"Hawk of war- -Howel the Tall, Prince of men! Dead is Howel, David slew him : Periv, son of old Kedivor, Sang him so, Sang his poet's death and passion Now nine centuries ago." Shortly before his death, Hywel wrote the poem known as "Hywel's Delight," in which his great love for the beauty of Wales is mixed with a soft melancholy, and a foreboding of the tragic end soon to overtake the hot Celtic spirit that burnt so fatefully in him : "A white foam-crowned wave flows o'er the grave I love the hated of Lloegr, land of the north, I love its sea-coast, and its mountains, Its cities bordering on its forests, its fair landscapes, Its white sea-mews, and its fair women. I love its warriors and their well-trained steeds, Its woods, its strongholds and its generous hearths. I love its meadows clothed in tender trefoils, Its wilds, where oft I led the chase, And if I am pale in the rush of the conflict, "Tis that I know I soon must leave it now. Ah! surely I cannot hold out until my party comes; Where my head was pillowed on a snow-white arm; In the famous vale of Cwm Deuddwr." It is as well, perhaps, to turn with this impulsive tribute of Hywel ab Owain to the poet's delights of Wales, rather than with any English reviewer's note of disparagement, to the natural conclusion of our subject. This, without being very profound, is yet, perhaps, in a way revolutionary— revolutionary, that is, from the point of view of conservative English literary culture. It points, in fact, to the need of a new and contemporary approach to the whole subject of Celtic literature, and of the discovery, surely not impossible, of a modus vivendi, so to speak, between Welsh poetry and English criticism. For the present is peculiarly, as we may conclude, the breaking-up time of old racial prejudices, and of old bounds between the literatures of nations. English literature has learnt at other times to be plastic to the classical languages, and to French, German, and Italian, and has gained greatly by these international influences. Surely, then, it is absurd that it should still (in spite of the eloquence of Matthew Arnold, and in spite of the Oxford Chair which Professor Rhŷs has made of European repute)—still, to all general intents and purposes be blind to the delights and the palpable uses of that Celtic literature for which it ought to have the nearest and most intimate feeling of all. The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion has laboured notably for many years now in this cause, and there is no need of a new beginner to enlarge upon the great services which such a society of Welshmen of culture and of letters, alive to all modern opportunities, is able to perform. And as the Cymmrodorion condescend so far, and concede so much to the weakness of their Saxon brethren, as to accept on occasion an English vehicle for Welsh ideas, they will agree, I am sure, that Wales itself, if it would win its full modern recognition at last, must be not only national, but international. That is to say, since English reviewers will not master Welsh as Welshmen master English, we must see to it that we adopt modern methods, and secure our full hearing, not in England only, but in Europe. For this, we want not only men of scholarship and erudition, but men of the lighter build appropriate to the more popular uses of belles lettres. So while we look to it that the race of great Celtic scholars has every chance of multiplying, and while we determine not to forget for a moment our dear and familiar Welsh tongue and its ancient literature (as, indeed, what with Oxford Texts and Welsh National Presses, we seem in no danger of doing), let us look to it, too, that we take our modern opportunity, and gain our modern hearing. Is it too much to think that if the false appearance of only half an Ossian in the eighteenth century could have so great an effect on European literature, that the real presentation of Taliesin and his fellow Cynveirdd on the eve of the twentieth might have its effect too. I must not seem to end in too much of an Ercles vein of prophecy about Welsh poetry, as modernly interpreted, and the Welsh Renaissance, which I believe is at hand. But in hoping for the new poets of Wales, writing in their native tongue, who shall continue to give expression to its mountainous and remoter spirit, we may be permitted to hope, too, for the Welsh Sir Walter Scott, who shall do for Wales what the author of Marmion and Old Mortality did for his country, and who shall give her superb national traditions and old poetic imaginations a vogue not only English, but European,nay, worldwide! THE CELT AND THE POETRY OF NATURE.1 BY W. LEWIS-JONES, M.A. "EXPLANATION," Lord Beaconsfield once observed, "is the most dismal of the duties of life." Such a duty, depressing though it may be, is laid upon me at the outset by the words I have chosen for the title of this paper. In the first place, ethnologists have played sad havoc of late with some of our long-cherished notions about "the Celt," and one is scarcely privileged now to use the name without an apology. But whatever may be its exact present value as a term in ethnology, the word "Celtic" is still to the literary student a convenient and intelligible, if not a strictly accurate, designation of certain well-defined origins, tendencies and results in literature. The Celt has been, and is, a potent factor in the literature of Europe, and is known to us by notes and characteristics which we have no difficulty in distinguishing. It is with some of these characteristics, as manifested chiefly in Welsh literature and its influence, that I propose to deal in the present paper. The hypothesis that the Welshman may have been originally an Iberian does not prevent our regarding the literary achievement and influence of the Welsh people as part of what we generically style Celtic literature. The Welshman, regarded as a force in literature, is an undoubted Celt; and in this sense there should be no ambiguity in my use of the term. 1 Read before the Society, Wednesday, 12th April, 1893. Again, the phrase "Poetry of Nature" has the disadvantage of being variously and often loosely used. First, the term is and may be applied to poetry which confines itself to simple description of natural phenomena. Mark Pattison, indeed, somewhere maintains that "descriptive poetry is a contradiction in terms." But the phrase must stand, and is intelligible as denoting all poetry in which we have descriptions of Nature that are not subordinated to the dominant mood or passion of the poet at the time. The poet, "with his eye on the object," to use Wordsworth's phrase, sets himself to draw an accurate and a vivid picture of any actual scene before him. This kind of poetry is as old as the Greeks. Homer has it-as evidence of which we need not go beyond those pregnant adjectives which describe the sea, or the many similes which betray so careful an observation of the phenomena of wood and stream and field, and of the habits of bird and beast. There is nothing here beyond observation-beyond a quick and thoroughly artistic perception of form and beauty translated into language which is an accurate reflection of the thing seen. In a word, it is the art of describing nature free from the influence of what Mr. Ruskin aptly calls "the pathetic fallacy." Homer and the Greeks did, indeed, It is worth while to refer at this point, by way of still further illustrating the usage of the term "Poetry of Nature," to the distinction which Mr. Ruskin draws between the Greek and the modern manner in natural description :-"Keats, describing a wave breaking out at sea, says of it 'Down whose green bank the short-lived foam, all hoar, The That is quite perfect, as an example of the modern manner. idea of the peculiar action with which foam rolls down a long, large wave could not have been given by any other words so well as by this wayward indolence.' But Homer would never have written, never thought of such words. He could not by any possibility have |