523945-128 PREFACE.· In offering the following work to the public, it is impossible for the author not to be influenced by a more than ordinary anxiety respecting its fate. His own comparative inexperience as a public writer, and the consciousness he unaffectedly feels of his imperfections in this respect, might of themselves be sufficient to justify this solicitude. But there are other circumstances that serve, in a material degree, to augment the apprehension he entertains as to the favourable reception of the CAMBRIAN PLUTARCH, and which require some preliminary notice. It is a fact not to be questioned, that a remarkable degree of ignorance prevails respecting the literature and history of that portion of our island, in which such of the aboriginal race, as had survived the repeated shocks of foreign invasion, sought their last asylum from the swords of their enemies. While the national peculiarities, whether in manners or literature, of Scotland and Ireland, have been industriously explored, and, in many instances, successfully developed, Wales has been |