Welsh Journals

THE MORRISES AND THE MAP OF ANGLESEY LEWIS MORRIS (Llewelyn Ddu o Fon, 1701-65) was a polymath, and certainly the most gifted Welshman of his generation. The very range of his activities and researches1 probably accounts for his failure to produce a finished text of the studies which occupied his adult years. His attempt to enlarge the framework of John Davies (Mallwyd)'s Dictionarium2 by the careful analysis and collation of manuscript texts unavailable to Davies, never matured.3 Equally abortive proved the arduous compilation of the critical and historical dictionary, Celtic Remains, 'which', he confessed to his brother Richard in 1760, 'I could wish to see published, but I don't believe I shall be able to live so long'. That the fascination of investigations in natural history also pulled at him strongly is obvious from an examination of his remaining manuscript notebooks, and is dramatically conveyed in his words to his brother William in 1755: 'I have wrote a great deal in antiquity's But what is all this for?- nothing at all. Wrote also a good deal on mines,-all vanity, etc. The chiefest pleasure I have had was an opportunity of making miscroscopical observations'.6 Yet in this field too, as in the linguistic and antiquarian dictionaries alluded to above, he was never to publish the work he envisaged on the natural history and antiquities of Anglesey. The proposals of Lewis Morris to publish a work on Anglesey are first outlined in a letter which he wrote to Dr. Edward Wynne, chancellor of the diocese of Hereford, on 10 May 1743.7 'I have always had a strong Byass', he intimates, 'to do something in regard to a Map and History of Anglesey. If God grants me life, and if I have opportunity and Encouragement from Ye Gentlemen of ye Island, &c. I am resolved to attempt it sometime or Other.' Twelve 1 J. H. Davies (ed.), The Letters of Lewis,Richard,William and John Morris,of Anglesey 1728-1765 (Aberystwyth, 1907-9). henceforward quoted as L.M.; and Hugh Anglesey 1728-1765 (Aberystwyth, 1907-9). henceforward quoted as L.M.; and Hugh Owen (ed.), Additional Letters of the Morrises of Anglesey, 1735-1786 (1949). published as vol. 49 of Y Cymmrodor and henceforward quoted as A.L.M., are a compelling intellectual record. John Davies (Mallwyd). Antiquae Linguae Britannicae (1632). 3 A.L.M.. p. 266. L.M.. II, 281. Celtic Remains was finally published in 1878. 6 B.M., Add. MS. 14,927 ff. 118-26; National Library of Wales MS. 604D. L.M., I, 374. 7 National Library of Wales Journal. VI, no. 2 (1949), 191-92; A.L.M., p. 81, a letter to David Lewis in 1745, again shows him intent 'to publish one time or other. The Natural History and Antiquities of Anglesey, Mr Rowlands in his Mona Antiqua having only just raised people's curiosities'.