ran like wild-fire through Wales, and had a great influence on the
minds of the people. Even when the royal cause was lost in the field, he
still carried on a poetical war against the successful party, but not so
openly as before, dealing chiefly in allegories, which, however, were
easy to be understood. Strange to say the Independents, when they had
the upper hand, never interfered with him though they persecuted certain
Royalist poets of far inferior note. On the accession of Charles the
Second he celebrated the event by a most singular piece called the
Lamentation of Oliver's men, in which he assails the Roundheads with the
most bitter irony. He was loyal to James the Second, till that monarch
attempted to overthrow the Church of England, when Huw, much to his
credit, turned against him, and wrote songs in the interest of the
glorious Prince of Orange. He died in the reign of good Queen Anne. In
his youth his conduct was rather dissolute, but irreproachable and almost
holy in his latter days--a kind of halo surrounded his old brow. It was
the custom in those days in North Wales for the congregation to leave the
church in a row with the clergyman at their head, but so great was the
estimation in which old Huw was universally held, for the purity of his
life and his poetical gift, that the clergyman of the parish abandoning
his claim to precedence, always insisted on the good and inspired old
man's leading the file, himself following immediately in his rear. Huw
wrote on various subjects, mostly in common and easily understood
measures. He was great in satire, great in humour, but when he pleased
could be greater in pathos than in either; for his best piece is an elegy
on Barbara Middleton, the sweetest song of the kind ever written. From
his being born on the banks of the brook Ceiriog, and from the flowing
melody of his awen or muse, his countrymen were in the habit of calling
him Eos Ceiriog, or the Ceiriog Nightingale.

So John Jones and myself set off across the Berwyn to visit the
birthplace of the great poet Huw Morris. We ascended the mountain by
Allt Paddy. The morning was lowering and before we had half got to the
top it began to rain. John Jones was in his usual good spirits.
Suddenly taking me by the arm he told me to look to the right across the
gorge to a white house, which he pointed out.

"What is there in that house?" said I.

"An aunt of mine lives there," said he.

Having frequently