of the measures in our language makes me almost despair of success. I have not a turn of genius fit for ludicrous poetry (which I believe is best relished in Wales), and You will see that the few little witticisms in Cywydd y Farf are rather forced than natural. D. ab Gwilym was perhaps the best Welshman that ever lived for that kind of Poetry and is therefore very deservedly admired for it; and tho' I admire (and even dote upon) the sweetness of his poetry, I have often wished he had raised his thoughts to something more grave and sublime. Our language undoubtedly affords plenty of words expressive and suitable enough for the genius of a Milton, and had he been born in our country, we, no doubt, should have been the happy nation that could have boasted of the grandest, sublimest piece of poetry in the universe. Our language excels most others in Europe, and why does not our poetry? It is to me very unaccountable. Are we the only people in the world that know not how to value so excellent a language? Or do we labour under a national incapacity and dulness? Heaven forbid it! Why then is our language not cultivated? Why do our learned men blame the indolence of our forefathers in former ages for transmitting so little of their language to posterity and live in indolence themselves? This is the case for aught I can see yet, and our posterity four or five hundred years hence may (for anything we do to prevent it) judge us to have been in this age as barbarous and unlearned as we conceive our ancestors to have been in the time of the Saxon Heptarchy. And if our countrymen write any thing that is good, they are sure to do it in English. Pa beth yw hyny ond iro blonegen? Are they afraid that their own language should gain any thing by them? or are they unwilling that their countrymen should get their knowledge at too cheap a rate unless they go to the trouble of learning English? But what would I be at? Certainly we are all the offspring of our antient Druids, and perhaps it may have come natural to us (as it was usual with them) to confine all our language to our own heads, and let posterity shift for themselves, as we have done before them.
