they have heard, perhaps, of the Black Book of Caermarthen, or of the
Red Book of Hergest, and they imagine that one or two famous
manuscript books like these contain the whole matter. They have no
notion that, in real truth, to quote the words of one who is no
friend to the high pretensions of Welsh literature, but their most
formidable impugner, Mr. Nash:- 'The Myvyrian manuscripts alone, now
deposited in the British Museum, amount to 47 volumes of poetry, of
various sizes, containing about 4,700 pieces of poetry, in 16,000
pages, besides about 2,000 englynion or epigrammatic stanzas. There
are also, in the same collection, 53 volumes of prose, in about
15,300 pages, containing great many curious documents on various
subjects. Besides these, which were purchased of the widow of the
celebrated Owen Jones, the editor of the Myvyrian Archaeology, there
are a vast number of collections of Welsh manuscripts in London, and
in the libraries of the gentry of the principality.' The Myvyrian
Archaeology, here spoken of by Mr. Nash, I have already mentioned; he
calls its editor, Owen Jones, celebrated; he is not so celebrated but
that he claims a word, in passing, from a professor of poetry. He
was a Denbighshire STATESMAN, as we say in the north, born before the
middle of last century, in that vale of Myvyr, which has given its
name to his archaeology. From his childhood he had that passion for
the old treasures of his Country's literature, which to this day, as
I have said, in the common people of Wales is so remarkable; these
treasures were unprinted, scattered, difficult of access, jealously
guarded. 'More than once,' says Edward Lhuyd, who in his
Archaeologia Britannica, brought out by him in 1707, would gladly
have given them to the world, 'more than once I had a promise from
the owner, and the promise was afterwards retracted at the
instigation of certain persons, pseudo-politicians, as I think,
rather than men of letters.' So Owen Jones went up, a young man of