beauty of what is remote and solitary; a rapt pleasure in what is ancient, and in the contemplation of what holds an inevitable melancholy; a visionary passion for beauty, which is of the immortal things, beyond the temporal beauty of what is mutable and mortal -even in these characteristics it does not stand alone, and perhaps not preeminent. There is a beauty in the Homeric Hymns that I do not find in the most beautiful of Celtic chants; none could cull from the gardens of the Gael what in the Greek anthology has been gathered out of time to be everlasting; not even the love and passion of the stories of the Celtic mythology surpass the love and passion of the stories of the Hellenic mythology. The romance that of old flowered among the Gaelic hills flowered also in English meads, by Danish shores, amid Teuton woods and plains. I think Catullus sang more excellently than Bailê Honeymouth, and that Theocritus loved nature not less than Oisìn, and that the ancient makers of the Kalevala were as much children of the wind and wave and the intimate natural world as were the makers of the ancient heroic chronicles of the Gael. There is no law set upon beauty. It has no geography. It is an open land. And if of those who enter there, peradventure any comes again, he is welcome for what he brings; nor do we demand if he be dark or fair, Latin or Teuton or Celt; or say of him that his tidings are lovelier or the less lovely because he was born in the shadow of Gaelic hills or nurtured by Celtic shores. It is well that each should learn the mother-song of his land at the cradleplace of his birth. It is well that the people of the isles should love the isles above all else, and the people of the mountains love the mountains above all else, and the people of the plains love the plains above all else. But it is not well that because of the whistling of the wind in the heather one should imagine that nowhere else does the wind stir the reeds and the grasses in its sudden, sweet incalculable hour. When I hear that a new writer is of the Celtic school, I am left in some uncertainty, for I know of many AngloCeltic writers, but of no "school," or what present elements would inform a school. What is a Celtic writer? If the word has any exact acceptance, it must denote an Irish or a Scottish Gael, a Cymric or Breton Celt, who writes in the language of his race. It is obvious that if one would write English literature, one must write in English and in the English tradition. When I hear, therefore, of this or that writer as a Celtic writer, I wonder if the term is not apt to be misleading. An English writer is meant, who in person happens to be an Irish Gael, or Highland or Welsh. I have already suggested what other misuse of the word obtains; Celtic emotion, Celtic love of nature, Celtic visionariness. That, as admitted, there is in the Celtic peoples an emotionalism peculiar in kind, and perhaps in intensity, is not to be denied; that a love of nature is characteristic is true, but differing only, if at all, in certain intimacies of approach; that visionariness is relatively so common as to be typical is obvious. But there is English emotion, English love of nature, English visionariness; as there is Dutch, or French, or German, or Russian, or Hindû. There is no nationality in these things save in the accident of contour and color. At a hundred yards a forest is seen to consist of ash and lime, of elms, beeches, oaks, hornbeams; but a mile away it is simply a forest. I do not know any Celtic visionary so rapt and absolute as the Londoner, William Blake, or the Scandinavian strangely spiritual mythology. I believe that, in the East, they lit the primitive genius of their race at unknown and mysterious fires; that in the ages they have not wholly forgotten the ancestral secret; that, in the West, they may yet turn from the gray wave that they see, and the gray wave of time that they do not see, and again, upon new altars, commit that primeval fire. But to believe is one thing, to affirm is another. Those of us who believe thus have no warrant to show. It may well be that we do but create an image made after the desire and faith of the heart. It is not the occasion to speak of what I do believe the peculiar and excelling beauty of the Celtic genius and Celtic literature to be; how deep its wellsprings; how full of strange new beauty to us who come upon it that is so old and remote. What I have just written will disclose that wherever else I may desire to worship, there is one beauty that has to me the light of home upon it; that there is one beauty from which, above all others now, I hope for a new revelation; that there is a love, there is a passion, there is a romance, which to me calls more suddenly and searchingly than any other ancient love or ancient passion or ancient romance. But, having said this, I am the more free to speak what I have in view. Let me say at once, then, that I am not a great believer in "movements," and still less in "renascences;" to be more exact, I hold myself in a suspicion towards these terms; for often, in the one, what we look for is not implicit, and, in the other, we are apt rather to find the aside and external. So far as I understand the "Celtic Movement," it is a natural outcome, the natural expression of a freshly inspired spiritual and artistic energy. That this expression is colored by racial temperament is its distinction, that it is controlled to novel usage is its opportunity. When we look for its source we find it in the usufruct of an ancient and beautiful treasure of national tradition. One may the more aptly speak thus collectively of a mythology and a literature and a vast and wonderful legendary folk-lore, since to us, now, it is in great part hidden behind veils of an all but forgotten tongue and of a system of life and customs, ideals and thought, that no longer obtains. I am unable, however, to see that it has sustenance in elements of revolt. A new movement should not be a revolt, but a sortie, to carry a fresh position. When one hears, as one does every now and then, that the Celtic movement is a revolt against the tyranny of the English tradition, one can but smile, as though a plaster-cast, that is of to-day, were to revolt against the Venus of Milo, or the Winged Victory that is of no day. If a movement has any inherent force it will not destroy itself in forlorn hopes, but will fall into line, and so achieve where alone the desired success can be achieved. There is no racial road to Beauty, nor to any excellence. Genius, which leads thither, beckons neither to tribe nor clan, neither to school nor movement, but only to one soul here and to another there; so that the Icelander hears and speaks in Saga, and the brown Malay hears and carves delicately in ivory; and the men'in Europe, from the Serb and the Finn to the Basque and the Breton, hear, and each in his kind answers; and what the Englishman says in song and romance, and the deep utterance of his complex life, his mountain kindred say in mabinogi or sqë· Even in those characteristi distinguish Celtic literat natural vision; a swift sometimes a sp beauty of what is remote and solrary a rapt pleasure in what is ancient and in the contemplation of what holds an inevitable melancholy; a visionary pas sion for beauty, which is of the inmortal things, beyond the temporal beauty of what is mutable and mortal -even in these characteristics it does not stand alone, and perhaps not preeminent. There is a beauty in the Hemeric Hymns that I do not find in the most beautiful of Celtic chants: nune could cull from the gardens of the Ga what in the Greek anthology has been gathered out of time to be evering: not even the love and passion of the stories of the Celtic mythology surpass the love and passion of the stories of the Hellenic mythology. The rouane that of old flowered among the Gathe hills flowered also in English meats, by Danish shores, amid Tentos suvla and plains. I think Catullus sang mure excellently than Baile Ho wel that because of the whistling of The WINE IL the heather one should mage tha: nowhere else does the wine str the reeds and the grasses in is sudden sweet incalculable bon When I bear that a new writer is of The Certe scool. I am left in some un many, for I know of many Anglo Gene where but of no "school," of presen: elements would informa What a Celte writer? !! The wure bar any art melame 11:TANT Geo as frints of a Mal Gaea (yur of Breton Call wh and that Theocritus loved tre av He less than Oisin, and that ie au makers of the Kalevala were be children of the wind and were aut intimate natural world makers of the ancient here durve of the Gael. There is no law set ups wa has no geography. I am me And if of those who are adventure any comes again. come for what he big rose demand if he be dark rent or Teuton or Celt; his tidings are lonel because he was omin : of OS ,e I ing a .uinn," hen he of each wn throat r, was his e Prionnsa t it was not but of all the of Scotland who and of Scotland I days that could did not ask what w that in his heart >wn dead hopes and t the prince was but is lost youth, and that old and gray because of iness and his own great , I fear that we who, as a habitually companion ourh dreams, may fall into that ere the realities are become , and shadows alone live and And then I remember that ers and visionaries are few; that e no such people; that no such e has ever been; and that of all weaving of sand and foam none is re idle than this, the strange instince dread of the multitude, that the Swedenborg, or the Flemish Ruysbroeck; or any Celtic poet of nature to surpass the Englishman, Keats; nor do I think even religious ecstasy is more seen in Ireland than it is in Italy. Nothing but harm is done by a protestation that cannot persuade deliberate acceptance. When I hear that "only a Celt" could have written this or that passage of emotion or description, I am become impatient of these parrot-cries, for I remember that if all Celtic literature were to disappear, the world would not be so impoverished as by the loss of English literature, or French literature, or that of Rome or of Greece. But, above all else, it is time that a prevalent pseudo-nationalism should be combatted. I am proud to be a Highlander, but I would not side with those who would "set the heather on fire;" if I were Irish, I would be proud, but I would not lower my pride by marrying it to a ceaseless ill-will, an irreconcilable hate, for there can be a nobler pride in unvanquished acquiescence than in revolt. I would be proud if I were Welsh, but I would not refuse to learn English, or to mix with English as equals. And proud as I might be to be Highland, or Scottish, or Irish, or Welsh, or English, I would be more proud to be British-for, there, at last, we have a bond to unite us all, and to give us space for every ideal, whether communal or individual, whether national or spiritual. As for literature, there is for us all, only English literature. All else is provincial or dialectic. But gladly I for one am willing to be designated Celtic, if the word signify no more than that one is an English writer who, by birth, inheritance and temperament, has an outlook not distinctively English, with some memories and traditions and ideas not shared in by one's countrymen of the South, with a racial instinct that informs what one writes, and, for the rest, a common heritage. The Celtic element in our national life has a vital and great part to play. We have a most noble ideal if we will but accept it. And that is not to perpetuate feuds, not to try to win back what is gone away upon the wind, not to repay ignorance with scorn, or dulness with contempt, or past wrongs with present hatred, but so to live, so to pray, so to hope, so to work, so to achieve, that we, what is left of the Celtic races, of the Celtic genius, may permeate the greater race of which we are a vital part; so that with this Celtic emotion, Celtic love of beauty and Celtic spirituality, a nation greater than any the world has seen may issue, a nation refined and strengthened by the wise relinquishings and steadfast ideals of Celt and Saxon, united in a common fatherland, and in singleness of pride and faith. As I have said, I am not concerned here with what I think the Celtic genius has done for the world, and for English literature in particular, and, above all, for us of to-day and to morrow; nor can I dwell upon what of beautiful and mysterious and wonderful it discloses, or upon its bitter-sweet charm. But of a truth, the inward sense and significance of the "Celtic Movement" is, as has been well said, in the opening of a fountain of legends, and, as scholars aver, a more abundant fountain than any in Europe, the great fountain of Gaelic legends. "None can measure of how great importance it may be to coming times, for every new fountain of legends is a new intoxication for the imagination of the world. It comes at a time when the imagination of the world is as ready as it was at the coming of the tales of Arthur and of the Grail for a new intoxication. . . . The arts have become religious, and must, as religious thought has always done, utter themselves through legends; and the Gaelic legends have so much of a new beauty that they may well give the opening century its most memorable symbols." Elsewhere the same writer truly discerns the spiritual secret of this movement as "a hidden tide that is flowing through many minds in many places, creating a new religious art and poetry." Perhaps the most significant sentence in M. Renan's remarkable study of the Poetry of the Celtic Races is that where he speaks of the Celtic race as having worn itself out in mistaking dreams for realities. I am not certain that this is true, but it holds so great a part of truth that it should make us think upon how we stand. I think our people have most truly loved their land, and their country, and their songs, and their ancient traditions, and that the word of bitterest savor is the word exile. But it is also true that in that love we love vaguely another land, a rain-bow land, and that our most desired country is not the real Ireland, the real Scotland, the real Brittany, but the vague Land of Youth, the shadowy Land of Heart's Desire. And it is also true, that deep in the songs we love above all other songs is a lamentation for what is gone away from the world, rather than merely from us as a people, or a sighing of longing for what the heart desires, but no mortal destiny requites. And true, too, that no tradition from of old is so compelling as the compelling tradition that is from within; and that the long sorrow of our exile is in part because we ourselves have driven away from us that company of hopes and dreams which were once realities, but are now among beautiful idle words. In a word, we dwell overmuch among desired illusions. These are as fair as the rainbow, when, like the rainbow, they are the spiritual reflections of certainties; but they are worthless as the rainbow-gold with which the Shee deceive the unwary, when what is the phantom of a spiritual desire is taken to be the reality of material fact. And I think that we should be on guard against any abuse of, that we should consider this other side of, our dreams and ideals, wherein awaits weakness as well as abides strength. It is not ill to dream, in a day when there are too few who will withdraw from a continual business, a day when there are fewer dreams. But we shall not greatly gain if we dream only of beautiful abstractions, and not also of actual or imaginative realities and possibilities. In a Highland cottage I heard, some time ago, a man singing a lament for "Tearlach Og Aluinn," Bonnie Prince Charlie; and when he ceased, tears were on the face of each that was there, and in his own throat a sob. I asked him, later, was his heart really so full of the Prionnsa Ban; but he told me that it was not him he was thinking of, but of all the dead men and women of Scotland who had died for his sake, and of Scotland itself, and of the old days that could not come again. I did not ask what old days, for I knew that in his heart he lamented his own dead hopes and dreams, and that the prince was but the image of his lost youth, and that the world was old and gray because of his own weariness and his own great grief. Sometimes I fear that we who, as a people, do habitually companion ourselves with dreams, may fall into that abyss where the realities are become shadows, and shadows alone live and move. And then I remember that dreamers and visionaries are few; that we are no such people; that no such people has ever been; and that of all idle weaving of sand and foam none is more idle than this, the strange instinctive dread of the multitude, that the |