Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/10

 of 22 Jan. 1679. He bore no ill-will to the jesuits, and when in articulo mortis ‘earnestly desired to be readmitted to the society.’ Wood says he had seen his grave, which was in the churchyard belonging to Christ Church, near Newgate, ‘under the middle part of a brick wall on the north side of the said yard.’ Wood seems to have known Pugh personally, and says ‘he was a person of a most comely port, well favoured and of excellent parts.’ He was a friend of John Lewgar [q. v.]

Wood says that Pugh left, in manuscript, ‘in Castlemaine's hands,’ a treatise ‘Of the several States and Commonwealths that have been in England since 1642.’ He had seen also a Latin ode of Pugh's composition ‘made on the immature death of Sidney Montagu,’ who perished in the sea-fight with the Dutch in June 1672.

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. iii. 697, 828–9, iv. 716; Dodd's Church Hist. iii. 288–9; Foley's Records of the English Jesuits, vi. 352, vol. vii. pt. i. p. 635; Pugh's Works; Watt's Bibl. Brit. ii. 782; authorities cited.]  PUGHE, WILLIAM OWEN, known in early life as (1759–1835), Welsh antiquary and lexicographer, was born at Tynybryn in the parish of Llanfihangely Pennant, Merionethshire, on 7 Aug. 1759. His father was a skilled singer to the harp, and he thus acquired at an early age an interest in Welsh poetry, which was deepened by the study of ‘Gorchestion Beirdd Cymru,’ when that collection appeared in 1773. After some education at Altrincham, Cheshire, he sought his fortune in May 1776 in London. About 1782 he made the acquaintance of Robert Hughes (Robin Ddu o Fôn) and Owen Jones (Owain Myfyr), through whom he became in 1783 a member of the ‘Gwyneddigion,’ a society of London Welshmen founded in 1771. Owen thereupon began to collect materials for a Welsh-English dictionary. The first section appeared ten years later, on 27 June 1793. Its publication proceeded slowly until 1803, when it was completed and issued in two volumes, with a grammar prefixed to the first. It contained about one hundred thousand words, with English equivalents, and, in a large number of cases, illustrative quotations from old Welsh writers. No fuller complete dictionary of the language at present exists. In definition, too, the work is fairly trustworthy; its system of etymology is its chief blemish. This is based on the assumption that all Welsh words can be resolved into monosyllabic elements of abstract signification, a notion first put forward with regard to English and other languages by Rowland Jones [q. v.] in his ‘Philosophy of Words’ (London, 1769). An abridgment of Owen's dictionary appeared in 1806, a new edition (revised by the author) in 1832 (Denbigh), and a further edition, with many alterations, in 1857 (Denbigh).

Meanwhile, in 1789, Owen published a volume of poems in English, and with Owain Myfyr edited the poetry of David (or Dafydd) ap Gwilym [q. v.] (London; reprinted at Liverpool, 1873), adding in English a ‘sketch of the life and writings’ of the poet. In 1792 he published ‘The Heroic Elegies and other Pieces of Llywarç Hen’ (London), with a translation and a prefatory sketch on bardism. He had become dissatisfied with the orthography of the Welsh language, and throughout this work uses ‘ç’ for the sound usually written ‘ch,’ and ‘v’ for Welsh ‘f.’ In his dictionary a third innovation appeared—the use of ‘z’ for ‘dd.’ In 1800 Owen translated into Welsh ‘A Cardiganshire Landlord's Advice to his Tenants,’ a treatise on agriculture, by Colonel Johnes of Hafod. The next year saw the publication of a far more important work, the first volume of the ‘Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales,’ an enterprise for which Owen, Owain Myfyr, and Iolo Morgannwg were all nominally responsible, though the main literary work was probably done by Owen, as the cost (above 1,000l. for the three volumes) was defrayed by Owain Myfyr. The first volume was an attempt to give from the manuscripts the text of all Welsh poetry to 1370 (excluding that of Dafydd ap Gwilym, already printed). The design of supplementing this with a selection of later poetry (general advertisement of 1 Jan. 1801) was never carried out. Vol. ii., which also appeared in 1801, contains the text of the Trioedd, the Bruts, and other prose documents of an historical nature; vol. iii. (didactic literature, laws, and music) followed in 1807. The three were reprinted, with some additions, in one volume at Denbigh in 1870. Owen was the editor of the ‘Cambrian Register,’ a publication devoted to Welsh history and literature, of which three volumes appeared, in 1796, 1799, and 1818. In June 1805 he commenced the ‘Greal,’ a Welsh quarterly of a similar character, which was issued under the patronage of the Gwyneddigion and Cymreigyddion societies of London. Its orthographical peculiarities proved an obstacle to its success, and it was discontinued in June 1807. ‘Cadwedigaeth yr Iaith Gymraeg,’ a Welsh grammar published by Owen in 1808, was printed at London in the same orthography, but an edition in ordinary spelling also came from a Bala