It Would Be Impossible To Exaggerate The Enormous Services Which
Three Great Welshmen Of The Twelfth Century Rendered To England
And
to the world - such services as we may securely hope will be
emulated by Welshmen of the next generation,
Now that we have lived
to witness what Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton has called "the great
recrudescence of Cymric energy." {5} The romantic literature of
England owes its origin to Geoffrey of Monmouth; {6} Sir Galahad,
the stainless knight, the mirror of Christian chivalry, as well as
the nobler portions of the Arthurian romance, were the creation of
Walter Map, the friend and "gossip" of Gerald; {7} and John Richard
Green has truly called Gerald himself "the father of popular
literature." {8} He began to write when he was only twenty; he
continued to write till he was past the allotted span of life. He
is the most "modern" as well as the most voluminous of all the
mediaeval writers. Of all English writers, Miss Kate Norgate {9}
has perhaps most justly estimated the real place of Gerald in
English letters. "Gerald's wide range of subjects," she says, "is
only less remarkable than the ease and freedom with which he treats
them. Whatever he touches - history, archaeology, geography,
natural science, politics, the social life and thought of the day,
the physical peculiarities of Ireland and the manners and customs of
its people, the picturesque scenery and traditions of his own native
land, the scandals of the court and the cloister, the petty struggle
for the primacy of Wales, and the great tragedy of the fall of the
Angevin Empire - is all alike dealt with in the bold, dashing,
offhand style of a modern newspaper or magazine article.
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