WELSH BARDS AND MUSIC. 317 



which the principles of their religious and civil po- 

 lity had been preferved by uninterrupted tradition 

 through many centuries. They were, indeed, ac- 

 quainted with the ufe of letters, but they did not 

 deem it lawful to commit thefe verfes to writing, 

 in order that their intelleftual faculties might be 

 ftrengthened, and alfo that their myileries fhould be 

 withheld from the contemplation of the vulgar. — 

 The metre in which thefe oracular inftrudions were 

 communicated to the people, was a kind of triplet 

 ftanza. The Englifli reader \^dll have a tolerable 

 idea of their conflrucllon from the following tranf- 

 lation of five of them, inferted (with feveral others) 

 in Jones's Relics of the Welfli Bards. Thefe have 

 the fame number of lines and feet as tlie originals ; 

 and the fenfe is preferved as nearly as the limits of 

 the metre would allow. The two firfl lines do not 

 feem to have much connexion with the laft ; there, 

 appears, however, to have been no fmall degree of 

 art employed In their compofition. In the firfl lines 

 the druid defcribes either actions that are familiar to 

 every one, or the appearance of vifible obje6ls. He 

 then concludes with a moral precept, or a proverbial 

 fentence ; and by annexing to It undoubted fa6l^ art- 

 fully implies that the truth of the maxim is as clear 

 and well eftabllflied as the identity of material ob- 

 jed:s: 



In the oak's high toweiing grove, 

 Dwells the liberty I love, — 

 Babblers from your truji remove. 



Liberty 



