Schlegel (_Lectures on Dramatic Art_) 1767-1845 (_c_) CELTIC LITERATURE AND ENGLISH We are apt to forget how considerable a substratum of the “English” people is Celtic. The first historical inhabitants of Britain were mainly Celts. They filled England and Scotland as they now fill Wales; they still occupy most of Ireland and of the Caledonian Highlands. The conquering Romans with their settlers and legionaries affected the population very little. When the Anglo-Saxons and Danes came in their successive waves, and occupied the southern, eastern, and northern portions of Great Britain, they did not arrive in numbers so great as absolutely to sweep away the existing people, that blend of little Roman with much Celt. They simply laid thicker strata on the ethnological concretion. The Celtic strain was much thinned, particularly in England, but it was by no means eliminated. The subsequent Norman invaders count numerically for little in the mass. If, therefore, we take the whole body of English literature, and think of the men who have produced it in Great Britain and Ireland, we cannot but recognize that in those writers there were probably certain Celtic elements, which must have had some potency in determining their capacity for thought and feeling. Englishmen may call themselves Anglo-Saxons, and we may be mostly made of Anglo-Saxon clay, but we do not know how much of us is, after all, the contribution of a Celtic strain, with its characteristic tendencies, the melancholy sentiment and the chivalrous but inconstant ardour which mark the Celtic race. Nevertheless it is one matter to speak of the Celtic spirit in our literature, and another to display the influence of Celtic literature upon our own. Celtic literature properly means the literature of peoples speaking Celtic, and to that literature some debts are due, at least to the Cymry of Wales and Brittany. * * * * * Already before the Anglo-Saxon invasion there were doubtless floating among the British Celts legends of mystery and marvel congenial to the racial taste. After the conflicts with the Saxons a great chieftain, Arthur, grew into prominence, and around him were destined to gather both these older legends, and also new stories of adventures with human foes, with dragons, or with mysterious powers and spells. Christianity, working upon the natural temperament of the Celt, encouraged that idealizing self-dedication to the cause of love or piety, which belongs to knights with a mission to “right the wrong.” It is this spirit which is the most important Celtic contribution to the literature of the middle ages.