Book II. Chap. X. of his Essay, has hit upon a similar illustration. Speaking of the facility with which in most minds ideas fade in the memory, he concludes: "In all these cases, ideas in the mind quickly fade, and often vanish quite out of the understanding, leaving no more footsteps or remaining characters of themselves than shadows do flying over fields of

corn."

Hobbes has anticipated Gall and Spurzheim, where he writes, Chap. XI. of the Treatise, "The Brain, the common organ of all the senses." Truly, the new thoughts come out of the old books, or as Dan Chaucer has declared:

"Out of the olde fieldes, as men saithe,

Cometh all this newe corne, fro yere to yere;
And out of the olde bookes, in good faithe,

Cometh all this newe science that men lere."

Rochefoucault's definition of Pity is almost identical with that given by Hobbes, who styles it, "Imagination, or fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another man's calamity."

After making, as we thought, quite a discovery, we found Hazlitt had, long before, pointed out the whole thing. So most of the new revelations of modern criticism are merely "new found old inventions," according to Butler. Chap. II. is an Essay on Idealism, a Berkleian speculation. Now, Hobbes died in 1679, Berkeley was born in 1684, and it is fair to infer the later philosopher borrowed from his predecesThe sum of the doctrine is contained in the tenth and last paragraph: "And from hence, also, it followeth, that whatsoever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they be not there, but are seeming apparitions only; the things that are really in the world without

sor.

us, are those motives by which these seemings are caused. And this is the great deception of sense, which also is to be by sense corrected: for, as sense telleth me when I see directly, that the color seemeth to be in the object; so, also, sense telleth me when I see by reflection, that color is not in the object."

We will conclude this discursive paper by quoting a common saying, that has passed into a proverb: "The worth of a thing is what it'll bring," neatly framed into one of the most telling couplets of Hudibras. In Hobbes, we find it thus expressed: “So much worth is every thing, as a man will give for all it can do.”

XXXIV.

A WELSH RARE-BIT FOR ST. DAVID'S DAY.*

St. George he was for England, St. Dennis was for France,

St. James for Spain, who by his fame the Gospel did advance;
St. Anthony for Italy, Andrew for Scots ne'er fails,
Patrick, too, stands for Ireland; St. David was for Wales.

As we are not speakers, nor lecturers, nor clergymen, but mere litterateurs, we don't know how we can more appropriately honor the natal day of the patron Saint of our ancestors, than by a petit morceau of literary tribute to the glories of the Welsh race. We shall not attempt to enter into an historical or antiquarian discussion of the origin of the Cymry, of the early establishment of the Cymric Church, or the story of English invasions and Cambrian struggles for independence.

* March 1, 1854.

The French historians Michelet and Thierry, have penetrated the Welsh character, and vividly narrated the history of the race. In episodical passages, they have done more than the regular histories of Wales have accomplished.

The Welsh character, brave, generous, choleric, patriotic and hospitable; proud of family and race, tenacious of particulars, logical and enthusiastic; the music and poetry of the bards, the learning of their theologians and lawyers, and their philologists, are universally admitted. We present a pot pourri of research, under the following captions: "Shakspeare's Welshman," the Language and Literature of the Cymry, and the Worthies of Wales.

SHAKSPEARE'S WELSHMAN.

Schlegel, the celebrated German critic, calls Owen Glendower, in Henry IV., "a well-meaning, honorable, but pedantic Welshman." Campbell, the poet, writes with generous justice, in the preface to his edition of Shakspeare, "Owen Glendower is a noble, wild picture of the heroic Welsh character; brave, vain, imaginative and impetuous. He was the William Wallace of Wales, and his vanity and superstition may be forgiven, for he troubled the English till they believed him, and taught him to believe himself, a conjurer." A sensible and patriotic Welsh biographer of the hero declares, that "Shakspeare seems to have embodied, in his portrait of Glendower, all that was romantic or marvellous in the traditional account of his life and character." A critic on Shakspeare, more bold, acute and brilliant than either, if not than all three of the foregoing-Hazlitt-has done full poetic justice to Owen Glendower, Fluellen, and Sir Hugh

Evans: "Owen Glendower is a masterly character. It is as bold and original as it is intelligible and thoroughly natural. Fluellen, the Welshman, is the most entertaining character in the piece (Henry V.). He is good-natured, brave, choleric and pedantic. His parallel between Alexander and Henry of Monmouth, and his desire to have some disputations with Captain Macmorris, on the discipline of Roman wars, in the heat of battle, are never to be forgotten. His treatment of Pistol is as good as Pistol's treatment of his French prisoners. The Welsh parson, Sir Hugh Evans, (a title which in those days was given to the clergy) is an excellent character in all respects. He is as respectable as he is laughable. He has very good discretions and very odd humors. The duel scene with Caius gives him an opportunity to show his choler and his tremblings of mind, his valor and his melancholy, in an irresistible manner. In the dialogue which, at his mother's request, he held with his pupil, William Page, to show his progress in learning, it is hard to say whether the simplicity of the master or scholar is greatest. (Vide Hazlitt's characters of Shakspeare's plays.)

THE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF THE CYMRY.

"The language of the British Bards," concludes Sharon Turner,"must have been substantially the same with the language of the Britons who withstood the valor of Cæsar, and of course must present us with a venerable image of perhaps the earliest language that appeared in Europe. No other nation but the Hebrew can show such a body of ethical and intellectual thought, and of versified composition of the

same antiquity. In the twelfth century, there were writings of old British Bards extant, which were then called ancient." See Vindication of Ancient British Poems.

Amid the noble array of Bards, four names appear to stand out with brilliant prominence. Taliesin "radiant front," Aneurin, Llywarch Hen, who is said to have lived 150 years, and lost twenty-four sons in battle, and David ap Guillym.

Among the annalists, Asser, the friend and Historian of Alfred, Giradus Cambrensis, Gildas.

Howe! Dha has gained the appellation of the "Welsh Justinian," Pelagius, one of the greatest of theological leaders -chief of the Morgans. Other great names we must reserve for a very imperfect miscellaneous list of Welsh worthies, most of whom flourished within the last three centuries. Numerous laudable attempts have been made to collect and preserve the relics of early bards, by enthusiastic and diligent antiquarian commentators. Stephens, in his Literature of the Cymry, has pointed out the treasuries of poetry and learning. Even a lady, Lady Charlotte Guest, has translated the Maginobion, a storehouse of natural legendary romance; and such able scholars as Dr. Owen Pugh and others have elaborated the lexicography of the language.

The fame of Welsh poetry rests very materially, so far as the English reader is concerned, on the admirable paraphrases of Gray, whose taste, enthusiasm and lyrical genius, shone with genuine splendor in his spirited versions-(we suspect superior to the original in execution, if not in the primary conception)—of the Triumphs of Owen (Gwynnedd) and the Death of Hoel, from the Gododin. The magnificent. ode, “The Bard," is composed in the true Cambrian spirit, and worthy of the noblest of his name. The tradition, by the way on which this fine poem is founded, has been ably