“The Celt’s quick feeling for what is noble and distinguished gave his poetry style; his indomitable personality gave it pride and passion; his sensibility and nervous exaltation gave it a better gift still, the gift of rendering with wonderful felicity the magical charm of nature. The forest solitude, the bubbling spring, the wildflowers are everywhere in romance. They have a mysterious life and grace there; they are nature’s own children, and utter her secret in a way which makes them something quite different from the woods, waters, and plants of Greek and Latin poetry. Now, of this delicate magic Celtic romance is so pre-eminent a mistress, that it seems impossible to believe the power did not come into romance from the Celts. Magic is just the word for it—the magic of nature; not merely the beauty of nature,—_that_ the Greeks and Latins had; not merely an honest smack of the soil, a faithful realism,—_that_ the Germans had; but the intimate life of nature—her weird power and her fairy charm.” What better example of this distinction between the magic and beauty of nature might be wished for than the following beautiful conception? “Well,” says Math to Gwydion, “we will seek, I and thou, to form a wife for him out of flowers. So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw. And they baptized her, and gave her the name of Flower-Aspect.” Shakespeare, in handling nature, while he had the Greek touch, is also credited with sometimes striking the more exquisite and inimitable Celtic note. Thus:— The moon shines bright. In such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise, in such a night Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls— ... In such a night Did Thisbe fearfully o’er-trip the dew— ... In such a night Stood Dido with a willow in her hand, Upon the wild seabanks, and waved her love To come again to Carthage. But we must pass on to the second period, the period after the Forty-five, to see a more abundant entrance of the Celtic elements into English literature as a whole. It might be detected in isolated instances, but during the latter half of the eighteenth century both prose and poetry were influenced by Celtic in a very marked degree. Collin’s ode on the “Popular Superstitions of the Highlands” was perhaps the first contribution after the memorable Rising to herald the new time. If we except Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” it is almost the earliest inroad by an English poet into the wild and romantic regions beyond the Grampians.