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Rh Welsh grammar was written by Dr. Griffith Roberts, and appeared at Milan in 1567. It gives an interest&shy;ing account of the language as it was written before the influence of Salesbury made itself felt; but the most remark&shy;able feature of the book is the section on etymology, which records the discovery by the author of the fact that the sound-changes which take place in Latin loan-words were capable of being stated as laws. Dr. J. D. Rhys's grammar appeared in 1592. The author wrote excellent Welsh, though his peculiar alphabet makes it appear uncouth; and his grammar is an attempt to describe the language as he wrote it. It is cast almost wholly in the form of tables, and is less syste&shy;matic in reality than in appear&shy;ance. The prosody, which is valuable, was contrib&shy;uted by contem&shy;porary bards. In 1593 a small grammar was published by Henry Salesbury, in which literary and dialectal forms are given, but are not distin&shy;guished.

Dr. John Davies published his grammar in 1621, the year after the appear&shy;ance of the revised Bible, which is believed to be chiefly his work. The grammar repre&shy;sents the result of a careful study of the works of the bards. It was the first Welsh grammar to be based on an exami&shy;nation of the actual facts of the language of standard authors. Medieval bards are quoted in modern&shy;ized spelling; in that respect, therefore, the work is not in the strict sense histori&shy;cal. But the author's analysis of the Modern literary language is final; he has left to his succes&shy;sors only the correc&shy;tion and amplifi&shy;cation of detail.

The grammar of William Owen (later W. O. Pughe) prefixed to his Diction&shy;ary, 1803, stands at the opposite pole. It is written on the same principle as the diction&shy;ary, and repre&shy;sents the language not as it is, or ever was, but as it might be if any suffix could be attached mechanic&shy;ally to any stem. The author's method can best be realized by imagining a Latin gram&shy;marian evolving out of the stems of volo the presents ind. volo, volis, volit; vīo, vīs, vīt ; vulo, vuls, vult; velo, vels, velt; vello, vellis, vellit,