Even friends of the Celt, who are perfectly incapable of extravagances of this sort, fall too often into a loose mode of criticism concerning him and the documents of his history, which is unsatisfactory in itself, and also gives an advantage to his many enemies. One of the best and most delightful friends he has ever had,—M. de la Villemarqué,—has seen clearly enough that often the alleged antiquity of his documents cannot be proved, that it can be even disproved, and that he must rely on other supports than this to establish what he wants; yet one finds him saying: ‘I open the collection of Welsh bards from the sixth to the tenth century. Taliesin, one of the oldest of them,’ . . . and so on. But his adversaries deny that we have really any such thing as a ‘collection of Welsh bards from the sixth to the tenth century,’ or that a ‘Taliesin, one of the oldest of them,’ exists to be quoted in defence of any thesis. Sharon Turner, again, whose _Vindication of the Ancient British Poems_ was prompted, it seems to me, by a critical instinct at bottom sound, is weak and uncritical in details like this: ‘The strange poem of Taliesin, called the _Spoils of Annwn_, implies the existence (in the sixth century, he means) of mythological tales about Arthur; and the frequent allusion of the old Welsh bards to the persons and incidents which we find in the _Mabinogion_, are further proofs that there must have been such stories in circulation amongst the Welsh.’ But the critic has to show, against his adversaries, that the _Spoils of Annwn_ is a real poem of the sixth century, with a real sixth-century poet called Taliesin for its author, before he can use it to prove what Sharon Turner there wishes to prove; and, in like manner, the high antiquity of persons and incidents that are found in the manuscripts of the _Mabinogion_,—manuscripts written, like the famous _Red Book of Hergest_, in the library of Jesus College at Oxford, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,—is not proved by allusions of the old Welsh bards, until (which is just the question at issue) the pieces containing these allusions are proved themselves to possess a very high antiquity. In the present state of the question as to the early Welsh literature, this sort of reasoning is inconclusive and bewildering, and merely carries us round in a circle. Again, it is worse than inconclusive reasoning, it shows so uncritical a spirit that it begets grave mistrust, when Mr. Williams ab Ithel, employed by the Master of the Rolls to edit the _Brut y Tywysogion_, the ‘Chronicle of the Princes,’ says in his introduction, in many respects so useful and interesting: ‘We may add, on the authority of a scrupulously faithful antiquary, and one that was deeply versed in the traditions of his order—the late Iolo Morganwg—that King Arthur in his Institutes of the Round Table introduced the age of the world for events which occurred before Christ, and the year of Christ’s nativity for all subsequent events.’ Now, putting out of the question Iolo Morganwg’s character as an antiquary, it is obvious that no one, not Grimm himself, can stand in that way as ‘authority’ for King Arthur’s having thus regulated chronology by his Institutes of the Round Table, or even for there ever having been any such institutes at all. And finally, greatly as I respect and admire Mr. Eugene O’Curry, unquestionable as is the sagacity, the moderation, which he in general unites with his immense learning, I must say that he, too, like his brother Celt-lovers, sometimes lays himself dangerously open. For instance, the Royal Irish Academy possesses in its Museum a relic of the greatest value, the _Domhnach Airgid_, a Latin manuscript of the four gospels. The outer box containing this manuscript is of the fourteenth century, but the manuscript itself, says O’Curry (and no man is better able to judge) is certainly of the sixth. This is all very well. ‘But,’ O’Curry then goes on, ‘I believe no reasonable doubt can exist that the _Domhnach Airgid_ was actually sanctified by the hand of our great Apostle.’ One has a thrill of excitement at receiving this assurance from such a man as Eugene O’Curry; one believes that he is really going to make it clear that St. Patrick did actually sanctify the _Domhnach Airgid_ with his own hands; and one reads on:—