from the merits of this work, but it remained for many years the most trustworthy history of Wales.
Price was an indefatigable worker in all movements which appealed to his fervid patriotism. He took an active part in the foundation of the Cymreigyddion, or Welsh Society of Brecon (1823), and that of Abergavenny (1833), sent regular communications to Welsh magazines, and corresponded with a large number of persons on Celtic topics. He took an especial interest in the Welsh (triple) harp, and through his exertions a school for players of this instrument was for a time maintained at Brecon. In October 1845 he won the prize of 80l. offered at Abergavenny Eisteddfod for the best essay on the comparative merits of Welsh, Irish, and Gaelic literature. In 1847 he published a pamphlet (Llandovery) on ‘The Geographical Progress of Empire and Civilisation,’ an expansion of Berkeley's theory that ‘westward the course of empire takes its way.’
Price died on 7 Nov. 1848, and was buried at Llanfihangel Cwmdu. In 1854–5 his ‘Literary Remains’ were published at Llandovery, the second volume containing a biography by Miss Jane Williams (Ysgafell), with many illustrative letters. To the first volume is prefixed a portrait, photographed from an oil painting at Llanover; to the second a photograph of a bust executed by W. M. Thomas.
[Literary Remains, Llandovery, 1854–5; Archæologia Cambrensis, 1st ser. iv. 146–50.]
PRICE, Sir UVEDALE (1747–1829), writer on ‘the picturesque,’ eldest son of Robert Price of Foxley in the parish of Yazor, Herefordshire, by Sarah, eldest daughter of the first Lord Barrington, was born in 1747. Robert Price was a skilled musician and artist, and, while residing with some other Englishmen at Geneva in 1741, illustrated with his drawings the ‘Letter from an English Gentleman, giving an account of the Glaciers,’ which came out in that year. Two characters of him—the first by R. N. A. Neville [q. v.], and the second by Benjamin Stillingfleet [q. v.], who after 1746 passed great part of his time at Foxley—are inserted in Coxe's ‘Literary Life of Stillingfleet’ (i. 160–1, ii. 169–82).
Uvedale, who came into a considerable fortune on the death of his father in 1761, was educated at Eton, and matriculated from Christ Church, Oxford, on 13 Dec. 1763, but left without a degree. While at Eton he became friendly with Charles James Fox. In January 1761 they acted together in a play at Holland House, continued their friendship at Oxford, and in the autumn of 1767 studied Italian together under a master at Florence. They journeyed in company to Rome, Venice, Turin, and Geneva, and in August 1768 paid a visit to Voltaire at Ferney. Fox then returned to England, but Price traversed the finest parts of Switzerland, and descended the Rhine to Spa (Memoirs and Corresp. of Fox, i. 27–9, 46–7).
Father and son made great improvements in the estate and gardens at Foxley. The chief labour of Uvedale was the construction of a charming ride of a mile and a half, through the woods to the point of ‘Lady Lift’ (Murray, Herefordshire, 1894, ed. p. 140). He opposed the system of Brown and Kent, arguing in favour of natural and picturesque beauty, and endeavouring to show that the fashionable mode of laying out grounds was ‘at variance with all the principles of landscape-painting, and with the practice of all the most eminent masters.’ These views were set out by Richard Payne Knight [q. v.], his friend and neighbour, in ‘The Landscape, a didactic Poem. Addressed to Uvedale Price’ (1794; 2nd edit. 1795), and by himself in ‘An Essay on the Picturesque,’ 1794. Humphrey Repton acknowledged their merits in a courteous ‘Letter to Uvedale Price,’ 1794, but claimed beauty for ‘the milder scenes that have charms for common observers,’ and Price replied with equal courtesy in ‘A Letter to H. Repton’ (1795; 2nd edit. 1798) (Sir Walter Scott in Quarterly Review, March 1828, p. 317).
A new edition, with considerable additions, of the first volume of ‘An Essay on the Picturesque’ appeared in 1796, and was translated into German at Leipzig in 1798; the second volume came out in 1798. A further edition of the complete work was issued in 1810, in three volumes, and it included Repton's letter to Price and his answer, as well as a reprint of his ‘Dialogue on the distinct Characters of the Picturesque and the Beautiful’ (Hereford, 1801), in which Price combated the objections of Knight in the second edition of the poem of ‘The Landscape,’ and criticised the opinions of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Burke on the beautiful. A long note in the second volume (pp. 383–406) of this edition dealt with Knight's remarks in the second edition of the ‘Analytical Enquiry into Taste’ on Price's views relating to the temple of Vesta at Tivoli. The best edition of ‘Sir Uvedale Price on the Picturesque’ was published at Edinburgh in 1842, ‘with much original matter by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder [q. v.], and sixty illustrations by Montagu Stanley, R.S.A.’
