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diff --git a/5159-0.txt b/5159-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b08dc79 --- /dev/null +++ b/5159-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4187 @@ +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: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CELTIC LITERATURE*** + + +Transcribed from the 1891 Smith, Elder and Co. edition by David Price, +email ccx074@pglaf.org + + [Picture: Book cover] + + + + + + THE STUDY + OF + CELTIC LITERATURE + + + * * * * * + + BY + + MATTHEW ARNOLD + + * * * * * + + Popular Edition + + * * * * * + + LONDON + + SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE + 1891 + + [_All rights reserved_] + + + + +INTRODUCTION. + + +THE 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 _Cornhill Magazine_, 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. + +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. + +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 +_Taliesin_, _or the Bards and Druids of Britain_, 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, {0a} 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. + +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:— + +‘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. + +‘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, _The Literature of the Cymry_, shows how perfectly +Welshmen can avoid this danger if they will. + +‘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.’ + +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. {0b} 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, ‘_de +humana impotentia non nisi parce loqui curabit_, _at largiter de humana +virtute seupotentia_.’ But so far as condemnation of Celtic failure was +needful towards preparing the way for the growth of Celtic virtue, I used +condemnation. + +The _Times_, 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. _Cease to do evil_, _learn to +do good_, was the upshot of its exhortations to the Welsh; by _evil_, the +_Times_ understanding all things Celtic, and by _good_, 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.’ + +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 _Times_, 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.’ + +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 _Times_, 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: ‘_Behold England’s difficulty in +governing Ireland_!’ + +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 _Times_ 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 +_Cornhill Magazine_, 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 _Times_ 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? + +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 _Times_ 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 _Times_ 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 _Times_ 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 _Journal des Débats_ 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 _Times_ may scold them and rate them, and assure them there is nobody +on earth so admirable. + +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!’ + +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. + + + + +THE STUDY OF CELTIC LITERATURE + + + ‘They went forth to the war, but they always fell.’ + + OSSIAN. + +SOME 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, +_the bloody city_, 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, _the place of feasting_, 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 _Sands of Lamentation_ +and Llys Helig, _Heilig’s Mansion_, a mansion under the waves, a +sea-buried palace and realm. _Hac ibat Simois_; _hic est Sigeia tellus_. + +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! _Blanc_, _rouge_, _rocher champ_, +_église_, _seigneur_,—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, {4} _gwyn_, _goch_, _craig_, _maes_, _llan_, +_arglwydd_; 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +_Saturday Review_, 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +_has_ been, what it _has_ 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. + +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 _science des origines_, 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; {14} 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 +_Myvyrian Archæology_, 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. + +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, _aliens in blood_ 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. + +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. + + + +I. + + +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 _Black Book of Caermarthen_, or of the _Red Book of Hergest_, 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 _Myvyrian Archæology_, there are +a vast number of collections of Welsh manuscripts in London, and in the +libraries of the gentry of the principality.’ The _Myvyrian Archæology_, +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 _statesman_, 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 _Archæologia Britannica_, 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 _Myvyrian Archæology of Wales_. 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,—_si quid mentem mortalia tangunt_,—he may be satisfied. + +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 +_Annals of the Four Masters_ (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 _Book of the Dun Cow_, the _Book of Leinster_, the _Book of +Ballymote_, the _Speckled Book_, the _Book of Lecain_, the _Yellow Book +of Lecain_,—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 _Tales_, consisting of _Historic +Tales_ and _Imaginative Tales_, distributes the contents of its _Historic +Tales_ 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 +_Annals of the Four Masters_ 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.’ {25} Through other +divisions of this mass of materials,—the books of pedigrees and +genealogies, the martyrologies and festologies, such as the _Féliré of +Angus the Culdee_, the topographical tracts, such as the +_Dinnsenchas_,—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.’ {26} + +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. + +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, _The Mythology and Rites of the British Druids_, +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:— + +‘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.’ + +Nothing could well be simpler; but what Davies finds in this simple +opening of Taliesin’s story is prodigious:— + +‘Let us take a brief view of the proprietor of this estate. Tegid +Voel—_bald serenity_—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.’ + +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.’ + +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.’ + +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 _Taliesin_ 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 _The Panegyric of Lludd the +Great_:— + +‘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; {29} 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.’ + +That looks Helio-dæmonic enough, undoubtedly; especially when Davies +prints _O Brithi_, _O Brithoi_! 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 +_O Brithi_, _O Brithoi_! 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:— + +‘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.’ + +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 _Panegyric on Lludd the Great_, and one +is very grateful to Mr. Nash. + +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:— + +‘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.’ + +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 (_henfon_) 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 _henfon_ 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 _heb eppa_, ‘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. + +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 _Vindication of the Ancient British Poems_ +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 _Spoils of Annwn_, 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 _Mabinogion_, 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 _Spoils of Annwn_ 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 +_Mabinogion_,—manuscripts written, like the famous _Red Book of Hergest_, +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 _Brut y +Tywysogion_, 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 +_Domhnach Airgid_, 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 _Domhnach Airgid_ +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 _Domhnach Airgid_ with his own +hands; and one reads on:— + +‘As St. Patrick, says an ancient life of St. Mac Carthainn preserved by +Colgan in his _Acta Sanctorum Hiberniæ_, 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!” + +‘“Upon my good word,” said the Saint, “it was not usual with you to make +that noise.” + +‘“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.” + +‘“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.” + +‘And the Saint then left Bishop Mac Carthainn there, at Clogher, and +bestowed the _Domhnach Airgid_ upon him, which had been given to Patrick +from heaven, when he was on the sea, coming to Erin.’ + +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? + +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. + + + +II. + + +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:— + +‘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 _Books of +Ballymote and Lecain_, _The Speckled Book_, _The Annals of the Four +Masters_, 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 _Book of Ballymote_ 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.”’ + +And from that day Moore, it is said, lost all heart for going on with his +_History of Ireland_, and it was only the importunity of the publishers +which induced him to bring out the remaining volume. + +_Could not have been written by fools or for any foolish purpose_. 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 _Red Book of Hergest_. 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.’ + +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:— + +‘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.’ + +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 _literary_ 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. + +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 _Kilhwch and Olwen_, in +the _Mabinogion_,—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. + +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. + +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 _Gododin_ put to purely calendarial +purposes; the _Nibelungen_, the _Mahabharata_, and the _Iliad_, finally +following the fate of the _Gododin_; 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 _Mabinogion_, 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 +_Kilhwch and Olwen_, 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:— + +‘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). + +‘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). + +‘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).’ + +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:— + +‘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. + +‘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. + +‘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. + +‘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.’ + +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.’ + +There is evidently mixed here, with the newer legend, a _detritus_, as +the geologists would say, of something far older; and the secret of Wales +and its genius is not truly reached until this _detritus_, 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. + +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 _Hanes Taliesin_, or _History of +Taliesin_, 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 _Traveller’s +Song_.’ 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 _Battle of the Trees_: ‘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 _Traveller’s Song_. 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 +was in the hall of Don before Gwydion was born_;’ he adds, after: ‘I was +chief overseer at the building of the tower of Nimrod,’ ‘_I have been +three times resident in the castle of Arianrod_;’ he adds, after: ‘I was +at the cross with Mary Magdalene,’ ‘_I obtained my inspiration from the +cauldron of Ceridwen_.’ 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. + +I say, then, what we want is to _know_ 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. + +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 _Art of Love_, and the verses found by Edward Lhuyd in the +_Juvencus_ manuscript at Cambridge. The mention of this _Juvencus_ +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. + +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 +‘_destitutio tenuium_’ has not yet taken place; when the sharp consonants +have not yet been changed into flat, _p_ or t into _b_ or _d_; when, for +instance, _map_, a son, has not yet become _mab_; _coet_ a wood, _coed_; +_ocet_, a harrow, _oged_. 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. + +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 _Leabhar na +h’Uidhre_; or, _Book of the Dun Cow_. 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 _Annals of the Four Masters_, 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 _Book of the Dun Cow_. 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. + +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 _Apian Land_? and within the +limits of Greek itself there is none. But the Scythian name for earth +‘apia,’ _watery_, _water-issued_, meaning first _isle_ and then +_land_—this name, which we find in ‘avia,’ Scandin_avia_, and in ‘ey’ for +Aldern_ey_, not only explains the _Apian Land_ 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 _shielded_ 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, _Shining +with the targe_, the Greek Hercules, the Sun, contains in the second half +of his name, _tavus_, ‘shining,’ a wonderful cement to hold times and +nations together. _Tavus_, ‘shining,’ from ‘tava’—in Sanscrit, as well +as Scythian, ‘to burn’ or ‘shine,’—is _Divus_, _dies_, _Zeus_, _Θεός_, +_Dêva_, and I know not how much more; and _Taviti_, 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 _familia_, is from +_thymelé_, 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 _Theuthisks_, Deutschen, Tudesques, are the men of one _theuth_, +nation, or people; and of this our name _Germans_ 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 _teuta_, people; +_taviti_, fire, appearing here in its secondary and derived sense of +_people_, just as it does in its own Scythian language in Targitavus’s +second name, _Tavit-varus_, _Teutaros_, 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. {66} 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 _solar_ 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. + +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 _vetus et major +Scotia_, as Colgan calls it? Who does not feel what pleasure Zeuss +brings us when he suggests that _Gael_, the name for the Irish Celt, and +_Scot_, are at bottom the same word, both having their origin in a word +meaning _wind_, and both signifying _the violent stormy people_? {68} +Who does not feel his mind agreeably cleared about our friends the +Fenians, when he learns that the root of their name, _fen_, ‘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 _Arya_, 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, _avara_, +occidental, the western land or isle of the west. {69} 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 +_heol_ (sol), or _buaist_ (fuisti)? or upon such a sentence as this, +‘_Peris Duw dui funnaun_’ (‘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 _Cormac’s Glossary_, +holds up the Irish word _traith_, the sea, and makes us remark that, +though the names _Triton_, _Amphitrite_, and those of corresponding +Indian and Zend divinities, point to the meaning _sea_, 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! + +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. + +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 _is_ there, is for me the only question. + + + +III. + + +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 _Saturday +Review_ treats these matters of ethnology with great power and learning, +and the _Saturday Review_ 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. + +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. + +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 _basket_ (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, _bam_, _kick_, _whop_, _twaddle_, +_fudge_, _hitch_, _muggy_,—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. + +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: +_Des Caractères Physiologiques des Races Humaines considérés dans leurs +Rapports avec l’Histoire_. 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 _Histoire des Gaulois_ 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:— + +‘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.’ + +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. + + + +IV. + + +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 _energy with honesty_. 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 _steadiness_; and you have the Germanic genius +_steadiness with honesty_. 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, _das Gemeine_, _die Gemeinheit_, 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, +_science_,—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. {82} + +_For dulness_, _the creeping Saxons_,—says an old Irish poem, assigning +the characteristics for which different nations are celebrated:— + + For acuteness and valour, the Greeks, + For excessive pride, the Romans, + For dulness, the creeping Saxons; + For beauty and amorousness, the Gaedhils. + +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 _douce petite race naturellement chrétienne_, his _race fière et +timide_, _à l’extérieur gauche et embarrassée_. 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 _infinie délicatesse de sentiment qui caractérise la race +Celtique_, how little that accords with the popular conception of an +Irishman who wants to borrow money! _Sentiment_ 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 +_gay_, it is said, is itself Celtic. It is not from _gaudium_, but from +the Celtic _gair_, to laugh; {84} 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; _a proud look and a high +stomach_, 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. + +Sentimental,—_always ready to react against the despotism of fact_; that +is the description a great friend {85} 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 _measure_; 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 _architectonicé_ +which shapes great works, such as the _Agamemnon_ or the _Divine Comedy_, +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. + +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 _Battle of +Moytura of the Fomorians_, 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. + +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, ‘_but they +always fell_.’ + +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; _to be a +bard_, _freed a man_,—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? + +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. + +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 _Saturday Review_, 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. + +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. + +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. + + + +V. + + +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 _Times_ +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 +_Cologne Gazette_ 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’? {97} 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. + +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 +_architectonicé_, 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. + +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. + +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:— + +‘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. + +‘“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?” + +‘“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.” + +‘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?” + +‘“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.”’ + +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:— + +‘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. + +‘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. + +‘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. + +‘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. + +‘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! + +‘Then the stranger looked at the chamberlain; and the chamberlain bent +his eyes on the ground and sighed.’ + +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. + +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 ‘_bêtise_ allemande,’ they talk of the ‘_gaucherie_ +anglaise;’ while they talk of the ‘Allemand _balourd_,’ they talk of the +‘Anglais _empêtré_;’ while they call the German ‘_niais_,’ they call the +Englishman ‘_mélancolique_.’ The difference between the epithets +_balourd_ and _empêtré_ exactly gives the difference in character I wish +to seize; _balourd_ means heavy and dull, _empêtré_ 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:— + + . . . Gallois sont tous, par nature, + Plus fous que bêtes en pâsture— + +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 _humour_, 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 +(_gaucherie typique_) 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. + +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. + + + +VI. + + +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. + +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:— + + . . . nor sometimes forget + Those other two equal with me in fate, + So were I equall’d with them in renown, + Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides— + +with this from Goethe:— + + Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, + Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt. + +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 _poetical_ simplicity. One may say the same of the +simple passages in Shakspeare; they are perfect, their simplicity being a +_poetical_ 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 _style_ 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. + +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 _Gemeinheit_ 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. + +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 A.D., 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 _Nibelungen_ 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 _not_ 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 _Nibelungen_, 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 _Nibelungen_. {120} 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. + +This something is _style_, 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 _Pindarism_, 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:— + + The grave of March is this, and this the grave of Gwythyr; + Here is the grave of Gwgawn Gleddyfreidd; + But unknown is the grave of Arthur. + +That comes from the Welsh _Memorials of the Graves of the Warriors_, 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):— + + Afflictions sore long time I bore, + Physicians were in vain, + Till God did please Death should me seize + And ease me of my pain— + +if, I say, we compare the Welsh memorial lines with the English, which in +their _Gemeinheit_ of style are truly Germanic, we shall get a clear +sense of what that Celtic talent for style I have been speaking of is. + +Or take this epitaph of an Irish Celt, Angus the Culdee, whose _Féliré_, +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:— + + Angus in the assembly of Heaven, + Here are his tomb and his bed; + It is from hence he went to death, + In the Friday, to holy Heaven. + + It was in Cluain Eidhnech he was rear’d; + It was in Cluain Eidhnech he was buried; + In Cluain Eidhnech, of many crosses, + He first read his psalms. + +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:— + + Their Lord they will praise, + Their speech they will keep, + Their land they will lose, + Except wild Wales. + +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! + +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 _Book of Praise_; 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 _Golden Treasury_; but yet no +sound critic can doubt that, so far as poetry is concerned, while the +_Golden Treasury_ is a monument of a nation’s strength, the _Book of +Praise_ 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. + +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 _Imitation_, the _Dies Iræ_, the _Stabat Mater_—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. + +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. + +Its chord of penetrating passion and melancholy, again, its _Titanism_ 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 +_Ossian_, carried in the last century this vein like a flood of lava +through Europe. I am not going to criticise Macpherson’s _Ossian_ 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 _Ossian_ she may +have stolen from that _vetus et major Scotia_, 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 +_Ossian_ 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:— + +‘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.’ + +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 _Werther_. 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 _Prometheus_,—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 _Sehnsucht_ 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:— + + O my crutch! is it not autumn, when the fern is red, the water-flag + yellow? Have I not hated that which I love? + + 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? + + 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. + + 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. + + O my crutch! stand straight, thou wilt support me the better; it is + very long since I was Llywarch. + + Behold old age, which makes sport of me, from the hair of my head to + my teeth, to my eyes, which women loved. + + The four things I have all my life most hated fall upon me + together,—coughing and old age, sickness and sorrow. + + 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. + + How evil was the lot allotted to Llywarch, the night when he was + brought forth! sorrows without end, and no deliverance from his + burden. + +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? + + The fire which on my bosom preys + Is lone as some volcanic isle; + No torch is kindled at its blaze; + A funeral pile! + +Or, again:— + + Count o’er the joys thine hours have seen, + Count o’er thy days from anguish free, + And know, whatever thou hast been, + ’Tis something better not to be. + +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? + + . . . What though the field be lost? + All is not lost; the unconquerable will, + And study of revenge, immortal hate, + And courage never to submit or yield, + And what is else not to be overcome. + +There, surely, speaks a genius to whose composition the Celtic fibre was +not wholly a stranger! + +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:— + + How evil was the lot allotted to Llywarch, the night when he was + brought forth— + +after Byron’s:— + + Count o’er the joys thine hours have seen— + +take this of Southey’s, in answer to the question whether he would like +to have his youth over again:— + + Do I regret the past? + Would I live o’er again + The morning hours of life? + Nay, William, nay, not so! + Praise be to God who made me what I am, + Other I would not be. + +There we have the other side of our being; the Germanic goodness, +docility, and fidelity to nature, in place of the Celtic Titanism. + +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. {133} 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:— + +‘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.’ + +And this, which is perhaps less striking, is not less beautiful:— + +‘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.’ + +And here the landscape, up to this point so Greek in its clear beauty, is +suddenly magicalised by the romance touch:— + +‘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.’ + +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 +{136} 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. + +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:— + + As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night— + +to call up any number of instances. Latin poetry supplies plenty of +instances too; if we put this from Propertius’s _Hylas_:— + + . . . manus heroum . . . + Mollia composita litora fronde togit— + +side by side with the line of Theocritus by which it was suggested:— + + _λειμὼν yάρ σφιν ἔκειτο μέyας_, _στιβάδεσσιν ὄνειαρ_— + +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:— + + What little town by river or seashore, + Or mountain-built with quiet citadel, + Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn? + +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 +_Zueignung_, 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 _Wanderer_,—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:— + + What little town, by river or seashore— + +to his:— + + White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine, + Fast-fading violets cover’d up in leaves— + +or his:— + + . . . magic casements, opening on the foam + Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn— + +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. + +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:’— + + Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba— + +as his charming flower-gatherer, who— + + Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens + Narcissum et florem jungit bene olentis anethi— + +as his quinces and chestnuts:— + + . . . cana legam tenera lanugine mala + Castaneasque nuces . . . + +then, I think, we shall be disposed to say that in Shakspeare’s— + + I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, + Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, + Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, + With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine— + +it is mainly a Greek note which is struck. Then, again in his:— + + . . . look how the floor of heaven + Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold! + +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:— + + Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead, + By paved fountain or by rushy brook, + Or in the beached margent of the sea— + +or this, the last I will quote:— + + The moon shines bright. In such a night as this, + When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, + And they did make no noise, in such a night + Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls— + + . . . in such a night + Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew— + + . . . in such a night + _Stood Dido_, _with a willow in her hand_, + _Upon the wild sea-banks_, _and waved her love_ + _To come again to Carthage_. + +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. + +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? + + * * * * * + +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:— + + Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, + Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt— + +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. + +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 _Evil Tribute of +Nomenoë_, or in _Lord Nann and the Fairy_, 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:— + + ’Twas mirk, mirk night, and the water bright + Troubled and drumlie flowed— + +which is evidently Lowland-Scotchy; or as:— + + Foregad, but thou’rt an artful hand! + +which is English-stagey; or as:— + + To Gradlon’s daughter, bright of blee, + Her lover he whispered tenderly— + _Bethink thee_, _sweet Dahut_! _the key_! + +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. + +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. + +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. _Aliens in speech_, _in religion_, _in +blood_! 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 _Lectures_ 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. + +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 _Daily Telegraph_, 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. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{0a} See p. 28 of the following essay. [Starts with “It is not +difficult for the other side . . . ”—DP.] + +{0b} See particularly pp. 9, 10, 11, of the following essay. + +{4} 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 _detritus_; 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 _phonesis_ 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.’ + +{14} 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 +_phonesis_ 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 _Gramatica Celtica_. 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 _Vergleichende Grammatik_, 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.’ + +{25} Dr. O’Conor in his _Catalogue of the Stowe MSS._ (quoted by +O’Curry). + +{26} O’Curry. + +{29} Here, where Saturday should come, something is wanting in the +manuscript. + +{66} See _Les Scythes_, _les Ancêtres des Peuples Germaniques et +Slaves_, 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, _Meer-Umschlungon_, among the pre-Hellenic Greeks, just as the same +land is called Morea by the modern post-Hellenic or Romaic Greeks from +_more_, 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 _avia_ of Scandinavia, assuming that to be the true German word for +_water_, which, if it had come down to us in Gothic, would have been +_avi_, genitive _aujôs_, and not a mere Latinised termination. Scythian +is surely a negative rather than a positive term, much like our _Indian_, +or the _Turanian_ 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 _shoot_, _sceótan_, _skiutan_, Lithuanian +_szau-ti_. 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 _div_ whence Dêvas, Deus, &c., but the root +_tap_, in Latin _tep_ (of tepere, tepefacere), Slavonic _tepl_, _topl_ +(for _tep_ or _top_), in modern Persian _tâb_. _Thymele_ refers to the +hearth as the place of smoke (θύω, _thus_, _fumus_), but _familia_ +denotes household from _famulus_ for _fagmulus_, the root _fag_ being +equated with the Sansk. _bhaj_, _servira_. Lucan’s Hesus or Esus may +fairly be compared with the Welsh _Hu_ Gadarn by legitimate process, but +no letter-change can justify his connection with _Gaisos_, the spear, not +the sword, Virgil’s _gæsum_, A. S. _gár_, our verb to _gore_, retained in +its outer form in _gar_-fish. For _Theuthisks lege Thiudisks_, from +_thiuda_, _populus_; in old high German Diutisk, Diotisk, _popularis_, +_vulgaris_, the country vernacular as distinguished from the cultivated +Latin; hence the word _Dutch_, _Deutsch_. With our ancestors _theód_ +stood for nation generally and _getheóde_ 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 _tuath_, in ancient Celtic it must have been _teuta_, _touta_, of +which we actually have the adjective _toutius_ in the Gaulish inscription +of Nismes. In Oscan we have it as _turta_, _tuta_, its adjective being +handed down in Livy’s _meddix tuticus_, the mayor or chief magistrate of +the _tuta_. In the Umbrian inscriptions it is _tota_. In Lithuanian +_tauta_, the country opposed to the town, and in old Prussian _tauta_, +the country generally, _en Prusiskan tautan_, _im Land zu Preussen_.’ + +{68} Lord Strangford observes here:—‘The original forms of Gael should +be mentioned—Gaedil, Goidil: in modern Gaelic orthography Gaoidheal where +the _dh_ is not realised in pronunciation. There is nothing impossible +in the connection of the root of this with that of Scot, _if_ the _s_ of +the latter be merely prosthetic. But the whole thing is _in nubibus_, +and given as a guess only.’ + +{69} ‘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 _tangible_ form is shown to +have been Iverio. Pictet’s connection with Arya is quite baseless.’ + +{82} It is to be remembered that the above was written before the recent +war between Prussia and Austria. + +{84} The etymology is Monsieur Henri Martin’s, but Lord Strangford +says—‘Whatever _gai_ may be, it is assuredly not Celtic. Is there any +authority for this word _gair_, 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 _gavisus_. But Diez, +chief authority in Romanic matters, is content to accept Muratori’s +reference to an old High-German _gâhi_, modern _jähe_, sharp, quick, +sudden, brisk, and so to the sense of lively, animated, high in spirits.’ + +{85} Monsieur Henri Martin, whose chapters on the Celts, in his +_Histoire de France_, are full of information and interest. + +{97} The above is really a sentence taken from the _Cologne Gazette_. +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—_informe_, +_ingens_, _cui lumen ademptum_? 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 _King Alfred_ and the _Chronicle_. Ohthere’s _North Sea +Voyage_ and Wulfstan’s _Baltic Voyage_ 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.’ + +The mass of a stock must supply our data for judging the stock. But see, +moreover, what I have said at p. 100. + +{120} 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.’ + +Very likely Lord Strangford is right, but the proposition with which he +begins is at variance with what the text quoted by Zeuss alleges. + +{133} 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 _romantic +element_,—rhyme itself, all the weight of evidence tends to show, comes +into our poetry from the Celts. + +{136} 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; _hohe Pilze_, _wie goldne Glocken_, _wachsen klingend empor +am Fusse der Bäume_;’ and so on. Now that stroke of the _hohe Pilze_, +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 _hineinstudirt_ 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. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CELTIC LITERATURE*** + + +******* This file should be named 5159-0.txt or 5159-0.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. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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