Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/259

 REVIEWS.

The Study of Celtic Literature. By Matthew Arnold, with Introduction, Notes, and Appendix by Alfred Nutt. Nutt, 1910. 8vo, pp. xlii H- 189.

Mr. Alfred Nutt left as his last bequest to the world a new edition, carefully annotated and brought up to date, of Matthew Arnold's famous Oxford Lectures on The Study of Celtic Litera- ture. A chance re-perusal of these lectures, now some time after their date of publication, suggests two reflections ; first, the immense strides made in Celtic studies and in their general appreciation since Arnold's day, and, second, the important work done by the Editor himself in making the world at large sensible both of the subject of these studies and of their importance in the general current of European literature. The Lectures, delivered over forty years ago, were in some sense an apology for demand- ing attention to such a subject at all. What points of contact could an Oxford student find in the literatures, if they were worthy of such a name as literature, of countries so isolated, so retrograde, so un-English, as Wales, Ireland, and Western Scot- land? What value had these literatures, supposing that they actually existed at all, for him ? To-day, when we have learned to look upon these literary 'remains' as fragments of a much greater whole, to which their existence bears witness, we begin to find that, on whatever path connected with mediseval studies we may set out to walk, whether historical or literary, whether ecclesiastical or secular, or whether it be in the more specialized domain of comparative philology, we cannot proceed far without some knowledge of these languages and of the writings preserved in them. They remain the only available sources of information