But he was in no way a
representative of his age; he, like Milton, sang among a crowd of
inferior poets themes quite detached from the life of his time, so that
he also, like his English brother, lacks "human interest." After Dafydd
ab Gwilym, he is the greatest poet who sang in the old metres, and the
influence of his correct and fastidious muse remains to this day.
William Williams, however, wrote in the free metres in a way that was
astoundingly fresh. It is not enough to say of him that he was a
hymnologist; he is much more, he is the national poet of Wales. He had
certainly the loftiest imagination of all the poets of five centuries,
and his influence on the Welsh people can be gauged by the fact that a
good deal of his idiom and dialect has fixed itself indelibly on modern
literary Welsh. Besides the hymns, he wrote a religious epic,
_Theomemphus_, which is to this day the national epic of evangelical
Wales. Even as Goronwy Owen is the father of modern Welsh poetry in the
old metres, so William Williams is the great fountain-head of the free
metres, because he set aflame the imagination of every poet that
succeeded him. With two such pioneers, it is natural that the rest of
this period should contain many great names. Thomas Edwards (Twm o'r
Nant) (1739-1810) has been called by an unwarrantably bold hyperbole,
"the Welsh Shakespeare." Most of his works are interludes and ballads,
and he used to be very popular with the common people; he is, to this
day, probably the oftenest quoted of all the Welsh poets. William Wynn,
rector of Llangynhafal (1704-1760), is the author of a "_Cywydd_ of the
Great Judgment," which bears comparison with Goronwy Owen's masterpiece.
Evan Evans (Ieuan Brydydd Hir) (1731-1789) was famous both as a poet and
as a scholar and antiquarian. Edward Rhisiart (1714-1777), the
schoolmaster of Ystradmeurig, was a scholar and a writer of pastorals in
the manner of Theocritus. Most of the other poets who flourished towards
the end of this period--Dafydd Ddu Eryri (1760-1822), Gwallter Mechain
(1761-1849), Robert ab Gwilym Ddu (1767-1850), Dafydd Ionawr
(1751-1827), Dewi Wyn o Eifion (1784-1841)--were brought into prominence
by the Eisteddfod, which began to increase in influence during this
period until it has become to-day the national festival. They all wrote
for the most part in _cynghanedd_, and the work of nearly all of them is
marked by correctness rather than by poetical inspiration.

9. _Pro