𝔏𝔩𝔶𝔱𝔥𝔶𝔯 15.
At RICHARD MORRIS.
DEAR SIR,
It is a very light thing with me, that my performances should be criticised upon: it is but what I must have expected, had they been really (as you would perswade me, and in this only I presume to 'question your Judgment,) the best that ever the world saw in that Language. How just their criticisms are I have no time to enquire; neither indeed could I, if I had time, because I have only above one or two of my Poems with me, or any where else in my possession; having I fear burnt them in haste among some old Letters and Papers at my parting from Donnington. But I verily believe that they may find all the variety of Cynghaneddau in most of them, especially Cywydd y Calan. But supposing, what they alledge, to be true in the main, viz. that llusg and Sain are oftner to be met with than any other Cynghanedd; I am
not able to apprehend how that comes to be a fault. In every Latin Heroick or Hexameter verse there are four feet, that may be either Spondees or Dactyls, or some of both indifferently, at the pleasure of the Poet: but all the Critics on Virgil, that ever I saw, never enquired, whether he was more inclinable to one or the other, so that that he excluded neither; and I am perswaded had any one taken it in his head to carry on such a piece of criticism on one of his Eclogues in Mr. Pope's days, he should have had an honourable place in his Dunciad for it. But be that as it will, you might have told Mr. Wynne[1] how very little I know of those little niceties as yet, and then perhaps he would have been less severe. The few Essays that I have hitherto composed were never designed for publick view; neither do I think they are fit to appear in Publick: they are my Schoolboy's task, the mere foetus of uninstructed Nature without any the least assistance of Art. Whilst others have had their several learned Grammarians,
- ↑ Ychwanega'r llawysgrif rhwng romfachan Inte Rector of Llangynhafal
