This Llanfair Mathafarn was the birthplace of Goronwy Owen, the poet. He was born in 1722 of extremely poor parents, went to Oxford through help of Edward Wynne, of Bodewryd. Subsequently Mr. Wynne despatched him to Jesus College, Oxford, and maintained him there. From an early age he gave indications of poetic genius, and he proved himself to be a ripe scholar in the classic tongues.
He was ordained in 1745, and his great ambition was to obtain a Welsh curacy and settle down in it. Lewis Morris did his best for him, but all he could get was a temporary appointment to his native parish Llanfair, where the curacy chanced to be vacant. But he had been there only three weeks when he received notice from the Bishop of Bangor that he must turn out to make way for a young clergyman of large independent fortune; so Goronwy was obliged to depart. He sought curacies in Wales, but could get no bishop to touch him with the ends of his fingers, as he had no connections and no fortune. That he was deeply pious, earnest, a scholar, an eloquent Welsh preacher, and a poet of singular merit counted as nothing. Unhappily, though Goronwy was a genius, he was given to drink, and could never remain long anywhere. At length he obtained a curacy at Oswestry, and there he married. From Oswestry he was removed to Donnington, in Shropshire, where his rector was a Scotchman and an absentee, but being a Douglas, rich and with the means of pushing himself, having neglected his duties as parish priest, he managed to get himself nominated and consecrated Bishop of Salisbury. Lewis Morris did his best to save the poet from his unfortunate vice, but failed.
At Donnington poor Goronwy Owen not only acted as curate to the great absentee rector, but also as master of the grammar school, and received twenty-six pounds as his stipend. Thence he shifted, first into Cheshire and then to Northolt, near London. In 1756 he was living in a garret in town vainly soliciting employment in his sacred calling, and undergoing with his family the utmost privations. His Welsh accent in English stood in his way, and his brilliant Welsh qualifications were not wanted in Wales. But, indeed, poor Goronwy, with all his gifts, was not the man to do much spiritual work.
At length Lewis Morris obtained for Goronwy Owen the mastership of a Government school at Williamsburg, in Virginia. Thither he went, and there he died about the year 1770.
As Lewis Morris has been mentioned in connection with poor Goronwy Owen, a few words must be devoted to him.
“Lewis Morris,” says George Borrow, “was born at a place called Trev y Beirdd, in Anglesey, in the year 1700. Anglesey, or Mona, has given birth to many illustrious men, but few, upon the whole, entitled to more honourable mention than himself. From a humble situation in life, for he served an apprenticeship to a cooper at Holyhead, he raised himself by his industry and talents to affluence and distinction, became a landed proprietor in the county of Cardigan, and inspector of the royal domains and mines in Wales. Perhaps a man more generally accomplished never existed; he was a first-rate mechanic, an expert navigator, a great musician, both in theory and practice, and a poet of singular excellence. Of him it was said, and with truth, that he could build a ship and sail it, frame a harp and make it speak, write an ode and set it to music. Though self-taught, he was confessedly the best Welsh scholar of his age, and was well versed in those cognate dialects of the Welsh—the Cornish, Armoric, Highland Gaelic, and Irish.... It was he who first told his countrymen that there was a youth in Anglesey whose genius, if properly encouraged, promised fair to rival that of Milton; one of the most eloquent letters ever written is one by him, in which he discants upon the beauties of certain poems of Goronwy Owen, the latent genius of whose boyhood he had observed, whom he had clothed, educated, and assisted up to the period when he was ordained a minister of the Church, and whom he finally rescued from a state bordering on starvation in London, procuring for him an honourable appointment in the New World.”
Lewis Morris made a collection of Welsh MSS., consisting of about eighty volumes, which are now in the British Museum. He died in 1765 and was buried at Llanbadarn Vawr, in Cardiganshire.