As there are for physiology physical marks, such as the
square heads of the German, the round head of the Gael, the oval head
of the Cymri, which determine the type of a people, so for criticism
there are spiritual marks which determine the type, and make us speak
of the Greek genius, the Teutonic genius, the Celtic genius, and so
on. Here is another test at our service; and this test, too, has
never yet been thoroughly employed. Foreign critics have indeed
occasionally hazarded the idea that in English poetry there is a
Celtic element traceable; and Mr. Morley, in his very readable as
well as very useful book on the English writers before Chaucer, has a
sentence which struck my attention when I read it, because it
expresses an opinion which I, too, have long held. Mr. Morley says:
--'The main current of English literature cannot be disconnected from
the lively Celtic wit in which it has one of its sources. The Celts
do not form an utterly distinct part of our mixed population. But
for early, frequent, and various contact with the race that in its
half-barbarous days invented Ossian's dialogues with St. Patrick, and
that quickened afterwards the Northmen's blood in France, Germanic
England would not have produced a Shakspeare.' But there Mr. Morley
leaves the matter.
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