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diff --git a/old/celt10.txt b/old/celt10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..365e4aa --- /dev/null +++ b/old/celt10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4380 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Celtic Literature, by Matthew Arnold +(#2 in our series by Matthew Arnold) + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Celtic Literature + +Author: Matthew Arnold + +Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5159] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on May 20, 2002] +[Most recently updated: May 20, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CELTIC LITERATURE *** + + + + +Transcribed from the 1891 Smith, Elder and Co. edition by David +Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + +CELTIC LITERATURE + + + + +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 mediaeval 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 he 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 Debats 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 aerial 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 Caesar! Blanc, rouge, rocher champ, eglise, +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 Caesar 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 Archaeology, 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 Archaeology, there +are a vast number of collections of Welsh manuscripts in London, and +in the libraries of the gentry of the principality.' The Myvyrian +Archaeology, 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 archaeology. 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 +Archaeologia 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 Archaeology 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 Felire 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 Villemarque 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-daemonic 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-daemonic enough, undoubtedly; especially when Davies +prints O Brithi, O Brithoi! in Hebrew characters, as being 'vestiges +of sacred hymns in the Phoenician language.' But then comes Mr. +Nash, and says that the poem is a middle-age composition, with +nothing Helio-daemonic 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 Villemarque,--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 Hiberniae, 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 archaeologists 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval, 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, Caesar'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 Caesar'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 mediaeval +literary period in each, and to which no other mediaeval 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 Caesar mentions. + +But perhaps the best way to get a full sense of the storied +antiquity, forming as it were the background to those mediaeval +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-mediaeval +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 Caesar. 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 +mediaeval personages; they belong to an older, pagan, mythological +world. The very first thing that strikes one, in reading the +Mabinogion, is how evidently the mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval 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,' ScandinAVIA, and in +'ey' for AldernEY, 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, [Greek], Deva, 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 thymele, +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 Amedee Thierry with +this title: Des Caracteres Physiologiques des Races Humaines +consideres 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 chretienne, his race fiere et timide, a l'exterieur +gauche et embarrassee. 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 delicatesse de sentiment qui caracterise 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'hote 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 architectonice 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 Baiae, 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 GurzenichSaale zu Ebren +der Abgeordneten Statt finden sollenden Bankette bereits vollstandig +getroffen worden waren, fand heute vormittag auf polizeiliche +Anordnung die Schliessung sammtlicher Zugange zum Gurzenich 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 Durer 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 +Durer and Rubens. And observe in what points our English pair +succeed, and in what they fall short. They fall short in +architectonice, 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 +'betise allemande,' they talk of the 'gaucherie anglaise;' while they +talk of the 'Allemand balourd,' they talk of the 'Anglais empetre;' +while they call the German 'niais,' they call the Englishman +'melancolique.' The difference between the epithets balourd and +empetre exactly gives the difference in character I wish to seize; +balourd means heavy and dull, empetre 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 betes en pasture - + + +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 Maeonides - + + +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 +Felire, 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 Irae, 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 Ruckert, 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:- + + +[Greek verse] - + + +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 +aerialness 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 mediaeval 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 Nomenoe, 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 Caesar, broadly +speaking, what the modern Romanic tongues are to Caesar'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 Provencal, 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 Ancetres des Peuples Germaniques et +Slaves, par F. G. Bergmann, professeur a la faculte 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 aujos, 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, sceotan, 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 [Greek] for the goddess +Vesta is not connected with the root div whence Devas, Deus, &c., but +the root tap, in Latin tep (of tepere, tepefacere), Slavonic tepl, +topl (for tep or top), in modern Persian tab. Thymele refers to the +hearth as the place of smoke ([Greek], 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 gaesum, A. S. gar, 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 +theod stood for nation generally and getheode 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 +Muller'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 gahi, modern jahe, 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 Einverstandniss mit +der Natur, besonders mit der Pflanzen--und Steinreich. Der Leser +fuhlt sich da wie in einem verzauberten Walde; er hort die +unterirdischen Quellen melodisch rauschen; wildfremde Wunderblumen +schauen ihn an mit ihren bunten schnsuchtigen Augen; unsichtbare +Lippen kussen seine Wangen mit neckender Zartlichkeit; hohe Pilze, +wie goldne Glocken, wachsen klingend empor am Fusse der Baume;' 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 celt10.txt or celt10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, celt11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, celt10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Celtic Literature + +Author: Matthew Arnold + +Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5159] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on May 20, 2002] +[Most recently updated: May 20, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII +</pre> +<p> +<a name="startoftext"></a> +Transcribed from the 1891 Smith, Elder and Co. edition by David Price, +email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CELTIC LITERATURE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +INTRODUCTION<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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 <i>Cornhill Magazine, </i>and are now +reprinted from thence. Again and again, in the course of them, +I have marked the very humble scope intended; which is, not to treat +any special branch of scientific Celtic studies (a task for which I +am quite incompetent), but to point out the many directions in which +the results of those studies offer matter of general interest, and to +insist on the benefit we may all derive from knowing the Celt and things +Celtic more thoroughly. It was impossible, however, to avoid touching +on certain points of ethnology and philology, which can be securely +handled only by those who have made these sciences the object of special +study. Here the mere literary critic must owe his whole safety +to his tact in choosing authorities to follow, and whatever he advances +must be understood as advanced with a sense of the insecurity which, +after all, attaches to such a mode of proceeding, and as put forward +provisionally, by way of hypothesis rather than of confident assertion.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Both Lord Strangford and others whose opinion I respect have said that +I am unjust in calling Mr. Nash, the acute and learned author of <i>Taliesin, +or the Bards and Druids of Britain, </i>a ‘Celt-hater.’ +‘He is a denouncer,’ says Lord Strangford in a note on this +expression, ‘of Celtic extravagance, that is all; he is an anti-Philocelt, +a very different thing from an anti-Celt, and quite indispensable in +scientific inquiry. As Philoceltism has hitherto, - hitherto, +remember, - meant nothing but uncritical acceptance and irrational admiration +of the beloved object’s sayings and doings, without reference +to truth one way or the other, it is surely in the interest of science +to support him in the main. In tracing the workings of old Celtic +leaven in poems which embody the Celtic soul of all time in a mediæval +form, I do not see that you come into any necessary opposition with +him, for your concern is with the spirit, his with the substance only.’ +I entirely agree with almost all which Lord Strangford here urges, and +indeed, so sincere is my respect for Mr. Nash’s critical discernment +and learning, and so unhesitating my recognition of the usefulness, +in many respects, of the work of demolition performed by him, that in +originally designating him as a Celt-hater, I hastened to add, as the +reader will see by referring to the passage, <a name="citation0a"></a><a href="#footnote0a">{0a}</a> +words of explanation and apology for so calling him. But I thought +then, and I think still, that Mr. Nash, in pursuing his work of demolition, +too much puts out of sight the positive and constructive performance +for which this work of demolition is to clear the ground. I thought +then, and I think still, that in this Celtic controversy, as in other +controversies, it is most desirable both to believe and to profess that +the work of construction is the fruitful and important work, and that +we are demolishing only to prepare for it. Mr. Nash’s scepticism +seems to me, - in the aspect in which his work, on the whole, shows +it, - too absolute, too stationary, too much without a future; and this +tends to make it, for the non-Celtic part of his readers, less fruitful +than it otherwise would be, and for his Celtic readers, harsh and repellent. +I have therefore suffered my remarks on Mr. Nash still to stand, though +with a little modification; but I hope he will read them by the light +of these explanations, and that he will believe my sense of esteem for +his work to be a thousand times stronger than my sense of difference +from it.<br> +<br> +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<br> +<br> +‘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.<br> +<br> +‘Your gathering acquires more interest every year. Let me +venture to say that you have to avoid two dangers in order to work all +the good which your friends could desire. You have to avoid the +danger of giving offence to practical men by retarding the spread of +the English language in the principality. I believe that to preserve +and honour the Welsh language and literature is quite compatible with +not thwarting or delaying for a single hour the introduction, so undeniably +useful, of a knowledge of English among all classes in Wales. +You have to avoid, again, the danger of alienating men of science by +a blind partial, and uncritical treatment of your national antiquities. +Mr. Stephens’s excellent book, <i>The Literature of the Cymry, +</i>shows how perfectly Welshmen can avoid this danger if they will.<br> +<br> +‘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.’<br> +<br> +Now certainly, in that letter, written to a Welshman and on the occasion +of a Welsh festival, I enlarged on the merits of the Celtic spirit and +of its works, rather than on their demerits. It would have been +offensive and inhuman to do otherwise. When an acquaintance asks +you to write his father’s epitaph, you do not generally seize +that opportunity for saying that his father was blind of one eye, and +had an unfortunate habit of not paying his tradesmen’s bills. +But the weak side of Celtism and of its Celtic glorifiers, the danger +against which they have to guard, is clearly indicated in that letter; +and in the remarks reprinted in this volume, - remarks which were the +original cause of Mr. Owen’s writing to me, and must have been +fully present to his mind when he read my letter, - the shortcomings +both of the Celtic race, and of the Celtic students of its literature +and antiquities, are unreservedly marked, and, so far as is necessary, +blamed. <a name="citation0b"></a><a href="#footnote0b">{0b}</a> +It was, indeed, not my purpose to make blame the chief part of what +I said; for the Celts, like other people, are to be meliorated rather +by developing their gifts than by chastising their defects. The +wise man, says Spinoza admirably, ‘<i>de humana impotentia non +nisi parce loqui curabit, at largiter de humana virtute seupotentia</i>.’ +But so far as condemnation of Celtic failure was needful towards preparing +the way for the growth of Celtic virtue, I used condemnation.<br> +<br> +The <i>Times</i>, however, prefers a shorter and sharper method of dealing +with the Celts, and in a couple of leading articles, having the Chester +Eisteddfod and my letter to Mr. Hugh Owen for their text, it developed +with great frankness, and in its usual forcible style, its own views +for the amelioration of Wales and its people. <i>Cease to do evil, +learn to do good, </i>was the upshot of its exhortations to the Welsh; +by <i>evil, </i>the <i>Times </i>understanding all things Celtic, and +by <i>good, </i>all things English. ‘The Welsh language +is the curse of Wales. Its prevalence, and the ignorance of English +have excluded, and even now exclude the Welsh people from the civilisation +of their English neighbours. An Eisteddfod is one of the most +mischievous and selfish pieces of sentimentalism which could possibly +be perpetrated. It is simply a foolish interference with the natural +progress of civilisation and prosperity. If it is desirable that +the Welsh should talk English, it is monstrous folly to encourage them +in a loving fondness for their old language. Not only the energy +and power, but the intelligence and music of Europe have come mainly +from Teutonic sources, and this glorification of everything Celtic, +if it were not pedantry, would be sheer ignorance. The sooner +all Welsh specialities disappear from the face of the earth the better.’<br> +<br> +And I need hardly say, that I myself, as so often happens to me at the +hands of my own countrymen, was cruelly judged by the <i>Times, </i>and +most severely treated. What I said to Mr. Owen about the spread +of the English language in Wales being quite compatible with preserving +and honouring the Welsh language and literature, was tersely set down +as ‘arrant nonsense,’ and I was characterised as ‘a +sentimentalist who talks nonsense about the children of Taliesin and +Ossian, and whose dainty taste requires something more flimsy than the +strong sense and sturdy morality of his fellow Englishmen.’<br> +<br> +As I said before, I am unhappily inured to having these harsh interpretations +put by my fellow Englishmen upon what I write, and I no longer cry out +about it. And then, too, I have made a study of the Corinthian +or leading article style, and know its exigencies, and that they are +no more to be quarrelled with than the law of gravitation. So, +for my part, when I read these asperities of the <i>Times, </i>my mind +did not dwell very much on my own concern in them; but what I said to +myself, as I put the newspaper down, was this: <i>‘Behold England’s +difficulty in governing Ireland</i>!’<br> +<br> +I pass by the dauntless assumption that the agricultural peasant whom +we in England, without Eisteddfods, succeed in developing, is so much +finer a product of civilisation than the Welsh peasant, retarded by +these ‘pieces of sentimentalism.’ I will be content +to suppose that our ‘strong sense and sturdy morality’ are +as admirable and as universal as the <i>Times </i>pleases. But +even supposing this, I will ask did any one ever hear of strong sense +and sturdy morality being thrust down other people’s throats in +this fashion? Might not these divine English gifts, and the English +language in which they are preached, have a better chance of making +their way among the poor Celtic heathen, if the English apostle delivered +his message a little more agreeably? There is nothing like love +and admiration for bringing people to a likeness with what they love +and admire; but the Englishman seems never to dream of employing these +influences upon a race he wants to fuse with himself. He employs +simply material interests for his work of fusion; and, beyond these, +nothing except scorn and rebuke. Accordingly there is no vital +union between him and the races he has annexed; and while France can +truly boast of her ‘magnificent unity,’ a unity of spirit +no less than of name between all the people who compose her, in England +the Englishman proper is in union of spirit with no one except other +Englishmen proper like himself. His Welsh and Irish fellow-citizens +are hardly more amalgamated with him now than they were when Wales and +Ireland were first conquered, and the true unity of even these small +islands has yet to he achieved. When these papers of mine on the +Celtic genius and literature first appeared in the <i>Cornhill Magazine, +</i>they brought me, as was natural, many communications from Welshmen +and Irishmen having an interest in the subject; and one could not but +be painfully struck, in reading these communications, to see how profound +a feeling of aversion and severance from the English they in general +manifested. Who can be surprised at it, when he observes the strain +of the <i>Times </i>in the articles just quoted, and remembers that +this is the characteristic strain of the Englishman in commenting on +whatsoever is not himself? And then, with our boundless faith +in machinery, we English expect the Welshman as a matter of course to +grow attached to us, because we invite him to do business with us, and +let him hold any number of public meetings and publish all the newspapers +he likes! When shall we learn, that what attaches people to us +is the spirit we are of, and not the machinery we employ?<br> +<br> +Last year there was a project of holding a Breton Eisteddfod at Quimper +in Brittany, and the French Home Secretary, whether wishing to protect +the magnificent unity of France from inroads of Bretonism, or fearing +lest the design should be used in furtherance of Legitimist intrigues, +or from whatever motive, issued an order which prohibited the meeting. +If Mr. Walpole had issued an order prohibiting the Chester Eisteddfod, +all the Englishmen from Cornwall to John o’ Groat’s House +would have rushed to the rescue; and our strong sense and sturdy morality +would never have stopped gnashing their teeth and rending their garments +till the prohibition was rescinded. What a pity our strong sense +and sturdy morality fail to perceive that words like those of the <i>Times +</i>create a far keener sense of estrangement and dislike than acts +like those of the French Minister! Acts like those of the French +Minister are attributed to reasons of State, and the Government is held +blameable for them, not the French people. Articles like those +of the <i>Times </i>are attributed to the want of sympathy and of sweetness +of disposition in the English nature, and the whole English people gets +the blame of them. And deservedly; for from some such ground of +want of sympathy and sweetness in the English nature, do articles like +those of the <i>Times </i>come, and to some such ground do they make +appeal. The sympathetic and social virtues of the French nature, +on the other hand, actually repair the breaches made by oppressive deeds +of the Government, and create, among populations joined with France +as the Welsh and Irish are joined with England, a sense of liking and +attachment towards the French people. The French Government may +discourage the German language in Alsace and prohibit Eisteddfods in +Brittany; but the <i>Journal des Débats </i>never treats German +music and poetry as mischievous lumber, nor tells the Bretons that the +sooner all Breton specialities disappear from the face of the earth +the better. Accordingly, the Bretons and Alsatians have come to +feel themselves a part of France, and to feel pride in bearing the French +name; while the Welsh and Irish obstinately refuse to amalgamate with +us, and will not admire the Englishman as he admires himself, however +much the <i>Times </i>may scold them and rate them, and assure them +there is nobody on earth so admirable.<br> +<br> +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!’<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE STUDY OF CELTIC LITERATURE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +‘They went forth to the war, but they always fell.’<br> +OSSIAN<br> +<br> +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, <i>the +bloody city, </i>where every stone has its story; there, opposite its +decaying rival, Conway Castle, is Diganwy, not decaying but long since +utterly decayed, some crumbling foundations on a crag top and nothing +more; Diganwy, where Mael-gwyn shut up Elphin, and where Taliesin came +to free him. Below, in a fold of the hill, is Llan-rhos, the church +of the marsh, where the same Mael-gwyn, a British prince of real history, +a bold and licentious chief, the original, it is said, of Arthur’s +Lancelot, shut himself up in the church to avoid the Yellow Plague, +and peeped out through a hole in the door, and saw the monster and died. +Behind among the woods, is Gloddaeth, <i>the place of feasting, </i>where +the bards were entertained; and farther away, up the valley of the Conway +towards Llanrwst, is the Lake of Ceirio-nydd and Taliesin’s grave. +Or, again, looking seawards and Anglesey-wards you have Pen-mon, Seiriol’s +isle and priory, where Mael-gwyn lies buried; you have the <i>Sands +of Lamentation </i>and Llys Helig, <i>Heilig’s Mansion, </i>a +mansion under the waves, a sea-buried palace and realm. <i>Hac +ibat Simois; hic est Sigeia tellus.<br> +<br> +</i>As I walked up and down, looking at the waves as they washed this +Sigeian land which has never had its Homer, and listening with curiosity +to the strange, unfamiliar speech of its old possessors’ obscure +descendants, - bathing people, vegetable-sellers, and donkey-boys, who +were all about me, suddenly I heard, through the stream of unknown Welsh, +words, not English, indeed, but still familiar. They came from +a French nursery-maid, with some children. Profoundly ignorant +of her relationship, this Gaulish Celt moved among her British cousins, +speaking her polite neo-Latin tongue, and full of compassionate contempt, +probably, for the Welsh barbarians and their jargon. What a revolution +was here! How had the star of this daughter of Gomer waxed, while +the star of these Cymry, his sons, had waned! What a difference +of fortune in the two, since the days when, speaking the same language, +they left their common dwelling-place in the heart of Asia; since the +Cimmerians of the Euxine came in upon their western kinsmen, the sons +of the giant Galates; since the sisters, Gaul and Britain, cut the mistletoe +in their forests, and saw the coming of Cæsar! <i>Blanc, +rouge, rocher champ, église, seigneur</i>, - these words, by +which the Gallo-Roman Celt now names white, and red, and rock, and field, +and church, and lord, are no part of the speech of his true ancestors, +they are words he has learnt; but since he learned them they have had +a worldwide success, and we all teach them to our children, and armies +speaking them have domineered in every city of that Germany by which +the British Celt was broken, and in the train of these armies, Saxon +auxiliaries, a humbled contingent, have been fain to follow; the poor +Welshman still says, in the genuine tongue of his ancestors, <a name="citation4"></a><a href="#footnote4">{4}</a> +<i>gwyn</i>, <i>goch</i>, <i>craig</i>,<i> maes, llan, arglwydd</i>; +but his land is a province, and his history petty, and his Saxon subduers +scout his speech as an obstacle to civilisation; and the echo of all +its kindred in other lands is growing every day fainter and more feeble; +gone in Cornwall, going in Brittany and the Scotch Highlands, going, +too, in Ireland; and there, above all, the badge of the beaten race, +the property of the vanquished.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +I believe it is admitted, even by the admirers of Eisteddfods in general, +that this particular Eisteddfod was not a success. Llandudno, +it is said, was not the right place for it. Held in Conway Castle, +as a few years ago it was, and its spectators, - an enthusiastic multitude, +- filling the grand old ruin, I can imagine it a most impressive and +interesting sight, even to a stranger labouring under the terrible disadvantage +of being ignorant of the Welsh language. But even seen as I saw +it at Llandudno, it had the power to set one thinking. An Eisteddfod +is, no doubt, a kind of Olympic meeting; and that the common people +of Wales should care for such a thing, shows something Greek in them, +something spiritual, something humane, something (I am afraid one must +add) which in the English common people is not to be found. This +line of reflection has been followed by the accomplished Bishop of St. +David’s, and by the <i>Saturday Review, </i>it is just, it is +fruitful, and those who pursued it merit our best thanks. But, +from peculiar circumstances, the Llandudno meeting was, as I have said, +such as not at all to suggest ideas of Olympia, and of a multitude touched +by the divine flame, and hanging on the lips of Pindar. It rather +suggested the triumph of the prosaic, practical Saxon, and the approaching +extinction of an enthusiasm which he derides as factitious, a literature +which he disdains as trash, a language which he detests as a nuisance.<br> +<br> +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;<i> </i>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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +So far, I go along with the stream of my brother Saxons; but here, I +imagine, I part company with them. They will have nothing to do +with the Welsh language and literature on any terms; they would gladly +make a clean sweep of it from the face of the earth. I, on certain +terms, wish to make a great deal more of it than is made now; and I +regard the Welsh literature, - or rather, dropping the distinction between +Welsh and Irish, Gaels and Cymris, let me say Celtic literature, - as +an object of very great interest. My brother Saxons have, as is +well known, a terrible way with them of wanting to improve everything +but themselves off the face of the earth; I have no such passion for +finding nothing but myself everywhere; I like variety to exist and to +show itself to me, and I would not for the world have the lineaments +of the Celtic genius lost. But I know my brother Saxons, I know +their strength, and I know that the Celtic genius will make nothing +of trying to set up barriers against them in the world of fact and brute +force, of trying to hold its own against them as a political and social +counter-power, as the soul of a hostile nationality. To me there +is something mournful (and at this moment, when one sees what is going +on in Ireland, how well may one say so!) in hearing a Welshman or an +Irishman make pretensions, - natural pretensions, I admit, but how hopelessly +vain! - to such a rival self-establishment; there is something mournful +in hearing an Englishman scout them. Strength! alas, it is not +strength, strength in the material world, which is wanting to us Saxons; +we have plenty of strength for swallowing up and absorbing as much as +we choose; there is nothing to hinder us from effacing the last poor +material remains of that Celtic power which once was everywhere, but +has long since, in the race of civilisation, fallen out of sight. +We may threaten them with extinction if we will, and may almost say +in so threatening them, like Cæsar in threatening with death the +tribune Metellus who closed the treasury doors against him: ‘And +when I threaten this, young man, to threaten it is more trouble to me +than to do it.’ It is not in the outward and visible world +of material life, that the Celtic genius of Wales or Ireland can at +this day hope to count for much; it is in the inward world of thought +and science. What it <i>has </i>been, what it <i>has </i>done, +let it ask us to attend to that, as a matter of science and history; +not to what it will be or will do, as a matter of modern politics. +It cannot count appreciably now as a material power; but, perhaps, if +it can get itself thoroughly known as an object of science, it may count +for a good deal, - far more than we Saxons, most of us, imagine, - as +a spiritual power.<br> +<br> +The bent of our time is towards science, towards knowing things as they +are; so the Celt’s claims towards having his genius and its works +fairly treated, as objects of scientific investigation, the Saxon can +hardly reject, when these claims are urged simply on their own merits, +and are not mixed up with extraneous pretensions which jeopardise them. +What the French call the <i>science des origines</i>, the science of +origins, - a science which is at the bottom of all real knowledge of +the actual world, and which is every day growing in interest and importance +- is very incomplete without a thorough critical account of the Celts, +and their genius, language, and literature. This science has still +great progress to make, but its progress, made even within the recollection +of those of us who are in middle life, has already affected our common +notions about the Celtic race; and this change, too, shows how science, +the knowing things as they are, may even have salutary practical consequences. +I remember, when I was young, I was taught to think of Celt as separated +by an impassable gulf from Teuton; <a name="citation14"></a><a href="#footnote14">{14}</a> +my father, in particular, was never weary of contrasting them; he insisted +much oftener on the separation between us and them than on the separation +between us and any other race in the world; in the same way Lord Lyndhurst, +in words long famous, called the Irish ‘aliens in speech, in religion, +in blood.’ This naturally created a profound sense of estrangement; +it doubled the estrangement which political and religious differences +already made between us and the Irish: it seemed to make this estrangement +immense, incurable, fatal. It begot a strange reluctance, as any +one may see by reading the preface to the great text-book for Welsh +poetry, the <i>Myvyrian Archæology, </i>published at the beginning +of this century, to further, - nay, allow, - even among quiet, peaceable +people like the Welsh, the publication of the documents of their ancient +literature, the monuments of the Cymric genius; such was the sense of +repulsion, the sense of incompatibilty, of radical antagonism, making +it seem dangerous to us to let such opposites to ourselves have speech +and utterance. Certainly the Jew, - the Jew of ancient times, +at least, - then seemed a thousand degrees nearer than the Celt to us. +Puritanism had so assimilated Bible ideas and phraseology; names like +Ebenezer, and notions like that of hewing Agag in pieces, came so natural +to us, that the sense of affinity between the Teutonic and the Hebrew +nature was quite strong; a steady, middleclass Anglo-Saxon much more +imagined himself Ehud’s cousin than Ossian’s. But +meanwhile, the pregnant and striking ideas of the ethnologists about +the true natural grouping of the human race, the doctrine of a great +Indo-European unity, comprising Hindoos, Persians, Greeks, Latins, Celts, +Teutons, Slavonians, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, of a Semitic +unity and of a Mongolian unity, separated by profound distinguishing +marks from the Indo-European unity and from one another, was slowly +acquiring consistency and popularising itself. So strong and real +could the sense of sympathy or antipathy, grounded upon real identity +or diversity in race, grow in men of culture, that we read of a genuine +Teuton, - Wilhelm von Humboldt - finding, even in the sphere of religion, +that sphere where the might of Semitism has been so overpowering, the +food which most truly suited his spirit in the productions not of the +alien Semitic genius, but of the genius of Greece or India, the Teutons +born kinsfolk of the common Indo-European family. ‘Towards +Semitism he felt himself,’ we read, ‘far less drawn;’ +he had the consciousness of a certain antipathy in the depths of his +nature to this, and to its ‘absorbing, tyrannous, terrorist religion,’ +as to the opener, more flexible Indo-European genius, this religion +appeared. ‘The mere workings of the old man in him!’ +Semitism will readily reply; and though one can hardly admit this short +and easy method of settling the matter, it must be owned that Humboldt’s +is an extreme case of Indo-Europeanism, useful as letting us see what +may be the power of race and primitive constitution, but not likely, +in the spiritual sphere, to have many companion cases equalling it. +Still, even in this sphere, the tendency is in Humboldt’s direction; +the modern spirit tends more and more to establish a sense of native +diversity between our European bent and the Semitic and to eliminate, +even in our religion, certain elements as purely and excessively Semitic, +and therefore, in right, not combinable with our European nature, not +assimilable by it. This tendency is now quite visible even among +ourselves, and even, as I have said, within the great sphere of the +Semitic genius, the sphere of religion; and for its justification this +tendency appeals to science, the science of origins; it appeals to this +science as teaching us which way our natural affinities and repulsions +lie. It appeals to this science, and in part it comes from it; +it is, in considerable part, an indirect practical result from it.<br> +<br> +In the sphere of politics, too, there has, in the same way, appeared +an indirect practical result from this science; the sense of antipathy +to the Irish people, of radical estrangement from them, has visibly +abated amongst all the better part of us; the remorse for past ill-treatment +of them, the wish to make amends, to do them justice, to fairly unite, +if possible, in one people with them, has visibly increased; hardly +a book on Ireland is now published, hardly a debate on Ireland now passes +in Parliament, without this appearing. Fanciful as the notion +may at first seem, I am inclined to think that the march of science, +- science insisting that there is no such original chasm between the +Celt and the Saxon as we once popularly imagined, that they are not +truly, what Lord Lyndhurst called them, <i>aliens in blood </i>from +us, that they are our brothers in the great Indo-European family, - +has had a share, an appreciable share, in producing this changed state +of feeling. No doubt, the release from alarm and struggle, the +sense of firm possession, solid security, and overwhelming power; no +doubt these, allowing and encouraging humane feelings to spring up in +us, have done much; no doubt a state of fear and danger, Ireland in +hostile conflict with us, our union violently disturbed, might, while +it drove back all humane feelings, make also the old sense of utter +estrangement revive. Nevertheless, so long as such a malignant +revolution of events does not actually come about, so long the new sense +of kinship and kindliness lives, works, and gathers strength; and the +longer it so lives and works, the more it makes any such malignant revolution +improbable. And this new, reconciling sense has, I say, its roots +in science.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +I.<br> +<br> +<br> +To know the Celtic case thoroughly, one must know the Celtic people; +and to know them, one must know that by which a people best express +themselves, - their literature. Few of us have any notion what +a mass of Celtic literature is really yet extant and accessible. +One constantly finds even very accomplished people, who fancy that the +remains of Welsh and Irish literature are as inconsiderable by their +volume, as, in their opinion, they are by their intrinsic merit; that +these remains consist of a few prose stories, in great part borrowed +from the literature of nations more civilised than the Welsh or Irish +nation, and of some unintelligible poetry. As to Welsh literature, +they have heard, perhaps, of the <i>Black Book of Caermarthen, </i>or +of the <i>Red Book of Hergest, </i>and they imagine that one or two +famous manuscript books like these contain the whole matter. They +have no notion that, in real truth, to quote the words of one who is +no friend to the high pretensions of Welsh literature, but their most +formidable impugner, Mr. Nash:- ‘The Myvyrian manuscripts alone, +now deposited in the British Museum, amount to 47 volumes of poetry, +of various sizes, containing about 4,700 pieces of poetry, in 16,000 +pages, besides about 2,000 englynion or epigrammatic stanzas. +There are also, in the same collection, 53 volumes of prose, in about +15,300 pages, containing great many curious documents on various subjects. +Besides these, which were purchased of the widow of the celebrated Owen +Jones, the editor of the <i>Myvyrian Archæology</i>, there are +a vast number of collections of Welsh manuscripts in London, and in +the libraries of the gentry of the principality.’ The <i>Myvyrian +Archæology</i>, here spoken of by Mr. Nash, I have already mentioned; +he calls its editor, Owen Jones, celebrated; he is not so celebrated +but that he claims a word, in passing, from a professor of poetry. +He was a Denbighshire <i>statesman</i>, as we say in the north, born +before the middle of last century, in that vale of Myvyr, which has +given its name to his archæology. From his childhood he +had that passion for the old treasures of his Country’s literature, +which to this day, as I have said, in the common people of Wales is +so remarkable; these treasures were unprinted, scattered, difficult +of access, jealously guarded. ‘More than once,’ says +Edward Lhuyd, who in his <i>Archæologia Britannica</i>, brought +out by him in 1707, would gladly have given them to the world, ‘more +than once I had a promise from the owner, and the promise was afterwards +retracted at the instigation of certain persons, pseudo-politicians, +as I think, rather than men of letters.’ So Owen Jones went +up, a young man of nineteen, to London, and got employment in a furrier’s +shop in Thames Street; for forty years, with a single object in view, +he worked at his business; and at the end of that time his object was +won. He had risen in his employment till the business had become +his own, and he was now a man of considerable means; but those means +had been sought by him for one purpose only, the purpose of his life, +the dream of his youth, - the giving permanence and publicity to the +treasures of his national literature. Gradually he got manuscript +after manuscript transcribed, and at last, in 1801, he jointly with +two friends brought out in three large volumes, printed in double columns, +his <i>Myvyrian Archæology of Wales</i>. The book is full +of imperfections, it presented itself to a public which could not judge +of its importance, and it brought upon its author, in his lifetime, +more attack than honour. He died not long afterwards, and now +he lies buried in Allhallows Church, in London, with his tomb turned +towards the east, away from the green vale of Clwyd and the mountains +of his native Wales; but his book is the great repertory of the literature +of his nation, the comparative study of languages and literatures gains +every day more followers, and no one of these followers, at home or +abroad, touches Welsh literature without paying homage to the Denbighshire +peasant’s name; if the bard’s glory and his own are still +matter of moment to him, - <i>si quid mentem mortalia tangunt</i>, - +he may be satisfied.<br> +<br> +Even the printed stock of early Welsh literature is, therefore, considerable, +and the manuscript stock of it is very great indeed. Of Irish +literature, the stock, printed and manuscript, is truly vast; the work +of cataloguing and describing this has been admirably performed by another +remarkable man, who died only the other day, Mr. Eugene O’Curry. +Obscure Scaliger of a despised literature, he deserves some weightier +voice to praise him than the voice of an unlearned bellettristic trifler +like me; he belongs to the race of the giants in literary research and +industry, - a race now almost extinct. Without a literary education, +and impeded too, it appears, by much trouble of mind and infirmity of +body, he has accomplished such a thorough work of classification and +description for the chaotic mass of Irish literature, that the student +has now half his labour saved, and needs only to use his materials as +Eugene O’Curry hands them to him. It was as a professor +in the Catholic University in Dublin that O’Curry gave the lectures +in which he has done the student this service; it is touching to find +that these lectures, a splendid tribute of devotion to the Celtic cause, +had no hearer more attentive, more sympathising, than a man, himself, +too, the champion of a cause more interesting than prosperous, - one +of those causes which please noble spirits, but do not please destiny, +which have Cato’s adherence, but not Heaven’s, - Dr. Newman. +Eugene O’Curry, in these lectures of his, taking as his standard +the quarto page of Dr. O’Donovan’s edition of the <i>Annals +of the Four Masters </i>(and this printed monument of one branch of +Irish literature occupies by itself, let me say in passing, seven large +quarto volumes, containing 4,215 pages of closely printed matter), Eugene +O’Curry says, that the great vellum manuscript books belonging +to Trinity College, Dublin, and to the Royal Irish Academy, - books +with fascinating titles, the <i>Book of the Dun Cow, </i>the <i>Book +of Leinster, </i>the <i>Book of Ballymote, </i>the <i>Speckled Book, +</i>the <i>Book of Lecain, </i>the <i>Yellow Book of Lecain</i>, - have, +between them, matter enough to fill 11,400 of these pages; the other +vellum manuscripts in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, have matter +enough to fill 8,200 pages more; and the paper manuscripts of Trinity +College, and the Royal Irish Academy together, would fill, he says, +30,000 such pages more. The ancient laws of Ireland, the so-called +Brehon laws, which a commission is now publishing, were not as yet completely +transcribed when O’Curry wrote; but what had even then been transcribed +was sufficient, he says, to fill nearly 8,000 of Dr. O’Donovan’s +pages. Here are, at any rate, materials enough with a vengeance. +These materials fall, of course, into several divisions. The most +literary of these divisions, the <i>Tales, </i>consisting of <i>Historic +Tales </i>and <i>Imaginative Tales, </i>distributes the contents of +its <i>Historic Tales </i>as follows:- Battles, voyages, sieges, tragedies, +cow-spoils, courtships, adventures, land-expeditions, sea-expeditions, +banquets, elopements, loves, lake-irruptions, colonisations, visions. +Of what a treasure-house of resources for the history of Celtic life +and the Celtic genius does that bare list, even by itself, call up the +image! The <i>Annals of the Four Masters</i> give ‘the years +of foundations and destructions of churches and castles, the obituaries +of remarkable persons, the inaugurations of kings, the battles of chiefs, +the contests of clans, the ages of bards, abbots, bishops, &c.’ +<a name="citation25"></a><a href="#footnote25">{25}</a> Through +other divisions of this mass of materials, - the books of pedigrees +and genealogies, the martyrologies and festologies, such as the <i>Féliré +of Angus the Culdee</i>, the topographical tracts, such as the <i>Dinnsenchas</i>, +- we touch ‘the most ancient traditions of the Irish, traditions +which were committed to writing at a period when the ancient customs +of the people were unbroken.’ We touch ‘the early +history of Ireland, civil and ecclesiastical.’ We get ‘the +origin and history of the countless monuments of Ireland, of the ruined +church and tower, the sculptured cross, the holy well, and the commemorative +name of almost every townland and parish in the whole island.’ +We get, in short, ‘the most detailed information upon almost every +part of ancient Gaelic life, a vast quantity of valuable details of +life and manners.’ <a name="citation26"></a><a href="#footnote26">{26}</a><br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +We want to know what all this mass of documents really tells us about +the Celt. But the mode of dealing with these documents, and with +the whole question of Celtic antiquity, has hitherto been most unsatisfactory. +Those who have dealt with them, have gone to work, in general, either +as warm Celt-lovers or as warm Celt-haters, and not as disinterested +students of an important matter of science. One party seems to +set out with the determination to find everything in Celtism and its +remains; the other, with the determination to find nothing in them. +A simple seeker for truth has a hard time between the two. An +illustration or so will make clear what I mean. First let us take +the Celt-lovers, who, though they engage one’s sympathies more +than the Celt-haters, yet, inasmuch as assertion is more dangerous than +denial, show their weaknesses in a more signal way. A very learned +man, the Rev. Edward Davies, published in the early part of this century +two important books on Celtic antiquity. The second of these books, +<i>The Mythology and Rites of the British Druids, </i>contains, with +much other interesting matter, the charming story of Taliesin. +Bryant’s book on mythology was then in vogue, and Bryant, in the +fantastical manner so common in those days, found in Greek mythology +what he called an arkite idolatry, pointing to Noah’s deluge and +the ark. Davies, wishing to give dignity to his Celtic mythology, +determines to find the arkite idolatry there too, and the style in which +he proceeds to do this affords a good specimen of the extravagance which +has caused Celtic antiquity to be looked upon with so much suspicion. +The story of Taliesin begins thus:-<br> +<br> +‘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.’<br> +<br> +Nothing could well be simpler; but what Davies finds in this simple +opening of Taliesin’s story is prodigious:-<br> +<br> +‘Let us take a brief view of the proprietor of this estate. +Tegid Voel - <i>bald serenity</i> - presents itself at once to our fancy. +The painter would find no embarrassment in sketching the portrait of +this sedate venerable personage, whose crown is partly stripped of its +hoary honours. But of all the gods of antiquity, none could with +propriety sit for this picture excepting Saturn, the acknowledged representative +of Noah, and the husband of Rhea, which was but another name for Ceres, +the genius of the ark.’<br> +<br> +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.’<br> +<br> +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.’<br> +<br> +It is not difficult for the other side, the Celt-haters, to get a triumph +over such adversaries as these. Perhaps I ought to ask pardon +of Mr. Nash, whose <i>Taliesin </i>it is impossible to read without +profit and instruction, for classing him among the Celt-haters; his +determined scepticism about Welsh antiquity seems to me, however, to +betray a preconceived hostility, a bias taken beforehand, as unmistakable +as Mr. Davies’s prepossessions. But Mr. Nash is often very +happy in demolishing, for really the Celt-lovers seem often to try to +lay themselves open, and to invite demolition. Full of his notions +about an arkite idolatry and a Helio-dæmonic worship, Edward Davies +gives this translation of an old Welsh poem, entitled <i>The Panegyric</i> +<i>of Lludd the Great</i>:-<br> +<br> +‘A song of dark import was composed by the distinguished Ogdoad, +who assembled on the day of the moon, and went in open procession. +On the day of Mars they allotted wrath to their adversaries; and on +the day of Mercury they enjoyed their full pomp; on the day of Jove +they were delivered from the detested usurpers; on the day of Venus, +the day of the great influx, they swam in the blood of men; <a name="citation29"></a><a href="#footnote29">{29}</a> +on the day of the Sun there truly assemble five ships and five hundred +of those who make supplication: O Brithi, O Brithoi! O son of +the compacted wood, the shock overtakes me; we all attend on Adonai, +on the area of Pwmpai.’<br> +<br> +That looks Helio-dæmonic enough, undoubtedly; especially when +Davies prints <i>O Brithi, O Brithoi</i>! in Hebrew characters, as being +‘vestiges of sacred hymns in the Phœnician language.’ +But then comes Mr. Nash, and says that the poem is a middle-age composition, +with nothing Helio-dæmonic about it; that it is meant to ridicule +the monks; and that <i>O Brithi, O Brithoi</i>! is a mere piece of unintelligible +jargon in mockery of the chants used by the monks at prayers; and he +gives this counter-translation of the poem:-<br> +<br> +‘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.’<br> +<br> +As one reads Mr. Nash’s explanation and translation after Edward +Davies’s, one feels that a flood of the broad daylight of common-sense +has been suddenly shed over the <i>Panegyric on Lludd the Great</i>, +and one is very grateful to Mr. Nash.<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +‘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.’<br> +<br> +One is not very clear what all this means, but it has, at any rate, +a solemn air about it, which prepares one for the development of its +first-named personage, the ape, into the mystical ape of the sanctuary. +The cow, too, - says another famous Celt-lover, Dr. Owen, the learned +author of the Welsh Dictionary, - the cow (<i>henfon</i>) is the cow +of transmigration; and this also sounds natural enough. But Mr. +Nash, who has a keen eye for the piecing which frequently happens in +these old fragments, has observed that just here, where the ape of the +sanctuary and the cow of transmigration make their appearance, there +seems to come a cluster of adages, popular sayings; and he at once remembers +an adage preserved with the word <i>henfon </i>in it, where, as he justly +says, ‘the cow of transmigration cannot very well have place.’ +This adage, rendered literally in English, is: ‘Whoso owns the +old cow, let him go at her tail;’ and the meaning of it, as a +popular saying, is clear and simple enough. With this clue, Mr. +Nash examines the whole passage, suggests that <i>heb eppa</i>, ‘without +the ape,’ with which Mr. Herbert begins, in truth belongs to something +going before and is to be translated somewhat differently; and, in short, +that what we really have here is simply these three adages one after +another: ‘The first share is the full one. Politeness is +natural, says the ape. Without the cow-stall there would be no +dung-heap.’ And one can hardly doubt that Mr. Nash is quite +right.<br> +<br> +Even friends of the Celt, who are perfectly incapable of extravagances +of this sort, fall too often into a loose mode of criticism concerning +him and the documents of his history, which is unsatisfactory in itself, +and also gives an advantage to his many enemies. One of the best +and most delightful friends he has ever had, - M. de la Villemarqué, +- has seen clearly enough that often the alleged antiquity of his documents +cannot be proved, that it can be even disproved, and that he must rely +on other supports than this to establish what he wants; yet one finds +him saying: ‘I open the collection of Welsh bards from the sixth +to the tenth century. Taliesin, one of the oldest of them,’ +. . . and so on. But his adversaries deny that we have really +any such thing as a ‘collection of Welsh bards from the sixth +to the tenth century,’ or that a ‘Taliesin, one of the oldest +of them,’ exists to be quoted in defence of any thesis. +Sharon Turner, again, whose <i>Vindication of the Ancient British Poems +</i>was prompted, it seems to me, by a critical instinct at bottom sound, +is weak and uncritical in details like this: ‘The strange poem +of Taliesin, called the <i>Spoils of Annwn</i>, implies the existence +(in the sixth century, he means) of mythological tales about Arthur; +and the frequent allusion of the old Welsh bards to the persons and +incidents which we find in the <i>Mabinogion</i>, are further proofs +that there must have been such stories in circulation amongst the Welsh.’ +But the critic has to show, against his adversaries, that the <i>Spoils +of Annwn</i> is a real poem of the sixth century, with a real sixth-century +poet called Taliesin for its author, before he can use it to prove what +Sharon Turner there wishes to prove; and, in like manner, the high antiquity +of persons and incidents that are found in the manuscripts of the <i>Mabinogion</i>, +- manuscripts written, like the famous <i>Red Book of Hergest</i>, in +the library of Jesus College at Oxford, in the fourteenth and fifteenth +centuries, - is not proved by allusions of the old Welsh bards, until +(which is just the question at issue) the pieces containing these allusions +are proved themselves to possess a very high antiquity. In the +present state of the question as to the early Welsh literature, this +sort of reasoning is inconclusive and bewildering, and merely carries +us round in a circle. Again, it is worse than inconclusive reasoning, +it shows so uncritical a spirit that it begets grave mistrust, when +Mr. Williams ab Ithel, employed by the Master of the Rolls to edit the +<i>Brut y Tywysogion, </i>the ‘Chronicle of the Princes,’ +says in his introduction, in many respects so useful and interesting: +‘We may add, on the authority of a scrupulously faithful antiquary, +and one that was deeply versed in the traditions of his order - the +late Iolo Morganwg - that King Arthur in his Institutes of the Round +Table introduced the age of the world for events which occurred before +Christ, and the year of Christ’s nativity for all subsequent events.’ +Now, putting out of the question Iolo Morganwg’s character as +an antiquary, it is obvious that no one, not Grimm himself, can stand +in that way as ‘authority’ for King Arthur’s having +thus regulated chronology by his Institutes of the Round Table, or even +for there ever having been any such institutes at all. And finally, +greatly as I respect and admire Mr. Eugene O’Curry, unquestionable +as is the sagacity, the moderation, which he in general unites with +his immense learning, I must say that he, too, like his brother Celt-lovers, +sometimes lays himself dangerously open. For instance, the Royal +Irish Academy possesses in its Museum a relic of the greatest value, +the <i>Domhnach Airgid</i>, a Latin manuscript of the four gospels. +The outer box containing this manuscript is of the fourteenth century, +but the manuscript itself, says O’Curry (and no man is better +able to judge) is certainly of the sixth. This is all very well. +‘But,’ O’Curry then goes on, ‘I believe no reasonable +doubt can exist that the <i>Domhnach Airgid</i> was actually sanctified +by the hand of our great Apostle.’ One has a thrill of excitement +at receiving this assurance from such a man as Eugene O’Curry; +one believes that he is really going to make it clear that St. Patrick +did actually sanctify the <i>Domhnach Airgid</i> with his own hands; +and one reads on:-<br> +<br> +‘As St. Patrick, says an ancient life of St. Mac Carthainn preserved +by Colgan in his <i>Acta Sanctorum Hiberniæ</i>, was on his way +from the north, and coming to the place now called Clogher, he was carried +over a stream by his strong man, Bishop Mac Carthainn, who, while bearing +the Saint, groaned aloud, exclaiming: “Ugh! Ugh!”<br> +<br> +‘“Upon my good word,” said the Saint, “it was +not usual with you to make that noise.”<br> +<br> +‘“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.”<br> +<br> +‘“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.”<br> +<br> +‘And the Saint then left Bishop Mac Carthainn there, at Clogher, +and bestowed the <i>Domhnach Airgid </i>upon him, which had been given +to Patrick from heaven, when he was on the sea, coming to Erin.’<br> +<br> +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;<i> </i>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?<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +II.<br> +<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +‘In the year 1839, during one of his last visits to the land of +his birth, he, in company with his old and attached friend Dr. Petrie, +favoured me with an unexpected visit at the Royal Irish Academy. +I was at that period employed on the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, and +at the time of his visit happened to have before me on my desk the <i>Books +of Ballymote and Lecain</i>, <i>The Speckled Book</i>, <i>The Annals +of the Four Masters</i>, and many other ancient books, for historical +research and reference. I had never before seen Moore, and after +a brief introduction and explanation of the nature of my occupation +by Dr. Petrie, and seeing the formidable array of so many dark and time-worn +volumes by which I was surrounded, he looked a little disconcerted, +but after a while plucked up courage to open the <i>Book of Ballymote</i> +and ask what it was. Dr. Petrie and myself then entered into a +short explanation of the history and character of the books then present +as well as of ancient Gaedhelic documents in general. Moore listened +with great attention, alternately scanning the books and myself, and +then asked me, in a serious tone, if I understood them, and how I had +learned to do so. Having satisfied him upon these points, he turned +to Dr. Petrie and said:- “Petrie, these huge tomes could not have +been written by fools or for any foolish purpose. I never knew +anything about them before, and I had no right to have undertaken the +History of Ireland.”’<br> +<br> +And from that day Moore, it is said, lost all heart for going on with +his <i>History of Ireland</i>, and it was only the importunity of the +publishers which induced him to bring out the remaining volume.<br> +<br> +<i>Could not have been written by fools or for any foolish purpose</i>. +That is, I am convinced, a true presentiment to have in one’s +mind when one looks at Irish documents like the Book of Ballymote, or +Welsh documents like the <i>Red Book of Hergest</i>. In some respects, +at any rate, these documents are what they claim to be, they hold what +they pretend to hold, they touch that primitive world of which they +profess to be the voice. The true critic is he who can detect +this precious and genuine part in them, and employ it for the elucidation +of the Celt’s genius and history, and for any other fruitful purposes +to which it can be applied. Merely to point out the mixture of +what is late and spurious in them, is to touch but the fringes of the +matter. In reliance upon the discovery of this mixture of what +is late and spurious in them, to pooh-pooh them altogether, to treat +them as a heap of rubbish, a mass of middle-age forgeries, is to fall +into the greatest possible error. Granted that all the manuscripts +of Welsh poetry (to take that branch of Celtic literature which has +had, in Mr. Nash, the ablest disparager), granted that all such manuscripts +that we possess are, with the most insignificant exception, not older +than the twelfth century; granted that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries +were a time of great poetical activity in Wales, a time when the mediæval +literature flourished there, as it flourished in England, France, and +other countries; granted that a great deal of what Welsh enthusiasts +have attributed to their great traditional poets of the sixth century +belongs to this later epoch, - what then? Does that get rid of +the great traditional poets, - the Cynveirdd or old bards, Aneurin, +Taliesin, Llywarch Hen, and their compeers, - does that get rid of the +great poetical tradition of the sixth century altogether, does it merge +the whole literary antiquity of Wales in her mediæval literary +antiquity, or, at least, reduce all other than this to insignificance? +Mr. Nash says it does; all his efforts are directed to show how much +of the so called sixth-century pieces may be resolved into mediæval, +twelfth-century work; his grand thesis is that there is nothing primitive +and pre-Christian in the extant Welsh literature, no traces of the Druidism +and Paganism every one associates with Celtic antiquity; all this, he +says, was extinguished by Paulinus in AD. 59, and never resuscitated. +‘At the time the Mabinogion and the Taliesin ballads were composed, +no tradition or popular recollection of the Druids or the Druidical +mythology existed in Wales. The Welsh bards knew of no older mystery, +nor of any mystic creed, unknown to the rest of the Christian world.’ +And Mr. Nash complains that ‘the old opinion that the Welsh poems +contain notices of Druid or Pagan superstitions of a remote origin’ +should still find promulgators; what we find in them is only, he says, +what was circulating in Wales in the twelfth century, and one great +mistake in these investigations has been the supposing that the Welsh +of the twelfth, or even of the sixth century, were wiser as well as +more Pagan than their neighbours.’<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +‘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.’<br> +<br> +There is the testimony of an educated Roman, fifty years after Christ, +to the Celtic race being then ‘wiser than their neighbours;’ +testimony all the more remarkable because civilised nations, though +very prone to ascribe to barbarous people an ideal purity and simplicity +of life and manners, are by no means naturally inclined to ascribe to +them high attainment in intellectual and spiritual things. And +now, along with this testimony of Lucan’s, one has to carry in +mind Cæsar’s remark, that the Druids, partly from a religious +scruple, partly from a desire to discipline the memory of their pupils, +committed nothing to writing. Well, then come the crushing defeat +of the Celtic race in Britain and the Roman conquest; but the Celtic +race subsisted here still, and any one can see that, while the race +subsisted, the traditions of a discipline such as that of which Lucan +has drawn the picture were not likely to be so very speedily ‘extinguished.’ +The withdrawal of the Romans, the recovered independence of the native +race here, the Saxon invasion, the struggle with the Saxons, were just +the ground for one of those bursts of energetic national life and self-consciousness +which find a voice in a burst of poets and poetry. Accordingly, +to this time, to the sixth century, the universal Welsh tradition attaches +the great group of British poets, Taliesin and his fellows. In +the twelfth century there began for Wales, along with another burst +of national life, another burst of poetry; and this burst <i>literary</i> +in the stricter sense of the word, - a burst which left, for the first +time, written records. It wrote the records of its predecessors, +as well as of itself, and therefore Mr. Nash wants to make it the real +author of the whole poetry, one may say, of the sixth century, as well +as its own. No doubt one cannot produce the texts of the poetry +of the sixth century; no doubt we have this only as the twelfth and +succeeding centuries wrote it down; no doubt they mixed and changed +it a great deal in writing it down. But, since a continuous stream +of testimony shows the enduring existence and influence among the kindred +Celts of Wales and Brittany, from the sixth century to the twelfth, +of an old national literature, it seems certain that much of this must +be traceable in the documents of the twelfth century, and the interesting +thing is to trace it. It cannot be denied that there is such a +continuous stream of testimony; there is Gildas in the sixth century, +Nennius in the eighth, the laws of Howel in the tenth; in the eleventh, +twenty or thirty years before the new literary epoch began, we hear +of Rhys ap Tudor having ‘brought with him from Brittany the system +of the Round Table, which at home had become quite forgotten, and he +restored it as it is, with regard to minstrels and bards, as it had +been at Caerleon-upon-Usk, under the Emperor Arthur, in the time of +the sovereignty of the race of the Cymry over the island of Britain +and its adjacent islands.’ Mr. Nash’s own comment +on this is: ‘We here see the introduction of the Arthurian romance +from Brittany, preceding by nearly one generation the revival of music +and poetry in North Wales;’ and yet he does not seem to perceive +what a testimony is here to the reality, fulness, and subsistence of +that primitive literature about which he is so sceptical. Then +in the twelfth century testimony to this primitive literature absolutely +abounds; one can quote none better than that of Giraldus de Barri, or +Giraldus Cambrensis, as he is usually called. Giraldus is an excellent +authority, who knew well what he was writing about, and he speaks of +the Welsh bards and rhapsodists of his time as having in their possession +‘ancient and authentic books’ in the Welsh language. +The apparatus of technical terms of poetry, again, and the elaborate +poetical organisation which we find, both in Wales and Ireland, existing +from the very commencement of the mediæval literary period in +each, and to which no other mediæval literature, so far as I know, +shows at its first beginnings anything similar, indicates surely, in +these Celtic peoples, the clear and persistent tradition of an older +poetical period of great development, and almost irresistibly connects +itself in one’s mind with the elaborate Druidic discipline which +Cæsar mentions.<br> +<br> +But perhaps the best way to get a full sense of the storied antiquity, +forming as it were the background to those mediæval documents +which in Mr. Nash’s eyes pretty much begin and end with themselves, +is to take, almost at random, a passage from such a tale as <i>Kilhwch +and Olwen, </i>in the <i>Mabinogion</i>, - that charming collection, +for which we owe such a debt of gratitude to Lady Charlotte Guest (to +call her still by the name she bore when she made her happy entry into +the world of letters), and which she so unkindly suffers to remain out +of print. Almost every page of this tale points to traditions +and personages of the most remote antiquity, and is instinct with the +very breath of the primitive world. Search is made for Mabon, +the son of Modron, who was taken when three nights old from between +his mother and the wall. The seekers go first to the Ousel of +Cilgwri; the Ousel had lived long enough to peck a smith’s anvil +down to the size of a nut, but he had never heard of Mabon. ‘But +there is a race of animals who were formed before me, and I will be +your guide to them.’ So the Ousel guides them to the Stag +of Redynvre. The Stag has seen an oak sapling, in the wood where +he lived, grow up to be an oak with a hundred branches, and then slowly +decay down to a withered stump, yet he had never heard of Mabon. +‘But I will be your guide to the place where there is an animal +which was formed before I was;’ and he guides them to the Owl +of Cwm Cawlwyd. ‘When first I came hither,’ says the +Owl, ‘the wide valley you see was a wooded glen. And a race +of men came and rooted it up. And there grew a second wood; and +this wood is the third. My wings, are they not withered stumps?’ +Yet the Owl, in spite of his great age, had never heard of Mabon; but +he offered to be guide ‘to where is the oldest animal in the world, +and the one that has travelled most, the Eagle of Gwern Abwy.’ +The Eagle was so old, that a rock, from the top of which he pecked at +the stars every evening, was now not so much as a span high. He +knew nothing of Mabon; but there was a monster Salmon, into whom he +once struck his claws in Llyn Llyw, who might, perhaps, tell them something +of him. And at last the Salmon of Llyn Llyw told them of Mabon. +‘With every tide I go along the river upwards, until I come near +to the walls of Gloucester, and there have I found such wrong as I never +found elsewhere.’ And the Salmon took Arthur’s messengers +on his shoulders up to the wall of the prison in Gloucester, and they +delivered Mabon.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +So again with the question as to the mythological import of these poems. +Mr. Nash seems to me to have dealt with this, too, rather in the spirit +of a sturdy enemy of the Celts and their pretensions, - often enough +chimerical, - than in the spirit of a disinterested man of science. +‘We find in the oldest compositions in the Welsh language no traces,’ +he says, ‘of the Druids, or of a pagan mythology.’ +He will not hear of there being, for instance, in these compositions, +traces of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, attributed to +the Druids in such clear words by Cæsar. He is very severe +upon a German scholar, long and favourably known in this country, who +has already furnished several contributions to our knowledge of the +Celtic race, and of whose labours the main fruit has, I believe, not +yet been given us, - Mr. Meyer. He is very severe upon Mr. Meyer, +for finding in one of the poems ascribed to Taliesin, ‘a sacrificial +hymn addressed to the god Pryd, in his character of god of the Sun.’ +It is not for me to pronounce for or against this notion of Mr. Meyer’s. +I have not the knowledge which is needed in order to make one’s +suffrage in these matters of any value; speaking merely as one of the +unlearned public, I will confess that allegory seems to me to play, +in Mr. Meyer’s theories, a somewhat excessive part; Arthur and +his Twelve (?) Knights of the Round Table signifying solely the year +with its twelve months; Percival and the Miller signifying solely steel +and the grindstone; Stonehenge and the <i>Gododin</i> put to purely +calendarial purposes; the <i>Nibelungen</i>, the <i>Mahabharata</i>, +and the <i>Iliad</i>, finally following the fate of the <i>Gododin</i>; +all this appears to me, I will confess, a little prematurely grasped, +a little unsubstantial. But that any one who knows the set of +modern mythological science towards astronomical and solar myths, a +set which has already justified itself in many respects so victoriously, +and which is so irresistible that one can hardly now look up at the +sun without having the sensations of a moth; - that any one who knows +this, should find in the Welsh remains no traces of mythology, is quite +astounding. Why, the heroes and heroines of the old Cymric world +are all in the sky as well as in Welsh story; Arthur is the Great Bear, +his harp is the constellation Lyra; Cassiopeia’s chair is Llys +Don, Don’s Court; the daughter of Don was Arianrod, and the Northern +Crown is Caer Arianrod; Gwydion was Don’s son, and the Milky Way +is Caer Gwydion. With Gwydion is Math, the son of Mathonwy, the +‘man of illusion and phantasy;’ and the moment one goes +below the surface, - almost before one goes below the surface, - all +is illusion and phantasy, double-meaning, and far-reaching mythological +import, in the world which all these personages inhabit. What +are the three hundred ravens of Owen, and the nine sorceresses of Peredur, +and the dogs of Annwn the Welsh Hades, and the birds of Rhiannon, whose +song was so sweet that warriors remained spell-bound for eighty years +together listening to them? What is the Avanc, the water-monster, +of whom<i> </i>every lake-side in Wales, and her proverbial speech, +and her music, to this day preserve the tradition? What is Gwyn +the son of Nudd, king of fairie, the ruler of the Tylwyth Teg, or family +of beauty, who till the day of doom fights on every first day of May, +- the great feast of the sun among the Celtic peoples, - with Gwythyr, +for the fair Cordelia, the daughter of Lear? What is the wonderful +mare of Teirnyon, which on the night of every first of May foaled, and +no one ever knew what became of the colt? Who is the mystic Arawn, +the king of Annwn, who changed semblance for a year with Pwyll, prince +of Dyved, and reigned in his place? These are no mediæval +personages; they belong to an older, pagan, mythological world. +The very first thing that strikes one, in reading the <i>Mabinogion, +</i>is how evidently the mediæval story-teller is pillaging an +antiquity of which he does not fully possess the secret; he is like +a peasant building his hut on the site of Halicarnassus or Ephesus; +he builds, but what he builds is full of materials of which he knows +not the history, or knows by a glimmering tradition merely; - stones +‘not of this building,’ but of an older architecture, greater, +cunninger, more majestical. In the mediæval stories of no +Latin or Teutonic people does this strike one as in those of the Welsh. +Kilhwch, in the story, already quoted, of <i>Kilhwch and Olwen, </i>asks +help at the hand of Arthur’s warriors; a list of these warriors +is given, which fills I know not how many pages of Lady Charlotte Guest’s +book; this list is a perfect treasure-house of mysterious ruins:-<br> +<br> +‘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).<br> +<br> +‘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).<br> +<br> +‘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).’<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +‘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.<br> +<br> +‘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.<br> +<br> +‘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.<br> +<br> +‘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.’<br> +<br> +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.’<br> +<br> +There is evidently mixed here, with the newer legend, a<i> detritus, +</i>as the geologists would say, of something far older; and the secret +of Wales and its genius is not truly reached until this <i>detritus, +</i>instead of being called recent because it is found in contact with +what is recent, is disengaged, and is made to tell its own story.<br> +<br> +But when we show him things of this kind in the Welsh remains, Mr. Nash +has an answer for us. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘all this +is merely a machinery of necromancers and magic, such as has probably +been possessed by all people in all ages, more or less abundantly. +How similar are the creations of the human mind in times and places +the most remote! We see in this similarity only an evidence of +the existence of a common stock of ideas, variously developed according +to the formative pressure of external circumstances. The materials +of these tales are not peculiar to the Welsh.’ And then +Mr. Nash points out, with much learning and ingenuity, how certain incidents +of these tales have their counterparts in Irish, in Scandinavian, in +Oriental romance. He says, fairly enough, that the assertions +of Taliesin, in the famous <i>Hanes Taliesin, </i>or <i>History of Taliesin, +</i>that he was present with Noah in the Ark, at the Tower of Babel, +and with Alexander of Macedon, ‘we may ascribe to the poetic fancy +of the Christian priest of the thirteenth century, who brought this +romance into its present form. We may compare these statements +of the universal presence of the wonder-working magician with those +of the gleeman who recites the Anglo-Saxon metrical tale called the +<i>Traveller’s Song</i>.’ No doubt, lands the most +distant can be shown to have a common property in many marvellous stories. +This is one of the most interesting discoveries of modern science; but +modern science is equally interested in knowing how the genius of each +people has differentiated, so to speak, this common property of theirs; +in tracking out, in each case, that special ‘variety of development,’ +which, to use Mr. Nash’s own words, ‘the formative pressure +of external circumstances’ has occasioned; and not the formative +pressure from without only, but also the formative pressure from within. +It is this which he who deals with the Welsh remains in a philosophic +spirit wants to know. Where is the force, for scientific purposes, +of telling us that certain incidents by which Welsh poetry has been +supposed to indicate a surviving tradition of the doctrine of transmigration, +are found in Irish poetry also, when Irish poetry has, like Welsh, its +roots in that Celtism which is said to have held this doctrine of transmigration +so strongly? Where is even the great force, for scientific purposes, +of proving, if it were possible to prove, that the extant remains of +Welsh poetry contain not one plain declaration of Druidical, Pagan, +pre-Christian doctrine, if one has in the extant remains of Breton poetry +such texts as this from the prophecy of Gwenchlan: ‘Three times +must we all die, before we come to our final repose’? or as the +cry of the eagles, in the same poem, of fierce thirst for Christian +blood, a cry in which the poet evidently gives vent to his own hatred? +since the solidarity, to use that convenient French word, of Breton +and Welsh poetry is so complete, that the ideas of the one may be almost +certainly assumed not to have been wanting to those of the other. +The question is, when Taliesin says, in the <i>Battle of the Trees: +</i>‘I have been in many shapes before I attained a congenial +form. I have been a narrow blade of a sword, I have been a drop +in the air, I have been a shining star, I have been a word in a book, +I have been a book in the beginning, I have been a light in a lantern +a year and a half, I have been a bridge for passing over three-score +rivers; I have journeyed as an eagle, I have been a boat on the sea, +I have been a director in battle, I have been a sword in the hand, I +have been a shield in fight, I have been the string of a harp, I have +been enchanted for a year in the foam of water. There is nothing +in which I have not been,’ - the question is, have these ‘statements +of the universal presence of the wonder-working magician’ nothing +which distinguishes them from ‘similar creations of the human +mind in times and places the most remote;’ have they not an inwardness, +a severity of form, a solemnity of tone, which indicates the still reverberating +echo of a profound doctrine and discipline, such as was Druidism? +Suppose we compare Taliesin, as Mr. Nash invites us, with the gleeman +of the Anglo-Saxon <i>Traveller’s Song. </i>Take the specimen +of this song which Mr. Nash himself quotes: ‘I have been with +the Israelites and with the Essyringi, with the Hebrews and with the +Indians and with the Egyptians; I have been with the Medes and with +the Persians and with the Myrgings.’ It is very well to +parallel with this extract Taliesin’s: ‘I carried the banner +before Alexander; I was in Canaan when Absalom was slain; I was on the +horse’s crupper of Elias and Enoch; I was on the high cross of +the merciful son of God; I was the chief overseer at the building of +the tower of Nimrod; I was with my King in the manger of the ass; I +supported Moses through the waters<i> </i>of Jordan; I have been in +the buttery in the land of the Trinity; it is not known what is the +nature of its meat and its fish.’ It is very well to say +that these assertions ‘we may fairly ascribe to the poetic fancy +of a Christian priest of the thirteenth century.’ Certainly +we may; the last of Taliesin’s assertions more especially; though +one must remark at the same time that the Welshman shows much more fire +and imagination than the Anglo-Saxon. But Taliesin adds, after +his: ‘I was in Canaan when Absalom was slain,’ ‘<i>I +was in the hall of Don before Gwydion was born</i>;’ he adds, +after: ‘I was chief overseer at the building of the tower of Nimrod,’ +‘<i>I have been three times resident in the castle of Arianrod</i>;’ +he adds, after: ‘I was at the cross with Mary Magdalene,’ +‘<i>I obtained my inspiration from the cauldron of Ceridwen</i>.’ +And finally, after the mediæval touch of the visit to the buttery +in the land of the Trinity, he goes off at score: ‘I have been +instructed in the whole system of the universe; I shall be till the +day of judgment on the face of the earth. I have been in an uneasy +chair above Caer Sidin, and the whirling round without motion between +three elements. Is it not the wonder of the world that cannot +be discovered?’ And so he ends the poem. But here +is the Celtic, the essential part of the poem: it is here that the ‘formative +pressure’ has been really in operation; and here surely is paganism +and mythology enough, which the Christian priest of the thirteenth century +can have had nothing to do with. It is unscientific, no doubt, +to interpret this part as Edward Davies and Mr. Herbert do; but it is +unscientific also to get rid of it as Mr. Nash does. Wales and +the Welsh genius are not to be known without this part; and the true +critic is he who can best disengage its real significance.<br> +<br> +I say, then, what we want is to <i>know </i>the Celt and his genius; +not to exalt him or to abase him, but to know him. And for this +a disinterested, positive, and constructive criticism is needed. +Neither his friends nor his enemies have yet given us much of this. +His friends have given us materials for criticism, and for these we +ought to be grateful; his enemies have given us negative criticism, +and for this, too, up to a certain point, we may be grateful; but the +criticism we really want neither of them has yet given us.<br> +<br> +Philology, however, that science which in our time has had so many successes, +has not been abandoned by her good fortune in touching the Celt; philology +has brought, almost for the first time in their lives, the Celt and +sound criticism together. The Celtic grammar of Zeuss, whose death +is so grievous a loss to science, offers a splendid specimen of that +patient, disinterested way of treating objects of knowledge, which is +the best and most attractive characteristic of Germany. Zeuss +proceeds neither as a Celt-lover nor as a Celt-hater; not the slightest +trace of a wish to glorify Teutonism or to abase Celtism, appears in +his book. The only desire apparent there, is the desire to know +his object, the language of the Celtic peoples, as it really is. +In this he stands as a model to Celtic students; and it has been given +to him, as a reward for his sound method, to establish certain points +which are henceforth cardinal points, landmarks, in all the discussion +of Celtic matters, and which no one had so established before. +People talked at random of Celtic writings of this or that age; Zeuss +has definitely fixed the age of what we actually have of these writings. +To take the Cymric group of languages: our earliest Cornish document +is a vocabulary of the thirteenth century; our earliest Breton document +is a short description of an estate in a deed of the ninth century; +our earliest Welsh documents are Welsh glosses of the eighth century +to Eutychus, the grammarian, and Ovid’s <i>Art of Love</i>, and +the verses found by Edward Lhuyd in the <i>Juvencus</i> manuscript at +Cambridge. The mention of this <i>Juvencus</i> fragment, by-the-by, +suggests the difference there is between an interested and a disinterested +critical habit. Mr. Nash deals with this fragment; but, in spite +of all his great acuteness and learning, because he has a bias, because +he does not bring to these matters the disinterested spirit they need, +he is capable of getting rid, quite unwarrantably, of a particular word +in the fragment which does not suit him; his dealing with the verses +is an advocate’s dealing, not a critic’s. Of this +sort of thing Zeuss is incapable.<br> +<br> +The test which Zeuss used for establishing the age of these documents +is a scientific test, the test of orthography and of declensional and +syntactical forms. These matters are far out of my province, but +what is clear, sound, and simple, has a natural attraction for us all, +and one feels a pleasure in repeating it. It is the grand sign +of age, Zeuss says, in Welsh and Irish words, when what the grammarians +call the ‘<i>destitutio tenuium</i>’ has not yet taken place; +when the sharp consonants have not yet been changed into flat, <i>p +</i>or t into <i>b </i>or <i>d; </i>when, for instance, <i>map, </i>a +son, has not yet become <i>mab; coet </i>a wood, <i>coed; ocet, </i>a +harrow, <i>oged</i>. This is a clear, scientific test to apply, +and a test of which the accuracy can be verified; I do not say that +Zeuss was the first person who knew this test or applied it, but I say +that he is the first person who in dealing with Celtic matters has invariably +proceeded by means of this and similar scientific tests; the first person, +therefore, the body of whose work has a scientific, stable character; +and so he stands as a model to all Celtic inquirers.<br> +<br> +His influence has already been most happy; and as I have enlarged on +a certain failure in criticism of Eugene O’Curry’s, - whose +business, after all, was the description and classification of materials +rather than criticism, - let me show, by another example from Eugene +O’Curry, this good influence of Zeuss upon Celtic studies. +Eugene O’Curry wants to establish that compositions of an older +date than the twelfth century existed in Ireland in the twelfth century, +and thus he proceeds. He takes one of the great extant Irish manuscripts, +the <i>Leabhar na h’Uidhre; </i>or, <i>Book of the Dun Cow</i>. +The compiler of this book was, he says, a certain Maelmuiri, a member +of the religious house of Cluainmacnois. This he establishes from +a passage in the manuscript itself: ‘This is a trial of his pen +here, by Maelmuiri, son of the son of Conn na m’Bocht.’ +The date of Maelmuiri he establishes from a passage in the <i>Annals +of the Four Masters, </i>under the year 1106: ‘Maelmuiri, son +of the son of Conn na m’Bocht, was killed in the middle of the +great stone church of Cluainmacnois, by a party of robbers.’ +Thus he gets the date of the <i>Book of the Dun Cow</i>. This +book contains an elegy on the death of St. Columb. Now, even before +1106, the language of this elegy was so old as to require a gloss to +make it intelligible, for it is accompanied by a gloss written between +the lines. This gloss quotes, for the explanation of obsolete +words, a number of more ancient compositions; and these compositions, +therefore, must, at the beginning of the twelfth century, have been +still in existence. Nothing can be sounder; every step is proved, +and fairly proved, as one goes along. O’Curry thus affords +a good specimen of the sane mode of proceeding so much wanted in Celtic +researches, and so little practised by Edward Davies and his brethren; +and to found this sane method, Zeuss, by the example he sets in his +own department of philology, has mainly contributed.<br> +<br> +Science’s reconciling power, too, on which I have already touched, +philology, in her Celtic researches, again and again illustrates. +Races and languages have been absurdly joined, and unity has been often +rashly assumed at stages where one was far, very far, from having yet +really reached unity. Science has and will long have to be a divider +and a separatist, breaking arbitrary and fanciful connections, and dissipating +dreams of a premature and impossible unity. Still, science, - +true science, - recognises in the bottom of her soul a law of ultimate +fusion, of conciliation. To reach this, but to reach it legitimately, +she tends. She draws, for instance, towards the same idea which +fills her elder and diviner sister, poetry, - the idea of the substantial +unity of man; though she draws towards it by roads of her own. +But continually she is showing us affinity where we imagined there was +isolation. What school-boy of us has not rummaged his Greek dictionary +in vain for a satisfactory account of that old name for the Peloponnese, +the <i>Apian Land</i>? and within the limits of Greek itself there is +none. But the Scythian name for earth ‘apia,’ <i>watery, +water-issued, </i>meaning first <i>isle </i>and then <i>land</i> - this +name, which we find in ‘avia,’ Scandin<i>avia</i>, and in +‘ey’ for Aldern<i>ey</i>, not only explains the <i>Apian +Land </i>of Sophocles for us, but points the way to a whole world of +relationships of which we knew nothing. The Scythians themselves +again, - obscure, far-separated Mongolian people as they used to appear +to us, - when we find that they are essentially Teutonic and Indo-European, +their very name the same word as the common Latin word ‘scutum,’ +the <i>shielded </i>people, what a surprise they give us! And +then, before we have recovered from this surprise we learn that the +name of their father and god, Targitavus, carries us I know not how +much further into familiar company. This divinity, <i>Shining +with the targe, </i>the Greek Hercules, the Sun, contains in the second +half of his name, <i>tavus, </i>‘shining,’ a wonderful cement +to hold times and nations together. <i>Tavus, </i>‘shining,’ +from ‘tava’ - in Sanscrit, as well as Scythian, ‘to +burn’ or ‘shine,’ - is <i>Divus, dies, Zeus, Θεος</i>, +<i>Dêva, </i>and I know not how much more; and <i>Taviti, </i>the +bright and burnt, fire, the place of fire, the hearth, the centre of +the family, becomes the family itself, just as our word family, the +Latin <i>familia, </i>is from <i>thymelé, </i>the sacred centre +of fire. The hearth comes to mean home. Then from home it +comes to mean the group of homes, the tribe;<i> </i>from the tribe the +entire nation; and in this sense of nation or people, the word appears +in Gothic, Norse, Celtic, and Persian, as well as in Scythian; the <i>Theuthisks, +</i>Deutschen, Tudesques, are the men of one <i>theuth, </i>nation, +or people; and of this our name <i>Germans </i>itself is, perhaps, only +the Roman translation, meaning the men of one germ or stock. The +Celtic divinity, Teutates, has his name from the Celtic <i>teuta, </i>people; +<i>taviti, </i>fire, appearing here in its secondary and derived sense +of <i>people, </i>just as it does in its own Scythian language in Targitavus’s +second name, <i>Tavit-varus, Teutaros, </i>the protector of the people. +Another Celtic divinity, the Hesus of Lucan, finds his brother in the +Gaisos, the sword, symbolising the god of battles of the Teutonic Scythians. +<a name="citation66"></a><a href="#footnote66">{66}</a> And after +philology has thus related to each other the Celt and the Teuton, she +takes another branch of the Indo-European family, the Sclaves, and shows +us them as having the same name with the German Suevi, the <i>solar +</i>people; the common ground here, too, being that grand point of union, +the sun, fire. So, also, we find Mr. Meyer, whose Celtic studies +I just now mentioned, harping again and again on the connection even +in Europe, if you go back far enough, between Celt and German. +So, after all we have heard, and truly heard, of the diversity between +all things Semitic and all things Indo-European, there is now an Italian +philologist at work upon the relationship between Sanscrit and Hebrew.<br> +<br> +Both in small and great things, philology, dealing with Celtic matters, +has exemplified this tending of science towards unity. Who has +not been puzzled by the relation of the Scots with Ireland - that <i>vetus +et major Scotia, </i>as Colgan calls it? Who does not feel what +pleasure Zeuss brings us when he suggests that <i>Gael, </i>the name +for the Irish Celt, and <i>Scot, </i>are at bottom the same word, both +having their origin in a word meaning <i>wind, </i>and both signifying +<i>the violent stormy people</i>? <a name="citation68"></a><a href="#footnote68">{68}</a> +Who does not feel his mind agreeably cleared about our friends the Fenians, +when he learns that the root of their name, <i>fen, </i>‘white,’ +appears in the hero Fingal; in Gwynned, the Welsh name for North Wales +in the Roman Venedotia; in Vannes in Brittany; in Venice? The +very name of Ireland, some say, comes from the famous Sanscrit word +<i>Arya, </i>the land of the Aryans, or noble men; although the weight +of opinion seems to be in favour of connecting it rather with another +Sanscrit word, <i>avara, </i>occidental, the western land or isle of +the west. <a name="citation69"></a><a href="#footnote69">{69}</a> +But, at any rate, who that has been brought up to think the Celts utter +aliens from us and our culture, can come without a start of sympathy +upon such words as <i>heol </i>(sol), or <i>buaist </i>(fuisti)? or +upon such a sentence as this, ‘<i>Peris Duw dui funnaun</i>’ +(‘God prepared two fountains’)? Or when Mr. Whitley +Stokes, one of the very ablest scholars formed in Zeuss’s school, +a born philologist, - he now occupies, alas! a post under the Government +of India, instead of a chair of philology at home, and makes one think +mournfully of Montesquieu’s saying, that had he been an Englishman +he should never have produced his great work, but have caught the contagion +of practical life, and devoted himself to what is called ‘rising +in the world,’ when Mr. Whitley Stokes, in his edition of <i>Cormac</i>’<i>s +Glossary, </i>holds up the Irish word <i>traith, </i>the sea, and makes +us remark that, though the names <i>Triton, Amphitrite, </i>and those +of corresponding Indian and Zend divinities, point to the meaning <i>sea, +</i>yet it is only Irish which actually supplies the vocable, how delightfully +that brings Ireland into the Indo-European concert! What a wholesome +buffet it gives to Lord Lyndhurst’s alienation doctrines!<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +But the forms of its language are not our only key to a people; what +it says in its language, its literature, is the great key, and we must +get back to literature. The literature of the Celtic peoples has +not yet had its Zeuss, and greatly it wants him. We need a Zeuss +to apply to Celtic literature, to all its vexed questions of dates, +authenticity, and significance, the criticism, the sane method, the +disinterested endeavour to get at the real facts, which Zeuss has shown +in dealing with Celtic language. Science is good in itself, and +therefore Celtic literature, - the Celt-haters having failed to prove +it a bubble, - Celtic literature is interesting, merely as an object +of knowledge. But it reinforces and redoubles our interest in +Celtic literature if we find that here, too, science exercises the reconciling, +the uniting influence of which I have said so much; if we find here, +more than anywhere else, traces of kinship, and the most essential sort +of kinship, spiritual kinship, between us and the Celt, of which we +had never dreamed. I settle nothing, and can settle nothing; I +have not the special knowledge needed for that. I have no pretension +to do more than to try and awaken interest; to seize on hints, to point +out indications, which, to any one with a feeling for literature, suggest +themselves; to stimulate other inquirers. I must surely be without +the bias which has so often rendered Welsh and Irish students extravagant; +why, my very name expresses that peculiar Semitico-Saxon mixture which +makes the typical Englishman; I can have no ends to serve in finding +in Celtic literature more than is there. What <i>is </i>there, +is for me the only question.<br> +<br> +<br> +III.<br> +<br> +<br> +We have seen how philology carries us towards ideas of affinity of race +which are new to us. But it is evident that this affinity, even +if proved, can be no very potent affair, unless it goes beyond the stage +at which we have hitherto observed it. Affinity between races +still, so to speak, in their mother’s womb, counts for something, +indeed, but cannot count for very much. So long as Celt and Teuton +are in their embryo rudimentary state, or, at least, no such great while +out of their cradle, still engaged in their wanderings, changes of place +and struggle for development, so long as they have not yet crystallised +into solid nations, they may touch and mix in passing, and yet very +little come of it. It is when the embryo has grown and solidified +into a distinct nation, into the Gaul or German of history, when it +has finally acquired the characters which make the Gaul of history what +he is, the German of history what he is, that contact and mixture are +important, and may leave a long train of effects; for Celt and Teuton +by this time have their formed, marked, national, ineffaceable qualities +to oppose or to communicate. The contact of the German of the +Continent with the Celt was in the pre-historic times, and the definite +German type, as we know it, was fixed later, and from the time when +it became fixed was not influenced by the Celtic type. But here +in our country, in historic times, long after the Celtic embryo had +crystallised into the Celt proper, long after the Germanic embryo had +crystallised into the German proper, there was an important contact +between the two peoples; the Saxons invaded the Britons and settled +themselves in the Britons’ country. Well, then, here was +a contact which one might expect would leave its traces; if the Saxons +got the upper hand, as we all know they did, and made our country be +England and us be English, there must yet, one would think, be some +trace of the Saxon having met the Briton; there must be some Celtic +vein or other running through us. Many people say there is nothing +at all of the kind, absolutely nothing; the <i>Saturday Review </i>treats +these matters of ethnology with great power and learning, and the <i>Saturday +Review </i>says we are ‘a nation into which a Norman element, +like a much smaller Celtic element, was so completely absorbed that +it is vain to seek after Norman or Celtic elements in any modern Englishman.’ +And the other day at Zurich I read a long essay on English literature +by one of the professors there, in which the writer observed, as a remarkable +thing, that while other countries conquered by the Germans, - France, +for instance, and Italy, - had ousted all German influence from their +genius and literature, there were two countries, not originally Germanic, +but conquered by the Germans, England and German Switzerland, of which +the genius and the literature were purely and unmixedly German; and +this he laid down as a position which nobody would dream of challenging.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +The province of the philologist and of the physiologist is not mine; +but this whole question as to the mixture of Celt with Saxon in us has +been so little explored, people have been so prone to settle it off-hand +according to their prepossessions, that even on the philological and +physiological side of it I must say a few words in passing. Surely +it must strike with surprise any one who thinks of it, to find that +without any immense inpouring of a whole people, that by mere expeditions +of invaders having to come over the sea, and in no greater numbers than +the Saxons, so far as we can make out, actually came, the old occupants +of this island, the Celtic Britons, should have been completely annihilated, +or even so completely absorbed that it is vain to seek after Celtic +elements in the existing English race. Of deliberate wholesale +extermination of the Celtic race, all of them who could not fly to Wales +or Scotland, we hear nothing; and without some such extermination one +would suppose that a great mass of them must have remained in the country, +their lot the obscure and, so to speak, underground lot of a subject +race, but yet insensibly getting mixed with their conquerors, and their +blood entering into the composition of a new people, in which the stock +of the conquerors counts for most, but the stock of the conquered, too, +counts for something. How little the triumph of the conqueror’s +laws, manners, and language, proves the extinction of the old race, +we may see by looking at France; Gaul was Latinised in language, manners, +and laws, and yet her people remained essentially Celtic. The +Germanisation of Britain went far deeper than the Latinisation of France, +and not only laws, manners, and language, but the main current of the +blood became Germanic; but how, without some process of radica extirpation, +of which, as I say, there is no evidence, can there have failed to subsist +in Britain, as in Gaul, a Celtic current too? The indications +of this in our language have never yet been thoroughly searched out; +the Celtic names of places prove nothing, of course, as to the point +here in question; they come from the pre-historic times, the times before +the nations, Germanic or Celtic, had crystallised, and they are everywhere, +as the impetuous Celt was formerly everywhere, - in the Alps, the Apennines, +the Cevennes, the Rhine, the Po, as well as in the Thames, the Humber, +Cumberland, London. But it is said that the words of Celtic origin +for things having to do with every-day peaceful life, - the life of +a settled nation, - words like <i>basket </i>(to take an instance which +all the world knows) form a much larger body in our language than is +commonly supposed; it is said that a number of our raciest, most idiomatic, +popular words - for example, <i>bam, kick, whop, twaddle, fudge, hitch, +muggy</i>, - are Celtic. These assertions require to be carefully +examined, and it by no means follows that because an English word is +found in Celtic, therefore we get it from thence; but they have not +yet had the attention which, as illustrating through language this matter +of the subsistence and intermingling in our nation of a Celtic part, +they merit.<br> +<br> +Nor have the physiological data which illustrate this matter had much +more attention from us in England. But in France, a physician, +half English by blood though a Frenchman by home and language, Monsieur +W. F. Edwards, brother to Monsieur Milne-Edwards, the well-known zoologist, +published in 1839 a letter to Monsieur Amédée Thierry +with this title: <i>Des Caractères Physiologiques des Races Humaines +considérés dans leurs Rapports avec l</i>’<i>Histoire</i>. +The letter attracted great attention on the Continent; it fills not +much more than a hundred pages, and they are a hundred pages which well +deserve reading and re-reading. Monsieur Thierry in his <i>Histoire +des Gaulois </i>had divided the population of Gaul into certain groups, +and the object of Monsieur Edwards was to try this division by physiology. +Groups of men have, he says, their physical type which distinguishes +them, as well as their language;<i> </i>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:-<br> +<br> +‘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;<i> </i>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.’<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +IV.<br> +<br> +<br> +Let me repeat what I have often said of the characteristics which mark +the English spirit, the English genius. This spirit, this genius, +judged, to be sure, rather from a friend’s than an enemy’s +point of view, yet judged on the whole fairly, is characterised, I have +repeatedly said, by <i>energy with honesty</i>. Take away some +of the energy which comes to us, as I believe, in part from Celtic and +Roman sources;<i> </i>instead of energy, say rather <i>steadiness</i>;<i> +</i>and you have the Germanic genius <i>steadiness with honesty</i>. +It is evident how nearly the two characterisations approach one another; +and yet they leave, as we shall see, a great deal of room for difference. +Steadiness with honesty; the danger for a national spirit thus composed +is the humdrum, the plain and ugly, the ignoble: in a word, <i>das Gemeine, +die Gemeinheit, </i>that curse of Germany, against which Goethe was +all his life fighting. The excellence of a national spirit thus +composed is freedom from whim, flightiness, perverseness; patient fidelity +to Nature, in a word, <i>science</i>, - leading it at last, though slowly, +and not by the most brilliant road, out of the bondage of the humdrum +and common, into the better life. The universal dead-level of +plainness and homeliness, the lack of all beauty and distinction in +form and feature, the slowness and clumsiness of the language, the eternal +beer, sausages, and bad tobacco, the blank commonness everywhere, pressing +at last like a weight on the spirits of the traveller in Northern Germany, +and making him impatient to be gone, this is the weak side; the industry, +the well-doing, the patient steady elaboration of things, the idea of +science governing all departments of human activity - this is the strong +side; and through this side of her genius, Germany has already obtained +excellent results, and is destined, we may depend upon it, however her +pedantry, her slowness, her fumbling, her ineffectiveness, her bad government, +may at times make us cry out, to an immense development. <a name="citation82"></a><a href="#footnote82">{82}</a><br> +<br> +<i>For dulness, the creeping Saxons</i>, - says an old Irish poem, assigning +the characteristics for which different nations are celebrated:-<br> +<br> +<br> +For acuteness and valour, the Greeks,<br> +For excessive pride, the Romans,<br> +For dulness, the creeping Saxons;<br> +For beauty and amorousness, the Gaedhils.<br> +<br> +<br> +We have seen in what sense, and with what explanation, this characterisation +of the German may be allowed to stand; now let us come to the beautiful +and amorous Gaedhil. Or rather, let us find a definition which +may suit both branches of the Celtic family, the Cymri as well as the +Gael. It is clear that special circumstances may have developed +some one side in the national character of Cymri or Gael, Welshman or +Irishman, so that the observer’s notice shall be readily caught +by this side, and yet it may be impossible to adopt it as characteristic +of the Celtic nature generally. For instance, in his beautiful +essay on the poetry of the Celtic races, M. Renan, with his eyes fixed +on the Bretons and the Welsh, is struck with the timidity, the shyness, +the delicacy of the Celtic nature, its preference for a retired life, +its embarrassment at having to deal with the great world. He talks +of the <i>douce petite race naturellement chrétienne, </i>his +<i>race fière et timide, à l</i>’<i>extérieur +gauche et embarrassée</i>. But it is evident that this +description, however well it may do for the Cymri, will never do for +the Gael, never do for the typical Irishman of Donnybrook fair. +Again, M. Renan’s <i>infinie délicatesse de sentiment qui +caractérise la race Celtique, </i>how little that accords with +the popular conception of an Irishman who wants to borrow money! +<i>Sentiment </i>is, however, the word which marks where the Celtic +races really touch and are one; sentimental, if the Celtic nature is +to be characterised by a single term, is the best term to take. +An organisation quick to feel impressions, and feeling them very strongly; +a lively personality therefore, keenly sensitive to joy and to sorrow; +this is the main point. If the downs of life too much outnumber +the ups, this temperament, just because it is so quickly and nearly +conscious of all impressions, may no doubt be seen shy and wounded; +it may be seen in wistful regret, it may be seen in passionate, penetrating +melancholy; but its essence is to aspire ardently after life, light, +and emotion, to be expansive, adventurous, and gay. Our word <i>gay, +</i>it is said, is itself Celtic. It is not from <i>gaudium, </i>but +from the Celtic <i>gair</i>, to laugh; <a name="citation84"></a><a href="#footnote84">{84}</a> +and the impressionable Celt, soon up and soon down, is the more down +because it is so his nature to be up to be sociable, hospitable, eloquent, +admired, figuring away brilliantly. He loves bright colours, he +easily becomes audacious, overcrowing, full of fanfaronade. The +German, say the physiologists, has the larger volume of intestines (and +who that has ever seen a German at a table-d’hôte will not +readily believe this?), the Frenchman has the more developed organs +of respiration. That is just the expansive, eager Celtic nature; +the head in the air, snuffing and snorting; <i>a proud look and a high +stomach, </i>as the Psalmist says, but without any such settled savage +temper as the Psalmist seems to impute by those words. For good +and for bad, the Celtic genius is more airy and unsubstantial, goes +less near the ground, than the German. The Celt is often called +sensual; but it is not so much the vulgar satisfactions of sense that +attract him as emotion and excitement; he is truly, as I began by saying, +sentimental.<br> +<br> +Sentimental, -<i> always ready to react against the despotism of fact</i>;<i> +</i>that is the description a great friend <a name="citation85"></a><a href="#footnote85">{85}</a> +of the Celt gives of him; and it is not a bad description of the sentimental +temperament; it lets us into the secret of its dangers and of its habitual +want of success. Balance, measure, and patience, these are the +eternal conditions, even supposing the happiest temperament to start +with, of high success;<i> </i>and balance, measure, and patience are +just what the Celt has never had. Even in the world of spiritual +creation, he has never, in spite of his admirable gifts of quick perception +and warm emotion, succeeded perfectly, because he never has had steadiness, +patience, sanity enough to comply with the conditions under which alone +can expression be perfectly given to the finest perceptions and emotions. +The Greek has the same perceptive, emotional temperament as the Celt; +but he adds to this temperament the sense of <i>measure</i>;<i> </i>hence +his admirable success in the plastic arts, in which the Celtic genius, +with its chafing against the despotism of fact, its perpetual straining +after mere emotion, has accomplished nothing. In the comparatively +petty art of ornamentation, in rings, brooches, crosiers, relic-cases, +and so on, he has done just enough to show his delicacy of taste, his +happy temperament; but the grand difficulties of painting and sculpture, +the prolonged dealings of spirit with matter, he has never had patience +for. Take the more spiritual arts of music and poetry. All +that emotion alone can do in music the Celt has done;<i> </i>the very +soul of emotion breathes in the Scotch and Irish airs; but with all +this power of musical feeling, what has the Celt, so eager for emotion +that he has not patience for science, effected in music, to be compared +with what the less emotional German, steadily developing his musical +feeling with the science of a Sebastian Bach or a Beethoven, has effected? +In poetry, again, poetry which the Celt has so passionately, so nobly +loved; poetry where emotion counts for so much, but where reason, too, +reason, measure, sanity, also count for so much, - the Celt has shown +genius, indeed, splendid genius; but even here his faults have clung +to him, and hindered him from producing great works, such as other nations +with a genius for poetry, - the Greeks, say, or the Italians, - have +produced. The Celt has not produced great poetical works, he has +only produced poetry with an air of greatness investing it all, and +sometimes giving, moreover, to short pieces, or to passages, lines, +and snatches of long pieces, singular beauty and power. And yet +he loved poetry so much that he grudged no pains to it; but the true +art, the <i>architectonicé </i>which shapes great works, such +as the <i>Agamemnon </i>or the <i>Divine Comedy, </i>comes only after +a steady, deep-searching survey, a firm conception of the facts of human +life, which the Celt has not patience for. So he runs off into +technic, where he employs the utmost elaboration, and attains astonishing +skill; but in the contents of his poetry you have only so much interpretation +of the world as the first dash of a quick, strong perception, and then +sentiment, infinite sentiment, can bring you. Here, too, his want +of sanity and steadfastness has kept the Celt back from the highest +success.<br> +<br> +If his rebellion against fact has thus lamed the Celt even in spiritual +work, how much more must it have lamed him in the world of business +and politics! The skilful and resolute appliance of means to ends +which is needed both to make progress in material civilisation, and +also to form powerful states, is just what the Celt has least turn for. +He is sensual, as I have said, or at least sensuous; loves bright colours, +company, and pleasure; and here he is like the Greek and Latin races; +but compare the talent the Greek and Latin (or Latinised) races have +shown for gratifying their senses, for procuring an outward life, rich, +luxurious, splendid, with the Celt’s failure to reach any material +civilisation sound and satisfying, and not out at elbows, poor, slovenly, +and half-barbarous. The sensuousness of the Greek made Sybaris +and Corinth, the sensuousness of the Latin made Rome and Baiæ, +the sensuousness of the Latinised Frenchman makes Paris; the sensuousness +of the Celt proper has made Ireland. Even in his ideal heroic +times, his gay and sensuous nature cannot carry him, in the appliances +of his favourite life of sociability and pleasure, beyond the gross +and creeping Saxon whom he despises; the regent Breas, we are told in +the <i>Battle of Moytura of the Fomorians, </i>became unpopular because +‘the knives of his people were not greased at his table, nor did +their breath smell of ale at the banquet.’ In its grossness +and barbarousness is not that Saxon, as Saxon as it can be? just what +the Latinised Norman, sensuous and sociable like the Celt, but with +the talent to make this bent of his serve to a practical embellishment +of his mode of living, found so disgusting in the Saxon.<br> +<br> +And as in material civilisation he has been ineffectual, so has the +Celt been ineffectual in politics. This colossal, impetuous, adventurous +wanderer, the Titan of the early world, who in primitive times fills +so large a place on earth’s scene, dwindles and dwindles as history +goes on, and at last is shrunk to what we now see him. For ages +and ages the world has been constantly slipping, ever more and more +out of the Celt’s grasp. ‘They went forth to the war,’ +Ossian says most truly, ‘<i>but they always fell</i>.’<br> +<br> +And yet, if one sets about constituting an ideal genius, what a great +deal of the Celt does one find oneself drawn to put into it! Of +an ideal genius one does not want the elements, any of them, to be in +a state of weakness; on the contrary, one wants all of them to be in +the highest state of power; but with a law of measure, of harmony, presiding +over the whole. So the sensibility of the Celt, if everything +else were not sacrificed to it, is a beautiful and admirable force. +For sensibility, the power of quick and strong perception and emotion, +is one of the very prime constituents of genius, perhaps its most positive +constituent; it is to the soul what good senses are to the body, the +grand natural condition of successful activity. Sensibility gives +genius its materials; one cannot have too much of it, if one can but +keep its master and not be its slave. Do not let us wish that +the Celt had had less sensibility, but that he had been more master +of it. Even as it is, if his sensibility has been a source of +weakness to him, it has been a source of power too, and a source of +happiness. Some people have found in the Celtic nature and its +sensibility the main root out of which chivalry and romance and the +glorification of a feminine ideal spring; this is a great question, +with which I cannot deal here. Let me notice in passing, however, +that there is, in truth, a Celtic air about the extravagance of chivalry, +its reaction against the despotism of fact, its straining human nature +further than it will stand. But putting all this question of chivalry +and its origin on one side, no doubt the sensibility of the Celtic nature, +its nervous exaltation, have something feminine in them, and the Celt +is thus peculiarly disposed to feel the spell of the feminine idiosyncrasy; +he has an affinity to it; he is not far from its secret. Again, +his sensibility gives him a peculiarly near and intimate feeling of +nature and the life of nature; here, too, he seems in a special way +attracted by the secret before him, the secret of natural beauty and +natural magic, and to be close to it, to half-divine it. In the +productions of the Celtic genius, nothing, perhaps, is so interesting +as the evidences of this power: I shall have occasion to give specimens +of them by-and-by. The same sensibility made the Celts full of +reverence and enthusiasm for genius, learning, and the things of the +mind; <i>to be a bard, freed a man</i>, - that is a characteristic stroke +of this generous and ennobling ardour of theirs, which no race has ever +shown more strongly. Even the extravagance and exaggeration of +the sentimental Celtic nature has often something romantic and attractive +about it, something which has a sort of smack of misdirected good. +The Celt, undisciplinable, anarchical, and turbulent by nature, but +out of affection and admiration giving himself body and soul to some +leader, that is not a promising political temperament, it is just the +opposite of the Anglo-Saxon temperament, disciplinable and steadily +obedient within certain limits, but retaining an inalienable part of +freedom and self-dependence; but it is a temperament for which one has +a kind of sympathy notwithstanding. And very often, for the gay +defiant reaction against fact of the lively Celtic nature one has more +than sympathy; one feels, in spite of the extravagance, in spite of +good sense disapproving, magnetised and exhilarated by it. The +Gauls had a rule inflicting a fine on every warrior who, when he appeared +on parade, was found to stick out too much in front, - to be corpulent, +in short. Such a rule is surely the maddest article of war ever +framed, and to people to whom nature has assigned a large volume of +intestines, must appear, no doubt, horrible; but yet has it not an audacious, +sparkling, immaterial manner with it, which lifts one out of routine, +and sets one’s spirits in a glow?<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Here, then, if commingling there is in our race, are two very unlike +elements to commingle; the steady-going Saxon temperament and the sentimental +Celtic temperament. But before we go on to try and verify, in +our life and literature, the alleged fact of this commingling, we have +yet another element to take into account, the Norman element. +The critic in the <i>Saturday Review</i>, whom I have already quoted, +says that in looking for traces of Normanism in our national genius, +as in looking for traces of Celtism in it, we do but lose our labour; +he says, indeed, that there went to the original making of our nation +a very great deal more of a Norman element than of a Celtic element, +but he asserts that both elements have now so completely disappeared, +that it is vain to look for any trace of either of them in the modern +Englishman. But this sort of assertion I do not like to admit +without trying it a little. I want, therefore, to get some plain +notion of the Norman habit and genius, as I have sought to get some +plain notion of the Saxon and Celtic. Some people will say that +the Normans are Teutonic, and that therefore the distinguishing characters +of the German genius must be those of their genius also; but the matter +cannot be settled in this speedy fashion. No doubt the basis of +the Norman race is Teutonic; but the governing point in the history +of the Norman race, - so far, at least, as we English have to do with +it, - is not its Teutonic origin, but its Latin civilisation. +The French people have, as I have already remarked, an undoubtedly Celtic +basis, yet so decisive in its effect upon a nation’s habit and +character can be the contact with a stronger civilisation, that Gaul, +without changing the basis of her blood, became, for all practical intents +and purposes, a Latin country, France and not Ireland, through the Roman +conquest. Latinism conquered Celtism in her, as it also conquered +the Germanism imported by the Frankish and other invasions; Celtism +is, however, I need not say, everywhere manifest still in the French +nation; even Germanism is distinctly traceable in it, as any one who +attentively compares the French with other Latin races will see. +No one can look carefully at the French troops in Rome, amongst the +Italian population, and not perceive this trace of Germanism; I do not +mean in the Alsatian soldiers only, but in the soldiers of genuine France. +But the governing character of France, as a power in the world, is Latin; +such was the force of Greek and Roman civilisation upon a race whose +whole mass remained Celtic, and where the Celtic language still lingered +on, they say, among the common people, for some five or six centuries +after the Roman conquest. But the Normans in Neustria lost their +old Teutonic language in a wonderfully short time; when they conquered +England they were already Latinised; with them were a number of Frenchmen +by race, men from Anjou and Poitou, so they brought into England more +non-Teutonic blood, besides what they had themselves got by intermarriage, +than is commonly supposed; the great point, however, is, that by civilisation +this vigorous race, when it took possession of England, was Latin.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +V.<br> +<br> +<br> +To begin with what is more external. If we are so wholly Anglo-Saxon +and Germanic as people say, how comes it that the habits and gait of +the German language are so exceedingly unlike ours? Why while +the <i>Times </i>talks in this fashion: ‘At noon a long line of +carriages extended from Pall Mall to the Peers’ entrance of the +Palace of Westminster,’ does the <i>Cologne Gazette </i>talk in +this other fashion: ‘Nachdem die Vorbereitungen zu dem auf dem +GürzenichSaale zu Ebren der Abgeordneten Statt finden sollenden +Bankette bereits vollständig getroffen worden waren, fand heute +vormittag auf polizeiliche Anordnung die Schliessung sämmtlicher +Zugänge zum Gürzenich Statt’? <a name="citation97"></a><a href="#footnote97">{97}</a> +Surely the mental habit of people who express their thoughts in so very +different a manner, the one rapid, the other slow, the one plain, the +other embarrassed, the one trailing, the other striding, cannot be essentially +the same. The English language, strange compound as it is, with +its want of inflections, and with all the difficulties which this want +of inflections brings upon it, has yet made itself capable of being, +in good hands, a business-instrument as ready, direct, and clear, as +French or Latin. Again: perhaps no nation, after the Greeks and +Romans, has so clearly felt in what true rhetoric, rhetoric of the best +kind, consists, and reached so high a pitch of excellence in this, as +the English. Our sense for rhetoric has in some ways done harm +to us in our cultivation of literature, harm to us, still more, in our +cultivation of science; but in the true sphere of rhetoric, in public +speaking, this sense has given us orators whom I do think we may, without +fear of being contradicted and accused of blind national vanity, assert +to have inherited the great Greek and Roman oratorical tradition more +than the orators of any other country. Strafford, Bolingbroke, +the two Pitts, Fox, - to cite no other names, - I imagine few will dispute +that these call up the notion of an oratory, in kind, in extent, in +power, coming nearer than any other body of modern oratory to the oratory +of Greece and Rome. And the affinity of spirit in our best public +life and greatest public men to those of Rome, has often struck observers, +foreign as well as English. Now, not only have the Germans shown +no eminent aptitude for rhetoric such as the English have shown, - that +was not to be expected, since our public life has done so much to develop +an aptitude of this kind, and the public life of the Germans has done +so little, - but they seem in a singular degree devoid of any aptitude +at all for rhetoric. Take a speech from the throne in Prussia, +and compare it with a speech from the throne in England. Assuredly +it is not in speeches from the throne that English rhetoric or any rhetoric +shows its best side; - they are often cavilled at, often justly cavilled +at; - no wonder, for this form of composition is beset with very trying +difficulties. But what is to be remarked is this; - a speech from +the throne falls essentially within the sphere of rhetoric, it is one’s +sense of rhetoric which has to fix its tone and style, so as to keep +a certain note always sounding in it; in an English speech from the +throne, whatever its faults, this rhetorical note is always struck and +kept to; in a Prussian speech from the throne, never. An English +speech from the throne is rhetoric;<i> </i>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.<br> +<br> +However, it is not my intention, in these remarks, to lay it down for +certain that this or that part of our powers, shortcomings, and behaviour, +is due to a Celtic, German, or Norman element in us. To establish +this I should need much wider limits, and a knowledge, too, far beyond +what I possess; all I purpose is to point out certain correspondences, +not yet, perhaps, sufficiently observed and attended to, which seem +to lead towards certain conclusions. The following up the inquiry +till full proof is reached, - or perhaps, full disproof, - is what I +want to suggest to more competent persons. Premising this, I now +go on to a second matter, somewhat more delicate and inward than that +with which I began. Every one knows how well the Greek and Latin +races, with their direct sense for the visible, palpable world, have +succeeded in the plastic arts. The sheer German races, too, with +their honest love of fact, and their steady pursuit of it, - their fidelity +to nature, in short, - have attained a high degree of success in these +arts; few people will deny that Albert Dürer and Rubens, for example, +are to be called masters in painting, and in the high kind of painting. +The Celtic races, on the other hand, have shown a singular inaptitude +for the plastic arts; the abstract, severe character of the Druidical +religion, its dealing with the eye of the mind rather than the eye of +the body, its having no elaborate temples and beautiful idols, all point +this way from the first; its sentiment cannot satisfy itself, cannot +even find a resting-place for itself, in colour and form; it presses +on to the impalpable, the ideal. The forest of trees and the forest +of rocks, not hewn timber and carved stones, suit its aspirations for +something not to be bounded or expressed. With this tendency, +the Celtic races have, as I remarked before, been necessarily almost +impotent in the higher branches of the plastic arts. Ireland, +that has produced so many powerful spirits, has produced no great sculptors +or painters. Cross into England. The inaptitude for the +plastic art strikingly diminishes, as soon as the German, not the Celtic +element, preponderates in the race. And yet in England, too, in +the English race, there is something which seems to prevent our reaching +real mastership in the plastic arts, as the more unmixed German races +have reached it. Reynolds and Turner are painters of genius, who +can doubt it? but take a European jury, the only competent jury in these +cases, and see if you can get a verdict giving them the rank of masters, +as this rank is given to Raphael and Correggio, or to Albert Dürer +and Rubens. And observe in what points our English pair succeed, +and in what they fall short. They fall short in <i>architectonicé, +</i>in the highest power of composition, by which painting accomplishes +the very uttermost which it is given to painting to accomplish; the +highest sort of composition, the highest application of the art of painting, +they either do not attempt, or they fail in it. Their defect, +therefore, is on the side of art, of plastic art. And they succeed +in magic, in beauty, in grace, in expressing almost the inexpressible: +here is the charm of Reynolds’s children and Turner’s seas; +the impulse to express the inexpressible carries Turner so far, that +at last it carries him away, and even long before he is quite carried +away, even in works that are justly extolled, one can see the stamp-mark, +as the French say, of insanity. The excellence, therefore, the +success, is on the side of spirit. Does not this look as if a +Celtic stream met the main German current in us, and gave it a somewhat +different course from that which it takes naturally? We have Germanism +enough in us, enough patient love for fact and matter, to be led to +attempt the plastic arts, and we make much more way in them than the +pure Celtic races make; but at a certain point our Celtism comes in, +with its love of emotion, sentiment, the inexpressible, and gives our +best painters a bias. And the point at which it comes in is just +that critical point where the flowering of art into its perfection commences; +we have plenty of painters who never reach this point at all, but remain +always mere journeymen, in bondage to matter; but those who do reach +it, instead of going on to the true consummation of the masters in painting, +are a little overbalanced by soul and feeling, work too directly for +these, and so do not get out of their art all that may be got out of +it.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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;<i> </i>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:-<br> +<br> +‘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.<br> +<br> +‘“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?”<br> +<br> +‘“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.”<br> +<br> +‘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?”<br> +<br> +‘“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.”’<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +‘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.<br> +<br> +‘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.<br> +<br> +‘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.<br> +<br> +‘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.<br> +<br> +‘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!<br> +<br> +‘Then the stranger looked at the chamberlain; and the chamberlain +bent his eyes on the ground and sighed.’<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +If we attend closely to the terms by which foreigners seek to hit off +the impression which we and the Germans make upon them, we shall detect +in these terms a difference which makes, I think, in favour of the notion +I am propounding. Nations in hitting off one another’s characters +are apt, we all know, to seize the unflattering side rather than the +flattering; the mass of mankind always do this, and indeed they really +see what is novel, and not their own, in a disfiguring light. +Thus we ourselves, for instance, popularly say ‘the phlegmatic +Dutchman’ rather than ‘the sensible Dutchman,’ or +‘the grimacing Frenchman’ rather than ‘the polite +Frenchman.’ Therefore neither we nor the Germans should +exactly accept the description strangers give of us, but it is enough +for my purpose that strangers, in characterising us with a certain shade +of difference, do at any rate make it clear that there appears this +shade of difference, though the character itself, which they give us +both, may be a caricature rather than a faithful picture of us. +Now it is to be noticed that those sharp observers, the French, - who +have a double turn for sharp observation, for they have both the quick +perception of the Celt and the Latin’s gift for coming plump upon +the fact, - it is to be noticed, I say, that the French put a curious +distinction in their popular, depreciating, we will hope inadequate, +way of hitting off us and the Germans. While they talk of the +‘<i>bêtise </i>allemande,’ they talk of the ‘<i>gaucherie +</i>anglaise;’ while they talk of the ‘Allemand <i>balourd</i>,’ +they talk of the ‘Anglais <i>empêtré</i>;’<i> +</i>while they call the German ‘<i>niais,</i>’<i> </i>they +call the Englishman ‘<i>mélancolique</i>.’ +The difference between the epithets <i>balourd </i>and <i>empêtré +</i>exactly gives the difference in character I wish to seize; <i>balourd +</i>means heavy and dull, <i>empêtré </i>means hampered +and embarrassed. This points to a certain mixture and strife of +elements in the Englishman; to the clashing of a Celtic quickness of +perception with a Germanic instinct for going steadily along close to +the ground. The Celt, as we have seen, has not at all, in spite +of his quick perception, the Latin talent for dealing with the fact, +dexterously managing it and making himself master of it; Latin or Latinised +people have felt contempt for him on this account, have treated him +as a poor creature, just as the German, who arrives at fact in a different +way from the Latins, but who arrives at it, has treated him. The +couplet of Chrestien of Troyes about the Welsh:-<br> +<br> +<br> +. . . Gallois sont tous, par nature,<br> +Plus fous que bêtes en pâsture -<br> +<br> +<br> +is well known, and expresses the genuine verdict of the Latin mind on +the Celts. But the perceptive instinct of the Celt feels and anticipates, +though he has that in him which cuts him off from command of the world +of fact; he sees what is wanting to him well enough; his mere eye is +not less sharp, nay, it is sharper, than the Latin’s. He +is a quick genius, checkmated for want of strenuousness or else patience. +The German has not the Latin’s sharp precise glance on the world +of fact, and dexterous behaviour in it; he fumbles with it much and +long, but his honesty and patience give him the rule of it in the long +run, - a surer rule, some of us think, than the Latin gets; still, his +behaviour in it is not quick and dexterous. The Englishman, in +so far as he is German, - and he is mainly German, - proceeds in the +steady-going German fashion; if he were all German he would proceed +thus for ever without self-consciousness or embarrassment; but, in so +far as he is Celtic, he has snatches of quick instinct which often make +him feel he is fumbling, show him visions of an easier, more dexterous +behaviour, disconcert him and fill him with misgiving. No people, +therefore, are so shy, so self-conscious, so embarrassed as the English, +because two natures are mixed in them, and natures which pull them such +different ways. The Germanic part, indeed, triumphs in us, we +are a Germanic people; but not so wholly as to exclude hauntings of +Celtism, which clash with our Germanism, producing, as I believe, our +<i>humour, </i>neither German nor Celtic, and so affect us that we strike +people as odd and singular, not to be referred to any known type, and +like nothing but ourselves. ‘Nearly every Englishman,’ +says an excellent and by no means unfriendly observer, George Sand, +‘nearly every Englishman, however good-looking he may be, has +always something singular about him which easily comes to seem comic; +- a sort of typical awkwardness (<i>gaucherie typique</i>) in his looks +or appearance, which hardly ever wears out.’ I say this +strangeness is accounted for by the English nature being mixed as we +have seen, while the Latin nature is all of a piece, and so is the German +nature, and the Celtic nature.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +VI.<br> +<br> +<br> +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;<i> </i>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.<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +<br> +. . . nor sometimes forget<br> +Those other two equal with me in fate,<br> +So were I equall’d with them in renown,<br> +Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides -<br> +<br> +<br> +with this from Goethe:-<br> +<br> +<br> +Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,<br> +Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt.<br> +<br> +<br> +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;<i> </i>and perhaps it is only on +condition of having this somewhat heightened and difficult manner, so +different from the plain manner of prose, that poetry gets the privilege +of being loosed, at its best moments, into that perfectly simple, limpid +style, which is the supreme style of all, but the simplicity of which +is still not the simplicity of prose. The simplicity of Menander’s +style is the simplicity of prose, and is the same kind of simplicity +as that which Goethe’s style, in the passage I have quoted, exhibits; +but Menander does not belong to a great poetical moment, he comes too +late for it; it is the simple passages in poets like Pindar or Dante +which are perfect, being masterpieces of <i>poetical </i>simplicity. +One may say the same of the simple passages in Shakspeare; they are +perfect, their simplicity being a <i>poetical </i>simplicity. +They are the golden, easeful, crowning moments of a manner which is +always pitched in another key from that of prose; a manner changed and +heightened; the Elizabethan style, regnant in most of our dramatic poetry +to this day, is mainly the continuation of this manner of Shakspeare’s. +It was a manner much more turbid and strewn with blemishes than the +manner of Pindar, Dante, or Milton; often it was detestable; but it +owed its existence to Shakspeare’s instinctive impulse towards +<i>style </i>in poetry, to his native sense of the necessity for it; +and without the basis of style everywhere, faulty though it may in some +places be, we should not have had the beauty of expression, unsurpassable +for effectiveness and charm, which is reached in Shakspeare’s +best passages. The turn for style is perceptible all through English +poetry, proving, to my mind, the genuine poetical gift of the race; +this turn imparts to our poetry a stamp of high distinction, and sometimes +it doubles the force of a poet not by nature of the very highest order, +such as Gray, and raises him to a rank beyond what his natural richness +and power seem to promise. Goethe, with his fine critical perception, +saw clearly enough both the power of style in itself, and the lack of +style in the literature of his own country; and perhaps if we regard +him solely as a German, not as a European, his great work was that he +laboured all his life to impart style into German literature, and firmly +to establish it there. Hence the immense importance to him of +the world of classical art, and of the productions of Greek or Latin +genius, where style so eminently manifests its power. Had he found +in the German genius and literature an element of style existing by +nature and ready to his hand, half his work, one may say, would have +been saved him, and he might have done much more in poetry. But +as it was, he had to try and create out of his own powers, a style for +German poetry, as well as to provide contents for this style to carry; +and thus his labour as a poet was doubled.<br> +<br> +It is to be observed that power of style, in the sense in which I am +here speaking of style, is something quite different from the power +of idiomatic, simple, nervous, racy expression, such as the expression +of healthy, robust natures so often is, such as Luther’s was in +a striking degree. Style, in my sense of the word, is a peculiar +re-casting and heightening, under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, +of what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction +to it; and dignity and distinction are not terms which suit many acts +or words of Luther. Deeply touched with the <i>Gemeinheit </i>which +is the bane of his nation, as he is at the same time a grand example +of the honesty which is his nation’s excellence, he can seldom +even show himself brave, resolute and truthful, without showing a strong +dash of coarseness and commonness all the while; the right definition +of Luther, as of our own Bunyan, is that he is a Philistine of genius. +So Luther’s sincere idiomatic German, - such language is this: +‘Hilf lieber Gott, wie manchen Jammer habe ich gesehen, dass der +gemeine Mann doch so gar nichts weiss von der christlichen Lehre!’ +- no more proves a power of style in German literature, than Cobbett’s +sinewy idiomatic English proves it in English literature. Power +of style, properly so-called, as manifested in masters of style like +Dante or Milton in poetry, Cicero, Bossuet or Bolingbroke in prose, +is something quite different, and has, as I have said, for its characteristic +effect, this: to add dignity and distinction.<br> +<br> +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 <i>Nibelungen </i>read and commented +on in German schools (German schools have the good habit of reading +and commenting on German poetry, as we read and comment on Homer and +Virgil, but do <i>not </i>read and comment on Chaucer and Shakspeare), +and it struck me how the fatal humdrum and want of style of the Germans +had marred their way of telling this magnificent tradition of the <i>Nibelungen, +</i>and taken half its grandeur and power out of it; while in the Icelandic +poems which deal with this tradition, its grandeur and power are much +more fully visible, and everywhere in the poetry of the Edda there is +a force of style and a distinction as unlike as possible to the want +of both in the German <i>Nibelungen</i>. <a name="citation120"></a><a href="#footnote120">{120}</a> +At the same time the Scandinavians have a realism, as it is called, +in their genius, which abundantly proves their relationship with the +Germans; any one whom Mr. Dasent’s delightful books have made +acquainted with the prose tales of the Norsemen, will be struck with +the stamp of a Teutonic nature in them; but the Norse poetry seems to +have something which from Teutonic sources alone it could not have derived; +which the Germans have not, and which the Celts have.<br> +<br> +This something is <i>style, </i>and the Celts certainly have it in a +wonderful measure. Style is the most striking quality of their +poetry. Celtic poetry seems to make up to itself for being unable +to master the world and give an adequate interpretation of it, by throwing +all its force into style, by bending language at any rate to its will, +and expressing the ideas it has with unsurpassable intensity, elevation, +and effect. It has all through it a sort of intoxication of style, +- a <i>Pindarism, </i>to use a word formed from the name of the poet, +on whom, above all other poets, the power of style seems to have exercised +an inspiring and intoxicating effect; and not in its great poets only, +in Taliesin, or Llywarch Hen, or Ossian, does the Celtic genius show +this Pindarism, but in all its productions:-<br> +<br> +<br> +The grave of March is this, and this the grave of Gwythyr;<br> +Here is the grave of Gwgawn Gleddyfreidd;<br> +But unknown is the grave of Arthur.<br> +<br> +<br> +That comes from the Welsh <i>Memorials of the Graves of the Warriors, +</i>and if we compare it with the familiar memorial inscriptions of +an English churchyard (for we English have so much Germanism in us that +our productions offer abundant examples of German want of style as well +as of its opposite):-<br> +<br> +<br> +Afflictions sore long time I bore,<br> +Physicians were in vain,<br> +Till God did please Death should me seize<br> +And ease me of my pain -<br> +<br> +<br> +if, I say, we compare the Welsh memorial lines with the English, which +in their <i>Gemeinheit </i>of style are truly Germanic, we shall get +a clear sense of what that Celtic talent for style I have been speaking +of is.<br> +<br> +Or take this epitaph of an Irish Celt, Angus the Culdee, whose <i>Féliré, +</i>or festology, I have already mentioned; a festology in which, at +the end of the eighth or beginning of the ninth century, he collected +from ‘the countless hosts of the illuminated books of Erin’ +(to use his own words) the festivals of the Irish saints, his poem having +a stanza for every day in the year. The epitaph on Angus, who +died at Cluain Eidhnech, in Queen’s County, runs thus:-<br> +<br> +<br> +Angus in the assembly of Heaven,<br> +Here are his tomb and his bed;<br> +It is from hence he went to death,<br> +In the Friday, to holy Heaven.<br> +<br> +It was in Cluain Eidhnech he was rear’d;<br> +It was in Cluain Eidhnech he was buried;<br> +In Cluain Eidhnech, of many crosses,<br> +He first read his psalms.<br> +<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +<br> +Their Lord they will praise,<br> +Their speech they will keep,<br> +Their land they will lose,<br> +Except wild Wales.<br> +<br> +<br> +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!<br> +<br> +Now we English undoubtedly exhibit very often the want of sense for +style of our German kinsmen. The churchyard lines I just now quoted +afford an instance of it: but the whole branch of our literature, - +and a very popular branch it is, our hymnology, - to which those lines +are to be referred, is one continued instance of it. Our German +kinsmen and we are the great people for hymns. The Germans are +very proud of their hymns, and we are very proud of ours; but it is +hard to say which of the two, the German hymn-book or ours, has least +poetical worth in itself, or does least to prove genuine poetical power +in the people producing it. I have not a word to say against Sir +Roundell Palmer’s choice and arrangement of materials for his +<i>Book of Praise</i>; I am content to put them on a level (and that +is giving them the highest possible rank) with Mr. Palgrave’s +choice and arrangement of materials for his <i>Golden Treasury</i>;<i> +</i>but yet no sound critic can doubt that, so far as poetry is concerned, +while the <i>Golden Treasury </i>is a monument of a nation’s strength, +the <i>Book of Praise </i>is a monument of a nation’s weakness. +Only the German race, with its want of quick instinctive tact, of delicate, +sure perception, could have invented the hymn as the Germans and we +have it; and our non-German turn for style, - style, of which the very +essence is a certain happy fineness and truth of poetical perception, +- could not but desert us when our German nature carried us into a kind +of composition which can please only when the perception is somewhat +blunt. Scarcely any one of us ever judges our hymns fairly, because +works of this kind have two sides, - their side for religion and their +side for poetry. Everything which has helped a man in his religious +life, everything which associates itself in his mind with the growth +of that life, is beautiful and venerable to him; in this way, productions +of little or no poetical value, like the German hymns and ours, may +come to be regarded as very precious. Their worth in this sense, +as means by which we have been edified, I do not for a moment hold cheap; +but there is an edification proper to all our stages of development, +the highest as well as the lowest, and it is for man to press on towards +the highest stages of his development, with the certainty that for those +stages, too, means of edification will not be found wanting. Now +certainly it is a higher state of development when our fineness of perception +is keen than when it is blunt. And if, - whereas the Semitic genius +placed its highest spiritual life in the religious sentiment, and made +that the basis of its poetry, - the Indo-European genius places its +highest spiritual life in the imaginative reason, and makes that the +basis of its poetry, we are none the better for wanting the perception +to discern a natural law, which is, after all, like every natural law, +irresistible; we are none the better for trying to make ourselves Semitic, +when Nature has made us Indo-European, and to shift the basis of our +poetry. We may mean well; all manner of good may happen to us +on the road we go; but we are not on our real right road, the road we +must in the end follow.<br> +<br> +That is why, when our hymns betray a false tendency by losing a power +which accompanies the poetical work of our race on our other more suitable +lines, the indication thus given is of great value and instructiveness +for us. One of our main gifts for poetry deserts us in our hymns, +and so gives us a hint as to the one true basis for the spiritual work +of an Indo-European people, which the Germans, who have not this particular +gift of ours, do not and cannot get in this way, though they may get +it in others. It is worth noticing that the masterpieces of the +spiritual work of Indo-Europeans, taking the pure religious sentiment, +and not the imaginative reason, for their basis, are works like the +<i>Imitation, </i>the <i>Dies Iræ, </i>the <i>Stabat Mater - </i>works<i> +</i>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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Its chord of penetrating passion and melancholy, again, its <i>Titanism +</i>as we see it in Byron, - what other European poetry possesses that +like the English, and where do we get it from? The Celts, with +their vehement reaction against the despotism of fact, with their sensuous +nature, their manifold striving, their adverse destiny, their immense +calamities, the Celts are the prime authors of this vein of piercing +regret and passion, - of this Titanism in poetry. A famous book, +Macpherson’s <i>Ossian, </i>carried in the last century this vein +like a flood of lava through Europe. I am not going to criticise +Macpherson’s <i>Ossian </i>here. Make the part of what is +forged, modern, tawdry, spurious, in the book, as large as you please; +strip Scotland, if you like, of every feather of borrowed plumes which +on the strength of Macpherson’s <i>Ossian </i>she may have stolen +from that <i>vetus et major Scotia, </i>the true home of the Ossianic +poetry, Ireland; I make no objection. But there will still be +left in the book a residue with the very soul of the Celtic genius in +it, and which has the proud distinction of having brought this soul +of the Celtic genius into contact with the genius of the nations of +modern Europe, and enriched all our poetry by it. Woody Morven, +and echoing Sora, and Selma with its silent halls! - we all owe them +a debt of gratitude, and when we are unjust enough to forget it, may +the Muse forget us! Choose any one of the better passages in Macpherson’s +<i>Ossian </i>and you can see even at this time of day what an apparition +of newness and power such a strain must have been to the eighteenth +century:-<br> +<br> +‘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.’<br> +<br> +All Europe felt the power of that melancholy; but what I wish to point +out is, that no nation of Europe so caught in its poetry the passionate +penetrating accent of the Celtic genius, its strain of Titanism, as +the English. Goethe, like Napoleon, felt the spell of Ossian very +powerfully, and he quotes a long passage from him in his <i>Werther</i>. +But what is there Celtic, turbulent, and Titanic about the German Werther, +that amiable, cultivated, and melancholy young man, having for his sorrow +and suicide the perfectly definite motive that Lotte cannot be his? +Faust, again, has nothing unaccountable, defiant and Titanic in him; +his knowledge does not bring him the satisfaction he expected from it, +and meanwhile he finds himself poor and growing old, and baulked of +the palpable enjoyment of life; and here is the motive for Faust’s +discontent. In the most energetic and impetuous of Goethe’s +creations, - his <i>Prometheus</i>, - it is not Celtic self-will and +passion, it is rather the Germanic sense of justice and reason, which +revolts against the despotism of Zeus. The German <i>Sehnsucht +</i>itself is a wistful, soft, tearful longing, rather than a struggling, +fierce, passionate one. But the Celtic melancholy is struggling, +fierce, passionate; to catch its note, listen to Llywarch Hen in old +age, addressing his crutch:-<br> +<br> +<br> +O my crutch! is it not autumn, when the fern is red, the water. flag +yellow? Have I not hated that which I love?<br> +<br> +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?<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +O my crutch! stand straight, thou wilt support me the better; it is +very long since I was Llywarch.<br> +<br> +Behold old age, which makes sport of me, from the hair of my head to +my teeth, to my eyes, which women loved.<br> +<br> +The four things I have all my life most hated fall upon me together, +- coughing and old age, sickness and sorrow.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +How evil was the lot allotted to Llywarch, the night when he was brought +forth! sorrows without end, and no deliverance from his burden.<br> +<br> +<br> +There is the Titanism of the Celt, his passionate, turbulent, indomitable +reaction against the despotism of fact;<i> </i>and of whom does it remind +us so much as of Byron?<br> +<br> +<br> +The fire which on my bosom preys<br> +Is lone as some volcanic isle;<br> +No torch is kindled at its blaze;<br> + A funeral pile!<br> +<br> +<br> +Or, again:-<br> +<br> +<br> +Count o’er the joys thine hours have seen,<br> +Count o’er thy days from anguish free,<br> +And know, whatever thou hast been,<br> +’Tis something better not to be.<br> +<br> +<br> +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +. . . What though the field be lost?<br> +All is not lost; the unconquerable will,<br> +And study of revenge, immortal hate,<br> +And courage never to submit or yield,<br> +And what is else not to be overcome.<br> +<br> +<br> +There, surely, speaks a genius to whose composition the Celtic fibre +was not wholly a stranger!<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +<br> +How evil was the lot allotted to Llywarch, the night when he was brought +forth -<br> +<br> +<br> +after Byron’s:-<br> +<br> +<br> +Count o’er the joys thine hours have seen -<br> +<br> +<br> +take this of Southey’s, in answer to the question whether he would +like to have his youth over again:-<br> +<br> +<br> +Do I regret the past?<br> +Would I live o’er again<br> +The morning hours of life?<br> +Nay, William, nay, not so!<br> +Praise be to God who made me what I am,<br> +Other I would not be.<br> +<br> +<br> +There we have the other side of our being; the Germanic goodness, docility, +and fidelity to nature, in place of the Celtic Titanism.<br> +<br> +The Celt’s quick feeling for what is noble and distinguished gave +his poetry style; his indomitable personality gave it pride and passion; +his sensibility and nervous exaltation gave it a better gift still, +the gift of rendering with wonderful felicity the magical charm of nature. +The forest solitude, the bubbling spring, the wild flowers, are everywhere +in romance. They have a mysterious life and grace there; they +are nature’s own children, and utter her secret in a way which +makes them something quite different from the woods, waters, and plants +of Greek and Latin poetry. Now of this delicate magic, Celtic +romance is so pre-eminent a mistress, that it seems impossible to believe +the power did not come into romance from the Celts. <a name="citation133"></a><a href="#footnote133">{133}</a> +Magic is just the word for it, - the magic of nature; not merely the +beauty of nature, - that the Greeks and Latins had; not merely an honest +smack of the soil, a faithful realism, - that the Germans had; but the +intimate life of nature, her weird power and her fairy charm. +As the Saxon names of places, with the pleasant wholesome smack of the +soil in them, - Weathersfield, Thaxted, Shalford, - are to the Celtic +names of places, with their penetrating, lofty beauty, - Velindra, Tyntagel, +Caernarvon, - so is the homely realism of German and Norse nature to +the fairy-like loveliness of Celtic nature. Gwydion wants a wife +for his pupil: ‘Well,’ says Math, ‘we will seek, I +and thou, by charms and illusions, to form a wife for him out of flowers. +So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, +and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, +the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw. And they baptized +her, and gave her the name of Flower-Aspect.’ Celtic romance +is full of exquisite touches like that, showing the delicacy of the +Celt’s feeling in these matters, and how deeply nature lets him +come into her secrets. The quick dropping of blood is called ‘faster +than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of reed-grass upon the earth, +when the dew of June is at the heaviest.’ And thus is Olwen +described: ‘More yellow was her hair than the flower of the broom, +and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her +hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood-anemony amidst the +spray of the meadow fountains.’ For loveliness it would +be hard to beat that; and for magical clearness and nearness take the +following:-<br> +<br> +‘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.’<br> +<br> +And this, which is perhaps less striking, is not less beautiful:-<br> +<br> +‘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.’<br> +<br> +And here the landscape, up to this point so Greek in its clear beauty, +is suddenly magicalised by the romance touch:-<br> +<br> +‘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.’<br> +<br> +Magic is the word to insist upon, - a magically vivid and near interpretation +of nature; since it is this which constitutes the special charm and +power of the effect I am calling attention to, and it is for this that +the Celt’s sensibility gives him a peculiar aptitude. But +the matter needs rather fine handling, and it is easy to make mistakes +here in our criticism. In the first place, Europe tends constantly +to become more and more one community, and we tend to become Europeans +instead of merely Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians; so whatever +aptitude or felicity one people imparts into spiritual work, gets imitated +by the others, and thus tends to become the common property of all. +Therefore anything so beautiful and attractive as the natural magic +I am speaking of, is sure, now-a-days, if it appears in the productions +of the Celts, or of the English, or of the French, to appear in the +productions of the Germans also, or in the productions of the Italians; +but there will be a stamp of perfectness and inimitableness about it +in the literatures where it is native, which it will not have in the +literatures where it is not native. Novalis or Rückert, for +instance, have their eye fixed on nature, and have undoubtedly a feeling +for natural magic; a rough-and-ready critic easily credits them and +the Germans with the Celtic fineness of tact, the Celtic nearness to +nature and her secret; but the question is whether the strokes in the +German’s picture of nature <a name="citation136"></a><a href="#footnote136">{136}</a> +have ever the indefinable delicacy, charm, and perfection of the Celt’s +touch in the pieces I just now quoted, or of Shakspeare’s touch +in his daffodil, Wordsworth’s in his cuckoo, Keats’s in +his Autumn, Obermann’s in his mountain birch-tree, or his Easter-daisy +among the Swiss farms. To decide where the gift for natural magic +originally lies, whether it is properly Celtic or Germanic, we must +decide this question.<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +<br> +As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night -<br> +<br> +<br> +to call up any number of instances. Latin poetry supplies plenty +of instances too; if we put this from Propertius’s <i>Hylas</i>:-<br> +<br> +<br> +. . . manus heroum . . .<br> +Mollia composita litora fronde togit -<br> +<br> +<br> +side by side with the line of Theocritus by which it was suggested:-<br> +<br> +<br> +<i>λειμων yαρ σφιν +εκειτο μεyας, +στιβαδεσσιν +ονειαρ</i> -<br> +<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +<br> +What little town by river or seashore,<br> +Or mountain-built with quiet citadel,<br> +Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?<br> +<br> +<br> +is Greek, as Greek as a thing from Homer or Theocritus; it is composed +with the eye on the object, a radiancy and light clearness being added. +German poetry abounds in specimens of the faithful way of handling nature; +an excellent example is to be found in the stanzas called <i>Zueignung, +</i>prefixed to Goethe’s poems; the morning walk, the mist, the +dew, the sun, are as faithful as they can be, they are given with the +eye on the object, but there the merit of the work, as a handling of +nature, stops; neither Greek radiance nor Celtic magic is added; the +power of these is not what gives the poem in question its merit, but +a power of quite another kind, a power of moral and spiritual emotion. +But the power of Greek radiance Goethe could give to his handling of +nature, and nobly too, as any one who will read his <i>Wanderer</i>, +- the poem in which a wanderer falls in with a peasant woman and her +child by their hut, built out of the ruins of a temple near Cuma, - +may see. Only the power of natural magic Goethe does not, I think, +give; whereas Keats passes at will from the Greek power to that power +which is, as I say, Celtic; from his:-<br> +<br> +<br> +What little town, by river or seashore -<br> +<br> +<br> +to his:-<br> +<br> +<br> +White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine,<br> +Fast-fading violets cover’d up in leaves -<br> +<br> +<br> +or his:-<br> +<br> +<br> +. . . magic casements, opening on the foam<br> +Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn -<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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:’ -<br> +<br> +<br> +Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba -<br> +<br> +<br> +as his charming flower-gatherer, who -<br> +<br> +<br> +Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens<br> +Narcissum et florem jungit bene olentis anethi -<br> +<br> +<br> +as his quinces and chestnuts:-<br> +<br> +<br> +. . . cana legam tenera lanugine mala<br> +Castaneasque nuces . . .<br> +<br> +<br> +then, I think, we shall be disposed to say that in Shakspeare’s +-<br> +<br> +<br> +I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,<br> +Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,<br> +Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,<br> +With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine -<br> +<br> +<br> +it is mainly a Greek note which is struck. Then, again in his:-<br> +<br> +<br> +. . . look how the floor of heaven<br> +Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold!<br> +<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +<br> +Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,<br> +By paved fountain or by rushy brook,<br> +Or in the beached margent of the sea -<br> +<br> +<br> +or this, the last I will quote:-<br> +<br> +<br> +The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,<br> +When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,<br> +And they did make no noise, in such a night<br> +Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls -<br> +<br> +. . . in such a night<br> +Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew -<br> +<br> +. . . in such a night<br> +<i>Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand,<br> +Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love<br> +To come again to Carthage.<br> +<br> +<br> +</i>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.<br> +<br> +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?<br> +<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +<br> +Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,<br> +Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt -<br> +<br> +<br> +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;<i> +</i>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.<br> +<br> +We, on the other hand, do not necessarily gain by the commixture of +elements in us; we have seen how the clashing of natures in us hampers +and embarrasses our behaviour; we might very likely be more attractive, +we might very likely be more successful, if we were all of a piece. +Our want of sureness of taste, our eccentricity, come in great measure, +no doubt, from our not being all of a piece, from our having no fixed, +fatal, spiritual centre of gravity. The Rue de Rivoli is one thing, +and Nuremberg is another, and Stonehenge is another; but we have a turn +for all three, and lump them all up together. Mr. Tom Taylor’s +translations from Breton poetry offer a good example of this mixing; +he has a genuine feeling for these Celtic matters, and often, as in +the <i>Evil Tribute of Nomenoë, </i>or in <i>Lord Nann and the +Fairy, </i>he is, both in movement and expression, true and appropriate; +but he has a sort of Teutonism and Latinism in him too, and so he cannot +forbear mixing with his Celtic strain such disparates as:-<br> +<br> +<br> +’Twas mirk, mirk night, and the water bright<br> +Troubled and drumlie flowed -<br> +<br> +<br> +which is evidently Lowland-Scotchy; or as:-<br> +<br> +<br> +Foregad, but thou’rt an artful hand!<br> +<br> +<br> +which is English-stagey;<i> </i>or as:-<br> +<br> +<br> +To Gradlon’s daughter, bright of blee,<br> +Her lover he whispered tenderly -<br> +<i>Bethink thee, sweet Dahut</i>! <i>the key</i>!<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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;<i> </i>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.<br> +<br> +A man of exquisite intelligence and charming character, the late Mr. +Cobden, used to fancy that a better acquaintance with the United States +was the grand panacea for us; and once in a speech he bewailed the inattention +of our seats of learning to them, and seemed to think that if our ingenuous +youth at Oxford were taught a little less about Ilissus, and a little +more about Chicago, we should all be the better for it. Chicago +has its claims upon us, no doubt; but it is evident that from the point +of view to which I have been leading, a stimulation of our Anglo-Saxonism, +such as is intended by Mr. Cobden’s proposal, does not appear +the thing most needful for us; seeing our American brothers themselves +have rather, like us, to try and moderate the flame of Anglo-Saxonism +in their own breasts, than to ask us to clap the bellows to it in ours. +So I am inclined to beseech Oxford, instead of expiating her over-addiction +to the Ilissus by lectures on Chicago, to give us an expounder for a +still more remote-looking object than the Ilissus, - the Celtic languages +and literature. And yet why should I call it remote? if, as I +have been labouring to show, in the spiritual frame of us English ourselves, +a Celtic fibre, little as we may have ever thought of tracing it, lives +and works. <i>Aliens in speech, in religion, in blood</i>! said +Lord Lyndhurst; the philologists have set him right about the speech, +the physiologists about the blood; and perhaps, taking religion in the +wide but true sense of our whole spiritual activity, those who have +followed what I have been saying here will think that the Celt is not +so wholly alien to us in religion. But, at any rate, let us consider +that of the shrunken and diminished remains of this great primitive +race, all, with one insignificant exception, belongs to the English +empire; only Brittany is not ours; we have Ireland, the Scotch Highlands, +Wales, the Isle of Man, Cornwall. They are a part of ourselves, +we are deeply interested in knowing them, they are deeply interested +in being known by us; and yet in the great and rich universities of +this great and rich country there is no chair of Celtic, there is no +study or teaching of Celtic matters; those who want them must go abroad +for them. It is neither right nor reasonable that this should +be so. Ireland has had in the last half century a band of Celtic +students, - a band with which death, alas! has of late been busy, - +from whence Oxford or Cambridge might have taken an admirable professor +of Celtic; and with the authority of a university chair, a great Celtic +scholar, on a subject little known, and where all would have readily +deferred to him, might have by this time doubled our facilities for +knowing the Celt, by procuring for this country Celtic documents which +were inaccessible here, and preventing the dispersion of others which +were accessible. It is not much that the English Government does +for science or literature; but if Eugene O’Curry, from a chair +of Celtic at Oxford, had appealed to the Government to get him copies +or the originals of the Celtic treasures in the Burgundian Library at +Brussels, or in the library of St. Isidore’s College at Rome, +even the English Government could not well have refused him. The +invaluable Irish manuscripts in the Stowe Library the late Sir Robert +Peel proposed, in 1849, to buy for the British Museum; Lord Macaulay, +one of the trustees of the Museum, declared, with the confident shallowness +which makes him so admired by public speakers and leading-article writers, +and so intolerable to all searchers for truth, that he saw nothing in +the whole collection worth purchasing for the Museum, except the correspondence +of Lord Melville on the American war. That is to say, this correspondence +of Lord Melville’s was the only thing in the collection about +which Lord Macaulay himself knew or cared. Perhaps an Oxford or +Cambridge professor of Celtic might have been allowed to make his voice +heard, on a matter of Celtic manuscripts, even against Lord Macaulay. +The manuscripts were bought by Lord Ashburnham, who keeps them shut +up, and will let no one consult them (at least up to the date when O’Curry +published his <i>Lectures </i>he did so), ‘for fear an actual +acquaintance with their contents should decrease their value as matter +of curiosity at some future transfer or sale.’ Who knows? +Perhaps an Oxford professor of Celtic might have touched the flinty +heart of Lord Ashburnham.<br> +<br> +At this moment, when the narrow Philistinism which has long had things +its own way in England, is showing its natural fruits, and we are beginning +to feel ashamed, and uneasy, and alarmed at it; now, when we are becoming +aware that we have sacrificed to Philistinism culture, and insight, +and dignity, and acceptance, and weight among the nations, and hold +on events that deeply concern us, and control of the future, and yet +that it cannot even give us the fool’s paradise it promised us, +but is apt to break down, and to leave us with Mr. Roebuck’s and +Mr. Lowe’s laudations of our matchless happiness, and the largest +circulation in the world assured to the <i>Daily Telegraph, </i>for +our only comfort; at such a moment it needs some moderation not to be +attacking Philistinism by storm, but to mine it through such gradual +means as the slow approaches of culture, and the introduction of chairs +of Celtic. But the hard unintelligence, which is just now our +bane, cannot be conquered by storm; it must be suppled and reduced by +culture, by a growth in the variety, fulness, and sweetness of our spiritual +life; and this end can only be reached by studying things that are outside +of ourselves, and by studying them disinterestedly. Let us reunite +ourselves with our better mind and with the world through science; and +let it be one of our angelic revenges on the Philistines, who among +their other sins are the guilty authors of Fenianism, to found at Oxford +a chair of Celtic, and to send, through the gentle ministration of science, +a message of peace to Ireland.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Footnotes:-<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote0a"></a><a href="#citation0a">{0a}</a> See p. +28 of the following essay. [Starts with “It is not difficult +for the other side . . . ” - DP.]<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote0b"></a><a href="#citation0b">{0b}</a> See particularly +pp. 9, 10, 11, of the following essay.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote4"></a><a href="#citation4">{4}</a> Lord Strangford +remarks on this passage:- ‘Your Gomer and your Cimmerians are +of course only lay figures, to be accepted in the rhetorical and subjective +sense. As such I accept them, but I enter a protest against the +“genuine tongue of his ancestors.” Modern Celtic tongues +are to the old Celtic heard by Julius Cæsar, broadly speaking, +what the modern Romanic tongues are to Cæsar’s own Latin. +Welsh, in fact, is a <i>detritus</i>; a language in the category of +modern French, or, to speak less roughly and with a closer approximation, +of old Provençal, not in the category of Lithuanian, much less +in the category of Basque. By true inductive research, based on +an accurate comparison of such forms of Celtic speech, oral and recorded, +as we now possess, modern philology has, in so far as was possible, +succeeded in restoring certain forms of the parent speech, and in so +doing has achieved not the least striking of its many triumphs; for +those very forms thus restored have since been verified past all cavil +by their actual discovery in the old Gaulish inscriptions recently come +to light. The <i>phonesis </i>of Welsh as it stands is modern, +not primitive its grammar, - the verbs excepted, - is constructed out +of the fragments of its earlier forms, and its vocabulary is strongly +Romanised, two out of the six words here given being Latin of the Empire. +Rightly understood, this enhances the value of modern Celtic instead +of depreciating it, because it serves to rectify it. To me it +is a wonder that Welsh should have retained so much of its integrity +under the iron pressure of four hundred years of Roman dominion. +Modern Welsh tenacity and cohesive power under English pressure is nothing +compared with what that must have been.’<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote14"></a><a href="#citation14">{14}</a> Here again +let me have the pleasure of quoting Lord Strangford:- ‘When the +Celtic tongues were first taken in hand at the dawn of comparative philological +inquiry, the tendency was, for all practical results, to separate them +from the Indo-European aggregate, rather than to unite them with it. +The great gulf once fixed between them was narrowed on the surface, +but it was greatly and indefinitely deepened. Their vocabulary +and some of their grammar were seen at once to be perfectly Indo-European, +but they had no case-endings to their nouns, none at all in Welsh, none +that could be understood in Gaelic; their <i>phonesis </i>seemed primeval +and inexplicable, and nothing could be made out of their pronouns which +could not be equally made out of many wholly un-Aryan languages. +They were therefore co-ordinated, not with each single Aryan tongue, +but with the general complex of Aryan tongues, and were conceived to +be anterior to them and apart from them, as it were the strayed vanguard +of European colonisation or conquest from the East. The reason +of this misconception was, that their records lay wholly uninvestigated +as far as all historical study of the language was concerned, and that +nobody troubled himself about the relative age and the development of +forms, so that the philologists were fain to take them as they were +put into their hands by uncritical or perverse native commentators and +writers, whose grammars and dictionaries teemed with blunders and downright +forgeries. One thing, and one thing alone, led to the truth: the +sheer drudgery of thirteen long years spent by Zeuss in the patient +investigation of the most ancient Celtic records, in their actual condition, +line by line and letter by letter. Then for the first time the +foundation of Celtic research was laid; but the great philologist did +not live to see the superstructure which never could have been raised +but for him. Prichard was first to indicate the right path, and +Bopp, in his monograph of 1839, displayed his incomparable and masterly +sagacity as usual, but for want of any trustworthy record of Celtic +words and forms to work upon, the truth remained concealed or obscured +until the publication of the <i>Gramatica Celtica</i>. Dr. Arnold, +a man of the past generation, who made more use of the then uncertain +and unfixed doctrines of comparative philology in his historical writings +than is done by the present generation in the fullest noonday light +of the <i>Vergleichende Grammatik</i>, was thus justified in his view +by the philology of the period, to which he merely gave an enlarged +historical expression. The prime fallacy then as now, however, +was that of antedating the distinction between Gaelic and Cymric Celts.’<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote25"></a><a href="#citation25">{25}</a> Dr. O’Conor +in his <i>Catalogue of the Stowe MSS</i>. (quoted by O’Curry).<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote26"></a><a href="#citation26">{26}</a> O’Curry.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote29"></a><a href="#citation29">{29}</a> Here, +where Saturday should come, something is wanting in the manuscript.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote66"></a><a href="#citation66">{66}</a> See <i>Les +Scythes, les Ancêtres des Peuples Germaniques et Slaves</i>, par +F. G. Bergmann, professeur à la faculté des Lettres de +Strasbourg: Colmar, 1858. But Professor Bergmann’s etymologies +are often, says Lord Strangford, ‘false lights, held by an uncertain +hand.’ And Lord Strangford continues: - ‘The Apian +land certainly meant the watery land, <i>Meer-Umschlungon, </i>among +the pre-Hellenic Greeks, just as the same land is called Morea by the +modern post-Hellenic or Romaic Greeks from <i>more, </i>the name for +the sea in the Slavonic vernacular of its inhabitants during the heart +of the middle ages. But it is only connected by a remote and secondary +affinity, if connected at all, with the <i>avia</i> of Scandinavia, +assuming that to be the true German word for <i>water, </i>which, if +it had come down to us in Gothic, would have been <i>avi, </i>genitive +<i>aujôs</i>, and not a mere Latinised termination. Scythian +is surely a negative rather than a positive term, much like our <i>Indian, +</i>or the <i>Turanian </i>of modern ethnologists, used to comprehend +nomads and barbarians of all sorts and races north and east of the Black +and Caspian seas. It is unsafe to connect their name with anything +as yet; it is quite as likely that it refers to the bow and arrow as +to the shield, and is connected with our word to <i>shoot, sceótan, +skiutan, </i>Lithuanian <i>szau-ti. S</i>ome of the Scythian peoples +may have been Anarian, Allophylic, Mongolian; some were demonstrably +Aryan, and not only that, but Iranian as well, as is best shown in a +memoir read before the Berlin Academy this last year; the evidence having +been first indicated in the rough by Schaffarik the Slavonic antiquary. +Coins, glosses, proper names, and inscriptions prove it. Targitaos +(not -tavus) and the rest is guess-work or wrong. Herodotus’s +Ταβιτι for the goddess Vesta is not connected +with the root <i>div </i>whence Dêvas, Deus, &c., but the +root <i>tap, </i>in Latin <i>tep </i>(of tepere, tepefacere), Slavonic +<i>tepl</i>, <i>topl </i>(for <i>tep</i> or <i>top</i>), in modern Persian +<i>tâb</i>. <i>Thymele</i> refers to the hearth as the place +of smoke (θυω, <i>thus</i>, <i>fumus</i>), but <i>familia</i> +denotes household from <i>famulus</i> for <i>fagmulus</i>, the root +<i>fag</i> being equated with the Sansk. <i>bhaj, servira</i>. +Lucan’s Hesus or Esus may fairly be compared with the Welsh <i>Hu</i> +Gadarn by legitimate process, but no letter-change can justify his connection +with <i>Gaisos</i>, the spear, not the sword, Virgil’s <i>gæsum</i>, +A. S. <i>gár</i>, our verb to <i>gore</i>, retained in its outer +form in <i>gar</i>-fish. For <i>Theuthisks lege Thiudisks</i>, +from <i>thiuda</i>, <i>populus</i>; in old high German Diutisk, Diotisk, +<i>popularis</i>, <i>vulgaris</i>, the country vernacular as distinguished +from the cultivated Latin; hence the word <i>Dutch</i>, <i>Deutsch</i>. +With our ancestors <i>theód</i> stood for nation generally and +<i>getheóde</i> for any speech. Our diet in the political +sense is the same word, but borrowed from our German cousins, not inherited +from our fathers. The modern Celtic form is the Irish <i>tuath</i>, +in ancient Celtic it must have been <i>teuta</i>, <i>touta</i>, of which +we actually have the adjective <i>toutius</i> in the Gaulish inscription +of Nismes. In Oscan we have it as <i>turta</i>, <i>tuta</i>, its +adjective being handed down in Livy’s <i>meddix tuticus, </i>the +mayor or chief magistrate of the <i>tuta</i>. In the Umbrian inscriptions +it is <i>tota. I</i>n Lithuanian <i>tauta, </i>the country opposed +to the town, and in old Prussian <i>tauta, </i>the country generally, +<i>en Prusiskan tautan, im Land zu Preussen.</i>’<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote68"></a><a href="#citation68">{68}</a> Lord Strangford +observes here: - ‘The original forms of Gael should be mentioned +- Gaedil, Goidil: in modern Gaelic orthography Gaoidheal where the <i>dh +</i>is not realised in pronunciation. There is nothing impossible +in the connection of the root of this with that of Scot, <i>if </i>the +<i>s </i>of the latter be merely prosthetic. But the whole thing +is <i>in nubibus, </i>and given as a guess only.’<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote69"></a><a href="#citation69">{69}</a> ‘The +name of Erin,’ says Lord Strangford, ‘is treated at length +in a masterly note by Whitley Stokes in the 1st series of Max Müller’s +lectures (4th ed.) p. 255, where its earliest <i>tangible </i>form is +shown to have been Iverio. Pictet’s connection with Arya +is quite baseless.’<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote82"></a><a href="#citation82">{82}</a> It is +to be remembered that the above was written before the recent war between +Prussia and Austria.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote84"></a><a href="#citation84">{84}</a> The etymology +is Monsieur Henri Martin’s, but Lord Strangford says - ‘Whatever +<i>gai </i>may be, it is assuredly not Celtic. Is there any authority +for this word <i>gair, </i>to laugh, or rather “laughter,” +beyond O’Reilly? O’Reilly is no authority at all except +in so far as tested and passed by the new school. It is hard to +give up <i>gavisus</i>. But Diez, chief authority in Romanic matters, +is content to accept Muratori’s reference to an old High-German +<i>gâhi, </i>modern <i>jähe</i>, sharp, quick, sudden, brisk, +and so to the sense of lively, animated, high in spirits.’<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote85"></a><a href="#citation85">{85}</a> Monsieur +Henri Martin, whose chapters on the Celts, in his <i>Histoire de France, +</i>are full of information and interest.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote97"></a><a href="#citation97">{97}</a> The above +is really a sentence taken from the <i>Cologne Gazette</i>. Lord +Strangford’s comment here is as follows: - ‘Modern Germanism, +in a general estimate of Germanism, should not be taken, absolutely +and necessarily, as the constant, whereof we are the variant. +The Low-Dutch of Holland, anyhow, are indisputably as genuine Dutch +as the High-Dutch of Germany Proper. But do they write sentences +like this one - <i>informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum</i>? If +not, the question must be asked, not how we have come to deviate, but +how the Germans have come to deviate. Our modern English prose +in plain matters is often all just the same as the prose of <i>King +Alfred </i>and the <i>Chronicle</i>. Ohthere’s <i>North +Sea Voyage </i>and Wulfstan’s <i>Baltic Voyage </i>is the sort +of thing which is sent in every day, one may say, to the Geographical +or Ethnological Society, in the whole style and turn of phrase and thought.’<br> +<br> +The mass of a stock must supply our data for judging the stock. +But see, moreover, what I have said at p. 100.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote120"></a><a href="#citation120">{120}</a> Lord +Strangford’s note on this is: - ‘The Irish monks whose bells +and books were found in Iceland could not have contributed anything +to the old Norse spirit, for they had perished before the first Norseman +had set foot on the island. The form of the old Norse poetry known +to us as Icelandic, from the accident of its preservation in that island +alone, is surely Pan-Teutonic from old times; the ar and method of its +strictly literary cultivation must have been much influenced by the +contemporary Old-English national poetry, with which the Norsemen were +in constant contact; and its larger, freer, and wilder spirit must have +been owing to their freer and wilder life, to say nothing of their roused +and warring paganism. They could never have known any Celts save +when living in embryo with other Teutons.’<br> +<br> +Very likely Lord Strangford is right, but the proposition with which +he begins is at variance with what the text quoted by Zeuss alleges.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote133"></a><a href="#citation133">{133}</a> Rhyme, +- the most striking characteristic of our modern poetry as distinguished +from that of the ancients, and a main source, to our poetry, of its +magic and charm, of what we call its <i>romantic element</i>, - rhyme +itself, all the weight of evidence tends to show, comes into our poetry +from the Celts.<br> +<br> +<a name="footnote136"></a><a href="#citation136">{136}</a> Take +the following attempt to render the natural magic supposed to pervade +Tieck’s poetry: - ‘In diesen Dichtungen herrscht eine geheimnissvolle +Innigkeit, ein sonderbares Einverständniss mit der Natur, besonders +mit der Pflanzen - und Steinreich. Der Leser fühlt sich da +wie in einem verzauberten Walde; er hört die unterirdischen Quellen +melodisch rauschen; wildfremde Wunderblumen schauen ihn an mit ihren +bunten schnsüchtigen Augen; unsichtbare Lippen küssen seine +Wangen mit neckender Zärtlichkeit; <i>hohe Pilze, wie goldne Glocken, +wachsen klingend empor am Fusse der Bäume</i>;’ and so on. +Now that stroke of the <i>hohe Pilze, </i>the great funguses, would +have been impossible to the tact and delicacy of a born lover of nature +like the Celt, and could only have come from a German who has <i>hineinstudirt +</i>himself into natural magic. It is a crying false note, which +carries us at once out of the world of nature-magic and the breath of +the woods, into the world of theatre-magic and the smell of gas and +orange-peel.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CELTIC LITERATURE ***<br> +<pre> + +******This file should be named celt10h.htm or celt10h.zip****** +Corrected EDITIONS of our EBooks get a new NUMBER, celt11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, celt10ah.htm + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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