Amongst these were his noble
generosity and sacrifice of self for the benefit of others. Weeks
and months he was in the habit of devoting to the superintendence
of the affairs of the widow and fatherless: one of his principal
delights was to assist merit, to bring it before the world and to
procure for it its proper estimation: it was he who first
discovered the tuneful genius of blind Parry; it was he who first
put the harp into his hand; it was he who first gave him scientific
instruction; it was he who cheered him with encouragement and
assisted him with gold. It was he who instructed the celebrated
Evan Evans in the ancient language of Wales, enabling that talented
but eccentric individual to read the pages of the Red Book of
Hergest as easily as those of the Welsh Bible; it was he who
corrected his verses with matchless skill, refining and polishing
them till they became well worthy of being read by posterity; it
was he who gave him advice, which, had it been followed, would have
made the Prydydd Hir, as he called himself, one of the most
illustrious Welshmen of the last century; and it was he who first
told his countrymen that there was a youth of 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 descants upon the beauties of certain poems of
Gronwy Owen, the latent genius of whose early 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.
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