Dosparth byrr

AN ADDITION TO THOMAS LLEWELYN's LIBRARY

In a recent blog, ‘The Library of Thomas Llewelyn’ (February 2020), Bill Hines offered a fascinating glimpse into the scholarly and bibliographical interests of Thomas Llewelyn (c.1720-83), a prominent 18th century Welsh Particular Baptist minister and educator, items from whose substantial collection are now kept at Aberystwyth University. As Bill remarked, “Llewelyn was a generous supporter of education and left his library, valued at £1500, to Bristol Baptist College after his death. Sadly much of the collection seems to have been dispersed in the middle of the 19th century, with no record of disposal.”

Another title can now be added to those we know Llewelyn owned. Among the many books he bequeathed to the Bristol Education Society was a short work entitled Dosparth byrr ar y rhann gyntaf i ramadeg cymraeg; printed in Milan in 1567, this was the first of a four-part analysis of the Welsh language by Gruffydd Robert (c.1527-98), Canon Theologian and confessor to Archbishop Carlo Borromeo. Llewelyn’s bookplate, though partially obscured, identifies him as the owner:

A work of considerable erudition in its day, Gruffydd Robert’s Grammar is also widely recognised as one of the classics of 16th-century Welsh literature. For T. Gwynfor Griffith, 'Italian humanists, notably Alberti, Bembo, and Castiglione, had argued persuasively that the vernacular could be raised to the dignity of a great literary language like Latin or Greek, if only learned authors would cultivate it … The application of that doctrine to the Welsh language was the principal concern of Gruffydd Robert. Like Bembo in his Prose della volgar lingua Robert set out to provide his compatriots with an analysis of their language and a guide to composition in it, and he did so in a work so well written that, like Bembo’s, it became a classic of the literature it sought to promote.'

In the opinion of the late Paul Morgan, Assistant Librarian at the Bodleian Library, this item was once in the Regent’s Park library in London: a collection which was later transferred to the Angus Library and Archive in Oxford; however, there appears to be no record of the Dosparth Byrr among the holdings of either institution. The next reference to its provenance occurs when it was donated in March 1987 by Robin Waterfield Ltd. of Oxford to the Bodleian. How this rare and valuable book came into the keeping of Robin Waterfield and his company remains a mystery.

Twelve copies, plus various surviving remnants and manuscript versions, are held in the National Library in Aberystwyth; the Cambridge University Library; the Newberry Library in Chicago; the British Library; Swansea University; and the Beinecke Library of Yale University. The Dosparth Byrr has an intriguing history: printed probably at the press of Vincenzo Girardone in the parish of San Protaso ad Monacos in Milan, the greater part of the print run was likely brought to Britain by the historian and chorographer Humphrey Llwyd and Henry Fitzalan, twelfth earl of Arundel, who were visiting the city when the book was in press. It attracted the attention of a range of notable readers and book collectors in Wales and beyond: Dr. John Dee, occultist, mathematician, and cartographer to Elizabeth I, had a copy, as did the great Welsh scientist, geographer, linguist and antiquary Edward Lhuyd, Joshua Thomas, the distinguished 18th-century Baptist historian, and the antiquarians Lewis Morris of Anglesey and his brother Richard, founders of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, who discussed it in their correspondence.

Nor was knowledge of this volume limited to Wales. No less a luminary than Dr. Samuel Johnson saw the Dosparth Byrr and remarked on it in a letter of May 1768 to Frederick Augusta Barnard, librarian to George III: “in every place things often occur where they are least expected. I was shown a Welsh Grammar, written in Welsh, and printed at Milan, I believe, before any Grammar of that language had been printed here.” Copies were held in the great libraries of Gwydir, Peniarth, and Wynnstay, and others were acquired by such eminent collectors as Frederick North, 5th Earl of Guilford, Richard Heber, Thomas Grenville, and Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte. In 1749, Thomas Llewelyn’s copy belonged to one Gwilim ap Gwilim, a London-based innkeeper and minor poet from Anglesey who was an associate of the Morris brothers. By the 1760s it had come into the possession of John Price (1735–1813), then librarian to the Bodleian. In 1767 Price presented it to Richard Morris; it is not known when it came into Llewelyn’s possession, though he may have acquired it from Morris himself.

A number of those whose names are written in copies of the Dosparth Byrr cannot be identified with certainty at this time; they are, however, witnesses to an interest in Gruffydd Robert’s work that reaches across the centuries. As is so often the case when researching provenance history, we feel ourselves to be in the presence of a kind of echo: faint vestiges of those who once valued this book in some way, and who wanted to leave their mark on it for the future, but whose days and distinctiveness are lost to us. Adding this important volume to what we know of Thomas Llewelyn’s library sheds further light on his literary and academic interests; it also highlights the debt owed to him for preserving an important copy of one of the most significant examples of the engagement of Welsh scholarship with Renaissance learning in the sixteenth century.

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Mark Paul Bryant-Quinn, Llan-non
( mp@bryantquinn.co.uk )