the continued advance and greatness of our nation +is threatened by one cause, and one cause above all. Far +more than by the helplessness of an aristocracy whose day is fast +coming to an end, far more than by the rawness of a lower class +whose day is only just beginning, we are emperilled by what I +call the “Philistinism” of our middle class. On +the side of beauty and taste, vulgarity; on the side of morals +and feeling, coarseness; on the side of mind and spirit, +unintelligence,—this is Philistinism. Now, then, is +the moment for the greater delicacy and spirituality of the +Celtic peoples who are blended with us, if it be but wisely +directed, to make itself prized and honoured. In a certain +measure the children of Taliesin and Ossian have now an +opportunity for renewing the famous feat of the Greeks, and +conquering their conquerors. No service England can render +the Celts by giving you a share in her many good qualities, can +surpass that which the Celts can at this moment render England, +by communicating to us some of theirs.’</p> +<p>Now certainly, in that letter, written to a Welshman and on +the occasion of a Welsh festival, I enlarged on the merits of the +Celtic spirit and of its works, rather than on their +demerits. It would have been offensive and inhuman to do +otherwise. When an acquaintance asks you to write his +father’s epitaph, you do not generally seize that +opportunity for saying that his father was blind of one eye, and +had an unfortunate habit of not paying his tradesmen’s +bills. But the weak side of Celtism and of its Celtic +glorifiers, the danger against which they have to guard, is +clearly indicated in that letter; and in the remarks reprinted in +this volume,—remarks which were the original cause of Mr. +Owen’s writing to me, and must have been fully present to +his mind when he read my letter,—the shortcomings both of +the Celtic race, and of the Celtic students of its literature and +antiquities, are unreservedly marked, and, so far as is +necessary, blamed. <a name="citation0b"></a><a href="#footnote0b" +class="citation">[0b]</a> It was, indeed, not my purpose to +make blame the chief part of what I said; for the Celts, like +other people, are to be meliorated rather by developing their +gifts than by chastising their defects. The wise man, says +Spinoza admirably, ‘<i>de humana impotentia non nisi parce +loqui curabit</i>, <i>at largiter de humana virtute +seupotentia</i>.’ But so far as condemnation of +Celtic failure was needful towards preparing the way for the +growth of Celtic virtue, I used condemnation.</p> +<p>The <i>Times</i>, however, prefers a shorter and sharper +method of dealing with the Celts, and in a couple of leading +articles, having the Chester Eisteddfod and my letter to Mr. Hugh +Owen for their text, it developed with great frankness, and in +its usual forcible style, its own views for the amelioration of +Wales and its people. <i>Cease to do evil</i>, <i>learn to +do good</i>, was the upshot of its exhortations to the Welsh; by +<i>evil</i>, the <i>Times</i> understanding all things Celtic, +and by <i>good</i>, all things English. ‘The Welsh +language is the curse of Wales. Its prevalence, and the +ignorance of English have excluded, and even now exclude the +Welsh people from the civilisation of their English +neighbours. An Eisteddfod is one of the most mischievous +and selfish pieces of sentimentalism which could possibly be +perpetrated. It is simply a foolish interference with the +natural progress of civilisation and prosperity. If it is +desirable that the Welsh should talk English, it is monstrous +folly to encourage them in a loving fondness for their old +language. Not only the energy and power, but the +intelligence and music of Europe have come mainly from Teutonic +sources, and this glorification of everything Celtic, if it were +not pedantry, would be sheer ignorance. The sooner all +Welsh specialities disappear from the face of the earth the +better.’</p> +<p>And I need hardly say, that I myself, as so often happens to +me at the hands of my own countrymen, was cruelly judged by the +<i>Times</i>, and most severely treated. What I said to Mr. +Owen about the spread of the English language in Wales being +quite compatible with preserving and honouring the Welsh language +and literature, was tersely set down as ‘arrant +nonsense,’ and I was characterised as ‘a +sentimentalist who talks nonsense about the children of Taliesin +and Ossian, and whose dainty taste requires something more flimsy +than the strong sense and sturdy morality of his fellow +Englishmen.’</p> +<p>As I said before, I am unhappily inured to having these harsh +interpretations put by my fellow Englishmen upon what I write, +and I no longer cry out about it. And then, too, I have +made a study of the Corinthian or leading article style, and know +its exigencies, and that they are no more to be quarrelled with +than the law of gravitation. So, for my part, when I read +these asperities of the <i>Times</i>, my mind did not dwell very +much on my own concern in them; but what I said to myself, as I +put the newspaper down, was this: ‘<i>Behold +England’s difficulty in governing Ireland</i>!’</p> +<p>I pass by the dauntless assumption that the agricultural +peasant whom we in England, without Eisteddfods, succeed in +developing, is so much finer a product of civilisation than the +Welsh peasant, retarded by these ‘pieces of +sentimentalism.’ I will be content to suppose that +our ‘strong sense and sturdy morality’ are as +admirable and as universal as the <i>Times</i> pleases. But +even supposing this, I will ask did any one ever hear of strong +sense and sturdy morality being thrust down other people’s +throats in this fashion? Might not these divine English +gifts, and the English language in which they are preached, have +a better chance of making their way among the poor Celtic +heathen, if the English apostle delivered his message a little +more agreeably? There is nothing like love and admiration +for bringing people to a likeness with what they love and admire; +but the Englishman seems never to dream of employing these +influences upon a race he wants to fuse with himself. He +employs simply material interests for his work of fusion; and, +beyond these, nothing except scorn and rebuke. Accordingly +there is no vital union between him and the races he has annexed; +and while France can truly boast of her ‘magnificent +unity,’ a unity of spirit no less than of name between all +the people who compose her, in England the Englishman proper is +in union of spirit with no one except other Englishmen proper +like himself. His Welsh and Irish fellow-citizens are +hardly more amalgamated with him now than they were when Wales +and Ireland were first conquered, and the true unity of even +these small islands has yet to be achieved. When these +papers of mine on the Celtic genius and literature first appeared +in the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>, they brought me, as was natural, +many communications from Welshmen and Irishmen having an interest +in the subject; and one could not but be painfully struck, in +reading these communications, to see how profound a feeling of +aversion and severance from the English they in general +manifested. Who can be surprised at it, when he observes +the strain of the <i>Times</i> in the articles just quoted, and +remembers that this is the characteristic strain of the +Englishman in commenting on whatsoever is not himself? And +then, with our boundless faith in machinery, we English expect +the Welshman as a matter of course to grow attached to us, +because we invite him to do business with us, and let him hold +any number of public meetings and publish all the newspapers he +likes! When shall we learn, that what attaches people to us +is the spirit we are of, and not the machinery we employ?</p> +<p>Last year there was a project of holding a Breton Eisteddfod +at Quimper in Brittany, and the French Home Secretary, whether +wishing to protect the magnificent unity of France from inroads +of Bretonism, or fearing lest the design should be used in +furtherance of Legitimist intrigues, or from whatever motive, +issued an order which prohibited the meeting. If Mr. +Walpole had issued an order prohibiting the Chester Eisteddfod, +all the Englishmen from Cornwall to John o’ Groat’s +House would have rushed to the rescue; and our strong sense and +sturdy morality would never have stopped gnashing their teeth and +rending their garments till the prohibition was rescinded. +What a pity our strong sense and sturdy morality fail to perceive +that words like those of the <i>Times</i> create a far keener +sense of estrangement and dislike than acts like those of the +French Minister! Acts like those of the French Minister are +attributed to reasons of State, and the Government is held +blameable for them, not the French people. Articles like +those of the <i>Times</i> are attributed to the want of sympathy +and of sweetness of disposition in the English nature, and the +whole English people gets the blame of them. And +deservedly; for from some such ground of want of sympathy and +sweetness in the English nature, do articles like those of the +<i>Times</i> come, and to some such ground do they make +appeal. The sympathetic and social virtues of the French +nature, on the other hand, actually repair the breaches made by +oppressive deeds of the Government, and create, among populations +joined with France as the Welsh and Irish are joined with +England, a sense of liking and attachment towards the French +people. The French Government may discourage the German +language in Alsace and prohibit Eisteddfods in Brittany; but the +<i>Journal des Débats</i> never treats German music and +poetry as mischievous lumber, nor tells the Bretons that the +sooner all Breton specialities disappear from the face of the +earth the better. Accordingly, the Bretons and Alsatians +have come to feel themselves a part of France, and to feel pride +in bearing the French name; while the Welsh and Irish obstinately +refuse to amalgamate with us, and will not admire the Englishman +as he admires himself, however much the <i>Times</i> may scold +them and rate them, and assure them there is nobody on earth so +admirable.</p> +<p>And at what a moment does it assure them of this, good +heavens! At a moment when the ice is breaking up in +England, and we are all beginning at last to see how much real +confusion and insufficiency it covered; when, whatever may be the +merits,—and they are great,—of the Englishman and of +his strong sense and sturdy morality, it is growing more and more +evident that, if he is to endure and advance, he must transform +himself, must add something to his strong sense and sturdy +morality, or at least must give to these excellent gifts of his a +new development. My friend Mr. Goldwin Smith says, in his +eloquent way, that England is the favourite of Heaven. Far +be it from me to say that England is not the favourite of Heaven; +but at this moment she reminds me more of what the prophet Isaiah +calls, ‘a bull in a net.’ She has satisfied +herself in all departments with clap-trap and routine so long, +and she is now so astounded at finding they will not serve her +turn any longer! And this is the moment, when Englishism +pure and simple, which with all its fine qualities managed always +to make itself singularly unattractive, is losing that +imperturbable faith in its untransformed self which at any rate +made it imposing,—this is the moment when our great organ +tells the Celts that everything of theirs not English is +‘simply a foolish interference with the natural progress of +civilisation and prosperity;’ and poor Talhaiarn, venturing +to remonstrate, is commanded ‘to drop his outlandish title, +and to refuse even to talk Welsh in Wales!’</p> +<p>But let us leave the dead to bury their dead, and let us who +are alive go on unto perfection. Let the Celtic members of +this empire consider that they too have to transform themselves; +and though the summons to transform themselves he often conveyed +harshly and brutally, and with the cry to root up their wheat as +well as their tares, yet that is no reason why the summons should +not be followed so far as their tares are concerned. Let +them consider that they are inextricably bound up with us, and +that, if the suggestions in the following pages have any truth, +we English, alien and uncongenial to our Celtic partners as we +may have hitherto shown ourselves, have notwithstanding, beyond +perhaps any other nation, a thousand latent springs of possible +sympathy with them. Let them consider that new ideas and +forces are stirring in England, that day by day these new ideas +and forces gain in power, and that almost every one of them is +the friend of the Celt and not his enemy. And, whether our +Celtic partners will consider this or no, at any rate let us +ourselves, all of us who are proud of being the ministers of +these new ideas, work incessantly to procure for them a wider and +more fruitful application; and to remove the main ground of the +Celt’s alienation from the Englishman, by substituting, in +place of that type of Englishman with whom alone the Celt has too +long been familiar, a new type, more intelligent, more gracious, +and more humane.</p> +<h2>THE STUDY OF CELTIC LITERATURE</h2> +<blockquote><p>‘They went forth to the war, but they always +fell.’</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">Ossian</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><span class="smcap">Some</span> time ago I spent some weeks at +Llandudno, on the Welsh coast. The best lodging-houses at +Llandudno look eastward, towards Liverpool; and from that Saxon +hive swarms are incessantly issuing, crossing the bay, and taking +possession of the beach and the lodging-houses. Guarded by +the Great and Little Orme’s Head, and alive with the Saxon +invaders from Liverpool, the eastern bay is an attractive point +of interest, and many visitors to Llandudno never contemplate +anything else. But, putting aside the charm of the +Liverpool steamboats, perhaps the view, on this side, a little +dissatisfies one after a while; the horizon wants mystery, the +sea wants beauty, the coast wants verdure, and has a too bare +austereness and aridity. At last one turns round and looks +westward. Everything is changed. Over the mouth of +the Conway and its sands is the eternal softness and mild light +of the west; the low line of the mystic Anglesey, and the +precipitous Penmaenmawr, and the great group of Carnedd Llewelyn +and Carnedd David and their brethren fading away, hill behind +hill, in an aërial haze, make the horizon; between the foot +of Penmaenmawr and the bending coast of Anglesey, the sea, a +silver stream, disappears one knows not whither. On this +side, Wales,—Wales, where the past still lives, where every +place has its tradition, every name its poetry, and where the +people, the genuine people, still knows this past, this +tradition, this poetry, and lives with it, and clings to it; +while, alas, the prosperous Saxon on the other side, the invader +from Liverpool and Birkenhead, has long ago forgotten his. +And the promontory where Llandudno stands is the very centre of +this tradition; it is Creuddyn, <i>the bloody city</i>, where +every stone has its story; there, opposite its decaying rival, +Conway Castle, is Diganwy, not decaying but long since utterly +decayed, some crumbling foundations on a crag top and nothing +more; Diganwy, where Mael-gwyn shut up Elphin, and where Taliesin +came to free him. Below, in a fold of the hill, is +Llan-rhos, the church of the marsh, where the same Mael-gwyn, a +British prince of real history, a bold and licentious chief, the +original, it is said, of Arthur’s Lancelot, shut himself up +in the church to avoid the Yellow Plague, and peeped out through +a hole in the door, and saw the monster and died. Behind +among the woods, is Gloddaeth, <i>the place of feasting</i>, +where the bards were entertained; and farther away, up the valley +of the Conway towards Llanrwst, is the Lake of Ceirio-nydd and +Taliesin’s grave. Or, again, looking seawards and +Anglesey-wards you have Pen-mon, Seiriol’s isle and priory, +where Mael-gwyn lies buried; you have the <i>Sands of +Lamentation</i> and Llys Helig, <i>Heilig’s Mansion</i>, a +mansion under the waves, a sea-buried palace and realm. +<i>Hac ibat Simois</i>; <i>hic est Sigeia tellus</i>.</p> +<p>As I walked up and down, looking at the waves as they washed +this Sigeian land which has never had its Homer, and listening +with curiosity to the strange, unfamiliar speech of its old +possessors’ obscure descendants,—bathing people, +vegetable-sellers, and donkey-boys, who were all about me, +suddenly I heard, through the stream of unknown Welsh, words, not +English, indeed, but still familiar. They came from a +French nursery-maid, with some children. Profoundly +ignorant of her relationship, this Gaulish Celt moved among her +British cousins, speaking her polite neo-Latin tongue, and full +of compassionate contempt, probably, for the Welsh barbarians and +their jargon. What a revolution was here! How had the +star of this daughter of Gomer waxed, while the star of these +Cymry, his sons, had waned! What a difference of fortune in +the two, since the days when, speaking the same language, they +left their common dwelling-place in the heart of Asia; since the +Cimmerians of the Euxine came in upon their western kinsmen, the +sons of the giant Galates; since the sisters, Gaul and Britain, +cut the mistletoe in their forests, and saw the coming of +Cæsar! <i>Blanc</i>, <i>rouge</i>, <i>rocher +champ</i>, <i>église</i>, <i>seigneur</i>,—these +words, by which the Gallo-Roman Celt now names white, and red, +and rock, and field, and church, and lord, are no part of the +speech of his true ancestors, they are words he has learnt; but +since he learned them they have had a worldwide success, and we +all teach them to our children, and armies speaking them have +domineered in every city of that Germany by which the British +Celt was broken, and in the train of these armies, Saxon +auxiliaries, a humbled contingent, have been fain to follow; the +poor Welshman still says, in the genuine tongue of his ancestors, +<a name="citation4"></a><a href="#footnote4" +class="citation">[4]</a> <i>gwyn</i>, <i>goch</i>, <i>craig</i>, +<i>maes</i>, <i>llan</i>, <i>arglwydd</i>; but his land is a +province, and his history petty, and his Saxon subduers scout his +speech as an obstacle to civilisation; and the echo of all its +kindred in other lands is growing every day fainter and more +feeble; gone in Cornwall, going in Brittany and the Scotch +Highlands, going, too, in Ireland; and there, above all, the +badge of the beaten race, the property of the vanquished.</p> +<p>But the Celtic genius was just then preparing, in Llandudno, +to have its hour of revival. Workmen were busy in putting +up a large tent-like wooden building, which attracted the eye of +every newcomer, and which my little boys believed (their wish, no +doubt, being father to their belief,) to be a circus. It +turned out, however, to be no circus for Castor and Pollux, but a +temple for Apollo and the Muses. It was the place where the +Eisteddfod, or Bardic Congress of Wales, was about to be held; a +meeting which has for its object (I quote the words of its +promoters) ‘the diffusion of useful knowledge, the +eliciting of native talent, and the cherishing of love of home +and honourable fame by the cultivation of poetry, music, and +art.’ My little boys were disappointed; but I, whose +circus days are over, I, who have a professional interest in +poetry, and who, also, hating all one-sidedness and oppression, +wish nothing better than that the Celtic genius should be able to +show itself to the world and to make its voice heard, was +delighted. I took my ticket, and waited impatiently for the +day of opening. The day came, an unfortunate one; storms of +wind, clouds of dust, an angry, dirty sea. The Saxons who +arrived by the Liverpool steamers looked miserable; even the +Welsh who arrived by land,—whether they were discomposed by +the bad morning, or by the monstrous and crushing tax which the +London and North-Western Railway Company levies on all whom it +transports across those four miles of marshy peninsula between +Conway and Llandudno,—did not look happy. First we +went to the Gorsedd, or preliminary congress for conferring the +degree of bard. The Gorsedd was held in the open air, at +the windy corner of a street, and the morning was not favourable +to open-air solemnities. The Welsh, too, share, it seems to +me, with their Saxon invaders, an inaptitude for show and +spectacle. Show and spectacle are better managed by the +Latin race and those whom it has moulded; the Welsh, like us, are +a little awkward and resourceless in the organisation of a +festival. The presiding genius of the mystic circle, in our +hideous nineteenth-century costume, relieved only by a green +scarf, the wind drowning his voice and the dust powdering his +whiskers, looked thoroughly wretched; so did the aspirants for +bardic honours; and I believe, after about an hour of it, we all +of us, as we stood shivering round the sacred stones, began half +to wish for the Druid’s sacrificial knife to end our +sufferings. But the Druid’s knife is gone from his +hands; so we sought the shelter of the Eisteddfod building.</p> +<p>The sight inside was not lively. The president and his +supporters mustered strong on the platform. On the floor +the one or two front benches were pretty well filled, but their +occupants were for the most part Saxons, who came there from +curiosity, not from enthusiasm; and all the middle and back +benches, where should have been the true enthusiasts,—the +Welsh people, were nearly empty. The president, I am sure, +showed a national spirit which was admirable. He addressed +us Saxons in our own language, and called us ‘the English +branch of the descendants of the ancient Britons.’ We +received the compliment with the impassive dulness which is the +characteristic of our nature; and the lively Celtic nature, which +should have made up for the dulness of ours, was absent. A +lady who sat by me, and who was the wife, I found, of a +distinguished bard on the platform, told me, with emotion in her +look and voice, how dear were these solemnities to the heart of +her people, how deep was the interest which is aroused by +them. I believe her, but still the whole performance, on +that particular morning, was incurably lifeless. The +recitation of the prize compositions began: pieces of verse and +prose in the Welsh language, an essay on punctuality being, if I +remember right, one of them; a poem on the march of Havelock, +another. This went on for some time. Then Dr. +Vaughan,—the well-known Nonconformist minister, a Welshman, +and a good patriot,—addressed us in English. His +speech was a powerful one, and he succeeded, I confess, in +sending a faint thrill through our front benches; but it was the +old familiar thrill which we have all of us felt a thousand times +in Saxon chapels and meeting-halls, and had nothing bardic about +it. I stepped out, and in the street I came across an +acquaintance fresh from London and the parliamentary +session. In a moment the spell of the Celtic genius was +forgotten, the Philistinism of our Saxon nature made itself felt; +and my friend and I walked up and down by the roaring waves, +talking not of ovates and bards, and triads and englyns, but of +the sewage question, and the glories of our local +self-government, and the mysterious perfections of the +Metropolitan Board of Works.</p> +<p>I believe it is admitted, even by the admirers of Eisteddfods +in general, that this particular Eisteddfod was not a +success. Llandudno, it is said, was not the right place for +it. Held in Conway Castle, as a few years ago it was, and +its spectators,—an enthusiastic multitude,—filling +the grand old ruin, I can imagine it a most impressive and +interesting sight, even to a stranger labouring under the +terrible disadvantage of being ignorant of the Welsh +language. But even seen as I saw it at Llandudno, it had +the power to set one thinking. An Eisteddfod is, no doubt, +a kind of Olympic meeting; and that the common people of Wales +should care for such a thing, shows something Greek in them, +something spiritual, something humane, something (I am afraid one +must add) which in the English common people is not to be +found. This line of reflection has been followed by the +accomplished Bishop of St. David’s, and by the <i>Saturday +Review</i>, it is just, it is fruitful, and those who pursued it +merit our best thanks. But, from peculiar circumstances, +the Llandudno meeting was, as I have said, such as not at all to +suggest ideas of Olympia, and of a multitude touched by the +divine flame, and hanging on the lips of Pindar. It rather +suggested the triumph of the prosaic, practical Saxon, and the +approaching extinction of an enthusiasm which he derides as +factitious, a literature which he disdains as trash, a language +which he detests as a nuisance.</p> +<p>I must say I quite share the opinion of my brother Saxons as +to the practical inconvenience of perpetuating the speaking of +Welsh. It may cause a moment’s distress to +one’s imagination when one hears that the last Cornish +peasant who spoke the old tongue of Cornwall is dead; but, no +doubt, Cornwall is the better for adopting English, for becoming +more thoroughly one with the rest of the country. The +fusion of all the inhabitants of these islands into one +homogeneous, English-speaking whole, the breaking down of +barriers between us, the swallowing up of separate provincial +nationalities, is a consummation to which the natural course of +things irresistibly tends; it is a necessity of what is called +modern civilisation, and modern civilisation is a real, +legitimate force; the change must come, and its accomplishment is +a mere affair of time. The sooner the Welsh language +disappears as an instrument of the practical, political, social +life of Wales, the better; the better for England, the better for +Wales itself. Traders and tourists do excellent service by +pushing the English wedge farther and farther into the heart of +the principality; Ministers of Education, by hammering it harder +and harder into the elementary schools. Nor, perhaps, can +one have much sympathy with the literary cultivation of Welsh as +an instrument of living literature; and in this respect +Eisteddfods encourage, I think, a fantastic and mischief-working +delusion.</p> +<p>For all serious purposes in modern literature (and trifling +purposes in it who would care to encourage?) the language of a +Welshman is and must be English; if an Eisteddfod author has +anything to say about punctuality or about the march of Havelock, +he had much better say it in English; or rather, perhaps, what he +has to say on these subjects may as well be said in Welsh, but +the moment he has anything of real importance to say, anything +the world will the least care to hear, he must speak +English. Dilettanteism might possibly do much harm here, +might mislead and waste and bring to nought a genuine +talent. For all modern purposes, I repeat, let us all as +soon as possible be one people; let the Welshman speak English, +and, if he is an author, let him write English.</p> +<p>So far, I go along with the stream of my brother Saxons; but +here, I imagine, I part company with them. They will have +nothing to do with the Welsh language and literature on any +terms; they would gladly make a clean sweep of it from the face +of the earth. I, on certain terms, wish to make a great +deal more of it than is made now; and I regard the Welsh +literature,—or rather, dropping the distinction between +Welsh and Irish, Gaels and Cymris, let me say Celtic +literature,—as an object of very great interest. My +brother Saxons have, as is well known, a terrible way with them +of wanting to improve everything but themselves off the face of +the earth; I have no such passion for finding nothing but myself +everywhere; I like variety to exist and to show itself to me, and +I would not for the world have the lineaments of the Celtic +genius lost. But I know my brother Saxons, I know their +strength, and I know that the Celtic genius will make nothing of +trying to set up barriers against them in the world of fact and +brute force, of trying to hold its own against them as a +political and social counter-power, as the soul of a hostile +nationality. To me there is something mournful (and at this +moment, when one sees what is going on in Ireland, how well may +one say so!) in hearing a Welshman or an Irishman make +pretensions,—natural pretensions, I admit, but how +hopelessly vain!—to such a rival self-establishment; there +is something mournful in hearing an Englishman scout them. +Strength! alas, it is not strength, strength in the material +world, which is wanting to us Saxons; we have plenty of strength +for swallowing up and absorbing as much as we choose; there is +nothing to hinder us from effacing the last poor material remains +of that Celtic power which once was everywhere, but has long +since, in the race of civilisation, fallen out of sight. We +may threaten them with extinction if we will, and may almost say +in so threatening them, like Cæsar in threatening with +death the tribune Metellus who closed the treasury doors against +him: ‘And when I threaten this, young man, to threaten it +is more trouble to me than to do it.’ It is not in +the outward and visible world of material life, that the Celtic +genius of Wales or Ireland can at this day hope to count for +much; it is in the inward world of thought and science. +What it <i>has</i> been, what it <i>has</i> done, let it ask us +to attend to that, as a matter of science and history; not to +what it will be or will do, as a matter of modern politics. +It cannot count appreciably now as a material power; but, +perhaps, if it can get itself thoroughly known as an object of +science, it may count for a good deal,—far more than we +Saxons, most of us, imagine,—as a spiritual power.</p> +<p>The bent of our time is towards science, towards knowing +things as they are; so the Celt’s claims towards having his +genius and its works fairly treated, as objects of scientific +investigation, the Saxon can hardly reject, when these claims are +urged simply on their own merits, and are not mixed up with +extraneous pretensions which jeopardise them. What the +French call the <i>science des origines</i>, the science of +origins,—a science which is at the bottom of all real +knowledge of the actual world, and which is every day growing in +interest and importance—is very incomplete without a +thorough critical account of the Celts, and their genius, +language, and literature. This science has still great +progress to make, but its progress, made even within the +recollection of those of us who are in middle life, has already +affected our common notions about the Celtic race; and this +change, too, shows how science, the knowing things as they are, +may even have salutary practical consequences. I remember, +when I was young, I was taught to think of Celt as separated by +an impassable gulf from Teuton; <a name="citation14"></a><a +href="#footnote14" class="citation">[14]</a> my father, in +particular, was never weary of contrasting them; he insisted much +oftener on the separation between us and them than on the +separation between us and any other race in the world; in the +same way Lord Lyndhurst, in words long famous, called the Irish +‘aliens in speech, in religion, in blood.’ This +naturally created a profound sense of estrangement; it doubled +the estrangement which political and religious differences +already made between us and the Irish: it seemed to make this +estrangement immense, incurable, fatal. It begot a strange +reluctance, as any one may see by reading the preface to the +great text-book for Welsh poetry, the <i>Myvyrian +Archæology</i>, published at the beginning of this century, +to further,—nay, allow,—even among quiet, peaceable +people like the Welsh, the publication of the documents of their +ancient literature, the monuments of the Cymric genius; such was +the sense of repulsion, the sense of incompatibilty, of radical +antagonism, making it seem dangerous to us to let such opposites +to ourselves have speech and utterance. Certainly the +Jew,—the Jew of ancient times, at least,—then seemed +a thousand degrees nearer than the Celt to us. Puritanism +had so assimilated Bible ideas and phraseology; names like +Ebenezer, and notions like that of hewing Agag in pieces, came so +natural to us, that the sense of affinity between the Teutonic +and the Hebrew nature was quite strong; a steady, middleclass +Anglo-Saxon much more imagined himself Ehud’s cousin than +Ossian’s. But meanwhile, the pregnant and striking +ideas of the ethnologists about the true natural grouping of the +human race, the doctrine of a great Indo-European unity, +comprising Hindoos, Persians, Greeks, Latins, Celts, Teutons, +Slavonians, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, of a Semitic +unity and of a Mongolian unity, separated by profound +distinguishing marks from the Indo-European unity and from one +another, was slowly acquiring consistency and popularising +itself. So strong and real could the sense of sympathy or +antipathy, grounded upon real identity or diversity in race, grow +in men of culture, that we read of a genuine +Teuton,—Wilhelm von Humboldt—finding, even in the +sphere of religion, that sphere where the might of Semitism has +been so overpowering, the food which most truly suited his spirit +in the productions not of the alien Semitic genius, but of the +genius of Greece or India, the Teutons born kinsfolk of the +common Indo-European family. ‘Towards Semitism he +felt himself,’ we read, ‘far less drawn;’ he +had the consciousness of a certain antipathy in the depths of his +nature to this, and to its ‘absorbing, tyrannous, terrorist +religion,’ as to the opener, more flexible Indo-European +genius, this religion appeared. ‘The mere workings of +the old man in him!’ Semitism will readily reply; and +though one can hardly admit this short and easy method of +settling the matter, it must be owned that Humboldt’s is an +extreme case of Indo-Europeanism, useful as letting us see what +may be the power of race and primitive constitution, but not +likely, in the spiritual sphere, to have many companion cases +equalling it. Still, even in this sphere, the tendency is +in Humboldt’s direction; the modern spirit tends more and +more to establish a sense of native diversity between our +European bent and the Semitic and to eliminate, even in our +religion, certain elements as purely and excessively Semitic, and +therefore, in right, not combinable with our European nature, not +assimilable by it. This tendency is now quite visible even +among ourselves, and even, as I have said, within the great +sphere of the Semitic genius, the sphere of religion; and for its +justification this tendency appeals to science, the science of +origins; it appeals to this science as teaching us which way our +natural affinities and repulsions lie. It appeals to this +science, and in part it comes from it; it is, in considerable +part, an indirect practical result from it.</p> +<p>In the sphere of politics, too, there has, in the same way, +appeared an indirect practical result from this science; the +sense of antipathy to the Irish people, of radical estrangement +from them, has visibly abated amongst all the better part of us; +the remorse for past ill-treatment of them, the wish to make +amends, to do them justice, to fairly unite, if possible, in one +people with them, has visibly increased; hardly a book on Ireland +is now published, hardly a debate on Ireland now passes in +Parliament, without this appearing. Fanciful as the notion +may at first seem, I am inclined to think that the march of +science,—science insisting that there is no such original +chasm between the Celt and the Saxon as we once popularly +imagined, that they are not truly, what Lord Lyndhurst called +them, <i>aliens in blood</i> from us, that they are our brothers +in the great Indo-European family,—has had a share, an +appreciable share, in producing this changed state of +feeling. No doubt, the release from alarm and struggle, the +sense of firm possession, solid security, and overwhelming power; +no doubt these, allowing and encouraging humane feelings to +spring up in us, have done much; no doubt a state of fear and +danger, Ireland in hostile conflict with us, our union violently +disturbed, might, while it drove back all humane feelings, make +also the old sense of utter estrangement revive. +Nevertheless, so long as such a malignant revolution of events +does not actually come about, so long the new sense of kinship +and kindliness lives, works, and gathers strength; and the longer +it so lives and works, the more it makes any such malignant +revolution improbable. And this new, reconciling sense has, +I say, its roots in science.</p> +<p>However, on these indirect benefits of science we must not lay +too much stress. Only this must be allowed; it is clear +that there are now in operation two influences, both favourable +to a more attentive and impartial study of Celtism than it has +yet ever received from us. One is, the strengthening in us +of the feeling of Indo-Europeanism; the other, the strengthening +in us of the scientific sense generally. The first breaks +down barriers between us and the Celt, relaxes the estrangement +between us; the second begets the desire to know his case +thoroughly, and to be just to it. This is a very different +matter from the political and social Celtisation of which certain +enthusiasts dream; but it is not to be despised by any one to +whom the Celtic genius is dear; and it is possible, while the +other is not.</p> +<h3>I.</h3> +<p>To know the Celtic case thoroughly, one must know the Celtic +people; and to know them, one must know that by which a people +best express themselves,—their literature. Few of us +have any notion what a mass of Celtic literature is really yet +extant and accessible. One constantly finds even very +accomplished people, who fancy that the remains of Welsh and +Irish literature are as inconsiderable by their volume, as, in +their opinion, they are by their intrinsic merit; that these +remains consist of a few prose stories, in great part borrowed +from the literature of nations more civilised than the Welsh or +Irish nation, and of some unintelligible poetry. As to +Welsh literature, they have heard, perhaps, of the <i>Black Book +of Caermarthen</i>, or of the <i>Red Book of Hergest</i>, and +they imagine that one or two famous manuscript books like these +contain the whole matter. They have no notion that, in real +truth, to quote the words of one who is no friend to the high +pretensions of Welsh literature, but their most formidable +impugner, Mr. Nash:—‘The Myvyrian manuscripts alone, +now deposited in the British Museum, amount to 47 volumes of +poetry, of various sizes, containing about 4,700 pieces of +poetry, in 16,000 pages, besides about 2,000 englynion or +epigrammatic stanzas. There are also, in the same +collection, 53 volumes of prose, in about 15,300 pages, +containing great many curious documents on various +subjects. Besides these, which were purchased of the widow +of the celebrated Owen Jones, the editor of the <i>Myvyrian +Archæology</i>, there are a vast number of collections of +Welsh manuscripts in London, and in the libraries of the gentry +of the principality.’ The <i>Myvyrian +Archæology</i>, here spoken of by Mr. Nash, I have already +mentioned; he calls its editor, Owen Jones, celebrated; he is not +so celebrated but that he claims a word, in passing, from a +professor of poetry. He was a Denbighshire +<i>statesman</i>, as we say in the north, born before the middle +of last century, in that vale of Myvyr, which has given its name +to his archæology. From his childhood he had that +passion for the old treasures of his Country’s literature, +which to this day, as I have said, in the common people of Wales +is so remarkable; these treasures were unprinted, scattered, +difficult of access, jealously guarded. ‘More than +once,’ says Edward Lhuyd, who in his <i>Archæologia +Britannica</i>, brought out by him in 1707, would gladly have +given them to the world, ‘more than once I had a promise +from the owner, and the promise was afterwards retracted at the +instigation of certain persons, pseudo-politicians, as I think, +rather than men of letters.’ So Owen Jones went up, a +young man of nineteen, to London, and got employment in a +furrier’s shop in Thames Street; for forty years, with a +single object in view, he worked at his business; and at the end +of that time his object was won. He had risen in his +employment till the business had become his own, and he was now a +man of considerable means; but those means had been sought by him +for one purpose only, the purpose of his life, the dream of his +youth,—the giving permanence and publicity to the treasures +of his national literature. Gradually he got manuscript +after manuscript transcribed, and at last, in 1801, he jointly +with two friends brought out in three large volumes, printed in +double columns, his <i>Myvyrian Archæology of +Wales</i>. The book is full of imperfections, it presented +itself to a public which could not judge of its importance, and +it brought upon its author, in his lifetime, more attack than +honour. He died not long afterwards, and now he lies buried +in Allhallows Church, in London, with his tomb turned towards the +east, away from the green vale of Clwyd and the mountains of his +native Wales; but his book is the great repertory of the +literature of his nation, the comparative study of languages and +literatures gains every day more followers, and no one of these +followers, at home or abroad, touches Welsh literature without +paying homage to the Denbighshire peasant’s name; if the +bard’s glory and his own are still matter of moment to +him,—<i>si quid mentem mortalia tangunt</i>,—he may +be satisfied.</p> +<p>Even the printed stock of early Welsh literature is, +therefore, considerable, and the manuscript stock of it is very +great indeed. Of Irish literature, the stock, printed and +manuscript, is truly vast; the work of cataloguing and describing +this has been admirably performed by another remarkable man, who +died only the other day, Mr. Eugene O’Curry. Obscure +Scaliger of a despised literature, he deserves some weightier +voice to praise him than the voice of an unlearned bellettristic +trifler like me; he belongs to the race of the giants in literary +research and industry,—a race now almost extinct. +Without a literary education, and impeded too, it appears, by +much trouble of mind and infirmity of body, he has accomplished +such a thorough work of classification and description for the +chaotic mass of Irish literature, that the student has now half +his labour saved, and needs only to use his materials as Eugene +O’Curry hands them to him. It was as a professor in +the Catholic University in Dublin that O’Curry gave the +lectures in which he has done the student this service; it is +touching to find that these lectures, a splendid tribute of +devotion to the Celtic cause, had no hearer more attentive, more +sympathising, than a man, himself, too, the champion of a cause +more interesting than prosperous,—one of those causes which +please noble spirits, but do not please destiny, which have +Cato’s adherence, but not Heaven’s,—Dr. +Newman. Eugene O’Curry, in these lectures of his, +taking as his standard the quarto page of Dr. +O’Donovan’s edition of the <i>Annals of the Four +Masters</i> (and this printed monument of one branch of Irish +literature occupies by itself, let me say in passing, seven large +quarto volumes, containing 4,215 pages of closely printed +matter), Eugene O’Curry says, that the great vellum +manuscript books belonging to Trinity College, Dublin, and to the +Royal Irish Academy,—books with fascinating titles, the +<i>Book of the Dun Cow</i>, the <i>Book of Leinster</i>, the +<i>Book of Ballymote</i>, the <i>Speckled Book</i>, the <i>Book +of Lecain</i>, the <i>Yellow Book of Lecain</i>,—have, +between them, matter enough to fill 11,400 of these pages; the +other vellum manuscripts in the library of Trinity College, +Dublin, have matter enough to fill 8,200 pages more; and the +paper manuscripts of Trinity College, and the Royal Irish Academy +together, would fill, he says, 30,000 such pages more. The +ancient laws of Ireland, the so-called Brehon laws, which a +commission is now publishing, were not as yet completely +transcribed when O’Curry wrote; but what had even then been +transcribed was sufficient, he says, to fill nearly 8,000 of Dr. +O’Donovan’s pages. Here are, at any rate, +materials enough with a vengeance. These materials fall, of +course, into several divisions. The most literary of these +divisions, the <i>Tales</i>, consisting of <i>Historic Tales</i> +and <i>Imaginative Tales</i>, distributes the contents of its +<i>Historic Tales</i> as follows:—Battles, voyages, sieges, +tragedies, cow-spoils, courtships, adventures, land-expeditions, +sea-expeditions, banquets, elopements, loves, lake-irruptions, +colonisations, visions. Of what a treasure-house of +resources for the history of Celtic life and the Celtic genius +does that bare list, even by itself, call up the image! The +<i>Annals of the Four Masters</i> give ‘the years of +foundations and destructions of churches and castles, the +obituaries of remarkable persons, the inaugurations of kings, the +battles of chiefs, the contests of clans, the ages of bards, +abbots, bishops, &c.’ <a name="citation25"></a><a +href="#footnote25" class="citation">[25]</a> Through other +divisions of this mass of materials,—the books of pedigrees +and genealogies, the martyrologies and festologies, such as the +<i>Féliré of Angus the Culdee</i>, the +topographical tracts, such as the <i>Dinnsenchas</i>,—we +touch ‘the most ancient traditions of the Irish, traditions +which were committed to writing at a period when the ancient +customs of the people were unbroken.’ We touch +‘the early history of Ireland, civil and +ecclesiastical.’ We get ‘the origin and history +of the countless monuments of Ireland, of the ruined church and +tower, the sculptured cross, the holy well, and the commemorative +name of almost every townland and parish in the whole +island.’ We get, in short, ‘the most detailed +information upon almost every part of ancient Gaelic life, a vast +quantity of valuable details of life and manners.’ <a +name="citation26"></a><a href="#footnote26" +class="citation">[26]</a></p> +<p>And then, besides, to our knowledge of the Celtic genius, Mr. +Norris has brought us from Cornwall, M. de la Villemarqué +from Brittany, contributions, insignificant indeed in quantity, +if one compares them with the mass of the Irish materials extant, +but far from insignificant in value.</p> +<p>We want to know what all this mass of documents really tells +us about the Celt. But the mode of dealing with these +documents, and with the whole question of Celtic antiquity, has +hitherto been most unsatisfactory. Those who have dealt +with them, have gone to work, in general, either as warm +Celt-lovers or as warm Celt-haters, and not as disinterested +students of an important matter of science. One party seems +to set out with the determination to find everything in Celtism +and its remains; the other, with the determination to find +nothing in them. A simple seeker for truth has a hard time +between the two. An illustration or so will make clear what +I mean. First let us take the Celt-lovers, who, though they +engage one’s sympathies more than the Celt-haters, yet, +inasmuch as assertion is more dangerous than denial, show their +weaknesses in a more signal way. A very learned man, the +Rev. Edward Davies, published in the early part of this century +two important books on Celtic antiquity. The second of +these books, <i>The Mythology and Rites of the British +Druids</i>, contains, with much other interesting matter, the +charming story of Taliesin. Bryant’s book on +mythology was then in vogue, and Bryant, in the fantastical +manner so common in those days, found in Greek mythology what he +called an arkite idolatry, pointing to Noah’s deluge and +the ark. Davies, wishing to give dignity to his Celtic +mythology, determines to find the arkite idolatry there too, and +the style in which he proceeds to do this affords a good specimen +of the extravagance which has caused Celtic antiquity to be +looked upon with so much suspicion. The story of Taliesin +begins thus:—</p> +<p>‘In former times there was a man of noble descent in +Penllyn. His name was Tegid Voel, and his paternal estate +was in the middle of the Lake of Tegid, and his wife was called +Ceridwen.’</p> +<p>Nothing could well be simpler; but what Davies finds in this +simple opening of Taliesin’s story is +prodigious:—</p> +<p>‘Let us take a brief view of the proprietor of this +estate. Tegid Voel—<i>bald +serenity</i>—presents itself at once to our fancy. +The painter would find no embarrassment in sketching the portrait +of this sedate venerable personage, whose crown is partly +stripped of its hoary honours. But of all the gods of +antiquity, none could with propriety sit for this picture +excepting Saturn, the acknowledged representative of Noah, and +the husband of Rhea, which was but another name for Ceres, the +genius of the ark.’</p> +<p>And Ceres, the genius of the ark, is of course found in +Ceridwen, ‘the British Ceres, the arkite goddess who +initiates us into the deepest mysteries of the arkite +superstition.’</p> +<p>Now the story of Taliesin, as it proceeds, exhibits Ceridwen +as a sorceress; and a sorceress, like a goddess, belongs to the +world of the supernatural; but, beyond this, the story itself +does not suggest one particle of relationship between Ceridwen +and Ceres. All the rest comes out of Davies’s fancy, +and is established by reasoning of the force of that about +‘bald serenity.’</p> +<p>It is not difficult for the other side, the Celt-haters, to +get a triumph over such adversaries as these. Perhaps I +ought to ask pardon of Mr. Nash, whose <i>Taliesin</i> it is +impossible to read without profit and instruction, for classing +him among the Celt-haters; his determined scepticism about Welsh +antiquity seems to me, however, to betray a preconceived +hostility, a bias taken beforehand, as unmistakable as Mr. +Davies’s prepossessions. But Mr. Nash is often very +happy in demolishing, for really the Celt-lovers seem often to +try to lay themselves open, and to invite demolition. Full +of his notions about an arkite idolatry and a Helio-dæmonic +worship, Edward Davies gives this translation of an old Welsh +poem, entitled <i>The Panegyric of Lludd the +Great</i>:—</p> +<p>‘A song of dark import was composed by the distinguished +Ogdoad, who assembled on the day of the moon, and went in open +procession. On the day of Mars they allotted wrath to their +adversaries; and on the day of Mercury they enjoyed their full +pomp; on the day of Jove they were delivered from the detested +usurpers; on the day of Venus, the day of the great influx, they +swam in the blood of men; <a name="citation29"></a><a +href="#footnote29" class="citation">[29]</a> on the day of the +Sun there truly assemble five ships and five hundred of those who +make supplication: O Brithi, O Brithoi! O son of the +compacted wood, the shock overtakes me; we all attend on Adonai, +on the area of Pwmpai.’</p> +<p>That looks Helio-dæmonic enough, undoubtedly; especially +when Davies prints <i>O Brithi</i>, <i>O Brithoi</i>! in Hebrew +characters, as being ‘vestiges of sacred hymns in the +Phœnician language.’ But then comes Mr. Nash, +and says that the poem is a middle-age composition, with nothing +Helio-dæmonic about it; that it is meant to ridicule the +monks; and that <i>O Brithi</i>, <i>O Brithoi</i>! is a mere +piece of unintelligible jargon in mockery of the chants used by +the monks at prayers; and he gives this counter-translation of +the poem:—</p> +<p>‘They make harsh songs; they note eight numbers. +On Monday they will be prying about. On Tuesday they +separate, angry with their adversaries. On Wednesday they +drink, enjoying themselves ostentatiously. On Thursday they +are in the choir; their poverty is disagreeable. Friday is +a day of abundance, the men are swimming in pleasures. On +Sunday, certainly, five legions and five hundreds of them, they +pray, they make exclamations: O Brithi, O Brithoi! Like +wood-cuckoos in noise they will be, every one of the idiots +banging on the ground.’</p> +<p>As one reads Mr. Nash’s explanation and translation +after Edward Davies’s, one feels that a flood of the broad +daylight of common-sense has been suddenly shed over the +<i>Panegyric on Lludd the Great</i>, and one is very grateful to +Mr. Nash.</p> +<p>Or, again, when another Celt-lover, Mr. Herbert, has +bewildered us with his fancies, as uncritical as Edward +Davies’s; with his neo-Druidism, his Mithriac heresy, his +Crist-celi, or man-god of the mysteries; and above all, his ape +of the sanctuary, ‘signifying the mercurial principle, that +strange and unexplained disgrace of paganism,’ Mr. Nash +comes to our assistance, and is most refreshingly rational. +To confine ourselves to the ape of the sanctuary only. Mr. +Herbert constructs his monster,—to whom, he says, +‘great sanctity, together with foul crime, deception, and +treachery,’ is ascribed,—out of four lines of old +Welsh poetry, of which he adopts the following +translation:—</p> +<p>‘Without the ape, without the stall of the cow, without +the mundane rampart, the world will become desolate, not +requiring the cuckoos to convene the appointed dance over the +green.’</p> +<p>One is not very clear what all this means, but it has, at any +rate, a solemn air about it, which prepares one for the +development of its first-named personage, the ape, into the +mystical ape of the sanctuary. The cow, too,—says +another famous Celt-lover, Dr. Owen, the learned author of the +Welsh Dictionary,—the cow (<i>henfon</i>) is the cow of +transmigration; and this also sounds natural enough. But +Mr. Nash, who has a keen eye for the piecing which frequently +happens in these old fragments, has observed that just here, +where the ape of the sanctuary and the cow of transmigration make +their appearance, there seems to come a cluster of adages, +popular sayings; and he at once remembers an adage preserved with +the word <i>henfon</i> in it, where, as he justly says, +‘the cow of transmigration cannot very well have +place.’ This adage, rendered literally in English, +is: ‘Whoso owns the old cow, let him go at her tail;’ +and the meaning of it, as a popular saying, is clear and simple +enough. With this clue, Mr. Nash examines the whole +passage, suggests that <i>heb eppa</i>, ‘without the +ape,’ with which Mr. Herbert begins, in truth belongs to +something going before and is to be translated somewhat +differently; and, in short, that what we really have here is +simply these three adages one after another: ‘The first +share is the full one. Politeness is natural, says the +ape. Without the cow-stall there would be no +dung-heap.’ And one can hardly doubt that Mr. Nash is +quite right.</p> +<p>Even friends of the Celt, who are perfectly incapable of +extravagances of this sort, fall too often into a loose mode of +criticism concerning him and the documents of his history, which +is unsatisfactory in itself, and also gives an advantage to his +many enemies. One of the best and most delightful friends +he has ever had,—M. de la Villemarqué,—has +seen clearly enough that often the alleged antiquity of his +documents cannot be proved, that it can be even disproved, and +that he must rely on other supports than this to establish what +he wants; yet one finds him saying: ‘I open the collection +of Welsh bards from the sixth to the tenth century. +Taliesin, one of the oldest of them,’ . . . and so +on. But his adversaries deny that we have really any such +thing as a ‘collection of Welsh bards from the sixth to the +tenth century,’ or that a ‘Taliesin, one of the +oldest of them,’ exists to be quoted in defence of any +thesis. Sharon Turner, again, whose <i>Vindication of the +Ancient British Poems</i> was prompted, it seems to me, by a +critical instinct at bottom sound, is weak and uncritical in +details like this: ‘The strange poem of Taliesin, called +the <i>Spoils of Annwn</i>, implies the existence (in the sixth +century, he means) of mythological tales about Arthur; and the +frequent allusion of the old Welsh bards to the persons and +incidents which we find in the <i>Mabinogion</i>, are further +proofs that there must have been such stories in circulation +amongst the Welsh.’ But the critic has to show, +against his adversaries, that the <i>Spoils of Annwn</i> is a +real poem of the sixth century, with a real sixth-century poet +called Taliesin for its author, before he can use it to prove +what Sharon Turner there wishes to prove; and, in like manner, +the high antiquity of persons and incidents that are found in the +manuscripts of the <i>Mabinogion</i>,—manuscripts written, +like the famous <i>Red Book of Hergest</i>, in the library of +Jesus College at Oxford, in the fourteenth and fifteenth +centuries,—is not proved by allusions of the old Welsh +bards, until (which is just the question at issue) the pieces +containing these allusions are proved themselves to possess a +very high antiquity. In the present state of the question +as to the early Welsh literature, this sort of reasoning is +inconclusive and bewildering, and merely carries us round in a +circle. Again, it is worse than inconclusive reasoning, it +shows so uncritical a spirit that it begets grave mistrust, when +Mr. Williams ab Ithel, employed by the Master of the Rolls to +edit the <i>Brut y Tywysogion</i>, the ‘Chronicle of the +Princes,’ says in his introduction, in many respects so +useful and interesting: ‘We may add, on the authority of a +scrupulously faithful antiquary, and one that was deeply versed +in the traditions of his order—the late Iolo +Morganwg—that King Arthur in his Institutes of the Round +Table introduced the age of the world for events which occurred +before Christ, and the year of Christ’s nativity for all +subsequent events.’ Now, putting out of the question +Iolo Morganwg’s character as an antiquary, it is obvious +that no one, not Grimm himself, can stand in that way as +‘authority’ for King Arthur’s having thus +regulated chronology by his Institutes of the Round Table, or +even for there ever having been any such institutes at all. +And finally, greatly as I respect and admire Mr. Eugene +O’Curry, unquestionable as is the sagacity, the moderation, +which he in general unites with his immense learning, I must say +that he, too, like his brother Celt-lovers, sometimes lays +himself dangerously open. For instance, the Royal Irish +Academy possesses in its Museum a relic of the greatest value, +the <i>Domhnach Airgid</i>, a Latin manuscript of the four +gospels. The outer box containing this manuscript is of the +fourteenth century, but the manuscript itself, says O’Curry +(and no man is better able to judge) is certainly of the +sixth. This is all very well. ‘But,’ +O’Curry then goes on, ‘I believe no reasonable doubt +can exist that the <i>Domhnach Airgid</i> was actually sanctified +by the hand of our great Apostle.’ One has a thrill +of excitement at receiving this assurance from such a man as +Eugene O’Curry; one believes that he is really going to +make it clear that St. Patrick did actually sanctify the +<i>Domhnach Airgid</i> with his own hands; and one reads +on:—</p> +<p>‘As St. Patrick, says an ancient life of St. Mac +Carthainn preserved by Colgan in his <i>Acta Sanctorum +Hiberniæ</i>, was on his way from the north, and coming to +the place now called Clogher, he was carried over a stream by his +strong man, Bishop Mac Carthainn, who, while bearing the Saint, +groaned aloud, exclaiming: “Ugh! Ugh!”</p> +<p>‘“Upon my good word,” said the Saint, +“it was not usual with you to make that noise.”</p> +<p>‘“I am now old and infirm,” said Bishop Mac +Carthainn, “and all my early companions in mission-work you +have settled down in their respective churches, while I am still +on my travels.”</p> +<p>‘“Found a church then,” said the Saint, +“that shall not be too near us” (that is to his own +Church of Armagh) “for familiarity, nor too far from us for +intercourse.”</p> +<p>‘And the Saint then left Bishop Mac Carthainn there, at +Clogher, and bestowed the <i>Domhnach Airgid</i> upon him, which +had been given to Patrick from heaven, when he was on the sea, +coming to Erin.’</p> +<p>The legend is full of poetry, full of humour; and one can +quite appreciate, after reading it, the tact which gave St. +Patrick such a prodigious success in organising the primitive +church in Ireland; the new bishop, ‘not too near us for +familiarity, nor too far from us for intercourse,’ is a +masterpiece. But how can Eugene O’Curry have imagined +that it takes no more than a legend like that, to prove that the +particular manuscript now in the Museum of the Royal Irish +Academy was once in St. Patrick’s pocket?</p> +<p>I insist upon extravagances like these, not in order to throw +ridicule upon the Celt-lovers,—on the contrary, I feel a +great deal of sympathy with them,—but rather, to make it +clear what an immense advantage the Celt-haters, the negative +side, have in the controversy about Celtic antiquity; how much a +clear-headed sceptic, like Mr. Nash, may utterly demolish, and, +in demolishing, give himself the appearance of having won an +entire victory. But an entire victory he has, as I will +next proceed to show, by no means won.</p> +<h3>II.</h3> +<p>I said that a sceptic like Mr. Nash, by demolishing the +rubbish of the Celtic antiquaries, might often give himself the +appearance of having won a complete victory, but that a complete +victory he had, in truth, by no means won. He has cleared +much rubbish away, but this is no such very difficult feat, and +requires mainly common-sense; to be sure, Welsh +archæologists are apt to lose their common-sense, but at +moments when they are in possession of it they can do the +indispensable, negative part of criticism, not, indeed, so +briskly or cleverly as Mr. Nash, but still well enough. +Edward Davies, for instance, has quite clearly seen that the +alleged remains of old Welsh literature are not to be taken for +genuine just as they stand: ‘Some petty and mendicant +minstrel, who only chaunted it as an old song, has tacked +on’ (he says of a poem he is discussing) ‘these +lines, in a style and measure totally different from the +preceding verses: “May the Trinity grant us mercy in the +day of judgment: a liberal donation, good +gentlemen!”’ There, fifty years before Mr. +Nash, is a clearance like one of Mr. Nash’s. But the +difficult feat in this matter is the feat of construction; to +determine when one has cleared away all that is to be cleared +away, what is the significance of that which is left; and here, I +confess, I think Mr. Nash and his fellow-sceptics, who say that +next to nothing is left, and that the significance of whatever is +left is next to nothing, dissatisfy the genuine critic even more +than Edward Davies and his brother enthusiasts, who have a sense +that something primitive, august, and interesting is there, +though they fail to extract it, dissatisfy him. There is a +very edifying story told by O’Curry of the effect produced +on Moore, the poet, who had undertaken to write the history of +Ireland (a task for which he was quite unfit), by the +contemplation of an old Irish manuscript. Moore had, +without knowing anything about them, spoken slightingly of the +value to the historian of Ireland of the materials afforded by +such manuscripts; but, says O’Curry:—</p> +<p>‘In the year 1839, during one of his last visits to the +land of his birth, he, in company with his old and attached +friend Dr. Petrie, favoured me with an unexpected visit at the +Royal Irish Academy. I was at that period employed on the +Ordnance Survey of Ireland, and at the time of his visit happened +to have before me on my desk the <i>Books of Ballymote and +Lecain</i>, <i>The Speckled Book</i>, <i>The Annals of the Four +Masters</i>, and many other ancient books, for historical +research and reference. I had never before seen Moore, and +after a brief introduction and explanation of the nature of my +occupation by Dr. Petrie, and seeing the formidable array of so +many dark and time-worn volumes by which I was surrounded, he +looked a little disconcerted, but after a while plucked up +courage to open the <i>Book of Ballymote</i> and ask what it +was. Dr. Petrie and myself then entered into a short +explanation of the history and character of the books then +present as well as of ancient Gaedhelic documents in +general. Moore listened with great attention, alternately +scanning the books and myself, and then asked me, in a serious +tone, if I understood them, and how I had learned to do so. +Having satisfied him upon these points, he turned to Dr. Petrie +and said:—“Petrie, these huge tomes could not have +been written by fools or for any foolish purpose. I never +knew anything about them before, and I had no right to have +undertaken the History of Ireland.”’</p> +<p>And from that day Moore, it is said, lost all heart for going +on with his <i>History of Ireland</i>, and it was only the +importunity of the publishers which induced him to bring out the +remaining volume.</p> +<p><i>Could not have been written by fools or for any foolish +purpose</i>. That is, I am convinced, a true presentiment +to have in one’s mind when one looks at Irish documents +like the Book of Ballymote, or Welsh documents like the <i>Red +Book of Hergest</i>. In some respects, at any rate, these +documents are what they claim to be, they hold what they pretend +to hold, they touch that primitive world of which they profess to +be the voice. The true critic is he who can detect this +precious and genuine part in them, and employ it for the +elucidation of the Celt’s genius and history, and for any +other fruitful purposes to which it can be applied. Merely +to point out the mixture of what is late and spurious in them, is +to touch but the fringes of the matter. In reliance upon +the discovery of this mixture of what is late and spurious in +them, to pooh-pooh them altogether, to treat them as a heap of +rubbish, a mass of middle-age forgeries, is to fall into the +greatest possible error. Granted that all the manuscripts +of Welsh poetry (to take that branch of Celtic literature which +has had, in Mr. Nash, the ablest disparager), granted that all +such manuscripts that we possess are, with the most insignificant +exception, not older than the twelfth century; granted that the +twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a time of great poetical +activity in Wales, a time when the mediæval literature +flourished there, as it flourished in England, France, and other +countries; granted that a great deal of what Welsh enthusiasts +have attributed to their great traditional poets of the sixth +century belongs to this later epoch,—what then? Does +that get rid of the great traditional poets,—the Cynveirdd +or old bards, Aneurin, Taliesin, Llywarch Hen, and their +compeers,—does that get rid of the great poetical tradition +of the sixth century altogether, does it merge the whole literary +antiquity of Wales in her mediæval literary antiquity, or, +at least, reduce all other than this to insignificance? Mr. +Nash says it does; all his efforts are directed to show how much +of the so called sixth-century pieces may be resolved into +mediæval, twelfth-century work; his grand thesis is that +there is nothing primitive and pre-Christian in the extant Welsh +literature, no traces of the Druidism and Paganism every one +associates with Celtic antiquity; all this, he says, was +extinguished by Paulinus in AD. 59, and never resuscitated. +‘At the time the Mabinogion and the Taliesin ballads were +composed, no tradition or popular recollection of the Druids or +the Druidical mythology existed in Wales. The Welsh bards +knew of no older mystery, nor of any mystic creed, unknown to the +rest of the Christian world.’ And Mr. Nash complains +that ‘the old opinion that the Welsh poems contain notices +of Druid or Pagan superstitions of a remote origin’ should +still find promulgators; what we find in them is only, he says, +what was circulating in Wales in the twelfth century, and one +great mistake in these investigations has been the supposing that +the Welsh of the twelfth, or even of the sixth century, were +wiser as well as more Pagan than their neighbours.’</p> +<p>Why, what a wonderful thing is this! We have, in the +first place, the most weighty and explicit +testimony,—Strabo’s, Cæsar’s, +Lucan’s,—that this race once possessed a special, +profound, spiritual discipline, that they were, to use Mr. +Nash’s words, ‘wiser than their +neighbours.’ Lucan’s words are singularly clear +and strong, and serve well to stand as a landmark in this +controversy, in which one is sometimes embarrassed by hearing +authorities quoted on this side or that, when one does not feel +sure precisely what they say, how much or how little; Lucan, +addressing those hitherto under the pressure of Rome, but now +left by the Roman civil war to their own devices, +says:—</p> +<p>‘Ye too, ye bards, who by your praises perpetuate the +memory of the fallen brave, without hindrance poured forth your +strains. And ye, ye Druids, now that the sword was removed, +began once more your barbaric rites and weird solemnities. +To you only is given knowledge or ignorance (whichever it be) of +the gods and the powers of heaven; your dwelling is in the lone +heart of the forest. From you we learn, that the bourne of +man’s ghost is not the senseless grave, not the pale realm +of the monarch below; in another world his spirit survives +still;—death, if your lore be true, is but the passage to +enduring life.’</p> +<p>There is the testimony of an educated Roman, fifty years after +Christ, to the Celtic race being then ‘wiser than their +neighbours;’ testimony all the more remarkable because +civilised nations, though very prone to ascribe to barbarous +people an ideal purity and simplicity of life and manners, are by +no means naturally inclined to ascribe to them high attainment in +intellectual and spiritual things. And now, along with this +testimony of Lucan’s, one has to carry in mind +Cæsar’s remark, that the Druids, partly from a +religious scruple, partly from a desire to discipline the memory +of their pupils, committed nothing to writing. Well, then +come the crushing defeat of the Celtic race in Britain and the +Roman conquest; but the Celtic race subsisted here still, and any +one can see that, while the race subsisted, the traditions of a +discipline such as that of which Lucan has drawn the picture were +not likely to be so very speedily +‘extinguished.’ The withdrawal of the Romans, +the recovered independence of the native race here, the Saxon +invasion, the struggle with the Saxons, were just the ground for +one of those bursts of energetic national life and +self-consciousness which find a voice in a burst of poets and +poetry. Accordingly, to this time, to the sixth century, +the universal Welsh tradition attaches the great group of British +poets, Taliesin and his fellows. In the twelfth century +there began for Wales, along with another burst of national life, +another burst of poetry; and this burst <i>literary</i> in the +stricter sense of the word,—a burst which left, for the +first time, written records. It wrote the records of its +predecessors, as well as of itself, and therefore Mr. Nash wants +to make it the real author of the whole poetry, one may say, of +the sixth century, as well as its own. No doubt one cannot +produce the texts of the poetry of the sixth century; no doubt we +have this only as the twelfth and succeeding centuries wrote it +down; no doubt they mixed and changed it a great deal in writing +it down. But, since a continuous stream of testimony shows +the enduring existence and influence among the kindred Celts of +Wales and Brittany, from the sixth century to the twelfth, of an +old national literature, it seems certain that much of this must +be traceable in the documents of the twelfth century, and the +interesting thing is to trace it. It cannot be denied that +there is such a continuous stream of testimony; there is Gildas +in the sixth century, Nennius in the eighth, the laws of Howel in +the tenth; in the eleventh, twenty or thirty years before the new +literary epoch began, we hear of Rhys ap Tudor having +‘brought with him from Brittany the system of the Round +Table, which at home had become quite forgotten, and he restored +it as it is, with regard to minstrels and bards, as it had been +at Caerleon-upon-Usk, under the Emperor Arthur, in the time of +the sovereignty of the race of the Cymry over the island of +Britain and its adjacent islands.’ Mr. Nash’s +own comment on this is: ‘We here see the introduction of +the Arthurian romance from Brittany, preceding by nearly one +generation the revival of music and poetry in North Wales;’ +and yet he does not seem to perceive what a testimony is here to +the reality, fulness, and subsistence of that primitive +literature about which he is so sceptical. Then in the +twelfth century testimony to this primitive literature absolutely +abounds; one can quote none better than that of Giraldus de +Barri, or Giraldus Cambrensis, as he is usually called. +Giraldus is an excellent authority, who knew well what he was +writing about, and he speaks of the Welsh bards and rhapsodists +of his time as having in their possession ‘ancient and +authentic books’ in the Welsh language. The apparatus +of technical terms of poetry, again, and the elaborate poetical +organisation which we find, both in Wales and Ireland, existing +from the very commencement of the mediæval literary period +in each, and to which no other mediæval literature, so far +as I know, shows at its first beginnings anything similar, +indicates surely, in these Celtic peoples, the clear and +persistent tradition of an older poetical period of great +development, and almost irresistibly connects itself in +one’s mind with the elaborate Druidic discipline which +Cæsar mentions.</p> +<p>But perhaps the best way to get a full sense of the storied +antiquity, forming as it were the background to those +mediæval documents which in Mr. Nash’s eyes pretty +much begin and end with themselves, is to take, almost at random, +a passage from such a tale as <i>Kilhwch and Olwen</i>, in the +<i>Mabinogion</i>,—that charming collection, for which we +owe such a debt of gratitude to Lady Charlotte Guest (to call her +still by the name she bore when she made her happy entry into the +world of letters), and which she so unkindly suffers to remain +out of print. Almost every page of this tale points to +traditions and personages of the most remote antiquity, and is +instinct with the very breath of the primitive world. +Search is made for Mabon, the son of Modron, who was taken when +three nights old from between his mother and the wall. The +seekers go first to the Ousel of Cilgwri; the Ousel had lived +long enough to peck a smith’s anvil down to the size of a +nut, but he had never heard of Mabon. ‘But there is a +race of animals who were formed before me, and I will be your +guide to them.’ So the Ousel guides them to the Stag +of Redynvre. The Stag has seen an oak sapling, in the wood +where he lived, grow up to be an oak with a hundred branches, and +then slowly decay down to a withered stump, yet he had never +heard of Mabon. ‘But I will be your guide to the +place where there is an animal which was formed before I +was;’ and he guides them to the Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd. +‘When first I came hither,’ says the Owl, ‘the +wide valley you see was a wooded glen. And a race of men +came and rooted it up. And there grew a second wood; and +this wood is the third. My wings, are they not withered +stumps?’ Yet the Owl, in spite of his great age, had +never heard of Mabon; but he offered to be guide ‘to where +is the oldest animal in the world, and the one that has travelled +most, the Eagle of Gwern Abwy.’ The Eagle was so old, +that a rock, from the top of which he pecked at the stars every +evening, was now not so much as a span high. He knew +nothing of Mabon; but there was a monster Salmon, into whom he +once struck his claws in Llyn Llyw, who might, perhaps, tell them +something of him. And at last the Salmon of Llyn Llyw told +them of Mabon. ‘With every tide I go along the river +upwards, until I come near to the walls of Gloucester, and there +have I found such wrong as I never found elsewhere.’ +And the Salmon took Arthur’s messengers on his shoulders up +to the wall of the prison in Gloucester, and they delivered +Mabon.</p> +<p>Nothing could better give that sense of primitive and +pre-mediæval antiquity which to the observer with any tact +for these things is, I think, clearly perceptible in these +remains, at whatever time they may have been written; or better +serve to check too absolute an acceptance of Mr. Nash’s +doctrine,—in some respects very salutary,—‘that +the common assumption of such remains of the date of the sixth +century, has been made upon very unsatisfactory +grounds.’ It is true, it has; it is true, too, that, +as he goes on to say, ‘writers who claim for productions +actually existing only in manuscripts of the twelfth, an origin +in the sixth century, are called upon to demonstrate the links of +evidence, either internal or external, which bridge over this +great intervening period of at least five hundred +years.’ Then Mr. Nash continues: ‘This external +evidence is altogether wanting.’ Not altogether, as +we have seen; that assertion is a little too strong. But I +am content to let it pass, because it is true, that without +internal evidence in this matter the external evidence would be +of no moment. But when Mr. Nash continues further: +‘And the internal evidence even of the so-called historic +poems themselves, is, in some instances at least, opposed to +their claims to an origin in the sixth century,’ and leaves +the matter there, and finishes his chapter, I say that is an +unsatisfactory turn to give to the matter, and a lame and +impotent conclusion to his chapter; because the one interesting, +fruitful question here is, not in what instances the internal +evidence opposes the claims of these poems to a sixth-century +origin, but in what instances it supports them, and what these +sixth-century remains, thus established, signify.</p> +<p>So again with the question as to the mythological import of +these poems. Mr. Nash seems to me to have dealt with this, +too, rather in the spirit of a sturdy enemy of the Celts and +their pretensions,—often enough chimerical,—than in +the spirit of a disinterested man of science. ‘We +find in the oldest compositions in the Welsh language no +traces,’ he says, ‘of the Druids, or of a pagan +mythology.’ He will not hear of there being, for +instance, in these compositions, traces of the doctrine of the +transmigration of souls, attributed to the Druids in such clear +words by Cæsar. He is very severe upon a German +scholar, long and favourably known in this country, who has +already furnished several contributions to our knowledge of the +Celtic race, and of whose labours the main fruit has, I believe, +not yet been given us,—Mr. Meyer. He is very severe +upon Mr. Meyer, for finding in one of the poems ascribed to +Taliesin, ‘a sacrificial hymn addressed to the god Pryd, in +his character of god of the Sun.’ It is not for me to +pronounce for or against this notion of Mr. Meyer’s. +I have not the knowledge which is needed in order to make +one’s suffrage in these matters of any value; speaking +merely as one of the unlearned public, I will confess that +allegory seems to me to play, in Mr. Meyer’s theories, a +somewhat excessive part; Arthur and his Twelve (?) Knights of the +Round Table signifying solely the year with its twelve months; +Percival and the Miller signifying solely steel and the +grindstone; Stonehenge and the <i>Gododin</i> put to purely +calendarial purposes; the <i>Nibelungen</i>, the +<i>Mahabharata</i>, and the <i>Iliad</i>, finally following the +fate of the <i>Gododin</i>; all this appears to me, I will +confess, a little prematurely grasped, a little +unsubstantial. But that any one who knows the set of modern +mythological science towards astronomical and solar myths, a set +which has already justified itself in many respects so +victoriously, and which is so irresistible that one can hardly +now look up at the sun without having the sensations of a +moth;—that any one who knows this, should find in the Welsh +remains no traces of mythology, is quite astounding. Why, +the heroes and heroines of the old Cymric world are all in the +sky as well as in Welsh story; Arthur is the Great Bear, his harp +is the constellation Lyra; Cassiopeia’s chair is Llys Don, +Don’s Court; the daughter of Don was Arianrod, and the +Northern Crown is Caer Arianrod; Gwydion was Don’s son, and +the Milky Way is Caer Gwydion. With Gwydion is Math, the +son of Mathonwy, the ‘man of illusion and phantasy;’ +and the moment one goes below the surface,—almost before +one goes below the surface,—all is illusion and phantasy, +double-meaning, and far-reaching mythological import, in the +world which all these personages inhabit. What are the +three hundred ravens of Owen, and the nine sorceresses of +Peredur, and the dogs of Annwn the Welsh Hades, and the birds of +Rhiannon, whose song was so sweet that warriors remained +spell-bound for eighty years together listening to them? +What is the Avanc, the water-monster, of whom every lake-side in +Wales, and her proverbial speech, and her music, to this day +preserve the tradition? What is Gwyn the son of Nudd, king +of fairie, the ruler of the Tylwyth Teg, or family of beauty, who +till the day of doom fights on every first day of May,—the +great feast of the sun among the Celtic peoples,—with +Gwythyr, for the fair Cordelia, the daughter of Lear? What +is the wonderful mare of Teirnyon, which on the night of every +first of May foaled, and no one ever knew what became of the +colt? Who is the mystic Arawn, the king of Annwn, who +changed semblance for a year with Pwyll, prince of Dyved, and +reigned in his place? These are no mediæval +personages; they belong to an older, pagan, mythological +world. The very first thing that strikes one, in reading +the <i>Mabinogion</i>, is how evidently the mediæval +story-teller is pillaging an antiquity of which he does not fully +possess the secret; he is like a peasant building his hut on the +site of Halicarnassus or Ephesus; he builds, but what he builds +is full of materials of which he knows not the history, or knows +by a glimmering tradition merely;—stones ‘not of this +building,’ but of an older architecture, greater, +cunninger, more majestical. In the mediæval stories +of no Latin or Teutonic people does this strike one as in those +of the Welsh. Kilhwch, in the story, already quoted, of +<i>Kilhwch and Olwen</i>, asks help at the hand of Arthur’s +warriors; a list of these warriors is given, which fills I know +not how many pages of Lady Charlotte Guest’s book; this +list is a perfect treasure-house of mysterious ruins:—</p> +<p>‘Teithi Hen, the son of Gwynham—(his domains were +swallowed up by the sea, and he himself hardly escaped, and he +came to Arthur, and his knife had this peculiarity, that from the +time that he came there no haft would ever remain upon it, and +owing to this a sickness came over him, and he pined away during +the remainder of his life, and of this he died).</p> +<p>‘Drem, the son of Dremidyd—(when the gnat arose in +the morning with the sun, Drem could see it from Gelli Wic in +Cornwall, as far off as Pen Blathaon in North Britain).</p> +<p>‘Kynyr Keinvarvawc—(when he was told he had a son +born, he said to his wife: Damsel, if thy son be mine, his heart +will be always cold, and there will be no warmth in his +hands).’</p> +<p>How evident, again, is the slightness of the narrator’s +hold upon the Twrch-Trwyth and his strange story! How +manifest the mixture of known and unknown, shadowy and clear, of +different layers and orders of tradition jumbled together, in the +story of Bran the Blessed, a story whose personages touch a +comparatively late and historic time. Bran invades Ireland, +to avenge one of ‘the three unhappy blows of this +island,’ the daily striking of Branwen by her husband +Matholwch, King of Ireland. Bran is mortally wounded by a +poisoned dart, and only seven men of Britain, ‘the Island +of the Mighty,’ escape, among them Taliesin:—</p> +<p>‘And Bran commanded them that they should cut off his +head. And take you my head, said he, and bear it even unto +the White Mount in London, and bury it there with the face +towards France. And a long time will you be upon the +road. In Harlech you will be feasting seven years, the +birds of Rhiannon singing unto you the while. And all that +time the head will be to you as pleasant company as it ever was +when on my body. And at Gwales in Penvro you will be +fourscore years, and you may remain there, and the head with you +uncorrupted, until you open the door that looks towards Aber +Henvelen and towards Cornwall. And after you have opened +that door, there you may no longer tarry; set forth then to +London to bury the head, and go straight forward.</p> +<p>‘So they cut off his head, and those seven went forward +therewith. And Branwen was the eighth with them, and they +came to land at Aber Alaw in Anglesey, and they sate down to +rest. And Branwen looked towards Ireland and towards the +Island of the Mighty, to see if she could descry them. +“Alas,” said she, “woe is me that I was ever +born; two islands have been destroyed because of me.” +Then she uttered a loud groan, and there broke her heart. +And they made her a four-sided grave, and buried her upon the +banks of the Alaw.</p> +<p>‘Then they went to Harlech, and sate down to feast and +to drink there; and there came three birds and began singing, and +all the songs they had ever heard were harsh compared thereto; +and at this feast they continued seven years. Then they +went to Gwales in Penvro, and there they found a fair and regal +spot overlooking the ocean, and a spacious hall was +therein. And they went into the hall, and two of its doors +were open, but the third door was closed, that which looked +towards Cornwall. “See yonder,” said +Manawyddan, “is the door that we may not open.” +And that night they regaled themselves and were joyful. And +there they remained fourscore years, nor did they think they had +ever spent a time more joyous and mirthful. And they were +not more weary than when first they came, neither did they, any +of them, know the time they had been there. And it was as +pleasant to them having the head with them as if Bran had been +with them himself.</p> +<p>‘But one day said Heilyn, the son of Gwyn: “Evil +betide me if I do not open the door to know if that is true which +is said concerning it.” So he opened the door and +looked towards Cornwall and Aber Henvelen. And when they +had looked, they were as conscious of all the evils they had ever +sustained, and of all the friends and companions they had lost, +and of all the misery that had befallen them, as if all had +happened in that very spot; and especially of the fate of their +lord. And because of their perturbation they could not +rest, but journeyed forth with the head towards London. And +they buried the head in the White Mount.’</p> +<p>Arthur afterwards, in his pride and self-confidence, +disinterred the head, and this was one of ‘the three +unhappy disclosures of the island of Britain.’</p> +<p>There is evidently mixed here, with the newer legend, a +<i>detritus</i>, as the geologists would say, of something far +older; and the secret of Wales and its genius is not truly +reached until this <i>detritus</i>, instead of being called +recent because it is found in contact with what is recent, is +disengaged, and is made to tell its own story.</p> +<p>But when we show him things of this kind in the Welsh remains, +Mr. Nash has an answer for us. ‘Oh,’ he says, +‘all this is merely a machinery of necromancers and magic, +such as has probably been possessed by all people in all ages, +more or less abundantly. How similar are the creations of +the human mind in times and places the most remote! We see +in this similarity only an evidence of the existence of a common +stock of ideas, variously developed according to the formative +pressure of external circumstances. The materials of these +tales are not peculiar to the Welsh.’ And then Mr. +Nash points out, with much learning and ingenuity, how certain +incidents of these tales have their counterparts in Irish, in +Scandinavian, in Oriental romance. He says, fairly enough, +that the assertions of Taliesin, in the famous <i>Hanes +Taliesin</i>, or <i>History of Taliesin</i>, that he was present +with Noah in the Ark, at the Tower of Babel, and with Alexander +of Macedon, ‘we may ascribe to the poetic fancy of the +Christian priest of the thirteenth century, who brought this +romance into its present form. We may compare these +statements of the universal presence of the wonder-working +magician with those of the gleeman who recites the Anglo-Saxon +metrical tale called the <i>Traveller’s +Song</i>.’ No doubt, lands the most distant can be +shown to have a common property in many marvellous stories. +This is one of the most interesting discoveries of modern +science; but modern science is equally interested in knowing how +the genius of each people has differentiated, so to speak, this +common property of theirs; in tracking out, in each case, that +special ‘variety of development,’ which, to use Mr. +Nash’s own words, ‘the formative pressure of external +circumstances’ has occasioned; and not the formative +pressure from without only, but also the formative pressure from +within. It is this which he who deals with the Welsh +remains in a philosophic spirit wants to know. Where is the +force, for scientific purposes, of telling us that certain +incidents by which Welsh poetry has been supposed to indicate a +surviving tradition of the doctrine of transmigration, are found +in Irish poetry also, when Irish poetry has, like Welsh, its +roots in that Celtism which is said to have held this doctrine of +transmigration so strongly? Where is even the great force, +for scientific purposes, of proving, if it were possible to +prove, that the extant remains of Welsh poetry contain not one +plain declaration of Druidical, Pagan, pre-Christian doctrine, if +one has in the extant remains of Breton poetry such texts as this +from the prophecy of Gwenchlan: ‘Three times must we all +die, before we come to our final repose’? or as the cry of +the eagles, in the same poem, of fierce thirst for Christian +blood, a cry in which the poet evidently gives vent to his own +hatred? since the solidarity, to use that convenient French word, +of Breton and Welsh poetry is so complete, that the ideas of the +one may be almost certainly assumed not to have been wanting to +those of the other. The question is, when Taliesin says, in +the <i>Battle of the Trees</i>: ‘I have been in many shapes +before I attained a congenial form. I have been a narrow +blade of a sword, I have been a drop in the air, I have been a +shining star, I have been a word in a book, I have been a book in +the beginning, I have been a light in a lantern a year and a +half, I have been a bridge for passing over three-score rivers; I +have journeyed as an eagle, I have been a boat on the sea, I have +been a director in battle, I have been a sword in the hand, I +have been a shield in fight, I have been the string of a harp, I +have been enchanted for a year in the foam of water. There +is nothing in which I have not been,’—the question +is, have these ‘statements of the universal presence of the +wonder-working magician’ nothing which distinguishes them +from ‘similar creations of the human mind in times and +places the most remote;’ have they not an inwardness, a +severity of form, a solemnity of tone, which indicates the still +reverberating echo of a profound doctrine and discipline, such as +was Druidism? Suppose we compare Taliesin, as Mr. Nash +invites us, with the gleeman of the Anglo-Saxon +<i>Traveller’s Song</i>. Take the specimen of this +song which Mr. Nash himself quotes: ‘I have been with the +Israelites and with the Essyringi, with the Hebrews and with the +Indians and with the Egyptians; I have been with the Medes and +with the Persians and with the Myrgings.’ It is very +well to parallel with this extract Taliesin’s: ‘I +carried the banner before Alexander; I was in Canaan when Absalom +was slain; I was on the horse’s crupper of Elias and Enoch; +I was on the high cross of the merciful son of God; I was the +chief overseer at the building of the tower of Nimrod; I was with +my King in the manger of the ass; I supported Moses through the +waters of Jordan; I have been in the buttery in the land of the +Trinity; it is not known what is the nature of its meat and its +fish.’ It is very well to say that these assertions +‘we may fairly ascribe to the poetic fancy of a Christian +priest of the thirteenth century.’ Certainly we may; +the last of Taliesin’s assertions more especially; though +one must remark at the same time that the Welshman shows much +more fire and imagination than the Anglo-Saxon. But +Taliesin adds, after his: ‘I was in Canaan when Absalom was +slain,’ ‘<i>I was in the hall of Don before Gwydion +was born</i>;’ he adds, after: ‘I was chief overseer +at the building of the tower of Nimrod,’ ‘<i>I have +been three times resident in the castle of Arianrod</i>;’ +he adds, after: ‘I was at the cross with Mary +Magdalene,’ ‘<i>I obtained my inspiration from the +cauldron of Ceridwen</i>.’ And finally, after the +mediæval touch of the visit to the buttery in the land of +the Trinity, he goes off at score: ‘I have been instructed +in the whole system of the universe; I shall be till the day of +judgment on the face of the earth. I have been in an uneasy +chair above Caer Sidin, and the whirling round without motion +between three elements. Is it not the wonder of the world +that cannot be discovered?’ And so he ends the +poem. But here is the Celtic, the essential part of the +poem: it is here that the ‘formative pressure’ has +been really in operation; and here surely is paganism and +mythology enough, which the Christian priest of the thirteenth +century can have had nothing to do with. It is +unscientific, no doubt, to interpret this part as Edward Davies +and Mr. Herbert do; but it is unscientific also to get rid of it +as Mr. Nash does. Wales and the Welsh genius are not to be +known without this part; and the true critic is he who can best +disengage its real significance.</p> +<p>I say, then, what we want is to <i>know</i> the Celt and his +genius; not to exalt him or to abase him, but to know him. +And for this a disinterested, positive, and constructive +criticism is needed. Neither his friends nor his enemies +have yet given us much of this. His friends have given us +materials for criticism, and for these we ought to be grateful; +his enemies have given us negative criticism, and for this, too, +up to a certain point, we may be grateful; but the criticism we +really want neither of them has yet given us.</p> +<p>Philology, however, that science which in our time has had so +many successes, has not been abandoned by her good fortune in +touching the Celt; philology has brought, almost for the first +time in their lives, the Celt and sound criticism together. +The Celtic grammar of Zeuss, whose death is so grievous a loss to +science, offers a splendid specimen of that patient, +disinterested way of treating objects of knowledge, which is the +best and most attractive characteristic of Germany. Zeuss +proceeds neither as a Celt-lover nor as a Celt-hater; not the +slightest trace of a wish to glorify Teutonism or to abase +Celtism, appears in his book. The only desire apparent +there, is the desire to know his object, the language of the +Celtic peoples, as it really is. In this he stands as a +model to Celtic students; and it has been given to him, as a +reward for his sound method, to establish certain points which +are henceforth cardinal points, landmarks, in all the discussion +of Celtic matters, and which no one had so established +before. People talked at random of Celtic writings of this +or that age; Zeuss has definitely fixed the age of what we +actually have of these writings. To take the Cymric group +of languages: our earliest Cornish document is a vocabulary of +the thirteenth century; our earliest Breton document is a short +description of an estate in a deed of the ninth century; our +earliest Welsh documents are Welsh glosses of the eighth century +to Eutychus, the grammarian, and Ovid’s <i>Art of Love</i>, +and the verses found by Edward Lhuyd in the <i>Juvencus</i> +manuscript at Cambridge. The mention of this +<i>Juvencus</i> fragment, by-the-by, suggests the difference +there is between an interested and a disinterested critical +habit. Mr. Nash deals with this fragment; but, in spite of +all his great acuteness and learning, because he has a bias, +because he does not bring to these matters the disinterested +spirit they need, he is capable of getting rid, quite +unwarrantably, of a particular word in the fragment which does +not suit him; his dealing with the verses is an advocate’s +dealing, not a critic’s. Of this sort of thing Zeuss +is incapable.</p> +<p>The test which Zeuss used for establishing the age of these +documents is a scientific test, the test of orthography and of +declensional and syntactical forms. These matters are far +out of my province, but what is clear, sound, and simple, has a +natural attraction for us all, and one feels a pleasure in +repeating it. It is the grand sign of age, Zeuss says, in +Welsh and Irish words, when what the grammarians call the +‘<i>destitutio tenuium</i>’ has not yet taken place; +when the sharp consonants have not yet been changed into flat, +<i>p</i> or t into <i>b</i> or <i>d</i>; when, for instance, +<i>map</i>, a son, has not yet become <i>mab</i>; <i>coet</i> a +wood, <i>coed</i>; <i>ocet</i>, a harrow, <i>oged</i>. This +is a clear, scientific test to apply, and a test of which the +accuracy can be verified; I do not say that Zeuss was the first +person who knew this test or applied it, but I say that he is the +first person who in dealing with Celtic matters has invariably +proceeded by means of this and similar scientific tests; the +first person, therefore, the body of whose work has a scientific, +stable character; and so he stands as a model to all Celtic +inquirers.</p> +<p>His influence has already been most happy; and as I have +enlarged on a certain failure in criticism of Eugene +O’Curry’s,—whose business, after all, was the +description and classification of materials rather than +criticism,—let me show, by another example from Eugene +O’Curry, this good influence of Zeuss upon Celtic +studies. Eugene O’Curry wants to establish that +compositions of an older date than the twelfth century existed in +Ireland in the twelfth century, and thus he proceeds. He +takes one of the great extant Irish manuscripts, the <i>Leabhar +na h’Uidhre</i>; or, <i>Book of the Dun Cow</i>. The +compiler of this book was, he says, a certain Maelmuiri, a member +of the religious house of Cluainmacnois. This he +establishes from a passage in the manuscript itself: ‘This +is a trial of his pen here, by Maelmuiri, son of the son of Conn +na m’Bocht.’ The date of Maelmuiri he +establishes from a passage in the <i>Annals of the Four +Masters</i>, under the year 1106: ‘Maelmuiri, son of the +son of Conn na m’Bocht, was killed in the middle of the +great stone church of Cluainmacnois, by a party of +robbers.’ Thus he gets the date of the <i>Book of the +Dun Cow</i>. This book contains an elegy on the death of +St. Columb. Now, even before 1106, the language of this +elegy was so old as to require a gloss to make it intelligible, +for it is accompanied by a gloss written between the lines. +This gloss quotes, for the explanation of obsolete words, a +number of more ancient compositions; and these compositions, +therefore, must, at the beginning of the twelfth century, have +been still in existence. Nothing can be sounder; every step +is proved, and fairly proved, as one goes along. +O’Curry thus affords a good specimen of the sane mode of +proceeding so much wanted in Celtic researches, and so little +practised by Edward Davies and his brethren; and to found this +sane method, Zeuss, by the example he sets in his own department +of philology, has mainly contributed.</p> +<p>Science’s reconciling power, too, on which I have +already touched, philology, in her Celtic researches, again and +again illustrates. Races and languages have been absurdly +joined, and unity has been often rashly assumed at stages where +one was far, very far, from having yet really reached +unity. Science has and will long have to be a divider and a +separatist, breaking arbitrary and fanciful connections, and +dissipating dreams of a premature and impossible unity. +Still, science,—true science,—recognises in the +bottom of her soul a law of ultimate fusion, of +conciliation. To reach this, but to reach it legitimately, +she tends. She draws, for instance, towards the same idea +which fills her elder and diviner sister, poetry,—the idea +of the substantial unity of man; though she draws towards it by +roads of her own. But continually she is showing us +affinity where we imagined there was isolation. What +school-boy of us has not rummaged his Greek dictionary in vain +for a satisfactory account of that old name for the Peloponnese, +the <i>Apian Land</i>? and within the limits of Greek itself +there is none. But the Scythian name for earth +‘apia,’ <i>watery</i>, <i>water-issued</i>, meaning +first <i>isle</i> and then <i>land</i>—this name, which we +find in ‘avia,’ Scandin<i>avia</i>, and in +‘ey’ for Aldern<i>ey</i>, not only explains the +<i>Apian Land</i> of Sophocles for us, but points the way to a +whole world of relationships of which we knew nothing. The +Scythians themselves again,—obscure, far-separated +Mongolian people as they used to appear to us,—when we find +that they are essentially Teutonic and Indo-European, their very +name the same word as the common Latin word ‘scutum,’ +the <i>shielded</i> people, what a surprise they give us! +And then, before we have recovered from this surprise we learn +that the name of their father and god, Targitavus, carries us I +know not how much further into familiar company. This +divinity, <i>Shining with the targe</i>, the Greek Hercules, the +Sun, contains in the second half of his name, <i>tavus</i>, +‘shining,’ a wonderful cement to hold times and +nations together. <i>Tavus</i>, ‘shining,’ from +‘tava’—in Sanscrit, as well as Scythian, +‘to burn’ or ‘shine,’—is +<i>Divus</i>, <i>dies</i>, <i>Zeus</i>, +<i>Θεός</i>, <i>Dêva</i>, and I +know not how much more; and <i>Taviti</i>, the bright and burnt, +fire, the place of fire, the hearth, the centre of the family, +becomes the family itself, just as our word family, the Latin +<i>familia</i>, is from <i>thymelé</i>, the sacred centre +of fire. The hearth comes to mean home. Then from +home it comes to mean the group of homes, the tribe; from the +tribe the entire nation; and in this sense of nation or people, +the word appears in Gothic, Norse, Celtic, and Persian, as well +as in Scythian; the <i>Theuthisks</i>, Deutschen, Tudesques, are +the men of one <i>theuth</i>, nation, or people; and of this our +name <i>Germans</i> itself is, perhaps, only the Roman +translation, meaning the men of one germ or stock. The +Celtic divinity, Teutates, has his name from the Celtic +<i>teuta</i>, people; <i>taviti</i>, fire, appearing here in its +secondary and derived sense of <i>people</i>, just as it does in +its own Scythian language in Targitavus’s second name, +<i>Tavit-varus</i>, <i>Teutaros</i>, the protector of the +people. Another Celtic divinity, the Hesus of Lucan, finds +his brother in the Gaisos, the sword, symbolising the god of +battles of the Teutonic Scythians. <a name="citation66"></a><a +href="#footnote66" class="citation">[66]</a> And after +philology has thus related to each other the Celt and the Teuton, +she takes another branch of the Indo-European family, the +Sclaves, and shows us them as having the same name with the +German Suevi, the <i>solar</i> people; the common ground here, +too, being that grand point of union, the sun, fire. So, +also, we find Mr. Meyer, whose Celtic studies I just now +mentioned, harping again and again on the connection even in +Europe, if you go back far enough, between Celt and German. +So, after all we have heard, and truly heard, of the diversity +between all things Semitic and all things Indo-European, there is +now an Italian philologist at work upon the relationship between +Sanscrit and Hebrew.</p> +<p>Both in small and great things, philology, dealing with Celtic +matters, has exemplified this tending of science towards +unity. Who has not been puzzled by the relation of the +Scots with Ireland—that <i>vetus et major Scotia</i>, as +Colgan calls it? Who does not feel what pleasure Zeuss +brings us when he suggests that <i>Gael</i>, the name for the +Irish Celt, and <i>Scot</i>, are at bottom the same word, both +having their origin in a word meaning <i>wind</i>, and both +signifying <i>the violent stormy people</i>? <a +name="citation68"></a><a href="#footnote68" +class="citation">[68]</a> Who does not feel his mind +agreeably cleared about our friends the Fenians, when he learns +that the root of their name, <i>fen</i>, ‘white,’ +appears in the hero Fingal; in Gwynned, the Welsh name for North +Wales in the Roman Venedotia; in Vannes in Brittany; in +Venice? The very name of Ireland, some say, comes from the +famous Sanscrit word <i>Arya</i>, the land of the Aryans, or +noble men; although the weight of opinion seems to be in favour +of connecting it rather with another Sanscrit word, <i>avara</i>, +occidental, the western land or isle of the west. <a +name="citation69"></a><a href="#footnote69" +class="citation">[69]</a> But, at any rate, who that has +been brought up to think the Celts utter aliens from us and our +culture, can come without a start of sympathy upon such words as +<i>heol</i> (sol), or <i>buaist</i> (fuisti)? or upon such a +sentence as this, ‘<i>Peris Duw dui funnaun</i>’ +(‘God prepared two fountains’)? Or when Mr. +Whitley Stokes, one of the very ablest scholars formed in +Zeuss’s school, a born philologist,—he now occupies, +alas! a post under the Government of India, instead of a chair of +philology at home, and makes one think mournfully of +Montesquieu’s saying, that had he been an Englishman he +should never have produced his great work, but have caught the +contagion of practical life, and devoted himself to what is +called ‘rising in the world,’ when Mr. Whitley +Stokes, in his edition of <i>Cormac’s Glossary</i>, holds +up the Irish word <i>traith</i>, the sea, and makes us remark +that, though the names <i>Triton</i>, <i>Amphitrite</i>, and +those of corresponding Indian and Zend divinities, point to the +meaning <i>sea</i>, yet it is only Irish which actually supplies +the vocable, how delightfully that brings Ireland into the +Indo-European concert! What a wholesome buffet it gives to +Lord Lyndhurst’s alienation doctrines!</p> +<p>To go a little further. Of the two great Celtic +divisions of language, the Gaelic and the Cymric, the Gaelic, say +the philologists, is more related to the younger, more synthetic, +group of languages, Sanscrit, Greek, Zend, Latin and Teutonic; +the Cymric to the older, more analytic Turanian group. Of +the more synthetic Aryan group, again, Zend and Teutonic are, in +their turn, looser and more analytic than Sanscrit and Greek, +more in sympathy with the Turanian group and with Celtic. +What possibilities of affinity and influence are here hinted at; +what lines of inquiry, worth exploring, at any rate, suggest +themselves to one’s mind. By the forms of its +language a nation expresses its very self. Our language is +the loosest, the most analytic, of all European languages. +And we, then, what are we? what is England? I will not +answer, A vast obscure Cymric basis with a vast visible Teutonic +superstructure; but I will say that that answer sometimes +suggests itself, at any rate,—sometimes knocks at our +mind’s door for admission; and we begin to cast about and +see whether it is to be let in.</p> +<p>But the forms of its language are not our only key to a +people; what it says in its language, its literature, is the +great key, and we must get back to literature. The +literature of the Celtic peoples has not yet had its Zeuss, and +greatly it wants him. We need a Zeuss to apply to Celtic +literature, to all its vexed questions of dates, authenticity, +and significance, the criticism, the sane method, the +disinterested endeavour to get at the real facts, which Zeuss has +shown in dealing with Celtic language. Science is good in +itself, and therefore Celtic literature,—the Celt-haters +having failed to prove it a bubble,—Celtic literature is +interesting, merely as an object of knowledge. But it +reinforces and redoubles our interest in Celtic literature if we +find that here, too, science exercises the reconciling, the +uniting influence of which I have said so much; if we find here, +more than anywhere else, traces of kinship, and the most +essential sort of kinship, spiritual kinship, between us and the +Celt, of which we had never dreamed. I settle nothing, and +can settle nothing; I have not the special knowledge needed for +that. I have no pretension to do more than to try and +awaken interest; to seize on hints, to point out indications, +which, to any one with a feeling for literature, suggest +themselves; to stimulate other inquirers. I must surely be +without the bias which has so often rendered Welsh and Irish +students extravagant; why, my very name expresses that peculiar +Semitico-Saxon mixture which makes the typical Englishman; I can +have no ends to serve in finding in Celtic literature more than +is there. What <i>is</i> there, is for me the only +question.</p> +<h3>III.</h3> +<p>We have seen how philology carries us towards ideas of +affinity of race which are new to us. But it is evident +that this affinity, even if proved, can be no very potent affair, +unless it goes beyond the stage at which we have hitherto +observed it. Affinity between races still, so to speak, in +their mother’s womb, counts for something, indeed, but +cannot count for very much. So long as Celt and Teuton are +in their embryo rudimentary state, or, at least, no such great +while out of their cradle, still engaged in their wanderings, +changes of place and struggle for development, so long as they +have not yet crystallised into solid nations, they may touch and +mix in passing, and yet very little come of it. It is when +the embryo has grown and solidified into a distinct nation, into +the Gaul or German of history, when it has finally acquired the +characters which make the Gaul of history what he is, the German +of history what he is, that contact and mixture are important, +and may leave a long train of effects; for Celt and Teuton by +this time have their formed, marked, national, ineffaceable +qualities to oppose or to communicate. The contact of the +German of the Continent with the Celt was in the pre-historic +times, and the definite German type, as we know it, was fixed +later, and from the time when it became fixed was not influenced +by the Celtic type. But here in our country, in historic +times, long after the Celtic embryo had crystallised into the +Celt proper, long after the Germanic embryo had crystallised into +the German proper, there was an important contact between the two +peoples; the Saxons invaded the Britons and settled themselves in +the Britons’ country. Well, then, here was a contact +which one might expect would leave its traces; if the Saxons got +the upper hand, as we all know they did, and made our country be +England and us be English, there must yet, one would think, be +some trace of the Saxon having met the Briton; there must be some +Celtic vein or other running through us. Many people say +there is nothing at all of the kind, absolutely nothing; the +<i>Saturday Review</i> treats these matters of ethnology with +great power and learning, and the <i>Saturday Review</i> says we +are ‘a nation into which a Norman element, like a much +smaller Celtic element, was so completely absorbed that it is +vain to seek after Norman or Celtic elements in any modern +Englishman.’ And the other day at Zurich I read a +long essay on English literature by one of the professors there, +in which the writer observed, as a remarkable thing, that while +other countries conquered by the Germans,—France, for +instance, and Italy,—had ousted all German influence from +their genius and literature, there were two countries, not +originally Germanic, but conquered by the Germans, England and +German Switzerland, of which the genius and the literature were +purely and unmixedly German; and this he laid down as a position +which nobody would dream of challenging.</p> +<p>I say it is strange that this should be so, and we in +particular have reason for inquiring whether it really is so; +because though, as I have said, even as a matter of science the +Celt has a claim to be known, and we have an interest in knowing +him, yet this interest is wonderfully enhanced if we find him to +have actually a part in us. The question is to be tried by +external and by internal evidence; the language and the physical +type of our race afford certain data for trying it, and other +data are afforded by our literature, genius, and spiritual +production generally. Data of this second kind belong to +the province of the literary critic; data of the first kind to +the province of the philologist and of the physiologist.</p> +<p>The province of the philologist and of the physiologist is not +mine; but this whole question as to the mixture of Celt with +Saxon in us has been so little explored, people have been so +prone to settle it off-hand according to their prepossessions, +that even on the philological and physiological side of it I must +say a few words in passing. Surely it must strike with +surprise any one who thinks of it, to find that without any +immense inpouring of a whole people, that by mere expeditions of +invaders having to come over the sea, and in no greater numbers +than the Saxons, so far as we can make out, actually came, the +old occupants of this island, the Celtic Britons, should have +been completely annihilated, or even so completely absorbed that +it is vain to seek after Celtic elements in the existing English +race. Of deliberate wholesale extermination of the Celtic +race, all of them who could not fly to Wales or Scotland, we hear +nothing; and without some such extermination one would suppose +that a great mass of them must have remained in the country, +their lot the obscure and, so to speak, underground lot of a +subject race, but yet insensibly getting mixed with their +conquerors, and their blood entering into the composition of a +new people, in which the stock of the conquerors counts for most, +but the stock of the conquered, too, counts for something. +How little the triumph of the conqueror’s laws, manners, +and language, proves the extinction of the old race, we may see +by looking at France; Gaul was Latinised in language, manners, +and laws, and yet her people remained essentially Celtic. +The Germanisation of Britain went far deeper than the +Latinisation of France, and not only laws, manners, and language, +but the main current of the blood became Germanic; but how, +without some process of radica extirpation, of which, as I say, +there is no evidence, can there have failed to subsist in +Britain, as in Gaul, a Celtic current too? The indications +of this in our language have never yet been thoroughly searched +out; the Celtic names of places prove nothing, of course, as to +the point here in question; they come from the pre-historic +times, the times before the nations, Germanic or Celtic, had +crystallised, and they are everywhere, as the impetuous Celt was +formerly everywhere,—in the Alps, the Apennines, the +Cevennes, the Rhine, the Po, as well as in the Thames, the +Humber, Cumberland, London. But it is said that the words +of Celtic origin for things having to do with every-day peaceful +life,—the life of a settled nation,—words like +<i>basket</i> (to take an instance which all the world knows) +form a much larger body in our language than is commonly +supposed; it is said that a number of our raciest, most +idiomatic, popular words—for example, <i>bam</i>, +<i>kick</i>, <i>whop</i>, <i>twaddle</i>, <i>fudge</i>, +<i>hitch</i>, <i>muggy</i>,—are Celtic. These +assertions require to be carefully examined, and it by no means +follows that because an English word is found in Celtic, +therefore we get it from thence; but they have not yet had the +attention which, as illustrating through language this matter of +the subsistence and intermingling in our nation of a Celtic part, +they merit.</p> +<p>Nor have the physiological data which illustrate this matter +had much more attention from us in England. But in France, +a physician, half English by blood though a Frenchman by home and +language, Monsieur W. F. Edwards, brother to Monsieur +Milne-Edwards, the well-known zoologist, published in 1839 a +letter to Monsieur Amédée Thierry with this title: +<i>Des Caractères Physiologiques des Races Humaines +considérés dans leurs Rapports avec +l’Histoire</i>. The letter attracted great attention +on the Continent; it fills not much more than a hundred pages, +and they are a hundred pages which well deserve reading and +re-reading. Monsieur Thierry in his <i>Histoire des +Gaulois</i> had divided the population of Gaul into certain +groups, and the object of Monsieur Edwards was to try this +division by physiology. Groups of men have, he says, their +physical type which distinguishes them, as well as their +language; the traces of this physical type endure as the traces +of language endure, and physiology is enabled to verify history +by them. Accordingly, he determines the physical type of +each of the two great Celtic families, the Gaels and the Cymris, +who are said to have been distributed in a certain order through +Gaul, and then he tracks these types in the population of France +at the present day, and so verifies the alleged original order of +distribution. In doing this, he makes excursions into +neighbouring countries where the Gaels and the Cymris have been, +and he declares that in England he finds abundant traces of the +physical type which he has established as the Cymric, still +subsisting in our population, and having descended from the old +British possessors of our soil before the Saxon conquest. +But if we are to believe the current English opinion, says +Monsieur Edwards, the stock of these old British possessors is +clean gone. On this opinion he makes the following +comment:—</p> +<p>‘In the territory occupied by the Saxons, the Britons +were no longer an independent nation, nor even a people with any +civil existence at all. For history, therefore, they were +dead, above all for history as it was then written; but they had +not perished; they still lived on, and undoubtedly in such +numbers as the remains of a great nation, in spite of its +disasters, might still be expected to keep. That the +Britons were destroyed or expelled from England, properly so +called, is, as I have said, a popular opinion in that +country. It is founded on the exaggeration of the writers +of history; but in these very writers, when we come to look +closely at what they say, we find the confession that the remains +of this people were reduced to a state of strict servitude. +Attached to the soil, they will have shared in that emancipation +which during the course of the middle ages gradually restored to +political life the mass of the population in the countries of +Western Europe; recovering by slow degrees their rights without +resuming their name, and rising gradually with the rise of +industry, they will have got spread through all ranks of +society. The gradualness of this movement, and the +obscurity which enwrapped its beginnings, allowed the contempt of +the conqueror and the shame of the conquered to become fixed +feelings; and so it turns out, that an Englishman who now thinks +himself sprung from the Saxons or the Normans, is often in +reality the descendant of the Britons.’</p> +<p>So physiology, as well as language, incomplete though the +application of their tests to this matter has hitherto been, may +lead us to hesitate before accepting the round assertion that it +is vain to search for Celtic elements in any modern +Englishman. But it is not only by the tests of physiology +and language that we can try this matter. As there are for +physiology physical marks, such as the square heads of the +German, the round head of the Gael, the oval head of the Cymri, +which determine the type of a people, so for criticism there are +spiritual marks which determine the type, and make us speak of +the Greek genius, the Teutonic genius, the Celtic genius, and so +on. Here is another test at our service; and this test, +too, has never yet been thoroughly employed. Foreign +critics have indeed occasionally hazarded the idea that in +English poetry there is a Celtic element traceable; and Mr. +Morley, in his very readable as well as very useful book on the +English writers before Chaucer, has a sentence which struck my +attention when I read it, because it expresses an opinion which +I, too, have long held. Mr. Morley says:—‘The +main current of English literature cannot be disconnected from +the lively Celtic wit in which it has one of its sources. +The Celts do not form an utterly distinct part of our mixed +population. But for early, frequent, and various contact +with the race that in its half-barbarous days invented +Ossian’s dialogues with St. Patrick, and that quickened +afterwards the Northmen’s blood in France, Germanic England +would not have produced a Shakspeare.’ But there Mr. +Morley leaves the matter. He indicates this Celtic element +and influence, but he does not show us,—it did not come +within the scope of his work to show us,—how this influence +has declared itself. Unlike the physiological test, or the +linguistic test, this literary, spiritual test is one which I may +perhaps be allowed to try my hand at applying. I say that +there is a Celtic element in the English nature, as well as a +Germanic element, and that this element manifests itself in our +spirit and literature. But before I try to point out how it +manifests itself, it may be as well to get a clear notion of what +we mean by a Celtic element, a Germanic element; what characters, +that is, determine for us the Celtic genius, the Germanic genius, +as we commonly conceive the two.</p> +<h3>IV.</h3> +<p>Let me repeat what I have often said of the characteristics +which mark the English spirit, the English genius. This +spirit, this genius, judged, to be sure, rather from a +friend’s than an enemy’s point of view, yet judged on +the whole fairly, is characterised, I have repeatedly said, by +<i>energy with honesty</i>. Take away some of the energy +which comes to us, as I believe, in part from Celtic and Roman +sources; instead of energy, say rather <i>steadiness</i>; and you +have the Germanic genius <i>steadiness with honesty</i>. It +is evident how nearly the two characterisations approach one +another; and yet they leave, as we shall see, a great deal of +room for difference. Steadiness with honesty; the danger +for a national spirit thus composed is the humdrum, the plain and +ugly, the ignoble: in a word, <i>das Gemeine</i>, <i>die +Gemeinheit</i>, that curse of Germany, against which Goethe was +all his life fighting. The excellence of a national spirit +thus composed is freedom from whim, flightiness, perverseness; +patient fidelity to Nature, in a word, +<i>science</i>,—leading it at last, though slowly, and not +by the most brilliant road, out of the bondage of the humdrum and +common, into the better life. The universal dead-level of +plainness and homeliness, the lack of all beauty and distinction +in form and feature, the slowness and clumsiness of the language, +the eternal beer, sausages, and bad tobacco, the blank commonness +everywhere, pressing at last like a weight on the spirits of the +traveller in Northern Germany, and making him impatient to be +gone, this is the weak side; the industry, the well-doing, the +patient steady elaboration of things, the idea of science +governing all departments of human activity—this is the +strong side; and through this side of her genius, Germany has +already obtained excellent results, and is destined, we may +depend upon it, however her pedantry, her slowness, her fumbling, +her ineffectiveness, her bad government, may at times make us cry +out, to an immense development. <a name="citation82"></a><a +href="#footnote82" class="citation">[82]</a></p> +<p><i>For dulness</i>, <i>the creeping Saxons</i>,—says an +old Irish poem, assigning the characteristics for which different +nations are celebrated:—</p> +<blockquote><p>For acuteness and valour, the Greeks,<br /> +For excessive pride, the Romans,<br /> +For dulness, the creeping Saxons;<br /> +For beauty and amorousness, the Gaedhils.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>We have seen in what sense, and with what explanation, this +characterisation of the German may be allowed to stand; now let +us come to the beautiful and amorous Gaedhil. Or rather, +let us find a definition which may suit both branches of the +Celtic family, the Cymri as well as the Gael. It is clear +that special circumstances may have developed some one side in +the national character of Cymri or Gael, Welshman or Irishman, so +that the observer’s notice shall be readily caught by this +side, and yet it may be impossible to adopt it as characteristic +of the Celtic nature generally. For instance, in his +beautiful essay on the poetry of the Celtic races, M. Renan, with +his eyes fixed on the Bretons and the Welsh, is struck with the +timidity, the shyness, the delicacy of the Celtic nature, its +preference for a retired life, its embarrassment at having to +deal with the great world. He talks of the <i>douce petite +race naturellement chrétienne</i>, his <i>race +fière et timide</i>, <i>à l’extérieur +gauche et embarrassée</i>. But it is evident that +this description, however well it may do for the Cymri, will +never do for the Gael, never do for the typical Irishman of +Donnybrook fair. Again, M. Renan’s <i>infinie +délicatesse de sentiment qui caractérise la race +Celtique</i>, how little that accords with the popular conception +of an Irishman who wants to borrow money! <i>Sentiment</i> +is, however, the word which marks where the Celtic races really +touch and are one; sentimental, if the Celtic nature is to be +characterised by a single term, is the best term to take. +An organisation quick to feel impressions, and feeling them very +strongly; a lively personality therefore, keenly sensitive to joy +and to sorrow; this is the main point. If the downs of life +too much outnumber the ups, this temperament, just because it is +so quickly and nearly conscious of all impressions, may no doubt +be seen shy and wounded; it may be seen in wistful regret, it may +be seen in passionate, penetrating melancholy; but its essence is +to aspire ardently after life, light, and emotion, to be +expansive, adventurous, and gay. Our word <i>gay</i>, it is +said, is itself Celtic. It is not from <i>gaudium</i>, but +from the Celtic <i>gair</i>, to laugh; <a +name="citation84"></a><a href="#footnote84" +class="citation">[84]</a> and the impressionable Celt, soon up +and soon down, is the more down because it is so his nature to be +up to be sociable, hospitable, eloquent, admired, figuring away +brilliantly. He loves bright colours, he easily becomes +audacious, overcrowing, full of fanfaronade. The German, +say the physiologists, has the larger volume of intestines (and +who that has ever seen a German at a table-d’hôte +will not readily believe this?), the Frenchman has the more +developed organs of respiration. That is just the +expansive, eager Celtic nature; the head in the air, snuffing and +snorting; <i>a proud look and a high stomach</i>, as the Psalmist +says, but without any such settled savage temper as the Psalmist +seems to impute by those words. For good and for bad, the +Celtic genius is more airy and unsubstantial, goes less near the +ground, than the German. The Celt is often called sensual; +but it is not so much the vulgar satisfactions of sense that +attract him as emotion and excitement; he is truly, as I began by +saying, sentimental.</p> +<p>Sentimental,—<i>always ready to react against the +despotism of fact</i>; that is the description a great friend <a +name="citation85"></a><a href="#footnote85" +class="citation">[85]</a> of the Celt gives of him; and it is not +a bad description of the sentimental temperament; it lets us into +the secret of its dangers and of its habitual want of +success. Balance, measure, and patience, these are the +eternal conditions, even supposing the happiest temperament to +start with, of high success; and balance, measure, and patience +are just what the Celt has never had. Even in the world of +spiritual creation, he has never, in spite of his admirable gifts +of quick perception and warm emotion, succeeded perfectly, +because he never has had steadiness, patience, sanity enough to +comply with the conditions under which alone can expression be +perfectly given to the finest perceptions and emotions. The +Greek has the same perceptive, emotional temperament as the Celt; +but he adds to this temperament the sense of <i>measure</i>; +hence his admirable success in the plastic arts, in which the +Celtic genius, with its chafing against the despotism of fact, +its perpetual straining after mere emotion, has accomplished +nothing. In the comparatively petty art of ornamentation, +in rings, brooches, crosiers, relic-cases, and so on, he has done +just enough to show his delicacy of taste, his happy temperament; +but the grand difficulties of painting and sculpture, the +prolonged dealings of spirit with matter, he has never had +patience for. Take the more spiritual arts of music and +poetry. All that emotion alone can do in music the Celt has +done; the very soul of emotion breathes in the Scotch and Irish +airs; but with all this power of musical feeling, what has the +Celt, so eager for emotion that he has not patience for science, +effected in music, to be compared with what the less emotional +German, steadily developing his musical feeling with the science +of a Sebastian Bach or a Beethoven, has effected? In +poetry, again, poetry which the Celt has so passionately, so +nobly loved; poetry where emotion counts for so much, but where +reason, too, reason, measure, sanity, also count for so +much,—the Celt has shown genius, indeed, splendid genius; +but even here his faults have clung to him, and hindered him from +producing great works, such as other nations with a genius for +poetry,—the Greeks, say, or the Italians,—have +produced. The Celt has not produced great poetical works, +he has only produced poetry with an air of greatness investing it +all, and sometimes giving, moreover, to short pieces, or to +passages, lines, and snatches of long pieces, singular beauty and +power. And yet he loved poetry so much that he grudged no +pains to it; but the true art, the <i>architectonicé</i> +which shapes great works, such as the <i>Agamemnon</i> or the +<i>Divine Comedy</i>, comes only after a steady, deep-searching +survey, a firm conception of the facts of human life, which the +Celt has not patience for. So he runs off into technic, +where he employs the utmost elaboration, and attains astonishing +skill; but in the contents of his poetry you have only so much +interpretation of the world as the first dash of a quick, strong +perception, and then sentiment, infinite sentiment, can bring +you. Here, too, his want of sanity and steadfastness has +kept the Celt back from the highest success.</p> +<p>If his rebellion against fact has thus lamed the Celt even in +spiritual work, how much more must it have lamed him in the world +of business and politics! The skilful and resolute +appliance of means to ends which is needed both to make progress +in material civilisation, and also to form powerful states, is +just what the Celt has least turn for. He is sensual, as I +have said, or at least sensuous; loves bright colours, company, +and pleasure; and here he is like the Greek and Latin races; but +compare the talent the Greek and Latin (or Latinised) races have +shown for gratifying their senses, for procuring an outward life, +rich, luxurious, splendid, with the Celt’s failure to reach +any material civilisation sound and satisfying, and not out at +elbows, poor, slovenly, and half-barbarous. The +sensuousness of the Greek made Sybaris and Corinth, the +sensuousness of the Latin made Rome and Baiæ, the +sensuousness of the Latinised Frenchman makes Paris; the +sensuousness of the Celt proper has made Ireland. Even in +his ideal heroic times, his gay and sensuous nature cannot carry +him, in the appliances of his favourite life of sociability and +pleasure, beyond the gross and creeping Saxon whom he despises; +the regent Breas, we are told in the <i>Battle of Moytura of the +Fomorians</i>, became unpopular because ‘the knives of his +people were not greased at his table, nor did their breath smell +of ale at the banquet.’ In its grossness and +barbarousness is not that Saxon, as Saxon as it can be? just what +the Latinised Norman, sensuous and sociable like the Celt, but +with the talent to make this bent of his serve to a practical +embellishment of his mode of living, found so disgusting in the +Saxon.</p> +<p>And as in material civilisation he has been ineffectual, so +has the Celt been ineffectual in politics. This colossal, +impetuous, adventurous wanderer, the Titan of the early world, +who in primitive times fills so large a place on earth’s +scene, dwindles and dwindles as history goes on, and at last is +shrunk to what we now see him. For ages and ages the world +has been constantly slipping, ever more and more out of the +Celt’s grasp. ‘They went forth to the +war,’ Ossian says most truly, ‘<i>but they always +fell</i>.’</p> +<p>And yet, if one sets about constituting an ideal genius, what +a great deal of the Celt does one find oneself drawn to put into +it! Of an ideal genius one does not want the elements, any +of them, to be in a state of weakness; on the contrary, one wants +all of them to be in the highest state of power; but with a law +of measure, of harmony, presiding over the whole. So the +sensibility of the Celt, if everything else were not sacrificed +to it, is a beautiful and admirable force. For sensibility, +the power of quick and strong perception and emotion, is one of +the very prime constituents of genius, perhaps its most positive +constituent; it is to the soul what good senses are to the body, +the grand natural condition of successful activity. +Sensibility gives genius its materials; one cannot have too much +of it, if one can but keep its master and not be its slave. +Do not let us wish that the Celt had had less sensibility, but +that he had been more master of it. Even as it is, if his +sensibility has been a source of weakness to him, it has been a +source of power too, and a source of happiness. Some people +have found in the Celtic nature and its sensibility the main root +out of which chivalry and romance and the glorification of a +feminine ideal spring; this is a great question, with which I +cannot deal here. Let me notice in passing, however, that +there is, in truth, a Celtic air about the extravagance of +chivalry, its reaction against the despotism of fact, its +straining human nature further than it will stand. But +putting all this question of chivalry and its origin on one side, +no doubt the sensibility of the Celtic nature, its nervous +exaltation, have something feminine in them, and the Celt is thus +peculiarly disposed to feel the spell of the feminine +idiosyncrasy; he has an affinity to it; he is not far from its +secret. Again, his sensibility gives him a peculiarly near +and intimate feeling of nature and the life of nature; here, too, +he seems in a special way attracted by the secret before him, the +secret of natural beauty and natural magic, and to be close to +it, to half-divine it. In the productions of the Celtic +genius, nothing, perhaps, is so interesting as the evidences of +this power: I shall have occasion to give specimens of them +by-and-by. The same sensibility made the Celts full of +reverence and enthusiasm for genius, learning, and the things of +the mind; <i>to be a bard</i>, <i>freed a man</i>,—that is +a characteristic stroke of this generous and ennobling ardour of +theirs, which no race has ever shown more strongly. Even +the extravagance and exaggeration of the sentimental Celtic +nature has often something romantic and attractive about it, +something which has a sort of smack of misdirected good. +The Celt, undisciplinable, anarchical, and turbulent by nature, +but out of affection and admiration giving himself body and soul +to some leader, that is not a promising political temperament, it +is just the opposite of the Anglo-Saxon temperament, +disciplinable and steadily obedient within certain limits, but +retaining an inalienable part of freedom and self-dependence; but +it is a temperament for which one has a kind of sympathy +notwithstanding. And very often, for the gay defiant +reaction against fact of the lively Celtic nature one has more +than sympathy; one feels, in spite of the extravagance, in spite +of good sense disapproving, magnetised and exhilarated by +it. The Gauls had a rule inflicting a fine on every warrior +who, when he appeared on parade, was found to stick out too much +in front,—to be corpulent, in short. Such a rule is +surely the maddest article of war ever framed, and to people to +whom nature has assigned a large volume of intestines, must +appear, no doubt, horrible; but yet has it not an audacious, +sparkling, immaterial manner with it, which lifts one out of +routine, and sets one’s spirits in a glow?</p> +<p>All tendencies of human nature are in themselves vital and +profitable; when they are blamed, they are only to be blamed +relatively, not absolutely. This holds true of the +Saxon’s phlegm as well as of the Celt’s +sentiment. Out of the steady humdrum habit of the creeping +Saxon, as the Celt calls him,—out of his way of going near +the ground,—has come, no doubt, Philistinism, that plant of +essentially Germanic growth, flourishing with its genuine marks +only in the German fatherland, Great Britain and her colonies, +and the United States of America; but what a soul of goodness +there is in Philistinism itself! and this soul of goodness I, who +am often supposed to be Philistinism’s mortal enemy merely +because I do not wish it to have things all its own way, cherish +as much as anybody. This steady-going habit leads at last, +as I have said, up to science, up to the comprehension and +interpretation of the world. With us in Great Britain, it +is true, it does not seem to lead so far as that; it is in +Germany, where the habit is more unmixed, that it can lead to +science. Here with us it seems at a certain point to meet +with a conflicting force, which checks it and prevents its +pushing on to science; but before reaching this point what +conquests has it not won! and all the more, perhaps, for stopping +short at this point, for spending its exertions within a bounded +field, the field of plain sense, of direct practical +utility. How it has augmented the comforts and conveniences +of life for us! Doors that open, windows that shut, locks +that turn, razors that shave, coats that wear, watches that go, +and a thousand more such good things, are the invention of the +Philistines.</p> +<p>Here, then, if commingling there is in our race, are two very +unlike elements to commingle; the steady-going Saxon temperament +and the sentimental Celtic temperament. But before we go on +to try and verify, in our life and literature, the alleged fact +of this commingling, we have yet another element to take into +account, the Norman element. The critic in the <i>Saturday +Review</i>, whom I have already quoted, says that in looking for +traces of Normanism in our national genius, as in looking for +traces of Celtism in it, we do but lose our labour; he says, +indeed, that there went to the original making of our nation a +very great deal more of a Norman element than of a Celtic +element, but he asserts that both elements have now so completely +disappeared, that it is vain to look for any trace of either of +them in the modern Englishman. But this sort of assertion I +do not like to admit without trying it a little. I want, +therefore, to get some plain notion of the Norman habit and +genius, as I have sought to get some plain notion of the Saxon +and Celtic. Some people will say that the Normans are +Teutonic, and that therefore the distinguishing characters of the +German genius must be those of their genius also; but the matter +cannot be settled in this speedy fashion. No doubt the +basis of the Norman race is Teutonic; but the governing point in +the history of the Norman race,—so far, at least, as we +English have to do with it,—is not its Teutonic origin, but +its Latin civilisation. The French people have, as I have +already remarked, an undoubtedly Celtic basis, yet so decisive in +its effect upon a nation’s habit and character can be the +contact with a stronger civilisation, that Gaul, without changing +the basis of her blood, became, for all practical intents and +purposes, a Latin country, France and not Ireland, through the +Roman conquest. Latinism conquered Celtism in her, as it +also conquered the Germanism imported by the Frankish and other +invasions; Celtism is, however, I need not say, everywhere +manifest still in the French nation; even Germanism is distinctly +traceable in it, as any one who attentively compares the French +with other Latin races will see. No one can look carefully +at the French troops in Rome, amongst the Italian population, and +not perceive this trace of Germanism; I do not mean in the +Alsatian soldiers only, but in the soldiers of genuine +France. But the governing character of France, as a power +in the world, is Latin; such was the force of Greek and Roman +civilisation upon a race whose whole mass remained Celtic, and +where the Celtic language still lingered on, they say, among the +common people, for some five or six centuries after the Roman +conquest. But the Normans in Neustria lost their old +Teutonic language in a wonderfully short time; when they +conquered England they were already Latinised; with them were a +number of Frenchmen by race, men from Anjou and Poitou, so they +brought into England more non-Teutonic blood, besides what they +had themselves got by intermarriage, than is commonly supposed; +the great point, however, is, that by civilisation this vigorous +race, when it took possession of England, was Latin.</p> +<p>These Normans, who in Neustria had lost their old Teutonic +tongue so rapidly, kept in England their new Latin tongue for +some three centuries. It was Edward the Third’s reign +before English came to be used in law-pleadings and spoken at +court. Why this difference? Both in Neustria and in +England the Normans were a handful; but in Neustria, as Teutons, +they were in contact with a more advanced civilisation than their +own; in England, as Latins, with a less advanced. The +Latinised Normans in England had the sense for fact, which the +Celts had not; and the love of strenuousness, clearness, and +rapidity, the high Latin spirit, which the Saxons had not. +They hated the slowness and dulness of the creeping Saxon; it +offended their clear, strenuous talent for affairs, as it +offended the Celt’s quick and delicate perception. +The Normans had the Roman talent for affairs, the Roman +decisiveness in emergencies. They have been called prosaic, +but this is not a right word for them; they were neither +sentimental, nor, strictly speaking, poetical. They had +more sense for rhetoric than for poetry, like the Romans; but, +like the Romans, they had too high a spirit not to like a noble +intellectual stimulus of some kind, and thus they were carried +out of the region of the merely prosaic. Their +foible,—the bad excess of their characterising quality of +strenuousness,—was not a prosaic flatness, it was hardness +and insolence.</p> +<p>I have been obliged to fetch a very wide circuit, but at last +I have got what I went to seek. I have got a rough, but, I +hope, clear notion of these three forces, the Germanic genius, +the Celtic genius, the Norman genius. The Germanic genius +has steadiness as its main basis, with commonness and humdrum for +its defect, fidelity to nature for its excellence. The +Celtic genius, sentiment as its main basis, with love of beauty, +charm, and spirituality for its excellence, ineffectualness and +self-will for its defect. The Norman genius, talent for +affairs as its main basis, with strenuousness and clear rapidity +for its excellence, hardness and insolence for its defect. +And now to try and trace these in the composite English +genius.</p> +<h3>V.</h3> +<p>To begin with what is more external. If we are so wholly +Anglo-Saxon and Germanic as people say, how comes it that the +habits and gait of the German language are so exceedingly unlike +ours? Why while the <i>Times</i> talks in this fashion: +‘At noon a long line of carriages extended from Pall Mall +to the Peers’ entrance of the Palace of Westminster,’ +does the <i>Cologne Gazette</i> talk in this other fashion: +‘Nachdem die Vorbereitungen zu dem auf dem +GürzenichSaale zu Ebren der Abgeordneten Statt finden +sollenden Bankette bereits vollständig getroffen worden +waren, fand heute vormittag auf polizeiliche Anordnung die +Schliessung sämmtlicher Zugänge zum Gürzenich +Statt’? <a name="citation97"></a><a href="#footnote97" +class="citation">[97]</a> Surely the mental habit of people +who express their thoughts in so very different a manner, the one +rapid, the other slow, the one plain, the other embarrassed, the +one trailing, the other striding, cannot be essentially the +same. The English language, strange compound as it is, with +its want of inflections, and with all the difficulties which this +want of inflections brings upon it, has yet made itself capable +of being, in good hands, a business-instrument as ready, direct, +and clear, as French or Latin. Again: perhaps no nation, +after the Greeks and Romans, has so clearly felt in what true +rhetoric, rhetoric of the best kind, consists, and reached so +high a pitch of excellence in this, as the English. Our +sense for rhetoric has in some ways done harm to us in our +cultivation of literature, harm to us, still more, in our +cultivation of science; but in the true sphere of rhetoric, in +public speaking, this sense has given us orators whom I do think +we may, without fear of being contradicted and accused of blind +national vanity, assert to have inherited the great Greek and +Roman oratorical tradition more than the orators of any other +country. Strafford, Bolingbroke, the two Pitts, +Fox,—to cite no other names,—I imagine few will +dispute that these call up the notion of an oratory, in kind, in +extent, in power, coming nearer than any other body of modern +oratory to the oratory of Greece and Rome. And the affinity +of spirit in our best public life and greatest public men to +those of Rome, has often struck observers, foreign as well as +English. Now, not only have the Germans shown no eminent +aptitude for rhetoric such as the English have shown,—that +was not to be expected, since our public life has done so much to +develop an aptitude of this kind, and the public life of the +Germans has done so little,—but they seem in a singular +degree devoid of any aptitude at all for rhetoric. Take a +speech from the throne in Prussia, and compare it with a speech +from the throne in England. Assuredly it is not in speeches +from the throne that English rhetoric or any rhetoric shows its +best side;—they are often cavilled at, often justly +cavilled at;—no wonder, for this form of composition is +beset with very trying difficulties. But what is to be +remarked is this;—a speech from the throne falls +essentially within the sphere of rhetoric, it is one’s +sense of rhetoric which has to fix its tone and style, so as to +keep a certain note always sounding in it; in an English speech +from the throne, whatever its faults, this rhetorical note is +always struck and kept to; in a Prussian speech from the throne, +never. An English speech from the throne is rhetoric; a +Prussian speech is half talk,—heavy talk,—and half +effusion. This is one instance, it may be said; true, but +in one instance of this kind the presence or the absence of an +aptitude for rhetoric is decisively shown. Well, then, why +am I not to say that we English get our rhetorical sense from the +Norman element in us,—our turn for this strenuous, direct, +high-spirited talent of oratory, from the influence of the +strenuous, direct, high-spirited Normans? Modes of life, +institutions, government, and other such causes, are sufficient, +I shall be told, to account for English oratory. Modes of +life, institutions, government, climate, and so forth,—let +me say it once for all,—will further or hinder the +development of an aptitude, but they will not by themselves +create the aptitude or explain it. On the other hand, a +people’s habit and complexion of nature go far to determine +its modes of life, institutions, and government, and even to +prescribe the limits within which the influences of climate shall +tell upon it.</p> +<p>However, it is not my intention, in these remarks, to lay it +down for certain that this or that part of our powers, +shortcomings, and behaviour, is due to a Celtic, German, or +Norman element in us. To establish this I should need much +wider limits, and a knowledge, too, far beyond what I possess; +all I purpose is to point out certain correspondences, not yet, +perhaps, sufficiently observed and attended to, which seem to +lead towards certain conclusions. The following up the +inquiry till full proof is reached,—or perhaps, full +disproof,—is what I want to suggest to more competent +persons. Premising this, I now go on to a second matter, +somewhat more delicate and inward than that with which I +began. Every one knows how well the Greek and Latin races, +with their direct sense for the visible, palpable world, have +succeeded in the plastic arts. The sheer German races, too, +with their honest love of fact, and their steady pursuit of +it,—their fidelity to nature, in short,—have attained +a high degree of success in these arts; few people will deny that +Albert Dürer and Rubens, for example, are to be called +masters in painting, and in the high kind of painting. The +Celtic races, on the other hand, have shown a singular inaptitude +for the plastic arts; the abstract, severe character of the +Druidical religion, its dealing with the eye of the mind rather +than the eye of the body, its having no elaborate temples and +beautiful idols, all point this way from the first; its sentiment +cannot satisfy itself, cannot even find a resting-place for +itself, in colour and form; it presses on to the impalpable, the +ideal. The forest of trees and the forest of rocks, not +hewn timber and carved stones, suit its aspirations for something +not to be bounded or expressed. With this tendency, the +Celtic races have, as I remarked before, been necessarily almost +impotent in the higher branches of the plastic arts. +Ireland, that has produced so many powerful spirits, has produced +no great sculptors or painters. Cross into England. +The inaptitude for the plastic art strikingly diminishes, as soon +as the German, not the Celtic element, preponderates in the +race. And yet in England, too, in the English race, there +is something which seems to prevent our reaching real mastership +in the plastic arts, as the more unmixed German races have +reached it. Reynolds and Turner are painters of genius, who +can doubt it? but take a European jury, the only competent jury +in these cases, and see if you can get a verdict giving them the +rank of masters, as this rank is given to Raphael and Correggio, +or to Albert Dürer and Rubens. And observe in what +points our English pair succeed, and in what they fall +short. They fall short in <i>architectonicé</i>, in +the highest power of composition, by which painting accomplishes +the very uttermost which it is given to painting to accomplish; +the highest sort of composition, the highest application of the +art of painting, they either do not attempt, or they fail in +it. Their defect, therefore, is on the side of art, of +plastic art. And they succeed in magic, in beauty, in +grace, in expressing almost the inexpressible: here is the charm +of Reynolds’s children and Turner’s seas; the impulse +to express the inexpressible carries Turner so far, that at last +it carries him away, and even long before he is quite carried +away, even in works that are justly extolled, one can see the +stamp-mark, as the French say, of insanity. The excellence, +therefore, the success, is on the side of spirit. Does not +this look as if a Celtic stream met the main German current in +us, and gave it a somewhat different course from that which it +takes naturally? We have Germanism enough in us, enough +patient love for fact and matter, to be led to attempt the +plastic arts, and we make much more way in them than the pure +Celtic races make; but at a certain point our Celtism comes in, +with its love of emotion, sentiment, the inexpressible, and gives +our best painters a bias. And the point at which it comes +in is just that critical point where the flowering of art into +its perfection commences; we have plenty of painters who never +reach this point at all, but remain always mere journeymen, in +bondage to matter; but those who do reach it, instead of going on +to the true consummation of the masters in painting, are a little +overbalanced by soul and feeling, work too directly for these, +and so do not get out of their art all that may be got out of +it.</p> +<p>The same modification of our Germanism by another force which +seems Celtic, is visible in our religion. Here, too, we may +trace a gradation between Celt, Englishman, and German, the +difference which distinguishes Englishman from German appearing +attributable to a Celtic element in us. Germany is the land +of exegesis, England is the land of Puritanism. The +religion of Wales is more emotional and sentimental than English +Puritanism; Romanism has indeed given way to Calvinism among the +Welsh,—the one superstition has supplanted the +other,—but the Celtic sentiment which made the Welsh such +devout Catholics, remains, and gives unction to their Methodism; +theirs is not the controversial, rationalistic, intellectual side +of Protestantism, but the devout, emotional, religious +side. Among the Germans, Protestantism has been carried on +into rationalism and science. The English hold a middle +place between the Germans and the Welsh; their religion has the +exterior forms and apparatus of a rationalism, so far their +Germanic nature carries them; but long before they get to +science, their feeling, their Celtic element catches them, and +turns their religion all towards piety and unction. So +English Protestantism has the outside appearance of an +intellectual system, and the inside reality of an emotional +system: this gives it its tenacity and force, for what is held +with the ardent attachment of feeling is believed to have at the +same time the scientific proof of reason. The English +Puritan, therefore (and Puritanism is the characteristic form of +English Protestantism), stands between the German Protestant and +the Celtic Methodist; his real affinity indeed, at present, being +rather with his Welsh kinsman, if kinsman he may be called, than +with his German.</p> +<p>Sometimes one is left in doubt from whence the check and limit +to Germanism in us proceeds, whether from a Celtic source or from +a Norman source. Of the true steady-going German nature the +bane is, as I remarked, flat commonness; there seems no end to +its capacity for platitude; it has neither the quick perception +of the Celt to save it from platitude, nor the strenuousness of +the Norman; it is only raised gradually out of it by science, but +it jogs through almost interminable platitudes first. The +English nature is not raised to science, but something in us, +whether Celtic or Norman, seems to set a bound to our advance in +platitude, to make us either shy of platitude, or impatient of +it. I open an English reading-book for children, and I find +these two characteristic stories in it, one of them of English +growth, the other of German. Take the English story +first:—</p> +<p>‘A little boy accompanied his elder sister while she +busied herself with the labours of the farm, asking questions at +every step, and learning the lessons of life without being aware +of it.</p> +<p>‘“Why, dear Jane,” he said, “do you +scatter good grain on the ground; would it not be better to make +good bread of it than to throw it to the greedy +chickens?”</p> +<p>‘“In time,” replied Jane, “the +chickens will grow big, and each of them will fetch money at the +market. One must think on the end to be attained without +counting trouble, and learn to wait.”</p> +<p>‘Perceiving a colt, which looked eagerly at him, the +little boy cried out: “Jane, why is the colt not in the +fields with the labourers helping to draw the carts?”</p> +<p>‘“The colt is young,” replied Jane, +“and he must lie idle till he gets the necessary strength; +one must not sacrifice the future to the +present.”’</p> +<p>The reader will say that is most mean and trivial stuff, the +vulgar English nature in full force; just such food as the +Philistine would naturally provide for his young. He will +say he can see the boy fed upon it growing up to be like his +father, to be all for business, to despise culture, to go through +his dull days, and to die without having ever lived. That +may be so; but now take the German story (one of +Krummacher’s), and see the difference:—</p> +<p>‘There lived at the court of King Herod a rich man who +was the king’s chamberlain. He clothed himself in +purple and fine linen, and fared like the king himself.</p> +<p>‘Once a friend of his youth, whom he had not seen for +many years, came from a distant land to pay him a visit. +Then the chamberlain invited all his friends and made a feast in +honour of the stranger.</p> +<p>‘The tables were covered with choice food placed on +dishes of gold and silver, and the finest wines of all +kinds. The rich man sat at the head of the table, glad to +do the honours to his friend who was seated at his right +hand. So they ate and drank, and were merry.</p> +<p>‘Then the stranger said to the chamberlain of King +Herod: “Riches and splendour like thine are nowhere to be +found in my country.” And he praised his greatness, +and called him happy above all men on earth.</p> +<p>‘Well, the rich man took an apple from a golden +vessel. The apple was large, and red, and pleasant to the +eye. Then said be: “Behold, this apple hath rested on +gold, and its form is very beautiful.” And he +presented it to the stranger, the friend of his youth. The +stranger cut the apple in two; and behold, in the middle of it +there was a worm!</p> +<p>‘Then the stranger looked at the chamberlain; and the +chamberlain bent his eyes on the ground and sighed.’</p> +<p>There it ends. Now I say, one sees there an abyss of +platitude open, and the German nature swimming calmly about in +it, which seems in some way or other to have its entry screened +off for the English nature. The English story leads with a +direct issue into practical life: a narrow and dry practical +life, certainly, but yet enough to supply a plain motive for the +story; the German story leads simply nowhere except into +bathos. Shall we say that the Norman talent for affairs +saves us here, or the Celtic perceptive instinct? one of them it +must be, surely. The Norman turn seems most germane to the +matter here immediately in hand; on the other hand, the Celtic +turn, or some degree of it, some degree of its quick perceptive +instinct, seems necessary to account for the full difference +between the German nature and ours. Even in Germans of +genius or talent the want of quick light tact, of instinctive +perception of the impropriety or impossibility of certain things, +is singularly remarkable. Herr Gervinus’s prodigious +discovery about Handel being an Englishman and Shakspeare a +German, the incredible mare’s-nest Goethe finds in looking +for the origin of Byron’s Manfred,—these are things +from which no deliberate care or reflection can save a man; only +an instinct can save him from them, an instinct that they are +absurd; who can imagine Charles Lamb making Herr Gervinus’s +blunder, or Shakspeare making Goethe’s? but from the sheer +German nature this intuitive tact seems something so alien, that +even genius fails to give it. And yet just what constitutes +special power and genius in a man seems often to be his blending +with the basis of his national temperament, some additional gift +or grace not proper to that temperament; Shakspeare’s +greatness is thus in his blending an openness and flexibility of +spirit, not English, with the English basis; Addison’s, in +his blending a moderation and delicacy, not English, with the +English basis; Burke’s in his blending a largeness of view +and richness of thought, not English, with the English +basis. In Germany itself, in the same way, the greatness of +their great Frederic lies in his blending a rapidity and +clearness, not German, with the German basis; the greatness of +Goethe in his blending a love of form, nobility, and +dignity,—the grand style,—with the German +basis. But the quick, sure, instinctive perception of the +incongruous and absurd not even genius seems to give in Germany; +at least, I can think of only one German of genius, Lessing (for +Heine was a Jew, and the Jewish temperament is quite another +thing from the German), who shows it in an eminent degree.</p> +<p>If we attend closely to the terms by which foreigners seek to +hit off the impression which we and the Germans make upon them, +we shall detect in these terms a difference which makes, I think, +in favour of the notion I am propounding. Nations in +hitting off one another’s characters are apt, we all know, +to seize the unflattering side rather than the flattering; the +mass of mankind always do this, and indeed they really see what +is novel, and not their own, in a disfiguring light. Thus +we ourselves, for instance, popularly say ‘the phlegmatic +Dutchman’ rather than ‘the sensible Dutchman,’ +or ‘the grimacing Frenchman’ rather than ‘the +polite Frenchman.’ Therefore neither we nor the +Germans should exactly accept the description strangers give of +us, but it is enough for my purpose that strangers, in +characterising us with a certain shade of difference, do at any +rate make it clear that there appears this shade of difference, +though the character itself, which they give us both, may be a +caricature rather than a faithful picture of us. Now it is +to be noticed that those sharp observers, the French,—who +have a double turn for sharp observation, for they have both the +quick perception of the Celt and the Latin’s gift for +coming plump upon the fact,—it is to be noticed, I say, +that the French put a curious distinction in their popular, +depreciating, we will hope inadequate, way of hitting off us and +the Germans. While they talk of the +‘<i>bêtise</i> allemande,’ they talk of the +‘<i>gaucherie</i> anglaise;’ while they talk of the +‘Allemand <i>balourd</i>,’ they talk of the +‘Anglais <i>empêtré</i>;’ while they +call the German ‘<i>niais</i>,’ they call the +Englishman ‘<i>mélancolique</i>.’ The +difference between the epithets <i>balourd</i> and +<i>empêtré</i> exactly gives the difference in +character I wish to seize; <i>balourd</i> means heavy and dull, +<i>empêtré</i> means hampered and embarrassed. +This points to a certain mixture and strife of elements in the +Englishman; to the clashing of a Celtic quickness of perception +with a Germanic instinct for going steadily along close to the +ground. The Celt, as we have seen, has not at all, in spite +of his quick perception, the Latin talent for dealing with the +fact, dexterously managing it and making himself master of it; +Latin or Latinised people have felt contempt for him on this +account, have treated him as a poor creature, just as the German, +who arrives at fact in a different way from the Latins, but who +arrives at it, has treated him. The couplet of Chrestien of +Troyes about the Welsh:—</p> +<blockquote><p>. . . Gallois sont tous, par nature,<br /> +Plus fous que bêtes en pâsture—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>is well known, and expresses the genuine verdict of the Latin +mind on the Celts. But the perceptive instinct of the Celt +feels and anticipates, though he has that in him which cuts him +off from command of the world of fact; he sees what is wanting to +him well enough; his mere eye is not less sharp, nay, it is +sharper, than the Latin’s. He is a quick genius, +checkmated for want of strenuousness or else patience. The +German has not the Latin’s sharp precise glance on the +world of fact, and dexterous behaviour in it; he fumbles with it +much and long, but his honesty and patience give him the rule of +it in the long run,—a surer rule, some of us think, than +the Latin gets; still, his behaviour in it is not quick and +dexterous. The Englishman, in so far as he is +German,—and he is mainly German,—proceeds in the +steady-going German fashion; if he were all German he would +proceed thus for ever without self-consciousness or +embarrassment; but, in so far as he is Celtic, he has snatches of +quick instinct which often make him feel he is fumbling, show him +visions of an easier, more dexterous behaviour, disconcert him +and fill him with misgiving. No people, therefore, are so +shy, so self-conscious, so embarrassed as the English, because +two natures are mixed in them, and natures which pull them such +different ways. The Germanic part, indeed, triumphs in us, +we are a Germanic people; but not so wholly as to exclude +hauntings of Celtism, which clash with our Germanism, producing, +as I believe, our <i>humour</i>, neither German nor Celtic, and +so affect us that we strike people as odd and singular, not to be +referred to any known type, and like nothing but ourselves. +‘Nearly every Englishman,’ says an excellent and by +no means unfriendly observer, George Sand, ‘nearly every +Englishman, however good-looking he may be, has always something +singular about him which easily comes to seem comic;—a sort +of typical awkwardness (<i>gaucherie typique</i>) in his looks or +appearance, which hardly ever wears out.’ I say this +strangeness is accounted for by the English nature being mixed as +we have seen, while the Latin nature is all of a piece, and so is +the German nature, and the Celtic nature.</p> +<p>It is impossible to go very fast when the matter with which +one has to deal, besides being new and little explored, is also +by its nature so subtle, eluding one’s grasp unless one +handles it with all possible delicacy and care. It is in +our poetry that the Celtic part in us has left its trace +clearest, and in our poetry I must follow it before I have +done.</p> +<h3>VI.</h3> +<p>If I were asked where English poetry got these three things, +its turn for style, its turn for melancholy, and its turn for +natural magic, for catching and rendering the charm of nature in +a wonderfully near and vivid way,—I should answer, with +some doubt, that it got much of its turn for style from a Celtic +source; with less doubt, that it got much of its melancholy from +a Celtic source; with no doubt at all, that from a Celtic source +it got nearly all its natural magic.</p> +<p>Any German with penetration and tact in matters of literary +criticism will own that the principal deficiency of German poetry +is in style; that for style, in the highest sense, it shows but +little feeling. Take the eminent masters of style, the +poets who best give the idea of what the peculiar power which +lies in style is, Pindar, Virgil, Dante, Milton. An example +of the peculiar effect which these poets produce, you can hardly +give from German poetry. Examples enough you can give from +German poetry of the effect produced by genius, thought, and +feeling expressing themselves in clear language, simple language, +passionate language, eloquent language, with harmony and melody; +but not of the peculiar effect exercised by eminent power of +style. Every reader of Dante can at once call to mind what +the peculiar effect I mean is; I spoke of it in my lectures on +translating Homer, and there I took an example of it from Dante, +who perhaps manifests it more eminently than any other +poet. But from Milton, too, one may take examples of it +abundantly; compare this from Milton:—</p> +<blockquote><p>. . . nor sometimes forget<br /> +Those other two equal with me in fate,<br /> +So were I equall’d with them in renown,<br /> +Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>with this from Goethe:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,<br /> +Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Nothing can be better in its way than the style in which +Goethe there presents his thought, but it is the style of prose +as much as of poetry; it is lucid, harmonious, earnest, eloquent, +but it has not received that peculiar kneading, heightening, and +re-casting which is observable in the style of the passage from +Milton,—a style which seems to have for its cause a certain +pressure of emotion, and an ever-surging, yet bridled, excitement +in the poet, giving a special intensity to his way of delivering +himself. In poetical races and epochs this turn for style +is peculiarly observable; and perhaps it is only on condition of +having this somewhat heightened and difficult manner, so +different from the plain manner of prose, that poetry gets the +privilege of being loosed, at its best moments, into that +perfectly simple, limpid style, which is the supreme style of +all, but the simplicity of which is still not the simplicity of +prose. The simplicity of Menander’s style is the +simplicity of prose, and is the same kind of simplicity as that +which Goethe’s style, in the passage I have quoted, +exhibits; but Menander does not belong to a great poetical +moment, he comes too late for it; it is the simple passages in +poets like Pindar or Dante which are perfect, being masterpieces +of <i>poetical</i> simplicity. One may say the same of the +simple passages in Shakspeare; they are perfect, their simplicity +being a <i>poetical</i> simplicity. They are the golden, +easeful, crowning moments of a manner which is always pitched in +another key from that of prose; a manner changed and heightened; +the Elizabethan style, regnant in most of our dramatic poetry to +this day, is mainly the continuation of this manner of +Shakspeare’s. It was a manner much more turbid and +strewn with blemishes than the manner of Pindar, Dante, or +Milton; often it was detestable; but it owed its existence to +Shakspeare’s instinctive impulse towards <i>style</i> in +poetry, to his native sense of the necessity for it; and without +the basis of style everywhere, faulty though it may in some +places be, we should not have had the beauty of expression, +unsurpassable for effectiveness and charm, which is reached in +Shakspeare’s best passages. The turn for style is +perceptible all through English poetry, proving, to my mind, the +genuine poetical gift of the race; this turn imparts to our +poetry a stamp of high distinction, and sometimes it doubles the +force of a poet not by nature of the very highest order, such as +Gray, and raises him to a rank beyond what his natural richness +and power seem to promise. Goethe, with his fine critical +perception, saw clearly enough both the power of style in itself, +and the lack of style in the literature of his own country; and +perhaps if we regard him solely as a German, not as a European, +his great work was that he laboured all his life to impart style +into German literature, and firmly to establish it there. +Hence the immense importance to him of the world of classical +art, and of the productions of Greek or Latin genius, where style +so eminently manifests its power. Had he found in the +German genius and literature an element of style existing by +nature and ready to his hand, half his work, one may say, would +have been saved him, and he might have done much more in +poetry. But as it was, he had to try and create out of his +own powers, a style for German poetry, as well as to provide +contents for this style to carry; and thus his labour as a poet +was doubled.</p> +<p>It is to be observed that power of style, in the sense in +which I am here speaking of style, is something quite different +from the power of idiomatic, simple, nervous, racy expression, +such as the expression of healthy, robust natures so often is, +such as Luther’s was in a striking degree. Style, in +my sense of the word, is a peculiar re-casting and heightening, +under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man +has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to +it; and dignity and distinction are not terms which suit many +acts or words of Luther. Deeply touched with the +<i>Gemeinheit</i> which is the bane of his nation, as he is at +the same time a grand example of the honesty which is his +nation’s excellence, he can seldom even show himself brave, +resolute and truthful, without showing a strong dash of +coarseness and commonness all the while; the right definition of +Luther, as of our own Bunyan, is that he is a Philistine of +genius. So Luther’s sincere idiomatic +German,—such language is this: ‘Hilf lieber Gott, wie +manchen Jammer habe ich gesehen, dass der gemeine Mann doch so +gar nichts weiss von der christlichen Lehre!’—no more +proves a power of style in German literature, than +Cobbett’s sinewy idiomatic English proves it in English +literature. Power of style, properly so-called, as +manifested in masters of style like Dante or Milton in poetry, +Cicero, Bossuet or Bolingbroke in prose, is something quite +different, and has, as I have said, for its characteristic +effect, this: to add dignity and distinction.</p> +<p>Style, then, the Germans are singularly without, and it is +strange that the power of style should show itself so strongly as +it does in the Icelandic poetry, if the Scandinavians are such +genuine Teutons as is commonly supposed. Fauriel used to +talk of the Scandinavian Teutons and the German Teutons, as if +they were two divisions of the same people, and the common notion +about them, no doubt, is very much this. Since the war in +Schleswig-Holstein, however, all one’s German friends are +exceedingly anxious to insist on the difference of nature between +themselves and the Scandinavians; when one expresses surprise +that the German sense of nationality should be so deeply +affronted by the rule over Germans, not of Latins or Celts, but +of brother Teutons or next door to it, a German will give you I +know not how long a catalogue of the radical points of +unlikeness, in genius and disposition, between himself and a +Dane. This emboldens me to remark that there is a fire, a +sense of style, a distinction, in Icelandic poetry, which German +poetry has not. Icelandic poetry, too, shows a powerful and +developed technic; and I wish to throw out, for examination by +those who are competent to sift the matter, the suggestion that +this power of style and development of technic in the Norse +poetry seems to point towards an early Celtic influence or +intermixture. It is curious that Zeuss, in his grammar, +quotes a text which gives countenance to this notion; as late as +the ninth century, he says, there were Irish Celts in Iceland; +and the text he quotes to show this, is as +follows:—‘In 870 <span class="GutSmall">A.D.</span>, +when the Norwegians came to Iceland, there were Christians there, +who departed, and left behind them Irish books, bells, and other +things; from whence it may be inferred that these Christians were +Irish.’ I speak, and ought to speak, with the utmost +diffidence on all these questions of ethnology; but I must say +that when I read this text in Zeuss, I caught eagerly at the clue +it seemed to offer; for I had been hearing the <i>Nibelungen</i> +read and commented on in German schools (German schools have the +good habit of reading and commenting on German poetry, as we read +and comment on Homer and Virgil, but do <i>not</i> read and +comment on Chaucer and Shakspeare), and it struck me how the +fatal humdrum and want of style of the Germans had marred their +way of telling this magnificent tradition of the +<i>Nibelungen</i>, and taken half its grandeur and power out of +it; while in the Icelandic poems which deal with this tradition, +its grandeur and power are much more fully visible, and +everywhere in the poetry of the Edda there is a force of style +and a distinction as unlike as possible to the want of both in +the German <i>Nibelungen</i>. <a name="citation120"></a><a +href="#footnote120" class="citation">[120]</a> At the same +time the Scandinavians have a realism, as it is called, in their +genius, which abundantly proves their relationship with the +Germans; any one whom Mr. Dasent’s delightful books have +made acquainted with the prose tales of the Norsemen, will be +struck with the stamp of a Teutonic nature in them; but the Norse +poetry seems to have something which from Teutonic sources alone +it could not have derived; which the Germans have not, and which +the Celts have.</p> +<p>This something is <i>style</i>, and the Celts certainly have +it in a wonderful measure. Style is the most striking +quality of their poetry. Celtic poetry seems to make up to +itself for being unable to master the world and give an adequate +interpretation of it, by throwing all its force into style, by +bending language at any rate to its will, and expressing the +ideas it has with unsurpassable intensity, elevation, and +effect. It has all through it a sort of intoxication of +style,—a <i>Pindarism</i>, to use a word formed from the +name of the poet, on whom, above all other poets, the power of +style seems to have exercised an inspiring and intoxicating +effect; and not in its great poets only, in Taliesin, or Llywarch +Hen, or Ossian, does the Celtic genius show this Pindarism, but +in all its productions:—</p> +<blockquote><p>The grave of March is this, and this the grave of +Gwythyr;<br /> +Here is the grave of Gwgawn Gleddyfreidd;<br /> +But unknown is the grave of Arthur.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That comes from the Welsh <i>Memorials of the Graves of the +Warriors</i>, and if we compare it with the familiar memorial +inscriptions of an English churchyard (for we English have so +much Germanism in us that our productions offer abundant examples +of German want of style as well as of its opposite):—</p> +<blockquote><p>Afflictions sore long time I bore,<br /> +Physicians were in vain,<br /> +Till God did please Death should me seize<br /> +And ease me of my pain—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>if, I say, we compare the Welsh memorial lines with the +English, which in their <i>Gemeinheit</i> of style are truly +Germanic, we shall get a clear sense of what that Celtic talent +for style I have been speaking of is.</p> +<p>Or take this epitaph of an Irish Celt, Angus the Culdee, whose +<i>Féliré</i>, or festology, I have already +mentioned; a festology in which, at the end of the eighth or +beginning of the ninth century, he collected from ‘the +countless hosts of the illuminated books of Erin’ (to use +his own words) the festivals of the Irish saints, his poem having +a stanza for every day in the year. The epitaph on Angus, +who died at Cluain Eidhnech, in Queen’s County, runs +thus:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Angus in the assembly of Heaven,<br /> +Here are his tomb and his bed;<br /> +It is from hence he went to death,<br /> +In the Friday, to holy Heaven.</p> +<p>It was in Cluain Eidhnech he was rear’d;<br /> +It was in Cluain Eidhnech he was buried;<br /> +In Cluain Eidhnech, of many crosses,<br /> +He first read his psalms.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That is by no eminent hand; and yet a Greek epitaph could not +show a finer perception of what constitutes propriety and +felicity of style in compositions of this nature. Take the +well-known Welsh prophecy about the fate of the +Britons:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Their Lord they will praise,<br /> +Their speech they will keep,<br /> +Their land they will lose,<br /> +Except wild Wales.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>To however late an epoch that prophecy belongs, what a feeling +for style, at any rate, it manifests! And the same thing +may be said of the famous Welsh triads. We may put aside +all the vexed questions as to their greater or less antiquity, +and still what important witness they bear to the genius for +literary style of the people who produced them!</p> +<p>Now we English undoubtedly exhibit very often the want of +sense for style of our German kinsmen. The churchyard lines +I just now quoted afford an instance of it: but the whole branch +of our literature,—and a very popular branch it is, our +hymnology,—to which those lines are to be referred, is one +continued instance of it. Our German kinsmen and we are the +great people for hymns. The Germans are very proud of their +hymns, and we are very proud of ours; but it is hard to say which +of the two, the German hymn-book or ours, has least poetical +worth in itself, or does least to prove genuine poetical power in +the people producing it. I have not a word to say against +Sir Roundell Palmer’s choice and arrangement of materials +for his <i>Book of Praise</i>; I am content to put them on a +level (and that is giving them the highest possible rank) with +Mr. Palgrave’s choice and arrangement of materials for his +<i>Golden Treasury</i>; but yet no sound critic can doubt that, +so far as poetry is concerned, while the <i>Golden Treasury</i> +is a monument of a nation’s strength, the <i>Book of +Praise</i> is a monument of a nation’s weakness. Only +the German race, with its want of quick instinctive tact, of +delicate, sure perception, could have invented the hymn as the +Germans and we have it; and our non-German turn for +style,—style, of which the very essence is a certain happy +fineness and truth of poetical perception,—could not but +desert us when our German nature carried us into a kind of +composition which can please only when the perception is somewhat +blunt. Scarcely any one of us ever judges our hymns fairly, +because works of this kind have two sides,—their side for +religion and their side for poetry. Everything which has +helped a man in his religious life, everything which associates +itself in his mind with the growth of that life, is beautiful and +venerable to him; in this way, productions of little or no +poetical value, like the German hymns and ours, may come to be +regarded as very precious. Their worth in this sense, as +means by which we have been edified, I do not for a moment hold +cheap; but there is an edification proper to all our stages of +development, the highest as well as the lowest, and it is for man +to press on towards the highest stages of his development, with +the certainty that for those stages, too, means of edification +will not be found wanting. Now certainly it is a higher +state of development when our fineness of perception is keen than +when it is blunt. And if,—whereas the Semitic genius +placed its highest spiritual life in the religious sentiment, and +made that the basis of its poetry,—the Indo-European genius +places its highest spiritual life in the imaginative reason, and +makes that the basis of its poetry, we are none the better for +wanting the perception to discern a natural law, which is, after +all, like every natural law, irresistible; we are none the better +for trying to make ourselves Semitic, when Nature has made us +Indo-European, and to shift the basis of our poetry. We may +mean well; all manner of good may happen to us on the road we go; +but we are not on our real right road, the road we must in the +end follow.</p> +<p>That is why, when our hymns betray a false tendency by losing +a power which accompanies the poetical work of our race on our +other more suitable lines, the indication thus given is of great +value and instructiveness for us. One of our main gifts for +poetry deserts us in our hymns, and so gives us a hint as to the +one true basis for the spiritual work of an Indo-European people, +which the Germans, who have not this particular gift of ours, do +not and cannot get in this way, though they may get it in +others. It is worth noticing that the masterpieces of the +spiritual work of Indo-Europeans, taking the pure religious +sentiment, and not the imaginative reason, for their basis, are +works like the <i>Imitation</i>, the <i>Dies Iræ</i>, the +<i>Stabat Mater</i>—works clothing themselves in the +middle-age Latin, the genuine native voice of no Indo-European +nation. The perfection of their kind, but that kind not +perfectly legitimate, they take a language not perfectly +legitimate; as if to show, that when mankind’s Semitic age +is once passed, the age which produced the great incomparable +monuments of the pure religious sentiment, the books of Job and +Isaiah, the Psalms,—works truly to be called inspired, +because the same divine power which worked in those who produced +them works no longer,—as if to show us, that, after this +primitive age, we Indo-Europeans must feel these works without +attempting to re-make them; and that our poetry, if it tries to +make itself simply the organ of the religious sentiment, leaves +the true course, and must conceal this by not speaking a living +language. The moment it speaks a living language, and still +makes itself the organ of the religious sentiment only, as in the +German and English hymns, it betrays weakness;—the weakness +of all false tendency.</p> +<p>But if by attending to the Germanism in us English and to its +works, one has come to doubt whether we, too, are not thorough +Germans by genius and with the German deadness to style, one has +only to repeat to oneself a line of Milton,—a poet +intoxicated with the passion for style as much as Taliesin or +Pindar,—to see that we have another side to our genius +beside the German one. Whence do we get it? The +Normans may have brought in among us the Latin sense for rhetoric +and style,—for, indeed, this sense goes naturally with a +high spirit and a strenuousness like theirs,—but the sense +for style which English poetry shows is something finer than we +could well have got from a people so positive and so little +poetical as the Normans; and it seems to me we may much more +plausibly derive it from a root of the poetical Celtic nature in +us.</p> +<p>Its chord of penetrating passion and melancholy, again, its +<i>Titanism</i> as we see it in Byron,—what other European +poetry possesses that like the English, and where do we get it +from? The Celts, with their vehement reaction against the +despotism of fact, with their sensuous nature, their manifold +striving, their adverse destiny, their immense calamities, the +Celts are the prime authors of this vein of piercing regret and +passion,—of this Titanism in poetry. A famous book, +Macpherson’s <i>Ossian</i>, carried in the last century +this vein like a flood of lava through Europe. I am not +going to criticise Macpherson’s <i>Ossian</i> here. +Make the part of what is forged, modern, tawdry, spurious, in the +book, as large as you please; strip Scotland, if you like, of +every feather of borrowed plumes which on the strength of +Macpherson’s <i>Ossian</i> she may have stolen from that +<i>vetus et major Scotia</i>, the true home of the Ossianic +poetry, Ireland; I make no objection. But there will still +be left in the book a residue with the very soul of the Celtic +genius in it, and which has the proud distinction of having +brought this soul of the Celtic genius into contact with the +genius of the nations of modern Europe, and enriched all our +poetry by it. Woody Morven, and echoing Sora, and Selma +with its silent halls!—we all owe them a debt of gratitude, +and when we are unjust enough to forget it, may the Muse forget +us! Choose any one of the better passages in +Macpherson’s <i>Ossian</i> and you can see even at this +time of day what an apparition of newness and power such a strain +must have been to the eighteenth century:—</p> +<p>‘I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were +desolate. The fox looked out from the windows, the rank +grass of the wall waved round her head. Raise the song of +mourning, O bards, over the land of strangers. They have +but fallen before us, for one day we must fall. Why dost +thou build the hall, son of the winged days? Thou lookest +from thy towers to-day; yet a few years, and the blast of the +desert comes; it howls in thy empty court, and whistles round thy +half-worn shield. Let the blast of the desert come! we +shall be renowned in our day.’</p> +<p>All Europe felt the power of that melancholy; but what I wish +to point out is, that no nation of Europe so caught in its poetry +the passionate penetrating accent of the Celtic genius, its +strain of Titanism, as the English. Goethe, like Napoleon, +felt the spell of Ossian very powerfully, and he quotes a long +passage from him in his <i>Werther</i>. But what is there +Celtic, turbulent, and Titanic about the German Werther, that +amiable, cultivated, and melancholy young man, having for his +sorrow and suicide the perfectly definite motive that Lotte +cannot be his? Faust, again, has nothing unaccountable, +defiant and Titanic in him; his knowledge does not bring him the +satisfaction he expected from it, and meanwhile he finds himself +poor and growing old, and baulked of the palpable enjoyment of +life; and here is the motive for Faust’s discontent. +In the most energetic and impetuous of Goethe’s +creations,—his <i>Prometheus</i>,—it is not Celtic +self-will and passion, it is rather the Germanic sense of justice +and reason, which revolts against the despotism of Zeus. +The German <i>Sehnsucht</i> itself is a wistful, soft, tearful +longing, rather than a struggling, fierce, passionate one. +But the Celtic melancholy is struggling, fierce, passionate; to +catch its note, listen to Llywarch Hen in old age, addressing his +crutch:—</p> +<blockquote><p>O my crutch! is it not autumn, when the fern is +red, the water-flag yellow? Have I not hated that which I +love?</p> +<p>O my crutch! is it not winter-time now, when men talk together +after that they have drunken? Is not the side of my bed +left desolate?</p> +<p>O my crutch! is it not spring, when the cuckoo passes through +the air, when the foam sparkles on the sea? The young +maidens no longer love me.</p> +<p>O my crutch! is it not the first day of May? The +furrows, are they not shining; the young corn, is it not +springing? Ah! the sight of thy handle makes me wroth.</p> +<p>O my crutch! stand straight, thou wilt support me the better; +it is very long since I was Llywarch.</p> +<p>Behold old age, which makes sport of me, from the hair of my +head to my teeth, to my eyes, which women loved.</p> +<p>The four things I have all my life most hated fall upon me +together,—coughing and old age, sickness and sorrow.</p> +<p>I am old, I am alone, shapeliness and warmth are gone from me; +the couch of honour shall be no more mine: I am miserable, I am +bent on my crutch.</p> +<p>How evil was the lot allotted to Llywarch, the night when he +was brought forth! sorrows without end, and no deliverance from +his burden.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There is the Titanism of the Celt, his passionate, turbulent, +indomitable reaction against the despotism of fact; and of whom +does it remind us so much as of Byron?</p> +<blockquote><p>The fire which on my bosom preys<br /> +Is lone as some volcanic isle;<br /> +No torch is kindled at its blaze;<br /> + A funeral pile!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Or, again:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Count o’er the joys thine hours have +seen,<br /> +Count o’er thy days from anguish free,<br /> +And know, whatever thou hast been,<br /> +’Tis something better not to be.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>One has only to let one’s memory begin to fetch passages +from Byron striking the same note as that passage from Llywarch +Hen, and she will not soon stop. And all Byron’s +heroes, not so much in collision with outward things, as breaking +on some rock of revolt and misery in the depths of their own +nature; Manfred, self-consumed, fighting blindly and passionately +with I know not what, having nothing of the consistent +development and intelligible motive of Faust,—Manfred, +Lara, Cain, what are they but Titanic? Where in European +poetry are we to find this Celtic passion of revolt so +warm-breathing, puissant, and sincere; except perhaps in the +creation of a yet greater poet than Byron, but an English poet, +too, like Byron,—in the Satan of Milton?</p> +<blockquote><p>. . . What though the field be lost?<br /> +All is not lost; the unconquerable will,<br /> +And study of revenge, immortal hate,<br /> +And courage never to submit or yield,<br /> +And what is else not to be overcome.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There, surely, speaks a genius to whose composition the Celtic +fibre was not wholly a stranger!</p> +<p>And as, after noting the Celtic Pindarism or power of style +present in our poetry, we noted the German flatness coming in in +our hymns, and found here a proof of our compositeness of nature; +so, after noting the Celtic Titanism or power of rebellious +passion in our poetry, we may also note the Germanic patience and +reasonableness in it, and get in this way a second proof how +mixed a spirit we have. After Llywarch +Hen’s:—</p> +<blockquote><p>How evil was the lot allotted to Llywarch, the +night when he was brought forth—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>after Byron’s:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Count o’er the joys thine hours have +seen—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>take this of Southey’s, in answer to the question +whether he would like to have his youth over again:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Do I regret the past?<br /> +Would I live o’er again<br /> +The morning hours of life?<br /> +Nay, William, nay, not so!<br /> +Praise be to God who made me what I am,<br /> +Other I would not be.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There we have the other side of our being; the Germanic +goodness, docility, and fidelity to nature, in place of the +Celtic Titanism.</p> +<p>The Celt’s quick feeling for what is noble and +distinguished gave his poetry style; his indomitable personality +gave it pride and passion; his sensibility and nervous exaltation +gave it a better gift still, the gift of rendering with wonderful +felicity the magical charm of nature. The forest solitude, +the bubbling spring, the wild flowers, are everywhere in +romance. They have a mysterious life and grace there; they +are nature’s own children, and utter her secret in a way +which makes them something quite different from the woods, +waters, and plants of Greek and Latin poetry. Now of this +delicate magic, Celtic romance is so pre-eminent a mistress, that +it seems impossible to believe the power did not come into +romance from the Celts. <a name="citation133"></a><a +href="#footnote133" class="citation">[133]</a> Magic is +just the word for it,—the magic of nature; not merely the +beauty of nature,—that the Greeks and Latins had; not +merely an honest smack of the soil, a faithful +realism,—that the Germans had; but the intimate life of +nature, her weird power and her fairy charm. As the Saxon +names of places, with the pleasant wholesome smack of the soil in +them,—Weathersfield, Thaxted, Shalford,—are to the +Celtic names of places, with their penetrating, lofty +beauty,—Velindra, Tyntagel, Caernarvon,—so is the +homely realism of German and Norse nature to the fairy-like +loveliness of Celtic nature. Gwydion wants a wife for his +pupil: ‘Well,’ says Math, ‘we will seek, I and +thou, by charms and illusions, to form a wife for him out of +flowers. So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the +blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and +produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that +man ever saw. And they baptized her, and gave her the name +of Flower-Aspect.’ Celtic romance is full of +exquisite touches like that, showing the delicacy of the +Celt’s feeling in these matters, and how deeply nature lets +him come into her secrets. The quick dropping of blood is +called ‘faster than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade +of reed-grass upon the earth, when the dew of June is at the +heaviest.’ And thus is Olwen described: ‘More +yellow was her hair than the flower of the broom, and her skin +was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands +and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood-anemony amidst the +spray of the meadow fountains.’ For loveliness it +would be hard to beat that; and for magical clearness and +nearness take the following:—</p> +<p>‘And in the evening Peredur entered a valley, and at the +head of the valley he came to a hermit’s cell, and the +hermit welcomed him gladly, and there he spent the night. +And in the morning he arose, and when he went forth, behold, a +shower of snow had fallen the night before, and a hawk had killed +a wild-fowl in front of the cell. And the noise of the +horse scared the hawk away, and a raven alighted upon the +bird. And Peredur stood and compared the blackness of the +raven, and the whiteness of the snow, and the redness of the +blood, to the hair of the lady whom best he loved, which was +blacker than the raven, and to her skin, which was whiter than +the snow, and to her two cheeks, which were redder than the blood +upon the snow appeared to be.’</p> +<p>And this, which is perhaps less striking, is not less +beautiful:—</p> +<p>‘And early in the day Geraint and Enid left the wood, +and they came to an open country, with meadows on one hand and +mowers mowing the meadows. And there was a river before +them, and the horses bent down and drank the water. And +they went up out of the river by a steep bank, and there they met +a slender stripling with a satchel about his neck; and he had a +small blue pitcher in his hand, and a bowl on the mouth of the +pitcher.’</p> +<p>And here the landscape, up to this point so Greek in its clear +beauty, is suddenly magicalised by the romance touch:—</p> +<p>‘And they saw a tall tree by the side of the river, +one-half of which was in flames from the root to the top, and the +other half was green and in full leaf.’</p> +<p>Magic is the word to insist upon,—a magically vivid and +near interpretation of nature; since it is this which constitutes +the special charm and power of the effect I am calling attention +to, and it is for this that the Celt’s sensibility gives +him a peculiar aptitude. But the matter needs rather fine +handling, and it is easy to make mistakes here in our +criticism. In the first place, Europe tends constantly to +become more and more one community, and we tend to become +Europeans instead of merely Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, +Italians; so whatever aptitude or felicity one people imparts +into spiritual work, gets imitated by the others, and thus tends +to become the common property of all. Therefore anything so +beautiful and attractive as the natural magic I am speaking of, +is sure, now-a-days, if it appears in the productions of the +Celts, or of the English, or of the French, to appear in the +productions of the Germans also, or in the productions of the +Italians; but there will be a stamp of perfectness and +inimitableness about it in the literatures where it is native, +which it will not have in the literatures where it is not +native. Novalis or Rückert, for instance, have their +eye fixed on nature, and have undoubtedly a feeling for natural +magic; a rough-and-ready critic easily credits them and the +Germans with the Celtic fineness of tact, the Celtic nearness to +nature and her secret; but the question is whether the strokes in +the German’s picture of nature <a name="citation136"></a><a +href="#footnote136" class="citation">[136]</a> have ever the +indefinable delicacy, charm, and perfection of the Celt’s +touch in the pieces I just now quoted, or of Shakspeare’s +touch in his daffodil, Wordsworth’s in his cuckoo, +Keats’s in his Autumn, Obermann’s in his mountain +birch-tree, or his Easter-daisy among the Swiss farms. To +decide where the gift for natural magic originally lies, whether +it is properly Celtic or Germanic, we must decide this +question.</p> +<p>In the second place, there are many ways of handling nature, +and we are here only concerned with one of them; but a +rough-and-ready critic imagines that it is all the same so long +as nature is handled at all, and fails to draw the needful +distinction between modes of handling her. But these modes +are many; I will mention four of them now: there is the +conventional way of handling nature, there is the faithful way of +handling nature, there is the Greek way of handling nature, there +is the magical way of handling nature. In all these three +last the eye is on the object, but with a difference; in the +faithful way of handling nature, the eye is on the object, and +that is all you can say; in the Greek, the eye is on the object, +but lightness and brightness are added; in the magical, the eye +is on the object, but charm and magic are added. In the +conventional way of handling nature, the eye is not on the +object; what that means we all know, we have only to think of our +eighteenth-century poetry:—</p> +<blockquote><p>As when the moon, refulgent lamp of +night—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>to call up any number of instances. Latin poetry +supplies plenty of instances too; if we put this from +Propertius’s <i>Hylas</i>:—</p> +<blockquote><p>. . . manus heroum . . .<br /> +Mollia composita litora fronde togit—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>side by side with the line of Theocritus by which it was +suggested:—</p> +<blockquote><p><i>λειμὼν +yάρ σφιν +ἔκειτο +μέyας</i>, +<i>στιβάδεσσιν +ὄνειαρ</i>—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>we get at the same moment a good specimen both of the +conventional and of the Greek way of handling nature. But +from our own poetry we may get specimens of the Greek way of +handling nature, as well as of the conventional: for instance, +Keats’s:—</p> +<blockquote><p>What little town by river or seashore,<br /> +Or mountain-built with quiet citadel,<br /> +Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?</p> +</blockquote> +<p>is Greek, as Greek as a thing from Homer or Theocritus; it is +composed with the eye on the object, a radiancy and light +clearness being added. German poetry abounds in specimens +of the faithful way of handling nature; an excellent example is +to be found in the stanzas called <i>Zueignung</i>, prefixed to +Goethe’s poems; the morning walk, the mist, the dew, the +sun, are as faithful as they can be, they are given with the eye +on the object, but there the merit of the work, as a handling of +nature, stops; neither Greek radiance nor Celtic magic is added; +the power of these is not what gives the poem in question its +merit, but a power of quite another kind, a power of moral and +spiritual emotion. But the power of Greek radiance Goethe +could give to his handling of nature, and nobly too, as any one +who will read his <i>Wanderer</i>,—the poem in which a +wanderer falls in with a peasant woman and her child by their +hut, built out of the ruins of a temple near Cuma,—may +see. Only the power of natural magic Goethe does not, I +think, give; whereas Keats passes at will from the Greek power to +that power which is, as I say, Celtic; from his:—</p> +<blockquote><p>What little town, by river or seashore—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>to his:—</p> +<blockquote><p>White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine,<br /> +Fast-fading violets cover’d up in leaves—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>or his:—</p> +<blockquote><p>. . . magic casements, opening on the foam<br /> +Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>in which the very same note is struck as in those extracts +which I quoted from Celtic romance, and struck with authentic and +unmistakeable power.</p> +<p>Shakspeare, in handling nature, touches this Celtic note so +exquisitely, that perhaps one is inclined to be always looking +for the Celtic note in him, and not to recognise his Greek note +when it comes. But if one attends well to the difference +between the two notes, and bears in mind, to guide one, such +things as Virgil’s ‘moss-grown springs and grass +softer than sleep:’—</p> +<blockquote><p>Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>as his charming flower-gatherer, who—</p> +<blockquote><p>Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens<br /> +Narcissum et florem jungit bene olentis anethi—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>as his quinces and chestnuts:—</p> +<blockquote><p>. . . cana legam tenera lanugine mala<br /> +Castaneasque nuces . . .</p> +</blockquote> +<p>then, I think, we shall be disposed to say that in +Shakspeare’s—</p> +<blockquote><p>I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,<br /> +Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,<br /> +Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,<br /> +With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>it is mainly a Greek note which is struck. Then, again +in his:—</p> +<blockquote><p>. . . look how the floor of heaven<br /> +Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>we are at the very point of transition from the Greek note to +the Celtic; there is the Greek clearness and brightness, with the +Celtic aërialness and magic coming in. Then we have +the sheer, inimitable Celtic note in passages like +this:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,<br /> +By paved fountain or by rushy brook,<br /> +Or in the beached margent of the sea—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>or this, the last I will quote:—</p> +<blockquote><p>The moon shines bright. In such a night as +this,<br /> +When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,<br /> +And they did make no noise, in such a night<br /> +Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls—</p> +<p>. . . in such a night<br /> +Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew—</p> +<p>. . . in such a night<br /> +<i>Stood Dido</i>, <i>with a willow in her hand</i>,<br /> +<i>Upon the wild sea-banks</i>, <i>and waved her love</i><br /> +<i>To come again to Carthage</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And those last lines of all are so drenched and intoxicated +with the fairy-dew of that natural magic which is our theme, that +I cannot do better then end with them.</p> +<p>And now, with the pieces of evidence in our hand, let us go to +those who say it is vain to look for Celtic elements in any +Englishman, and let us ask them, first, if they seize what we +mean by the power of natural magic in Celtic poetry; secondly, if +English poetry does not eminently exhibit this power; and, +thirdly, where they suppose English poetry got it from?</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>I perceive that I shall be accused of having rather the air, +in what I have said, of denying this and that gift to the +Germans, and of establishing our difference from them a little +ungraciously and at their expense. The truth is, few people +have any real care to analyse closely in their criticism; they +merely employ criticism as a means for heaping all praise on what +they like, and all blame on what they dislike. Those of us +(and they are many) who owe a great debt of gratitude to the +German spirit and to German literature, do not like to be told of +any powers being lacking there; we are like the young ladies who +think the hero of their novel is only half a hero unless he has +all perfections united in him. But nature does not work, +either in heroes or races, according to the young ladies’ +notion. We all are what we are, the hero and the great +nation are what they are, by our limitations as well as by our +powers, by lacking something as well as by possessing +something. It is not always gain to possess this or that +gift, or loss to lack this or that gift. Our great, our +only first-rate body of contemporary poetry is the German; the +grand business of modern poetry,—a moral interpretation, +from an independent point of view, of man and the world,—it +is only German poetry, Goethe’s poetry, that has, since the +Greeks, made much way with. Campbell’s power of +style, and the natural magic of Keats and Wordsworth, and +Byron’s Titanic personality, may be wanting to this poetry; +but see what it has accomplished without them! How much +more than Campbell with his power of style, and Keats and +Wordsworth with their natural magic, and Byron with his Titanic +personality! Why, for the immense serious task it had to +perform, the steadiness of German poetry, its going near the +ground, its patient fidelity to nature, its using great plainness +of speech, poetical drawbacks in one point of view, were +safeguards and helps in another. The plainness and +earnestness of the two lines I have already quoted from +Goethe:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,<br /> +Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>compared with the play and power of Shakspeare’s style +or Dante’s, suggest at once the difference between +Goethe’s task and theirs, and the fitness of the faithful +laborious German spirit for its own task. Dante’s +task was to set forth the lesson of the world from the point of +view of mediæval Catholicism; the basis of spiritual life +was given, Dante had not to make this anew. +Shakspeare’s task was to set forth the spectacle of the +world when man’s spirit re-awoke to the possession of the +world at the Renaissance. The spectacle of human life, left +to bear its own significance and tell its own story, but shown in +all its fulness, variety, and power, is at that moment the great +matter; but, if we are to press deeper, the basis of spiritual +life is still at that time the traditional religion, reformed or +unreformed, of Christendom, and Shakspeare has not to supply a +new basis. But when Goethe came, Europe had lost her basis +of spiritual life; she had to find it again; Goethe’s task +was,—the inevitable task for the modern poet henceforth +is,—as it was for the Greek poet in the days of Pericles, +not to preach a sublime sermon on a given text like Dante, not to +exhibit all the kingdoms of human life and the glory of them like +Shakspeare, but to interpret human life afresh, and to supply a +new spiritual basis to it. This is not only a work for +style, eloquence, charm, poetry; it is a work for science; and +the scientific, serious German spirit, not carried away by this +and that intoxication of ear, and eye, and self-will, has +peculiar aptitudes for it.</p> +<p>We, on the other hand, do not necessarily gain by the +commixture of elements in us; we have seen how the clashing of +natures in us hampers and embarrasses our behaviour; we might +very likely be more attractive, we might very likely be more +successful, if we were all of a piece. Our want of sureness +of taste, our eccentricity, come in great measure, no doubt, from +our not being all of a piece, from our having no fixed, fatal, +spiritual centre of gravity. The Rue de Rivoli is one +thing, and Nuremberg is another, and Stonehenge is another; but +we have a turn for all three, and lump them all up +together. Mr. Tom Taylor’s translations from Breton +poetry offer a good example of this mixing; he has a genuine +feeling for these Celtic matters, and often, as in the <i>Evil +Tribute of Nomenoë</i>, or in <i>Lord Nann and the +Fairy</i>, he is, both in movement and expression, true and +appropriate; but he has a sort of Teutonism and Latinism in him +too, and so he cannot forbear mixing with his Celtic strain such +disparates as:—</p> +<blockquote><p>’Twas mirk, mirk night, and the water +bright<br /> +Troubled and drumlie flowed—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>which is evidently Lowland-Scotchy; or as:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Foregad, but thou’rt an artful hand!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>which is English-stagey; or as:—</p> +<blockquote><p>To Gradlon’s daughter, bright of blee,<br /> +Her lover he whispered tenderly—<br /> +<i>Bethink thee</i>, <i>sweet Dahut</i>! <i>the key</i>!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>which is Anacreontic in the manner of Tom Moore. Yes, it +is not a sheer advantage to have several strings to one’s +bow! if we had been all German, we might have had the science of +Germany; if we had been all Celtic, we might have been popular +and agreeable; if we had been all Latinised, we might have +governed Ireland as the French govern Alsace, without getting +ourselves detested. But now we have Germanism enough to +make us Philistines, and Normanism enough to make us imperious, +and Celtism enough to make us self-conscious and awkward; but +German fidelity to Nature, and Latin precision and clear reason, +and Celtic quick-wittedness and spirituality, we fall short +of. Nay, perhaps, if we are doomed to perish (Heaven avert +the omen!), we shall perish by our Celtism, by our self-will and +want of patience with ideas, our inability to see the way the +world is going; and yet those very Celts, by our affinity with +whom we are perishing, will be hating and upbraiding us all the +time.</p> +<p>This is a somewhat unpleasant view to take of the matter; but +if it is true, its being unpleasant does not make it any less +true, and we are always the better for seeing the truth. +What we here see is not the whole truth, however. So long +as this mixed constitution of our nature possesses us, we pay it +tribute and serve it; so soon as we possess it, it pays us +tribute and serves us. So long as we are blindly and +ignorantly rolled about by the forces of our nature, their +contradiction baffles us and lames us; so soon as we have clearly +discerned what they are, and begun to apply to them a law of +measure, control, and guidance, they may be made to work for our +good and to carry us forward. Then we may have the good of +our German part, the good of our Latin part, the good of our +Celtic part; and instead of one part clashing with the other, we +may bring it in to continue and perfect the other, when the other +has given us all the good it can yield, and by being pressed +further, could only give us its faulty excess. Then we may +use the German faithfulness to Nature to give us science, and to +free us from insolence and self-will; we may use the Celtic +quickness of perception to give us delicacy, and to free us from +hardness and Philistinism; we may use the Latin decisiveness to +give us strenuous clear method, and to free us from fumbling and +idling. Already, in their untrained state, these elements +give signs, in our life and literature, of their being present in +us, and a kind of prophecy of what they could do for us if they +were properly observed, trained, and applied. But this they +have not yet been; we ride one force of our nature to death; we +will be nothing but Anglo-Saxons in the Old World or in the New; +and when our race has built Bold Street, Liverpool, and +pronounced it very good, it hurries across the Atlantic, and +builds Nashville, and Jacksonville, and Milledgeville, and thinks +it is fulfilling the designs of Providence in an incomparable +manner. But true Anglo-Saxons, simply and sincerely rooted +in the German nature, we are not and cannot be; all we have +accomplished by our onesidedness is to blur and confuse the +natural basis in ourselves altogether, and to become something +eccentric, unattractive, and inharmonious.</p> +<p>A man of exquisite intelligence and charming character, the +late Mr. Cobden, used to fancy that a better acquaintance with +the United States was the grand panacea for us; and once in a +speech he bewailed the inattention of our seats of learning to +them, and seemed to think that if our ingenuous youth at Oxford +were taught a little less about Ilissus, and a little more about +Chicago, we should all be the better for it. Chicago has +its claims upon us, no doubt; but it is evident that from the +point of view to which I have been leading, a stimulation of our +Anglo-Saxonism, such as is intended by Mr. Cobden’s +proposal, does not appear the thing most needful for us; seeing +our American brothers themselves have rather, like us, to try and +moderate the flame of Anglo-Saxonism in their own breasts, than +to ask us to clap the bellows to it in ours. So I am +inclined to beseech Oxford, instead of expiating her +over-addiction to the Ilissus by lectures on Chicago, to give us +an expounder for a still more remote-looking object than the +Ilissus,—the Celtic languages and literature. And yet +why should I call it remote? if, as I have been labouring to +show, in the spiritual frame of us English ourselves, a Celtic +fibre, little as we may have ever thought of tracing it, lives +and works. <i>Aliens in speech</i>, <i>in religion</i>, +<i>in blood</i>! said Lord Lyndhurst; the philologists have set +him right about the speech, the physiologists about the blood; +and perhaps, taking religion in the wide but true sense of our +whole spiritual activity, those who have followed what I have +been saying here will think that the Celt is not so wholly alien +to us in religion. But, at any rate, let us consider that +of the shrunken and diminished remains of this great primitive +race, all, with one insignificant exception, belongs to the +English empire; only Brittany is not ours; we have Ireland, the +Scotch Highlands, Wales, the Isle of Man, Cornwall. They +are a part of ourselves, we are deeply interested in knowing +them, they are deeply interested in being known by us; and yet in +the great and rich universities of this great and rich country +there is no chair of Celtic, there is no study or teaching of +Celtic matters; those who want them must go abroad for +them. It is neither right nor reasonable that this should +be so. Ireland has had in the last half century a band of +Celtic students,—a band with which death, alas! has of late +been busy,—from whence Oxford or Cambridge might have taken +an admirable professor of Celtic; and with the authority of a +university chair, a great Celtic scholar, on a subject little +known, and where all would have readily deferred to him, might +have by this time doubled our facilities for knowing the Celt, by +procuring for this country Celtic documents which were +inaccessible here, and preventing the dispersion of others which +were accessible. It is not much that the English Government +does for science or literature; but if Eugene O’Curry, from +a chair of Celtic at Oxford, had appealed to the Government to +get him copies or the originals of the Celtic treasures in the +Burgundian Library at Brussels, or in the library of St. +Isidore’s College at Rome, even the English Government +could not well have refused him. The invaluable Irish +manuscripts in the Stowe Library the late Sir Robert Peel +proposed, in 1849, to buy for the British Museum; Lord Macaulay, +one of the trustees of the Museum, declared, with the confident +shallowness which makes him so admired by public speakers and +leading-article writers, and so intolerable to all searchers for +truth, that he saw nothing in the whole collection worth +purchasing for the Museum, except the correspondence of Lord +Melville on the American war. That is to say, this +correspondence of Lord Melville’s was the only thing in the +collection about which Lord Macaulay himself knew or cared. +Perhaps an Oxford or Cambridge professor of Celtic might have +been allowed to make his voice heard, on a matter of Celtic +manuscripts, even against Lord Macaulay. The manuscripts +were bought by Lord Ashburnham, who keeps them shut up, and will +let no one consult them (at least up to the date when +O’Curry published his <i>Lectures</i> he did so), +‘for fear an actual acquaintance with their contents should +decrease their value as matter of curiosity at some future +transfer or sale.’ Who knows? Perhaps an Oxford +professor of Celtic might have touched the flinty heart of Lord +Ashburnham.</p> +<p>At this moment, when the narrow Philistinism which has long +had things its own way in England, is showing its natural fruits, +and we are beginning to feel ashamed, and uneasy, and alarmed at +it; now, when we are becoming aware that we have sacrificed to +Philistinism culture, and insight, and dignity, and acceptance, +and weight among the nations, and hold on events that deeply +concern us, and control of the future, and yet that it cannot +even give us the fool’s paradise it promised us, but is apt +to break down, and to leave us with Mr. Roebuck’s and Mr. +Lowe’s laudations of our matchless happiness, and the +largest circulation in the world assured to the <i>Daily +Telegraph</i>, for our only comfort; at such a moment it needs +some moderation not to be attacking Philistinism by storm, but to +mine it through such gradual means as the slow approaches of +culture, and the introduction of chairs of Celtic. But the +hard unintelligence, which is just now our bane, cannot be +conquered by storm; it must be suppled and reduced by culture, by +a growth in the variety, fulness, and sweetness of our spiritual +life; and this end can only be reached by studying things that +are outside of ourselves, and by studying them +disinterestedly. Let us reunite ourselves with our better +mind and with the world through science; and let it be one of our +angelic revenges on the Philistines, who among their other sins +are the guilty authors of Fenianism, to found at Oxford a chair +of Celtic, and to send, through the gentle ministration of +science, a message of peace to Ireland.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote0a"></a><a href="#citation0a" +class="footnote">[0a]</a> See p. 28 of the following +essay. [Starts with “It is not difficult for the +other side . . . ”—DP.]</p> +<p><a name="footnote0b"></a><a href="#citation0b" +class="footnote">[0b]</a> See particularly pp. 9, 10, 11, +of the following essay.</p> +<p><a name="footnote4"></a><a href="#citation4" +class="footnote">[4]</a> Lord Strangford remarks on this +passage:—‘Your Gomer and your Cimmerians are of +course only lay figures, to be accepted in the rhetorical and +subjective sense. As such I accept them, but I enter a +protest against the “genuine tongue of his +ancestors.” Modern Celtic tongues are to the old +Celtic heard by Julius Cæsar, broadly speaking, what the +modern Romanic tongues are to Cæsar’s own +Latin. Welsh, in fact, is a <i>detritus</i>; a language in +the category of modern French, or, to speak less roughly and with +a closer approximation, of old Provençal, not in the +category of Lithuanian, much less in the category of +Basque. By true inductive research, based on an accurate +comparison of such forms of Celtic speech, oral and recorded, as +we now possess, modern philology has, in so far as was possible, +succeeded in restoring certain forms of the parent speech, and in +so doing has achieved not the least striking of its many +triumphs; for those very forms thus restored have since been +verified past all cavil by their actual discovery in the old +Gaulish inscriptions recently come to light. The +<i>phonesis</i> of Welsh as it stands is modern, not primitive +its grammar,—the verbs excepted,—is constructed out +of the fragments of its earlier forms, and its vocabulary is +strongly Romanised, two out of the six words here given being +Latin of the Empire. Rightly understood, this enhances the +value of modern Celtic instead of depreciating it, because it +serves to rectify it. To me it is a wonder that Welsh +should have retained so much of its integrity under the iron +pressure of four hundred years of Roman dominion. Modern +Welsh tenacity and cohesive power under English pressure is +nothing compared with what that must have been.’</p> +<p><a name="footnote14"></a><a href="#citation14" +class="footnote">[14]</a> Here again let me have the +pleasure of quoting Lord Strangford:—‘When the Celtic +tongues were first taken in hand at the dawn of comparative +philological inquiry, the tendency was, for all practical +results, to separate them from the Indo-European aggregate, +rather than to unite them with it. The great gulf once +fixed between them was narrowed on the surface, but it was +greatly and indefinitely deepened. Their vocabulary and +some of their grammar were seen at once to be perfectly +Indo-European, but they had no case-endings to their nouns, none +at all in Welsh, none that could be understood in Gaelic; their +<i>phonesis</i> seemed primeval and inexplicable, and nothing +could be made out of their pronouns which could not be equally +made out of many wholly un-Aryan languages. They were +therefore co-ordinated, not with each single Aryan tongue, but +with the general complex of Aryan tongues, and were conceived to +be anterior to them and apart from them, as it were the strayed +vanguard of European colonisation or conquest from the +East. The reason of this misconception was, that their +records lay wholly uninvestigated as far as all historical study +of the language was concerned, and that nobody troubled himself +about the relative age and the development of forms, so that the +philologists were fain to take them as they were put into their +hands by uncritical or perverse native commentators and writers, +whose grammars and dictionaries teemed with blunders and +downright forgeries. One thing, and one thing alone, led to +the truth: the sheer drudgery of thirteen long years spent by +Zeuss in the patient investigation of the most ancient Celtic +records, in their actual condition, line by line and letter by +letter. Then for the first time the foundation of Celtic +research was laid; but the great philologist did not live to see +the superstructure which never could have been raised but for +him. Prichard was first to indicate the right path, and +Bopp, in his monograph of 1839, displayed his incomparable and +masterly sagacity as usual, but for want of any trustworthy +record of Celtic words and forms to work upon, the truth remained +concealed or obscured until the publication of the <i>Gramatica +Celtica</i>. Dr. Arnold, a man of the past generation, who +made more use of the then uncertain and unfixed doctrines of +comparative philology in his historical writings than is done by +the present generation in the fullest noonday light of the +<i>Vergleichende Grammatik</i>, was thus justified in his view by +the philology of the period, to which he merely gave an enlarged +historical expression. The prime fallacy then as now, +however, was that of antedating the distinction between Gaelic +and Cymric Celts.’</p> +<p><a name="footnote25"></a><a href="#citation25" +class="footnote">[25]</a> Dr. O’Conor in his +<i>Catalogue of the Stowe MSS.</i> (quoted by O’Curry).</p> +<p><a name="footnote26"></a><a href="#citation26" +class="footnote">[26]</a> O’Curry.</p> +<p><a name="footnote29"></a><a href="#citation29" +class="footnote">[29]</a> Here, where Saturday should come, +something is wanting in the manuscript.</p> +<p><a name="footnote66"></a><a href="#citation66" +class="footnote">[66]</a> See <i>Les Scythes</i>, <i>les +Ancêtres des Peuples Germaniques et Slaves</i>, par F. G. +Bergmann, professeur à la faculté des Lettres de +Strasbourg: Colmar, 1858. But Professor Bergmann’s +etymologies are often, says Lord Strangford, ‘false lights, +held by an uncertain hand.’ And Lord Strangford +continues:—‘The Apian land certainly meant the watery +land, <i>Meer-Umschlungon</i>, among the pre-Hellenic Greeks, +just as the same land is called Morea by the modern post-Hellenic +or Romaic Greeks from <i>more</i>, the name for the sea in the +Slavonic vernacular of its inhabitants during the heart of the +middle ages. But it is only connected by a remote and +secondary affinity, if connected at all, with the <i>avia</i> of +Scandinavia, assuming that to be the true German word for +<i>water</i>, which, if it had come down to us in Gothic, would +have been <i>avi</i>, genitive <i>aujôs</i>, and not a mere +Latinised termination. Scythian is surely a negative rather +than a positive term, much like our <i>Indian</i>, or the +<i>Turanian</i> of modern ethnologists, used to comprehend nomads +and barbarians of all sorts and races north and east of the Black +and Caspian seas. It is unsafe to connect their name with +anything as yet; it is quite as likely that it refers to the bow +and arrow as to the shield, and is connected with our word to +<i>shoot</i>, <i>sceótan</i>, <i>skiutan</i>, Lithuanian +<i>szau-ti</i>. Some of the Scythian peoples may have been +Anarian, Allophylic, Mongolian; some were demonstrably Aryan, and +not only that, but Iranian as well, as is best shown in a memoir +read before the Berlin Academy this last year; the evidence +having been first indicated in the rough by Schaffarik the +Slavonic antiquary. Coins, glosses, proper names, and +inscriptions prove it. Targitaos (not -tavus) and the rest +is guess-work or wrong. Herodotus’s +Ταβιτι for the goddess Vesta is not +connected with the root <i>div</i> whence Dêvas, Deus, +&c., but the root <i>tap</i>, in Latin <i>tep</i> (of tepere, +tepefacere), Slavonic <i>tepl</i>, <i>topl</i> (for <i>tep</i> or +<i>top</i>), in modern Persian <i>tâb</i>. +<i>Thymele</i> refers to the hearth as the place of smoke +(θύω, <i>thus</i>, <i>fumus</i>), but +<i>familia</i> denotes household from <i>famulus</i> for +<i>fagmulus</i>, the root <i>fag</i> being equated with the +Sansk. <i>bhaj</i>, <i>servira</i>. Lucan’s Hesus or +Esus may fairly be compared with the Welsh <i>Hu</i> Gadarn by +legitimate process, but no letter-change can justify his +connection with <i>Gaisos</i>, the spear, not the sword, +Virgil’s <i>gæsum</i>, A. S. <i>gár</i>, our +verb to <i>gore</i>, retained in its outer form in +<i>gar</i>-fish. For <i>Theuthisks lege Thiudisks</i>, from +<i>thiuda</i>, <i>populus</i>; in old high German Diutisk, +Diotisk, <i>popularis</i>, <i>vulgaris</i>, the country +vernacular as distinguished from the cultivated Latin; hence the +word <i>Dutch</i>, <i>Deutsch</i>. With our ancestors +<i>theód</i> stood for nation generally and +<i>getheóde</i> for any speech. Our diet in the +political sense is the same word, but borrowed from our German +cousins, not inherited from our fathers. The modern Celtic +form is the Irish <i>tuath</i>, in ancient Celtic it must have +been <i>teuta</i>, <i>touta</i>, of which we actually have the +adjective <i>toutius</i> in the Gaulish inscription of +Nismes. In Oscan we have it as <i>turta</i>, <i>tuta</i>, +its adjective being handed down in Livy’s <i>meddix +tuticus</i>, the mayor or chief magistrate of the +<i>tuta</i>. In the Umbrian inscriptions it is +<i>tota</i>. In Lithuanian <i>tauta</i>, the country +opposed to the town, and in old Prussian <i>tauta</i>, the +country generally, <i>en Prusiskan tautan</i>, <i>im Land zu +Preussen</i>.’</p> +<p><a name="footnote68"></a><a href="#citation68" +class="footnote">[68]</a> Lord Strangford observes +here:—‘The original forms of Gael should be +mentioned—Gaedil, Goidil: in modern Gaelic orthography +Gaoidheal where the <i>dh</i> is not realised in +pronunciation. There is nothing impossible in the +connection of the root of this with that of Scot, <i>if</i> the +<i>s</i> of the latter be merely prosthetic. But the whole +thing is <i>in nubibus</i>, and given as a guess only.’</p> +<p><a name="footnote69"></a><a href="#citation69" +class="footnote">[69]</a> ‘The name of Erin,’ +says Lord Strangford, ‘is treated at length in a masterly +note by Whitley Stokes in the 1st series of Max +Müller’s lectures (4th ed.) p. 255, where its earliest +<i>tangible</i> form is shown to have been Iverio. +Pictet’s connection with Arya is quite baseless.’</p> +<p><a name="footnote82"></a><a href="#citation82" +class="footnote">[82]</a> It is to be remembered that the +above was written before the recent war between Prussia and +Austria.</p> +<p><a name="footnote84"></a><a href="#citation84" +class="footnote">[84]</a> The etymology is Monsieur Henri +Martin’s, but Lord Strangford says—‘Whatever +<i>gai</i> may be, it is assuredly not Celtic. Is there any +authority for this word <i>gair</i>, to laugh, or rather +“laughter,” beyond O’Reilly? +O’Reilly is no authority at all except in so far as tested +and passed by the new school. It is hard to give up +<i>gavisus</i>. But Diez, chief authority in Romanic +matters, is content to accept Muratori’s reference to an +old High-German <i>gâhi</i>, modern <i>jähe</i>, +sharp, quick, sudden, brisk, and so to the sense of lively, +animated, high in spirits.’</p> +<p><a name="footnote85"></a><a href="#citation85" +class="footnote">[85]</a> Monsieur Henri Martin, whose +chapters on the Celts, in his <i>Histoire de France</i>, are full +of information and interest.</p> +<p><a name="footnote97"></a><a href="#citation97" +class="footnote">[97]</a> The above is really a sentence +taken from the <i>Cologne Gazette</i>. Lord +Strangford’s comment here is as +follows:—‘Modern Germanism, in a general estimate of +Germanism, should not be taken, absolutely and necessarily, as +the constant, whereof we are the variant. The Low-Dutch of +Holland, anyhow, are indisputably as genuine Dutch as the +High-Dutch of Germany Proper. But do they write sentences +like this one—<i>informe</i>, <i>ingens</i>, <i>cui lumen +ademptum</i>? If not, the question must be asked, not how +we have come to deviate, but how the Germans have come to +deviate. Our modern English prose in plain matters is often +all just the same as the prose of <i>King Alfred</i> and the +<i>Chronicle</i>. Ohthere’s <i>North Sea Voyage</i> +and Wulfstan’s <i>Baltic Voyage</i> is the sort of thing +which is sent in every day, one may say, to the Geographical or +Ethnological Society, in the whole style and turn of phrase and +thought.’</p> +<p>The mass of a stock must supply our data for judging the +stock. But see, moreover, what I have said at p. 100.</p> +<p><a name="footnote120"></a><a href="#citation120" +class="footnote">[120]</a> Lord Strangford’s note on +this is:—‘The Irish monks whose bells and books were +found in Iceland could not have contributed anything to the old +Norse spirit, for they had perished before the first Norseman had +set foot on the island. The form of the old Norse poetry +known to us as Icelandic, from the accident of its preservation +in that island alone, is surely Pan-Teutonic from old times; the +ar and method of its strictly literary cultivation must have been +much influenced by the contemporary Old-English national poetry, +with which the Norsemen were in constant contact; and its larger, +freer, and wilder spirit must have been owing to their freer and +wilder life, to say nothing of their roused and warring +paganism. They could never have known any Celts save when +living in embryo with other Teutons.’</p> +<p>Very likely Lord Strangford is right, but the proposition with +which he begins is at variance with what the text quoted by Zeuss +alleges.</p> +<p><a name="footnote133"></a><a href="#citation133" +class="footnote">[133]</a> Rhyme,—the most striking +characteristic of our modern poetry as distinguished from that of +the ancients, and a main source, to our poetry, of its magic and +charm, of what we call its <i>romantic element</i>,—rhyme +itself, all the weight of evidence tends to show, comes into our +poetry from the Celts.</p> +<p><a name="footnote136"></a><a href="#citation136" +class="footnote">[136]</a> Take the following attempt to +render the natural magic supposed to pervade Tieck’s +poetry:—‘In diesen Dichtungen herrscht eine +geheimnissvolle Innigkeit, ein sonderbares Einverständniss +mit der Natur, besonders mit der Pflanzen—und +Steinreich. Der Leser fühlt sich da wie in einem +verzauberten Walde; er hört die unterirdischen Quellen +melodisch rauschen; wildfremde Wunderblumen schauen ihn an mit +ihren bunten schnsüchtigen Augen; unsichtbare Lippen +küssen seine Wangen mit neckender Zärtlichkeit; <i>hohe +Pilze</i>, <i>wie goldne Glocken</i>, <i>wachsen klingend empor +am Fusse der Bäume</i>;’ and so on. Now that +stroke of the <i>hohe Pilze</i>, the great funguses, would have +been impossible to the tact and delicacy of a born lover of +nature like the Celt, and could only have come from a German who +has <i>hineinstudirt</i> himself into natural magic. It is +a crying false note, which carries us at once out of the world of +nature-magic and the breath of the woods, into the world of +theatre-magic and the smell of gas and orange-peel.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CELTIC LITERATURE***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 5159-h.htm or 5159-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/1/5/5159 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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