• 70 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. V. 



tributions of larger or smaller magnitude to the literature of Wales, to 

 bringing to light its hidden treasures, to deciphering and explaining the 

 more ancient and unintelligible Welsh MSS., and to exciting among 

 English readers a desire to gather some acquaintance at least with the 

 literature of the Britons. Neither in Irish nor in Welsh literature is 

 there any ancient poetry that can be placed on a footing of equality with 

 the poetry of the Ossianic age — with the poems of Ossian, Ullin and 

 Oran. There are no poems in Welsh literature to be compared, in 

 point of grandeur of conception and of continuous narrative and power-, 

 ful sentiment, with the poems of the Bard of Selma. The enthusiastic 

 admirers of Ossian claim for him a much earlier date than that which is 

 assigned to Taliessin. It is generally conceded that the most important 

 books or treatises that have been written in more recent years had as 

 their authors Carnhuanawc, the talented and patriotic clergyman Thomas 

 Price ; Thomas Stephens, the author of the Literature of the Kymry and 

 several other works ; and Skene, the learned editor of the Four Ancient 

 Books of Wales, containing the Cymric poems attributed to the bards of 

 the sixth century. Justice is merely done to Mr. Skene when it is said 

 that he has rendered immense service to the Celtic literature of Scotland, 

 his native country, and that he had no superior in judgment and in 

 learning in the very abstruse sphere which he selected for his peculiar 

 labours. His Four Ancient Books of Wales embrace the Black Book of 

 Caermarthen, the Book of A 7ieurin, the Book of Taliessin, and the Red 

 Book of Hergest. "It is in those four MSS.," Skene writes, "that the 

 oldest known texts are to be found, and in order to avoid any risk of its 

 being coloured by my own views, I refrained from attempting the trans- 

 lation myself, and to obtain it, if possible, from the most eminent living 

 Welsh scholars." Mr. Skene bestows this commendation on Mr. 

 Stephens : " His work is written with much ability and is in fact the 

 first real attempt to subject these poems to anything like a critical 

 analysis." Thomas Stephens, and the modest, learned and indefatig- 

 able Irish scholar Eugene O'Curry, are entitled to a similar meed of 

 praise. Their painstaking labours in the interest of their respective 

 countries have surely earned for them an honourable and a permanent 

 place in the affections of the Welsh and Irish. 



Thomas Stephens was essentially a self-made, and to a large extent a 

 self-taught man. He was stimulated by the Eisteddfoddau to prose- 

 cute his researches into the less-known channels of Welsh litera- 

 ture. He was distinguished for the breadth and accuracy of his views, 

 for his unflinching love of truth, and for his active .sympathy with every 

 movement that tended to improve the position of his fellow-countrymen. 

 He preferred truth to patriotic pride, and incurred disfavour because he 



