Caer Gyby—Lewis Morris—Noble Character.
I dined or rather supped well at the Railroad Inn—I beg its pardon,
Hotel, for the word Inn at the present day is decidedly vulgar. I
likewise slept well; how could I do otherwise, passing the night, as I
did, in an excellent bed in a large, cool, quiet room? I arose rather
late, went down to the coffee-room and took my breakfast leisurely, after
which I paid my bill and strolled forth to observe the wonders of the
place.
Caer Gybi or Cybi’s town is situated on the southern side of a bay on the
north-western side of Anglesey. Close to it on the south-west is a very
high headland called in Welsh Pen Caer Gybi, or the head of Cybi’s city,
and in English Holy Head. On the north, across the bay, is another
mountain of equal altitude, which if I am not mistaken bears in Welsh the
name of Mynydd Llanfair, or Saint Mary’s Mount. It is called Cybi’s town
from one Cybi, who about the year 500 built a college here to which
youths noble and ignoble resorted from far and near. He was a native of
Dyfed or Pembrokeshire, and was a friend and for a long time a
fellow-labourer of Saint David. Besides being learned, according to the
standard of the time, he was a great walker, and from bronzing his
countenance by frequent walking in the sun was generally called Cybi
Velin, which means tawny or yellow Cybi.
So much for Cybi, and his town! And now something about one whose memory
haunted me much more than that of Cybi during my stay at Holyhead.
Lewis Morris was born at a place called Tref y Beirdd, in Anglesey, in
the year 1700. Anglesey, or Mona, has given birth to many illustrious
men, but few, upon the whole, entitled to more honourable mention than
himself. From a humble situation in life, for he served an
apprenticeship to a cooper at Holyhead, he raised himself by his industry
and talents to affluence and distinction, became a landed proprietor in
the county of Cardigan, and inspector of the royal domains and mines in
Wales. Perhaps a man more generally accomplished never existed; he was a
first-rate mechanic, an expert navigator, a great musician, both in
theory and practice, and a poet of singular excellence. Of him it was
said, and with truth, that he could build a ship and sail it, frame a
harp and make it speak, write an ode and set it to music. Yet that
saying, eulogistic as it is, is far from expressing all the vast powers
and acquirements of Lewis Morris. Though self-taught, he was confessedly
the best Welsh scholar of his age, and was well-versed in those cognate
dialects of the Welsh—the Cornish, Armoric, Highland Gaelic and Irish.
He was likewise well acquainted with Hebrew, Greek and Latin, had studied
Anglo-Saxon with some success, and was a writer of bold and vigorous
English. He was besides a good general antiquary, and for knowledge of
ancient Welsh customs, traditions, and superstitions, had no equal. Yet
all has not been said which can be uttered in his praise; he had
qualities of mind which entitled him to higher esteem than any
accomplishment connected with intellect or skill. Amongst these were his
noble generosity and sacrifice of self for the benefit of others. Weeks
and months he was in the habit of devoting to the superintendence of the
affairs of the widow and fatherless: one of his principal delights was to
assist merit, to bring it before the world and to procure for it its
proper estimation: it was he who first discovered the tuneful genius of
blind Parry; it was he who first put the harp into his hand; it was he
who first gave him scientific instruction; it was he who cheered him with
encouragement and assisted him with gold. It was he who instructed the
celebrated Evan Evans in the ancient language of Wales, enabling that
talented but eccentric individual to read the pages of the Red Book of
Hergest as easily as those of the Welsh Bible; it was he who corrected
his verses with matchless skill, refining and polishing them till they
became well worthy of being read by posterity; it was he who gave him
advice, which, had it been followed, would have made the Prydydd Hir, as
he called himself, one of the most illustrious Welshmen of the last
century; and it was he who first told his countrymen that there was a
youth of Anglesey whose genius, if properly encouraged, promised fair to
rival that of Milton: one of the most eloquent letters ever written is
one by him, in which he descants upon the beauties of certain poems of
Gronwy Owen, the latent genius of whose early boyhood he had observed,
whom he had clothed, educated and assisted up to the period when he was
ordained a minister of the Church, and whom he finally rescued from a
state bordering on starvation in London, procuring for him an honourable
appointment in the New World. Immortality to Lewis Morris! But
immortality he has won, even as his illustrious pupil has said, who in
his elegy upon his benefactor, written in America, in the four-and-twenty
measures, at a time when Gronwy had not heard the Welsh language spoken
for more than twenty years, has words to the following effect:—
“As long as Bardic lore shall last, science and learning be
cherished, the language and blood of the Britons undefiled, song be
heard on Parnassus, heaven and earth be in existence, foam be on the
surge, and water in the river, the name of Lewis of Mon shall be held
in grateful remembrance.”