PROFESSOR MORLEY, EDITOR OF "EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE," ON CELTIC LITERATURE AND THE CELTIC PROFESSORSHIP.
Professor Morley, at a meeting called by the Gaelic Society of London, in Willis' Room, spoke as follows, and we think his remarks, being those of a great and unprejudiced Englishman of letters, well worth reproducing in the Celtic Magazine:—
He said that the resolution, which had a fit proposer in a distinguished representative of the north, was seconded by one [himself] who had no other fitness for the office than that he was altogether of the south, and had been taught by a long study of our literature to believe that north and south had a like interest in the promotion of a right study of Celtic. We were a mixed race, and the chief elements of the mixture were the Celtic and Teutonic. The Teutonic element gave us our strength for pulling together, the power of working in association under influence of a religious sense of duty; but had we been Teutons only, we should have been somewhat like the Dutch. He did not say that in depreciation of the Dutch. They are popularly associated with Mynheer Vandunck, but are to be associated rather with grand struggles of the past for civil and religious liberty, for they fought before us and with us in the wars of which we had most reason to be proud, and gave the battle-field upon which our Sidney fell at Zutphen. Nevertheless, full as Dutch literature is of worthy, earnest thought, it is not in man to conceive a Dutch Shakspere. This was not his first time of saying, that, but for the Celtic element in our nation, there would never have been an English Shakspere; there would never have been that union of bold originality, of lively audacity, with practical good sense and steady labour towards highest aims that gave England the first literature in the world, and the first place among the nations in the race of life. The Gael and Cymry, who represented among us that Celtic element, differed in characteristics, but they had in common an artistic feeling, a happy audacity, inventive power that made them, as it were, the oxygen of any combination of race into which they entered. He had often quoted the statement made by Mr Fergusson in his "History of Architecture," that, but for the Celts, there would hardly have been a church worth looking at in Europe. That might be over expressive of the truth, but it did point to the truth; and the more we recognise the truth thus indicated the sooner there would be an end of ignorant class feeling that delayed such union as was yet to be made of Celt with Saxon—each an essential part of England, each with a strength to give, a strength to take. We had remains of ancient Celtic literature; some representing—with such variation as oral traditions would produce—a life as old as that of the third century in songs of the battle of Gabhra, and the bards and warriors of that time, some recalling the first days of enforced fusion between Celt and Teuton in the sixth century. There were old manuscripts, enshrining records, ancient when written, of which any nation civilised enough to know the worth of its own literature must be justly proud. Our story began with the Celt, and as it advanced it was most noticeable that among the voices of good men representing early English literature, whenever the voice came from a man who advanced himself beyond his fellows by originality of thought, by happy audacity as poet or philosopher, it was (until the times of Chaucer) always the voice of a man who was known to have, or might reasonably be supposed to have, Celtic blood in his veins; always from a man born where the two races had lived together and blended, or were living side by side and blending. Before the Conquest it was always in the north of England, afterwards always along the line of the west, until in the latter part of the fourteenth century, London was large and busy enough to receive within itself men from all parts, and became a sort of mixing-tub for the ingredients of England. From that time the blending has been general, though it might even now be said that we are strongest where it has been most complete. With such opinions then, derived by an Englishman who might almost call himself most south of the south, from an unbiassed study of the past life of his country, he could not do other than support most heartily the resolution—"That a complete view of the character and origin of society, as it exists in these countries, cannot be given without a knowledge of the language, literature, and traditions of the Celts." He welcomed heartily the design of founding a Celtic Chair in the University of Edinburgh as a thing fit and necessary to be done, proposed to be done in a fit place, and by a most fit proposer. The scheme could not be better recommended than by the active advocacy of a scholar like Professor Blackie, frank, cheery, natural; who caused Mr Brown and Mr Jones often to shake their heads over him, but who was so resolved always to speak his true thought frankly, so generous in pursuit of worthy aims, with a genial courage, that concealed no part of his individuality, that he could afford to look on at the shaking of the heads of Mr Brown and Mr Jones, while there could be no shaking of the public faith in his high-minded sincerity. As to the details of the establishment of the chair there might be difficulties. The two Celtic languages had to be recognised. The ideal Professor whom one wished to put in the new chair should have, with scholarly breadth of mind, a sound critical knowledge of the ancient forms of both, and of their ancient records, and he would be expected to combine with this a thorough mastery of at least Gaelic, which he would have to teach also as a spoken tongue. Whatever difficulty there might be in this was only so much the more evidence of the need of putting an end to the undue neglect that had made Celtic Scholarship so scarce. Nothing would ever be done by man or nation if we stayed beginning till our first act should achieve perfection. He could only say that it was full time to begin, and that the need of a right study of Celtic must be fully recognised if the study of English literature itself was to make proper advance in usefulness, and serve England in days to come, after its own way, with all its powers.