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crudescent anywhere, for good or for evil. Listen to a song of the New Hebrides, " and you in dreams behold the Hebrides," the Old Hebrides, so exactly identical is the wailing cadence in Gaelic and in New Hebridean minstrelsy. Comparative science dispels the Celtic illusion that anything whatever is peculiarly Celtic, or dependent on Celtic race and blood.

Turn we now to the poetry of the Lyra Celtica,' old or new. The translations in verse, like all translations in verse, may be neglected. Take Taliesin's "Song to the Wind," "the most famous poem of the most famous Cymric bard":

"Great are its evaporations.

On land and on sea
It is indispensable.

It frequently comes

Proceeding from the heat of the sun,
And the coldness of the moon.
The moon is less beneficial,
Inasmuch as her heat is less."

wulf.' Of course there are better passages in these old Welsh writers; we find love of nature, pensive melancholy, "old unhappy far-off things," but not so very much to brag of: there is less of Tennyson than of Tupper.

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The modern pieces are chiefly later than Mr Arnold's lectures. The young generation is Celtic enough, but that proves nothing. It has read Mr Arnold, and Mr Sharp, and M. Renan, and Mr Grant Allen, and it says, "Go to, let us be Celtic!" The Celticism is selfconscious, voulu, of malice prepense. For the real thing, in modern poetry, we must go to the peasant songs of Ireland, Volkslieder, published by Dr Hyde. They are charming, as charming Italian, Spanish Gipsy, or Romaic Volkslieder, and in a very similar way. is not that a number of these young Neo-Celtic poets lack lyrical merits. Miss Fiona Macleod, Mr Yeats, Mrs Robertson Matheson, Miss Nora Hopper, and several others, write very pleasing, delicate, winning poems. But poems just as pleasing are produced by our non-Celtic minstrels. The only marked peculiarities of these so-called Celts are consciously produced on the lines of Welsh and Irish minstrelsy. Mr Quiller Couch's delightful piece, "The Splendid Spur," is Caroline, a deliberate following, and an admirable one, of such verse as Shirley's "The glories of our birth and state." Mr Couch was not thinking of being Celtic; but most of Quite so; but it needed no Celt these young poets are thinking of to tell us this, or that bogs are it, and are imitating certain featcomparatively firm in dry weather. ures of Celtic poetry, just as, in the Aneurin's floreat (as Mr Sharp last century, they would have imcalls it) was about 500 A.D. He itated Pope. Again, in her novel, had been got at by Christians, and 'Green Fire,' Miss Macleod “Macthe result is absolutely the same phersonises": the windy, wailing, as in the Teutonic case of Beo- indistinct, and, oddly, Lyttonian

Yet Mr Arnold denies science, and commonplace, to Celts! Taliesin offers the popular science of his period.

In the Odes of the Months, by Aneurin, we meet our good old Tupper, of whom no Celt makes his vaunt:

"Prudence is the best guide for man.'

Easy is society where there is affection."

"He that will neither work nor pray

Is not worthy to have bread."

romance, is pertinaciously bent on being "Ossianic." Now vague, obscure mistiness is not Celtic, but the foible of James Macpherson, as we have heard Mr Hector Maclean declare.

Really Celtic, as a critic not without the necessary Celtic drop of blood ventures to think, are Mr Yeats's Tales in prose, and, above all, Mr Neil Munro's stories in 'The Lost Pibroch.' In these we meet genius, as obvious and undeniable as that of Mr Kipling, if less popular in appeal. Accidentally or consciously, Mr Munro's powers are directed to old Highland life, and he does what genius alone can do -he makes it live again, and makes our imaginations share its life; his knowledge being copious, original, at first hand. That any human life was ever like that painted, with too rich a palette, by Miss Macleod in 'Green Fire,' we respectfully and hopefully take leave. to doubt. C'est de pur Jamie Macpherson, doublé de Bulwer Lytton. The young Neo-Celts, if they respect their often respectable talents, will try to be natural, to be themselves; and will avoid imitation of Taliesin, Aneurin, Irish peasants, and Rob Don. To these enthusiasts we would also recommend a study of the Jacobite poetry. Honestly, which songs are best John Roy Stuart's, William Ross's, Alastair Macdonnell's, Rob Don's (rich as some of these are in bloodthirstiness for its own sake), or the Jacobite songs of the Lowland Scots? Take, for spirit, "The wind has blawn my plaid away".

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"The sun rises bright in France, And fair sets he;

But he has tint the blithe blink he had In my ain countree."

These are certainly by no means inferior in pathos and spirit, while, as a matter of art, they are more terse, more concerned with what is essential, than the contemporary Gaelic songs of the Rising. Let the Neo-Celts compare them, if they know Gaelic, and then decide between the merits of Highlands and Lowlands. Those who know not Gaelic, and read the Gaelic songs in English prose, of course miss the form. Plus the form,

1 The reader may refer to Mr Craigie's most instructive essay on Gaelic Historical Songs, in the Scottish Review,' October 1891: "All Gaelic poetry depends far more on its form than its matter; the thought may be as trifling or trite as possible, but if there is harmony of sound, the Gael is satisfied." Artificial complications beyond those of the Chant Royal more and more beset Gaelic poetry, 1550-1750.

William Ross's Gaelic Elegy for the Death of Charles Edward is, save in a few verses, worthy of him who sang

"Now all is done that man may do,

And all is done in vain."

The spirit is that of Theocritus, but Ross was a schoolmaster, and may, conceivably, have imitated the old Sicilian laments. If the coincidence is accidental, he is still as Dorian as Celtic in some of his stanzas.

The spirit of these remarks will be greatly misconstrued by any one who supposes that we wish to decry Celtic literature and Celtic studies. Even in translations the 'Mabinogion' and the half-mythical Irish romances (such as < Diarmaid and Grainne') deserve to be widely read. The popular tales, Gaelic, Irish, or Breton, the popular songs, the myths, many modern Gaelic poems, the old heroic ballads, are all full of interest and charm, even to a merely English reader, who necessarily misses the form of the originals, in which often lies their most conspicuous merit. Celtic literature was the natural expression of a poetical race, arrested (as far as literature is concerned) at certain rather early stages of development. There is no epic, no theatre; there is no Celtic vernacular poetry of men on a high level of conscious civilisation and social organisation, like that of Periclean Greece, or of Rome in the first century before our era, or of Elizabethan England. The Celtic speaking peoples, as such, never attained to these social and political conditions.

They have not only no Homer; they have no Sophocles, no Theocritus, no Virgil or Lucretius, no Horace or Catullus; no Shakespeare or Milton. Their development (if they had it in them to develop)

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was diverted by Christianity, and stunted by foreign conquest. Their educated classes were Anglicised, or Frenchified. They never joyed the chances of Greece, Rome, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and England. Their vernacular literature has been that of old bards, sennachies, peasants, medieval romancers, and ecclesiastics: it has never been that of a highly instructed and reflective literary class. For what it is,a literature of a development arrested early, it is rich, poetical, tender, and imaginative.

If the Neo-Celts are in earnest, let them provide us with Celtic texts and literal translations of Celtic literature, or do for Ireland, Brittany, and Wales what Mr Neil Munro has begun to do for the West Highlands. This is the path; to make large claims of the best things in English literature, or in French heroism, for "the Celtic element" is not the path. Conscious modern imitation of poetry which the imitators, as a rule, cannot read in the original languages, is not the path. These proceedings irritate the so-called Saxon, provoke his ridicule, and keep alive his prejudices. It is foolish to call Jeanne d'Arc or Walter Scott "Celts"; foolish to say that a poet must have Celtic blood because, in fact, you like his poetry. Let us repeat that the relations of race to poetic or other mental qualities is a mystery -that veræ causa, as of environment and historical circumstances, must be exhausted before we can claim this or that gift as a gift of race. Races have too long been mixed, and the history of race is too profoundly obscure. When we bring race into literary criticism, we dally with that unlovely fluent enchantress, Popular Science. A. LANG.

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BUT alas, this was easier said than done, like most things in this world of words. When I had put myself into choice apparel, with hat and tie exhibiting my College colours which we should have carried to the head of the river, if fate had not swept me from the New College boat-and when I had impeached that fate again, for not affording me my brother Harold's face, yet resolving to brazen it out, had appeared inside the lower door of St Winifred's stronghold (which I knew how to open by the owner's counsel)-instead of finding things in their wonted peace, orderly, picturesque, in statuesque repose, at a glance I descried a very warlike change.

There was Stepan with a long gun, and cartridges enough in the bandoleer on his braided frock, to account for all the civic force, as well as half of Aldershot; and behind him a score of fellows no less martial. Both the gigantic dogs were loose, and equally resolute against invasion; even little Allai was in a clump of trees, with a dagger as long as himself in both hands, and his white teeth ground against all Albion.

In the name of wonder, what could be in the wind? Just like my luck of course it was, at a most important moment, to hit upon something far more momentous to the very people I was come to

move.

"Good Stepan, I pray thee to communicate unto me the signification of the matters I behold." For I knew that this trusty Cau

ELEMENTS.

casian had picked up a bit of our language, and preferred the long bits. He rolled his fine eyes, which were big enough for mill-stones, and in his still bigger mind revolved the sounds which had vainly reached his ears. "What are you up to now?" I amended my enquiry; and having heard the milk-boy say something to that tune, when they declined so much of heaven in his cans, he bowed his head magnificently, and said, "All right."

This is the first consolation found by a foreigner in our language. It is courteous to ourselves as well, and shows confidence in our country.

There was no sort

"What a fool you are!" I cried with a Briton's low ingratitude; and then I saw the stately figure of Sûr Imar coming towards me. This King of the mountains looked as calm as if he had been girded with ancestral snow. of weapon in his broad white belt, and no menace worse than a hospitable smile upon his large fair countenance. He took me by both hands, with a tenderness for the left, which proved how kind his memory was, and led the way to a seat beneath the ivied wall, and looked at me, as if he liked

me.

"I have been expecting you for many days," he said; and nothing but a little turn of voice just here and there could have led one to suppose that he was not of English birth; "why have you never come to show me whether I am a good physician?"

I gave him all true reasons, that

1 Copyright, 1897, by Dodd, Mead & Co. in the United States of America.

I had been away, and occupied with a number of home-cares when at home, and I spoke of my parents in a way which he approved; and then I was led on by his kindness so that I asked whether he was quite at leisure.

"Even more than usual," he answered with a smile. "We have stopped our little operations for the afternoon; because we have been admonished by a kind friend that some little attack upon our place may be expected."

"Well, you are a cool hand!" was almost upon my lips; but a glance at him prevented any personal remark. He was not the sort of man to be dealt with thus. But I resolved at least to be straightforward with him.

"Sûr Imar, I must not come here under false pretences. The fact is simply this, and I wish to tell you first, for no blame can possibly attach to her, and I have not told her of it. But I love your daughter, Dariel."

He looked at me with some surprise, but no sign of resentment; and I met his clear gaze firmly, trying at the same time to look braver than I felt, for he took a long time before he answered.

"Ah, you little know what you are bringing upon yourself. For the sake of your friends you must overcome you must put it down at once; before it gets stronger, quench it. For the sake of all who love you, and all your hopes in life, you must conquer it, abolish it, annihilate it. You are a man of strong will, if I have any knowledge of the English face." His tone and manner were of friendly advice, rather than of stern forbiddance.

"I know my own mind on this subject," I replied, "and nothing will alter it. Whatever the consequence may be to myself, I shall

go on unless there is fear of harming her."

harming her, Perhaps you

"There is fear of very great fear of it. have the right to know. That depends upon yourself. Tell me, for I am at a loss to understand, how long this has been, and how it can have happened; for surely it is of short opportunity."

"That is true enough, and too true;" for although it had been going on with me for months, there had not been half the opportunities I longed for; "but it has been growing very rapidly, Sûr Imar, although there have been so few interviews, and the first of them quite a one-sided one. In fact, I have had very little chance as yet one occasion I lost altogether, and I did not make the best of another. Oh no, I have scarcely had any proper chances yet."

"Be thankful that it is so, my friend. It will be my duty to prevent their increase." Dariel's father smiled at his own words, with a sense of humour which I did not share. "But just have the kindness, for I have the right to know, to tell me how there can have been any interviews at all. My daughter has been brought up in England partly, and resembles in many points an English young lady, rather than a Lesghian; but

"It has never been any fault of hers at all. Altogether my fault, what little fault there has been. But I hope, if you don't encourage me, Sûr Imar, you will take good care not to let anybody else."

"That is rather a surprising demand;" he spoke so gravely that it was my turn to smile at the modesty of my own request. "Because you are prohibited, all the world must be so. But tell me how you fell into this sad mishap."

"That I shall never consider it,

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