Only from Glaslyn would the description in _Aylwin_ of y Wyddfa
standing out against the sky 'as narrow and as steep as the sides of
an acorn' be correct, but from the north and north-west sides of
Glaslyn this answers with quite curious exactness to the appearance
of the mountain. We must suppose the action of the story to have
taken place before the revival of the copper-mining industry on
Snowdon.
With regard, however, to the question here raised, I can save myself
all trouble by simply quoting the admirable remarks of _Sion o
Ddyli_ in the same number of _Notes and Queries:_--
None of us are very likely to succeed in placing this llyn, because
the author of _Aylwin_, taking a privilege of romance often
taken by Sir Walter Scott before him, probably changed the
landmarks in idealising the scene and adapting it to his story. It
may be, indeed, that the Welsh name given to the llyn in the book
is merely a rough translation of the gipsies' name for it, the
'Knockers' being gnomes or goblins of the mine; hence 'Coblynau'
equals goblins. If so, the name itself can give us no clue unless
we are lucky enough to secure the last of the Welsh gipsies for a
guide. In any case, the only point from which to explore Snowdon
for the small llyn, or perhaps llyns (of which Llyn Coblynau is a
kind of composite ideal picture), is no doubt, as E. W. has
suggested, Capel Curig; and I imagine the actual scene lies about a
mile south from Glaslyn, while it owes something at least of its
colouring in the book to that strange lake. The 'Knockers,' it must
be remembered, usually depend upon the existence of a mine near by,
with old partly fallen mine-workings where the dropping of water or
other subterranean noises produce the curious phenomenon which is
turned to such imaginative account in the Snowdon chapters of
_Aylwin_.
There is another question--a question of a very different
kind--raised by several correspondents of _Notes and Queries_,
upon which I should like to say a word--a question as to _The
Veiled Queen_ and the use therein of the phrase 'The Renascence of
Wonder'--a phrase which has been said to 'express the artistic motif
of the book.' The _motif_ of the book, however, is one of
emotion primarily, or it would not have been written.
There is yet another subject upon which I feel tempted to say a few
words. D'Arcy in referring to Aylwin's conduct in regard to the cross
says:--
You were simply doing what Hamlet would have done in such
circumstances--what Macbeth would have done, and what he would have
done who spoke to the human heart through their voices. All men, I
believe, have Macbeth's instinct for making 'assurance doubly
sure,' and I cannot imagine the man who, entangled as you were in a
net of conflicting evidence--the evidence of the spiritual and the
evidence of the natural world--would not, if the question were that
of averting a curse from acting on a beloved mistress, have done as
you did. That paralysis of Hamlet's will which followed when the
evidence of two worlds hung in equipoise before him, no one can
possibly understand better than I.
Several critics have asked me to explain these words. Of course,
however, the question is much too big and much too important to
discuss here. I will merely say that Shakespeare having decided in
the case of 'Macbeth' to adopt the machinery he found in Holinslied,
and in the case of 'Hamlet' the machinery he found in the old
'Hamlet,' seems to have set himself the task of realising the
situation of a man oscillating between the evidence of two worlds,
the physical and the spiritual--a man in each case unusually
sagacious, and in each case endowed with the instinct for 'making
assurance doubly sure'--the instinct which seems, from many passages
in his dramas, to have been a special characteristic of the poet's
own, such for instance as the words in _Pericles_:
For truth can never be confirm'd enough,
Though doubts did ever sleep.
Why is it that, in this story, Hamlet, the moody moraliser upon
charnel-houses and mouldy bones, is identified with the jolly companion
of the Mermaid, the wine-bibbing joker of the Falcon, and the Apollo
saloon? It is because Hamlet is the most elaborately-painted character
in literature. It is because the springs of his actions are so
profoundly touched, the workings of his soul so thoroughly laid bare,
that we seem to know him more completely than we know our most intimate
friends. It is because the sea which washes between personality and
personality is here, for once, rolled away, and we and this Hamlet
touch, soul to soul. That is why we ask whether such a character can
be the mere evolvement of the artistic mind at work. That is why we
exclaim: 'The man who painted Hamlet must have been painting himself.'
The perfection of the dramatist's work betrays him. For, really and
truly, no man can paint another, but only himself, and what we call
'character painting' is, at the best, but a poor mixing of painter and
painted, a 'third something' between these two; just as what we call
colour and sound are born of the play of undulation upon organism.