Note 722 — Chapter III · CLASSICISM IN THE OTHER NATIONS.

I shall own frankly that, when I first read this, I had either never heard of Arthur Kelton, or had utterly forgotten him, and thought the name must be a muddle of “Skelton.” What is known about him may be found in Warton, iv. 159, ed. Hazlitt (taken, as was probably Quadrio’s knowledge of him, from Wood and Bale), and also in the Dictionary of National Biography. According to the latter, his poem in praise of the Welsh nation is not now extant or discoverable; and though a Chronicle exists I have never seen it. What made the Jesuit name Kelton at all is as dark to me as what made him transform Gower and “Wicherley” into “Melic” bards.