Note 612 — Chapter III · THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES.

Considerations of something the same kind may partly excuse a further omission—which I know will be deplored by some, and which I daresay will be denounced by others—that of any notice of rhetorical and metrical writings in the Celtic and Scandinavian languages. I shall very frankly acknowledge that there is another reason for this omission. I have the greatest dislike to writing about anything at second-hand; and while I have as yet had time to acquire only a slight knowledge of Icelandic, I do not know anything at all of the Celtic languages. With the help of Fors Fortuna, I may be yet able to make these defects in some measure good; but I do not think it necessary to delay the present volume indefinitely in order to do so. “There is no staying,” as Johnson says, “for the concurrence of all conveniences. We will do as well as we can.” So far as I have been able to inform myself, the rhetorical writing of Icelandic is not extensive or important, even though some may have come from the interesting hand of Snorri Sturluson. The early Irish metrical treatises are, no doubt, of great importance for the history of metre. But being purely particularist, and out of the general current of European literature, their critical importance can hardly be regarded as of the highest kind. And Welsh, while anything of the sort in it must be much later, is necessarily in the same position.