I consider that the true value of these poems is a problem which has still to be solved. Whether they are genuine works of the bards whose names they bear, or whether they are the production of a later age, I do not believe that they contain any such system of Druidism or Neo-Druidism as Davies, Herbert, and others attempt to find in them, nor do I think that their authors wrote, and the compilers of these ancient MSS. took the pains to transcribe, century after century, what was a mere farago of nonsense and of no historical or literary value. I think that these poems have a meaning, and that, both in connection with the history and literature of Wales, that meaning is worth finding out; and I think further, that if they were subjected to a just and candid criticism, we ought to be able to ascertain their true place and value in the literature of Wales. Renan, on the other hand, held that bardism lasted into the heart of the Middle Ages under the form of a secret doctrine, with a conventional language and symbols almost wholly derived from the solar divinity of Arthur. “This,” he says, “may be termed Neo-Druidism, a kind of Druidism subtilised and reformed on the model of Christianity, which may be seen growing more and more obscure and mysterious until the moment of its total disappearance.” One remarkable fact in connection with these early poems is how few of them contain any notice of Arthur. Out of the whole number there are only five which mention him at all, and then it is the historical Arthur, the Guledig, to whom the defence of the wall was entrusted, and who fought the twelve battles in the north, perishing at Camlan. For accounts of the ideal Arthur we need to turn to the medieval romances, and this is the part of Welsh literature which has most fascinated the world and influenced the literatures of Europe. It is well known how there arose on the Continent in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a body of Romance, popular in England, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and even Iceland, down to the Reformation, and it is equally well known that the origin of these tales may be traced to Wales through the north-west of France—the modern Brittany. First appeared the _Historia Britonum_ of Gruffydd ap Arthur, commonly known as Geoffrey of Monmouth, who was a Welsh priest, born in 1128. In this book he professed to have translated into Latin from an ancient Welsh MS. the history of Britain from the days when the fabulous Brut, the great-grandson of Aeneas, landed on its shores, down through the whole period of King Arthur and his Round Table to Cadwaladr, a Cymric king who died in 689. From the Latin the stories were put into French verse by Gaimar, and getting to France they fell into the hands of Robert Wace, a native of Jersey (and Norman trouvère), who, with the help of other independent sources of information, made them into a poem in 1155, which he called the “Brut.”