iv.

Another aim of WALES is to bring the influence of Welsh literature to act upon the thought of English Wales. It is a purifying, ennobling, strengthening influence. My ambition is, before my working day is over, to give English Wales translations of the hundred best Welsh prose works. Why should not the English literature of Wales have characteristics of its own,-like Scotch literature or American literature? It is not by slavishly imitating the most worthless and ephemeral productions of an English period of decadence that a Welsh literature is to be formed. It must be characteristically Welsh before it will be of value to England and to the world. To give the best thought of Wales to other nations is a noble work, to ape the shallowest manners of the poorest English thinkers is despicable. We could undoubtedly produce a luxurious hothouse crop of W. T. Steads and Conan Doyles, -but has not England too many of these already? Our aim should be higher, to give to the world a Sir Walter Scott or a Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scotchman or the American gives his own contribution to English literature, and not a weak echo. Medieval Wales has as rich and as picturesque materials as the Scotland of Sir Walter Scott, eighteenth century Wales has a life as attractive as that of the New England of Hawthorne. Let us give the Englishman our own, not a feeble imitation of what he has already.

The second volume of WALES will be devoted especially to the history of Welsh industries, to the development of technical education, and to Welsh history and literature. In history, it will contain all the laws relating to Wales from the beginning of the English Parliament, facsimiles of important documents, sketches of great movements, accounts of the friar and the Jesuit and the Jacobite and the revivalist. In literature, it will contain translations of Welsh poems and prose works, original poetry, and articles on Welshmen who have a lasting place in English literature. There will be stories illustrative of the various phases of Welsh life, and an occasional play on a Welsh subject. The struggle for intermediate education in each county will be fully described, and it is intended that WALES shall be of standard authority to the future historian of Welsh education.

As far as illustrations and printing are concerned, the editor and publishers are determined to make WALES a credit to Welsh printing.

If WALES is to succeed, I must have the continued support of those,-of all classes and of all No poor expression of gratitude from me is necessary, the parties,-who have so generously helped me. love and the labour are all for Wales.

Lincoln College, Oxford.

OWEN M. EDWARDS.

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