poetry is so complete, that the ideas of the one may be almost
certainly assumed not to have been wanting to those of the other.
The question is, when Taliesin says, in the Battle of the Trees: 'I
have been in many shapes before I attained a congenial form. I have
been a narrow blade of a sword, I have been a drop in the air, I have
been a shining star, I have been a word in a book, I have been a book
in the beginning, I have been a light in a lantern a year and a half,
I have been a bridge for passing over three-score rivers; I have
journeyed as an eagle, I have been a boat on the sea, I have been a
director in battle, I have been a sword in the hand, I have been a
shield in fight, I have been the string of a harp, I have been
enchanted for a year in the foam of water. There is nothing in which
I have not been,'--the question is, have these 'statements of the
universal presence of the wonder-working magician' nothing which
distinguishes them from 'similar creations of the human mind in times
and places the most remote;' have they not an inwardness, a severity
of form, a solemnity of tone, which indicates the still reverberating
echo of a profound doctrine and discipline, such as was Druidism?
Suppose we compare Taliesin, as Mr. Nash invites us, with the gleeman
of the Anglo-Saxon Traveller's Song. Take the specimen of this song
which Mr. Nash himself quotes: 'I have been with the Israelites and
with the Essyringi, with the Hebrews and with the Indians and with
the Egyptians; I have been with the Medes and with the Persians and
with the Myrgings.' It is very well to parallel with this extract
Taliesin's: 'I carried the banner before Alexander; I was in Canaan
when Absalom was slain; I was on the horse's crupper of Elias and
Enoch; I was on the high cross of the merciful son of God; I was the
chief overseer at the building of the tower of Nimrod; I was with my
King in the manger of the ass; I supported Moses through the waters
of Jordan; I have been in the buttery in the land of the Trinity; it