And I need hardly say, that I myself, as so often happens to me at
the hands of my own countrymen, was cruelly judged by the Times, and
most severely treated. What I said to Mr. Owen about the spread of
the English language in Wales being quite compatible with preserving
and honouring the Welsh language and literature, was tersely set down
as 'arrant nonsense,' and I was characterised as 'a sentimentalist
who talks nonsense about the children of Taliesin and Ossian, and
whose dainty taste requires something more flimsy than the strong
sense and sturdy morality of his fellow Englishmen.'

As I said before, I am unhappily inured to having these harsh
interpretations put by my fellow Englishmen upon what I write, and I
no longer cry out about it. And then, too, I have made a study of
the Corinthian or leading article style, and know its exigencies, and
that they are no more to be quarrelled with than the law of
gravitation. So, for my part, when I read these asperities of the
Times, my mind did not dwell very much on my own concern in them; but
what I said to myself, as I put the newspaper down, was this:
'Behold England's difficulty in governing Ireland!'

I pass by the dauntless assumption that the agricultural peasant whom
we in England, without Eisteddfods, succeed in developing, is so much
finer a product of civilisation than the Welsh peasant, retarded by
these 'pieces of sentimentalism.' I will be content to suppose that
our 'strong sense and sturdy morality' are as admirable and as
universal as the Times pleases. But even supposing this, I will ask
did any one ever hear of strong sense and sturdy morality being
thrust down other people's throats in this fashion? Might not these
divine English gifts, and the English language in which they are
preached, have a better chance of making their way among the poor