' But the critic has to show,
against his adversaries, that the Spoils of Annwn is a real poem of
the sixth century, with a real sixth-century poet called Taliesin for
its author, before he can use it to prove what Sharon Turner there
wishes to prove; and, in like manner, the high antiquity of persons
and incidents that are found in the manuscripts of the Mabinogion,--
manuscripts written, like the famous Red Book of Hergest, in the
library of Jesus College at Oxford, in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries,--is not proved by allusions of the old Welsh bards, until
(which is just the question at issue) the pieces containing these
allusions are proved themselves to possess a very high antiquity. In
the present state of the question as to the early Welsh literature,
this sort of reasoning is inconclusive and bewildering, and merely
carries us round in a circle. Again, it is worse than inconclusive
reasoning, it shows so uncritical a spirit that it begets grave
mistrust, when Mr. Williams ab Ithel, employed by the Master of the
Rolls to edit the Brut y Tywysogion, the 'Chronicle of the Princes,'
says in his introduction, in many respects so useful and interesting:
'We may add, on the authority of a scrupulously faithful antiquary,
and one that was deeply versed in the traditions of his order--the
late Iolo Morganwg--that King Arthur in his Institutes of the Round
Table introduced the age of the world for events which occurred
before Christ, and the year of Christ's nativity for all subsequent
events.
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