She said she had never heard of him, but that she could show me the portrait of a great poet, and going away, presently returned with a print in a frame.
"There," said she, "is the portrait of Twm o'r Nant, generally called the Welsh Shakespeare." I looked at it.

The Welsh Shakespeare was represented sitting at a table with a pen in his hand; a cottage-latticed window was behind him, on his left hand; a shelf with plates, and trenchers behind him, on his right.
His features were rude, but full of wild, strange expression; below the picture was the following couplet:-- "Llun Gwr yw llawn gwir Awen; Y Byd a lanwodd o'i Ben." "Did you ever hear of Twm o'r Nant ?" said the old dame.
"I never heard of him by word of mouth," said I; "but I know all about him--I have read his life in Welsh, written by himself, and a curious life it is.

His name was Thomas Edwards, but he generally called himself Twm o'r Nant, or Tom of the Dingle, because he was born in a dingle, at a place called Pen Porchell, in the vale of Clwyd--which, by the bye, was on the estate which once belonged to Iolo Goch, the poet I was speaking to you about just now.

Tom was a carter by trade, but once kept a toll-bar in South Wales, which, however, he was obliged to leave at the end of two years, owing to the annoyance which he experienced from ghosts and goblins, and unearthly things, particularly phantom hearses, which used to pass through his gate at midnight without paying, when the gate was shut." "Ah," said the dame, "you know more about Tom o'r Nant than I do; and was he not a great poet ?" "I daresay he was," said I, "for the pieces which he wrote, and which he called Interludes, had a great run, and he got a great deal of money by them, but I should say the lines beneath the portrait are more applicable to the real Shakespeare than to him." "What do the lines mean ?" said the old lady; "they are Welsh, I know, but they are far beyond my understanding." "They may be thus translated," said I: "God in his head the Muse instill'd, And from his head the world he fill'd." "Thank you, sir," said the old lady.

"I never found any one before who could translate them." She then said she would show me some English lines written on the daughter of a friend of hers who was lately dead, and put some printed lines in a frame into my hand.