t the story is of Italian origin, and that it
formed part of one of the many rascally novels brought over to England
after the marriage of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the third son of Edward
the Third, with Violante, daughter of Galeazzo, Duke of Milan.

Dafydd Ab Gwilym has been in general considered as a songster who never
employed his muse on any subject save that of love, and there can be no
doubt that by far the greater number of his pieces are devoted more or
less to the subject of love. But to consider him merely in the light of
an amatory poet would be wrong. He has written poems of wonderful power
on almost every conceivable subject. Ab Gwilym has been styled the Welsh
Ovid, and with great justice, but not merely because like the Roman he
wrote admirably on love. The Roman was not merely an amatory poet: let
the shade of Pythagoras say whether the poet who embodied in immortal
verse the oldest, the most wonderful, and at the same time the most
humane, of all philosophy was a mere amatory poet. Let the shade of
blind Homer be called up to say whether the bard who composed the
tremendous line--

"Surgit ad hos clypei dominus septemplicis Ajax"--

equal to any save _one_ of his own, was a mere amatory songster. Yet,
diversified as the genius of the Roman was, there is no species of poetry
in which he shone in which the Welshman may not be said to display equal
merit. Ab Gwilym, then, has been fairly styled the Welsh Ovid. But he
was something more--and here let there be no sneers about Welsh: the
Welsh are equal in genius, intellect and learning to any people under the
sun, and speak a language older than Greek, and which is one of the
immediate parents of the Greek. He was something more than the Welsh
Ovid: he was the Welsh Horace, and wrote light, agreeable, sportive
pieces, equal to any things of the kind composed by Horace in his best
moods. But he was something more: he was the Welsh Martial, and wrote
pieces equal in pungency to those of the great Roman
epigrammatist,--perhaps more than equal, for we never heard that any of
Martial's epigrams killed anybody, whereas Ab Gwilym's piece of
vituperation on Rhys Meigan--pity that poets should be so
virulent--caused the Welshman to fall down dead. But he was yet
something more: he could, if he pleased, be a Tyrtaeus; he was no
fighter--where was there ever a poet that was?--but he wrote an ode on a
sword, the only warlike piece that he ever wrote,