WILLIAM SALESBURY AND HIS DICTIONARY.

BY THE EDITOR.

GWALLTER MECHAIN-the Rev. Walter Davies-in his brief memoir of William Salesbury,1 aptly quotes the words of Samson" Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness." Thus, he says, from the stem of the red-handed Saxon and the shafted Norman, came one who sowed the seeds of a rich harvest of blessings, spiritual and temporal, for our poor, persecuted Wales. The Salesburies, he continues, were of Norman descent, and, as tradition has it, came into England with the Conqueror. According to the herald-bards, the son of the first Salesbury was John, the father of Sir Harri Ddu, a name familiar to every lover of our Cymric melodies. John died in 1289. Reinalt, however, tells us that Sir Harri Ddu was the fourth Salesbury; and that he married Nest, the grand-daughter of Ithel Fychan. By thus intermarrying with Welsh heiresses, the Salesburies, like other Norman families, such as the Herberts, Stradlings, Bassetts, and Turbervilles, became Cymric in lineage and language, as well as in devotedness and affection.

Not only was the Salesbury stem prolific, but it spread its branches far and wide, until ere long it overshadowed considerable portions of the counties of Denbigh, Flint, and Merioneth. They had mansions at Bachymbyd, Rhug, Bache

See 'Gwaith y Parch. Walter Davies, A.C. (Gwallter Mechain) Dan olygiad y Parch. D. Silvan Evans, B.D.', vol. ii, page 191. A work most carefully edited, and got up regardless of expense at the cost of the bard's daughter, Miss Davies of Penmaen Dyfi, and published at Carmarthen in 1868, in three volumes.

graig, Clocaenog, Lleproc, Llanrhaiadr, Llywesog, Llanfwrog, Maescadarn, Gwytherin, Dol Beledr, and Llandyrnog.

As with nations, so it is with families; they spring up, flourish for a season, and then decay. If their growth has been rapid, equally rapid is their decadence. Such was the fate of the Salesburies. Though we cannot say with Ieuan Brydydd Hir:

"Y llwybrau gynt lle bu 'r gân,

Yw lleoedd y ddallhuan;"

we may with strict truth assert, in the words of Goronwy Owen, that there remain of this once flourishing stock,

"Prin ddau, lle 'r oedd gynnau gant."

It was from the Lleweni branch of the family that the subject of this paper sprang. Robert, the second son of Thomas Salesbury, married Gwenhwyfar, sole daughter and heiress of Rhys ab Einion Fychan of Plas Isaf in Llanrwst. Of them was born Ffoulk Salesbury, who married a Puleston, and had issue, Robert, the elder son, and William, the author of the Dictionary. Robert had two daughters; Gwen, who was married to Griffith Wynn of Gwydir, and Ellen, who became the wife of Ellis Llwyd, the ancestor of Sir John Wynn of Wynnstay. It will be seen from this brief pedigree of the Salesburies, that our author was connected with some of the chief families of North Wales.

An accusation has been handed down against William Salesbury, of having dispossessed his nieces, Gwen and Ellen, of their inheritance of Plas Isaf; but Gwallter Mechain maintains, that not only is the charge devoid of evidence for its support, but that it is in the highest degree improbable. It cannot be entertained that a man of William Salesbury's high name and character, would stoop to dispossess his nieces of their property. And it is still more incredible, that the Wynns of Gwydir, a bold and resolute stock, would suffer

themselves to be so dispossessed. Besides, had it been so, what could be thought of the high-minded Sir John Wynn, the proud historian of a long line of ancestors, condescending to speak of the wrongful possessor of his inheritance as "a rare scholar" and a "great Hebrician"? We grant that high mental attainments are no proofs of the presence of lofty moral qualities; but William Salesbury made mind and intellect subservient to the cause of patriotism and religion, as every work that he has written testifies. The probability is, that he inherited Plas Isaf in his own right, as the next male heir of his brother Robert; for, as we learn from Sir John Wynn, in his History of the Gwydir Family, one condition of the Welsh tenure of lands was, that the inheritance should not descend to daughters, but to the heir male of the house.

Born at Plas Isaf, William Salesbury, it is probable, received his early education at Denbigh or some other neighbouring town, whence in due time he proceeded to complete his studies at Oxford. Nothing is known of his career at the University, save what we learn from the brief account given by Anthony Wood, in his Athena Oxonienses, and which we now quote:-" William Salesbury, a most exact critic in British Antiquities, was born of an ancient and gentle family in Denbighshire, and spent several years in Academical learning either in St. Alban's or Broad-gate's Hall, or both. Thence he went to an Inn of Chancery in Holbourn near London, called Thavies Inn, where he studied and made sufficient progress in the Common Law; and thence, it is probable, to Lincoln's Inn. Afterwards he applied his Muse to the searching of Histories, especially those belonging to his own country, wherein he became so curious and critical that he wrote and published."

Wood then gives the titles of the several works of our author, and which are as follows:

A Dictionary in English and Welsh, much necessary to

all such Welshmen as will speedily learn the English tongue. London, 1547."

"A little Treatise of the English pronunciation of the Letters. London, 1547." "From this Dictionary and Treatise", adds Wood, "Dr. John Davies obtained many materials when he was making his Dictionarium Britannico-Latinum.” "A plain and familiar Introduction, teaching how to pronounce the letters in the British Tongue, now commonly called Welsh. London, 1567."

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Battery of the Pope's Bottereux, commonly called 'The High Altar'. London, 1550."

Without mentioning Salesbury's Translation of the New Testament, and with a passing glance only at his Laws of Howel Dda, Wood thus concludes his brief biographical notice :

'He was living in the House of Humphrey Toy, a Bookseller in St. Paul's Church Yard in London, in 1567, in the ninth and tenth year of Elizabeth, being then esteemed a Person to be much meriting of the Church and British Tongue; but when he died, I find not."

Soon after this date William Salesbury retired to his estate in Wales, where he again devoted himself to Cymric literature.

Salesbury was an extraordinary linguist for his time. He is said to have been conversant with at least ten languages. In addition to the testimony of Sir John Wynn, we learn from the remarks that preface the Rhetoric', and to which Henry Perry has strangely appended his name, that he knew Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish, as well as English and Welsh. He was thus fitted both by talents and attainments for a lexicographer. And it is in this character that we would now introduce him.

Compilers of dictionaries have generally been assisted by

vocabularies or other elementary works already in existence. Le Gonidec had several at hand, in addition to one or two dictionaries, when he began his great Armorican lexicon. The Highland Society was similarly circumstanced, when it brought out its compendious Gaelic work. It was the same with the Irish dictionaries: their writers built them up of materials collected by other hands. Canon Williams, too, in the construction of his Cornish lexicon, derived assistance from previous efforts, and especially from those of Tonkin. But William Salesbury had nothing of the kind. He was the pioneer of the little band of philologists that have elucidated our rich old Cymric tongue. Without help, without material, save the spoken language and the few MSS. within his reach, he constructed a valuable and, taking all the circumstances into consideration, a marvellous work; as useful to the men of his day, as it is interesting and useful to the student of these later centuries. While other builders have had their material at hand, Salesbury had to traverse the streets and lanes, the highways and hedges for most of his. Had there been a few printed books, his labours would have been considerably lessened; but there were none. And as for MSS. in the reign of the eighth Harry-where were they to be found? They were both rare and difficult of access. I have spoken of Salesbury's work as a building. With much more justice I might have termed it a creation.

Salesbury's compilation, with all its defects, is a reliable work. His idea of a dictionary, it is true, is different from that of William Owen Pughe's. The latter is theoretical. Salesbury, on the contrary, is always practical. The work of the latter is a faithful record of the language of his day, and with all its errors and imperfections. From Dr. Owen Pughe we glean how the Welsh should be spoken; but from William Salesbury how it actually fell from the lips of the men of his time. And we are led to the conclusion, that the