It is true that he must
be judged according to the times he lived in; his chief object was to
reach the ignorant masses of his countrymen, and to attain this object it
was necessary for him to adopt their blunt and unveneered speech. For
all that, one cannot help feeling that he has, in several instances,
descended to a lower level than was demanded of him, with the inevitable
result that both the literary merit and the good influence of his work in
some measure suffer. Many passages which might be considered coarse and
indecorous according to modern canons of taste, have been omitted from
this translation.
From the literary point of view THE VISIONS OF THE SLEEPING BARD has from
the first been regarded as a masterpiece, but from the religious, two
very different opinions have been held concerning it. One, probably the
earlier, was, that it was a book with a good purpose, and fit to stand
side by side with Vicar Pritchard's Canwyll y Cymry and Llyfr yr
Homiliau; the other, that it was a pernicious book, "llyfr codi
cythreuliaid"--a devil-raising book. A work which in any shape or form
bore even a distant relationship to fiction, instantly fell under the ban
of the Puritanism of former days.
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