746 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1804. 



he removed to Donnington, near 

 Shrewsbury, where he served a 

 church, and taught a school, for 

 about twenty-six pounds a year. 

 He changed his residence in 1753 

 (with his wife and two children), to 

 serve the curacy of Walton, near 

 Liverpool, for which, and the care 

 of a school, he was allowed forty 

 pounds and a house. Here he 

 found all the articles of life so ex- 

 pensive, that, in a letter to his in- 

 timate friend, Mr. Richard Morris, 

 of the Navy-office, the brother to 

 Lewis Morris, he expresses a wish 

 that he could obtain in ^V'ales, in 

 exchange for it, a curacy of only 

 thirty pounds. On this slender, and 

 hard-earned pittance, his family was 

 almost starving, when, two years 

 afterwards, he was induced to re- 

 move to London, in search of some- 

 thing more valuable. His friend, 

 Lewis Morris, applied for prefer- 

 ment to lord Powis, but his appli- 

 cation was unsuccessful, and poor 

 Goronwy was compelled to accept, 

 for a short time, the curacy of 

 jVorth-holt, in Middlesex. Here he 

 was once more on the point of 

 starving, when the rcftory of St. 

 Andrews, in the county of Bruns- 

 wick, in Virginia, worth about two 

 hundred pounds per annum, was 

 obtained for him ; and, in the 

 month of November, 1737, he sail- 

 ed from this country to take pos- 

 session of it. Here his situation 

 seems to have been still distressing. 

 He had to live among men whose 

 whole conduct he detested, and 

 ■whose interest he found was pursued 

 at the expence of every thing wor- 

 thy and honourable. In only two 

 letters that have been received by 

 his friends in this country, of the 

 great number that he wrote, he 

 complains, that all his letters from 



hence were opened before they 

 came to his hands. With one of 

 these letters he himself travelled se- 

 venty miles, and with the other 

 nearly as far, to secure them a pas- 

 sage, by delivering them himself to 

 captains of vessels. In one of 

 them, dated July 1767, he states 

 the loss of all his family, except one 

 boy. 



Thus had this poor fellow , though 

 a man of the highest talents, to 

 struggle with misfortune through 

 every part of his life: and the close 

 attention that, in England, he paid 

 to the duties of his station as a ^ 

 schoolmaster, and his application to 

 the stud}' of languages and general 

 literature, during what ought to 

 have been Jiours dedicated to rest, 

 with the necessary anxieties for his 

 family, tended greatly to under- 

 mine his health. His character 

 throughout appears to have becit 

 free from stain. He was not ambi- 

 tious, a comfortable subsistence 

 seems to have been the utmost limits 

 of his wishes, yet his country did 

 not give it; and with every qualiti- 

 cation that could render him of use 

 to society, he was banished from his 

 native home, to seek an asylum, for 

 a mere existence, in a voluntary 

 transportation from every thing he 

 held dear and valuable. 



The acquirements of Goronwy 

 Owen were very extensive. To a 

 perfect acquaintance with the Latin 

 and Greek languages, he added a 

 knowledge of Hebrew, Chaldee, 

 Arabic, and Syriac. His Latin odes 

 have been universally admired for 

 the purity of their language, ami 

 for the elegance of their expression. 

 Asa Welsh poet, he ranks superior 

 to all since the days of Dafydd ap 

 Gwilym. Those partsof his works 

 that have beeu printed, are consi- 



dcredi 



