eagerly picked up, and came a little closer, and received from us some fishhooks and beads, and a small looking-glass. On coming to a beautiful val ley between the mountains, having a small run of water, we wished to ascertain if it was fresh; and we gave the chief a boat-bucket to fetch us some; and in about half an hour he returned running with the water; which, I think, gave Mr. Williams and myself more confidence in the natives. They ran and brought us some cocoa-nuts, but were still extremely shy. Mr. Williams drank of the water the native brought, and I held his hat to screen him from the sun. He seemed pleased with the natives, and attributed their shyness to the ill-treatment they must have received from foreigners visiting the island on some former occasion. Mr. Cunningham asked him if he thought of going on shore. I think he said he should not have the slightest fear; and then remarked to me, 'Captain, you know we like to take possession of the land; and if we can only leave good impressions on the minds of the natives, we can come again and leave teachers: we must be content to do a little; you know Babel was not built in a day.' He did not intend to leave a teacher this time. Mr. Harris asked him if he might go on shore, or if he had any objection: he said, 'No, not any,' Mr. Harris then waded on shore: as soon as he landed, the natives ran from him; but Mr. Williams told him to sit down; he did so, and the natives came close to him, and brought him some cocoa-nuts, and opened them for him to drink.

“Mr. Williams remarked he saw a number of native boys playing, and thought it a good sign, as implying that the natives had no bad intentions: I said, I thought so too, but I would rather see some women also; because when the natives resolve on mischief they send the women out of the way; there were no women on the beach. At last he got up, went forward in the boat, and landed. He presented his hand to the natives; which they were unwilling to take: he then called to me to hand some cloth out of the boat; and he sat down and divided it among them, endeavouring to win their confidence. All three walked up the beach; Mr. Harris first; Mr. Williams and Mr. Cunningham followed."

Mr. Cunningham tells the remainder.

"Mr. Williams called for a few pieces of print; which he divided in small pieces to throw around him. Mr. Harris said he wished to have a stroll inland; which was not objected to; and he walked on, followed by a party of the natives. Mr. Williams and I followed, directing our course up the side of the brook. The looks and manners of the savages I much distrusted, and remarked to Mr. Williams, that probably we had to dread the revenge of the natives in consequence of their former quarrel with strangers, wherein perhaps some of their friends had been killed. Mr. Williams, I think, did not return me an answer; being engaged at the instant repeating the Samoan numerals to a crowd of boys, one of whom was repeating them after him. I was also trying to get the names of a few things around us, and walked onward. Finding a few shells lying on the bank, I picked them up. On noticing they were of a species unknown to me, I was in the act of putting them into my pocket, when I heard a yell, and instantly Mr. Harris rushed out of the bushes about twenty yards before me. I instantly perceived it

was run or die. I shouted to Mr. Williams to run, (he being as far behind me as Mr. Harris was in advance,) and I sprung forward through the natives that were on the banks of the brook, who all gave way. I looked round, and saw Mr. Harris fall in the brook, and the water dash over him; a number of savages beating him with clubs. Mr. Williams did not run at the instant I called to him, till we heard a shell blow : it was an instant, but too much to lose. I again called to Mr. Williams to run, and sprang forward for the boat, which was out of sight; it was round a point of bush.

"Mr. Williams, instead of making for the boat, ran directly down the beach into the water, and a savage after him. It seemed to me that Mr. Williams's intention was to swim off till the boat picked him up. At the instant I sighted the boat, I heard a yell behind me; and, looking round, found a savage close after me with a club. I stooped, and picking up a stone, struck him so as to stop his further pursuit, The men in the boat had, on seeing Mr. Williams and me running, given the alarm to Captain Morgan, who was on the beach at the time. He and I jumped into the boat at the same instant; several stones were thrown at the boat. Mr. Williams ran into deep water, and the savage close after him. On entering the water, he fell forward, but did not attempt to swim; when he received several blows from the club of the native on the arms and over the head. He twice dashed his head under water to avoid the club, with which the savage stood over him ready to strike the instant he rose. I threw two stones from the boat; which for a moment averted the progress of the other native, who was a few paces behind; but it was only for an instant. The two rushed on our friend, and beat his head, and soon several others joined them. I saw a whole handful of arrows stuck into his body. Though every exertion was used to get up the boat to his assistance, and though only about eighty yards distant, before we got half the distance our friend was dead, and about a dozen savages were dragging the body on the beach, beating it in the most furious manner. A crowd of boys surrounded the body as it lay in the ripple of the beach, and beat it with stones, till the waves dashed red on the shore with the blood of their victim. Alas! that moment of sorrow and agony-I almost shrieked in distress. Several arrows were shot at us ! and one passing under the arm of one of the men, passed through the lining and entered the timber. This alarmed the men; who remonstrated, as, having no fire arms to frighten the savages away, it would be madness to approach them, as Mr. Williams was now dead. To this Captain Morgan reluctantly assented, and pulled off out of the reach of the arrows."

THE

MONTHLY REVIEW.

APRIL 1843.

ART. I.

1. The Mabinogion, from Llyfr Coch o Hergest and other Ancients' Welsh MSS.; with an English_Translation and Notes. By Lady CHARLOTTE GUEST. Parts I. II. III. and IV. 1838–42. 2. The Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations. By J. C. PRICHARD, M.D., F.R.S., M.R.I.A., Corresponding Member of the French Institute. 1831.

"THE Mabinogions," or "Juvenile Legends," four parts of which appear at the head of this page, form a body of romance long known to exist in Wales, and generally supposed capable of throwing much light on the origin of the early metrical romances of Europe. Their interest, derived from this supposition, has probably not been diminished by the mystery in which they have hitherto been wrapped: not only until now have they never, by the aid of a translation, passed the limited pale of Celtic literature; but until now also they have never been printed or collected together in their original Welsh; so that even in Wales itself they are by no means familiarly known.

“The Mabinogion," observes Mr. Southey, in his introduction to the romance of "Mort d'Artur," "are exceedingly curious, nor is there a greater desideratum in British literature than an edition of these tales, with a literal version, and such comments, &c." Mr. Davies, with whose name the paragraph concludes, did not, however, fulfil its recommendation, an omission now the less to be regretted, since the task has been undertaken by a lady, whose position has given her an extensive access to the manuscripts of highest authority, and whose taste has preserved her from that love of baseless hypothesis in which even the most judicious antiquaries of Celtic birth are but too prone to indulge.

Before proceeding to examine into the composition of, or authority for, these tales, or into the nature of their connexion with European romance, we shall pass in brief review what is known of the origin of the singular people, by whom they were invented, and the relation VOL. I. (1843) NO. IV.

M M

that they bear to the inhabitants of the rest of Europe, by whom the tales have been adopted. In doing this we shall necessarily avail ourselves of the valuable labours of Dr. Prichard, who has bestowed much and successful attention upon this important subject.

There is a general, and therefore probably a natural disposition implanted in the mind of man to trace back the ancestry both of individual families and of whole nations and races towards their origin and source; and in the absence of documentary history or well-supported tradition, to call in the assistance of fabulous tales and legends. With the exception, however, of the valuable, but very brief account of the origin of the human race afforded by Scripture, and long concealed from all but one small tribe of mankind, the children of Adam were left in complete ignorance with respect to the circumstances under which the nations of the world took their rise. Man stood between the vast profound of the past and the future, regarding either with that sort of hopeless curiosity, mingled with awe, with which we naturally associate the infinite, whether in time, space, or power. Indistinct traditions of a revelation, of a common origin from the rising of the sun, of a general destruction by water, of a future state of rewards and punishments, floated like threads of gossamer over the abyss; and furnished material for the fine-spun visions of poets and theoretical philosophers, though by no means strong enough to bind the belief of those who looked at all critically into the subject. The question of their origin was to men as that of the internal economy of the heavenly bodies; as one, towards the solution of which, no new approximation was likely to be gained, at the least on this side of the grave.

The ancients, though by no means curious respecting the origin of nations, neglected to take the only course likely to add to their stock of knowledge on the subject; they preserved and embellished the older myths, and added not a few wild speculations of their own; but they were not critics; they were not accustomed to sift literary evidence. Probably neither Livy nor the more educated of his readers believed the early Roman tales to be strictly true; but they took no pains to distinguish between the true and the false. They were more anxious, in the words of Pliny, "vetustis novitatem dare, novis auctoritatem, obsoletis nitorem," than to give the "oboscuris lucem, dubiis fidem," which has characterised a later race. Cæsar, who won his laurels with the sword, but like a chief of our own time and country rendered them more enduring by his 'pen, left behind him what, with the writings of Tacitus, constitutes almost all that is now historically known of the remote inhabitants of Gaul, Germany, and Britain. Strabo and Ptolemy and other geographical writers added somewhat, though with less correctness, to this stock of knowledge; but during the darkness of the following ages, a huge heap of fable, containing scarce enough of truth to preserve the mass

from decay, was piled together,—each writer, in the poverty of his original invention, claiming for his country that descent that his ignorance or his knowledge considered to be most illustrious; some grafting their pedigree upon Scripture, others, more familiar with the classics, asserting a common descent with Rome from the Colonists after the Trojan war. At the dawn of letters nothing could apparently be more hopeless than the state of the early history of nations. Geography and chronology were not; from accounts so meagre, so entangled, so conflicting, so obviously absurd, who could hope to recover the truth, or to arrive at any conclusion, save that no conclusion was to be arrived at?

It is perhaps fortunate for us that the monkish historians did not attempt to rectify these undigested compositions, or by retrenching their more obvious absurdities, to produce from them a national history. When mythology is embellished into romance, there remain commonly traces whence the date of the additions may be detected; but after the reverse of this process the case is hopeless; and there is nothing under the sun so uninteresting, or that defies analysis so completely, as a cut-down, compressed, nationalized romance. Had the monks attempted what some later writers performed, the difficulty of subjecting historical fable to a critical examination, would have been increased well nigh to an impossibility.

The growth of science in Europe was somewhat later than the revival of letters, but it was not until long after the method of induction had been applied with some strictness to physics, that a similar process was brought to bear upon literature, furnishing out by degrees the apparatus of modern criticism.

It was even longer still before men sought for new facts, or supposed it possible that there should remain evidence of their origin uncollected around them, from which any light could be thrown upon the accounts of those who had lived so many centuries nearer to the times of which they wrote; still less that this evidence, being undesigned, should be of the most pertinent and the highest possible description. This evidence was brought to light by comparative philology. "Res," says St. Augustin, no mean philologer, "per signa discuntur." A symbol is the representive of a fact. The speech of a people is ever moulded upon their thoughts and customs, and the study of the vocabulary of a nation is the study of the progress of the national mind. Each word records a fact. Thus: Jan expresses in Sanscrit "birth," and in Latin, under the form of " Janua," 66 entrance." The name "Januarius" therefore records the fact, that that month was regarded as the parent of, or the entrance to, the year. In our own language, whilst the individual terms "black," "white," &c., are Saxon, the abstract term "colour" is Norman; thus marking the superior cultivation of the comparing or reasoning faculty among the Normans. In the opening chapter of Ivanhoe, as our readers