both of them derived the fable from the same Italian source; and as congenial souls will sometimes be betrayed into a coincidence of taste, that they both happened in drawing the same portraits, to choose the same drapery. From the thir teenth and fourteenth centuries to the present period, the allusions to classical authors observed in the works of the Welsh bards are very frequent*. Rys Prichard, in his book, called Llyfr Ficar, has the following lines, Dechreu ddysgu trech yn blentyn, Tempra 'th lestr tra fo'r newydd A'r gwin gwynn o dduwiol grefydd. RYS PRICHARD. which are an exact translation of a passage in Horace nunc adbibe puro Pcctore verba puer, nunc te melioribus offer, Quo semel imbuta, recens servabit odorem Testa diu. Lib. i. Epist. ii. 6. Let thy pure mind imbibe in youth, The wine of uncorrupted truth, And thy untainted cask will taste Of this first seas'ning to the last. ANONYM. from RYS PRICHARD'S Poems. Fel y damsang meirch rhyfelwyr Felly damsang angeu diriaid, As steeds in battle rudely rush, And troops of all descriptions crush, And cots and courts to ruin brings. He is mentioned in Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, as a man of great abilities, he adapted his language to the capacity of the vulgar, and did much good by the purity of his doctrine, and the excellency of his moral sentimen tand was capable of writing with great elegance. Pallida HISTORICAL ANECDOTES RELATIVE TO THE ENERGY, BEAUTY, AND MELODY, OF THE WELSH LANGUAGE, AND ITS AFFINITY TO THE ORIENTAL LANGUAGES, AND THOSE OF THE SOUTH OF EUROPE *. IT T is an extraordinary circumstance, studied as the Ancient British Language has been for centuries, admired by those who understand it, and despised and vilified only by those who are ignorant of it; that its beauties have not been asserted, nor its force and energy fairly appreciated. The attacks so violently made upon it, and the censure so unjustly thrown upon it, have induced its friends occasionally to undertake its defence; but they have defended it so injudiciously, and opposed its foes so feebly, that they have aided its enemies, rather than supported the cause they espoused; and by the awkward position they took, trampled on the prostrate body of the language of their country, while they affected to hold up the shield of literature in its defence. Ignorance has affirmed, for what will not ignorance affirm, that it is a langnage abounding in consonants, and that it is a rough language. To these assertions, at first ignorantly advanced, and afterwards maliciously supported, it has been injudiciously said, that its alliterations and other peculiarities compensate for the number of its consonants, and its strength of expression for its harshness. But whatever its pleasing peculiarities or its energy may be, there is no necessity of admiting that they can be only considered as bare compensations for faults, of which it cannot be Extracted from a series of letters on the subject, by a Member of the Uni versity of Oxford. justly " justly accused. Where for instance are the proofs that it abounds with consonants? If compositions can be pointed out in it, where not only there appear a less number of consonants than in compositions of the same number of lines in any other language, but where there are no consonants at all, the charge will prove evidently to be as unjustly made by its ene mies, as it is iujudiciously ad- O'i wiw wy i weu e â, ai weuau E weua ei we aia, A'i weuau yw ieuau ja. From his own eggs the busy worm From these examples, which every person, not totally ignorant of the ancient British language, knows might be multiplied without number, it will appear evident, that to reproach the Welsh with the number of their consonants, is as absurd as it is unjust. For what can be more ridiculous, than to find authors ignorant of the language preferring the charge of multiplicity of consonants against compositions, which upon examination prove to be totally devoid of consonants. In what other tongue, can stanzas of thirty or forty syllables be written in an easy elegant style, consisting entirely of vowels and a few occasional diphthongs. But if it be thought too difficult an enterprise to produce in any other language, so many complete stanzas, entirely destitute of consonants; let any advocate for any modern favourite tongue, produce if possible any number of lines, in any other language, which shall be able to cope with an equal number of Welsh lines, with regard to the that paucity of the consonants, occur in the following example, I 2 and and many instances of a similar nature might be adduced, where only two consonants appear, Un wên Helen anwyla * A wna ava i ni'n ha', A'n hoyw ha oni weni Un ael i'n ni lawena Ni wên haulwen ein ha'. Helen, one gracious smile will bring In winter all the charms of spring, And when thou smil'st not, spring appears In the dark garb that winter wears, And sorrow every visage shrouds And summer suns are lost in clouds. In the following example only four consonants occur, and those four are what are generally deemed liquids, * Meinwen ry eiriau mwyna A'r wên o liw haulwen ha' A unir nien yr hên iau? Ran lawen meinwen a mi ? Mae'n horiau yma'n hwyro, Rhyw wiw air ar ryw awr rho. Fair maid, whose gentle accents please, Shall we, my fair one, still delay? y and w are considered as vowels, and sounded as such in the above examples, w is pronounced like the ou in French, in the word oui, yes. Many |