I received your's last post, without date, with a _Cowydd Merch_, for
which I am very much obliged to you. I cannot see why you should be
afraid of that subject being the favourite of your _Awen_. It is the
most copious subject under heaven, and takes in all others; and, for a
fruitful fancy, is certainly the best field to play in, during the poet's
tender years. Descriptions of wars, strife, and the blustering part of
man's life, require the greatest ripeness of understanding, and knowledge
of the world; and is not to be undertaken but by strong and solid heads,
after all the experience they can come at.
Is it not odd, that you will find no mention made of _Venus_ and _Cupid_
amongst our Britons, though they were very well acquainted with the Roman
and Greek writers? That god and his mother are implements that modern
poets can hardly write a love-poem without them: but the Britons scorned
such poor machines. They have their _Essyllt_, _Nyf_, _Enid_, _Bronwen_,
_Dwynwen_, of their own nation, which excelled all the Roman and Greek
goddesses.--I am now, at my leisure hours, collecting the names of these
famous men and women, mentioned by our poets, (as Mr. Edward Llwyd once
intended,) with a short history of them; as we have in our common Latin
dictionaries, of those of the Romans and Grecians. And I find great
pleasure in comparing the _Triades_, _Beddau_, _Milwyr Ynys Prydain_, and
other old records, with the poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries; which is the time when our Britons wrote most and best.
Let me have a short _Cowydd_ from you now and then; and I will send you
my observations upon them, which may be of no disservice to you. That
sent in your last letter, I here return to you; with a few corrections.
It doth not want many: use them, or throw them in the fire, which you
please. Do not swallow them without examination. The authority of good
poets must determine all.
Y forwyn gynt, fawr iawn gais,
Deg aruthr erioed a gerais.
The word _Aruthr_, though much used, in the sense you take it, seems not
proper here; yet Dr. Davies translates it _Mirus_. I cannot think but
the original import of the word is _terrible_; and they cannot say in
English of a woman, she is _terribly fair_. _Rhuthr_, from whence
_Aruthr_ is compounded, I dare say had that sense, at least:--
"Y cythraul accw ruthrwas."