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NOTES AND QUERIES. [10* s. v. MARCH 17, im
Moreover, as my book has long ago gone the
round of the critics, high and low, their
verdict supports me with practical unanimit}'
in this indulgence of a natural inclination.
There are plenty of works on archaeology,
genealogy, etymology, and kindred subjects
connected with Wales, but, so far as I know,
not of a kind, nor written in such a way as,
to attract the most enlightened outside reader
to a knowledge of the Principality, or to
move greatly those within it who are not
students of these subjects.
But the point I am making for is this. MR. OWEN asserts (on what authority I know not) that a certain local genius, to whom I paid a deserved tribute, was my " guide " during the many weeks he rightly says I spent in Cardiganshire, and practically accuses me of being ashamed to speak of him as "my friend," and failing to give him some modest measure of immortality by mentioning his name. To begin with, I unfortunately never had the opportunity of travelling even a hundred yards with him, for business reasons irrelevant here. Moreover, I made friends and acquaintances of all kinds all over the county among those interested in the various matters that interest me and my readers, and I do not take a ** guide " with me on my travels. As to the second insinuation, I may merely remark it is in extremely bad taste, and any one who knew me would laugh loudly at such a hopeless misfire. Lastly, I would say that I make it a rule never to discuss the character of living persons by name in any travel books, for reasons obvious, I should think, to a child.
As regards the interesting individual dragged, somewhat officiously and tactlessly, into print by MR. OWEN, I had merely several interesting talks with him in my own quarters, and regret they were not more MR. OWEN continues that his favourite authoress would have drawn a wonderfu sketch of this "last of the doggers." 1 daresay she would, after the manner of many excellent ladies on their holiday trips, and quite oblivious to the fact that there are doggers al over Wales and the border counties, pursuing a trade that none of them whom I come across (and I meet a great many) would thank me for regarding as a picturesque survival o a dying industry. I meet them in many counties and in many valleys, and do no think the supply of alder is in any way giving out or that the demand in the North for clogs is one jot abating. That, at anj rate, was my information at first hand from several of my dogger acquaintances as mucl as four years after I missed an opportunity
f pronouncing a funeral oration over the
ast of the breed !
I offer no defence for such errors in Welsh pelling as I and my printers between us lave committed ; but I object to being xpected to know the colloquialisms of lifferent parishes, such as ** Llandybie A^elsh," for instance. In a book of this kind, covering four or five counties, with a view particularly to interpreting them to itrangers, it is quite unreasonable to expect lairsplitting distinctions and etymological discussions proper to the local antiquary, and revelled in by the Welsh antiquary above all others. The sense of literary pro- portion would be hopelessly outraged, and he most cultivated stranger would cast uch a work from him and rightly in disgust.
At the risk of seeming egotism I venture to affirm that my three books on Wales have been
- he first efforts to give the educated English
eader a physical, social, and above all his- torical picture of that country in what is usually called, I believe, literary form- within reasonable memory. Most Welsh critics have generously recognized this, and lave shown a due sense of proportion in the space at their disposal, and not forgotten the scope of the book, its intentions, and such modest literary and artistic merits as it may have, in captious criticisms of trifles, in air- ing their own special bits of local knowledge or Welsh etymology, or in pointing out a line of treatment that they would like the author to have adopted, oblivious of the needs of space or of various tastes. For perhaps the author may, after all, be the best judge. But there is no excuse whatever for blunders in a critic, and MR. OWEN has made two or three egregious ones in a single column.
A. G. BRADLEY.
DR. LETSUM OR LETTSOM (10 th S. v. 148,
191). The following is from The Wonderful
Magazine, and Marvellous Chronicle, vol. i.
for the year 1793, p. 346 :
" On the Report of Dr. Letsom's Death ; which Falshood [sic] the Doctor, to the great pleasure of all who know him, was able publicly to contradict himself.
You say I 'm dead, I say you lie,
I physicks, bleeds, and sweats 'em ; If after this my patients die,
Why verily
J. Lets 'em."
EGBERT PIERPOINT.
The Gentleman's Magazine for August, 1904, has an article on * The Ancient Mercantile Houses of London, 1 relating especially to the
