“Bardism brought him into strange company, which I dare say he did not think strange, and certainly not absurd. Anna Seward, who mistook herself for a poet, and was one of the worst poets ever denominated ‘Swan,’ was kind to him in London. He in return initiated her into the bardic order at a meeting of ‘Ancient British Bards resident in London,’ which was convened on Primrose Hill at the Autumnal equinox, 1793. At an earlier meeting, also on Primrose Hill, he had recited an ‘Ode on the Mythology of the British Bards in the manner of Taliesin,’ and, since this poem was subsequently approved at the equinoctial, and ratified at the solstitial, convention, it was, according to ancient usage, fit for publication. It was not a reason. Nevertheless, a bard is a bard, whatever else he may or may not be.
“Iolo was proud to declare that the old Welsh bards had kept up a perpetual war with the church of Rome, and had suffered persecution. ‘Man, Liberty, and Light.’ You and I, Mr Stodham, perhaps don’t know what he meant. But if Iolo did not know, he was too happy to allow the fact to emerge and trouble him.
“Of course, he connected the bards with Druidism, which he said they had kept alive. A good many sectarians would have said that he himself was as much a Druid as a Christian. He accepted the resurrection of the dead. He did not reject the Druid belief in transmigration of souls. He identified Druidism with the patriarchal religion of the Old Testament, but saw in it also a pacific and virtually Christian spirit. He affirmed that Ancient British Christianity was strongly tinctured by Druidism, and it was his opinion that the ‘Dark Ages’ were only dark through our lack of light. He hated the stories of Cæsar and others about human sacrifices, and would say to opponents, ‘You are talking of what you don’t understand—of what none but a Welshman and a British bard can possibly understand.’ He compared the British mythology favourably with the ‘barbarous’ Scandinavian mythology of Thor and Odin. He studied whatever he could come at concerning Druidism, with the ‘peculiar bias and firm persuasion’ that ‘more wisdom and beneficence than is popularly attributed to them’ would be revealed.
“In the French Revolution he recognised the spirit of ‘Man, Liberty, and Light.’ His friends deserted him. He in turn was willing to leave them for America, ‘to fly from the numerous injuries he had received from the laws of this land.’ He had, furthermore, the hope of discovering the colony settled in America, as some believed, by the mediæval Welsh prince Madoc.”
“That was like Borrow, too,” suggested Mr Stodham.
“It was, and the likeness is even closer; for, like Borrow, Iolo did not go to America. Nevertheless, to prepare himself for the adventure, he lived out of doors for a time, sleeping in trees and on the ground, and incurring rheumatism.
“But though he did not go to America for love of Liberty, he had his papers seized, and is said to have been summoned by Pitt for disaffection to the State. Nothing worse was proved against him than the authorship of several songs in favour of Liberty, ‘perhaps,’ said his biographer, ‘a little more extravagant than was quite commendable at that inflammatory period.’ They expected him to remove his papers himself, but he refused, and had them formally restored by an official. When he was fifty he gave up his trade because the dust of the stone was injuring his lungs. He now earned a living by means of a shop at Cowbridge where books, stationery, and grocery were sold. His speciality was ‘East India Sweets uncontaminated by human gore.’ Brothers of his who had made money in Jamaica offered to allow him £50 a year, but in vain. ‘It was a land of slaves,’ he said. He would not even administer their property when it was left to him, though a small part was rescued later on by friends, for his son and daughter. The sound of the bells at Bristol celebrating the rejection of Wilberforce’s Anti-Slavery Bill drove him straight out of the city. Believing that he was spied upon at Cowbridge he offered a book for sale in his window, labelled ‘The Rights of Man.’ He was successful. The spies descended on him, seized the book, and discovered that it was the Bible, not the work of Paine.
“He was personally acquainted with Paine and with a number of other celebrities, such as Benjamin Franklin, Bishop Percy, Horne Tooke, and Mrs Barbauld. Once in a bookshop he asked Dr Johnson to choose for him among three English grammars. Johnson was turning over the leaves of a book, ‘rapidly and as the bard thought petulantly’: ‘Either of them will do for you, young man,’ said he. ‘Then, sir,’ said Iolo, thinking Johnson was insulting his poverty, ‘to make sure of having the best I will buy all’; and he used always to refer to them as ‘Dr Johnson’s Grammars.’ It was once arranged that he should meet Cowper, but the poet sat, through the evening, silent, unable to encounter the introduction.
“The excesses of the Revolution, it is said, drove Iolo to abandon the idea of a Republic, except as a ‘theoretic model for a free government.’ He even composed an ode to the Cowbridge Volunteers. Above all, he wrote an epithalamium on the marriage of George the Fourth, which he himself presented, dressed in a new apron of white leather and carrying a bright trowel. His ‘English Poems’ were dedicated to the Prince of Wales.”