BOOKS.
THE STORY OF THE NATIONS.—WALES.*
Mn. OwEN EDWARDS, in summing up the character and policy of Llywelyn the Great, uses a very felicitous and sig- nificant phrase : "He had given up the Celtic luxury of scheming against the inevitable." In view of the too common limitations of an Englishman's knowledge, it may be as well to explain that this Llywelyn ruled Wales, with considerable limitations and obstructions, but, on the whole, with success, for nearly half-a-century (1194-1240), and that his idea was the "independence of Wales as a part of a more extensive kingdom." He saw that Wales as a sovereign State with boundaries absolutely limiting its more powerful neighbour was an im- possibility. His own life experience had taught him that the temptation to make private terms with this same neighbour would always be irresistible by ambitious subordinates. One of the last acts of his life, therefore, was to acknowledge the overlordship of the English King. Wales was to be to England what Brittany and Burgundy were to France. The scheme was not destined to prosper. In the first place, Llywelyn did not carry his own people with him ; in the second, the relation itself, as, indeed, the French precedent sufficiently showed, was not permanently work- able; it demanded too much loyalty both in lord and vassal. So it came to a speedy end. Llywelyn's successors on the one hand, and the English King on the other, wanted something more. And of course the big battalions had the better of it. But the ideal was not really lost. It was realised in another way in later times. It may be said to be the foundation of the British Empire. And still one of the great difficulties to its thorough and harmonious development is this same Celtic " scheming against the inevitable." Irish- men indulge in it, asking for what it might be possible to give, though always a doubtful boon, if their island were a thousand miles away, and of late a certain section of Welshmen seem disposed to follow on the same line. Mr. Edwards's book may, it is quite possible, be of some service in present-day politics, as well as be a valuable contribution to history and literature. It is the more likely to be so as it is inspired throughout by a potent, though never, as far as we- have observed, an unreasonable, sympathy of race.
It is, of course, in the relations of Wales to England that the majority of readers will find their chief interest. A significant example may be seen in the story of the three Edwards. Our author scarcely does justice, we think, to the "greatest of the Plantagenets," but it is perfectly true that the virtues of Edward I. were not such as appealed to the imagination of a Celtic people. He seems, however, to have been carried out of himself by his surroundings, and when he bestowed the title of Prince of Wales on the child born at Carnarvon he did a greater thing than he was, perhaps, con- scious of. This Welsh-born Prince was but a poor creature, but he was popular in the land of his birth, and even had some idea of the duty which his title seemed to impose upon him. The same feelings were renewed under happier auspices two generations later, when in 1341, forty-one years after the birth of Edward of Carnarvon, his grandson received the same title. This time there was a ceremony of coronation, an act of complaisance to Welsh feeling which might be not unprofitably repeated. Mr. Edwards brings out more forcibly than we remember to have seen it done before the important share that Welsh archery had in the great English victories of the fourteenth century. "The home of the longbow," he says, "is the south-east corner of Wales, the well-wooded rolling plain of Gwent and Morgannwg." The Welsh had for some time been well known as mercenaries, a profession which mountaineers have followed from time immemorial. "They generally fought for the King of England, but would have • Wale,. By Owen IL Edwards. London : T. Fisher 17nwin. [Ss.]
preferred," says Mr. Edwards—we do not know on what authority—" to fight against him." There were ten thousand of them at Falkirk, and the course of events might have been materially changed if they had turned their arrows against Edward, as at one time it seemed likely that they would do, rather than against Wallace. At Crecy there were five thousand, a fourth part of the whole English force. The famous crossbowmen of Genoa and the mail-clad knights of France were unable to endure the withering hail of their arrows. They fought again at Poitiers, and yet again at Agincourt. There were Welsh on the other side also, led by a countryman who claimed to be heir of the Welsh crown, but they were of little more avail than the Greek mercenaries had been to their Persian paymasters when they were ranged against Alexander. (Darius could do absolutely nothing with his twenty thousand Greeks heavy armed at the Granicus, and his thirty thousand at Issus.) Mr. Edwards joins the Black Death with the longbow as one of the causes which changed the social aspect of Wales in the fourteenth century. He says in one of the many striking passages of his book :—
"The Black Prince took away from Wales the strongest and the most adventurous; the Black Death came and took away the weakest and the most timid. The Death was the greater bene- factor. A war, by taking away the strongest, degenerates the breed. It leaves a nation weaker, more impatient, in mental and physical decline. A plague, by taking away the weakest, im- proves the breed ; the population increases rapidly, and the nation is filled with new energy and hope. After the Black Death we seem to be in a new world—the poet sings of the plough, the descendant of princes becomes the champion of the villein—in the days of Owen Glendower."
A third he finds in the literary development of the same time, a Welsh Renaissance, so to speak. The visible result was the revival of Welsh nationality under a leader who is described as "exercising wider sway and wielding greater power even than Llywelyn the Great." We cannot follow Mr. Edwards into his very interesting account of Owen Glendower, who appears in his pages as a personality of uncommon force, rudely represented in the popular belief of the time by the supposed possession of magical powers.
Scarcely inferior in interest is the account of the part played by Wales in the Wars of the Roses, in the changes of
the Reformation, and in the struggle between King and Par- liament. To the two centuries and a half that followed the end of the Civil War he has but a few pages to give, little more than a page to a decade. The subject would amply suffice for another volume, which would be the more welcome as it is one which, to English readers at least, is almost wholly a blank. But this must be for another occasion. This series, we see, is brought to a close.
We may take the opportunity of saying a few words about it as a whole, an opportunity offered by the publication of a special edition, in which the fifty-six volumes are offered to readers at a reduced price. It would be rash to attempt any
comprehensive judgment of its merits. If we are to take the common test of the number of editions or impressions that have appeared, it is clear that a fair,amount of success, to say the least, has been attained. The first place, according to this standard, belongs to Canon Rawlinson's Ancient Egypt, which has reached a tenth edition. Three more have attained an eighth, five a seventh, two a sixth, and three a fifth,— taking the first twenty-one only, as having been before the public for a sufficient time to allow a proper appreciation. Adding three with three and three with two editions each, we obtain the very respectable average of nearly six, or, to be strictly accurate, 5-6. Among the later volumes the most popular, for reasons which we need not go far to seek, is Dr. Theal's South. Africa, which has reached a ninth edition. The average of the fifty-five (not including Wales) works out at exactly three, but some of the volumes, it must be remembered, are very recent.
The subject of Dr. Thears book suggests the criticism that some of the volumes scarcely come under the general title of the series. South Africa can hardly be described as a nation, nor can " The Hansa, Towns," nor " The Barbary Corsairs," nor, except by some stretch of the term, " The Tuscan Republics " or " The West Indies." There is a curious omission
of Greece, at least in the flourishing period of the race, though Alexander's Empire gives an account of the remarkable l series of events by which so large a part of the Eastern
world was Hellenised, and The Byzantine Empire takes up :another portion of the same subject. Yet another portion is dealt with in the earlier part of . Professor Freeman's Sicily, though here it is a country rather than a nation that is really the subject. But it may be fairly urged, on the other hand, that a more rigid adherence to the limits imposed by the title would have left considerable provinces of history unoccupied. As it is, the student who could truth- fully claim to have mastered the contents of these fifty-six volumes would be at least possessed of a tolerably complete equipment of knowledge.
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