Reviews.

:

GOMER; or a brief Analysis of the Language and Knowledge of the

Ancient Cymry. By John WILLIAMS, A.M., Oxon., Arch

deacon of Cardigan. London: Hughes and Butler. 1854. In introducing to our readers' notice a new work by the Archdeacon of Cardigan, we feel that it cannot be necessary to say a word about the author. Wherever the Cymrian language is spoken, or Cymrian antiquities have met with any degree of attention, the name of Archdeacon Williams is familiarly known, while, from his intimate acquaintance with the former, he is regarded as the most respectable expositor of the latter. But it would be an injustice to lead the reader to suppose that either the author's acquirements or his reputation are confined within such narrow limits. He has earned for himself, as a scholar and as a historian, a far more lasting celebrity. While the memory of “the great Emathian conqueror

» endures, the name of Archdeacon Williams will continue to exist beside it, enshrined, if not in his own pages, in the foot-notes and appendices of a more celebrated writer. Under these circumstances we do not think it necessary to apologize for noticing at length a work by the Archdeacon, professing to deal not merely with the structure of the Welsh language, but to a certain extent with the history of the Welsh nation. Indeed, we should be neglecting an obvious duty if we omitted to do so, or failed to apply to it the test of a searching criticism. A writer of the Archdeacon's calibre and character can have no desire to avoid such an ordeal; on the contrary, in announcing a new discovery in the following terms, he would seem implicitly to court it:

“Should any one ask me the reason why a system so manifest as, when properly explained, it (viz., that which it is the object of the work to enunciate] must be to every man of common sense (for he carries the evidence of it in his own bosom), should so long be unknown, I can only answer that as without a teacher, master of his craft, a student cannot see in mere words or their context, any greater knowledge than he brings with him to the investigation; so also those who preceded me in the study of the Cymraeg were neither adequately prepared nor intellectually furnished for the work undertaken and partially performed by me. And, after all, the embers of the truth, faintly glowing within me, had been almost smothered by doubts and difficulties of a perplexing nature, until, owing to a lucky coincidence, they burst into a vivid flame which dispelled all doubts and removed all difficulties.”—pp. 152, 153. The perfect humility of the language in which this paragraph is couched, is barely sufficient to veil, for the mere purposes of decency, the consciousness of an important discovery. The Archdeacon, as he would have us believe, is neither greater nor wiser than his predecessors, and the transcendent superiority of his discoveries over theirs can only be accounted for by the proportionably superior character of his intellectual furniture. Still, he cannot deny,

not even for the sake of modesty,—the immeasurable importance of the system which it is his mission to promulgate. No: it is due to the world, and he must speak out. A system whose advent is heralded in such terms, cannot be passed over in silence. We owe it to our readers to inform them both what the theory is, and to what extent the author may be thought to have established it. And we owe it to the Archdeacon himself to inquire how far he is justified in modestly transferring the credit of the discovery from himself to his learning, by applying the probe to such philosophical, philological, and historical knowledge, as he displays in the course of the work.

The general scope of the book may be described as an endeavour to demonstrate the philosophical structure of the Welsh language. But these words must be taken to express much more than their obvious meaning. The Archdeacon has found in the organization of that language the plainest evidence that the Cymry possessed, at some period of undefined antiquity, a fully developed system of mental philosophy. Nor is our author at a loss to determine the character of their speculations. Their metaphysical system was that which, long lost to the world, has at length been elaborated by Sir William Hamilton, and to which the Archdeacon gives the somewhat highsounding designation of “the Hamiltonian philosophy.” This system, so much of it at least as is necessary for the writer's purpose, is detailed in the Second and Third Chapters of Gomer, almost entirely in the words of Sir William Hamilton. Undeterred by the Archdeacon's considerate caution to his “dear Countrymen” to “judge of those parts of it which from want of habit (they] may not perfectly understand, by [the] plainer portions" of the work, we will cite at length the summary of these speculations which is appended to Chapter III.:

“ That the facts of consciousness which testify the existence both of the ego and the non-ego, that is, of the perceiving mind, and the external object perceived, are to be believed intuitively, and are prior to any possible demonstration.

“ That man's power of thinking is limited by great laws which compel it to attach time and place to everything thinkable.

“ That the ideas which we can form respecting time and place, clearly prove the imbecility of the human mind, because it fails to realize the truth or falsehood of two contradictory propositions.

“With respect to time the mind is compelled either that it had a commencement, or that it had not. But it cannot conceive or realize in thought, either the commencement or non-commencement of an infinite lapse of ages.

“ With respect to space, the mind cannot conceive it as limited or unlimited; and granting that the universe occupies space, it cannot conceive either a limited or unlimited universe; so that, if with Aristotle we should conceive the visible creation to be a hollow sphere, of which the concave side is studded with fixed stars, we should be still be compelled to think of its convex side, and believe it to be embosomed in a wider space external to itself. Hence the mind cannot conceive any magnitude which may not be regarded as a portion of something still greater, nor conceive the smallest particle as not divisible into still smaller atoms."-p. 44. No doubt, our readers will tell us that all this is very dry, but that is not our fault. We are bound to state the case fairly, and we feel ARCH. CAMB., NEW SERIES, VOL. V.

2 s

too."

that this is best done in the author's own words. This then is the philosophy which the Archdeacon conceives to be embodied in the essential structure of his native tongue. He has devoted the four. succeeding chapters, a matter of fourscore and odd pages, to à critical examination of that language, and has arrived without the slightest difficulty or hesitation at the desired conclusion. And in the Eighth Chapter he goes to the Doethineb y Cymry and the Trioedd doethineb Beirdd Ynys Prydain, and there reads the same doctrines emphatically delivered.

We deeply regret that we cannot follow him. This may be owing in part to the obscure, desultory, and spasmodic style and method of the entire treatise, but we cannot attribute it altogether to that cause. After a careful and repeated examination of the philological chapters, we are only able to say that they lead us to no results whatever. Never were we more startled than when, on arriving for the first time at p. 146, we found ourselves suddenly landed in a triumphant conclusion, for which not the slightest shadow of an intelligible argument had been adduced in the preceding pages. It is easy for the author to retort that he is not bound to "find us reason and understanding

But we will follow his own example, and that of his teacher Sir William Hamilton, in appealing to the common consciousness of mankind. We challenge our readers to peruse the philological parts of Gomer, and to produce a single instance of connected reasoning, or anything beyond grandiloquent declamation and groundless dogmatism. The truth is that the Archdeacon has gone to his subject with his mind already made up. His citation from Aristotle may be retorted on himself:

“Men listen to proofs according to previous habits, for we wish to hear men speak in accordance with our usual opinions.”—p. viii. Accordingly our author has found no difficulty in recognizing, in the rude lispings of a barbarous age, the metaphysical doctrines of his own day. Like the hero of In Memoriam :

" He finds on misty mountain-ground

“ His own vast shadow glory-crown'd,

" He sees himself in all he sees.” He has fallen into the trap into which so many scholars have fallen before him," the Vanity of the Learned” (la boria de dotti) as Vico has named it. The following extract from the Scienza Nuova, may prove useful to the Archdeacon in guiding and coercing his future speculations:

“ It is a further property of the human mind, that where men cannot form any idea of distant and unknown things, they measure them by what is known and present to themselves.

“ This axiom indicates the unfailing source of all the errors entertained as well by entire nations as by all the learned concerning the primitive condition of humanity; since it is from the enlightened, civilized and magnificent age in which the former first began to notice, and the latter to reason upon, the original state of man (which must necessarily have been petty, rude and obscure) that they have drawn their estimate of it."

“ To the Vanity of Nations is added the Vanity of the Learned, who will have it that the knowledge which they themselves possess is as old as the world.”

of

We must now redeem our promise of inquiring to what extent the Archdeacon is “adequately prepared or intellectually furnished” for the task which he has undertaken. This is a far more satisfactory labour than that in which we have just been engaged. To criticise the general scope of a philosophical treatise which cannot be said to contain a single argument, is a barren and hopeless undertaking: it is a much simpler process to bring its individual statements to the touchstone of facts, which will enable us to decide between their truth and falsehood, and between the knowledge and ignorance of the author.

In the first instance we must approach his philosophy, as it affects the foundation of the entire work. This, as we have stated, is mainly borrowed, and with due acknowledgments, from Sir William Hamilton. The summary which has been already quoted will give the reader a just idea of the extent of the author's obligations. But, in point of fact, he has more than repaid them, in attributing to his Maître de Philosophie the elaboration of scientific positions, which are, in fact, very

much earlier date. Has Archdeacon Williams never heard of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft of Immanuel Kant? Is he in blissful ignorance that the “Antinomies of Reason" of the philosopher of Königsberg have quite anticipated all that appears in the Third Chapter of Gomer on the authority of Sir William Hamilton. We have no inclination to detract from the credit of that writer, when we assure Archdeacon Williams that in all places of learning, with the possible exceptions of Edinburgh and Llandovery, the celebrity of the Critical is far greater than that of the “Hamiltonian” philosophy.

But we must follow the writer's philosophy into detail, and give our readers one or two specimens of it.

“It is well known that among the Greeks the first division of the 'To ov,' our " bod,' that which exists, was into the 'To &v,' the one, and the ‘To allo,' the other,—that God and spirit was of the nature of ‘To év,' and matter and body of the nature of 'To allo

'The Cymraeg still retains vestiges which show that the division known to the Greeks had been familiar to our ancestors. The 'allo,' has still its counterpart in the Cymric arall,' another.

So the allo' was assigued to the outer or external world. Hence allan,' out, outside,” &c.pp. 114, 115. With Tò év, the Archdeacon ingeniously connects the hypothetical Latin form ens, as well as the Welsh enaid (soul) and enw (name) and erects a marvellous piece of mysticism on the latter etymology:

“Here, perhaps, it will not be improper for me to express my firm conviction that, intimately connected with 'en, spiritual being, is that word which in the Cymraeg is ‘enw,' connected with the idea of which, whether represented by the Greek “ovoua,' or the Latin ónomon,' we have some of the holiest and purest

.

a

6

feelings, which magicians and sorcerers in all ages, and in the western and eastern world, have abused for the purpose of deceiving and deluding mankind. Το discover the enw' of a spiritual antagonist were to vanquish him and make him subservient to him who could rightly use it.”—p. 118. What does all this mean?

Lastly there is a little physical science, of a very odd kind :" • Cre,' the root [of cread, creation,] as explained by Pughe, is compounded of cyd' and 'rhe,' which according to analogy, would give cyre'contracted.cre.' The root of the verb rhedeg,' to run, or flow, is érhe, corresponding with the Greek 'péu.' . The cyre' or 'cre’ would, therefore, describe the confluence of bodies, such as would necessarily precede the act of creation, and from which time should be counted, corresponding with the beginning described in the first words of Genesis, and with the Apxn KTLOÉWS’ of St. Peter.”—p. 130. We can only compare the passage in Italics to the celebrated Hibernian distich :

“ Had you seen but these roads before they were made,

“ You would lift up your hands and bless General Wade." The Archdeacon has learned his metaphysics from Sir William Hamilton; but we suspect that he has studied the “cosmogony, or creation of the world,” in the school of Mr. Ephraim Jenkinson.

However, it is fair to say, that the Archdeacon does not pretend to be a philosopher. He has avowedly borrowed his metaphysics from Sir William Hamilton. But he does profess to be a “scholar and an archæologian.” “I am ready,” he says, in a letter appended to Gomer (one of our old friends, Number XVII. we think, in the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian) and levelled against the archæological heresies of "the Honourable and Reverend Algernon Herbert” (who has received his ordination from the Archdeacon),

“I am ready to peril my reputation as a scholar and an archæologian upon the final result of this discussion.”-p. 155.

Mr. Archdeacon Williams, therefore, has a “reputation as a scholar and as an archæologian." Let us see what it is worth. And as we are officially bound to do, we will first try his knowledge of history and archæology.

“ Pindar, the great lyric and religious poet, who was born according some, B. C. 560, according to others 540.”—p. 158. There is a plausible but fallacious circumstantiality about this, as Pindar was born B. c. 518.

“ The tragedian Æschylus was, perhaps, some thirty years younger than Pindar, who died B.C. 480, the very year in which Æschylus fought so gallantly at Salamis.”—p. 159. Now Æschylus was so far from being "some thirty years younger than Pindar, that he was some seven years older. The former was born B.C. 525, the latter, as we have seen, B.C. 518. Lastly, Pindar