Welsh Journals

Correspondence. To the Editor of 'The Welsh Outlook.' THE NEW WELSH BIBLICAL DICTIONARY. Sir,-I am certainly beginning to feel that your monthly is growing in literary value and importance for any student of Welsh literature, etc., and I wonder whether a word of mine re the new Biblical Dictionary now appearing in the grand old mother-tongue of Wales can find room in the "Outlook." Having now for the last twenty years left alone Welsh literature, except that when on holiday I try to pick up all I can about its most important items, I feel I must add a note about this noble venture. Wales has long been wanting for new knowledge in the form of such a dictionary. It had a national right to expect it from its fine University. One cannot help congratulat- ing (1) the Editors for their noble venture, and (2) the publishers for their superb work. At present, I will confine myself to a few notes on the Editor's work. General readers, especially those who know something of the art of reading, will not dive into the work, be- fore they have cast careful glance at the advertisement on the cover. There they will find the names of the Editors and helpers, and discover some general sug- gestions as to authority and contents of the work. Of Reviews. Then and Now. By Mrs. H. A. L. Fisher. Oxford University Press. Price, 5/- net. This little volume, of a hundred pages, purports to be an examination of the economic phenomena and con- ditions which followed upon the Napoleonic Wars in England, and a comparison between those times and the present day. Mr. Lloyd George contributes an introduction which, although readable enough, enhances in no way the value of the book, as it is a scarcely veiled defence of the work of the Coalition Government of which he was the head. Mrs. Fisher's part of the work is, however, of con- siderable value. She is a trained economist, and an able writer. Brief, but illuminating, examination is made of the general social and economic fabric, of the rural problem, of the urban problem, of finance, and of currency. It is a pity that Mrs. Fisher did not write an additional chapter on the effect of the Napoleonic Wars upon the political ideas of the time, making a comparison between them and the new ideas of our own day. For, just like the present years, the quarter of a century after 1815 was a period of revolt against all the ancient and accepted standards and conventions. There was then, perhaps, a stronger hold upon the fundamentals, with less disposition to consider all pre- vious generations of men fools. The Life of St. Samson of Dol. By Thomas Taylor, B.D., London. S.P.C.K. 1925. Price, 5/ The Life here translated into English by Canon Thomas Taylor, of Truro, is the oldest and in several respects the most valuable of all our complete extant Lives of British saints, having been written by a man of the Ancient British Church, who had lived the greater part of his existence in the halcyon days prior to the arrival of St. Augustine at Canterbury, and was therefore too old to be affected by the bitter intermin- able conflict between Wales and Canterbury, which then began. This life reflects that halcyon period, and is a basic document for the study of Welsh history. Wherefore we are grateful to Canon Taylor for his acceptable book, to Miss Eleanor Hull, the General Editor of the series, and to the S.P.C.K.; and we all things, half truths in advertisement suggest the more serious interrogations. The work, it is said, is carried out under the patron- age of the Welsh Order of Graduates; but strange to say, even though I am a member of that order, I never knew of any resolution of the same to that effect; and how many other members are in the same quandary. The editorial staff represent Independents, Calvinists and Baptists,-but where are the Wesleyans and Church of Wales? Hence, it can hardly be described as Catholic or National. All the staff are members of the U.C.N.W.-bravo Bangorites! But what of the other Colleges who send their contribution to the Order of Graduates? Are all the "best scholars and writers of the nation" to be found only among the Bangorites? Moreover, the editorial staff at least-I have not yet seen the list of contributors-is made up of the younger, if not the youngest, generation of Bangorites, rather than of the old and oldest, i.e. the men of mere book- knowledge rather than the men of experience. Is that the line along which one can expect the correct, sane, and truest knowledge of the contents of the Bible? Even these few notes of interrogation clearly remind the general reader that the work will fall far short of being the Biblical, the National, or the University, ideal which is fully due to the Bible-loving Welsh; and for this weakness only the Editorial staff can be held re- sponsible.­×Yours, etc., FAX. gladly and warmly recommend it to the attention and study of our readers. Canon Taylor approaches his subject with anything but a Welsh outlook, not that he is to be charged with bias or even lack of sympathy, but simply that he is unaware or at least negligent of work done in Wales bearing on the life and times of his Welsh hero. The only modern Welsh book referred to is Newell's "Popular History of the Ancient British Church." a work not of much value even in 1887, when it was published, much less now. He makes no reference to Professor J. E. Lloyd, or even Dr. Hugh Williams, and it is hard to forgive him for ignoring Baring-Gould and Fisher's "Lives of the British Saints," which contains an exceptionally interesting article of St. Samson of Dol. Our readers, therefore, will not be surprised to find that Canon Taylor quotes Gildas as making St. Alban to die at Verulam; that he gives Caerleon as a possible seat of one of the three British bishops at Aries in 314; that he makes Britons to seek refuge in Wales and Cornwall before all-conquering Saxons; that he makes St. Brieuc to come from Cardigan; that he thinks Cardiganshire was in Dyfed; and that he equates Gwent with Monmouthshire. On the other hand, he is saved from other and perhaps greater errors by the good use which he makes of the researches of Breton scholars. Canon Taylor's introduction fills some thirty-five pages, dealing lightly but surely with the rise and character of monachism among the Britons, and St. Samson's place in it. He finds that St. Samson was consecrated bishop on Sunday, February 22, A.D. 521, being the Feast of St. Peter's Chair. He is surprised that the biographer should say in praise of Samson that "no one ever saw him drunk," a sentence "which if it occurred in the biography of a modern bishop, would be read with indignant protest." To which one might reply that modern bishops are not given to such austerities as those practised by Samson. If they were, their never being seen tipsy might be a merit indeed. St. Piro fell into a well and died, he being at the time 'the worse for drink, a fact which could not be gain- said. But his brethren did not turn this fact into that kind which Cotswoldians call 'a lie and a half.' Piro was very old; the season was Lent; they were Christians.