Welsh Journals

sides being undoubtedly the greatest, the most interesting of Gray's Welsh group, as it is en- tirely original and is not a translation of a trans- lation as are its fellows. Gray's other Welsh poems are "The Triumphs of Owen," "The Death of Hoel," "Caradoc" and "Conan." The first was published in 1768 together with "The Fatal Sisters" and "The Descent of Odin," while the other smaller pieces were discoverd among his papers after his death. "The Triumphs of Owen" is described as "A Fragment; from the Welsh," but so far from translating Gwalchmai's poem which was the basis of his inspiration, Gray took his poem from a Latin prose version which he found in Evans's "Specimens of Welsh Poetry" already men- tioned. In the same volume Gray also came across some extracts from the Gododin, a Welsh epic poem of the sixth century, and these he translated in "The Death of Hoel," "Caradoc" and "Conan." Mr. Edmund Gosse thinks that one of these has something of the concision of an epigram from the Greek anthology:- "Have you seen the tusky boar, Or the bull, with sullen roar, On surrounding foes advance? So Caradoc bore his lance. Mr. Gosse adds that the others are "not nearly equal in poetical merit to the Scandinavian para- phrases." Perhaps not. But some few lines of the "Conan" fragment show how Gray entered into the spirit of these ballads. The following, for instance, are as incisive and suggestive as the original Welsh, which Gray had never even seen The Tram Wires. By Geoffrey H. Wells. fT^HE man and the girl came down the low steps from the cinema into the damp night. r It was not raining at the moment, but the pavements were wet and bleak, and pass- ing motors spurted mud from the soiled road. "It's stopped," he told the girl. "Let's walk home. "As you please," she replied, shrugging her thin shoulders. He was hardly more than a boy, twenty-three perhaps, and she a year or so younger. His dress, his whole bearing, proclaimed him but a lowly acolyte in the office hierarchy, a junior clerk perhaps she, in her shapeless coat fur- trimmed at collar and cuffs, might have been any- thing from a duchess (her ambition) to a typist (her fate). Together they navigated the crowded main street, pausing in the centre while a tram with smeared and misted windows clattered past them, "As the flame's devouring force; As the whirlwind in its course; As the thunder's fiery stroke, Glancing on the shiver'd oak; Did the sword of Conan mow The crimson harvest of the foe." There is none of the niceness and delicacy of the Augustan poets here. It is just life, full-blooded, fierce and savage as it was lived in the days of Conan. That is partly the great merit of Gray's versions of these old Scandinavian and Welsh ballads. In his other poems we feel that he has some reluctance to leave the paths trod by his contemporaries, but these pieces we are consider- ing are pure, unadulterated Romanticism, an- ticipatory of Scott. Gray has no scruples about shocking the delicate susceptibilities of his readers when he thinks it is necessary in the in- terests of his art, and so we have him using plain, brutal English, such as had not been heard during that century, instead of fashionable euphemisms. Even a man like Dr. Johnson, however, could admire these poems, for he says of Gray — "His translations of Northern and Welsh poetry de- serve praise; the imagery is preserved, perhaps often improved; but the language is unlike the language of other poets." The "sting in the tail" of that dictum but maintains what has been remarked above. Johnson found Gray's straight- forwardness of speech displeasing because he was so much a child of his age and because he was the champion and defender of the dying tradition which is sometimes called Classicism. All the same, it says much for the poetical merit of these poems that they could stir Johnson to admiration, and his praise will form a fitting conclusion to these fragmentary and rambling remarks. and turned up a quiet road. The offices which lined it were all dark; only a sombre caretaker's gaslight glimmered in one or two garret windows. They walked in silence. "Are you still cross about that dance?" he asked her at last. For a moment she did not reply, staring in front with her head bent a little so that her face was dark under the shade of her hat. "Tell me," he urged. "You made me look such a fool, dancing with you all the time and Her voice was low, querulous, full of injured pride, not a trace of affection in it, hard and cold-like the stones they walked upon. He answered impatiently, as one who repeats a statement once too often. "It wasn't intentional, you know. It didn't even occur to me that I'd done anything until you told me about it afterwards." "There's no difference. All my friends think I'm—" "Those half-witted idiots you call your friends are capable of thinking anything! He too felt quarrelsome, and shifted from defence to