Welsh Journals

purpose in assisting students to form some idea of the work before them. The reprints of the Guild of Graduates followed, providing trustworthy texts of some of the Welsh classics. Other books designed for use in the study of the language do not call for notice in a survey of this descrip- tion. Suffice it to say that the lines were laid down of a scientific study of grammar and of the history of literature. Compared with this study of native material, the avenues of outside influences have been perhaps of a more popular character, but by no means less important. Though not yet issued in book form, the magazine articles of Emrys ap Iwan intro- duced some of the spirit of French litera- ture. Owen M. Edwards' little books of travel were genuine literature, which made Italy and Brittany live for us. Due to this inspiration, undoubtedly, were many of the books of travel that followed, dealing with various countries from Ire- land to South America, from South Africa to Palestine. Professor Morris Jones's translations from Heine graced the early volumes of Cymru," and contributed largely to the fashioning of the modern Welsh lyric. The influence of Robert Bryan's articles on the East and of his translations and adaptations from various languages must also be taken into account. Morris Lewis's versions of portions of the Iliad rose far above the level of occasional Eisteddfod prize translations from the Greek, and Daniel Rees's interpretation of the Divina Commedia is in its fidelity to the original a work of surpassing merit. Morris Jones's version of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which some day will be as much of a classic in Welsh as is Fitzgerald's version in English, is a pro- duction of the period. Later translations from foreign languages include a large number of lyrics from the French, German, Italian, Spanish, Breton and Gaelic, and of a few classical odes. The influence of Heine, Goethe, Uhland, Coppee, Swin- burne, and Thomas Hardy might easily be traced in the lyric poetry of our period. Recent scholarship has also given us the conclusions of Biblical criticism and new translations of portions of the Scriptures. It will thus be seen that our literary activity has by no means been limited to an artificial study of native material. It answers to a living interest and genuine demand. Such work, however, if the literary tradition is to persist and improve, must necessarily have been preparatory for something of a creative character. And this is the test. Is there in the Welsh literature of the last twenty-five years anything that counts ? I think we may reply that there is. A study of the period reveals three main tendencies, which we may describe as the Romantic, the Real- istic, and the Religious, or Idealist. The earlier years of our epoch showed some uncertainty. A characteristic of the pre- ceding period had been a tendency to abandon the traditional forms of Welsh verse. With the knowledge of English had come a comparative loss of the previous mastery of idiom and instinct for form. This led to the supposition, frequently expressed by many writers, that the Cynghanedd had hampered Welsh poetry, and that freedom and greatness lay in blank verse on the English model. But the verse produced in Cynghanedd by these critics is certainly superior to their blank verse and rhymed couplets without Cynghanedd. Their efforts in what they considered to be freedom effectively show that they were utterly unable to appreciate the craft, say, of Milton, or to see that his mastery of his medium involved as great a difficulty as the handling of Cynghanedd, bearing