Reviews of Books.

LECTURES ON WELSH PHILOLOGY. By JOHN RHYS, M.A., late Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools. Trübner: London.

THIS work is not yet out of the printer's hands, but we have been favoured with several sheets that are to form its pages; and we heartily congratulate the Cymry on its forthcoming appearance. We hasten to acquaint our readers with the nature of its contents. The first lecture, which was delivered at a meeting of the Cymmrodorion in London last year, serves as an introduction to the rest, and gives a brief sketch of the reasoning on which Comparative Philology, or as it is now more concisely called Glottology, is based. In the course of this sketch the author makes a digression to show how a comparison of the simple words, possessed in common by the chief Indo-European nations, lifts the veil of darkness which covers their history at a time when there was as yet neither Celt nor Teuton, neither Greek, Roman, nor Hindoo. This has been done before by M. Pictet, and by some of the Germans, but the author confines himself to cases where he can give the lead to Welsh words: one could not beforehand have imagined that such words as haidd, uwd, tant, dehau, euog, crefydd, could by any means whatever be invested with so much importance and dignity: it affords us no little pleasure to observe how proudly our old language is made to assert its place in the Indo-European world. In the latter part of the lecture, the author reaches the Celtic family of languages, and falls foul of the received classification which treats as two branches the Gælic and the Gallo

British; the latter presupposes a nearer relationship between the Cymry and the ancient Gauls of the Continent. The reasons hitherto adduced for this view are completely disposed of, and the author goes on to advocate another classification of the Celts, namely, into a continental and insular, otherwise termed by him, Gauls and Goidelo-Kymric Celts. His theory is that the Celtic family was divided into two branches, by the fact of a certain number crossing the channel into Great Britain. The insular Celts, the ancestors of the Cymry and the Gaels of Ireland and Scotland, subdivided themselves by some of their number crossing to Ireland. Up to that time he supposes them to have spoken one and the same Goidelo-Kymric language. From that time they began to diverge in speech, and the gulf has gone on widening to such an extent, that at this day Irishmen and Welshmen speaking their own languages cannot understand one another.

The old theory is that the Celts came to these islands in two distinct waves of population, but Mr. Rhys endeavours to show that there is no reason for supposing this to have been the case, and this he does by tracing, in the first and subsequent lectures, the growth of the most striking differances between Welsh and Irish to various dates, mostly subsequent to the fifth century, until there is hardly anything left which would go to prove a prehistoric division among the Goidelo-Cymric Celts.

The second lecture traces the spread in Welsh of the initial mutations, and gives the physiological explanation; how far he has succeeded in his explanations we will not venture to say, but the fact of attempting to explain them is in itself new, as our grammarians are fond of regarding such things as self-evident, and as essential features of the Celtic languages from time immemorial. He illustrates most of the changes by analogous ones in other languages, and especially

in the Sassarese dialect of Italian, the initial mutations in which have been ably handled by Prince L. L. Bonaparte.

The third lecture is devoted to the Welsh vowels, to the explanation of which he applies the latest discoveries of Professor Helmholtz; but the leading feature of the lecture is perhaps the account it gives of the reorganization of the Welsh vowel system, in the course of which the vowels of the Indo-European parent-speech, with their constant quantities of long or short, became the vowels of modern Welsh, with their positional quantities being long or short according to the nature or number of sounds which follow them in the same words.

The fourth lecture is devoted to the history of the Welsh language, from the Roman occupation to the present day, written with the view of showing the unbroken continuity of its existence in the west of the island; but as no one could throw doubt on its virtual identity in the nineteenth century and the twelfth, or on the latter and that of the ninth, he devotes most of the lecture to the point on which attacks are usually made, and spares no trouble to vindicate the Cymric origin of the inscriptions of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, found in Wales, Devonshire, and Cornwall; this is a defence of the rights of the Cymry against the Irish, which the author has been actively carrying on for several years in the Archæologia Cambrensis, where the Irish claim used to be accepted nem. con.

The fifth lecture gives an account of the Roman alphabet and its modifications among the Cymry, while the two last lectures are given up entirely to the discussion of the old Cymric monuments written in that strange character called Ogam, and in attempting to trace it to its origin. The author is of opinion that it was in use among our ancestors long before the Roman alphabet became known to them.

The acumen which Mr. Rhys has displayed throughout

the work, and the patient untiring investigation he has made of the materials within his reach, demand our grateful acknowledgments. The lucidity which pervades the work, will render it a text-book to the philological student; every lover of our Cymric tongue, as he reads its pages, will find himself possessed of a nobler language and a wealthier relic of antiquity than his fondest dreams ever led him to anticipate.

WYNNSTAY AND THE WYNNS. A volume of varieties put

together by the author of "The Gossiping Guide to Wales." Oswestry: Woodhall and Venables. 1876. THIS beautiful little volume is alike creditable to author and publishers. We trace throughout the compilation-for the author scarcely pretends to more-the same free, open, chatty style which has given so distinctive a character to the "Gossiping Guide to Wales."

We do not hesitate to say that the author has supplied a real want. The Wynns of Wynnstay stand so prominently forward, both in our ancient and modern historic annals—are so intertwined, we had almost said, with the daily life of the Cymry, as to make it more than ordinarily desirable that their history, pedigree, and homes, should be familiarised throughout the Principality. Wynnstay is photographed not only by the artist, but by the author; while Llangedwyn, "Standing embosomed in a happy valley",

unfolds its antique treasures of architecture in gables and dormer windows, amidst quaintly laid out gardens and luxuriant shrubberies. We do not wonder that Sir Watkin and Lady Williams Wynn should spend so much of their time at Llangedwyn.

The illustrations also are to the purpose. They make us acquainted with the old homes and with the very form and features of their former and present possessors.

GWAITH Y PARCHEDIG EVAN EVANS (JEUAN BRYDYDD HIR) gan D. SILVAN EVANS, B.D. Caernarfon: H. Humphreys. 1876.

THE REV. D. Silvan Evans deserves our best thanks for editing the works of Ieuan Brydydd Hir. The poet's name had become almost a household word; but his works in their entirety were comparatively unknown. We are of opinion that his "Englynion ar Lys Ifor Hael o Faesaleg", with their beauty of expression and richness of pathos, have given the bard an adventitious fame. A careful reading of the whole of his works disappoints us. in them to compare with the Englynion we mention.

Most certainly there is nothing

Each a master in our Cymric tongue, we could almost wish that Mr. Silvan Evans had confined himself and his author to the Welsh language. It is impossible to say anything in favour of the English and Latin poems. The former would scarcely be deemed worthy of the "poet's corner" in a country newspaper of the present day; while the Latin poem is nothing but a selection of phrases from the classic writers, so badly put together, that one of the lines will not even

scan.

Mr. Silvan Evans has, however, done his best with the materials he had in hand. If he has erred-and we will not say he has-in publishing every composition of his author, it must be ascribed to his love and veneration of the man, who, a century ago, saved so much of our literature from the hands of the spoiler.

Bearing in mind its price, the work is very creditable to the publisher; and we are not sure that Mr. Humphreys has not conferred a greater boon on the Principality by putting it within the reach of every class of his countrymen, than if he had brought it out in a more elaborate, beautiful, but expensive form.