Of the distinguished men of this period none seems to have acted more entirely from internal impulse and to have had a stronger influ ence on others than Owen Jones. Owen Jones was born at Llanvih angel Glyn y Myvyr, in Denbighshire, in 1741. "In early life," says the Rev. Robert Williams, " he was sent to Loudon, where he was taken into the employ of Messrs. Kidney and Nutt, furriers in Thames Street, to whose business he eventually succeeded, and he continued to carry it on with credit until his decease," which took place at his house in Thames Street, in 1814, at the age of seventy-three. Count Villernarqud, in the preface to his translation of the ancient bards, gives a very poetical sketch of the biography of Owen Jones. " While still a child," he says, " and engaged in herding cows, he could see at a distance rising through the air the snow-covered peak of Snowdon, the Celtic Parnassus, on whose summit whoever slumbers awakes inspired. Ile ascended it more than once, and his happy inspiration might make us believe that there he must have slept. 11'hen be was older, he often witnessed on this mountain the poetical contests of the bards and harpers of the different cantons of the country, and passing at the foot of the ancient castles which held the poetic treasures of his race he formed the daring project of bringing them to the knowledge of the world." There are here some palpable mistakes, as in attributing to Snowdon the properties of Cader Idris, on whose summit it is the popular belief that whoever sleeps awakes either crazy or a poet, and it is not probable that Snowdon was often ascended by a Denbighehire boy. But however hyperbolically expressed, the sentiment is correct. In the midst of his prosperous business in London, Owen Jones was still a warm-hearted Welshman, far more munificent in the promotion of his country's literature than all the magnates of the country combined. In 1771 he founded the society of Gwyneddigion (or Men of Gwynedd, a portion of North Wales), which revived in a manner the ancient congresses of the bards, and distributed prizes among the best performers on the Welsh harp and the writers of the best Welsh poems. In 1789 he published with Owen Thighs the poems of Ab Owilym, and in 1801 and the subsequent years up to 1807 be issued at his expense three volumes of the' Myvyrian Archaiology,' so called in his honour from Myvyr, the bardic name which he had assumed in remembrance of his native vale of Myvyr, In Denbighshire. Owen Pughe and Edward Williams were, as has been already mentioned, the editors of the work. The chief connection of Jones with the Archaiology was in supplying the funds, and it is said that he thus expended upwards of 10001.—a sum, large as it was, by which he cheaply earned the gratitude and respect of all lovers of literature of his own times and all to come. Ills last literary enterprise was the publication of a periodical, Y Urea]; which appeared in 1805 and advanced no further than one volume. In this too, Owen Pughe was the editor and Owen Jones only the Mxcenas. The triad of his labours was thus formed by the Gwyneddigion Society, the Myvyrian Archaiology,' and the Greal.' William Owen or William Owen Pughe, as he was called in later life after be had inherited some property in Wales, was an antiquary, a lexicographer, and a poet. He was born in 1769, in a primitive part of Merionethshire, close to Cader Idris, from which he assumed the bardic name of Idrison, and he closed a long life in 1835, at the foot of the same mountain, to the vicinity of which he happened to be on a visit. Till he was seven years old he heard not a word of English, and though he went to school at Altringham, near Manchester, and at the age of seventeen was sent up to Loudon to earn his living, he never seems to have acquired a thorough mastery of the English language. His English has always a taint of Welsh in it, while, on the other hand, his colleague, Edward Williams, says that his Welsh writings " may be said to be English written in Welsh words." In the great city be remained for six years without knowing that any other person in it ever thought of the Welsh language and literature, till an accidental meeting with another Welshman, who introduced him to Owen Jones, brought into connection two men who scarcely seem to have passed a day without doing something for both. The largest Welsh and English dictionary in existence, published in two -large volumes between 1793 and 1803, was the work of eighteen years of Owen Pughe's life. It is said in regard to it, by the Rev. R. Williams, that "while Johnson's Dictionary of English, as enlarged by Todd, comprises only 58,000 words and Webster's about 70,000, Owen Pughe's Dictionary of Welsh contains more than 100,000 words, illustrated by 12,000 quota tions." The dictionary would be much improved by striking out many of these words which appear to exist only in its pages. In it Owen introduced a new system of Welsh orthography, and his friend, the Rev. T. Charles, of Bala, who was appointed at the same time to superintend through the press the edition of the Welsh Bible, the agitation for which had given rise to the British and Foreign Bible Society, took the opportunity of introducing it there ; but the Society interfered and the system was obliged to be In the second edition of his dictionary, issued at Denbigh, in 1832, the customary spelling is used. There is an abridgment of the work by Owen himself in 1806, which is much too compendious. In 1806 Owen came into possession of some property by inheritance, which enabled him to take up his residence in Wales, at Tros.y-Pare, near Denbigh, and to have the command of his time, which he devoted as usual to Welsh literature. His most important work of this period is a translation of ' Paradise Lost' into Welsh, which has a peculiar importance from his having thrown off in it the shackles of " Cyughanedd " or alliteration, which had fettered the movements of Welsh poetry for centuries. The innova tion was a most happy one : it was adopted by the Eisteddvod of marthcn in the same year, and has been followed by many succeediog bards with great advantage. Owen Pughe was known Southey the poet, and is frequently mentioned in his correspondence, but not always in terms of respect. On one occasion Southey expresses his surprise that Pughe should have translated Paradise Lost,' of which, in Southey 's opinion, he could hardly understand a sentence ; and ou another Southey says of him, in a letter to Wynne, " full of Welsh information he certainly was, but a muddier-minded man I never met with." That there was some foundation for this opinion may be inferred from the fact that Pughe was a follower of Joanna Southcott, and was one of her twenty-four elders. Edward Williams, who quarrelled with him in the latter part of his life, said in a letter, in 1813, that Owen "with his iteltyltorthms absolutely ruined everything he ever took in hand." Edward Williams, still better known by his bardic name of Tel° Morganwg, is the third of the three associates of the " Myvyrian Archaiology," and undoubtedly the most gifted of the three. Leas for tunate than his companions, he was born in so low a sphere of life that at the age of nine he began to assist his father at his trade of a stone mason, and with all his endowments he worked through life at the trade, though never in strong health, and in his old age was in need of the assistance of a public subscription. He was born in 1745, in the parish of Llancarvan, in Olamorganshire, and was noted in youth for absence of mind and literary enthusiasm. On a quarrel with his father he left him abruptlyfor London, and worked as a stonemason at Bhackfriars Bridge. An interview which he sought with Dr. Johnson in a bookseller's shop only left a painful impression of the great lexi cographer's rudeness ; and though he saw Cowper, the poet, he only saw him in his decline. With Robert Southey he appears to have been intimate, at a time when Southey, like himself, was full of repub lican ideas, and the English poet drew from him much of the Welsh lore of Madoc,' and introduces him as a character in the poem under the name of Ielo. Of all English authors of celebrity, Southey took the greatest interest in Welsh history and literature ; and if ho had carried out his purpose of his residence in the Vale of Neath, which was only prevented by a trifle, the literary consequences might have been important. He had a high opinion both of the talents and the character of lobo. " Bard Williams is in town," he wrote once to his wife, when on a visit to London, "aud so I shall shake one honest man by the hand whom I did not expect to see." Both the bards had a thorough abhorrence of the great metropolis ; and Williams, who at one time proposed to emigrate to America, not, like Southey, to found a Pautisocracy, but to search for the descendants of Madoc and his men, finally returned to Flemingatone, in Glamorganahiro, within about two miles of his birthplace, and there continued till his death. lobo, like his friend, was a great pedestrian, so much so, that when his son Taliesin bought him a horse, he could not be prevailed upon to ride, and carried his eccentricity so far as to lead the animal about the country on his journeys without ever mounting it. lie had a personal triad of his own " There are three things I do not want : a horse, for I have a good pair of legs ; a cellar, for I drink no bear ; and a purse, for I have no money." It is painful to record that ho quarrelled with his friends of the ' Myvyrian Arehaiology; and complained that Owen Jones bad not paid him some money which was due to him; while at the same time his principles were so high that he refused to take possession of an estate in Jamaica, which had been left him by his brothers, because it was cultivated by slaves. Ho wrote between two and three thousand
Welsh hymns, some of which are highly esteemed, and were published under the title of ' Salmau yr Eglwys yn yr Anialwch ' (` Psalms of the Church in the Desert '); but, as his friend Waring tells us, " hie creed appeared to be so whimsical a compound of Christianity and Dnildism, Fidler-003y and Mysticism, that the ' History of all Religions,' copious as it is in variety, furnishes no definition of it." Ile was surrounded, in spite of his eccentricities, by general respect, which was strikingly manifested at the great Eisteddved of Caennarthen, in 1819. Ilia death took place in 1826, at the age of eighty-one. He appears, from some letters published in the ' Cambrian Register' for 1818, to have written his autobiography, with a survey of Welsh literature during his time, but this work, which would certainly have been of value, has dieappeared. His son, Taliesiu Williams, was to have written an ex tended biography of his father, but tho project was never put in execution. A life of him, which appeared in 1850, from the pen of an English friend, Elijah Waring, who was unacquainted with the Welsh language, is an amusing volume of light reading, but not the sort of biography required ; for though in all his letters and writings which remain, foto Morganwg appears the frankest of the frank, there are several points in his literary career which require elucidation, and on which depend important questions with regard to Welsh literature.
Edward Williams was an English as well as a Welsh Not. His ' English Poems. Lyrical and Pastoral,' published in two volumes with the date of 1794, present perhaps the most curious list of subscribers that was ever attached to any publication. It begins with the name of the Prince of Wales ; it contains those of Mrs. Barbauld and Miss Burney, of William Lisle Bowles the poet, and William Bowles, " Gene ralissimo of the Creek nation," Miss Hannah More and Mrs. Yearsley the milkmaid, Cowper, the poet of the Task,' and Rogers, the poet of the ' Pleasures of Memory,' Cyril Jackson, Dean of Christ Church, and Dr. Priestley of Birmingham, Mr. Raikes of Gloucester, the founder of Sunday Schools, and Mr. Thomas Paine, Dr. Parr and Mr. Horne Tooke, Citizen Brissot, Wilberforce and General Washington. The poems are of sonic merit, but the chief point of interest that now attaches to the volumes centres in the notes. One of the pieces is an Ode on the Mythology of the Ancient British Bards in tho manner of Taliesin, recited on Primrose Hill at a meeting of British Bards in the summer solstice of 1792, and ratified at the subsequent auttunnal equinox and winter solstice.' Primrose Hill was then a comparatively unfre quented green height in the fields between London and Hampstead, distinguished by a grove of trees which was barbarously cut down about 1828, and being in view of Owen Pughe's residence at Pen tonville, may have been selected as a more convenient place for a meeting of bards than the summit of Plinlimmon originally named. Edward Williams, who was then an ardent republican, seems to have been at the same time an equally ardent defender of the privileges of the British bards. . These, he maintained, were a regular corporate body, traceable from the earliest times to his own, in which there was only one legitimate board of bards remaining, the "Chair of Glamorgan," and only two members of that, himself and the Rev. Evan Evans of Aberdare.
In the notes to his Ode,' he gives a number of Triads in Welsh and English, containing the doctrines of " the Bards," and embracing a system of theology which is declaredt o be anterior to Christianity, but no more adverse to it than the religion of Enoch, Noah, and Abraham. "There are three circles or states of existence," according to one of these Triads: "the Circle of Infinity, where there is nothing but God of living or dead, and none but God can traverse it ; the Circle of Inchoation, where all things are by nature derived from death—this circle has been traversed by man ; and the Circle of Felicity, where all things spring from life—this man shall traverse in heaven." "Ani mated beings have three states of existence," says another Triad ; " that of Inchoation In the great deep or lowest point of existence, that of Liberty in the state of Humanity, and that of Love which is felicity in !leaven." The system is further explained as one of metempsychosis, and there is a larger development of it contributed by Willlams to the preface to his friend Owen Pughe's edition of Llywarch Hen. In this it Is said, among other things, "No finite beings can possibly bear the infinite tedium of eternity. They will be relieved from it by continual renovations at proper periods, by passing into new modes of existence and which will not, like death, be dreaded, but be eagerly looked for and approached with joy. Every existence will impart its peculiar epoch of knowledge, for consciousness and memory will remain, or there would be no such thing as endl.'ss life." These doctrines, first put in print at the time of the French Revolu tion, certainly bear a close resemblance to many of those which had their origin at that period, and it was a point of some interest to know how far back they could In reality be traced. Williams informed the readers of his ' Poems' that the Triads he had given were " from a manuscript collection by Llewelvn Sion, a bard of Glamorgan, about the year 1560. Of this manuscript" he added. " I have a transcript ; the original is in the possession of Mr. Richard Bradford, of Bettwa, near Bridgend, in Glamorgan. This collection was made from vedette manuscripts of considerable, and scene of very great, antiquity—these and their authors are mentioned, and most or all of them still extaut." It is not surprising that they were not received with unlimited confi dence in their authenticity, but it is very surprising that lobo dill not take the best method of silencing doubts by printing the manuscript in the Myvyrian Archaiology, which a few years after he was engaged in editing. Far from this, he did not even show it to his friend who published the extracts. Tho manuscript in which they were contained bore' the title of ' Cyvrinach y Beirdd ' or the Secret of the 'lards,' and was in two jsrts. " Edward Williams had only the first part with him in London," says Owen Pughe in a letter to his son iu 1819, first printed by his grandson (in the Cambrian Journal' for 1857, p. 56), " at least ho said he had not the second, which by his description is the most curious, and the real Cyvrinach," and this Owen Pughe never saw. The association of the Myvyrian Archaiology finally broke up without its appearing. " In my collmtion," says foto, in a document printed by Waring, " I strenuously opposed the absurd fables of the darker ages, which are most obviously falsehoods of tho, darkest hue. This gave offence to my coadjutors. who charged one with rejecting supposititious documents which never existed, which r with diligence could never find, and which they cannot but know do not exist else where. Such are the fictions of Geoffrey of Monmouth, that of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and many things more of the same character." It would seem from this that Williams quar relled with Owen Pughe on tho question of the insertion of the Mabi nogion, which never appeared in the Archaiology, but it is strange that under the circumstances he should talk in this strain respecting " supposititious documents." The Rev. Edward Davies, in his ' Mytho logy of the Druids,' published in 1S09, very plainly intimated that he considered the ' Bardic Triads,' with their theophilanthropic ideas, as supposititious. Doubts on the same score were freely expressed by many, but in 1819, lobo Morganwg had a distinguished triumph at the Eieteddvod of Caermarthen, where he invested Dr. Burgess, the Bishop of St. David's, with the insignia of a Bard. From that time Bards, Druids, and Orates, once reduced to two in number, have become numerous and in vogue, and Banlism has held a position in Wales analogous to that of Freemasonry in England. Tho call naturally became louder for the publication of the documents on which the institution was supposed to rest ; and finally, in 1822, lobo Morganwg, then a man of seventy-soven, issued a prospectus to publish a work in Welsh to contain the Esoteric Literature of the British Bards.' Ile died four years after without having published it. It was only in 1829 that his son brought out the long-expected Cyvrinach y Beinld: and iu it, to the surprise of all, though tho work was published as complete, no Triads of Bardisin ' were to be found. The Cyvrinach ' of 1829 was simply an excellent treatise on Welsh versification by Llew•elyn Sion, of Llangewyd, interspersed with some very absurd statements respecting the Welsh language before the Flood, which of course derived no authority from having been made by a man of the age of Elizabeth. According to the Cyvrinach ' there are but three proper languages— that spoken by Adam before the Fall, which is now the language of God, the angels, and the saints in Heaven ; that written by Moses, which is the language of the Scriptures (a statement showing that the writer did not know that the Testament is in Greek); and that first spoken by Enoch, the son of Seth, and now spoken by the Welsh in Wales. Welsh is thus the only living language of divine origin ; and the Awe!' or poetic geniue of the Welsh is due to divine inspiration, while the poetry of the Saxon, English, and other corrupted Languages, is inspired by their inventor—the devil.