Celtic Literature | Page 3

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