“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.” “What a fearful fall,” exclaimed Mr Stodham, who may himself have been a Bard of Liberty. “But his business, apart from his trade, was antiquities, and especially the quest of them up and down Wales.”