^LIBRARY 1 UNtVERSlWoF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO r THE EENAISSANCE AND WELSH LITEEATUEE, Disce docendus adhuc, quae censet amiculus, ut si Caecus iter monstrare velit ; tamen aspice si quid Et nos, quod cures proprium fecisse, loquamur. Horace. AND Welsh Literature: BEING A REVIEW OP SOME OF THE WELSH CLASSICS IN THE LIGHT OF THE HUMANISTIC MOVEMENT. BY THE IRev, Wl. flfterebitb flfcorris, B.A., F.E.HisT.S., MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTS. Author of "British Violin Makers: Classical & Modern"; "Walter H. Mayson"; " Giuseppe Guarneri (del Gesu) " ; etc. MAESTEG : JAMES JAMES, PRINTER, CAXTON PRESS, CASTLE STREET. 1908. PREFACE. These simple reflections upon some of the more notable of our Welsh classics are put in print for the benefit of the intelligent laity among whom I labour, and are intended as a stimulus to further and deeper reading of the books discussed. They pretend to be no more than they really are simple reflections. The line of thought adopted starts from the assumption that in investigating the history of literature the best method of procedure is to extract general history from the life-story of individuals and their books. The more marked characteristics of any period of literature are revealed in certain authors who may be taken as types of that period. The seers of any age are few as compared with the visionless multitude, but it is to them we must go for an interpretation of " the writing upon the wall." In the works o master-minds, the spirit of the age in which these minds lived is incarnate, is clothed with literary flesh and blood. Great men may not be able to grasp the whole of any truth, or see the ultimate issue of the part of it which they discover ; but what they do see and grasp they handle with the dexterity begotten of intellectual and spiritual superiority. Thus, the meaning of the Renaissance movement may be better comprehended from a study of the works VI. of Michael Angelo, Baccaccio, Erasmus, Reuchlin, Luther, Calvin, More, Cranmer, etc., than from that of the innumerable biographies and productions of lesser lights. In the case of Wales, especially, the underlying ideas of the Renaissance take shape far more definitely in the labours of men like Salesbury, Dr. John Davies, Bishops Morgan and Davies, Ellis Wynne, Morgan Llwyd, etc., who attempted serious work, than they do in the fugitive efforts of the motley host of translators. THE AUTHOR. MAESTEG, JAN. Isx, 1908. CONTENTS. PAGE Preface v. Chapter I. Introductory 9 II. Medievalism Decay and Death 21 III. The Genesis and Growth of the Renaissance 35 IV. Ditto, (continued) 50 V. Salesbury, Morgan, and Parry : the Bible Translators 60 VI. Vicar Prichard: the Hogarth of the Pen 123 VII. Morgan Llwyd: the Seer of Gwynedd 153 VIII. Huw Morus : the Carolist of Ceiriog... 183 IX. Charles Edwards: the Beloved Author... 203 X. Ellis Wynne: the Sleeping Bard 232 XI. Griffith Jones: the Pioneer of Education 256 XII. Theophilus Evans : the Patriot-Historian 269 XIII. Goronwy Owen: the Classical Poet 287 Cbe Renaissance and fl&elsb literature. Chapter K INTRODUCTORY. TTTHE term " Renaissance," in a restricted sense, has -*- been applied to the style of architecture which succeeded the Gothic. This would appear to be the denotation of the term usually adopted by Ruskin and by writers of his school"*. In its wider application it means " a new birth to liberty the spirit of man- kind recovering consciousness and the power of self- determination, recognizing the beauty of the outer world and of the body through art, liberating the reason in science and the conscience in religion, restoring culture to the intelligence, and establishing the principle of political freedom. "f The term is now almost universally used in its wider signification. * " Stones of Venice." Vol. I, chap. ir. t '* The Renaissance in Italy &c." Symonds, p. 30. 10 Freeman, in a, chapter dealing with the " Unity of History," says : " The Revival of learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries marks, as is agreed on all hands, one of the greatest epochs in the history of the mind of man .... That age was an age when the spirit of man cast away trammels by which it had long been fettered ; it was an age when men opened their eyes to light, against which they had been closed for ages .... That revival of learning which brought the men of our modern world face to face with the camp before Hios, and with the agore of Athens, was indeed a revolution which amounted to hardly less than a re-birth of the human mind." * Some writers, while recognizing the all-pervading influence of the mysterious Humanistic movement, show a tendency to view its manifestations from some particular and exclusive standpoint, such as e.g. Pater, who looks upon the Renaissance as a revival of the ancient art of " physical beauty the worship of the body" and the consequent "breaking down of those limits which the religious system of the Middle Ages imposed upon the heart and the imagination."! Welsh writers, for the most part, have regarded the Protestant Reformation as the feature par excellence of the movement. In an article dealing with the works of Morgan Llwyd the Rev. L. Edwards, D.D., the Macaulay of Welsh Essayists says : " Oes * " Comparative Politics." p. 126. t " Studies in the History of the Renaissance." Pref. p. XI. 11 ryfeddach na chyffredin oedd yr oes hono mewn llawer ystyr, pan oedd pob math o egwyddorion yn ym- weithio yn erbyn eu gilydd mewn llawn nerth, ac yn gwneuthur yr holl deyrnas yn dryblith drwyddi . . . oes o ddinystr cyffredinol ar ffurfiau difywyd, ac o gyffro alaethus yn mhlith y pryfed copyn wrth weled eu gweoedd yn cael eu hysgubo ymaith mor ddi- arbed."* The opposing principles we gather from the body of the essay were mainly of a religious and worldly character. The late Dean Howell in a private letter to a friend of the author said that " but for the Reformation the Revival of Learning of the six- teenth century would have been as meaningless and fruitless as the ancient fight over the shape of the tonsure." On the other hand we have Gregorovius laying undue emphasis on the literary aspect of the Renaissance : " The Revival of Learning was the first [first in point of importance, as it would appear from the context] marvellous act of the gigantic moral transformation in which Europe became involved the important periods of which were the Italian Renaissance, the German Reformation, and the French Revolution."! These views appear to be one-sided. But there is a danger, it must be admitted, in over-widening of the mental horizon ; for in proportion as we widen the denotation of a term we narrow its connotation. We are apt to lose sight of the great brooding Spirit himself when we view successively his numerous progeny in * "Traethoclati Llenyddol," p. 136. t " Geschichte der stadt Rom im Mittelalter," VoL TII, p. 499. 12 the domain of art, science, religion, &c. It is hard to conceive of the Renaissance as a well-defined, unified principle, when our attention is directed to the mani- festations of that principle in ever varied movements, under multi-coloured forms. If we thoroughly grasp the fact that the Energy is one, but its transformations many, we shall no doubt sufficiently guard ourselves against untoward bias for any particular movement or form. When marking on our mental map the course of the myriad Renaissance streams let us not forget to put in deep shading the one mount from which they spring. But the power to perceive the one in the many and the many in the one is a gift all too rare among men. It is given to only a few to discern that the spirit which breaks forth in pious lyricism in a Tennyson may break out in dogmatic agnosticism in a Spencer. The excursion from the realm of organ- ism to that of non-living matter revealed nothing to Huxley beyond the mirage of Spontaneous Generation, whereas it discovered to Wallace the oasis of Biogenesis. Both were men of faith in quest of truth, for " There live more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds." We are astonished, nay we are bewildered, when we review the immense array of facts brought before us within the extreme limits of the Renaissance epoch. These limits, it is now considered, are 1453 and 1789, the first being the date of the taking of Constantinople by Mohammed II, the second that of the beginning of the French Revolution. 13 The facts which we are called upon to examine are such that if any two are brought together for com- parison we seem to be dealing with things that are as divergent and irreconcilable as a pair of logical contradictories. For instance, take an example from the domain of art. Look at the Statues of the Captives by Michael Angelo, which are now in the Louvre. These, we are told, were originally intended for the tomb of Pope Julius, but being of too great proportions were finally cast aside in an unfinished state. " It is a composition of infinite pathos " so writes an eminent critic. Nothing in the whole realm of sculpture surpasses the ethereal beauty of the sleeping prisoner, who, after fruitless efforts to escape, rests on his bed of stone, with broad, white-browed head thrown back, revealing a throat of classical proportion and symmetry. In striking but studied contrast stands the figure of the other prisoner, who is furiously struggling to rend his bonds in sunder, with flaming eye and swollen muscle, and every limb contorted. Here we have a group in which the lines of silent sadness melt into those of strong suffering. When we have sat before the group for an hour, to drink of the inspiration, we feel that our emotion has been taken in hand, disciplined, and re-created. If we are momentarily depressed, we find that Pity becomes a very angel in sorrow. We go away with the impression that we have been dreaming a day-dream, the essence of which is profound peace, distilled into one short hour wherein we may hear the voice of earth, her sounds of spring, her stream songs, her storms, and her melodious rest. 14 From the Louvre let us pass to the church of SS. John and Paul, in Venice. Turn to the southern aisle. Here we have before us two statues of the Doge Bertuccio Falier, his son the Doge Silvester, and his son's wife, Elizabeth. Let Ruskin be our interpreter. " The statues of the Doges, though mean and Polonius- like, are partly redeemed by the Ducal robes ; but that of the Dogaressa is a consummation of grossness, vanity, and ugliness, the figure of a large and wrinkled woman, with elaborate curls in stiff projection round her face, covered from her shoulders to her feet with ruffs, furs, lace, jewels, and embroidery. Beneath and around are scattered Virtues, Victories, Fames, genii the entire company .... deserving attentive study as exhibiting every condition of false taste and feeble conception."* Here are two Renaissance facts from the domain of art. Or, take another pair of facts. " Luther's friends were afraid that his life would not be safe even in Wittenberg after the Edict of Worms ; and the Elector of Saxony ordered a band of soldiers to seize him on his way home and carry him off to the Wartburg, a strong castle near Eisenach, where he could remain concealed and secured .... He lived in the Wartburg in retirement, was ordered to let his beard grow, wore a knight's dress, and went by the name of Junker George. Luther remained ten months in his hiding place. It was here that he began his greatest work, the translation of the Bible from the original Greek and Hebrew texts into "Stones of Venice." Vol. II, p. 117. 15 German."* From the Wartburg pass on to one of the side wards of the hospital of Pampeluna a short step of about twenty years. " Ignatius Loyola, a young Spanish noble, trained amidst the chivalry of Spain, where long wars with the Moors had made devotion to the Papacy a great part of patriotism, had his leg shattered at the siege of Pampeluna. Two painful operations at last convinced him that his career as a soldier had ended, and his thoughts turned towards a a new service. He vowed that he would be a soldier of the Church. In the fits of fever which his wound had caused, he had fantastic visions of the Virgin, and on his recovery he vowed his life, with all the ceremonial of mediaeval chivalry, to God, the Virgin, and the Church After some years of training, disappointments, and delays, he obtained permission from the Pope to found the Society of Jesus."| The first impression produced on the mind of the student of history by the consideration of these and similar facts is that of opposition of principle, and he endeavours to solve the riddle of finality on the Hegelian hypothesis of development by antagonism. This view of the subject has been seriously set forward by a learned writer, Dr. Pastor, as the view which alone satisfies all the demands of the case. He divides the Renaissance into two movements, the one Christian, the other Pagan, or, as he prefers to express it, " the one true and the other false." Further and deeper * "The Reformation," bj Prof. Lindsay, p. 16. t Ibid. p. 38. 16 consideration will convince the student, however, that there is at bottom no opposition, no antagonism. The same spirit which animated one sculptor to produce work of exalted Christian purity also moved another equally great to chisel forms of classical (if pagan) voluptuousness. That spirit, through Luther, gave to them that hunger and thirst after righteousness the Word of God, and through Loyola, the Society of Jesus. But whilst the truth we are indicating does not necessarily involve antagonism, it assuredly points to a mystery. Life is a riddle. There is no rose without its thorn, no day without its night, no good without its concomitant evil. Ahuramazda casts his dark shadow behind him, and that shadow is Ahrinam. Rembrandt paints his background dark, with a gleam of light bursting through. Profound philosophy ! Here is the riddle, and here also is its solution. Both the gleam and the gloom are emanations from the brain of one and the same artist. Being is one : the trend of time is one. The upward march of the aeons ends in the bosom of the Eternal. "And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all." The Renaissance was the sowing season of the modern world. The great sower went forth to sow, and as he sowed, some seed fell by the way-side, some among thorns, some on stony places, and much into good * " Geschicht* der Papste seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters," Intro, p. 45. 17 ground. This brought forth thirty, that a hundred fold. The harvest differs in different parts of the field, both in quantity and quality. As to quality, most of the sheaves are heavy-laden, but some have more straw than grain. The student must traverse the whole field to judge the harvest, nay, he must search the very way-side and the thorns, lest an isolated ear of corn escape his attention. He is not to sample one solitary corner, and by the quality of that to estimate the worth of the whole. "Half a truth is twice a lie" is a homely but truthful proverb which the philosophical historian some- times conveniently forgets, to the utter confusion of the reader who has now one side of a fact presented to him, and then another, without the least attempt at comprehensiveness. By some such partial methods the advocates, e.g. of the theory of the absolute Teutonic predominance in the origin of the English constitution have equally erred with those who have held the theory of the continued existence of Romano-Celtic influences. It was this same lack of unification that led Christian Ferdinand Baur to elaborate his one-sided Tendency- theory of the origin of the Gospels. Whilst accounting for the supposed antagonistic doctrinal tendencies of the several Gospels, he forgot that the " tendencies " might be quite as satisfactorily explained as varied but consistent aspects of the one system of truth held by all the apostles as they were on the theory which he broached. In every branch of knowledge that alone is truth which reconciles the aggregate of data. 18 Let him, therefore, who would grasp the Renaissance as an Idea, mount the highest observatory of Time, that he may trace its workings in all their ramifications, and he will succeed to understand the Idea according as he is well or ill-fitted for the task. This injunction is specially imperative on the student of Welsh literature. The history of Welsh literature viewed in its own light reveals nothing extraordinary or noteworthy from Dafydd ab Edmwnd (1450) down to Goronwy Owen (1750), either in prose or in poetry, if we except, of course, the vernacular version of the Scriptures and some half-a- dozen or so classics. The mind is led on insensibly from author to author, from decade to decade, without experiencing the slightest shock or awakening. We pass link after link of the long literary chain, till we find that we have reached the last, having experienced no other sensation than that of seeing links, some thicker some thinner than the rest mayhap. Not till our attention has been called to other literary chains, to their make and metal, do we go back to examine our own, then to discover that some of its links are of fact and some of fancy some of gold and some of baser metal. The student who views the Welsh literature of the period more especially of the latter half of it- -solely in its own light, falls into the same error as the botanist does who traces the affinities of plants by means of the Linnsean system. The artificial system may help the botanist to trace out a flower whose name he may wish to discover ; but since it depends solely 19 on the arrangement of one set of organs, it often separates plants which are closely allied, and on the other hand unites those which possess no common properties beyond the structure of their flowers. Similarly in literature : the exclusionary compares englyn with englyn and aivdl with aivdl, never dreaming that there exists anything outside the laws of y pedivar mesur ar ugain which has or can have the slightest bearing on the material he has to consider. He forthwith proceeds to analyse and to synthesize according to his artificial methods. It has been customary for Welsh writers, I think, to view literary interaction from an exclusively Cymric standpoint. Much has been written on the influence of our literature on that of other nations. It would appear from what some of these writers say, that we have given to others nearly all that is worth giving, and have received in return little that is worth receiving. The Rev. L. Edwards, D.D., in his admirable essay on " Shakspere a'r Cymry," says: "Ac mor bell ag y mae rhagoriaeth ei [i.e. Shakespeare's] ysgrifen- iadau yn ymddibynu ar ei addysg foreuol, y mae yn ymddangos fod Prif-fardd y Saeson, a'r Saeson fel cenedl trwyddo ef, ac nid hwy yn unig, ond pob cenedl wareiddiedig, yn ddyledus i Gymru."'* Dr. Edwards instances Spencer, Gray, Southey, and Tennyson as being also indebted to Welsh literature for some of their best material. Some writers go the length of suggesting that the author of the " Suenos " got his Traethodau Llenyddol." p. 631. 20 material from a Welsh source, and that " Bardd Cwsg " is, after all, only indirectly indebted to the Spaniard. "Y mae yn bosibl mai perthyn i lenyddiaeth Gymreig yr oedd hyd yn nod ddefnyddiau Quevedo ei hun ar y cyntaf ; ac iddynt trwy gyfrwng y mynachod, feallai, gael eu eu trosglwyddo i'r Yspaen."f Other writers again have dealt with the influence of Welsh traditions and romances on the literature of Europe, notably so " Carnhuanawc," T. D. Hardinge, &c., all of which lies entirely outside the range of the present subject. Now, it is not sought here in the least to minimize the importance of the influence of Welsh literature on that of other nations what we seek to do is to establish the importance of the other side of the great truth of literary interaction. Let us not approach the subject under a Pan-Cymric spell. If we do, we shall get nothing for our pains but the scorn of our neighbours, and the unenviable reputation of suffering from a form of literary leprosy which somebody has called the "Spite of the Proud." Let us rather approach our subject in a catholic spirit catholic, that is, in the primitive and best meaning of the word. We shall then be in a mood to learn in what manner and to what extent our principal writers were inspired by Muses other than those whose abode is the Welsh Parnassus, Erryri Wen. " Hanes Llenyddiaeth Gymreig." Ashton. p. 115. Chapter 2. MEDIEVALISM DECAY AND DEATH. TT lias been remarked that the roots of any period * of history are buried in the soil of a preceding period. This is eminently true of the Renaissance period. " The new idea germinates under the ruins of the old order as it falls into decay and dissolution.' It is life in death. Out of the brain of the Mediaeval Jupiter came the Renaissance Minerva. Nor is the illustration inapt ; for the culminating point of the Middle Ages must be placed at a period when Scholastic philosophy had run out the course of its virilty. That is the time when Latin Christianity had completed those vast tomes of Theology which amaze and appal the mind with their enormous accumulations of intellectual industry, ingenuity, and toil, and of which the sole result to posterity is this barren amazement. Albert, the philospher, Aquinas, the theologian, Bonaventura, the mystic, Scotus, the dialectician, and Ockham, the politician these form the galaxy of Scholasticism. It may be said of the works of these, that whosoever takes a delight in intellectual gymnastics exercises which have no bearing, 22 and which were never intended to have any bearing, on the life and conduct of mankind may study their systems, when he may acquire something like reverence for the forgotten athletes in the intellectual games of antiquity. But he will soon discover that he is engaged in exercise for its own sake. The Schoolmen with all their plumbing into the unfathom- able have fathomed nothing ; with all their number- less logical apparatus, they have proved nothing to the satisfaction of the inquisitive mind. In the writings of the distinguished pentarchy just named we have the quintessence of Scholasticism. Here the ideas of the Middle Ages are at the full bloom, and this very efflorescence, which is their only possession, was the precursor of its own decay. From the dawn of the fourteenth century its loss of vigour and colour is clearly and increasingly evident in every department of human life, and it is not surprising that the bloom fell before the fruit began to form. In nothing is this decay more evident than in the fact that authors now began to bestow quite as much attention on form as they did on matter, and as the century waxed and waned, their matter cut quite a mean figure beside their manner. The material of the literary building was quite lost under the intricate mosaic with which it was covered. The characteristics of literature in the era of decline have been succinctly summed up by Ruskin. In speaking of the early Renaissance period (by which he means the transition period between Medievalism and the real Revival) he 23 says : " They [the authors] discovered suddenly that the world for centuries had been living in an ungrammatical manner, and they made it forthwith the end of human existence to be grammatical. And it mattered thence- forth nothing what was said, or what was done, so only it was said with scholarship, and done with system. Falsehood in a Ciceronian dialect has no opposers ; truth in patois no listeners. A Roman phrase was thought worth any number of Gothic facts. The sciences ceased at once to be anything more than different kinds of grammars, grammar of language, grammar of logic, grammar of ethics, grammar of art ; and the tongue, wit, and invention of the human race were supposed to have found their utmost and most divine mission in syntax and syllogism, perspective and five orders."* This is preeminently true of Welsh literature : the only difference being that as to time the remarks must be applied to the works of the succeeding century, the pace of both progression and retrogression being much slower in the principality than it was in the outside world. The general con- dition of our literature in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is very accurately described by Professor 0. M. Edwards. He says : " The golden age of Welsh poetry came to an end with the Eisteddfod of Caerwys in 1524, and the death of Tudur Aled. It had degenerated steadily for a century. It had developed from the strong and realistic odes of the period of independence to the love-song of the fourteenth century, "Stones of Venice." Vol. II, p. 61. 24 to reach the perfection of its beauty in Dafydd ap Gwilym. It then began to decline ; it became more artificial in diction, and less graceful in thought . . . But a more potent cause of decline vras the growing artificiality which froze thought into the rigid mould of the alliterative metres . . . . With artificial metres and stereotyped sentiment, the bard's handicraft became a mechanical one ; and the elegy became a careful catalogue of family virtues and a most valuable and careful narration of family history.""* In illustration of the justness of this criticism, let us take a number of promiscuous stanzas from the awdlau, cywyddau, &c., of the principal bards of the fifteenth century. It is not at all necessary for our purpose to give connected or ex- tended extracts : all that is required here is that we should learn something of the nature of the art employed by the writers under discussion. A mere corner of a Titian canvass, or of a Raffaelo's, is enough to enable the connoisseur to determine whether or not he has before him the work of a maestro. (1) FBOM "AWDL FOLIANT I'B OWE O'B TYWYN," BY DAFYDD NANMOB, c. 1460. " Chwe' gwaith y peraist, chwe' gwaith pared, Chwe' chapan i'm rhan, Gymro hynod ; Chwe' dwbled felfed am dy fod mewn grym, Chwe' gwn ac aur ym', chwe' ugain gr6d. * "The Story of the Nations Wales." pp. 306-7. 25 Nid un ddwy grafangc i fwrw Ffrangcod, Nid un ebawlfeirch, nid un balfod ; Nid un ras dy gas gosod, a'th gleddau, Nid un wayw'n ddarnau, nid un ddyrnod. ****** Aed nen ffurfafen fferf fawr, a'r dwr oer AT ei ol, a'r lloer, a'r haul i'r llawr ! Tristed ei weled ar ei elawr gref, Truan f u lief trwj nef a llawr ! " (2) FBOM "CYWYDD Y FED WEN," BY IETTAN DEULWYN, c. 1460. " Mae bedwen yn niben allt, Friglasrwydd fawr ei glwyswallt ; Lie rhoi'r, dan bebyll yr haf, Lien noswyl leuan nesaf ; Mae yno, yn Mai enwog, Allorau gwyrdd a lle'r gog ; A lie teg i orlliw ton, Lletyau i'w llaeion. A gorsedd, o gywirserch A rh61 a sut, rheolau serch : Ac i'r ddyn, o gaerau'r dd61 Osbler adar ysprydol ; A phader serch hoffder son, O baderan bedw irion." (3) FBOM "AWDL O FOLIANT I EYS O FON," By DAFTDD AP EDMWND, c. 1450. "Clawr Qwynedd, glas gledd, glos glan glwys Glod eryr gloyw ei darian ; Gwrdd yw Rys, garw ddur liosan. Gwres inynych les Mon achlan. 26 Ac o phwyswn i gyffesu, Awr ormesu erjr maswedd ; Enw a ddwyswn a nawdd lesu, I'w ras lesu ar Eys Iwyswedd : A nawdd gleiniau Yr holl seiniau, Ar ei freiniau, Erfai rinwedd ; A'i oer lleiniau A'i Ian heiniau, A'i fargeiniau, Ifor Gwynedd." That will suffice. The reader who has managed to read a small volume through of stuff such as this will be ready to agree that art of this kind is hoar- frost to the tender bloom of poetry. Artis est celare artem, but art here is crimson with blowing of its own trumpet. In further elucidation of this important point, let us take an illustration or two from the pages of English poetry. Pope and Spencer abound in alliter- ation, yet their art in employing it is so well con- cealed that it never raises in our minds a suspicion of artifice. Look at the following lines : " In *ome /air body thus th* in/orming *oul. With spirits feeds, with vigour /ills the whole." "Which Zives as fong as fools are pleased to 27 " "With some unmeaning ^Aing they call a thought." " Such as a Zamp whose life does fa.de away, Or as the moon efoathed with cZoudy night." Mark the artistic superiority of these to such tricks as Mr. Swinburne likes to play : e.g. " Who are we that embalm and ewbrace thee With spice* and savours of song ? " or " The /air fimbs of the ioves, the /air /aces Of ^ods that were goodly and ^lad." Look again at the specimen given above of the art of Dafydd ap Edmwnd : " Clawr Gwynedd, glas gledd, glos glan," &c. Some enthusiasts, we know, would call this consonantal jingle musical notes. They may be notes ; but they are notes without melody. The effort they betray is only too evident, alike to the eye and to the ear. True poetry, like the true poet, is born and not made. And here, we beg leave to digress for a moment that we may state as near as possible what we conceive to be the natural structure of Welsh verse. The true unit of Welsh verse is not the foot, not the accent, not quantity, not cynghanedd, but simply a period of time the rhythm. The natural music of our language than which nothing can be more divinely sweet is fully expressed only when its periods flow cadentially. Different metres are distinguished 28 by the prevailing character of what is, or should be, their music. Thus, the ordinary cyhydedd hir line of eight bannau has twelve syllables and four rhythmic beats. But the possible variations on this metre as on all the metres, when freed from the usual re- strictions, are many, and admit of no arbiter but the poet's ear. Such a theory may be regarded as too lax, as amounting almost to the abnegation of all rule. Yet it is submitted that nothing short of this way of stating the case will meet the inherent demands of Welsh prosody. Take mydr rhijdd in its most cultivated form, and let us test the " foot and accent " rule by an example or two from one of the most introspective and learned of modern bards, in whose deeply studied music we may be sure nothing careless or accidental is allowed, no cadence that did not commend itself to his ear, however un- accountable or erratic it may sound to our ears. Let us take " Nicander " as our model for the nonce, in the great anorgerdd to which he gave his most mature and earnest workmanship. Can anyone really pretend to reduce to corfannau the studied irregularity of lines like these ? " Rhwng twrf rhaiadrau brwmstan croch-orllifol." " Chwerthin gorphwyllog gwae y du anobaith." " Ond y rhan fwyaf mewn mudandod distaw." " Wrth gallestr ddanedd dig glogwym eirias." * " Moses " Arwrgerdd Fuddngol. 29 The third line would serve well as a crux in a scansion exercise, as no one can say of what foot it is an example. These are but few instances culled from the unlikiest of sources. Did we but choose to go further afield, similar instance might be cited by the thousand. Now, it is in poetry such as the " Moses " arwrgerdd, and in the numberless pryddestau of our best bards, that the natural music of the Welsh language gets full ex- pression, and that expression is fullest when the verse is freed from the numberless arbitrary rules imposed by metre mongers. The natural and supreme law of Welsh prosody is rhythm. Rhythm, indeed, is the predominant law of natural verse in all languages, especially the vernacular languages of Europe. Take English, for example. During the last thirty years, as anyone may observe, dactylic metres have come immensely more into favour with English poets than formerly. And why ? Simply because the predominant law of English verse is acknowledged to be rhythm, and dactylic metres best lend themselves to cadential treatment. It almost looks as if English poetry were entering now on a dactylic era. Inasmuch as English thought has always exerted some amount of influence on Welsh thought, we will cite a few instances illustrative of this cadential tendency in English verse, for the benefit of the devotee of the Dafydd ap jEdmwnd cult. Tennyson, after sowing the metrical wild oats of his 30 juvenile poems, begins steadily with iambic metres, progresses through the trochees of " Locksley Hall " to the vigorous dactyls of " Maud " " I liate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood " adopts this as the favourite ballad metre of his old age, and extends its sweep in the remarkable metres of " Kapiolani " and of " Vastness " " What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or a moment's anger of bees in their hive." Morris begins similarly with the iambics of the " Earthly Paradise," and goes on to the metre of "Sigurd" and the rest, to lines like: " Love is enough ; have no thought for tomorrow." Eosetti, though more rarely, strikes the same note with unfailing mastery " Say, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower ? " Browning, with a wider range of music, and less studious attention to the niceties of metre, yet shows signs of the same tendency, and progresses from " Evelyn Hope " and " Master Hugues of Saxe Gotha " to the exulting lines of " Abt Vogler " and a ballad- measure much resembling that adopted by Tennyson. Returning to Welsh poetry, and casting a wistful glance at Mediaevalism once more, we cannot but an- imadvert that Dafydd ap Edmwnd put a Nessus robe on Awen, and that Eisteddfod Caerfyrddin, when it 31 smiled its sickly approval, consented to the putting to death of Nature herself. Beyond this matters could not go : it was the culminating point of literary artificiality. We say "literary" advisedly, for there is nothing outside the range of poetry in that period if we except the romances, which are really prose-poetry that deserves to be described as " literature." The primary causes of the decay we have been describing, i.e. of Welsh verse, may be put in a nutshell in the words of a recent writer : " The loss of naturalness, the tyranny of Eisteddfodau, the rise of alliteration." Very potent factors, it must not be forgotten, were the degeneration of the chief, and the consequent transference of literary patronage to the people ; and (some would add) the Anglicizing tendencies of the Tudor period. Some think also that the rebellion of Glyndwr exerted a baneful influence on our literature, but that is not likely. War has been associated with some of the highest flights of the Muse, and the classics teem with illustrations in proof of the old saying that "war is the mother of song." The poet of all time sang of war, and the fiery flow of his verse resembles the movements of the army he lauds : Old ap 'inai 1 , utrel rt wpl \di*>y Tratra. During the second Messenian war, the martial songs of Tyrtaeus roused the fainting courage of the Spartans, 32 and so efficacious were his poems that to them is mainly ascribed the final success of the Spartan arms. And \vere not our own bards of old inspired to sing Unbenaeth Prydain to the clatter of hoofs and the clanging of swords ? Too much stress, in our opinion, has also been laid on the effects of the Anglicizing tendencies of the sixteenth century. Some have gone the length of asserting that the Welsh language was practically dead towards the end of the Tudor period. If that had been the case, we fail to understand why Bishop Morgan should have considered it at all necessary to translate the Scriptures into Welsh. No, in spite of the Act of Union, and the unfriendly attitude of the Council of Ludlow, the language lived. The spirit of our nation is well reflected in the " Triads of the English " which were sung before the Chair of Tir larll by Ilopgin Twm Phillip, of Gelli Vid, in the year 1572, and of which the following triad is an example: "Three things are best when furthest away; mad dogs, the curse of God, and an Englishman." In the " Triads of the Welsh " by the same bard occurs the following patriotic triad : " Three things which a Welshman ought to love above all else ; the Welsh nation, Welsh laws and customs, and the Welsh language." But of great importance as effecting the character of our literature was the decline of the Welsh chief " The Welsh nobles transferred their patronage from 33 Welsh literature ; and the peasant had two centuries of translations of dreary English theology. The con- tinuity of national thought became an under-current only." The three mental and moral factors of Mediaeval Wales were the bard, the friar, and the Lollard, and the chief was the patron of each by turns, now of the one, then of the others. The thirteenth century was the harvest-tide of monasticisin. The monk of those days was noted for two virtues, veracity and simplicity virtues that never fail of admiration. " He that speaks what is really in him, will find men to listen, though under never such impediments," quoth Carlyle. And so the begging friar wandered from village to village, and from mansion to mansion always and everywhere did he receive the warmest welcome. But times changed, and the monk with them. The salt of monasticisin lost its savour, and the " practical- devotional " Abbot Samsons of the thirteenth century became the God-and-Mammon Jabez Cashbags of the fifteenth. The change was already manifest in the fourteenth century, and it was then the bard came into favour. He re-occupied the throne which he had been obliged to vacate, and which the monk had usurped. His gospel was love : his goddess woman. He built his tabernacle on the ruins of that of his predecessor, i.e., on mariolitry. He sang of Enid and of Olwen, of lips and of bosoms, and of blue eyes and * "The Storj of the Nations Wales." p. 304. 34 golden tresses. The wine of his muse was red as the blushes of Ceinwen. He regained the patronage of prince and the applause of peasant. And thus it continued till the Lollard came and hurled his in- vectives at monk and bard alike. He also received hero worship for one brief hour, but it was all too brief, alas ! In the rebellion of Glyndwr, monk, bard, and Lollard were swept the way of the sword, and the chief took counsel of the world, the flesh, and the devil. With the accession of the Tudors the power of the Welsh princes disappeared, and with it their in- fluence for good. The Welsh chief retired sullenly to his castle, let down the portcullis, and set his teeth for petty and self-aggi'andizement. He was no longer the father of his people or the patron of bard and harpist ; henceforth he became the parasite of the soil and merciless bone-grinder of the poor. And so it continued, from the doom of Mediaevalism till the full dawn of the Renaissance, a chill, sunless period of sterility and stagnation. The bard sang or tried to sing as in the olden days, but those who understood cared not for his song, and those who cared under- stood not. The peasant, his future patron, could neither read nor write, and his wit had been blunted by five centuries of Christian paganism. Cbapttr 3* THE GENESIS AND GROWTH OF THE RENAISSANCE. TT70 understand the Eenaissance in any of its more -* local aspects, we must take a comprehensive view of its origin and development. What one writer terms the " primary causal nexus " of the great awakening is to be found in the increased devotion to classical antiquity devotion, be it admitted, which had never entirely ceased to exist throughout the Middle Ages. Latin, the sacred tongue of the Western Church, had always been the medium of cultured intercourse between the scholars and ecclesiastics of all ages ; and when Petrarch professed a cult for antiquity which resembled fanaticism, "taking refuge in its lore as in a temple" he was merely putting a fresh coat of asphaltum on a well-trodden path. Petrarch was followed by Boccaccio one of the greatest names in the annals of the Italian Eenaissance, in whom the victory of the classical spirit is almost complete. One of the most interesting psychological studies of all history is furnished by the personality of this wonderful man. A highly gifted master of form, he also revelled in the languid 36 atmosphere of pagan sensuality. A polished courtier, the confidant of popes, a defender of the outward forms of the old Faith he was withal a very Epicurus in morals. One can understand why very different estimates of the character of Boccaccio have been formed by different writers. The man's being was a busy junction of contrariant principles. Landor puts in his mouth sentiments like the following : " I never felt any high gratification in hearing of people being damned, and much less would I toss them into the fire myself." . "I dare not defend myself under the bad example of any, and the bad example of a great man is the worst defence of all." . . "If God's first love was hell-making, we might almost wish his affections were as mutable as ours are : that is, if Holy Church would countenance us therein." . . "I wish I could find in some epitaph, ' he loved so many ' : it is better than, ' he killed so many.' " * These expressions may smell of heterdoxy, but they are not the sentiments of a bad man. Pastor, on the other hand, is simply shocked at Boccaccio's " utter lack of Christian discipline and moral decency." In this strange compound of charlatanism, chivalry, and classicalism, we discover the first trace of the struggle between the old order and the new, but we have not long to wait to see the issue. If the battle is stubborn and promises to be a protracted one, we know at the outset that the new order is sure to win. Boccaccio makes it clear that to him the Mediaeval Church with * "The Pentameron." Walter Savage Landor. 37 her u holy Latin tongue " had ceased to represent th e highest ideals of culture; and he proclaimed the fac^ and proved its worth by the richness and beauty of his vernacular speech. The flowers of winter wither and die. Out of their mould comes the crop of another spring, flower by flower at first a laughing primrose or a timid violet by-and-by a joyous chorus of purple heather. Froissart uses the French of the peasant for his " Chronicles," and Chaucer tells his "Canterbury Tales" in the English of the ploughboy. The sun of that Spring rose on the sky of the New Age in 1453. The men of those days thought it was the setting of the sun, and the last Saturday of the world's history. No event in the annals of the world was ever accompanied by such paralyzing consternation as the triumph of Mohammed II, and the fall of Constantinople. Contemporary historians did not over-estimate its magnitude, but they erred in that they despairingly looked back to the Mediaeval Sodom rather than on and up to the Zoar of deliverance and development. Constantinople was the Mediaeval Athens. Its destruction dispersed an army of Greek scholars who carried with them a whole museum of precious manu- scripts of the classical authors, which had been fossilizing in dust heaps in the Byzantine monasteries. The 38 majority of these Greek scholars found their way into Europe into Italy more especially where their presence gave an immense impetus to the movement which was just beginning. The vast treasures of Greek thought had till now been unknown to the universities of Europe, except traditionally, for the slovenly Latin translations conveyed no idea of the exalted refinement of the originals. Besides, there were very few that could pretend to teach Greek. We learn from one of Petrarch's letters that, in his time, there were only eight men in Italy who had any acquaintance with Greek, three of whom were in Florence and not one in Rome. The learned Greeks were everywhere hailed with the greatest delight. Men revelled in the wealth of ideas to be found in Plato and Aristotle, and before the close of the fifteenth century, acquaintance with the Greek language and philosophy was considered an indispensable qualification of a scholar. From Italy the Greek fever spread to other countries. Grocyn and Linacre taught Greek at Oxford, and John Colet lectured there in 1496 on the Greek Testament. Erasmus came to England in 1498, and he " fanned into flame the burning pile," as we shall have occasion to show more fully at a later stage. Hardly less astonishing, if less important, was the remarkable coincidence of the invention of the compass, gunpowder, and printing about the same time as the fall of Constantinople. It has been disputed whether these inventions are really of European origin, but the 39 question of their origin is unimportant here : they certainly became known as inventions in Europe about the middle of the fifteenth century. The history of printing and its influence on the destinies of the world could not be adequately dealt with under the limits of a ponderous quarto. We may say respecting the early history of printing with Disraeli that it "re- mained, as long as its first artificers could keep it, a secret and occult art ; and it is the only one that ceaselessly operates all the miracles which the others had vainly promised." * " Miracle " ! Tes ; a greater than the raising of Lazarus. " Greater things than these shall ye do." The coincidence of the invention of printing with the discovery of ancient manuscripts is sufficiently astonishing, but printing regarded per se, and in the light of its infinite potentialities, stands out as one of the greatest miracles of all time. Printing became the reaping machine of the ripened harvest, and without its aid the vast crops must per- force have been lost. Books could be copied more rapidly than by hand, and far more cheaply, and this gave an unparalleled stimulus to the spread of learning. Previous to the invention of the ars artium, so slow was the process of multiplying copies, that one hundred Bibles could not be procured under the expense of seven thousand days, or of nearly twenty years' labour, and of a sum of money nearly equivalent to three thousand pounds in current coin. Assuredly, it would be impossible to form anything like an adequate con- * " Amenit es of Literature." Excelsior Series, p. 108. 40 ception of the magnitude and far-reaching consequences of this miracle of printing. The invention was first introduced into England by John Caxton, in 1472-3, the first English book a translation of K'aoul le Fevre's " Eecuyel of the Historyes of Troye " having been printed at Cologne in 1471. Its introduction imto Wales was of a much later date, and the delay accounts in part for the late hour of the Welsh awakening. According to Canon Silvan Evans, the first Welsh press was set up at Trefhedyn, in Cardigan- shire, and the first book printed in Welsh was "Eglurhad o Gatechism Byrraf y Gymanfa," published in 1719. Shortly after this date, there were printing houses established at Carmarthen and Trefecca, and later, at Bodedern, Bala, Trefriw, and Denbigh. Up to the year 1685, Welsh books were printed for the most part in London, some in Oxford (from 1661), and two or three on the Continent. In 1685 Thomas Jones, the Shrewsbury printer, brought out the fourth edition of " Ymarfer o Dduwioldeb," and thereafter the Shrewsbury press became the birth-place of nearly all the Welsh books of the succeeding half-century. For the long stretch of two hundred and fourteen years, i.e., from the date of the setting up of the first British press by Caxton, to that of the publication of " Ymarfer o Dduwioldeb " by Thomas Jones, at Shrewsbury, the Welsh litterateur laboured under two disadvantages, viz., that of living at a great distance from the printing house and, what was worse, that of having his books printed by English firms. English 41 compositors, who were ignorant of the Welsh language, stupidly crammed every page with innumerable errata, and it was absolutely necessary, under these conditions, if the book were to present anything like a passable appearance, that the author should be on the premises to correct the proofs as they issued from the press. This entailed both a serious loss of time and money, and little wonder if the number of those who had courage to face the task was but few. When the ]S"onconformists set up their first printing houses at Carmarthen and Trefecca, the sun of the Renaissance was already passed the meridian, and France almost entering into the shadow of the great Revolution. But the afternoon sun burst at last through the chill cloud of literary disability, and the land of bards became also the land of books. From 1700 to 1800, the number of Welsh books published was 1,224, as compared with 173 published between 1588 and 1700. That this number compared very favourably with the number produced in England during the same period may be seen from the following figures. In 1701 the English speaking population of the British Isles was estimated at 10,500,000, and 1801 at 18,520,000. In 1701 the Welsh speaking population of Wales was estimated at 380,000, and in 1801 at 540,000. The number of English books published in England during the said century is stated by Low to be about 51,500. Thus, at the end of the eighteenth century, the English population of the island was about thirty-five times as many as the Welsh, and the number of 42 English books published in the same period about forty-two times as many. The invention of gunpowder also had far-reaching consequences. Gradually, the old weapons of war were cast aside, the catapults, rams, and mangonels giving way to the more wieldy and deadly cannon. With the old engines went the coat of mail and the bow and arrow, and also the class distinction which had made warfare a comparatively safe and exciting amuse- ment to the rich. Gunpowder was the means of more than levelling the ramparts of passing castledom : it razed the defences of Mediaeval knighthood. It has brought untold misery in its train, we know, but it has helped to quarry some of the material for the Temple of Liberty. The geographical discoveries of the period must also be attributed to Eenaissance activity. After the con- quest of Constantinople by the Turks, merchants were compelled to seek a new trade route to India, and this led to the discovery in 1492 of the New "World. The closing of the Levant trade routes, however, was only one of the contributing-causes of the nautical activity. Great seamen had caught no smaller a measure of the Humanistic spirit than had the scholars, the statesmen, and the ecclesiastics. Columbus, Yasco da Gama, John and Sebastian Cabot, and (if the tale be anything more than a pretty romance) our own 43 Madoc, were all borne on the crest of the wave "which swept o'er sea and land." The diagonal of the parallelogram, to borrow a statical phrase, had up to 1453 been drawn through the Mediterranean : the forces at work now changed the direction of the point of their application, and there was a new resultant. Henceforth London, Bristol, Bordeaux, Cadiz, and Lisbon became the chief harbours for the traffic of the world. "These discoveries," says Eansome, "not only changed men's ideas in geography, but made a great alteration in the relative political importance of the nations of the world." * And here we must not overlook the influence of the Copernican system. The widening of the mental horizon is nowhere more plainly visible than it is in the labours of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, John Kepler, and we would couple with the names of these in- tellectual giants that of Eobert Recorde, of Tenby, who was the first British astronomer to adopt the Copernican theory, and the first original writer on mathematics in the British Isles. Astronomy and higher mathematics are the parent sciences of navigation and geographical discovery. We are, of course, aware that the great pioneers of physical research were all indefatigable students of the classics, and that they were inspired in their researches by the new learning. Paulsen, in his observations on the influence of Humanism on physical research, says: "Iin Hurnan- ismus stellt sich das Driingen des modernen Geistes * History of England." p. 390. 44 nach einer ihm gemassen Ersheinungsform clar. Der Lebenstrieb der abendlandischen Volker . . . fand in der naturalistischen Bildung des vorchristlichen Altertums seine Lebensempfindung und Weltanschauung angsedriickt."* Peurbach, Cusanus, Copernicus, JBrahe, Galileo, and Newton were all humble students of the old Greek systems, and they built their Tast super- structures on foundations laid by Ptolemy, Archimedes, Euclid, Aristotle, and the Peripatetic philosophers. As to Galileo, we know that he taught the Ptolemaic system whilst he occupied the chair of mathematics at Padua, from 1592 to 1598, although, as it would appear from his own words, he taught it in compliance with the popular feeling, and for some time after he had become a convert to the Copernican doctrines; that is, if the treatise on the sphere which bears his name be authentic, which is doubted by some.t In his dialogues on the Copernican system we have evidence of his perfect familiarity with the whole range of ancient philosophy.:}: Brahe's work is partic- ularly interesting. Moral conduct apart, a comparison might be instituted between him and Boccaccio. In both, the conflict between old and new principles resulted in an attempted compromise an arrangement which proved futile and evanescent. Brahe was born at Knudstorp, on December 14th, 1546, and was sent * " Geschichte des gelehrten Untemchts "