right, any more, or, at any rate, any longer, than they did about mine. SEITHENYN. The wine was lawful spoil of war. THE ABBOT. But if King Arthur brings his might to bear upon yours, I fear neither you nor I shall have a right to this wine, nor to any thing else that is here. SEITHENYN. Then make the most of it while you have it. THE ABBOT. Now, while you have some months of security before you, you may gain great glory by surrendering the lady; and, if you be so disposed, you may no doubt claim, from the gratitude of King Arthur, the fairest princess of his court to wife, and an ample dower withal. MELVAS. That offers something tangible. SEITHENYN. Another ray from the golden goblet will set it in a most luminous view. THE ABBOT. Though I should advise the not making it a condition, but asking it, as a matter of friendship, after the first victory that you have helped him to gain over the Saxons. MELVAS. The worst of those Saxons is, that they offer nothing tangible, except hard knocks. They bring nothing with them. They come to take; and lately they have not taken much. But I will muse on your advice; and, as it seems, I may get more by following than rejecting it, I shall very probably take it, provided that you now attend me to the banquet in the hall. SEITHENYN. Now you talk of the hall and the banquet, I will just intimate that the finest of all youths, and the best of all bards, is a guest in the neighbouring abbey. MELVAS. If so, I have a clear right to him, as a guest for myself. The abbot was not disposed to gainsay King Melvas's right. Taliesin was invited accordingly, and seated at the left hand of the king, the abbot being on the right. Taliesin summoned all the energies of his genius to turn the passions of Melvas into the channels of Anti-Saxonism, and succeeded so perfectly, that the king and his whole retinue of magnanimous heroes were inflamed with intense ardour to join the standard of Arthur; and Melvas vowed most solemnly to Taliesin, that another sun should not set, before Queen Gwenyvar should be under the most honourable guidance on her return to Caer Lleon. 210 CHAP. XV. THE CIRCLE OF THE BARDS. The three dignities of poetry: the union of the true and the wonderful; the union of the beautiful and the wise; and the union of art and nature. TRIADS OF POETRY. AMONGST the Christmas amusements of Caer Lleon, a grand Bardic Congress was held in the Roman theatre, when the principal bards of Britain contended for the preeminence in the art of poetry, and in its appropriate moral and mystical knowledge. The meeting was held by daylight. King |