Welsh Journals

MODERN WELSH LITERATURE. THE literary activity of the past twenty- five years in Wales has been very great, in spite of the fact that, as we are frequently told, the publication of Welsh books does not pay. Without in any way losing sight of the existence and great value of the democratic literary tradition and interest, which must really be at the root of any fairly widespread culture, it must be admitted that this literary activity is, within our period, either directly or indirectly, largely the creation of the schools and colleges. Twenty-five years ago, it was only to a very limited extent that higher education had begun to affect the output of the Welsh press. This was not unnatural. The pioneers of higher education in Wales were not parti- cularly concerned in providing facilities for the study of the language and literature of the country. Many of them, whose public positions were due to their know- ledge of Welsh, in fact hoped and believed that railways and colleges would kill the language. Fortunately, there were other forces at work, directed in some cases by men of mixed blood, such as Thomas Gee, whose father was English, and Emrys ap Iwan, who had French blood and Continental training, and who fought the battle of the language with intense per- sistence. Sir John Rhys had already rescued Celtic study in this kingdom from the methods into which it unfortunately fell after the promising days of Edward Lhuyd. In Oxford, or on the Continent, were trained a few young Welshmen who had inherited the old literary tradition, and it was with the return of those men to Wales that the new epoch really began. The educational value of the language was slowly discovered by those whose profession it had been, by means of it, to educate the people in a religious sense. Thomas Gee stood alone in his advocacy of the foundation of a Welsh Chair at Bangor. The Educationalists, many of them men whose eminence depended particularly upon their Welsh oratory, were satisfied with a mere lectureship. But a beginning was made and solid work done. T. E. Ellis, in his addresses and speeches, and 0. M. Edwards, with his early books of travel and later with his magazines and reprints, charmed and fired the imagina- tion of hundreds of young men whose early schooling had simply left them, if not with an anti-national bias, then certainly with no knowledge of the history or literature of their country. One then felt that it was good to be alive and in Wales. Thus, what may be held with justice to be of any value in the present day literature of Wales is due to the national culture that, against all difficulties, succeeded, at least to a considerable extent, to justify and make itself efficient. Nation- al it was in origin, and its danger, as its enemies often said, was to become pro- vincial. The best way to see what really happened to it is to study some of the main tendencies of its expression in literature. Let us first take what may be described as the more intimately national aspect of the literature of our period. Early in the eighties, El vet Lewis began to contribute critical articles on Welsh literary subjects to Y Geninen." To the task he brought a due appreciation of the language, a knowledge of the contents of the works criticised, and a standard resting upon acquaintance with other literatures. Charles Ashton's work, inaccurate and uncritical as it frequently is-nevertheless, highly creditable to him-served a useful