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Celtic Literature: What little town, by river or seashore -

What little town, by river or seashore -

to his:-

White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine, Fast-fading violets cover’d up in leaves -

or his:-

. . . magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn -

in which the very same note is struck as in those extracts which I quoted from Celtic romance, and struck with authentic and unmistakeable power.

Shakspeare, in handling nature, touches this Celtic note so exquisitely, that perhaps one is inclined to be always looking for the Celtic note in him, and not to recognise his Greek note when it comes. But if one attends well to the difference between the two notes, and bears in mind, to guide one, such things as Virgil’s ’moss-grown springs and grass softer than sleep:’ -

Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba -

as his charming flower-gatherer, who -

Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens Narcissum et florem jungit bene olentis anethi -

as his quinces and chestnuts:-

. . . cana legam tenera lanugine mala Castaneasque nuces . . .

then, I think, we shall be disposed to say that in Shakspeare’s -

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine -

it is mainly a Greek note which is struck. Then, again in his:-

. . . look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold!

we are at the very point of transition from the Greek note to the Celtic; there is the Greek clearness and brightness, with the Celtic aerialness and magic coming in. Then we have the sheer, inimitable Celtic note in passages like this:-