“‘Th’ American wilds, where Simplicity’s reign Will cherish the Muse and her pupil defend ... I’ll dwell with Content in the desert alone.’ They were blessed days when Content still walked the earth with a capital C, and probably a female form in light classic drapery. There was Felicity also. Iolo wrote ‘Felicity, a pastoral.’ He composed a poem to the cuckoo, and translated the famous Latin couplet which says that two pilgrimages to St David’s are equivalent to one to Rome itself: “‘Would haughty Popes your senses bubble, And once to Rome your steps entice; ’Tis quite as well, and saves some trouble, Go visit old Saint Taffy twice.’ He wrote quantities of hymns. Once, to get some girls out of a scrape--one having played ‘The Voice of Her I Love’ on the organ after service--he wrote a hymn to the tune, ‘The Voice of the Beloved,’ and fathered it on an imaginary collection of Moravian hymns. One other virtue he had, as a bard: he never repeated his own verses. God rest his soul. He was a walker, not a writer. The best of him--in fact, the real man altogether--refused to go into verse at all. “Yet he had peculiarities which might have adorned a poet. Once, when he was on a job in a churchyard at Dartford, his master told him to go next morning to take certain measurements. He went, and, having taken the measurements, _woke_. It was pitch dark, but soon afterwards a clock struck two. In spite of the darkness he had not only done what he had to do, but he said that on his way to the churchyard every object appeared to him as clear as by day. The measurements were correct. “One night, asleep in his chair, three women appeared to him, one with a mantle over her head. There was a sound like a gun, and one of the others fell, covered in blood. Next day, chance took him--was it chance?--into a farm near Cowbridge where he was welcomed by three women, one hooded in a shawl. Presently a young man entered with a gun, and laid it on the table, pointing at one of the women. At Iolo’s warning it was discovered that the gun was primed and at full cock. “Another time, between Cowbridge and Flimstone, he hesitated thrice at a stile, and then, going over, was just not too late to save a drunken man from a farmer galloping down the path. “In spite of his love of Light and Liberty, he was not above turning necromancer with wand and magic circle to convert a sceptic inn-keeper. He undertook to call up the man’s grandfather, and after some gesticulations and muttering unknown words, he whispered, ‘I feel the approaching spirit. Shall it appear?’ The man whom he was intending to benefit became alarmed, and begged to be allowed to hear the ghost speak, first of all. In a moment a deep, sepulchral voice pronounced the name of the grandfather. The man had had enough. He bolted from the place, leaving Iolo and his confederates triumphant.