These novices in Christianity, as well as in poetry, began to reform the errors of their forefathers; and we were not-and I hope are not at all ashamed to follow their example. Why should we not do the same in poetry? or what shame were it, if we did? For my part I think it a greater shame for a people that boast of having had poetry among them so long, to suffer such novices to bring poetry to its perfection so long before them. But we certainly are still Druids in our hearts, and envy posterity and grudge them the benefit of our labours. I have often thought that the freer and less confined to cynghanedd the metre is, the better a poem must be. All my reasons I have no room to give you; but I will just observe. that the Greek mode of versification is much freer from being confined to a number of syllables than that of the Romans; and the English more unconfined than either-it having neither a fixed number, nor quantity of syllables, nor even a rhyme. at the end, much less the letters of cynghanedd, which our language groans under, and which no other was ever acquainted with. In consequence of which, Homer is preferred to Virgil, and Milton to both.
But I would not adopt any metre to the English, nor any other language I know. I would have some resemblance of our present metres, but longer than any of them. I am always longer in laying my schemes how a thing should be done, than in doing it when a plan is laid. I have thought of several methods of settling and adjusting a proper metre for Epic poetry, but have not as yet fixed on one; and I am resolved not to fix till I receive my "Dr. John David Rhys."
Byddwch wych. Dyma'r gloch Osper yn canu.
Wyf eich Gwasanaethwr a'ch Gwladwr,
