four numbers, each of
which amongst other things was to contain one of his interludes. The
price, of the number was one shilling. I questioned the man of the stall
about the other numbers, but found that this was the only one which he
possessed. Eager, however, to read an interlude of the celebrated Tom, I
purchased it and turned away from the stall. Scarcely had I done so when
I saw a wild-looking woman with two wild children looking at me. The
woman curtseyed to me, and I thought I recognised the elder of the two
Irish females whom I had seen in the tent on the green meadow near
Chester. I was going to address her, but just then my wife called to me
from the shop and I went to her, and when I returned to look for the
woman she and her children had disappeared, and though I searched about
for her I could not see her, for which I was sorry, as I wished very much
to have some conversation with her about the ways of the Irish wanderers.
I was thinking of going to look for her up "Paddy's dingle," but my wife
meeting me, begged me to go home with her, as it was getting late. So I
went home with my better half, bearing my late literary acquisition in my
hand.

That night I sat up very late reading the life of Twm O'r Nant, written
by himself in choice Welsh, and his interlude which was styled "Cyfoeth a
Thylody; or, Riches and Poverty." The life I had read in my boyhood in
an old Welsh magazine, and I now read it again with great zest, and no
wonder, as it is probably the most remarkable autobiography ever penned.
The interlude I had never seen before, nor indeed any of the dramatic
pieces of Twm O'r Nant, though I had frequently wished to procure some of
them--so I read the present one with great eagerness. Of the life I
shall give some account and also some extracts from it, which will enable
the reader to judge of Tom's personal character, and also an extract of
the interlude, from which the reader may form a tolerably correct idea of
the poetical powers of him whom his countrymen delight to call "the Welsh
Shakespear."

CHAPTER LIX

History of Twm O'r Nant--Eagerness for Learning--The First Interlude--The
Cruel Fighter--Raising Wood--The Luckless Hour--Turnpike-Keeping--Death
in the Snow--Tom's Great Feat--The Muse a Friend--Strength in Old
Age--Resurrection of the Dead.

"I am the first-born of my parents," says Thomas Edwards. "They were
poor people and very ignorant. I was brought into the wor