Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/109

 says, 'my garden, orchard, and farm, [and] some small mine works take a good part of my time' (11 Feb. 1761).

In spite of the pressing character of his business affairs, he contrived to devote much of his time to his favourite Welsh studies. In his youth, he tells us, music and poetry were his chief amusements. He could, according to the 'Diddanwch Teuluaidd,' both make a harp and play it, and the poems of 'Lly welyn Ddu o Fon' (his bardic title) form a substantial part of that collection of Welsh verse. He wrote with equal ease in the 'strict' and the 'free' metres, though little of his work is remembered save the well-known 'Lay of the Cuckoo to Merioneth.' He was familiar with the classical authors and acquainted with modern languages. His English style is clear and good, while his manuscript books show no small knowledge of mechanics, mining, and metallurgy. As he grew older he turned from poetry to Welsh history and antiquities. It became his great ambition to compile a dictionary of Celtic mythology, history, and geography, such as had been planned by Edward Lhuyd (1660-1709) [q. v.], but never carried out. 'I am now,' he says in a letter of 14 July 1751, 'at my leisure hours collecting the names of these famous men and women, mentioned by our poets, with a short history of them, as we have in our common Latin dictionaries of those of the Romans and Grecians ' (Cambrian Register, ii. 332). About 1760 this work, an historical, topographical, and etymological dictionary, to which he gave the title 'Celtic Remains,' was completed. It was not, however, printed until 1878, when it was issued as an extra volume in connection with 'Archæologia Cambrensis,' edited by Canon Silvan Evans. Morris himself calls it the labour of forty years, and it certainly shows him to have been a remarkably industrious and intelligent student of Celtic antiquity, and a proficient in the obsolete philology of that day.

Morris corresponded with his friends with zeal and vivacity. The three brothers wrote constantly to each other, not only on family matters, but also on literary and poetical topics. Lewis maintained a long correspondence on historical questions with Ambrose Phillips, Carte, Samuel Pegge of Whittington, Vaughan of Nannau, and other scholars ; while Welsh poetry he discussed in letters to William Wynn, Evan Evans (leuan Brydydd Hir), Goronwy Owain, and Edward Richard of Ystrad Meurig. He was quick to recognise and encourage poetical talent in others. Goronwy Owain he may almost be said to have discovered, for it was the

opening of a correspondence between them about Christmas 1751 that induced the bard to resume poetical composition after a long silence, during which Goronwy had become unknown in Wales. The friendship between the two and Morris's admiration of 'the chief bard of all Wales' lasted until 1756, when the patron lost all patience with the poet's irregular habits. Shortly afterwards Goronwy emigrated to Virginia, yet he retained enough recollection of Morris's kindness to send to this country ten years afterwards a poem in praise of his benefactor, of whose death he had just heard. The death of Morris's mother Goronwy also lamented in touching verses.

Morris's last years were spent in retirement at Penbryn, and were much broken by ill-health. He died on 11 April 1765, and was buried in the chancel of Llanbadarn Fawr, near Aberystwyth, where a tablet has been placed to his memory. The memoir in the 'Cambrian Register' (vol. ii.) is accompanied by a portrait, which is said to be taken 'from a mezzotinto print, of about the same size, after a drawing done by Mr. Morris of himself.' There is a good picture of him at the W r elsh school at Ashford, Kent.

By his first wife, Elizabeth Griffiths of Ty Wry dyn, Holyhead, he had three children : Lewis (born 29 Dec. 1729), who died young ; Margaret (1731-1761), and Eleanor.

On 20 Oct. 1749 he married his second wife, Ann Lloyd, heiress of Penbryn y Barcut, Cardiganshire. By her he had nine children, Lewis (d. 1779), John, Elizabeth, Jane (died young), a second Jane, William, Richard, Mary, and Pryse. William married Mary Anne Reynolds, heiress of a branch of the Williamses (formerly Boleyns) of Breconshire. Their eldest son, Lewis Morris (d. 1872), was the first registrar of county courts for Glamorganshire, Breconshire, and Radnorshire, and father of Mr. Lewis Morris, of Penbryn, Carmarthenshire, the well-known poet and promoter of higher education in Wales.

Morris's works are : 1. 'Tlysau yr Hen Oesoedd,' Holyhead, 1735. 2. 'Anogaeth i Argraphu Llyfrau Cymraeg,' Holyhead, 1735. 3. 'Plans of Harbours, Bars, Bays, and Roads in St. George's Channel,' 1748 ; 2nd edit., with additional matter, issued by William Morris (Lewis's son), Shrewsbury, 1801. 4. 'A Short History of the Crown Manor of Creuthyn, in the county of Cardigan, South Wales,' 1766. 5. 'Diddanwch Teuluaidd ' contains the bulk of Morris's verse, London, 1763 ; 2nd ed. Carnarvon, 1817. 6. ' Celtic Remains,' Cambrian Archæological Association, 1878. 7. Many manuscript volumes now in the British Museum.