It is a long while since I heard from you, and really I don't know when;
for my long and dangerous illness has eradicated all former transactions
out of my memory, so that I have but a very faint idea of my former
letters sent or received. From the beginning of November to this time, I
have been struggling with death at his door; and in the very height of my
fever, an accident by fire had likely to have destroyed me and mine.
Such shocks are terrible, and enough to deface all correspondence. I am
now beginning to be able to sit down to write a little, and but very
little; for I am severely troubled with an asthma, which I suppose will
finish me one day or other. _Chwilio_, _chwilio a ffaelio cael eich
llythyr diwaethaf mewn modd yn y byd_. At the time when a pleuretic
fever knocked me down, I was fitting up a new closet for my books and
papers, and ever since everything has been in confusion, so that I am as
long finding out a book or paper, as if I was in Mostyn Library.
Now I think on it, my brother of the navy office tells me, that you have
lately met with two or three copies of Brut y Brenhinoedd at Mostyn. I
shall be very much obliged to you for an extract of the beginning of
each, and of the conclusion, to see if we can come at a genuine copy,
which hath not been mixed with Galfrid or Walter; and should be glad to
know if you have met with any British books written in the old letter
(called now the Saxon), besides a line or two, in the beginning of the
Welsh Charter, in Liber Landavensis, which you sent me; and whether all
that charter be not written in the same character, or any thing else in
that book. This seems to me to be the case with respect to that
character, that it was the one which the Druids used, and all Britain and
its islands, before the Roman conquest. That the provincial Britains,
immediately under the Roman power took the Roman letters; therefore we
are not to look for the old character among the Loegrian Britains, nor
the Armoricans, nor the Cornish. That the Druids taking their shelter in
Wales, Ireland, and the highlands of the North, the British party _there_
retained the old character; but the Roman party took to their new letter;
and in process of time, both the Roman and British characters were mixed;
as we find them upon some tombstones in Wales, (but not in England) soon
after the Saxon conquest. The Irish still retain their old letter; but
it seems the Britains laid it quite aside, about the time of the Norman
conquest, or before. The North Britains retained it for some time, as
appears by those ancient verses, which Mr. Edward Llwyd mentions, and
which he takes to be the Pictish. The inscriptions on Pabo's and
Iestin's tombs, are proofs of what I say; and that of Catamanus, in
Llangadwaladyr, of the mixed letter. Mr. Thomas Carte, who had the loan
of the Liber Landav. sent me word, that it was written in the Saxon
character. It seems he only dipt into the beginning of it, and took all
the rest to be the same, or perhaps there may be passages in it here and
there, which are in that character. You told me that all the old grants
were written in a good strong hand, like my _Cnute's grant_, but better
rather; and yet in the donation of Iudhail, which you sent me, I find
some of the old characters. I also observe that if all the book is
written in the same strong good hand, it is not an original; for it is
impossible to find persons to write the same hand for hundreds of years
successively; and if I remember well, Sir John Pryse, in his defence of
British History, mentions some grants, which were scarcely legible in the
Liber Landav. in his time; and yet you say, that there are donations
therein down to bishop Herwaldus, about 1104. Doth not that shew that
the book is only a copy, taken after the Norman conquest, with some notes
of later date?
Set me right in these things; for I am at an entire loss about them.
This is all I have leisure to write at present, and should be glad to
hear from you--who am,
Yours sincerely,
LEWIS MORRIS.
_Penbryn_, _February_ 4, 1761.
* * * * *
The same to the same.