civilization of the Welsh to their intercourse with the English, "ex convictu Saxonum," as well as to their acquisition of some portion of wealth, was probably himself a Saxon. He proves that, in his time, our ancestors not only wore shoes and stockings, but that they were in the habit of visiting the towns, of conducting themselves with decorum and politeness at their meals, and further, that they cultivated the arts of agriculture and horticulture, and actually slept in beds with tapestry hangings! The luxury and refinement of modern times can scarcely exceed this description; and yet this great change for the better in their habits and manners was effected in less than a century from that period in which William Britto describes them as savages, wandering almost naked in their mountain forests, without a roof to shelter them. In the reign of Henry the Second, when the Pope forbade the clergy their wives, and inhibited them from marriage, Madoc Hên Gwyllt, a Welsh priest, produced a dozen couplets, in Latin rhymes, on the occasion, which are so far worthy our notice, as not being altogether devoid of humour, as summing up some of the principal arguments against clerical celibacy, and, more particularly, as fixing the period when the English Catholic clergy were first forbidden to marry by papal ordinance. The only reward the poet modestly asks for his poetry, is a Pater noster to be said for him by every married clergyman and his lady. "Prisciani regula penitus cassatur Sacerdos per Hic et Hæc olim declinatur, "Ità quidem Presbyter cœpit allegare, "O quam dolor anxius! quam tormentum grave! "Non est innocentius, immó nocens veré "Gignere nos præcipit vetus testamentum, "Dedit enim Dominus maledictionem "Nonne de militibus milites procedunt? "Zacharias habuit prolem et uxorem "Paulus cœlos rapitur in superiores Ad nos tandem rediens, instruensque mores, "Propter hæc et alia dogmata doctorum "Proximorum fœminas, filias et neptes "Ecce jam pro clericis multum allegavi That ancient historical poet old Robert of Gloucester, may be considered a Welshman, from his having been a monk in Llanthony Abbey, during the earlier part of his life. This writer brought the English language to a very high degree of perfection, for the time in which he lived. In the following characteristic anecdote which he gives us of William Rufus, there is not a single word which is not perfectly intelligible at present, and scarcely one which is not good English at this day: there is also a smoothness in the metre very remarkable for the age. It is further observable that his language in the construction of its phrases, and more particularly in the collocation of the words, bears a much closer affinity to the Norman-French than to the old Saxon or ancient British. It is a very pointed satire, told with great naïveté, on the pride of the great for costly apparel, merely for its cost, abstractedly from any other consideration. "As his chamberlayne him brought, as he rose on a day, He asked what they costned,-Three shillings, he said. A worse paire enough, the other srswith him brought, In this manner serve me, other ne serve me not." When Henry the Eighth, soon after the Pope conferred upon him the title of Defender of the Faith, translated Dr. Mountayne from a Welsh bishoprick to the see of Lincoln, a curate of the diocess he quitted, Evan Pugh, wrote this Latin distich, which is inserted in "Owen's Epigrams:" "Defensor fidei montem de sede removit, Which may be thus Englished: "The Faith's Defender moves Mountain from this see,- One of the best arguments that can be adduced against the alleged ferocity of our ancestors, may certainly be found in the peculiar softness and harmony of their language. In the history of nations, it has always been observed that a people must have attained a very considerable degree of civilization before their vernacular tongue becomes capable of musical expression: the perfection of the language of every country may be considered the best criterion of its moral and intellectual refinement. Here, methinks, I hear one of your Saxon readers exclaim, "But surely. sir, with all your partiality to the Principality, you do not mean to assert that the Welsh language has any pretensions to melody or sweetness? the Welsh, so harshly grating to the ear, so redundant in double consonants and gutterals, that the late Mr. Justice Hardinge is reported to have said, on the Brecon circuit, 'I would rather give up the emoluments of my office, than try a cause in so barbarous a language!" To this I answer, Yes, I do maintain, notwithstanding this judicial authority, that of all the modern languages of Europe, the Welsh is the softest and the most harmonious, and the most capable, from the vast variety of its inflections, of admitting a continual reduplication of alliterative repetitions in its cadences. In this it strongly resembles the Provençal Romanesque of the Troubadours of the south of France, now a dead language, but from which the early Italian poets formed their own melodious verse. If we compare some of the relics left us of Taliessin with the verses of Sordello, a celebrated Troubadour of Provence, as they are now extant, in a manuscript in the French king's library in Paris, we must be instantly struck with the similarity which exists between the mechanism of the rhythm and metre of the two poets, each abounding with syllabic alliterations which give their poetry a pleasing and peculiar softness, and which, in all cases, renders "The sound an echo to the sense." I must here cite the authority of a scholar who will certainly be allowed by all to be a competent judge on this subject: I mean Dr. John David Rhys, the author of a very learned Latin-Welsh Grammar, printed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and entitled "Cymræcæ Lingua Institutiones." Dr. Rhys, by birth a Welshman, after studying at Christ Church, in Oxford, for some time, went abroad and resided for many years in Italy, in which country he took the degree of M.D. at the university of Sienna, and was soon afterwards appointed public moderator in the university of Pistoia, another city in Tuscany he became so great an adept in the Tuscan language as to publish, in Italian, a very elaborate treatise on the construction and pronunciation of that tongue, on the universally admired "Lingua Toscana, Bocca Romana.” He returned to Wales in the decline of life, and composed his Welsh Grammar in Breconshire. An epitome of his life is given in that excellent topographical work, "The History of Breconshire," by the late Mr. Theophilus Jones. The Grammar of Dr. Rhys is not merely a dry treatise on the grammatical rules of the language, but he has taken astonishing pains to explain and illustrate the different ancient British metres, and their wonderful concatenations of alliterations. From his thorough acquaintance with Welsh and Italian, there never was a man more capable of justly appreciating the respective merits of both these languages: he tells us that there exists a similarity between them, but gives a decided superiority to the Welsh. He thus expresses himself, "Erant olim apud Italos antiquiores in Carminibus, concentuum quædam genera Cambro-brytannicis concentibus non usque adeo absimilia, verum gratia et venustate Cambrobrytannicis multo inferiora; nec omni ex parte eodem modo ab Italis, quo à Cambro-brytannicis in versibus constituta; ut intuenti et intelligenti lectori est manifestum. Quod forsitan lingua Italica, pulcherrima quidem, et omnium vulgarium linguarum (meo judicio) proculdubiò Regina, aquè ornatè et eleganter ac Cambro-brytannica natura, tales concentuum formas nec ferat nec ostentet. Unde jam apud Italos, ferè obsoleta reperiuntur hujuscemodi concentuum genera. Sicuti enim unaquæque alia lingua in cæteris aliquid quod sibi proprium sit, meritò adipiscitur: ita quoque et in hâc parte Cambro-brytannica istud tanquam peculiare et proprium sibi vindicat. Sed ex multis, (solum exempli gratiâ et veluti instar omnium,) subjungamus pauca hæc Circes carmina, quæ mihi fortuitò contigerunt, ne adeo, ut opinor, antiqua, ad Ulyssem, ut fingitur, conscripta, et Italicè versa. Qua carmina, ne vir umbram quidem Cambro-brytannicorum concentuum venusta pulchritudinis ostendere videntur.” He then presents us with the whole of this Italian epistle from Circe, the daughter of the Sun, to Ulysses, from which I extract the first two stanzas. Circe, Figliuola del Sole, à Ulisse: epistola decima. "Ulisse O lasso, O dolce amore i' moro "Ninfa non fie à Circe chente conta; Se bella, ne Sibilla fassi, O fessi, Donne, O danne, che Febo affranto affronta." Dr. Rhys concludes his dissertation on Welsh metre by citing a number of stanzas, from Taliessin and other Welsh bards, to prove the superior softness of the Ancient British poetry over the Italian, that Regina Linguarum, more particularly in that which constitutes the chief pride of Italian poesy, the concentuum venusta pulchritudo. |