prose works of the
Welsh:--

1. 'The Chronicle of the Kings of the Isle of Britain;' supposed to have
been written by Tysilio, in the seventh century. This work, or rather a
Latin paraphrase of it by Geoffrey of Monmouth, has supplied our early
English historians with materials for those parts of their works which
are devoted to the subject of ancient Britain. It brings down British
history to the year 660.

2. A continuation of the same to the year 1152, by Caradawg of
Llancarvan. It begins thus: "In the year of Christ 660, died Cadwallawn
ab Cadfan, King of the Britons, and Cadwaladr his son became king in his
place; and, after ten years of peace, the great sickness, which is called
the Yellow Plague, came over the whole isle of Britain."

3. The 'Code of Howel Da;' a book consisting of laws, partly framed,
partly compiled, by Howel Da, or the Good, who began to reign in the year
940. It is divided into three parts, and contains laws relating to the
government of the palace and the family of the prince, laws concerning
private property, and laws which relate to private rights and privileges.
It is a code which displays much acuteness, good sense, and not a little
oddity. Many of Howel's laws prevailed in Wales as far down as the time
of Henry VII.

4. 'The Life or Biography of Gruffydd ap Cynan.' This Gruffydd, of whom
we have had more than once occasion to speak already, was born in Dublin
about the year 1075. He was the son of Cynan, an expatriated prince of
Gwynedd, by Raguel, daughter of Anlaf or Olafr, Dano-Irish king of Dublin
and the fifth part of Ireland. After a series of the strangest
adventures he succeeded in regaining his father's throne, on which he
died after a glorious reign of fifty years. He was the father of Owen
Gwynedd, one of the most warlike of the Welsh princes, and was grandsire
of that Madoc who, there is considerable reason for supposing, was the
first discoverer of the great land in the West. A truly remarkable book
is the one above mentioned, which narrates his life. It does full
justice to the subject, being written in a style not unworthy of Snorre
Sturlesen, or the man who wrote the history of King Sverrer and the
Birkebeiners, in the latter part of the Heimskringla. It is a
composition of the fifteenth century, but the author is unknown.

5. The Mabinogion, or Juvenile Diversions, a collection of Cumric
legends, in substance of unknown antiquity, but in the dress