Celtic Literature | Page 8

opinion of my brother Saxons as to the
practical inconvenience of perpetuating the speaking of Welsh. It may
cause a moment's distress to one's imagination when one hears that the
last Cornish peasant who spoke the old tongue of Cornwall is dead; but,
no doubt, Cornwall is the better for adopting English, for becoming

more thoroughly one with the rest of the country. The fusion of all the
inhabitants of these islands into one homogeneous, English-speaking
whole, the breaking down of barriers between us, the swallowing up of
separate provincial nationalities, is a consummation to which the
natural course of things irresistibly tends; it is a necessity of what is
called modern civilisation, and modern civilisation is a real, legitimate
force; the change must come, and its accomplishment is a mere affair of
time. The sooner the Welsh language disappears as an instrument of the
practical, political, social life of Wales, the better; the better for
England, the better for Wales itself. Traders and tourists do excellent
service by pushing the English wedge farther and farther into the heart
of the principality; Ministers of Education, by hammering it harder and
harder into the elementary schools. Nor, perhaps, can one have much
sympathy with the literary cultivation of Welsh as an instrument of
living literature; and in this respect Eisteddfods encourage, I think, a
fantastic and mischief-working delusion.
For all serious purposes in modern literature (and trifling purposes in it
who would care to encourage?) the language of a Welshman is and
must be English; if an Eisteddfod author has anything to say about
punctuality or about the march of Havelock, he had much better say it
in English; or rather, perhaps, what he has to say on these subjects may
as well be said in Welsh, but the moment he has anything of real
importance to say, anything the world will the least care to hear, he
must speak English. Dilettanteism might possibly do much harm here,
might mislead and waste and bring to nought a genuine talent. For all
modern purposes, I repeat, let us all as soon as possible be one people;
let the Welshman speak English, and, if he is an author, let him write
English.
So far, I go along with the stream of my brother Saxons; but here, I
imagine, I part company with them. They will have nothing to do with
the Welsh language and literature on any terms; they would gladly
make a clean sweep of it from the face of the earth. I, on certain terms,
wish to make a great deal more of it than is made now; and I regard the
Welsh literature,--or rather, dropping the distinction between Welsh
and Irish, Gaels and Cymris, let me say Celtic literature,--as an object
of very great interest. My brother Saxons have, as is well known, a
terrible way with them of wanting to improve everything but

themselves off the face of the earth; I have no such passion for finding
nothing but myself everywhere; I like variety to exist and to show itself
to me, and I would not for the world have the lineaments of the Celtic
genius lost. But I know my brother Saxons, I know their strength, and I
know that the Celtic genius will make nothing of trying to set up
barriers against them in the world of fact and brute force, of trying to
hold its own against them as a political and social counter-power, as the
soul of a hostile nationality. To me there is something mournful (and at
this moment, when one sees what is going on in Ireland, how well may
one say so!) in hearing a Welshman or an Irishman make pretensions,--
natural pretensions, I admit, but how hopelessly vain!--to such a rival
self-establishment; there is something mournful in hearing an
Englishman scout them. Strength! alas, it is not strength, strength in the
material world, which is wanting to us Saxons; we have plenty of
strength for swallowing up and absorbing as much as we choose; there
is nothing to hinder us from effacing the last poor material remains of
that Celtic power which once was everywhere, but has long since, in
the race of civilisation, fallen out of sight. We may threaten them with
extinction if we will, and may almost say in so threatening them, like
Caesar in threatening with death the tribune Metellus who closed the
treasury doors against him: 'And when I threaten this, young man, to
threaten it is more trouble to me than to do it.' It is not in the outward
and visible world of material life, that the Celtic genius of Wales or
Ireland can at this day hope to count for much; it is in the inward world
of thought and science. What it HAS been,