Welsh Journals

REVIEWS THE DICTIONARY OF WELSH BIOGRAPHY DOWN TO 1940. Edited by J. E. Lloyd, R. T. Jenkins, and W. LI. Davies. The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, London, 1959. Pp. lviii, 1157. 126s. 'He that believeth', says Isaiah, 'shall not make haste', and this volume, of more than 1,150 pages in double column and containing over 3,500 articles, is the result of scholarly activity (necessarily interrupted by war and other disturbances) extending over more than twenty years. Its contributors, numbering nearly 300, have been experts in a variety of fields. Of the editors who began it, one, the doyen of Welsh historians in his day, was the outstanding authority on early, and the other (happily surviving to see the end of this great labour) on the recent, history of the nation; and for five years, following the death of Sir John Lloyd, the project benefited by the great devotion of Sir William Llywelyn Davies of the National Library. The Dictionary could thus hardly fail to be of inestimable value to inquirers interested in some aspect or other of the activities pursued, in Wales or by Welsh people, during the past fifteen or sixteen centuries. The necessity and excellence of this Dictionary will be clear enough to all who in the past have relied largely on Enwogion Cymru-an admirable performance for its time-published in Liverpool as long ago as 1870 by Isaac Foulkes who, by his cheap editions of Welsh books and his periodical, as the new Dictionary rightly says, 'rendered an inestimable service to the ordinary Welshman'; but many Welshmen have risen to eminence since his day, and, besides, there has been a remarkable development of Welsh studies, resulting in a more informed and critical conception of the past. Asclepiodotus, earl of Cornwall, and other mythical heroes or villains, included by Foulkes, have no place in this Dictionary (D.W.B.); nor has Inigo Jones, whom Foulkes, though aware of difficulties, inclined to regard as a Welshman, the builder of Llanrwst bridge. Foulkes, too, did not doubt that the founder of Rhode Island was born in Cynwyl Gaio in 1606 though it is now fairly certain that he was the son of a London merchant taylor. D.W.B., however, is intended to do more than correct errors of biographical detail, for its editors adopted a different notion from that of their predecessors on the function of such a compilation. It is likely that earlier compilers, besides wishing to preserve the memory of good men, wanted to show that the Welsh nation, like others, could take pride in a long array of heroic or distinguished characters. There is less need to show that now, and the editors have aimed at making the biographical record not simply a list of more or less eminent people but a reflection of the country's history. For that reason they have included persons who