Welsh Journals

intensifies the prevailing light. When pressure came," says the official narrative of the Cymmrodorion, members absented themselves; the Society, hitherto so flourishing, fell to pieces." Alas, it was ever thus with mortals Even the London Welsh could not transcend the natural limitations of mankind. The crisis came in 1787. From a sad but explicit remark by Leathart, we glean the last incident of that grim eclipse- The insolvency of the Treasurer put an end to their career." The Brethren were dispersed and went their ways. It would perhaps have comforted them to know that their Society would be revived, and that, after a second failure, it would be revived again, as if something in THE CRITICAL WRITINGS OF T. GWYNN JONES. [CONCLUDED]. lll. G WYNN JONES, like another poet, has often been a soldier in the cause of humanity. He, too, has fought the Philistines. And his pamphlet on Ireland* is perhaps his noblest action, one of the few bright gestures that redeem the present shame of Welsh political life. It is, one must admit, an extravagant and even absurd venture; for into that sinecurely armed host of lepers, the Welsh members of Parliament, Mr. Gwynn Jones comes charging with such vain purposes as to kill prejudice and spread understanding. He would fight disease with knowledge; he would sling pebbles of reasonableness at the Goliath of Downing Street. And here is his battle-cry ­- When a man is roused to rage by the filthy trickery and the lying of that medley of adventurers which is the Government of England, what can he do wiser than turn to English literature, so that his blood may cool and his heart be softened. Is there any who, in the quietness of his mind, can hate the people Chaucer has pictured, Shakespeare and Dickens have described ? Is there any will doubt the noble aims of Milton, of Shelley, or of Peacock? And this argument may hold for every country, and for Ireland like the rest. For though its literature may not tell everything about a nation, yet will it speak truer than aught else." And so, by revealing to his countrymen some little of the unexhausted treasury of Gaelic literature, Gwynn Jones would persuade us to think of the Irish as a normally civilised people, not entirely without flesh and blood, nor yet utterly devoid of decent human virtues, art and song and prose and kindly imaginings. It was the Irish blood in him which first led Mr. Jones to learn Gaelic and to study its writers. It was that also, we may think, that urged him in this little tract to give of his most generous, to spend all his powers, so that he might win our sympathy for the cause he champions. And it is remarkable that whenever he writes on Ireland, some new merit seems to touch his pen. We have noted this in one of his earlier essays, and in the slender chapters of this book we find the Iwerddon. Gan T. Gwynn Jones. Adargraffiad o'r Darian." Aberdar, 1919. their underlying idea defied the demons of disintegration that play havoc with our human schemes. But the friends and followers of Richard Morris had not the knowledge of these new mornings to console the sorrow of their night. For them, it was the end of that brave undertaking, begun with so much zest and so much grace of language at the London Stone Tavern in 1753. They lost their solemn symbol-" The Great Chair of the Society, properly ornamented for the President with the Society's Arms over it." The Great Chair went into the keeping of the Gwynedd- igion Society-a body of that wiser breed of the North, who, with characteristic discretion, had kept themselves clear of British Zoology. {To be continued). By J. S. Lewis. same radiance, and phrases that leap coloured to the eye like miniatures in some antique missal. For prose, too, has its patterns, its arranged harmonies, subtle as those of verse; and into the pattern of this pamphlet Mr. Jones has inwoven whatever of delightful and appro- priate he has found in the broidered craft of writers long dead. Thus, in retelling some of the oldest Irish tales, such as the story of Bricriu (p. 11), he uses with consummate judgment the idiom of the Welsh romances of the 13th century; and the triumph of his art is that this idiom enters into his regular prose style without violence, gives it a richer tone, and at the same moment is itself a genuine criticism of his Irish matter.-relates it to something similar in our own language, and suggests its atmosphere. It needs a master to accom- plish this; it needs some of his spirit to appreciate it. But for most readers the song-translations of the book will be its happiest charm. And, indeed, this was the queerest notion, to prove the justice of a nation's cause by interpreting its poetry, to believe with Keats that what is first in beauty must be throned on Olympus, and to think we should accept the argument in cold blood Alas, we do not deserve the compliment. Yet it is this which makes the book unique as a political pamphlet,-something, we may be certain, that col- lectors in twenty years will be seeking. Let us add that when Mr. Jones publishes the edition of his collected verse for which we are all waiting, these and other translations from the Irish will not be the least precious pages. IV. We come finally to Gwynn Jones's latest volume, Welsh Literature in the 19th Century, And if the account of his literary ideas given at the beginning of this essay be correct, clearly the temptation which might have assailed him in this task would be to write a manifesto, an attack on the vices of that bewildering last century, and a defence of the school he has done much to raise. A book of that kind might be delicious reading; it might be the signal for the final battle,— for the Philistines are still in the land. But there is Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg y Bedwaredd Ganrif ar Bymtheg. Caernarfon, 1920.