Celtic Literature | Page 5

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