there may be in those
collections some besides that we have not heard of. All these treasures
might be brought to light, by a person well qualified for the
undertaking, properly recommended by men of character and learning: and I
think, in an age wherein all parts of literature are cultivated, it would
be a pity to lose the few remaining monuments now left of the ancient
British Bards, some of which are by their very antiquity become
venerable. Aneurin Gwawdrydd above-mentioned is said, by Mr. Robert
Vaughan of Hengwrt, to be brother to Gildas ap Caw, author of the
_Epistle de excidio Britanniae_ which is the most ancient account of
Great Britain extant in Latin by a native.--No manner of estimate can be
made of the works of our Bards and Historians that have been destroyed
from time to time; nay some very curious ones have been lost within this
century and a half. I think, therefore, it would be an act becoming the
Antiquarian Society, and all patrons of learning in general, to encourage
and support such an undertaking, which would redound much to their
honour, and be a fund of a rational and instructive amusement.--Nor would
those benefits alone accrue from a thorough knowledge of our Bards, but
still more solid and substantial ones. For who would be better qualified
than such a person to decide the controversy about the genuineness of the
British History, by Tyssilio, from the oldest copies of it now extant,
which differ in a great many particulars from the Latin translation of
Galfrid, who owns that he received his copy from a person who brought it
from Armorica; and why may there not be some copies of it still behind in
some monasteries of that country, and of other works still more valuable?
Mr. Llwyd, of the Museum, intended to visit them all, in order to get a
catalogue of them to be printed in his Archaeologia Britannica; but he
was prevented by the war which then broke out, of which he gives an
account in a letter to Mr. Rowlands, author of Mona Antiqua restaurata,
and which is published at the end of that treatise. Who can be better
qualified to succeed in such an undertaking than a person that is
thoroughly well versed in all the old MSS. now extant in Wales. I find
that the Armoric historians, particularly Father Lobineau, quote some of
their ancient Bards to confirm historical facts. This is demonstration
that some of their oldest Bards are still extant; and who knows but that
some of the books they t