Welsh Journals

more like collections for a work on translation than part of the work itself There are irrelevant digressions, sudden obiter dicta, here a provocatively dogmatic assertion, there a non-committal reserve. It would be a pity if the irritation which these faults of structure may cause in some readers should lead anyone interested in the subject (and what lover of literature is not ?) to leave Mr. Bates unread; for he has much of value and interest to say, and even where his opinions challenge contradiction (and there are several points on which I should like to join battle) there is always some substance in them. And any would-be translator should study carefully the examples given and the comments made on them. It is noteworthy that Mr. Bates, who ranges almost literally from China to, Peru," is silent, like most English writers, on the subject of Welsh. Is it too much to ask that he, who is clearly an excellent linguist, should, before he next takes up his subject, pay some attention to a noble language and a most interesting literature to be found at his very door? H. IDRIS BELL. Wales in Pictures The Story of Wales." By Rhys Davies (Collins, 4/6d.). IT THINK it is rough luck on a writer of fiction to be asked to compress into 48 pages, most of which are to be illustrations, the history, appearance, and social, economic and every other sort of development of his native land. Particularly rough luck is it when the book is one of a widely distributed series likely to find pedantic readers in its native country who will be almost over-critical. As someone writing in a Welsh paper and without a trace of Welsh blood, I hoped I was going to be able to leap to its defence. And let me say at once, that I think the text of the book is excellent, so far as it goes-that the opening historical sketch sounds to me like a balanced piece of work and, what is unusual in modem historical sketches, it is readable. Perhaps best of all I enjoyed the character study of Davies the Ocean and wished that Mr. Rhys Davies had put in more such Welshmen. Had he done so, I feel he would have answered some of the questions about Wales to which this book provides no answer and which are among the first that I, as a Cymrophil, would have asked.