really a remarkable character, and
taught me two or three things besides Welsh pronunciation; and to
discourse a little in Cumraeg. He had been a soldier in his youth, and
had served under Moore and Wellington in the Peninsular campaigns, and
from him I learnt the details of many a bloody field and bloodier storm,
of the sufferings of poor British soldiers, and the tyranny of haughty
British officers; more especially of the two commanders just mentioned,
the first of whom he swore was shot by his own soldiers, and the second
more frequently shot at by British than French. But it is not deemed a
matter of good taste to write about such low people as grooms, I shall
therefore dismiss him with no observation further than that after he had
visited me on Sunday afternoons for about a year he departed for his own
country with his wife, who was an Englishwoman, and his children, in
consequence of having been left a small freehold there by a distant
relation, and that I neither saw nor heard of him again.

But though I had lost my oral instructor I had still my silent ones,
namely, the Welsh books, and of these I made such use that before the
expiration of my clerkship I was able to read not only Welsh prose, but,
what was infinitely more difficult, Welsh poetry in any of the
four-and-twenty measures, and was well versed in the compositions of
various of the old Welsh bards, especially those of Dafydd ab Gwilym,
whom, since the time when I first became acquainted with his works, I
have always considered as the greatest poetical genius that has appeared
in Europe since the revival of literature.

After this exordium I think I may proceed to narrate the journey of
myself and family into Wales. As perhaps, however, it will be thought
that, though I have said quite enough about myself and a certain groom, I
have not said quite enough about my wife and daughter, I will add a
little more about them. Of my wife I will merely say that she is a
perfect paragon of wives--can make puddings and sweets and treacle
posset, and is the best woman of business in Eastern Anglia--of my
step-daughter--for such she is, though I generally call her daughter, and
with good reason, seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to
me--that she has all kinds of good qualities, and several
accomplishments, knowing something of conchology, more of botany, drawing
capitally in the Dutch style, and playing remarkably well on the
guitar--not the tr