So said he, and the barge with oar and sail Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere Revolving many memories, till the hull Look’d one black dot against the verge of dawn, And on the mere the wailing died away. But when that moan had past for evermore, The stillness of the dead world’s winter dawn Amazed him, and he groan’d, “The King is gone.” And therewithal came on him the weird rhyme, “From the great deep to the great deep he goes.” Sir Bedivere was thus the sole survivor of the Knights of the Round Table. In the final battle all that remained of them perished except the king himself and two knights, who escaped wounded. But first one and then the other passed, dying from his hurt. With what a halo of colour and real Celtic enchantment poets and romancers have covered up the last grim tragedy of the wounded knight watching his master, the royal Arthur die, after all the rest were fallen and gone, and the Round Table was from henceforth to be but a memory. Macaulay must have inherited the Celtic power of pictorial detail and vivid colouring, though he might not willingly acknowledge it. Where did he get that brilliant turn for style and those suggestive tricks of lively fancy if not from his Celtic ancestry? After him came three Celtic enthusiasts of great literary standing, who put Macaulay’s apathy towards the Gaelic and Cymric tradition to the blush. These were Matthew Arnold; John Campbell Shairp, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and Principal of the United College, St. Andrews; and Professor Blackie of Edinburgh. Over the first, the apostle of culture, and otherwise dispassionate critic, the Celtic past undoubtedly cast a spell. The finding of its literature seemed to have influenced him in a similar manner as the hoving of a new planet into his ken thrills the eager astronomer. And we have his personal contribution in his well-known _Study of Celtic Literature_ (1867), a book which, like Renan’s French essay, has done much to enhance the reputation and influence of our ancient heritage in modern times. It was through his strenuous advocacy that the Celtic chair which Professor Rhys now occupies in Oxford was established. Principal Shairp published _Kilmahoe: a Highland Pastoral, with other Poems_, in 1864; his _Poetic Interpretation of Nature_ in 1877; and _Aspects of Poetry_ in 1881. These books revel in the Celtic sentiment, its melancholy, and love of nature. Their author exhibited the same spirit of admiration for the Gaelic muse that Matthew Arnold did for the Cymric.