Barrington, in his Observations upon the Statutes, raises some historic doubts whether that massacre of the Welsh bards, upon which Gray founded his magnificent ode, actually occurred:—
"But", he says, "a manuscript history, written by Sir John Wynne of Gwydir, authorises the supposed tradition of a massacre of the bards; nor could the writer of that most admirable ode have made his bard so warmly express, or his reader feel, the tyranny of Edward, if he had not probably raised an indignation and fire in his own breast, and by reading of other materials, which I have not happened to meet with."
Has the question of this real or pretended massacre been raised, or proved beyond doubt?
As to Gray requiring "materials" for his fancy, poets even of inferior genius contrive to weave a web out of airy nothings, and the liveliest description by an old Cymric bard of the slaughters of the thirteenth century, will not carry conviction of the truth of the narrative in the nineteenth.
H. T. H.
Minor Queries.
Portrait of William Combe.—Lonsdale the portrait painter, in a letter dated January, 1826, addressed to a friend of Combe whilst living, says:
"I shall be much obliged if you will have the goodness to cause my picture of the late Mr. Combe to be sent to me. Mr. C. borrowed the picture of me to show to some friend, and kept it till his death."