• From a consciousness that time was rapidly diminishing the number of our most curious manuscripts, the conductors of the present undertaking were induced to take the necessary measures for preserving the contents of those remaining, by printing a few copies to supply the demand of the collectors of British History and Antiquities. Towards accomplishing such a design, they lately increased a collection, which they had been several years accumulating for themselves, by purchasing many manuscripts, and by procuring transcripts of others; and the editors made application also to gentle men possessed of rich treasures of this kind, for the use of their writings.

The materials being arranged, from the above-mentioned sources, it was found that the plan naturally divided itself into two parts; one having poetry for is object; the other prose; and that it was eligible to pursue the following order in the execution of it:

The first volume is appropriated for so much of the ancient Poetry of the Britons as fate has bequeathed to us; and comprehending all the remaining compositions, from the earliest times to the beginning of the fourteenth century. To those who are tolerably well versed in Welsh literature, this will appear a very proper point for the conclusion of the volume; as it forms a remarkable epoch in the cha. racter of our poetical compositions in particular; resulting from the loss of patronage, occasioned by the great change in our political condition.

The second volume of Poetry includes the most select performances of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. However charming all the effusions of the Cambrian Muse, during those periods, may appear to the few, who are acquainted with them, the Editors must content themselves with giving such pieces only, as seem most deserving of notice, from their intrinsic merit; or as they may tend to elucidate our history, or to display our national manners and customs: for, by publishing the whole, which would extend to many volumes, there would be great expence incurred, without adequate gratification to the public.

These volumes will form a thesaurus of ancient British verse, through the space of about twelve hundred years; and they will display various characteristics, with respect to style and manner.

The first volume of Prose Archaiology is dedicated to history. It will embrace about the same extensive period as the first volume of poetry; that is, from the fifth to the beginning of the fourteenth century. Therein the reader may perceive, that the Welsh have some records of their origin, and of ancient events, the preservation of which must obtain to them fair cause of exultation, in the presence of the nations of Europe.

The succeeding volume of Prose contains monuments of various parts of learning and science: amongst other matters, maxims of social economy and morality; a splendid collection of proverbs; institutes of grammar and of poetry. These, as they become known, will shine unexpectedly and with brilliant lustre before the world.

With respect to the nature and character of a collection of miscel laneous ancient writings, to such as do not understand the language

which they are conveyed, no satisfactory information can be given by an introductory discourse, however elaborate it may be; therefore the Editors will not make the attempt, trusting that the intention wil be adequately answered, by a reference to the table of contents prefixed to each volume, wherein any peculiar characteristics of the respective pieces are pointed out. But, however, there are some historical sketches of persons and things, appertaining to the object of this publication, which could not be well passed over; these the reader will find, under the head of a Review of British Literature, in the concluding volume.'

In favour of the antiquity of these productions, it is observed:

No one branch of literature ever exists amongst any people by itself, singly and alone; it is always accompanied by others: thus in Wales we have in our old manuscripts, besides poetry, history, geography, such as it is, astronomy, laws, ethics, devotional tracts, agriculture, grammar, vocabularies, criticisms, lives of saints, medical tracts of various ages; and all these by very numerous authors. Such are the natural and unavoidable circumstances of literary knowledge; before we can hope to establish a forgery, in any one single branch, it is absolutely necessary that we should forge in all, or most, of the others, that every thing may have its inseparable concomitants. To say that letters had been used in any country, and they had never been applied to, or ever had for their object more than one branch of learning, is as probable a tale as if one should say that he had seen a large and fertile country, where only one species of plant grew, but that in the greatest luxuriancy. In all these various branches put together, the Welsh language affords upwards of a thousand, we will venture to say two thousand, manuscripts of very considerable antiquity.

Where a great number of copies of any work are found, that circumstance is a sufficient proof that it has been long extant; and more particularly so, if such numerous copies are obviously of various antiquities; clearly evinced to be so, by the very various appearances of age, of colour, of decays of hand-writing, &c. appearances that art can never give; at least it has not hitherto succeeded in the attempt. Nothing but a great length of time can possibly give existence to such a number of copies, of characters and complexions so various, as we produce. This argument becomes still stronger, if those books appear to be of those ages when but few could write, and when inducements to write were also but very small: a still greater length of time is necessary, under such circumstances, to produce such a mul. titude of copies; and hundreds of Welsh manuscripts are of such a description.

The copy of a negligent or unskilful transcriber gets into the' hands of one who detects its errors, and in his own way corrects them; in the hands of another person such errors are corrected in a different manner; a third supplies the defect, on ideas of his own, very different sometimes from either of the others; so does a fourth, a tenth, and possibly a hundredth. Thus will copies, in a long succession of years, differ greatly from each other, and perhaps every

one

one of them in some things from all the others; and when time has left the original at a very remote distance, it becomes imperceptible, where no copy by the author, or of, or near his age, can with any probability be discovered. The judicious critic can only prefer that copy, which has the best readings; that has the fewest inconsistencies in sense, purity of language, manners, versification, and the like. When a time arrives, wherein we find a great multiplicity of such copies, we may be well assured that their original is very ancient ; for such a multiplicity of copies, of variations in readings, of apparent but very various antiquities, evinced by the effects of time in different degrees upon them, can never be produced but by a long series of ages. These things are, as we may term them, the grey hairs and wrinkles of old age, which never deceive those who behold them. The many copies extant of the ancient Welsh bards have been thus acted upon, by time and by accident; of course they are authentic ; or there must have existed a very great number of forgers somewhere, and at some time, as remote at least as the appearances of the greatly decayed manuscripts indicate, who combined thus to impose on the world; and in every age there must have been a succession of forgers, who, possessed of a secret, very similar to that of Free Masons, continued the fraud, and all to no purpose. If there are any who can possibly believe such a thing, we warmly congratulate them on the peculiar superiorities of their understandings, who can stand under mountains of absurdities and improbabilities without falling.'

We very much approve the conduct of the editors in never deviating from the MSS., and in inserting the various readings in the form of notes.

The national poetry of the Welsh is thus described:

The second part of this volume, as is likewise observed before, contains the works of a great number of our most celebrated bards of the second period, commencing at the beginning, or nearly so, of the twelfth century, and continued into the fourteenth century. At the close of this period our versification had attained to such a degree of perfection, by regular and progressive improvements, that no language, antient or modern, ever yet attained to. Our system includes not only all the varieties of verse that has yet been produced in all known languages, and in all known ages, but also a number equally great of such constructed verse as we have neither seen nor heard of, in any country, or in any tongue; and yet these latter ones are by far the most beautiful and musical that we have. This system comprehends twenty-four classes of verse, or twenty-four elementary principles; these classes, and their subdivisions, include every species of verse that has ever yet, in any age, or amongst any people, been produced; besides, as just observed, a prodigious number of originals entirely and exclusively our own. All which had been discovered and brought into general practice about the close of this our second period. But with the whole being arranged and reduced to a regular system commences our third period, the object of the second volume of poetry, which must consist now of only a selection from a great number of bards, the whole of whose works could not be comprised in a very. 4 great

great number of volumes. This period will come down to the time of queen Elizabeth; ever since which period our poetry has been lamentably on the decline, till within about forty years ago, when a considerable revival took place; and it is now slowly returning, by an advancing reformation, to its ancient purity, which will be where it should stop, a little short of the excessive refinements to which it once attained. A selection of a sufficient variety of the best, rather than the restoration of the cumbersome whole, of our ancient metres, is that which seems most desirable, and of attaining to this we are, seemingly, in a pretty fair way at the present conjuncture.'

We do not mean to deny that the Welsh language is susceptible of grandeur and sublimity, for we are well acquainted with specimens of this character in prose: but the complicated structure of the poetry appears to us to be unfavourable to this sort of writing, and to be more adapted to the lighter efforts of the muse in humour, wit, and point; and, as far as our information extends, the Welsh poetry is chiefly of this descrip tion. We perceive, however, that the poems here given as the most antient contain many specimens of the heroic, and are remarkable for strong expressions and bold images.

It does not strike us that the prose collection has any claims to very high antiquity. The triads exhibit many marks of a comparatively modern origin, and the genealogies of the British saints betray still more.

The editors would probably have done wisely, had they postponed the publication of their historical tracts, and committed to the press those miscellaneous compositions of which they speak, and those very ancient moral aphorisms, which are of a nature so very singular in their structure, turn of thought, and mode of expression, that there has not yet been known a language in the world whence they could have been in any degree derived, or wherein strength, clearness, neatness, and facility of expression, can be equally found.' We are very much disposed to think that this account is not exaggerated; because we know that the Welsh proverbs do not yield to those of any country in felicity and point.

We do not make any extracts from the compositions inserted in these volumes, because we apprehend that few of our readers are acquainted with the language in which they are written; and those few, perhaps, will be desirous of possessing the whole work

Jo.

REV. JULY, 1802

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ART.

ART. XI. Historical and Political Memoirs of the Reign of Lewis XVI. from his Marriage to his Death: Founded on a variety of authentic Documents, furnished to the Author, before the Revolution, by many eminent Statesmen and Ministers; and on the secret Papers discovered, after the 10th of August 1792, in the Closets of the King at Versailles and the Tuileries. By John Lewis Soulavie, the Elder, Compiler of the Memoirs of Marshal Duke of Richelieu, and of the Memoirs of the Duke of St. Simon. Translated from the French, and accompanied with explanatory Tables, and one hundred and thirteen Portraits. 8vo. 6 Vols. al. 8s. Boards. Robinsons. 1802.

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HERE can be no doubt that this work will attract the attention of various classes of readers. The strong bearing of its contents, on a period so awfully interesting, will cause it to be earnestly sought by the philosopher and the student of history; the disclosure which it makes of so many domestic, political, and diplomatic intrigues, will secure it a place on the tables of public men ;-its anecdotes of characters who led the ton will recommend it to the fashionables, and the lovers of novels and romances;-those who are pleased with the acquaintance, of the imaginary great will have recourse to it, because it will render them the familiar intimates of the real personages themselves ;-and, laying open the secret views. and schemes of all the courts in Europe, it bids fair to be greedily seized in every country of our quarter of the globe, as well as in every region which contains men who can be interested in European politics. We would be understood, however, as confining these observations to the first three volumes; and we would add to this enumeration of their recommendatory qualities, that they at the same time exhibit a variety of scenes of profligacy, which will offend the eyes and vitiate the imaginations of all modest readers.

Designated as this production is, and professing to be founded very much on documents hitherto not made public, if the nar rative flows with ease, if it recites no improbabilities, if it be trays no bias or party spirit, the critic has little to do with it, and there is but little scope for his art.

In assigning the causes of the French Revolution, M. Soulavie views it from a point more remote than most of those who have descanted on it, and considers himself as thus enabled to ac count for it more satisfactorily. Among the causes of this great event, he regards the following as the principal;-the existence of the Protestant body,-the discontents occasioned by the treaties of 1756 and 1758, and the continuance of the Austrian alliance, -the disgraceful close of the reign of Louis XV.,-the easy undecided character of his successor,-the countenance shewn

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