Welsh Journals

others in a very satisfactory way. His plans admit of construction in sections, giving a maximum of convenience as each section is added, and ultimately uniting to form a complete scheme of buildings excellently adapted for the work of a great library, which will bear comparison with the finest library buildings in the world. The key to the scheme is the book-stack, the most economical and satisfactory method of storing books. Beyond adequate provision for the readers and the staff, the most urgent requirement of a library is some system of easy adjustment to the growing collections of books and manuscripts. In the plans this has been provide for by means of three book-stacks, to be erected at the rear of the main-buildings, as required. The first stack will store about half a million volumes. The other two will each take something less than half "Change." A Glamorgan Play in Four Acts. By J. O. Francis. Abreystwyth 1913, 1/6 net. Pp. 7-133. The rapid growth of the drama in Wales during the last few years has given a new lease of life to one of the most unpleasant features of our literature,-that ignorant criticism which beholds its object from below, and can therefore say nothing to the point, whether to praise or to blame. Poetry, which has suffered so, much from this treatment during the last thirty years is at last, we believe, delivered from the unpoetical critic, but the Welsh drama is still appraised by men who have never seen the inside of a theatre, or read anything more dramatic than temperance dialogues. Indeed,we know that the dramatic critic of the English newspapers in Wales is invariably a reporter, the most illiterate and uncultured of all the vast army that straggles on the outskirts of literature. There are already indications that the first real English play to deal with Welsh life is likely to suffer from the blundering attentions of the Welsh critic," and, for that reason, we should convey an altogether erroneous impression of our attitude towards Change, if we were to seek to point out what we consider its defects. It will be a greater service to the cause of Welsh drama in general, if we attempt to show very briefly a few of its many excellencies. In the first place, it is strikingly influenced by that very marked return to realism, which has characterised the best Welsh literarure during the last few years. a million. With the storage in the main buildings, and the three stacks, it will be possible for the wants of the next two hundred years to be met. The authorities responsible, when the existing plans are exhausted, will have ample land for further develop- ment. The National Library is already becoming popular. This is shown by the gifts made to its collections by rich and poor alike, by the contributions to the building fund, and by the use already made of the books and manuscripts. As the facilities for the loan of books to students are developed, this attach- ment of the people will increase. The progress made in five years is a guarantee that the library will rank as one of the greatest libraries of the world, both for its buildings and for the treasures in its collections. REVIEWS It is only lately that Welsh writers-whether writing in Welsh or in English-have found the necessary detachment and independence which are essential to the realistic writer. Mr. Francis sees steadily the changing panorama of life in the mining villages of Glamorgan, and is not afraid of putting it into his play without extenuation or exaggeration. Certainly, this realism of Mr. Francis' does not pretend to describe the whole of that life ;-it picks and chooses, and in this instance, the author has very wisely elected, on the one hand, to omit those nauseous details which some writers both French and English have mistaken for realism, and on the other hand, to choose in John Price, a type of the older order, and in John Henry, a type of the newer, much stronger and more uncompromising examples than the average which is to be found in real life. In other words- in setting forth his play, he has chosen the wiser course of showing extraordinary men in ordinary crises, rather than ordinary men in extraordinary crises,-which latter course leads inevitably to melodrama, and which has vitiated nearly all the dramas lately produced in Wales. In close connection with this virtue of the higher realism, there is another quality of Mr. Francis' work which we acclaim with enthusiasm--the entire absence of the sentimental fallacy. We cannot here discuss what sentimentality is or is not, but certainly, the dra- matic variety of it is that nauseous love-making which so tickles the groundlings in modern English plays,