The Sleeping Bard; Or, Visions of the World, Death, and HellWynne, Ellis
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The Sleeping Bard; Or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell
Wynne, Ellis
Allegories; Christian life; Religious literature, Welsh; Welsh literature -- 18th century; Welsh literature -- Translations into English
The following translation of the Sleeping Bard has long existed in
manuscript. It was made by the writer of these lines in the year 1830,
at the request of a little Welsh bookseller of his acquaintance, who
resided in the rather unfashionable neighbourhood of Smithfield, and who
entertained an opinion that a translation of the work of Elis Wyn, would
enjoy a great sale both in England and Wales. On the eve of committing
it to the press however, the Cambrian Briton felt his small heart give
way within him: "Were I to print it," said he, "I should be ruined; the
terrible descriptions of vice and torment, would frighten the genteel
part of the English public out of its wits, and I should to a certainty
be prosecuted by Sir James Scarlett. I am much obliged to you, for the
trouble you have given yourself on my account--but Myn Diawl! I had no
idea till I had read him in English, that Elis Wyn had been such a
terrible fellow."
Yet there is no harm in the book. It is true that the Author is any
thing but mincing in his expressions and descriptions, but there is
nothing in the Sleeping Bard which can give offence to any but the over
fastidious. There is a great deal of squeamish nonsense in the world;
let us hope however that there is not so much as there was. Indeed can
we doubt that such folly is on the decline, when we find Albemarle Street
in '60, willing to publish a harmless but plain speaking book which
Smithfield shrank from in '30?
The Vision of the Course of the World.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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