Welsh Journals

that in any literary history he deserves as much atten- tion as Islwyn. There would be few to contradict him, and a competent study of his art is long overdue. Even on the poets Mr. Jones is sometimes, and perhaps deliberately, provocative. He tells us that Alun Mabon is Ceiriog's best work, and he tells no more. Now that poem has the misfortune to be popular, which is something of a crime among critics. Yet, let us ask, is there any honest and skilled student of poetry who can read Alun Mabon and not feel that it is, with all its artificialities, one of the most finished and beautiful pastorals in modern literature, a very subtle work of art, compounded of many simples worthy the analysing, and deserving all the attention that Mr. Jones has lavished on the work of Dafydd R. Jones? For there, of course, the critic deliberately threw a glove. The present reviewer would consider twice and thrice before rejecting the matured judgment of Mr. Gwynn Jones; and it is impossible to read Hanes Bywyd Sion Llwyd without recognising how strange a poem it is from a Welshman born in 1832. For here is absolute honesty of thought, courage, and originality. The book as a whole gives the impression of a mind grown wise and tolerant and pitiful; and we may, for those reasons, be glad of Mr. Gwynn Jones's emphatic appreciation. But how much of the book is poetry? Mr. Jones himself says, "the style is often inexcusably bad, the grammar often fcaurty.' Well, that is too modest. The fact surely is that the style is hardly for ten lines together secure, and it is usually so sloven, so heedless of metre, so empty of any beauty of word or phrase, that we are surprised that it should be in verse at all. Here, for example, is a typical lyric stanza on p. 35 of the book Pan aeth i lawr i'w swyddfa y bore, synnu wnai ei gyd- swyddogion, tremiai'n syn a gwelw, fel un fai mewn rhyw ing dirdyniadol, ond nid oedd gair i'w gael pan holent ef, dywedai'n fyr ei fod yn teimlo'n wael." Why should anyone write that as verse? For that reason we must believe that Mr. Jones has over-rated the value of the work. And yet there is one quite exceptional passage which begins on p. 115 of the poem Fe glywai sisial tyner Rhwng cwynfan gwan a chan." It is a long lyrical passage, in which the branch, the trunk of the tree, the rock, the wind, are made to meditate and commune, and it is that very rare thing, a great philosophical lyric. full of passion and power, and more akin to the work of a French poet such as Alfred de Vigny than to anything in Welsh literature. I loved. Then lo! where melody had thrilled There came the piercing pause of empty days, When restless eyes would grope in sorrowed ways Until, in darkness seeing, they were stilled. I found thee then-more near than I had willed Or dared to wish Thy presence nearer stays Than human touch, or speech, or loving gaze, Or my own crowded thought. The days are filled. We have to thank the critic who has made us read it. Perhaps no section of this history is so typical of the writer's attitude and of his connoisseurship as that on Eben Fardd. His style here is allusive, illustrative, his tone friendly and judicial, and the artist in him crosses finely with the critic. Mr. Jones examines the famous couplet Llithrig yw'r palmant llathrwyn, Mor gwaed ar y marmor gwyn," and he comments It would be better, Mae'r gwaed ar y marmor gwyn.' This may remind us of a remark of the English poet on his own quatrain ­. She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept and sigh'd full sore, And there I shut her wild, wild eyes With kisses four." Why four kisses," wrote Keats, why, four because I wish to restrain the headlong impetuosity of my muse; she would fain have said score without hurting the rhyme, but we must temper the Imagination, as the critics say, with Judgment." It is that tempered imagination which has made Gwynn Jones's "Departure of Arthur" a classic already in our poetry, and it is the same quality which gives a steady, tranquil strength to his criticism. To close this essay, let us show Gwynn Jones treating a writer who has roused the vision which is behind all his work. It is thus he speaks of Talhaearn Talhaearn was nurtured on a tavern-hearth in a remote village, and in a neighbourhood where the old songs of the 18th century had long remained. From a boy he knew those catches and loved them. He knew them as he had heard them sung by tipsy farmers and labourers in his mother's horre; and he learnt, while yet young, to write things like them. Then he mastered English, and, better still, he went to France and learnt French. In his political opinions he was, like Ceiriog, slavishly English. But he grew to something nobler; he read Beranger, and came to appreciate the Frenchman's passion for liberty of thought. His latest songs were the work of a Welshman thus influenced, the only Welsh poet of the period to whom such chances fell. And so, in temper and experience, Talhaearn was more akin to the older poets of Catholic ages, when men knew a little Latin; when they went on pilgrimage to Rome and to St. lago de Compos- tella, when they slept in Continental inns, and exchanged tales with monks and travellers of many nations, a queer confused rabble, it may be, yet bound peacefully together while they listened to the Mass, and made one in the quietude of a common worship. To read such a paragraph in Welsh is to have a sense of shutters thrown back and windows opened, and a wind coming from the sea. IN MEMORIAM. No joy I wreathe in floral memories For (once it hurt) thou hast no home-land grave. Our past I knew and loved. With it are fears. But now I know just thee--a heav'n of ease. Nought from my spirit-sight can hold thee save The aching blindness of forgetting tears. Barry Docks. G. M. Tuckett.